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Pay attention because the trial is starting. Dateline's morning meeting is underway.
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You know, it really got into the weeds about those Google searches. Our editorial team is catching up on breaking crime news.
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When do we think this trial really is going to be? The cops thought it was a burglary.
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I've been in touch with them. Going to find out more. Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly.
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I'm Lester Holt. And for Andrea Canning, it's October 30th. And here's what's on our docket.
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In Maryland, the murder trial of a yoga teacher, once on the FBI's most wanted list.
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His alleged victim, a beloved college professor. She was enchanted by him, but prosecutors say that he found his mark.
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In Dateline Roundup, a release date for Sean Diddy Combs. Authorities arrest suspects in the Louvre Museum heist.
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and an ex-cop goes on trial for shooting an unarmed woman in her own home. She said she was scared of a possible intruder.
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Plus, Andrea talks to the filmmaker taking a bold new approach to the story of female serial killer Eileen Wuornos.
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It was kind of Eileen in her own words. But before all that, we're headed to Tennessee,
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where a woman is accused of attempting to take out a hit on her ex-husband. It wasn't the first time their troubled marriage burst into public view.
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Angelia, or Angie Solomon, is due to appear in Williamson County Court next week
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for an important pretrial hearing in a case that made headlines earlier this year.
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The ex-wife of former WSMV morning anchor Aaron Solomon was arrested tonight. Prosecutors allege Angie met up with undercover officers
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and agreed to pay them $5,000 to murder her ex-husband. Now, the case gained instant notoriety,
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not only because Angie Zalette's target, Aaron Solomon, was well-known around town,
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but also because the couple's daughter previously made disturbing allegations against him
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in a YouTube video that went viral. My name is Gracie Solomon. I'm 14 years old, and I'm here to tell my story.
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My brother died protecting me from my father, Aaron Solomon. My father's a monster.
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Erin has staunchly denied these allegations. Meantime, Angie has pleaded not guilty to several charges, including one count of solicitation of first degree murder.
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Here to unpack the allegations and family drama ahead of next week's hearing is Dateline producer Marianne O'Donnell.
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Marianne, thanks for being with us. I don't know if we have the time for you to unpack all the parts of this case.
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Yeah. You know, this is either one of the more diabolical cases or it's just the worst divorce case this side of the Mississippi.
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It's a tangled mess. Yeah. Well, tell us about this family because there's a lot of background here.
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There really is. So Aaron and Angelia, Angie, as you rightly called her, Solomon, they got married in 2001.
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They had two children, Grant and Gracie, and they were living in this beautiful suburb outside Nashville, Tennessee.
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Angie has a doctorate in pharmacy, though she really is pretty much, you know, takes care of the kids in the house.
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Aaron, who's a financial planner now, was up until 2011 an anchor with the NBC affiliate station WSMV.
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So at some point, the Solomons begin having marriage issues. Their marriage starts to fall apart. Tell us about that.
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Yeah, it was 2013. Aaron filed for divorce from Angie and it was finalized in 2014.
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Now, he cited irreconcilable differences, but according to the divorce documents, they were having major financial issues.
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What did Angie have to say about the divorce? She made some really strong allegations of abuse, saying that Aaron physically and sexually abused her and the kids.
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Aaron vehemently denies all of it. Now, multiple times throughout the divorce process, the court found these accusations lacked merit.
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Even giving Aaron majority custody of the kids, the court just never found any substance there of the allegations.
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All right, let's jump ahead to the summer of 2020. Something tragic happened to the Solomon's son, Grant.
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Yeah, it's really an awful story. I mean, Grant is about 18. He's a baseball player going into his senior year of high school.
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And he meets his dad, Aaron, at a pitching complex. And there's a tiny parking lot outside and has this really steep incline.
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So now Aaron says he was the first to pull into the parking lot, parked his car.
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And then his son Grant arrived in his truck. Aaron says he saw his son get out of the car to get his baseball gear.
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And that's when Aaron says, you know, he got busy looking at his phone, checking his emails.
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You know how we all do. And that when he looked back up, Grant was gone. and not only Grant, but the truck was gone.
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And he realizes that Grant's truck had rolled down the hill and dragged Grant with it into the ditch.
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Oh, my goodness. What happened next? Aaron called 911, told the operator that his son was trapped underneath the truck.
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He clearly is in a panic. Oh, my God. Was your son working on it? No, no, he was just getting out of it.
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It's the hill. We're on an incline and I guess he didn't have it in park or something or it wasn't engaged or.
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Oh, my God. And they weren't able to save him. Correct. First responders had come to the scene.
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But, you know, the boy died in route to the hospital. Police investigated. And they determined that it was what it was, a tragic accident.
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How did Angie react to Grant death Angie accused Aaron of foul play murdering their son And to be clear again there have been no charges brought against Aaron and he vehemently denies any accusations
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Angie and Gracie went public with their accusations on social media. Oh, yeah. They made social media accounts under the names Justice for Grant and Freedom for Gracie.
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That's where they share the abuse allegations against Aaron. He has caused so much pain for my family.
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He has tried to manipulate me and has manipulated others and has worked. So what was Aaron's response to the social media campaign that's growing around him?
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Aaron filed a defamation lawsuit against Angie. He said the false allegations actually caused him to lose clients.
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A judge dismissed the case in March of 2022, saying that Aaron's filing didn't show that the campaign caused significant damage to his reputation or work.
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OK, Marianne, that's the backdrop, if you can believe it, of the alleged murder for hire scheme.
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So according to investigators, Angie was looking for someone to kill her husband.
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This was in April. She met up with undercover officers from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
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How did all that play out? What happened? Yeah, well, the undercover officers recorded a conversation with Angie in which she expressed her desire to have Aaron die a slow death and be put underground.
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So what are investigators saying about a possible motive for this alleged arrangement, murder for hire arrangement?
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Well, according to prosecutors that are hearing, the alleged motive would be largely a financial one.
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Angie supposedly told the undercover officers that Aaron's death would provide Gracie with access to a trust fund.
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I'm curious. I can't imagine receiving this kind of news, but how did Aaron react to news of his ex-wife's arrest?
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Well, he spoke out on a podcast called The Good Grief, Good God Show and said he was scared and surprised by the alleged crime.
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My heart sank and my heart rate went up like a million instantly. And I'm just like, I was in disbelief.
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I was in shock. Like it's everybody saying like, you're like a Dateline episode or something, but it's your life.
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In some ways, he's hoping, this is what he says, that this case will confirm his side of the story,
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that he had done nothing wrong in the marriage or certainly to his son. We should reiterate that Angie has pleaded not guilty.
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Her attorney said at the probable cause hearing that there were a lot of things said in the car that she didn't mean.
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So we'll see what else they have to say at the hearing coming up next week. What do we know about that?
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Well, it's a preliminary hearing, so we should get a little more idea of the evidence prosecutors say they have against Angie.
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Well, Marianne, thanks for keeping us up to date on this one. It is a fascinating one with a lot of twists and turns.
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We'll check in with you as it progresses. Thanks very much. You got it. Coming up, a jury weighs the fate of a man accused of befriending and then murdering a college professor.
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Testimony wrapped up this week in the trial of a yoga teacher accused of murdering a beloved college professor 15 years ago.
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then allegedly fleeing to Mexico to escape justice. The story of how Jorge Rueda Landeros befriended 52-year-old Sue Ann Markham
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and the nature of their relationship has formed the crux of the arguments the jury has heard during the trial.
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Prosecutors allege that Landeros was a ruthless con man who seduced Sue into handing over hundreds of thousands of dollars of her life savings
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and staged a burglary at her Maryland home to cover up her brutal murder. The defendant knew he could not leave Sue Markham alone.
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And so he strangled her in the basement of her home. Landeros has denied it all.
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His defense attorney says that the friendship was real and Sue's actual killer was a man the police had in custody hours after the crime, but then let go.
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Here to tell us more is Neil Augenstein, who has been covering the case for the Washington, D.C. radio news station WTOP from the beginning.
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Welcome to the podcast, Neil. Hello there, Lester. Pleasure to talk with you about this.
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Really fascinating case. Why don't we start off and ask you to give a kind of a thumbnail sketch, if you will, of who Sue Ann Markham was.
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I know she's been described as beloved by her former students at American University.
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Sue Markham was an accounting and taxation professor at AU's School of Business.
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All of her students said that she was a wonderful teacher. What was the connection between her and Landeros? He's not denying that they knew each other, obviously.
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Well, Sue met Jorge Landeros in a Spanish class that he was teaching. They became friends in the months, in years after that.
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Yeah, and I know the opening arguments, the prosecutor painting this idea that she was simply enchanted with him.
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The word was enchanted, and according to prosecutors, over the next several years, he preyed upon her.
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At some point, he was living out of her home, teaching yoga and teaching massage.
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He ran his business out of the basement. Sue asked for nothing in return, except possibly for a love that he was never going to give.
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In 2008, they came up with a plan that they would be doing some day trading together.
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Sue Markham was the one who bankrolled it. By 2009 all of the money that the two had been working together with was gone Then according to prosecutors he killed her When she had nothing left to get him when the money ran dry Jorge Landeros killed her
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Police eventually found out that Sue Ann Markham had a $500,000 life insurance policy and that Jorge Landeros was the sole beneficiary.
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And that obviously helps the prosecution inform this idea that this was a financial crime.
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The fact that Jorge Landeros was the sole beneficiary was something that was repeated for years.
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This was a motive. Which brings us to the crime itself. Can you tell us what we know about the crime?
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According to prosecutors, on October 24, 2010, Sue Markham and Jorge Landeros had a fight.
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According to police and prosecutors, Landeros smashed her on the head with a tequila bottle and strangled her to death in the basement.
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So what kind of incriminating information did the prosecution try to bring in the case against him?
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Well, crime scene investigators lifted potential fingerprints and they took DNA swabs from Sue Markham's body.
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and prosecutors determined that that single source male contributor was Jorge Landeros.
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So they had a lot. They had a suspect, but they didn't have him in the country. He ends up in Mexico.
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And for the prosecution, they present that as evidence that he left the country as proof of a consciousness of guilt.
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So let's talk about what the defense position was. They've got a completely different perspective.
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They want the jury to hear. This is a story about a botched burglary which led to the death of Ms. Markham.
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That same night that Sue Markham was found dead, an 18-year-old was found driving Sue Markham's Jeep.
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The defense said that police were too quick to poo-poo the investigation into the man who was found in Sue Markham's SUV.
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And it made perfect sense that Jorge Landeros, who was a good friend of Sue Markham, that his fingerprints would be all over the home.
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And we should point out that Landeros' attorneys did not shy away from this issue of the $500,000 life insurance policy.
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We learned that it was reciprocal. Ms. Markham had a life insurance policy, and Mr. Landeros was the beneficiary.
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Mr. Landeros had a life insurance policy, and Ms. Markham was the beneficiary. According to the defense, these two good friends were starting a business venture together, so it made perfect sense for them both to take out life insurance policies.
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And after seven days of testimony, the jury received the case. If he is convicted, what is he potentially looking at?
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In Maryland, the maximum sentence for premeditated first-degree murder is life with no chance of parole.
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Well, Neil, it has been great having you on the podcast today. Thanks for doing this.
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Thank you for having me. Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. We'll have news on Sean Combs' prison release date,
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the latest on the Louvre heist, and an ex-police officer's murder trial. Plus, a brand-new documentary about Eileen Wuornos
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unearths her jailhouse interviews, the serial killer, in her own words. Joining me for this week's Roundup is Dateline producer Sue Simpson.
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Thanks for joining us, Sue. Hi, Lester. All right, let's get to it. Our first story, we're off to New York for an update.
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In a case our listeners know well by now, that of music mogul Sean Diddy Combs. He's awaiting transport to federal prison after a jury convicted him this summer on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
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What's the latest on that case, Sue? So, Lester, as you know, Combs was officially sentenced earlier this month to 50 months in prison.
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But that was just an estimate of time. We were waiting for the Bureau of Prisons to factor in time served to get a more exact sense of his sentence.
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And they're now done with that. On Monday, they published his official release date.
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It is May 8th, 2028. Now, that means he'll be released in just over two and a half years.
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Is there any chance he gets out earlier for things like good behavior? Yeah, definitely.
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He can get about 15% off his sentence for good behavior. So that could have him getting out, say, in December of 2027.
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All right, our next story, another closely watched one. And we're going to Paris for news of some arrests and the heist that took place at the world-famous Louvre Museum earlier this month.
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The story is, everybody keeps saying, because it's true, it's something out of a movie, right?
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Straight out of a movie, isn't it? The museum was actually open when the robbery took place, which is amazing, given the fact that this is the world's most visited museum.
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According to law enforcement, around 9.30 a.m. on Sunday, October 19th, a team of thieves backed a truck up to a balcony window and they broke in.
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And then they used disc cutters to cut open display cases and they made off with more than $100 million worth of crown jewels.
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And they left the same way they came in and escaped on motorbikes. And they did all that. This is remarkable, Lester.
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They did all that in less than eight minutes. Yeah, and time is of the essence because ultimately it's about retrieving the jewels
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before they can be broken down and sold. So do we know what happened? Well not yet but there have been some arrests On Sunday French authorities detained two men who they said had prior convictions and had previously targeted jewelry stores Then on Wednesday night five more people were arrested The Paris prosecutor did not give details about the suspect identities
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but did say that one of them had been tracked from DNA left behind at the scene.
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So far, Lester, there's no sign of the jewels. All right, for our final story, we're off to an Illinois courthouse
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for the latest in a case that garnered national attention. It was the 2024 shooting death of Sonia Massey in her home
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by then-Sheriff's Deputy Sean Grayson. Remind us about that case. So Sonia Massey called police in the early morning hours of July 6, 2024.
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She said she was scared of a possible intruder, and then Sheriff's Deputy Grayson responded to the scene.
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Massey answered the door for Grayson and a fellow officer and let them into her home.
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After noticing there was a pot of water boiling on the stove, Grayson asked Massey to remove it, testifying he took it as a threat.
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What happened next was captured on his body cam. Oh, I'll rebuke you in the name of Jesus.
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I'll rebuke you in the name of Jesus. You better f***ing not. That's what I got.
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I'll f***ing shoot you right in your f***ing face. Okay, I'm sorry. Drop the f***ing talk!
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Sue, the video is obviously very upsetting. It went viral, and it raised a lot of questions about the use of deadly force
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by police officers, and it did spark some protests. Grayson was charged with three counts
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of first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm, and official misconduct. He pleaded
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not guilty. This week is week two of his trial. What's the latest? Well, the prosecution called
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several witnesses last week trying to prove that this was not appropriate police conduct and was
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instead murder. The prosecution also showed the body cam footage of the shooting frame by frame
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and prosecutors argue that you can see Grayson getting angry at Massey and that she posed no threat to him.
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The defense began making their case this week and on Monday, Grayson himself took the stand.
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He said he felt threatened by Massey and he shot her in self-defense. And we learn Wednesday afternoon that a jury found Sean Grayson guilty of second-degree murder.
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Massey's family gathered outside the courthouse after the verdict was delivered and their lawyer gave a comment.
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Was Sonia a threat? The unequivocal answer is no. She was not a threat. She was never a threat.
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And that's what was proven in this court. Okay, Sue, well, thanks so much for these updates.
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Thank you, Lester. The real Eileen Wuornos is not a serial killer. I was so lost that I turned into one.
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You were listening to the voice of notorious serial killer Eileen Wuornos in a long-lost interview she did from behind bars on Florida's death row.
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And here's Wuornos in another interview talking to former Dateline correspondent Michelle Gillen.
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I am innocent. It was self-defense. The legal system didn't believe you. I do not regret it. I do not regret it.
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Wuornos' jailhouse interviews are at the heart of a brand-new Netflix documentary
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premiering this week called Eileen, Queen of the Serial Killer. produced by BBC Studios Documentary Unit in collaboration with NBC News Studios.
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The story of Eileen Wuornos has captivated the nation since her arrest in 1991 for a year-long killing spree along a Florida highway.
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She's been pulled the hookah from hell. Terrorized men along Florida's highways.
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She's a wild, boozing, lesbian prostitute. Warnos, a Florida area sex worker, shot and killed seven men before robbing them and dumping their bodies in the woods.
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Now more than three decades later, filmmaker Emily Turner wants to give viewers a closer look at Warnos' life leading up to the murders and a chance to hear the killer in her own words.
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Andriy Canning sat down with Turner recently to talk about the documentary. Take a listen to their conversation.
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Emily, welcome to the show. Thank you. Tell us about Eileen Wuornos. What drew you to this story?
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It sort of is infamous. And there was something very kind of captivating and, dare I say, sort of charismatic and enigmatic about Eileen.
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And in doing the research, it was quite clear that there was a pretty like black and white view that people seemed to come on site.
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It was either she's a kind of cold-blooded murderer or she's this kind of hapless victim.
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And I guess as a filmmaker, that's always quite attractive because, as is so often in life, the truth kind of comes somewhere in the middle.
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And she's such a sort of contradiction. What's so interesting about this documentary is that the viewers get to see and hear directly from Eileen in the jailhouse interview on the witness stand.
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Everybody would have believed that I had to defend myself. They would have said, you're a prostitute.
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We don't care. Did you learn any more about this woman and why she committed these crimes hearing her speak?
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So the kind of original kind of germ of the idea for making this film was we got access to an Australian artist called Jasmine Hurst, who had done an interview with Eileen as a result of a 10 year relationship of writing to each other.
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And that had never been, I think, had never been seen before. And it was such an interesting and sort of, in many ways, strange interview because it was with a friend and she was, yeah, it was kind of Eileen in her own words.
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And I went on this huge journey with how I felt about Eileen, from watching that interview and seeing a really human side of her.
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After the rapes, SMS, top of the head. To, you know, watching her on the stand in the only trial she had, where she speaks in incredible detail about sexual assault.
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It's really harrowing to... I do with Jasmine where she talks and almost starts laughing about the murders.
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And I sort of would catch myself thinking, oh, well, I've changed my mind last week.
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I thought this and now I feel like that. And I really wanted the viewer and the audience to kind of have a similar journey.
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Her troubles started, it sounds like, long before she even became a sex worker. Yeah. Yeah, I think her first sexual assault was as a child.
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and you know as a she she left home after having given birth to to a son when she was 14 and I
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think that first year of being a sex worker or the number of sexual assaults she experienced
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within that year I think is sort of in the almost 20 according to her account. So was she angry
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with these men and this was her way of you know getting revenge? I think for sure that's a kind of
00:24:50
take on it. But the argument against that is lots of people are victims of a huge amount of crime
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and not very many people go out and, you know, kill in the sort of violent way that she did.
00:25:02
I mean, yeah, it's like on one hand, you can't ignore her past, right? Because she had a rough
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life. But then on the other hand, you can't ignore that she's breaking the law in a really big way
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and taking away these people from their families. Yeah of course Absolutely We in no means kind of trying to justify why she was a perpetrator but it just interesting to look at what the lessons her story kind of holds for all of us Well Eileen Queen of the Serial Killers is streaming right now
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on Netflix, so you can go check it out. Emily, thank you so much for bringing us this story.
00:25:40
Thank you. Well, that's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. To get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium.
00:25:52
And coming up this Friday on Dateline, Blaine Alexander has an all-new episode about the murder of a beloved Florida doctor.
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Did his past come back to haunt him, or was it someone closer to home? I would have never ever in my life thought I'd run into somebody that could be this devastating to the family.
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Watch The Death of Dr. Schwartz this Friday at 9, 8 central on NBC. Thanks for listening.
00:26:18
Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Carson Cummins and Brittany Morris. Our associate producer is Caroline Casey.
00:26:26
Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Kurloff. Production and fact-checking help by Sarah Kadir.
00:26:33
Veronica Mazzaka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound engineer. Original music by Jesse McGinty.
00:26:40
Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.
00:26:47
Thanks so much, everybody. Have a great day.