Deadly Mirage - Busted

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

Two suspects are arrested. Then one of them turns on the other.

It was around 11 on the morning of November 17, 2014, three months to the day after her husband's murder, that Sabrina Limon was taken into custody at her children's school. Like Jonathan Hearn, who had been arrested earlier, Sabrina was placed in the back of a patrol car and driven to the desert town of Boron, which was the closest Kern County Sheriff's Department substation. It was there that the couple's long journey through the American justice system would begin.

Jonathan Hearn's family had already been notified of his arrest. Sabrina's sister, Julie, had been told by investigators that somebody needed to make arrangements to take care of her kids because she had been detained. I was at work and I got the call on my cell phone. They said that they had arrested Sabrina and Jonathan Hearn. I needed to pick up the kids from school. We weren't able to talk to Brina. I just couldn't, couldn't believe it. While Jonathan and Sabrina were being transported to Boron, teams of investigators fanned out

to begin searches of their homes. From Sabrina's residence, we were able to obtain lots of documents regarding financial stuff from life insurance companies, from BNSF Railroad, letters from Jonathan to Sabrina. Every love letter, every racy photo, every text message, and every sales receipt were no longer just proof of a steamy illicit affair. They were now called evidence. From Jonathan's residence, we were able to seize the motorcycle that was ridden. We seized two styles of helmets.

In this episode, you will hear how some critical evidence was missed during those searches. There were things at Jonathan's house that I was aware of that they didn't have. You'll hear about a motive for murder far more tangible than vague notions of God's purpose. There is a financial benefit to Robert Lamone dying, $300,000 in insurance and potentially $2 million settlement with a railroad. And you'll hear how one of those suspects was seemingly able to walk away free and clear to start life anew. She didn't know anything about it. And I believe in her innocence. They said there just simply wasn't enough evidence.

I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Deadly Mirage, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 5, Busted. The arrests of Jonathan Hearn and Sabrina Limon on murder charges were a huge story in the high desert communities of California. 24-year-old Jonathan Hearn, a firefighter paramedic, is charged with first-degree murder. Sheriff's officials say Sabrina Limon, seen here with her husband Robert, planned his death with Hearn. And they say that Hearn and Sabrina Limon exchanged thousands of text messages. thousands of text messages.

The Kern County Sheriff's deputies who'd conducted the months-long investigation into Rob Lamone's death were justifiably proud of their work. Yes, it was a great feeling. Thousands of hours were put into the investigation, listening to phone calls and surveillance, and so it did feel good. And you finally got your man and your woman.

Yes. In the hours after his arrest, Jonathan said little to investigators beyond asking for a lawyer. Sabrina, on the other hand, seemed willing to talk, perhaps because her interrogators told her she was not under arrest. You are detained, but you're not under arrest. I want to make that perfectly clear to you, okay? That may have been a distinction without a difference, but Sabrina was game. She readily admitted to having an on-and-off affair with Jonathan Hearn. I had had a relationship with him. She was vague about when the affair began, when it resumed, and how often she'd spoken with Jonathan

in the months, weeks, and hours before her husband's murder. Of course, the investigators already knew the answers to all of that. I can give you the amounts of text messages and phone calls that were made prior to, during, and after Robert was killed. I do this for a living. I'm not playing games with you. For 30 minutes, they went round and round. Sabrina talking about her dead husband, her kids, and Sabrina talking about her dead husband, her kids, and God's purpose.

You keep saying it's God's plan. What? I tried to figure that out. I have no idea how could he be gone. So, I have to put my faith in God. That's when the cops got straight to the point. We have evidence that will prove Jonathan Hearn murdered Robert Lamont. Are you serious? He is going to prison for the rest of his life, okay? If I wasn't clear to you in the beginning, this is your one chance not to join him. Do you understand that?

This is your one chance. I understand that. I can't wrap my brain. We don't believe you. We know everything. It is your turn to tell the truth. If Sabrina's interviewers were waiting for some kind of confession, an admission that she knew her lover had murdered her husband, that she knew her lover had murdered her husband. They were disappointed. I mean, there's no way that Jonathan's the one that murdered Robert.

I mean, there's just, there's no way. The interview ended when Sabrina asked for a lawyer. At that point, she was arrested, and deputies drove her to Bakersfield for formal booking and fingerprinting. It was in Bakersfield that she asked to speak with Detective Randall Meyer. The next afternoon, Sabrina was led to the same interrogation room where she'd met Detective Meyer a week earlier. Sorry for not being honest with you, Detective Randall. That's okay.

Give me a second here, okay? She was still wearing the tight-fitting gray jeans and white jacket she'd worn the day before when deputies had picked her up at her children's school. I need to basically put it on the record

that I didn't force you to come here, that you came here because you decided you wanted to talk to me, right? Yes. And I need to read your rights again. The detective was his same old congenial self. He said he understood why Sabrina had lied to him.

You were probably upset and scared, and you didn't know what to say. So I know tons of stuff about all this that's gone on, and I want you to tell me the truth. The detective wanted Sabrina to tell her story again, starting with that first meeting in Costco and the critical moment when Jonathan Hearn asked for her phone number. Our friends' friends were having a party, and they were fire department people.

And I said, are you going to that party kind of thing? And then he's like, well, maybe I'll see are you going to that party kind of thing? And then he's like, well, maybe I'll see you there. Like, what's your number? And I had never given out my number to like a stranger before. And I did. I instantly like felt guilty. Like, oh my gosh.

An innocent mistake? She told the detective she thought Jonathan knew she was married, even though she never wore her wedding ring while she was working. But then he called and messaged me and I was just like, oh my gosh, like I got myself into it. So I didn't answer it or respond. And he apologized. He was like, are you married? I'm so sorry. And then I put, yeah, I thought that you knew that.

She could have ended it right there, but she didn't do that. And Jonathan, he did not back away either. So together they tiptoed into that treacherous swamp, colloquially called friends with benefits. It was a gradual thing to be sure, A romantic attraction that only became noticeable when it was absent. It was pleasant to meet, pleasant to talk, pleasant to anticipate the next meeting, fun to exchange gifts and trinkets. Did you feel guilty about that? You know, the funny thing, after I told him I was hurt and he was sincerely sorry, I didn't feel that bad because I'm social. I talk to a lot of people and Rob and I were open. Like Rob was, he was pretty casual with me. As casual as swinging on grandma's porch.

Oh yes, the swinging. Sabrina told the detective about that too. And we have had open relationships, parties, and just kind of like that kind of a lifestyle, more like, now the kids weren't exposed to that firsthand. Right. I know we've talked about your open relationship before and you told me you didn't have one. I was dreading it. I didn't want any of this to come out, you know? Did you think this would ever come out? I've been tripping, you know? I've been...

Okay. It's shameful. There's an old saying that for some men, marriage is just a word. While to others, it's a sentence. The kind you serve. To the late Rob Lamone, marriage wasn't a word or a sentence. It was more like a theme park. And he wanted to climb onto every ride.

Well, that's if you believe Mrs. Rob Lamone. According to Sabrina, the whole open marriage thing was all Rob's idea. And it began six years earlier when she and Rob started spouse swapping with another couple. That's where the door opened. I hate to talk about him, Ellie,

you know, because I don't want to dishonor him. But he was a man. Yeah, so he was all about it, you know, to the end of their, like, whatever we had to do. And this went on. Sabrina was fuzzy on dates. She couldn't remember exactly when she met Jonathan. 2013, maybe? She also didn't remember when they started sleeping together. Six months later? Eight months? She did, however, remember quite well the night her husband discovered a large batch of love texts from Jonathan on her phone. Robert had found my phone. Tell me about that. He's like, who's this dude? And he'd seen him out once before. So he was just like, you know, what's up?

How did this go down? And I just kind of told him, like, I don't know. It just happened. So did you think it would be okay? I mean, with Rob, if you were seeing Jonathan? Because, you know, you guys kind of had that open relationship. I guess that's how I justified it. The detective, of course, already knew a lot of this.

He'd heard it from a couple of members of the Wolfpack. Rob and Sabrina's Silver Lakes friends, Jason and Kelly Bernatine. According to the Bernatines, Rob was not okay with his wife having an affair with Jonathan Hearn, an outsider who was not a Wolfpack member. Rob had demanded it stop. Jonathan apologized to Robert, and apologized to Robert. Talked to him, he apologized to him. And we felt bad. And Rob and I just kind of kept going.

And Jonathan and I stopped talking. Then after a few months, Sabrina said, she and Jonathan resumed their affair. I just, wow, you know. I mean, we got deep. We got deep. You and Jonathan. Mm-hmm. So Rob's going to work, and then he's working overtime shifts and stuff,

and Jonathan would be at your house. Sometimes. Late at night. When the kids were sleeping or whatever. Not always, or yeah, if they were gone. After taking a short break so a crime lab tech could come in and take a DNA sample, fingerprints, and photographs, the detective pressed Sabrina on how much she'd known about her lover's plan to murder her husband.

How did Jonathan know that Rob was going to be working in Tashview? Well, he wasn't supposed to be working in Tehachapi, but I did tell him. Sabrina told the detective she typically kept Jonathan posted whenever Rob was working one of those 12-hour shifts in Tehachapi, because that was time she and Jonathan could possibly spend between the sheets. We were possibly going to get together, but he was doing other stuff. You told them where the shop was at,

off the freeway right there? I'll say yes, I have. I think I've explained just like times we went up there and the building, how the building was, you know? Did you give them the address or anything? No, I don't know the address. I just kind of explained how it is. The detective knew firsthand the railroad shop into Hatchipee was hard to find.

The building wasn't marked. It's your husband's place of business. Why would you specifically tell him that it's a business rather than freeway in Hatchipee? That's where he works at. I don't. I don't know. I told him that. It was in conversation. I don't know. You know what? I think if you would have never told him that, It was in conversation. I don't know. You know what?

I think if you would have never told him that, he would have never been able to find it. Because it's not on the map. You can't Google it and find it. That's right. Sabrina had no answer for that. For 30 seconds, she said nothing. Then she hung her head and whispered.

Why did I tell him? Why did I tell him? Yes or no, did you ever suspect him of doing it? Yes, after seeing the video and conversations. It could have been me, but it could have been planted. We could keep going over all these things. They could say this, we could do this, you know, kind of thing. We went over a lot of that kind of stuff, like a lot.

Sabrina insisted it had been the affair that she and Jonathan Hearn had wanted to hide all along, not murder. She said she'd never wanted to believe that Jonathan was a killer. It wasn't about the affair. This is about him concealing the fact that he murdered your husband and he didn't want people to find out about it. And he thought he was doing God's work because you were living a life of sin and he wanted to save you from that. What do I do now? What do you do now? You tell me everything you know. Because I'll be honest with you, what I get out of this interview is going to make a huge decision on if you ever touch and see your kids again, ever, in your entire life.

Yeah, no, I feel like I've been just completely out of my mind. If Sabrina Limon knew anything more about her husband's murder, she didn't say it. Even when the detective told her that Jonathan Hearn had asked to speak to him. What do you think he's going to say? That was not true, of course. It was just more bait. A last-ditch effort to chum the waters enough so that Sabrina might flip on her lover, close the case, maybe even salvage a plea deal for herself.

Sabrina did not bite. Jonathan's going to tell me that you started all this and you talked him into it. Well, that wouldn't be true. He's going to tell me exactly what started all this and you talked him into it. Well, that wouldn't be true. He's going to tell me exactly what happened. Well, good. After four hours of watching Sabrina's interview from the next room, Department Brass decided they'd seen enough. Another investigator stepped into the room and brought it all to an end. If you don't have anything for us, I think we need to get you to jail. Okay.

What I need you to do is I need you to stand up and turn around. And with that, Sabrina Lamone, mom, widow, Wolfpack member in good standing, was handcuffed and taken back to jail. On November 20th, the day after Sabrina's long post-arrest interview with Detective Meyer, the Kern County District Attorney charged Jonathan Hearn with first-degree murder. That done, the DA felt the case against Sabrina Limon was weak.

The supervisors felt at that point in time that we needed some follow-up investigative work done with Sabrina. Just not enough against her at that point. Correct. The problem was this. Out of hours and hours of wiretaps, Sabrina had said nothing incriminating.

No smoking gun is what we would call it. She didn't admit to being involved or committing the murder of Rob Lamont. So a few days after being picked up by Kern County deputies, Sabrina was released from custody. I actually had met with the district attorney that was assigned to the case at the time, and she had given me what we call a wish list. It's a list of items that they would wish or want us to get done.

Before they can charge her? Yes. What were those items? Obviously, they wanted the admission, which we weren't going to get. They requested we speak to the friends again and find out if anybody had any idea that this was occurring. Speak with Jonathan's friends to assist with the investigation. Sabrina Lamone may have been out of jail, but she was not free from suspicion, not from the law, and certainly not from former friends like Jason and Kelly Bernatine.

And so now she's back in your town, living her life, does she know you guys cooperated? Yeah. Do you ever talk to her? No. Are you afraid of her? No. Are you telling me the truth? Yes.

I am not afraid of her. I'm afraid of somebody else that she might talk somebody into. Not her. The American writer Thomas Wolfe famously said, you can't go home again. A lot of the time, that's certainly true. And it didn't take Sabrina Limon long to learn her hometown had turned on her.

The people out in Silver Lakes were so cruel. They would try to ram her car. That's Sabrina's sister, Julie. There was one time, and I went to the little market, and one of the friends said, oh yeah, that golfer that was out in the front yard at their house, it's gone, and I should have taken that. People were like vultures and wanted things of Robert's and theirs. And it was just, it was nuts. It was just crazy. It wasn't just hard for Sabrina to show her face in town. Julie says the kids were taunted and teased.

It got so bad, Sabrina decided to homeschool them. And eventually, she decided to leave town. In fact, when we put the house up for sale, we didn't even put a sign outside because she was scared of the way that everyone was being so cruel to her and turned on her. Once the house sold, Sabrina packed up the kids and moved 145 miles away to Camarillo, a small town north of Los Angeles. There, she rented a three-bedroom condo and tried to start

a new life amid neighbors who knew nothing of her old one. Of course, leaving one's past behind is not that easy. Sabrina still had Rob's family to contend with. The kids had a grandmother who wanted to see them, aunts and uncles and cousins who wanted to know what happened. What about them? She hasn't called or made any attempt to make contact with me. That's Lydia Marrero, one of Rob Lamont's sisters. If she did call, what would you say to her? What do you want to know?

What's the truth? What's happened, Sabrina? What led to this? Sabrina has more answers to the questions, and she just doesn't want to admit to it. Well, when we didn't hear from her, we wondered, well, she must be guilty. And that's Chris Wilson, another of Rob's sisters. If you're arrested for a crime.

That you didn't commit. That you didn't commit, wouldn't you reach out to your husband's family and say, I did not do this. I had no part of this. And I'm living in this nightmare. Yes. Here I am, and they're accusing me, and I had no part of this. You didn't get that call. Never got that call.

Never. My mom never got that call. You have any contact with her after that? No. I have sent the kids cards for Christmas, their birthdays. We had to find her because she moved from Hellendale. Um, so we had to find her. Lydia says the silence from Sabrina after her release spoke volumes. Her silence, her absence from everybody, you know, all that just tells me she's very much involved. And she might feel that not talking to anybody's going to prevent any implication on her.

Chris Wilson says her mom was devastated by Rob's sudden death and the loss of contact with her grandchildren. Chris says her mother's health suffered a steep decline, and in June of 2016, she died. She was only 68. She died of a broken heart. Losing her son. Mm-hmm. As a parent, I would never want to lose my child. And mom lost her only son. She just declined. His death killed her. Yes, yes.

And she, to know how that it was his wife that was involved, that was even harder for mom. That's the thing about betrayal. Sometimes the person we should fear most is the one we trust most. That was a lesson Sabrina Limon was about to learn the hard way. Before they'd even met, defense attorney Clayton Campbell had a feeling he was going to like Jonathan Hearn. He liked Jonathan's parents when they came in to discuss the case. They believed strongly in their son's innocence, and they seemed like his kind of people. That's because they were devout Christians, just like Clayton. They told him Jonathan had been homeschooled, just like Clayton. I'm a bit older than Jonathan, probably 13 years or so older than him.

That's Clayton Campbell, Jonathan Hearn's defense attorney. I figured we had something in common and I could relate to him in that respect. I also kind of knew, you know, how to relate to his family a little bit. The things Jonathan was accused of were nothing short of terrible.

Murdering the husband of a woman he was having an affair with. Awful. Well, the more Clayton Campbell dug into the case and examined the evidence, the better he liked his chances at trial. I thought, hey, we have an actual shot at developing a defense. And of course, we ended up with a much better shot than I thought once we started digging into the reports. After all, what did the prosecution have? An affair? Security camera video? A motorcycle and some guns? Well, Campbell thought the security video was too blurry to identify anybody. And the motorcycle? Well, there must be hundreds of motorcycles in

Southern California like the one Jonathan owned. As for the two handguns that were registered to Jonathan, the prosecutor couldn't prove either of them was the murder weapon. They tested all of Jonathan's firearms. Not one of them matched the bullets that were used to kill Robert. That was encouraging. However, there was one big problem. Clayton Campbell's client wanted to confess his sins right from the jump, just like King David did in that Bible story involving Bathsheba. His reason for that is that he actually has a conscience. He knows what he did was wrong. And he felt that maintaining a not guilty plea was dishonest.

And that what he should do is he shouldn't make the fact that he killed someone worse by lying about it and maintaining a lie. For a lot of defense attorneys, that might have been an easy call. Let the client cop to murder, collect the fee, and call it a day. Next? Well, not Clayton Campbell. To him, this posed a moral dilemma. I have the same religious moral viewpoint that he has, but I have these professional obligations as his attorney.

I'm supposed to protect him. It's very difficult to find some kind of a way out where we satisfy both his conscience, where he admits wrongdoing, and at the same time protect him from life without the possibility of parole. The lawyer prayed with his client. He pleaded with Jonathan to not confess his guilt to anyone, not even his family. So for two years, Jonathan Hearn sat in a jail cell, presumably speaking only to God about his guilty conscience. And perhaps his prayers were answered, because he did receive forgiveness from an unlikely quarter.

That was Rob Lamone's family. I have forgiven him for what he has done. That's Rob's sister, Chris Wilson. How can you do that? Because my faith, with my faith, I forgive him because God forgave me. I truly forgive him because God forgave me. I truly forgive him. Well, God forgave you. You didn't kill anybody.

Right. Right. But that's where I am. As the days and weeks ticked down to Jonathan's trial date, Clayton Campbell poured over the lists of evidence that prosecutors intended to produce for a jury. It was then that he noticed a lot of evidence he expected to see there was missing. There were things at Jonathan's house that I was aware of that they didn't have. Jonathan had not only told his lawyer details of the affair

with Sabrina and details about the murder of her husband, he'd also told where he'd hidden key evidence. For instance, shortly after the shooting, Jonathan told the lawyer how he had replaced the barrel on the murder weapon with a new one. The actual barrel that fired the fatal shots, Jonathan told his lawyer, was hidden in a chicken coop behind his house. Along with a homemade silencer he'd fashioned out of a flashlight. Clayton Campbell saw the makings of a deal. My hope was, okay, we'll give them all that information,

then they couldn't find it and never use it against him. If they decide to pull the rug out from under us and back out on the deal. We actually were prepared to go to trial on Jonathan starting January of 2017. That's lead detective Randall Meyer. Jonathan's attorney approached the district attorney and spoke with him and said that Jonathan could provide information that would lead to the possible prosecution of Sabrina Lamont.

After years of professing his undying love for Sabrina and praying for God's help in keeping their secret, Jonathan Hearn prepared to turn on her. Jonathan Hearn prepared to turn on her. God's purpose, it seemed, had just become Jonathan's proffer. On the 3rd of January, 2017, talks between the defense and the prosecution team began at the sheriff's department. For Jonathan Hearn, those meetings must have seemed heaven sent because finally he had an opportunity to confess his sins, which included at least two of the seven deadliest. Well, that first meeting, I got the feeling that Jonathan felt that this was more of his chance to basically get it off his chest and confess.

chance to basically get it off his chest and confess. And so it did scare me a little bit that he was more focused on his own guilt at that meeting than on sharing all the information they needed about her. Jonathan told prosecutors and investigators he and Sabrina spent months plotting to kill Rob Lamone. In fact, he said, they had once conspired to poison him. I did plan the poisoning of Robert with some necessary assistance from Sabrina. That's the voice of Jonathan Hearn. I needed to know what kind of food he would be sure to eat. She provided me a couple suggestions.

We discussed the location where they should take place. We agreed upon Tehachapi to send him some food laced with poison. According to Jonathan, they settled on putting a fatal dose of arsenic in some banana pudding, Rob's favorite. Jonathan told investigators he had ordered the arsenic online, calculated the fatal dosage by weight, and then tested it on a dog. with that on a neighbor dog who had caused me considerable issues in the past and put the arsenic on some meat and gave it to the dog to see what would happen. Jonathan said he did not see the dog again after that. So a few days later, he made a family-sized batch of banana pudding with Nilla wafers for Sabrina's family. Then, in a smaller Tupperware bowl, he said he put a single portion, and he put the arsenic in that. Jonathan said he delivered the two pudding containers to Sabrina's house one day when Rob was at work.

She told me that she put the smaller portion for Robert, put it in his lunch the next day, whatever his next shift was out to Hatchby. You guys didn't know anything about the poisoning until Jonathan gave that to you. That's correct. Detective Randall Meyer. They actually ended up giving it to Rob.

Yes. And then at the last minute, Sabrina got cold feet and told Rob not to eat it. Yes, he said they had conversations and were worried about law enforcement looking at their phone records. And so he had talked to Sabrina and they felt that they would ditch the plan for now. To back up his story, Jonathan told investigators that he stashed the leftover arsenic in the garage attached to his house, hidden in an empty paint can. I made sure we included everything that we were aware of that could possibly be discovered and harmful to

Jonathan. That was a key condition of the plea deal, says Clayton Campbell. Any evidence Jonathan helped investigators find could not be used against him. All the stuff that was hidden, we wanted to make sure they got all that stuff so that it couldn't be used against Jonathan, even if a deal wasn't reached. That night, Clayton Campbell went home and prayed that investigators would find everything Jonathan had told them was hidden in and around his home. After all, a couple of years had passed since Jonathan lived there. I don't know whether the paint buckets are still there. Were they thrown away?

Who knows? And I'd seen that garage. It's like a lot of garages. There's a lot of stuff in there. And sure enough, late at night, it must have been 10 or 11 in the evening, I hear back from Detective Meyer that they found it. With the blessing of Rob Lamone's family, the Kern County Prosecutor's Office told Clayton Campbell

they would make a deal with Jonathan Hearn. In exchange for Jonathan's full cooperation in the case against Sabrina Limon, the district attorney would let Jonathan plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. Instead of a possible life without parole for murder, Jonathan would receive a predetermined sentence of 25 years and four months in prison. Clayton Campbell felt good about that. Jonathan would be a free man around the time he turned 50. Considering what he'd been facing, that was good. Now, Campbell had to tell Jonathan's parents their son had just confessed to murder. That was probably the hardest conversation I've

ever had with a client's family, you know, is to tell these people who were very hopeful that Jonathan was innocent and that he would be vindicated, that he in fact was guilty and that he was admitting that and making a deal with the prosecutor. That was, as you can imagine, difficult for them to hear. While Clayton Campbell was meeting with the Hearn family, Detective Randall Meyer and a team of investigators were just turning onto Ventura Boulevard in Camarillo. They were on their way to arrest Sabrina Limon again. Coming up next on Deadly Mirage.

My wife and I and Rob and Sabrina would engage in sexual activities, but it was not wife swapping. Good morning, sir. Can you tell us your name and spell your first and last name for the record? not white swapping. Good morning, sir. Can you tell us your name and spell your first and last name for the record? Yes, sir. My name is Jonathan Hearn. Last name spelled H-E-A-R-N. She was nowhere involved in the murder of her husband. It was a deal that he cut to get himself out from underneath being convicted and in life without the possibility of parole. Deadly Mirage is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Tim Beecham is the producer. Ryan Drew, Kelly Laudine, and Marshall Hausfeld are audio editors. Carson Cummins is associate producer.

Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Katie Lau. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.