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Good morning. You're listening to the Dateline Story Meeting. We will jump in so we can get started on a busy day.
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Our producers are catching up on breaking crime news. What's the timeline on things?
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We were supposed to start trial on Monday. This is affluence, money, greed. Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly.
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I'm Andrea Canning. It's February 12th, and here's what's on our docket. Emotions run high in a Georgia courthouse
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as the boyfriend of a murdered law student takes the stand. I would be so angry,
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not understanding how God could allow the devil into his angel's house. In Dateline Roundup, Luigi Mangione's outburst in the courtroom,
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and the latest chapter in the saga of Alec Murdoch, the disgraced attorney convicted of murdering his wife and son.
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Murdoch's defense team went before the five justices of the South Carolina Supreme Court
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to argue why he should get a new trial. Plus, remember Olympian ice skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding?
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We'll be talking to a veteran ice skating reporter about the crime that captured the world's attention.
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This man was running with this stick just coming down at my leg. But before all that, we wanted to update you on the latest developments
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in the search for Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of our colleague and friend, Savannah.
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Nancy Guthrie has been missing from her home in Tucson for more than 10 days. According to the Pima County Sheriff, she was abducted in the early morning hours of February 1st.
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Up until Tuesday, the sheriff said investigators had no suspects or leads in the case.
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That all changed Tuesday afternoon. As you may have seen, the FBI released video captured by Nancy's security camera in the early morning hours of her disappearance.
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It showed a masked and armed man walking up to her front door. Here to tell us more about what was in the video and what it all means for bringing Nancy home is NBC News National Law Enforcement and Intelligence correspondent Tom Winter.
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And I should say we're taping this conversation on Wednesday afternoon. Tom, thanks for being here.
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Hi, Andrea. Good afternoon. I know you've been all over this story. And, you know, just personally and professionally, it's a difficult one for you, for all of us.
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remind us of the timeline of Nancy's disappearance. And we've learned a lot more
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about that from law enforcement. The timeline here has become a little bit more clear. So it's
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Saturday night, approximately 9.30, 9.45 in Tucson. And it's the Guthrie family that drops off Nancy
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at her home in the greater Tucson area. At approximately 1.47 a.m. on Sunday morning,
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There's this moment where somebody is seen on the Nest camera on the front door of her home.
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And that was this extraordinary video that we saw released by the FBI. And then a critical piece of evidence, apparently Nancy Guthrie's pacemaker had the ability to communicate and give information and reporting kind of real time to her phone.
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And at some point around 2.28 a.m., they're no longer in connection. And that is what investigators believe is a moment where she is now officially out of the home and away from the home, probably a moment or two before that.
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And so the family is advised that Nancy Guthrie did not join up with her regular group to watch a stream of a mass of a church on Sunday morning.
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The family gets there, and in less than 10 minutes, they realize something is terribly wrong.
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They pick up the phone, they call police, and the sheriff says, look, we immediately saw some things that just didn't seem right.
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were indications that this could be the site of a crime. And as a matter of fact, actually dispatch homicide detectives, Andrea, right from the very beginning.
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Yeah, her vital medication was apparently left behind wallet, phone. There's her blood on the doorstep.
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Tom, there have been reports of several ransom notes being received by TV stations and TMZ demanding payment for the safe return of Nancy.
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You have actually seen a copy of one of the notes. Can you sort through what we know and don't know about them and what you're allowed to share?
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yeah sure and so everybody understands the details that we withhold from these notes uh
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really just because there are certain aspects of the investigation we don't want to kind of tip off
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whoever they're looking for but the gist of it is this they point out the fact that she was wearing
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a white apple watch they point out the fact that there were floodlights at the home there's a
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request for cryptocurrency and they provide some specific deadlines look the first picture you're
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going to find of Nancy Guthrie and Savannah Guthrie together is she is wearing a white Apple
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watch. That's public information. That there's a floodlight at the home. I mean, how many homes in
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this country don't have floodlights outside or some sort of lighting outside of a home?
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The thing that people have been focused on are these potential deadlines. But then we saw the
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Guthrie family, as you know, start to put out videos and saying, look, just reach out to us.
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We're ready. We're here to talk, but provide us with some form of proof of life. It's our
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understanding that that hasn't happened. And so really, authorities are trying to see whether
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these notes are credible or not. We don't have any additional insight into that so far.
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Right. So you mentioned the surveillance video that was released on Tuesday by the FBI.
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I feel like it's it feels like everyone in the country must have seen it at this point.
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Initially, we were told that Nancy did not have a subscription to, you know, having the video saved.
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and we were told there may be no footage ever, but that all changed. It all changed. It was clear that there was a lot of work between Google, which is the parent
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company of Ness, which was this camera and the FBI. Yeah, a lot of people hard at work,
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surely just working around the clock with what we're talking about. At what point did the FBI decide to go public with it? Was it immediately?
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Well the FBI assuredly did not immediately make these images public once they became aware of them First off it our understanding that the family was briefed on these images wanted to make sure see if anybody in the family recognized anybody in the course of this And then the decision is made to go public because
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you want to involve the whole country. Tom, can you just, for our listeners who are not looking
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at the video right now, and we will link to the images and the videos in our episode description,
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but can you just describe exactly what we see on the tape? Right. Well, you see a couple of different things on the tape. I mean, first off, you see the
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individual approach. They've got their head down there and almost intentionally looking at the
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ground light. They don't want the camera to see their eyes. And this individual approaches,
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they're kind of fiddling around. You get some real close-up images of their gloves. You see
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this gun that's carried in a holster externally. It appears that it would be set up if somebody
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It was a right-handed shot. And then you see a backpack on them with the kind of reflective tape out front in this light-colored mask.
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But their eyes are very clear. Some people say that around the mouth there might be some facial hair, either a goatee or a mustache or both.
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And the backpack is very large. And one of the things that sticks out, and I'm sure you noticed this, just how full that backpack is.
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Oh, my gosh. Full. To the seams almost. Yeah. I mean, and very chilling, very jarring to look at those images.
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About eight hours after those images were released, we learned that a man had been taken into custody for questioning.
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What do you know about him? And it sounds like it's not really going anywhere, right, with him?
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Right. Well, this person was released. They took his phone. They've kept his phone.
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They conducted a court-authorized search. I think that's notable. You know, as you know, you don't search a home without that court paperwork.
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But when you actually conduct those searches and talk to them, you might realize that some of those things are easily explained and they might not actually point towards the crime.
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Okay, and the FBI director released a statement saying they're looking at people and that they have made a lot of progress.
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What is next? What are the most critical steps, do you think, going forward? So you're already seeing some activity since this video came out. You're looking at a lot of searches that are occurring on the ground, FBI agents combing through Nancy Guthrie's neighborhood, just the old-fashioned shoe leather or boot leather, whatever you want to say in this particular instance.
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they're going from store to store gas station to gas station pulling video all of that's part of
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the investigation so they're really kind of humming on that and that's something that i think will get
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to the point of identifying is this one person is it two three four people who's involved in this
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why did they do this it's so uh obviously nerve-wracking for everybody in that community
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and just what the guthrie family has been put through here and our colleague savannah it's just
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Yeah, it's so awful. And I think everybody wants an answer for Nancy. Everybody wants an answer for Savannah and the family just to figure out how did we get here? Why would somebody do something like this?
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Yeah. And it's just you feel almost like you know Nancy. You know you're rooting for her, even for people who haven't met her. It's like the whole country has come together for Savannah's mom, which is so wonderful. And if anyone does know anything, you can call 1-800-CALL-FBI. That's 800-225-5324. Or you can visit tips.fbi.gov if you want to leave a tip online.
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Thank you so much, Tom, for covering this story for the network. You've done such a great job.
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And during a difficult time, you're really breaking things down for people. So we appreciate it.
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Well, you got it. I'm so glad we had a chance to talk. And it's all about getting information out.
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And certainly, we got to hold out hope for Nancy. We all want that so badly. And our prayers and hearts are with Savannah and her family during this difficult time.
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Thank you. Thank you. We'll be right back. For our next story, we're heading to the college town of Athens, Georgia, where it's week two in the trial of a man accused of murdering University of Georgia law student Tara Baker 25 years ago.
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Prosecutors say DNA evidence proves Edric Faust is the killer, but he says he's innocent.
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And in a blistering cross-examination this week, Faust's defense attorney confronted the person he alleges is the real murderer.
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Schmelin, you have not shared a tear. Come on now. Here to bring us up to speed is Dateline producer Dorothy Newell, who has been inside the courtroom.
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Hey, Dorothy. Hey, Andrea. Dorothy, let's start with just a quick recap of the case.
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remind us who was Tara Baker and what happened to her in 2001? So Tara was a 23-year-old first-year law student at the University of Georgia.
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On January 19, 2001, at about 11.20 a.m., firefighters responded to a fire at Tara's
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home. She lived off campus. And when they entered, they found Tara's body. She'd been raped,
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strangled, stabbed, and left for dead. And her bedroom was on fire. So awful. Dorothy, you and Dateline Field producer Justin Ratchford have spent a lot of time in Athens covering this case.
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What struck you the most about the location of this crime? I mean, this is a place where parents send their children off to college, hoping that they're safe.
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Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, first of all, Athens is like the quintessential college town.
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There's tons of kids here. They're working, they're playing, they're planning for their futures.
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just like Tara was doing when she was killed. She had her whole life in front of her.
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That's what makes this really hard to hear. So what did investigators learn in those early days
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as they were investigating this off-campus crime? Well, there were certainly indications
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that this didn feel like a random attack There were no signs of forced entry Nothing was taken except her lap pop and she was still wearing her diamond earrings Investigators looked at various people
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a classmate, a lawyer from the law firm where she worked, and Tara's boyfriend, Chris Milton.
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But police said his alibi checked out and no one else rose to the level of arrest. But evidence
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was gathered and organized, and that would become important over the years. as it so often does in these cases when they go unsolved, because in this case, 25 years later,
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investigators finally made an arrest. This was such a long time coming, Dorothy.
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That's right. They used new technology to retest the rape kit that was done at the time of
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Tara's murder, and they got some viable DNA. This time around, when they ran the suspect DNA through
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CODIS, that's the National Criminal DNA Database, they got a hit, a repeat offender named Edric
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Faust. And that was just really out of the blue. So the prosecution, of course, Dorothy,
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focused its opening statement on that DNA match, which jurors, they like to hear about DNA.
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Right. The prosecutor said the chances that the DNA belonged to anyone but Faust
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were one in 800 quadrillion. Right. But so, okay, there's an unusual twist. The defense is not disputing this. How does Mr. Foss's DNA simply being in Ms. Baker's body
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establish that he is the person that killed Ms. Baker? Yeah, defense attorney Amon Cruz agrees that Foss DNA was inside Tara's body,
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But he's more interested in the fact that someone else's DNA was there, too. And it was her boyfriend, Chris.
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So Chris was Tara's boyfriend, as you said. They were intimate. So I would think that would be expected to find his DNA.
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But the defense says there's more to it, Dorothy. Yeah, the defense argued that Chris's alibi was shaky.
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And he changed his story to the police about when he last saw Tara. And that makes him, according to the defense, deeply suspicious.
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Okay, so that was the lead up to what happened on day six of the trial when the prosecution called Chris to the stand to tell his story.
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Take us through his testimony, Dorothy. So the prosecutor asked Chris about his and Tara's relationship.
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How was the state of you and Tara's relationship in those months leading up to her murder?
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Everything was wonderful. We were both in the understanding that we were pursuing future paths for us to have a better future together.
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Our relationship was strong. He talked about getting the awful news. He was working at a plumbing job and got paged by Tara's mother.
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What did you learn when you called Miss Virginia Baker? She had told me that there was a fire at Tara's residence, and there was a body discovered in the fire.
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In that moment, what was your reaction to hearing that information? Devastated. Chris also talked about how he got so upset he punched a wall.
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Yeah, and that's pretty important to the case. The defense argued that Chris's hands showed cuts and scrapes after the murder,
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And that could implicate him in the very violent crime, right? But that first day, police noted nothing on his hands.
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Later, I think it was like two days later, he told the court he really lost it. I started having an extreme emotional moment.
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And there was a wall in front of me. And I punched it, I don't know, maybe 30 times, maybe more.
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Chris told the jury he cooperated with investigators from the beginning, doing repeated interviews, giving them DNA samples.
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He said he struggled with his grief in private. I would find myself on my knees, pounding the ground, the sand, whatever, just finding myself so mad at God,
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not understanding how God could allow the devil into his angel's house. Dorothy, then it was the defense's turn to cross-examine Chris Melton.
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This is such a big moment in all of this. He is really the crux of their defense, right?
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Yeah, right off the bat, things were tense. The defense attorney brought into question Chris's emotions, suggesting they weren't authentic.
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Why didn't you cry? When? Just now. Why didn't any tears fall out of your eyes? They are falling out.
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Well, let's talk about January 19th. Would you agree that today you were much more emotional than you were on the day that you learned of Ms. Baker's death?
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I was holding it together best I could. The defense's cross-examination was all about timelines.
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Where was Chris the morning of the murder? Where was he in the days before Tara was killed?
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And I know we said off the top that, you know, his his alibi was was checked out.
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Well, there's all kinds of timelines involved here. There's another timeline that's really important.
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So Chris testified that he and Tara had seen each other the weekend before the murder.
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So a few days before. But the defense brought up something that Chris told investigators in 2024.
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He said that he hadn't seen Tara for 10 days before her death. The last time you saw Ms. Baker, was it six days before, 10 days before?
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From the beginning, I said I saw her the weekend prior. From the beginning, you've said that?
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Yes, sir. That you've seen her the weekend, and that has always been what you said?
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There was a time that I was confused, and it was 20 plus years later. The defense point is that Chris stories are inconsistent probably untrue and his timeline isn trustworthy So the prosecution Dorothy still calling their witnesses Do we know what next Given the many delays I guessing this will go on another week
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Okay, thank you, Dorothy, for this update. You're welcome. Thanks, Andrea. Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. We've got updates on Luigi Mangione and Alec Murdoch.
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Plus, we look back on a 30-year-old ice skating scandal, the attack on Nancy Kerrigan.
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Welcome back. Joining me for this week's roundup is Dateline producer Mario Garcia.
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Mario, welcome back. Thanks for having me back, Andrea. So first up, we've got an update out of New York. It's a story you know very well, the case of Luigi Mangione.
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He is the man accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson back in December 2024.
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Luigi Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. So what's new, Mario?
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That's right, Andrea. Mangione was back in court this past Friday. And, you know, bear in mind, he's facing criminal charges in both federal and state court.
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His federal trial on stalking charges is now set for jury selection to begin on September 8th and with opening arguments in October.
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So, OK, he found out the date of his state trial, June 8th. whatever happened was not sitting well with him as he was being escorted out of the courtroom.
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Yeah, that was interesting. I've been to several hearings, Andrea, and he's been very active in his
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defense and talking with his attorneys during hearings. But this was a little bit of excitement
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as he was being escorted out. He shouted, it's been reported, it's the same trial twice. One plus
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one is two, double jeopardy by any common sense, which was the first time we've seen to act like
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that in court. What did he mean by that, Mario, in this particular case by double jeopardy? Because
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I think when most of us think of double jeopardy, we think if you're acquitted, you can't be tried
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for the same crime twice. Well, you're not supposed to be tried for the same crime twice,
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as you said, Andrea. And our legal expert, Danny Savalos, told our friends over at NBC News Now
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that double jeopardy is not likely at play here because the state and the federal government are
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considered two separate sovereigns, and he's technically being charged with different crimes
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in each jurisdiction. So it's definitely a rare situation, I would say. So as we all know, Mario, trial dates move around constantly. So we'll see if these dates hold.
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Okay, now we're going to go to a case I know well. It's another high-profile defendant. She
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was back in court this week across the country in Salt Lake City, Utah, Corey Richens. Corey is the
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mom of three who wrote a children's book about grief before she was charged with her husband
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Eric's murder. Prosecutors say she laced his drink with a lethal dose of fentanyl. Richens denies
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that, and she has pleaded not guilty. Her trial, I can't believe it because I feel like I've been
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on this story for such a long time, it's finally underway. It is finally underway, Andrea. Jury
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selection finally began in the Richens trial on Tuesday, and many of the potential jurors told
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the judge that they'd heard of the case, but didn't know much detail or have a strong opinion
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about it. There's been a lot of buzz about the questionnaire that the prospective jurors are
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filling out. It's an incredibly rigorous questionnaire. And so now people are looking
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at that. It's 23 pages long with some 99 questions. Prospective jurors are being asked questions
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about everything from the TV programs they like to watch, bumper stickers on their cars. Both the
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prosecution and the defense are trying to weed out anyone, anyone who might have some kind of bias.
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So the jurors will find out next week if they've been selected. All right, we'll keep a close
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watch on that one. And it brings us to our main story in Roundup this week. On Wednesday,
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there was a high stakes hearing at the Supreme Court of South Carolina in the case of Alec Murdoch,
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the disgraced lawyer convicted of fatally shooting his wife, Maggie, and their 21-year-old son,
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Paul. Mario, before we get into what's new here, just give a really quick recap of this complicated
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story. Complicated indeed, Andrea. Murdoch called police in June of 2021, you might recall, to report
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finding his wife and son fatally shot when he says he arrived at their home. But investigators didn't
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buy that. They methodically pieced together cell phone video, vehicle data, and witness testimony
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that placed Murdoch at the scene at the time of the shootings, and he was arrested for those
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murders. At his trial, prosecutors said he'd killed Maggie and Paul to cover up financial crimes,
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and a jury convicted him in March of 2023. Okay. Murdoch ultimately was sentenced to life in prison,
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and he got a life sentence for each of the murders. So, Mario, tell us what his team is
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now arguing to the Supreme Court of South Carolina. On Wednesday, Murdoch's defense team went before
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the five justices of the South Carolina Supreme Court to argue why he should get a new trial,
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And one of their main arguments is that he didn't get a fair trial because of the behavior of someone that had been in the courtroom the whole time, the court clerk.
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Yeah, this was a lot of drama involving this clerk. Remind people of what happened with her.
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Her name is Becky Hill, and I covered the original trial. And Miss Becky was everywhere and had regular contact with the jury as part of their job, getting them into the court, getting them their lunch and everything else.
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And after the trial, she was actually criminally charged for her behavior during that trial.
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She denied tampering with the jury in any way, but pleaded guilty to four counts, including misconduct in office.
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And then she later apologized to the court. OK, what does the defense say Miss Becky did that specifically violated Murdoch's right to a fair trial?
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Murdoch's defense says that Miss Becky made comments to jurors that could have influenced them to find Murdoch guilty.
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For example, they point to remarks she allegedly made encouraging jurors to watch Alec Murdoch's demeanor closely during 10 years.
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or urging them to move deliberations along. Let's listen to Murdoch's defense team make their case to the justices on Wednesday.
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As I stand here today, I'm honored to be arguing about how to interpret that Constitution,
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the Sixth Amendment specifically. I've never seen a factual pattern like this, where the clerk of court sets out to influence
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the verdict. Mary, what do the prosecutors say in response to this argument? Well, not surprising, Andrea, the prosecutors dispute all of this and say any comments by
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Ms. Becky were limited and did not affect the verdict. In fact, the prosecutors say nine of the jurors told a lower court judge exactly that at a
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previous hearing. And so if the court were to grant Murdoch a new trial, do we think he stays behind bars?
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Even if that happened, Andrea, he'd still remain in prison because of his lengthy state
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and federal sentences for his financial crimes. But a ruling in his favor could have much broader implications for how courts handle claims of jury influence moving forward.
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I find this completely fascinating. With these appeals, hard to say when we could have a ruling, right?
00:25:08
Right. Cases like this could typically take weeks or months, Andrea. Thank you for all these updates, Mario.
00:25:13
Thanks for having me. For our final story, we're heading to the Winter Olympics.
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Millions of ice skating fans have been glued to the games this past week. watching the gravity-defying spins of quad god Ilya Malinan,
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or the fancy footwork of ice dancers Madison Chalk and Evan Bates. It made us think back to two other U.S. Olympian ice skaters
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who made headlines 30 years ago for their skating, and also for something that happened off the ice.
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We are talking, of course, about the afternoon in January 1994 when 24-year-old ice skating champion Nancy Kerrigan
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was attacked at a Detroit ice rink by a man with a baton. Dateline interviewed her soon after it happened.
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This man was running with this stick just coming down at my leg. Phillip Hirsch is a special contributor to NBCOlympics focusing on figure skating Welcome to the show Philip My pleasure So let remind people about Nancy Kerrigan She was such a big deal in the world of ice skating at the time
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So Nancy had something about her. She just had a beautiful, beautiful line on the ice.
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She was the bronze medalist at the 1992 Winter Olympics and then went on to become U.S. champion in 1993.
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And she became sort of America's sweetheart. Philip, Nancy was in Detroit getting ready to compete in the 1994 U.S. National Championship.
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She had just finished practicing for the day. Take us to that moment where everything changed for her.
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Well, most of us in the U.S. media were actually sitting watching the short program of the pairs competition when somebody ran into the press seat area and said Nancy's been attacked.
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Nancy came through the curtain, separating the practice rink from the backstage area, and was attacked by somebody using what turned out to be a metal baton.
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She was whacked on the knee, and the very famous video of this shows her screaming, why, why, me?
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Why? Why? I remember it like it was yesterday. In sort of press box banter, one of my colleagues immediately said, where was Tanya?
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Really? For those people who weren't born or were too young, Tanya Harding was a big competitor
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of Nancy Kerrigan. Tanya was an extraordinary skater. She was a much more athletic skater.
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She won the 1991 U.S. Championships and became the first U.S. woman to land a triple axel
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jump in competition, which was a very big deal. She stood to benefit the most by Nancy not being on the Olympic team.
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It was just a normal assumption for people to say, totally jokingly, where was Tanya?
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The attacker fled. So this was really the beginning of a mystery of who this man was.
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Let's take a listen to this Dateline interview that Jane Pauly conducted with Nancy Kerrigan just days after the attack.
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I don know why that man did what he did to you And you don know either Yeah I wondered why and thought if i could just ask him you know i just like to know and but i don think i could understand anyway if he would were
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to be able to give me an explanation because i don't think that way i don't think
00:28:28
it's too vicious and cruel and how can you i can't understand it so police in detroit
00:28:37
investigated it. It turned out that the masked hitman was a guy named Shane Stant.
00:28:44
So Shane then leads to Tonya Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Galluli. And leads to Tonya's bodyguard, Sean Eckert.
00:28:53
Jeff Galluli ended up pleading guilty to planning the attack. So both Tonya and Nancy end up going
00:28:59
to Lillehammer, Norway, a few weeks after the incident. As members of the U.S. Olympics figure
00:29:05
skating team, there was so much tension hanging over the competition. Nancy's recovering from the
00:29:11
attack. Tanya's under a cloud of suspicion. What happens? The biggest deal of the Olympics may have
00:29:18
been the first practice when they were on the ice together. Everybody was waiting for that moment.
00:29:22
Nancy wore in the same dress that she had when she was attacked, which is her way of saying,
00:29:26
I'm here and I'm strong. As it turned out, Nancy skated throughout that competition as well
00:29:31
as she ever had in her life. What happened with Tanya? One of her bootlaces broke as she tried
00:29:36
to tighten the skates, and that caused a long delay. Tanya had a very bad short program.
00:29:41
She was not able to land a triple axel. At that point, the competition between Nancy and Tanya
00:29:47
was over. Tanya ends up finishing eighth overall. Nancy gets the silver medal. Less than a month
00:29:51
later, Tanya Harding pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of conspiracy to hinder prosecution.
00:29:56
She never admitted to helping, you know, plan it, but she did admit that she took part in covering it up.
00:30:05
Right, exactly. She eventually admitted to having some knowledge of what had happened.
00:30:10
She was basically kept from skating in any sanctioned competition for the rest of her career.
00:30:15
You said after the attack figure skating went viral on national TV print outlets for the next two months It just really supercharged interest in the sport Well the irony of this was that most of the figure skaters
00:30:28
the initial reaction was how horrible this was. And then the next two or three years went by,
00:30:33
they realized it was making all of them rich. A lot of skaters made a lot of money
00:30:38
because Tonya Harding's cohorts and she had raised the visibility of this sport to a level
00:30:45
that it had really never seen. The ratings were off the charts for the first part of the competition.
00:30:52
All right. Well, Philip, still capturing our attention all these years later. Thank you for your unique insight
00:30:58
into such a crazy time. Thanks, Eddie. That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly.
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00:31:14
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00:31:26
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00:31:32
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00:31:40
I was sitting at home and some force compelled me to go watch this episode of Dateline NBC.
00:31:50
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00:31:55
Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Carson Cummins, Caroline Casey and Kiani Reed.
00:32:02
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00:32:08
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and Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline Hi everyone