Dateline Originals - The Seduction - Ep. 6: A Silhouette with a Gun

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

Three shots fired, and the truth about Ron’s murder is revealed.This episode was originally published on July 12, 2022. 

It was a movie, an action-adventure, the sort of movie Jaime loved. And he was in it. He was the co-star, the supervillain. Patty had helped him put together the imagined costume of a deranged killer. Coveralls and gloves and creepy nylon stocking mask. Then she, the true star, played the victim to the hilt. So committed to the role she'd created, she even cut her own arm. And with blood dripping everywhere, she barricaded herself in the bathroom. She held tightly in her good hand the perfect prop, a real gun to complete

the authenticity of the fiction she'd arranged. Too bad there wasn't a camera to focus on her wild eyes, her pretended terror, as she pointed the gun straight at Jaime and cocked the hammer. Uh-oh. I said, Patty! And she goes, boom, one time. And I guess the first shot went through my arm, which I didn't know because of the shock. She fires again, and it hits me in the collarbone area,

and it knocks me to the ground. And I'm on the ground and I'm crying, Patty, Patty, what are you doing? It's me. Stop this. Why are you killing me? Stop this. It's me. And Patty responded by shooting him again. And that one hit my leg. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Dateline's newest podcast, The Seduction. Three times, Patty shot Jaime.

And all three bullets went clean through him and through the wall behind him. I saw those very bullet holes myself. Perfect little half-inch diameter holes, one just about the level of my calf. I figured that must have been the last one fired as Jaime lay crumpled on the floor, begging for his life. And after that, she drops the gun. She starts running outside the house screaming for help. I'm in such shock that maybe there were blanks because I wasn't feeling anything at the time.

I was like, okay, maybe this is just all improvisation. There are blanks. She just wanted neighbors to think something bad really, really happened. I get up and I run outside, get her. I'm like, Patty, what are you doing right now? Did you just shoot me? Did you just really shoot me? And as we get back in the house, that's when I start to feel my aches and I start to feel woozy.

I start to feel the blood trickling down my leg, my arm, my chest. And I see myself in a reflection and I'm going pale. And I start to tell her, Patty, we need to leave right now. We need to go now. This is all bad. You just ruined it. We're done for. We need to go now.

Where's the gun? She keeps asking. Where's the gun? I don't know. You just dropped it. Let's go. She was patting me down thinking I had it. I fell to the ground after she touches my leg from the pain. I tell her, Patty, I don't have it. Let's go, please. And I told her how cold I was how thirsty she still looks for the gun finally she finds it I stand up she jumps on top of the bed onto her headboard I had a shelf on the top she reaches and I see that she just reaches and a whole bunch of bullets are falling from her hand and so she has a handful of bullets and she runs back across the hall. And the headboard has a mirror

so I can see the reflection of her standing in the hallway. And she's reloading the gun. So there you are. She has shot you. Now you see her through the mirror. She's loading the gun. I yelled to her, Patty, why are you reloading the gun? What are you doing? Why are you trying to kill me? It's me, Jaime. She very calmly says, I'm not reloading the gun. I don't know what you're talking about.

I can see you right there in the reflection. You're lying to me right now. No acting now. Jaime was terrified. He ran into the bathroom and tried to hide. But of course, he couldn't. The now shattered door was just hanging on its hinges. I didn't know where else to go. I was just panicked.

I'm still shivering. I'm still crying. I'm still bleeding. And she comes in and she's pointing the gun at me again. And she's telling me, you need to get out right now. And I have my hands up the whole time and I'm crying to her. Patty, what is this? It's me. Why are you trying to kill me right now? What did I do wrong? I've done everything for you right now what am i doing wrong she starts rambling on about how ron was such a good man he didn't deserve to die i can't believe you what do you expect me to do for you sounded like a different woman it was totally a different woman ike was looking her in the eyes and it just didn't look like the Patty I knew anymore. She cocked the gun

and told me to get on my knees. I told her, if you're going to kill me, just kill me now. I can't remember the other babble she was saying, but she started pointing the gun at herself. And I said, no, stop that. Don't do that either. What are you doing right now? If you want to be with me, you need to stop this and let's go right now. Whatever we have, let's just go. Where are we going to go? We only have so much money and this and this and this. We don't have nothing now. I said, well, that's not my problem. You did this. Either we stay here, clean this up, and I have to go to the police tomorrow looking like hell, and they're going to know, or we leave.

Didn't it occur to you, I mean, at that point, to leave yourself? You managed to prevent her from shooting you. Why the hell didn't you just run? Why didn't you recognize, this woman wants to kill me? I've got gotta go. It was very hard for me to walk. Yeah, but come on. That's not really an excuse.

She just tried to kill you. You call 911, you get the F out of there. Don't you? I kept feeling the love that I had for her. The love? She just tried to shoot you to death. I'm asking myself that same question. Good question.

And I honestly, that's always what comes in my mind is. You were feeling the love. My feeling the love that it was a mistake. I was, it had to have been a mistake. She's temporarily insane. Went temporarily insane with all this trauma. She lost some blood. She got banged up a little.

Okay, I'll give her that. I was scared. There was fear in me. There was much fear in me, but I still felt so much love for her that this had to, it was going to be okay. She's coming back to her senses. She knows who I am again.

She started to calm down and she was calm now. She started to get grasp of things. She started packing the car. I helped her as much as I could. We got in and we started to drive away. At that moment, I was drinking a lot of water in the car, and there was already bandage, gauzes and band-aids and some other medical stuff that I guess she had.

For bandaging up her arm. For bandaging up her arm. But now it was being used for me, and that's what made me continue going with her bandaging up her arm. But now it was being used for me. And that's what made me continue going with her was because she was taking care of me again. And I felt okay. So she is trying to keep me alive. She is helping me.

She gave me water. She gave me some food. Did she tell you she loved you? Yes. She told me how sorry she was, how she doesn't remember shooting me. She said that she just went blank and that when she got out of her senses, she realized that what was happening and she even fainted when she saw my wounds. And she's like, oh my God, I can't believe I did this to you. I'm so sorry. And she even fainted when she saw my wounds. And she's like, oh my God, I can't believe I did this to you. I'm so sorry. And she started to faint.

And I told her that it's okay. It was just an accident. Let's just move on, you know. At the time, you really believed that, huh? Yes. And so they headed out on the road. With Patty behind the wheel and Jaime riding shotgun, his life slowly oozing away. Where'd he go? I told her we got to go straight to Mexico if we got any chance. As they drove, Patty told Jaime she had some special medicine for him. She kept giving me somas for the pain.

I kept going to sleep. The drug Jaime is talking about, soma, is a prescription muscle relaxant that deadens pain, makes you sleepy, and if you take too many, could kill you. Around 4 a.m. outside of Truckee, California, as Jaime slept, Patty nodded off herself, or so she'd eventually claim. Anyway, she drifted off the road, hit a big rock, blew out a tire, bent the wheel rim. They limped into a gas station and waited three hours for it to open, before being told their car would have to be towed to Reno for repairs. Mind you, Jaime had three bullet holes in him. Well, six, I guess, if you consider the exit wounds.

And his blood kept leaking out as they waited for their car to get fixed. By the time they were back on the road, it was noon. Eight hours had passed. I.B. fell asleep. For how long, he wasn't sure. He didn't say anything about stopping to buy gas, as Patty said they did.

But at some point, he woke up and realized they were nowhere near Mexico. We were in Utah. How are we doing in Utah? I'm going to go to Virginia because I know of a little place there that is off the radar. I'm like, in this country, there's no such thing as off the radar anymore. They're going to find us. Don't worry, it's up in the mountains in the woods somewhere. On and on drove Patty as Jaime fought to stay

conscious. Nightfall found them outside Salt Lake City, and an exhausted Patty pulled into a Motel 6 for the night, but made Jaime pull himself together and limp into the office to book their room. I paid for it in cash. I showed him my ID.

Given Jaime was all shot up, you'd have thought Patty would be the one to book the room, but Patty appeared to be thinking ahead. A kidnap victim booking her own hotel room? That would be a tough one to explain to the cops later, after Jaime bled to death. No, it had to be Jaime's name on the registry. I went back to the room. She was already unpacking. As I went in, that's when she really bandaged me up correctly.

I took a shower. She had these sticky butterfly stitches, so she sealed everything up as best as she could. She hyposprayed me. She did all sorts of stuff. And then she gave me more Soma. So, I.M.E. was well on his way to lights out permanently when that cop happened by and looked at that license plate and decided for whatever reason to run a routine check. Saved Jaime's life. When did you two start actually making plans?

When Detective Lensing arrived, he heard Jaime's story of the fake kidnapping and Patty's cut arm and Jaime's own gunshot wounds. And he listened intently. This would be a very serious case all on its own. But Lensing had traveled from California to Utah in hopes of solving a murder. He wanted to know who killed Ron Prespa and why. And Jaime, so close to death, was in a confessional mood, prepared to free his conscience of all those sinful burdens. To be continued... to murder Ron. And then Patty got Jaime into a homicidal mood by telling him her husband was a monster who beat and raped her. But a few days with Ron, and Jaime could see that he wasn't a monster at all.

He was a decent and kind man. To Jaime, he was becoming almost a father figure. So remember, he called Patty and told her he was becoming almost a father figure. So remember, he called Patty and told her the deal was off. He couldn't do it. And Patty's response was to tell Jaime to clear out she never wanted to see him again. She would say, you're telling me you don't love me right now. No, I'm not saying that.

Well, that's what you're meaning by saying that this is wrong, that you don't believe me. Then she would say, if you're going to do it, do it. And if not, just leave. Then a kind of panic washed over Jaime. Lose his patty? He just couldn't. He walked back toward the house, his mind a turmoil. And that's when his downcast eyes spotted a small sledgehammer. And I told myself, well, if one hit on the head even just makes him go unconscious, that's enough for me. Ron, satisfied his pigs were fine, came back inside, fell back into his big easy chair near the TV. So when I went inside the house, I went and sat behind him, and I started to drink a lot of water from my nerves.

I was really nervous. And once again, a couple more calls from Patty. Is it done? Is it done? Not yet. Well, hurry up. Click. And I finally took my last drink of water. I put on the gloves. I wiped on the hammer.

The house was so small. Ron was just feet away, facing away from Jaime, who was sitting at the kitchen table. I looked myself in the reflection by the window, and I was telling myself, if you do this, there's no turning back. You're doing this because it's right. You're doing this because you love her. So you were sitting behind him, trying to get up your nerve. What did you think about?

I was thinking about all the things that she told me. And they must be true.. And they must be true. And that they must be true. This has to be true. If she tells me it's true, she won't lie to me. She's never lied to me. Once again, Jaime relived Patty's story. The one about Ron raping her.

And that triggered Jaime's own memories of abuse. Immediately, I got the adrenaline rush because I started to feel anger. I jumped out of my seat, and I hit him on the head three times quickly. He put his arms up, and I sounded like a what and a why at the same time. And as he threw his arms up, they automatically fell down. And I was yelling at him, telling him how you raped my wife. You beat my wife. You're getting what you deserve. That's right.

Patty's my wife. I married her. How dare you touch my wife that way? And I hit him on the head about three, four more times. And it just ended up where I knew for a fact he was dead.

You broke his skull. I broke his skull. And I dropped the hammer and I felt a relief and I felt exhausted. Relief? Relief that I finally got this over with, that I finally did justice for this woman. Should be happy now. Not for the first time, Jaime's story shocked me to the core,

but it wasn't over. To please Patty, Jaime still had much to do. He still needed to stage Ron's death to look like an accident. He had to get the body out of that house. It took me about an hour and a half to put him in the car. How'd you do it? I drug him all the way to the vehicle outside, and the problem was to lift him and put him in a driver's seat.

So Jaime made a ramp out of a ladder and a sheet of plywood. I set that up, the ladder and the plywood on top, and I was dragging him up. And it was working. I got him all the way into the seat, and I belted him in as though he was driving. How did you get the SUV to the place where you knocked it off the cliff? I sat in the middle seat,

and I was using my left leg the whole time for brake and gas, and my right hand to steer. That can't have been easy. No, it was exhausting. Sitting right beside this man you've just murdered, his head is open and bleeding, and you've killed him, and he's right beside you. How did you keep your sanity?

I thought of a movie. The movie Jaime was thinking about is Sin City. There's a scene in which a killer assigned to dump a body is driving through the countryside with the corpse sitting beside him. I started to tell myself, wow, three years ago when I watched this movie, neither did I feel that I was going to be doing something similar to this. Reality inside that Suburban was horrific, but transformed to fantasy? It became nothing more than a scene from a favorite movie. And I just kept replaying that part in my head and enjoying the feeling of being in a theater with my cousin,

watching that movie, was what helped me. Along the way, Jaime dumped the hammer, a bloody rug, and Ron's easy chair. And then on Chili Bar Road, at the curve over the gorge, he put all the props in place for the climactic accident scene. I started to douse the car with gasoline, and I opened up a paint tank. I lit the lighter while I put his foot in the gas pedal. It was at this point that blood leaking from the Suburban formed a puddle on the road,

to be discovered later by investigators. It was on park, so it was just revved. I lit it, and then I put it on drive. Everything went in flames. I shut the door, and I saw the car go down. He ran to the getaway car he'd parked earlier behind the earthen berm. Had he followed the plan, he'd have driven southeast to Texas. But he just couldn't.

Instead, he went west. I actually ended up driving back to her house. You weren't supposed to do that. I wasn't supposed to do that. Why'd you do that? I had to see her. Why? I felt that if I didn't see her, that she was going to abandon me.

When Jaime returned to the house, he said, he found Patty in the living room, cleaning up the blood he had left behind. And in the middle of it all, said Jaime, sitting in the very spot where Ron had been when he was murdered was Patty's three-year-old granddaughter, watching cartoons on television. As I go there, she looks at me and she's like, what are you doing here? Are you serious right now? You know, get out of here. As I reached for a hug and a kiss, she withdrew from me.

I said, you need to leave now. I'm like, well, can I at least get a last goodbye hug and kiss? She gave me this hug and this kiss that was empty. And now, alone, at night, on the open road. It was when I started to feel dirty. I started to feel ashamed.

I wanted to throw up. I felt like I just desecrated a man for what I started to see now as a selfish reason. And on top of everything, I just damned my soul. To all this, I listened intently and around and around in my head went the question, how was it possible? Here he was, soft-spoken, submissive, almost sweet. How could this one have so brutally murdered the best man, the kindest man he'd ever met? And then sit here with me and describe it all

as if he was recounting something he'd seen on TV the night before. How could he bear to tell that story, share that awful truth with another, knowing full well he had committed the worst of all sins, the taking of an innocent life? I'm sure you've noticed by now, Jaime's tick of repeating back comments I made and questions I asked. Almost robotically. To put it simply, he was the most compliant person I've ever interviewed. As he talked, I thought how easy it must have been for Patty or anyone he cared about to manipulate him, to play him like a fiddle. And though he clearly knew right from wrong, he remained willing, even eager, to play the chump for Patty.

Because even after the murder, the shooting, the betrayal, Jaime sat with Detective Lensing that day he so narrowly escaped death in Salt Lake City and said he still loved Patty. It's funny how it hurts. It's like I know who she is now, but yet I feel for her. You know, she really made me feel like I was her husband. And that she was my wife. Jaime and Patty were arrested and hauled back to California,

where Jaime was charged with murder. Also, arson for setting the forest ablaze when he disposed of Ron's SUV. And Patty? The charges against her were even more serious. Like Jaime, she too was charged with murdering Ron. But on top of that, she was also charged with attempted murder for shooting Jaime. She was looking at life in prison. Unless... Unless, well, here was a clever idea.

What if she could persuade Jaime, her compliant, love-struck Jaime, to take the fall? What if he testified that the killing of Ron Prespo was all his idea, and that Patty was blameless when she tried to kill him. Self-defense. But how could she get to him? Hangtown. The old gold rush name for the seat of El Dorado County. This is where Jaime and Patty were held while awaiting trial. It's a small county with a single jail for both men and women, and in our story, that matters.

Why? Because of a certain feature in the building's plumbing system, which gave Patty an opportunity to crawl right back into Jaime's pliable mind and, of course, his heart. If both you and the person that are parallel with the toilet empty out the water,

you can speak through it as though you're right in the same rooms, very clearly. It's incredible. Separated by both brick and bar, Jaime and Patty were now, ironically, closer than ever. The communication with her was intoxicating me so much that I started to believe everything again that she was telling me about the man.

What did you say to each other through that tube? A bunch of I love yous and sorries and we'll get through this together. I promise Patty that I'll make you walk. You'll get away with this. An empty promise? Perhaps not. Much of the case against Patty would be based on Jaime's confession. But now Patty was telling Jaime just what he should say in court, to provide a match for the tale Patty told Detective Lensing back in Salt Lake City. She admitted she was involved in the whole thing.

But at the very last moment, she called it off because she couldn't do that to her husband. And then from that point on, Jaime Ramos was the one that continued with the plan and killed her husband. So she was not involved. And then came and kidnapped her. Exactly. To get rid of the only other witness that he had. And she was defending herself by shooting him. She would be the hero. She killed the person who killed her husband. It was a kind of problem. As El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pearson told us, convicting Patty without Jaime's testimony would be troublesome. There's a big difference between knowing and believing

that somebody's criminally responsible and being able to prove it. And so night after night, Patty's disembodied instructions and her sweet nothings echoed down the plumbing and into Jaime's cell. She promised if she walks, she'll marry me in prison. She'll visit me every day. She'll put money in my books. You were prepared to go along with that? I was prepared to go along. Spend the rest of your life in prison? Spend the rest of my life in prison. And be visited by Patty? Be visited by Patty. Even in court, where they could not speak to each other,

Jaime's slavish devotion to Patty was obvious for all to see. Ron's daughter, Misty, found it all revolting. And the way that he looked at her, I wanted to throw up. He looked at her with such lust. And to sit there and look at this woman, the way that he did was, it was gut-wrenching for us as a family. That she had that much control over somebody, and still did, after she tried to kill him. You couldn't see a movie like this. James Clark, IME's court-appointed attorney, said he'd never had a case like this in 30 years of practicing law.

I like the kid, but you know what? I also like the victim. He seemed to be a good guy. What's your assessment of her? My viewpoint of her is she is a reptile. She has no heart, no feelings, no emotions. There's only one person she's interested in. That's her.

You ever seen this kind of manipulation before? Never to the extent that I saw it here. What did you say to him about that? What can you say to anybody who's in love with somebody? I mean, you know, it's irrational. James Clark said Jaime had only one defense worth pursuing, flip on Patty and hope for some small measure of lenience when it came to sentencing. Evidence of his guilt was overwhelming.

The issue was just how was he to be punished. That was the issue. And would Patty be punished at all? Or would Jaime take the fall for her? So Clark made a phone call to the one person who had the power to break Patty's spell, Jaime's grandmother. I brought the grandmother up here along with the two aunts

and they told him to tell the truth and do the right thing. My family told me, when have we ever lied to you? When have we ever hurt you? I couldn't think of anything. So then why then do you not believe us, the police, everybody, even her own children, are saying how evil this woman is. How can you not believe this? It made me realize this is the truth. It is the truth. I have to tell the truth. And that's when, that moment forward, I stopped contacting her in every way. And instead, when he appeared before a grand jury, he told the truth. The whole ugly story, just as it happened. One of the grand jurors said, I don't think that young

man would have ever harmed a fly in his life but for the fact that he ran into Patty. Then Jaime showed detectives Lansing and Hedges the 14-mile route he took with Ron Prespa's corpse pressed against him. And they searched for Ron's easy chair and the ladder and the rug, all the stuff Jaime said he jettisoned along the roadside.

But they came up empty. Until they stopped at a small glade along Chili Bar Road. Where he's at back there, that's the area. It shouldn't be further than that. And there, buried in the leaves, Detective Lensing found something. Looks like a blue rug. Hidden underneath. Detective Lensing found something. Looks like a blue rug, hidden underneath, like somebody intentionally put leaves over the top of it. This is the rug that Ron Presby was on at the time he was murdered. And you can see some of the remnants of his blood in those moldy spots there. Now, Jaime had to prepare himself for the day when he would have to take the witness stand

and face Patty, the woman he still loved. He'd have to condemn her. I was telling myself I was going to do my best not to look at her. That if the only time I had to look at her was when they told me if I had to point, which usually I see in movies, that can you please point to the defendant? Couldn't imagine doing that. I couldn't imagine doing that, but I felt like, okay, I have to do that real quick,

and then I can look at my family. But three days before the trial, Patty suddenly and without explanation pleaded guilty to all charges. And when I found out that it was true, this weight just went off my shoulders. I thank God for that. Why Patty pleaded guilty is a mystery.

I think at some point, she's probably been lying to her own family all these months about what actually happened, and she knew this goes to trial. They would learn the truth and what her real responsibility was in this case. Ron Prespa's daughter, Misty, couldn't believe Patty openly admitted she was involved in Misty's dad's murder. It was so against her character as a person. I was shocked. It was good to hear her say guilty. I don't care if it was for her own reasons.

Whatever she had to do for herself, to hear that out of her mouth was good. A month later, in a packed courtroom, Patty, aloof and alone, was sentenced to 40 years to life. Detective Mike Lenzing was there to watch. This woman is the most evil and cold-hearted murderer that I've dealt with. Why'd she hate him so much? I don't know that she hated him. She just loved herself more. And Jaime, he too pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.

And while casting shamed, penitent looks at his family, He was sentenced to 25 years to life. But before being led off to prison, he agreed to meet with Ron's daughters, April and Misty. He explained that the little amount of time that he knew my dad, he was also growing to love him. And it's hard to hear that from somebody that brutally murdered him. That's the hardest part for me, that he would still do this and still take him away knowing the type of person he was

and to follow through with it. The forest home where they grew up and where their father cared for them so well is a dark place now. To know that my dad lost his life in here, it's horrible. There's so much evil that took place in here. How did she do it? How did that woman exert such a magical hold over her young man? And yet she did. And as I sat with him there in that little prison visiting room, I could see that in a way, even after everything that happened,

she still did. Do you love her sometimes still? Some moments in the dark at night? There's moments where I feel that what I did was right. Because you wanted her so much. Because I wanted her so much. Because I wanted her so much. And you still did. And I still did.

Did. Do maybe is sometimes. Sometimes, but it's going away. It's going away. The Seduction is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Vince Sterla is the producer. Jonathan Mosier is the audio editor. Rachel Ligon is associate producer. Matt Sullivan is assistant audio editor.

Susan Nall is senior producer. From NBC News Audio, Bryson Barnes as Technical Director, sound mixing by Bob Mallory. Nina Bisbano is associate producer.