Dateline Originals - The Girl in the Blue Mustang - Ep. 1: Michelle's Last Day

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

She loved her shiny blue Mustang. Then it became a crime scene.This episode was originally published on March 14, 2023. 

It was a pitch black night in the high desert, Antelope Valley, up the Grapeline Highway north of LA. It was late February, the year was 2000. Sheriff's Deputy Billy Cox stepped out of his patrol car and braced himself against a cold wind howling down from the San Gabriel Mountains. Wind show was in the low 30s, rain coming in. Hard to believe in just a few weeks a sea of blood-red poppies would begin to bloom in the surrounding Mojave Desert. Cox was responding to a call of shots fired at the park-and-ride off Exit 5 on Highway 14 in Palmdale. It was 9.49 p.m. The lot had about emptied out by the time he arrived, daily commuters home safe in their beds. And then, there he was, the caller.

Security guard by the look of it, waving at him about a hundred yards away. Cox drove over there and rolled down his window. The guard seemed agitated. Told him somebody had been shot. Looked bad. Over there, he pointed. Over in the west end of the lot. So then Cox cruised slowly through the darkened lot. And there it was. Something very wrong around that bright blue Mustang, all askew between the long rows of parking spaces. Cox slowly eased out of his squad car and approached. The driver's side door was open. The window rolled down about four inches.

A woman's left leg and bare foot were hanging out of the door. Weird angle. Dead still. The engine was running. Keys of the door. Weird angle. Dead still. The engine was running. Keys in the ignition. Headlights on. But she was dead. No doubt about that.

Barely more than a kid by the look of her. Cox reached into the car, fished out what must have been her purse. Inside was a California driver's license. She was young, all right. Eighteen years old.

Her name was Michelle O'Keefe. Cox followed procedure, called for paramedics, though she was long past saving. Also, additional deputies. But it didn't take long to realize this was going to go way above his pay grade. L.A. County Homicide Detective Richard Longshore was sound asleep and two counties away when he got the call. You're waking up in the middle of the night, you're rolling out, you're thinking for the minute the phone rings as to what kind of scene it's going to be. Actually, you look forward to it. That's the adrenaline rush.

It's a new case. Longshore was a pro's pro. 18 years at L.A. County Homicide, so sure, his adrenaline surged in that old familiar way as he roared up the 405. But what did he know? It wasn't going to be adrenaline that would crack this one. It takes a lot of confidence, a certain amount of ego to work these cases. There are cases that you will take home with you at night and that will last until the end of your life.

This is a story about a family, about a mother's premonition. I don't know if it was her spirit that just came over me or something, just felt like she was gone. It's a story about circumstantial evidence as tricky to read as a mirage on the high desert. It's about accounts that might be fact and might be fiction and seem to shift like sand in a desert wind. It is funny how people react to different situations when there's trauma involved. You and I can look at the same thing, and you can see something totally different than what I see. Why was an innocent young woman shot to death

in a guarded suburban parking lot? What happened to Michelle O'Keefe in her final moments? And who did it? In the hard world where spirits do not roam, there would be no preparing for the wild gyrations to come. Things that were as true as can be and then maybe not true at all. And then something else altogether. I'm Keith Morrison and this is The Girl in the Blue Mustang,

a podcast from Dateline. Episode 1, Michelle's last day. We're at Disneyland right now, and it's 9.19 p.m. That's Michelle O'Keefe. It was New Year's Eve, 1999. Michelle and her family were about to greet the new millennium at the happiest place on earth. And she was especially lovely that night, with her pale Irish skin and her luxurious head of black hair.

Back home, Michelle had just unwrapped an early high school graduation gift, a brand new blue Mustang. She loved that car, loved downshifting its V6 engine on the winding high desert roads near their home in Palmdale, 70 miles north of LA. And she was galloping ahead like the car's famous logo. She was going to be a somebody. She was already on the dean's list at Antelope Valley Community College. It's like she did everything right. I think for an 18-year-old, she was pretty well, pretty well steered in the right direction. So she was very focused. That's Michelle's proud dad, Mike O'Keefe. Mike told me she'd been a cheerleader, and not just in her high school squad either.

Mike figured she cheered up the whole world around her. Michelle had a great heart. She was nice to everybody. People in school said that she was friends with all the different groups of people, not just cheerleaders. She was friends with everybody. She always thought of other people first. She was a great student, just a great person. That's Michelle's mother, Pat, the day I drove up to Palmdale to ask about her daughter.

Pat's face lit up. Her dark eyes sparkled. As we stood around in her kitchen and she talked about the daughter who felt like a soulmate, too. She started college when she was in the seventh grade. What? Yeah. Back up a little bit.

She started college in seventh grade? What do you mean? She had to get special permission from the principal. And we got the paperwork done and she started at the junior college in the seventh grade taking a math class. And she finished her calculus. She was very, very smart. Michelle was all set to get her associate's degree in the spring at the tender age of 18.

She had a couple of jobs. Receptionist at the beauty parlor where her mom was a manager. And because they lived only two hours from Hollywood, she also scored some walk-on jobs in film and TV. Well, you can just put the camera on me for a while. That bit from a home movie was pure Michelle. She was a natural around a camera. How did she get into that stuff? Actually, it was Mike's sister who was into it.

She lived in L.A., and she was in several movies. And so his sister got her into it. As an extra. As an extra. But when she got into it, they wouldn't stop calling her. On February 22nd, Michelle was up early. She padded down the hall and ran into her sleepy-eyed 12-year-old brother, Jason. 6.30, I woke up.

She was getting ready to leave. She was off. She said, big day. And this one? This one was going to be good. She talked about it. She said, I got booked for a Kid Rock video shoot today. Do you want to go?

I was like, I don't think I can miss any more days of school. I've missed so much already because I've had a stripped throat. And then she's like, oh, well, I'm going. Call me and let me know how your science project goes. And then she's like, oh, well, I'm going. Call me and let me know how your science project goes. And then she left. Michelle and her best friend Jennifer Peterson were both booked on the same shoot, and Michelle was hitching a ride in Jennifer's car to L.A.

But then, since the ninth grade, they'd always done everything together. As usual, Michelle had everything planned down to the smallest detail. First, she was going to drop her car off close to the college campus. She'd be back from the shoot just in time for her evening English class. Jennifer followed Michelle as she turned right off Avenue S into the Palmdale Park and Ride. As she pulled into a parking space, Michelle made sure it was under a parking light. That way her shiny new Mustang would be as safe as possible. And so was she when she returned after dark. Then Michelle jumped into Jennifer's family Ford Taurus station wagon and they hit the road.

Michelle turned on her favorite radio station, Kiss FM, flew down Highway 14 out of the mountains to the City of Angels lying at their feet. The shoot location was in the heart of downtown L.A., the grand old Olympic Auditorium, where once upon a time, way back in the 1920s, they put on boxing matches. But today they'd be shooting a music video with none other than Kid Rock. How's everybody feeling today? The agent who had booked them had two words for the kind of wardrobe she wanted them to wear for the shoot.

Hip and trendy. That's Michelle's best friend, Jennifer Peterson. Kid Rock strode out on stage and gripped his mic. It was the first take of one of his latest hits, Bawitaba. My name is Kid! It's Kid, baby! It's Kid Rock!

Michelle and Jennifer were right in front, loving it and looking good. Jennifer again about Michelle. She was wearing a skirt right above her knees with ruffles on the bottom and a blue tube top with a vinyl jacket over it. The shoot went late, but before it wrapped, a crew member offered to walk Michelle and Jennifer to their car. They politely declined. It wasn't the first time they'd been hit on, and if they ever had to defend themselves,

Michelle was ready anyway. More than ready, Jennifer figured. She was taking kickboxing classes for self-defense, and she thought that she could protect herself. So, happy and unscathed, they headed back up the highway toward Palmdale. Here's what her mom, Pat, heard later. She called her professor on the way home to say she was running late. The class was from 7 to 10, and she was supposed to catch the last half hour of her class. It was after 9, by the time they turned into the Palmdale Park and Ride.

Michelle was on the phone, calling into Kiss FM, trying to win free concert tickets. When we got there, the lot was pretty empty, so we cut across the lot, and I parked behind her car. As she was pulling away, Jennifer looked in her rearview mirror and saw the Mustang's headlights flash on, and Michelle begin to back up. No way of knowing, that carefree trip was the last time she would ever see her friend alive.

It was just after midnight by the time Detective Richard Longshore and his partner Diane Harris arrived at the park and ride. Michelle had already been dead three hours by then. TV cameras had already shown up. They gathered around Longshore. It appears that she has sustained some trauma. This is obviously a homicide investigation. What was her condition? What did she look like? There was several gunshots.

We didn't know how many at that time. She was leaned in her car with her head over to one side. She had one leg extended out of the car. And there were several shell casings on the ground, expended projectiles. It took us several hours before we had a good idea of what had transpired. Michelle had been shot point-blank in the chest

and three other times in the face and neck. Her wounds included blunt force trauma to her forehead. There was one witness, a security guard named Raymond Jennings, who'd radioed shots fired to his supervisor hours earlier. He was new, second night on the job. It was 1.20 a.m. when Longshore got around to talking to the guy. He was about freezing by that point, been waiting around since he heard a car alarm at 9.30. And he said that

he recognized that as being a Mustang alarm. And he heard the engine racing and he walked back towards his car, which is parked between the Mustang and himself, and heard a single gunshot. He took cover and looked up beyond the car and saw the Mustang rolling backwards with additional shots being fired until it came to a rest at the top of the platter. The guard said he was 100 yards away with his line of sight partially blocked by a van, so he couldn't see the shooter. Then what, did he rush down and see what happened? No, he didn't. He said he called for help, and he expressed a fear that the shooter was still there,

and he was unarmed. He didn't have a firearm. It was an unarmed guard post. Investigators worked the park-and-ride crime scene until sunrise, but had very little to go on. By then, bleary-eyed commuters had started to arrive for the two-hour slog to L.A. Not the sort of place you'd expect to find a random murder. No. And we looked at all the usual suspects, if you will. You know, is this a domestic dispute or a lover's quarrel?

Well, she had no boyfriends. Was this a robbery? Well, her purse was there containing well over $100. The only thing missing was her cell phone. And the purse was in plain view in her car. Was this a carjacking? Well, no one knew that she was coming from a video shoot. She'd parked the car there. She and her girlfriend, about 1 in the afternoon, had gone to Los Angeles and had driven home, got back to the parking lot about 9.30. But it's not logical that a person would just sit there

because this Mustang is there and wait in freezing temperatures for six, seven, eight, nine hours and then not take the car. It doesn't fit. Longshore was perplexed. There was no obvious motive. No enemies, no vices.

She wasn't a party girl. She was religious. And whatever dangers lurked out there, Michelle's mother, Pat, said her daughter was ready for them. I used to always tell her to be careful, Michelle, because she was so pretty and guys might try to come under her, try to make advances. And she said, well, don't worry, Mom, I won't let anybody take me away.

I'd rather die than be raped. At the crime scene, there were forensic signs of a confrontation of some kind before Michelle was killed. Was there a sexual assault? That is what we finally determined probably occurred. Her blouse or her tube top had been dislodged, exposing portions of her breasts. That wasn't just the EMT guys who arrived? No, we were able to determine based on talking to them that that had been the condition that she actually was presented when they arrived. Mr. Jennings, in his statements, indicated that he saw exposed breasts and that type of thing. And we found out from the Ford motor company engineer

that Michelle's car was not equipped with the kind of door locks that when you drive a distance, they automatically lock. You had to do it manually. So the door was open to anybody that wanted to open it. So all of these things were what you managed to uncover in the first few days. Yes, sir. But still had no suspect. That's correct.

So something about that security guard seemed just curious. The Night of the Kid Rock Shoot in L.A., Pat O'Keefe went to bed nervous. She was lying next to her husband, Mike, tossing and turning, worrying about Michelle. Well, I knew sometimes those video shoots ran late, and I tried to call her a couple times, and she didn't answer. I figured she probably took her phone off, and... You knew something had happened.

Yeah, I knew something had happened. It was kind of ironic because I woke up, and I noticed she was crying on the end of the bed, and I said, what the heck's wrong?

And she goes, I know something's happened to Michelle. I just know it. You had some kind of premonition that night? I don't know if it was her spirit that just came over me or something, just felt like she was gone. Because I already told Mike

she's dead. I just have a feeling. It was 3 a.m. when their phone broke to silence, followed by a knock at the door and the rotating amber light of an emergency vehicle raking their dark living room wall. There's been an accident, and I go, oh, my gosh. I go, was Michelle in a wreck?

And they go, well, not exactly. There's been a... she's been shot. And of course, you know, chills went down my spine. I go, well, then she's alive. And he goes, well, no. And that just really, when I heard those words, it just really, just took all the feeling out of me, basically. Just three sheriffs don't show

up to your door for nothing I'm not trying to poke you with sharp sticks or anything but is there any way to understand for people to understand what that feeling is like when you know they're on the way nothing worse it seemed real but then it didn't seem kind of seemed like a dream yeah like it just this didn't seem right. I sort of lost all the feeling in my body when they told me. We'll never, ever get to see her get married. We'll never get to see her have her grandkids.

You kind of want to spin back the clock, but can't, is that? Yeah. It's your knees buckled. Yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, I think i had to sit back we're near the stairway and i just gotta lean back and had to sit down on the steps and get my breath and then i look up at the top of the stairway our son's 12 year old son's there and he knows something's wrong so he comes down and we have to tell him and that was just really horrible.

I saw both my parents in tears, and even the sheriff's deputies were kind of in tears. And that's when they had told me what exactly had happened. That's Michelle's brother, Jason. There's no way to prepare yourself for news like that. No. No. Wildest dream. Could you imagine that, you know, about 20 hours before that,

I was working on a science project with her. Now she's gone until the day I get to heaven. To see the look of his face, you know, when he lost his sister, it was just really bad. Yeah. Affected him as much as you guys. Oh, my gosh. oh my gosh affected the rest of his life in the days after michelle o'keefe's murder her parents tried to pick up the pieces but it was impossible i tried to go back to work and i couldn't because i saw an empty she was my receptionist at

the beauty salon i was a manager and i'd always see an empty chair there, and I was so used to seeing cheerful Michelle. And I'd be cutting hair, and then tears would be rolling down my eyes. I was like, I can't do this. I can't do this. Michelle's dad, Mike, was haunted by something else. A strange premonition Michelle shared in the months before her murder. Everything was really going pretty well for us as a family. I remember it was one night we were watching a movie and it showed this guy in a coffin that couldn't get out.

And she said, you know, Dad, that's why when I die I want to be cremated. And it just sort of struck me. You know, I said, why would you even make a statement like that? And I go, why would you say such a thing? And she goes, you know, I just had a feeling I'm not going to live much longer. And I asked her, I go, has somebody been bothering you? Or is there some reason? She goes, no, I just had this feeling I'm not going to live much longer.

I've just had this strange feeling for a while. Michelle even shared her fear with her younger brother. She could have always bet me that she's going to die before me. I was like, well, how are we going to pay each other? She goes, once we get to heaven, we'll give each other the money. We just kind of joked around about it. And then a few weeks before the Kid Rock shoot, something that sent chills down Michael Keefe's spine, Michelle was in the kitchen opening the mail when she came across a package from the California DMV.

She got the tags for her Mustang and she came to me and the last three digits on the license plate were 187. And she goes, Dad, I don't want to put these on my car. 187. And I said, you know what 187 was? I go, what were 187. And she goes, Dad, I don't want to put these on my car. 187. And I said, you know what 187 was? I go, what's 187? She goes, Dad, that's the police code for homicide. In the early days of the investigation, detectives, of course, had a lot of questions about what happened at the park and ride. So they went back to the only witness they had, security guard Raymond Jennings.

What sort of image did he have? What kind of presentation? He's very cordial. He had a southern accent that came and went. He has just moved to California from North Carolina. Very polite, very cordial in every single encounter I had with him. Jennings told Detective Longshore that when he heard those gunshots, he took cover behind his own car until his supervisor got there. And then, reluctantly, he went down with her to get a closer look. He said that was about 9.45, a few minutes before the first responders arrived. Later, Jennings told Longshore he felt bad that he didn't see more.

It bothers me every day to know that I didn't see it. I know it sounds funny and ridiculous, but it bothers me every day that I did not see anything and I wish that I did see something, that I had some kind of information

related to you guys. Memory is a mysterious and not always reliable process. Storing bits and pieces of information in the brain. I sat back down in the car. Then retrieving them. And I just kept going through it in my head. Crystal clear, apparently, in the moments immediately after an incident. When I started walking back, the car was rolling backwards.

And as it was rolling, the fire was going on. And increasingly unpredictable as time goes on. That's why investigators decided on a special type of questioning technique for Jennings called a cognitive interview. Recalling what he had seen or done earlier that day might help him remember things. Missing details. If you were to lose your car keys, as we all have done, just trying to think back, you know, okay, where could they be? You come up with a blank. But if you can put together what you did for the hours before that, all of a sudden it may come to you. Sure. You just take it step by step. Step by step. Jennings looked relaxed in a sleeveless t-shirt and comfortable shorts,

like he was chatting with a good friend instead of with Detective Diane Harris about a gruesome murder. Without skipping a beat, Jennings began describing Michelle's last seconds alive. It looked like she was still twitching. And that probably could have been... And she did that because her neck was so comfortable. And that was my first act. I tried to pull her out and put more first aid on her. When I asked him about why you didn't render first aid,

because he told us that she was still alive, you saw a body moving, this type of thing. He said, well, that was a crime scene. I didn't want to be part of that. I said, what's more important, saving a life or a crime scene? Well, saving a life. You didn't do anything, did you? No.

And he's trained. He was a National Guardsman. He had that type of training. It was all very odd. They gave him a polygraph just to test his truthfulness. And then the polygrapher said he failed it. And yet,

he remained enthusiastic as if he was not just cooperating. Like he was trying to prove he could be more than a security guard.

Maybe he could be a sheriff's deputy. Anyway, he kept talking. So I was thinking that she got shot in the chest and was trying

to get out of there. And talking. She put the car in reverse and was backing up. That's when the rest of the shots fired out. And talking. That's how I speculate. Then Detective Harris asked Jennings about the state of Michelle's clothing the night she was killed. I looked in the car and I said, well, it couldn't be rape.

And then I thought, well, at first't be Ray. And then I thought, well, at first I did think it was Ray because her breasts were hanging out at the time. And that was just puzzling. I'm like, why is her breast hanging out? And I thought she was a prostitute because of the way she was dressed. And then I found out she was in a Kid Rock extra,

you know, extra in the Kid Rock video. I said, that explains why she was dressed. I said, Ray, we're talking about a dead 18-year-old. He said, well, that's right. I apologize if I offended you. Yeah, it's just a strange, strange individual. There's a fine line between witness and participant. The more Jennings talked,

the more investigators began to wonder if the helpful security guard knew too much. This season on The Girl in the Blue Mustang. We had people confessing to it. Youngsters, teenagers, early 20s up the Antelope Valley. I had guys come up to me that I've never seen before that you wouldn't want to meet in Dark Alley that said, I'll take care of it for me. Just tell me when you want me to do it. And I said, no.

I said, it's there. I kept telling myself, it's in the video. You're an investigator. Find it. Why don't you keep your smirk off your face? I know I will not. I never take juries for granted. It comes back to the old adage. If you're an investigator, find him. Why don't you keep your smirk off your face? I know I will not. I never take juries for granted. It comes back to the old adage,

you know what you say, but you don't know what they hear. I was sitting at home, and some force compelled me to go watch this episode of Dateline NBC. It's had a huge ripple effect. People's lives have been changed forever. You know, as long as there's breath in my lungs, we aren't going to give up. The Girl in the Blue Mustang is a production of Dateline and NBC News.

Scott Fraser is a producer. Brian Drew, David Varga, and John Koster are audio editors. Thomas Kemmen is assistant audio editor. Kiani Reid is associate producer. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Liz Cole is executive producer. And David Corvo is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, Bryson Barnes is technical director.

Sound mixing by Bob Mallory. Nina Bisbano is associate producer. Thank you.