Dateline Originals - The Girl in the Blue Mustang - Ep. 4: One Buzz. Then Another.

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

After three trials, a verdict. But a Dateline viewer could change everything…This episode was originally published on March 28, 2023. 

Some things in life are given, and one of them is that a prison jumpsuit in a courtroom has a way of standing out, defining its wearer. Maybe that's why Raymond Jennings seemed less than cordial as he took his usual seat at the end of the defense table on the morning of March 16, 2009. He was encased in shapeless reddish-orange instead of the crisp business shirt and tie he'd been allowed to wear during his two jury trials. The fluorescence made him look agitated, perhaps.

Michelle O'Keefe's family had already taken their seats just behind him. Lawyers and court officials sat to either side. The decision they had all come to hear was going to be crucial. Two juries had deadlocked, and now it was up to the judge. Should Jennings go on trial yet again, a third time, for the murder of Michelle O'Keefe? Or should the judge declare an end to it all and send him home? All rise, said the bailiff, and Judge Michael Johnson entered the room, climbed the bench, and sat down. The air crackled nervously. Let me address the principal issue

for today, whether I'll exercise my discretion to dismiss the case. All it took was 12 words. So I will simply state my ruling. I will not dismiss the case. Jennings shook his head as if in disbelief.

He seemed barely in control of himself. I would like it quiet in the courtroom, please. There would be a third trial. One more time, the O'Keiths would go to court, live through it all again, willingly, all the upset, the dislocation, the pain, to get justice for Michelle. After the hearing, a group of reporters hurried down the elevator and gathered on the sidewalk out on West Temple Street,

eager to get the family's reaction. It was a fine spring day. The air was fresh for L.A. But the O'Keeffe's may not have noticed other things to think about now. Frankly, we're just frustrated after the second go-round and didn't know what to think about now. Frankly, we're just, we're frustrated after the second go-round and didn't know what to think, you know, and we weren't sure if we're going to get the third opportunity or not. God bless Judge Johnson for allowing that to happen today.

As Mike O'Keefe spoke, Pat O'Keefe stood by his side and said not a word, but clung to a framed photograph of Michelle, as if it was yesterday they lost her, not nine years ago. Paddle Keefe's son, Jason, spoke next. Going in today, you think of the possibilities of what if the man that murdered my sister walks free, and that crosses your mind constantly. Hearing that was just like a huge weight off your shoulders. You know, we worked very hard to get to this point. We're confident that the third trial will have unanimous 12 to 0 vote and he'll be in jail for 25 to life. In the pursuit of justice, as the O'Keeffe's were finding out,

there is no substitute for a determined family. And on that sunny day, it was as if Lady Justice was smiling down on them. In approval? Perhaps. With Lady Justice, it down on them. In approval? Perhaps. With Lady Justice, it's sometimes hard to tell. In this episode, you'll take a ride on that blue Mustang. You'll ride it down a rabbit hole. Into what?

Chaos? Confusion? Or perhaps just to one young man's night of insomnia. I was sitting at home and some force compelled me to go watch this episode of Dateline NBC. Oh my, what that young brain would conjure up. But not yet. Not yet. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is The Girl in the Blue Mustang, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 4. One buzz, then another. A third trial of Raymond Jennings, charged with murdering Michelle O'Keefe, would not be held in L.A.

To get away from the downtown L.A. jury pool? Well, no, not really. Sometimes justice can hinge on things like available space, brick and mortar. There was now a brand new courthouse in Michelle O'Keeffe's hometown, right there in the Antelope Valley, all staffed up and ready for a long trial. And, as different from downtown L.A., as chalk is from cheese. And the stakes had been raised this time. Both sides had been told this third trial would be the last. So, things might be a little different this time.

Mr. Jennings is charged in count one, on or about February 22, 2000, within the county of Los Angeles with the crime of murder. Judge Lisa Chung looked out past the rich wood paneling of her fine newish courtroom and intoned the words, with the named victim being Miss Michelle O'Keefe. Raymond Jennings, in his sober gray-green suit, sat to the left of his defense attorney, David Houchen. To the right, Prosecutor Michael Blake sat alone at the prosecution table, elbows resting on armrests, fingertips pressed pensively together, hoping Ray Jennings would take the stand, of course. The man who had talked and talked to the cops, maybe talked too much for his own good, hadn't uttered a word during his first two trials.

But this time, he must have been hoping he'd talk. I mean, he's a guy who gets himself in trouble with his mouth, huh? Well, I had some questions for him, right? You can imagine. I bet you did. But the opportunity never came. No surprise. Jennings' defense attorney didn't think it was

a good idea. Ladies and gentlemen, as a point of reference once again, this is the strike mark. Being so close to home meant, for the first time, prosecutors were able to take jurors to the park and ride so they could see the crime scene with their own eyes. It looked mournful and eerie in the dark to the steady whir of traffic on the highway.

And the clock struck 9.30, the very time Michelle was murdered. I started to believe that they were understanding the scene. Just looking at them walking around, and I could see things registering. They understood better just the physicality of the slope of the lot, you know, the vantage points that are described. The night lighting illuminated Detective Longshore's khaki-colored trench coat as he led the tour. Jurors in his wake, scribbling in their notebooks. Raymond Jennings was allowed to watch from a distance. The O'Keeffe's too. The strike mark of one of the bullets fired by Michelle's killer almost a decade earlier

was still there, still visible. It was eerie, etched into the pavement. A deputy stood right there at the strike mark, where the shooter had to have been. And then the jurors walked up a gentle slope to the exact spot on an overlook where Jennings said he had taken cover and from there couldn't make out the shooter. They looked down there and they could clearly make out all the detail of the deputy's face from where they were standing. This is the feedback they gave us after the fact. They were like, this doesn't add up now. This is a good feeling you're getting.

Yeah, like the light bulb went off, basically. In the courtroom, where the O'Keefe's nightmare had been recounted for the last time, tan chairs for the 12 jurors were empty now. The third trial had come and finally gone to the jury. The weary O'Keefe paused for a moment in front of the elevators before heading home to begin the long wait for a verdict. Days passed. A week. Thanksgiving came and went. Two weeks now. What was the jury doing in there? The empty courtroom became the O'Keeffe's makeshift church. They were always there, sitting stoically, keeping vigil. Pat O'Keeffe often kept her Bible open,

a black-and-white laminated photo of Michelle carefully placed in its crease. Their long wait was now in its third week. We're always thinking about it. We live it. We breathe it. Day and night. I think for five minutes last night, though, we got together with church and we had a little get together. Christmas is never the same for us, to tell you the truth, since this happened. So, you know, if the jury needs to be that thorough and go into that week, then it is what it is. While I'm in there waiting and listening for the buzz from the jury, and you'll hear one buzz, I just wait for a second one, hoping there's another one behind it, because two buzzes equals word.

There's over 10,000 pages of evidence they're reviewing right now, and that's why, as of today, it'll be the third week, and I'm confident that the jury will come to the right conclusion and come to the right decision. Mind you, around the Antelope Valley, views regarding the guilt or innocence of Raymond Jennings were, well, they were mixed. After all, the evidence was circumstantial. Some people were saying, maybe Jennings shouldn't have been tried at all. Maybe he was innocent. Did you think there was a danger he could walk?

Absolutely. You know, the jury was pretty impassive. Typically, the feeling is that the longer they're out, the worse it is for the prosecution. And so I was really getting concerned. Everybody's waiting for the moment. And finally, it came. December 18th, 2009. The Friday before Christmas. A balmy 63 degrees as the sun climbed up the light pink wall of the courthouse. A buzzer burst the silence.

And then another. After 24 days of deliberations, the jury had finally reached a verdict. All assembled in the courthouse, hearts thumping in their chests. What was the mood like in the courtroom as the jury prepared to read a verdict? As they came in? I mean, this is like a decade's worth of work for you. We were all holding hands. We were all holding hands.

We were in prayer. Ironically enough, the pastor from our church was a juror on another trial, so he prayed with us just before we went in. Inside, a crowd filled the room to capacity. Rayma Jennings was brought in, wearing suit and tie cuffed behind his back. A bailiff inserted a key and freed his hands. Every eye seemed focused

on Jennings and then on the jury filing in unreadable eyes. And then the clerk picked up a sheet of yellow line paper and read the words the jury had written. We, the jury, in above-entitled action,

find the defendant, Raymond Jennings, not guilty of the crime of willful, deliberate, and premeditated first-degree murder. Not guilty of first-degree murder. There was a sudden intake of breath, not least by Detective Richard Longshore. You kind of think, this can't be happening again. And then, the clerk continued reading.

We, the jury, in above entitled action, find the defendant Raymond Jennings guilty of the crime of secondary murder. Alleged victim, Michelle O'Keefe. There are no more dramatic or pregnant or difficult moments probably in human affairs than that moment in the courtroom you're waiting to know. So, I kind of sighed and I thought, well, you know, maybe they must have, hopefully they leaned towards second degree. And sure enough, then the court clerk, you know, read that he was guilty of second degree murder, included with the, you know, the use of a firearm. And oh my gosh, thank goodness that they came to a consensus. The jurors delivered.

They worked through. They all came to agreement. And my hat's off to them. That was Michelle's dad, Michael Keefe, talking to me in the same kitchen where Michelle said goodbye the day she was murdered. Now Michelle's mom, Pat, sat silently, a brown scarf draped loosely around her neck. What about you? How was that for you that day? Ah, a big sigh of relief. A big sigh of relief after 10 years that Michelle finally can rest in peace and justice was served.

In the fading light of that sunny, sunny day, jurors mingled with the press outside the courthouse. And then some of the jurors embraced the O'Keeffe's and said, tears in their eyes, they had decided to hold a candlelight vigil in the park and ride in Michelle's memory. They said they wanted to have a little tribute to Michelle and invited us and that was incredible. Anything else that we've experienced pales in comparison. It was just like there was

I can't tell you it's just like finishing a big race or something. Letting go. Yes. A sense of peace. Something and you're just finally relaxed. I think I can take the edge off, yeah. A few weeks later, Raymond Jennings was led back into that same courtroom, shackled, his prison jumpsuit a jarring slash of orange-red. He stared forward as they undid his cuffs, his face a blank. The O'Keefe's stood behind him, next to a formal black and white portrait of Michelle. Mike O'Keefe spoke first. When I learned of Michelle's death, I felt a piece of me die. I have to ask, what kind of demon lives within you

to have done such a dastardly act? Pat O'Keefe wanted Jennings to know he was also facing a prison of the mind. You said you watched her die because you didn't want to disturb a crime scene. An innocent person wouldn't say something like that. You will have to live with that image of her dying and taking her last breath. And here was Michelle's younger brother, Jason, asking Jennings to finally do the right thing. Today, you can repent for your sins.

Ask God for forgiveness. Ask all of us for forgiveness. And if you ask me, I will forgive you. Then, Raymond Lee Jennings, the man who perhaps had already said too much, had one more thing to say. He turned to the right in his chair to face the O'Keeffe's. I sit here as an innocent man, and I've heard you speak on God. As Christ is my Lord and Savior, I will stand before God, and this is one sin that I will not be judged for. I'm at peace in my life and I laugh and I smile because I hold no remorse because I didn't kill your sister.

That is the bottom line. Jesus is my Lord and Savior and I will stand before him. And I'll stand before him with you, with you, and with you. And we'll answer to this question. You could, as they say, hear a pin drop as Jennings turned to the judge for one last profession of innocence. I don't ask any mercy from this court because I know I don't have any coming. I will take my time and I will hold my head up as a man. My five children will know who their father is and they will know he is not a murderer.

The sentence I'm about to pass. The judge showed no mercy, gave Jennings the maximum. For a total sentence of 40 years to life. 40 to life. And in that moment in the courtroom, as the deputy clicked his shackles back on and led him out a side door toward the cell block, Jennings felt his life spiraling away. Of course, he kept insisting he was innocent. But I wanted to know about that moment, when the jury so dramatically said otherwise. I didn't ask him to accuse him all over again. That was all done.

No, this was just to understand. There must be quite a remarkable rollercoaster in your gut, in your head, in your heart when you hear not guilty first-degree murder, and then she keeps reading. And what was that like? Absolute devastation. You do hold that anger and you you know and i was angry towards you know the uh the detectives is where most of my anger uh lied at this detective longshore and uh rex par Rex Parris and how they all came against me to, and you know that you're innocent of this crime, and yet you've just been found guilty.

It was eating at me. It was destroying me. You know, I just got found guilty for a murder I didn't commit. What happens now? What happens to my children? You know, what happens to my mom? Because you're led away. You know that this is life, right?

This is going to be life. Absolutely. I was devastated. I broke down in the holding tank. I remember calling my wife's grandmother, and I was a complete wreck. So you had to kind of suck it up and decide, okay, I'm a lifer now, and I'm going to at least figure out how to live successfully in prison. Is that what you did?

In a sense, you talk to people and you get, as they call in the prison world, laced up. Laced up? Yeah. They fill you with all the information that you need to know for the most part. But, yeah, you just have to toughen up and realize that, you know, as they call it in county jail, catching the chain, and you will be transferred to a state facility to serve out some time. In your case, 40 to life. 40 to life. Which meant, really, he'd most likely die in prison.

And the O'Keeves? After a decade of determined effort, that family had finally arrived at a place that felt like justice. And the awful tragedy that had haunted the Antelope Valley for so long was finally over. Or so we thought. We absolutely thought. In the spring of 2010, we broadcast our two-hour report about the murder of Michelle O'Keefe and the long investigation and the endless delays and the three trials

with all their raw emotions and uncertainties. And, of course, the sentencing of Raymond Lee Jennings. By then, Jennings had been behind bars, counting pretrial jail time, six years. He had learned the prison life. His wife had divorced him. He'd appealed his conviction and lost the appeal. And he'd turned for help to a last resort,

the California Innocence Project, which promised to look into his case. Oh, it was very exciting, because at that point, my appeals had been exhausted. And so the light at that tunnel was getting very dim. But there is a fairly long distance between being accepted and ever getting redress. Oh, absolutely.

It can take decades. Years. If he was lucky. So, tempered excitement, he wasn't holding his breath. The O'Keefes had moved on, too, best they could. Though beset, as you will hear later, by a litany of life's troubles. Years passed. Five years. And then one night in 2015. I was sitting at home and some force compelled me to go watch this episode of Dateline NBC.

On the day of her death, Michelle O'Keefe, 18 years old, college freshman, was in a wonderful mood. For the life of him, Clint Ehrlich couldn't explain what had drawn him to her Dateline episode about Michelle O'Keefe's murder that night. After all, he wasn't a true crime fan. In fact, he didn't even like watching television. I pulled it up on my computer, actually. Oh, why that story? Because

what I saw was something about an Iraq war veteran who had supposedly murdered a young girl in a parking lot in California, and I couldn't understand why would he do that. Sometimes we're told people actually fall asleep as they watch repeats of Dateline.

But by the time this Dateline was over, sleep was the last thing on Clint Ehrlich's mind. And I wanted to find out what was the story. Well, of course, even before I laid eyes on Clint Ehrlich, I had to know who was this guy who seemed so eager to talk to me about a case he had nothing to do with. He came to see me looking, frankly, like a young hotshot lawyer, but different somehow. Dark suit, crisp, high-collared white shirt. He had a shock of sandy brown hair and a slightly mischievous air, like he knew things. Or thought he did. Odd duck is too strong, but you're different.

I am different, yes. Right now I'm a visiting researcher at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, where I'm writing my dissertation on nuclear game theory. By the way, that was Moscow as in Russia. 2015, a less complicated time. Why are you doing that? Because it interests me and because I can. Yeah. And yet I hear that your track to this sort of writing dissertations in Moscow is not normal. You didn't go to college?

Well, I dropped out of high school and then I didn't go to college. Well, so how do you get from one place to the other place? I decided not to go to college because I knew that I wanted to pursue law. And I had the privilege of having my dad be one of the top lawyers in the country. And so being able to be his apprentice and get my legal education that way, hands-on, was very appealing. I'll be darned. It's the Abraham Lincoln method. Young Lincoln? Or like Ben Franklin? Maybe. But he was certainly confident.

Clint Ehrlich had also researched cruise missile defense at a national security think tank at the age of 16. So if I were to ask you to describe what sort of person you are? I would say that I'm an autodidactic polymath. A fancy way of saying a self-taught person who knows a lot about a lot of things. Well, it's a good thing to just be able to say it, right? You know, it's taken me a long time to be able to say it, but this case has definitely helped. By this case, of course, Clint meant the case of Michelle O'Keefe and the conviction of Raymond Jennings. After you saw the episode, what did you decide to do?

I immediately logged on to Westlaw and pulled up the Court of Appeals opinion and decided to read it. Clint stayed up all night, rifling through document after document, utterly hooked. And by the time he finished reading everything he could about Michelle O'Keefe's case, he could hardly wait to tell his father. It was June 1st, 2015. A beautiful late spring day, temperature in the low 80s in Encino, California. The day Clint Ehrlich went to meet his dad for lunch at a fast food Mexican restaurant near his law office. Jeff Ehrlich looked the part, balding and bespectacled, with a salt and pepper goatee.

Clint is very good at figuring out, how do I put this? I call it a workaround sometimes. Sort of like, I'm here, I want to be there. What is the most efficient way for me to do that? And he can figure it out himself as opposed to somebody giving him a textbook and saying, read this. If anyone could figure out the practice of legal education and law, Clint would be that person. And within a very, very short time, he was spectacular at it. Anyway, after that particular all-nighter, Clint was a bit bleary-eyed, but convinced

Ray Jennings didn't kill that girl. And he said to me, Dad, if I found a case involving, I think he said an Iraq War veteran who was wrongfully convicted of murder, would you be interested in working with me to help get him out? And I said, okay, maybe, what have you got? And then he sent me, he emailed me a copy of the Court of Appeal opinion. Did he explain himself? I mean, where did he come up with that? He didn't tell me anything about it other than if I could convince you that there's an innocent man in prison and, you know, would you be willing to take his case and get him out? And his way of convincing you is to hand you the appellate court? That was the first thing.

And he read the opinion. He knew that it was by a court that previously had issued an opinion against me and that it would pique my interest. Jeff Ehrlich had a very successful career as an appellate attorney with legal experience that had taken him all the way to the Supreme Court. His clients were usually insurance policyholders, though he'd certainly never got involved in a murder case. Michelle O'Keefe? Never heard of her. Raymond Jennings?

Same thing. But he knew enough about his son and his son's unusual gifts, so he read the appellate court's opinion. The opinion I found very troubling. Why? Because they start off the opinion by essentially saying, we recognize that there is no witness that saw this man commit the crime. There's no physical evidence to tie him to the crime,

that the victim has blood DNA from another person under her fingernails. And they sort of put all that aside, like it had no evidentiary value, and then said, but there's this circumstantial evidence which is more than sufficient to support the conviction. And I thought, well... And circumstantial evidence often is, by the way. I have no problem with circumstantial evidence. It can be very powerful.

It can be more powerful than the other kind sometimes, depending. Circumstantial evidence can be every bit as powerful as direct evidence, depending on what it is. So which one was it in this case? A little of both. First of all, the standard to me of beyond a reasonable doubt is a really high standard when people start to make judgments after the fact about what you should have seen somehow that seemed troubling in a circumstance where they admit that he's 400 feet away it's night it's you know a traumatic, gunshots being fired where he's admittedly

ducking down behind a car. I was troubled by that. It just bugged me. So the father and son legal team dug in and poured over all of it. Crime scene photos, the trial transcripts, the police interviews, the Rex Paris deposition, anything they could get their hands on. And with each document, each footnote, Jeff Ehrlich moved from interested to convinced he had to do something about this. He reached out to Ray Jennings' fiancee because we couldn't reach out to him directly. I didn't know how to reach him. And I said, hi, I't reach out to him directly. I didn't know how to reach him. And I said, hi, I'm an appellate lawyer.

She was very guarded at first. I told her that actually I just really thought I could help and that Ray needed help and that I could give the help and I would like to try. I would do it at no charge. And if you will agree or get his permission to represent you. You know, what would possess you to do such a thing? Take a case pro bono, out of the blue, somebody you don't know, I don't suppose

you have any personal reason to care about any more than anybody else. I guess I likened it at the time to, this man needed help. He needed a particular kind of help. And it happened to be the kind of help he needed was my particular skill set. He needed a really good appellate lawyer. Adding in the jail time before and during his three trials, Raymond Jennings had already done more than a decade of hard time.

Eating prison food, following prison rules. Then, a phone call from his fiancée. And now, Jennings faced an excruciating decision. Continue with the innocence project he had already invested years in, or hang his hopes on an untried civil attorney and his autodidact son, who were these people calling out of the blue? The decision was very difficult because the Innocence Project, in essence, was a lifeline. And now I have an attorney who speaks a very good game. But you got to let go of that lifeline and grab on to the other one. So I called Jeff and spoke with him over the phone for the 15 minutes that I was allotted. And I've never heard an attorney speak the way that he did, very passionate,

made it very clear that his intention was to get me out of prison by all means necessary. What was it like when you got off the phone with him? The elation. You're talking about being on a high. I mean, you went from waiting for the California Innocence Project to do something to you have a man now that's willing to go to bat for you. Someone like Jeff Ehrlich, who had enough experience to provide lawyerly depth and balance to his son's out ofof-the-box brilliant instincts. He had things moving. I mean, he hit the ground running.

You know, Jeff is a very persistent man. He's very, and if he has passion for something, he's going after it. He's very aggressive. He's aggressive with his words. He's aggressive with his work. And, you know, I look at it, everything that they put together is what should have been done at my first trial. Tell me about your first face-to-face meeting with him. My first face-to-face meeting was in Chino Prison.

And I'd never been to a prison before because I don't do criminal law. And so they brought him into a room where Clint and I were. And there was a small table there and two chairs. And there were these lockers along the wall. And he walked in and we shook hands. And then the guard opened up one of these, what I thought was a locker, and put him inside it and made him sit in it. And it was like a tiny phone booth with a metal grate in front and then a slot. And then I had to interview him through this metal grate, and you could barely make out his face. And it really affected me to see this man, the only way I could communicate

with him in person was to have him shackled in this tiny little metal booth really brought home for me what the reality of his day-to-day existence was and what the stakes were for me in trying to,

I had to win his case. The case of the girl in the blue Mustang was about to become a different kind of story altogether. Next, on The Girl in the Blue Mustang. No one can characterize what low is until you go through something like that. Dizzying twists ahead for the O'Keeffe's and the Ehrlich's.

The district attorney makes the decision about what to do. And so we're on pins and needles. 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. Dina Bisbano is associate producer. Thank you.