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Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Canning, and we are Talking Dateline. Today, I'm here with Josh
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Mankiewicz. Hey, Josh. How you doing? Good. All right. So this episode is called Open Desert. If you haven't seen it, it's the episode
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right below this one on your list of podcasts. So go there and listen to it or stream it on
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Peacock and then come back here. Today, Josh has an extra clip that he's going to play for us from
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his interview with the victim's father. Plus, we're going to be joined later by this episode's
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producer and a good friend of mine, Anne Priceman, to answer some questions from social media.
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To recap this story, back in March of 2020, 16-year-old Brittany Lackey was reported missing
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from her hometown of Spring Creek, Nevada. She was last seen with her friend Bryce,
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who said he had dropped Brittany off to meet a mysterious cowboy named JT. Detectives and Brittany's family searched far and wide for her body and her killer,
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Eventually, they found her remains in a nearby desert. And DNA evidence at the scene showed them that her killer wasn't that cowboy, but her trusted friend, Bryce.
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Okay, let's talk Dateline. Josh, what really hit me from the very first line of this episode was the child not answering the phone.
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Yeah. Right? That happens to all of us as parents. You know, at first, it's like no big deal.
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Your kid didn't answer their phone. You don't really think much of it. And then if they don't answer the second time or the third time or they're not answering texts, your mind immediately goes to the worst place.
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At the same time, you're like, no, no, no, everything's fine. And usually it is.
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But then, unfortunately, as we've learned on this show, sometimes it's not okay.
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Yeah. And that's what Jim Yulaki was going through. He also, you know, there's one more component to that, which is in this case, he knew how long it took to get from where he last seen his daughter to where his daughter said she was going.
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So, like, she should have been home. She should have been reachable. You know, that's an age where kids want to start having some portion of their life for themselves.
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And they don't want to tell you, the parent, everything. but in this case in this family jim ulacky he knew this is not my daughter you know misleading
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me so she can run off and you know have a beer behind the gym with somebody she's not supposed
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to be hanging out with he knew something was wrong sounds like such a great dad such a softy
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with his daughter yeah because she completely changed his life and i loved how he said you
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know i'm dad first and then i'm the best friend or the friend yeah he was super protective of her
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I mean, he paid a lot of attention to where she was, what she was doing, where she was going.
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I mean, he was on her. And in this case, of course, we had the worst outcome that they had to discover her body in that way.
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You know, and it's amazing that they eventually even found her when you look at that landscape.
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And, you know, as the name of the show, right? Open Desert. Right. I mean, it's gorgeous country.
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I sort of wasn't prepared for that. There's no easy way to get there. You got to fly somewhere and then drive for a long distance.
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But it is absolutely gorgeous when you get there. And yeah, there's this town. And then around it is a great deal of just nothing, just natural beauty.
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But a lot of areas where if you are up to something that you shouldn't be up to, nobody
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will see you. And if you want to hide a body, there's a lot of places to do that.
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Yeah. And it's interesting because it sort of reminds you of the Wild West, old fashioned.
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But then it's got this edge to it where I noticed the teenagers, you know, have nose rings.
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They were free spirits, right? They were just being themselves. I looked at Brittany's eyeshadow and it was multiple colors, like one of those really pretty sunsets in the mountain that has like every color in it.
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It just kind of told me that this girl was a free spirit. You know, she was doing her thing.
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She was riding her horses, dressing the way she wanted to dress. She was being the person she wanted to be.
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Yeah, I mean, like a lot of the people we cover, this was somebody who was just, you know, on the cusp of adulthood and, you know, loved the rodeo and loved being around horses and, you know, really wanted a life that encompassed some part of that world.
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And whereas, you know, a lot of people that you run into in a small town like that, they can't wait to get out.
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Like, I got to go. I want to be in L.A. or I want to be in New York. I want to go to the big city.
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And she was like, no, no, I love it here. You know, she embraced that culture and the stuff you do there.
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And, you know, she was all about the rodeo. Where was Brittany going in life? She was going to go someplace that made her happy.
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That's where she was going. One thing that made me really sad in this episode, and it was a really powerful red herring, was that girl fight that was caught on video at the rodeo.
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I did not like watching that video. Well, first of all, you can see in Brittany, her dad, right? I mean, like that, I'm not backing down from a fight. I'm not afraid of you. And she got in a fight with some kids in school, but then it ended up spilling over into the rodeo and some of that was caught on video.
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And I mean, law enforcement had absolutely no choice but to figure out who that is because
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is it conceivable that somebody who's 16 years old could be killed by other 16-year-olds
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that they had some kind of nebulous dispute with? Absolutely. And that's one of the roads that law enforcement went down.
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I mean they found those girls and ultimately determined that they were not involved But that one of the things that you have to do because any defense attorney worth their salt is going to say wait a minute
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you did not check out these people who were clearly angry enough to get in a fistfight with
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her. You didn't check those people out as suspects. Of course you will. You have to.
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Yeah. And I didn't know how this story ended. So for me, I was thinking this is a viable lead right
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here. Right. Exactly. I mean, there were a lot of twists and turns in this case. It was the blackmail.
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thing, the, uh, the kidnap scam. So cruel. And all you want is to cling to some hope.
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Yeah. The toughest thing I think the police had to do in this was say to Brittany's mom,
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listen, um, this is not real. There's no chance this is real. These people don't have your
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daughter. They may be committing a crime here, but we've talked about this before on talking
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dateline, when the thing that you are hoping for as a parent is that your child is still alive,
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but imprisoned by some maniac, when that's the best case scenario, you have gone to a very bad,
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very dark place. And that's where Brittany's mom was at that point, which is okay. Well,
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at least in that scenario, she's still alive. And the hardest thing that law enforcement had
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to do was say to her, hey, this is nothing. Okay. After the break, we'll be back with an extra clip from Josh's interview with Brittany's
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dad, Jim Ullacki. One of the things that I've had to learn in this job is that the traditional rules or
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the rules that I grew up with of dating or going steady or who's with who, you know,
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the idea that like, I'm going to come to your house and I'm going to pick you up and I'm going
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to have some flowers for you and your dad's going to grill me in the entryway. And then I'm going to
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make sure that I have you back by, you know, 10 59 PM or whatever the curfew is, which I'm okay
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with. I am okay with that. I know that you with, with, with all those, with all those girls in
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your house, I know you are okay with that, but that has changed and it's sort of hard to figure
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out what an involvement is. And so that's kind of, you know, a little bit about what was going
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on between Brittany and Bryce. I mean, they were friends. Also, clearly he thought there was more
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going on there and or could be more going on there. And we don't know what else had happened
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before that. We do know that it went very, very wrong and that he was the aggressor in that.
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Yeah. And her dad said clearly this was someone before he figured out Bryce, someone that she trusted. Right. There's no question about that. She did not see him
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as some annoying guy who was pestering her, who was stalking her, who wouldn't leave her alone.
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I mean, they were friends and they were thought of as friends by everybody who knew them.
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And her dad actually talked to you about that in a clip that did not make the show
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that we're going to play right now that's right up that alley of what you're talking about.
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Going back to now, back when Bryce seemed like a decent, trustworthy guy, when they were friends, what was her relationship with Bryce?
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I only met Bryce twice. Every guy had to meet me before she could do anything with him,
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and I'd do the typical dad thing. But, you know, I've been to jail a lot in my younger radical years and everything,
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and I would tell him I'm not that dad who says I've been to jail, and I haven't.
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I've been to jail many times, and I'm not afraid to go back to jail. Whatever you do to my daughter, I'm going to do to you.
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And I was just my little spew, and actually I really meant it. I mean, I'm very protective of my kids.
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That would have worked with me, let me just say. So I'd seen him for probably two or three minutes, and then they left.
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He came by one other time. I'd very briefly seen him, but he mainly showed up around her mom.
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Okay, so you had that conversation with Bryce, but he wasn't really a boyfriend, right?
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No. I mean, she sort of made clear, this is just my friend. Yeah, and it was not her boyfriend that she brought over.
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Just any guy that she was hanging around with, I would just say that. So there was nothing really to fear with Bryce.
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No, there was nothing suspicious. And like he and his family had been in that town forever.
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Like they were all sort of known quantities. And it's amazing because usually it's like you look back, oh, the red flags were there.
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You know, oh, he did this or he said that. And it all makes sense. But not in this case.
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Yeah, that's right. Bryce did a fairly good job of steering the investigation away from him, even to the point
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of coming to a memorial for her because I'm guessing something told him, if you don't
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go, it's going to be suspicious. And he went and people were putting their arms around him.
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Well, we know that law enforcement detectives, they go to the funeral or they sit outside
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the funeral, you know, that usually trying to hide the fact that they're law enforcement.
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Right. But sometimes they're taking photos of every license plate in the parking lot.
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Yeah, because very often the killer does go to the funeral, just like an arsonist might go to the burned down building.
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Right. And a killer might go to the funeral, one, because not going might make them seem suspicious.
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And second, because so often murders are committed by somebody that the victim knows.
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That the victim knows, exactly. And that's the majority of our Dateline episodes.
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In a way that maybe should give people a little bit of comfort which is the you know the random madman or madwoman who you know breaks into your house kills you Like that pretty rare Like this you mostly in danger from people you know from relationships you already have But one of the things about this
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story that made it an interesting story to tell was that there was this mythical other suspect,
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this cowboy named JT that, you know, drove a, you know, a particular kind of pickup truck.
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And Bryce gave a description of this guy and of the truck. And that, I mean, the police turned over a lot of stones looking for JT, looking for that truck, and looking for those initials.
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And in nearly every law enforcement agency that I know of, there's a nickname, Database.
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So if you're looking for somebody named Sugar or Beefy or JT, it's going to be in there.
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I was actually known as Sugar back in high school. Um, and so they spent, they spent a lot of time looking for the mythical JT until they figured out that the way Bryce was talking about this guy kept changing.
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Like one time he was in the truck, one time he was out of the truck. Yeah. And I made a note of that as you know, his story kept changing that this is why defense attorneys tell people not to open their mouths.
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That's right. Right. Because this is what got him in trouble. if he had just not said anything.
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And I, you know, it's, of course, it's that you're damned if you do, you're damned if you
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don't. If you're innocent and you don't say anything, then you look guilty. If you're guilty, you say something, you potentially could incriminate yourself.
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So it is tricky. But in this case, he absolutely should not have opened his mouth.
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I mean, yes, in the sense that, I mean, a defense attorney would have said, don't talk
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with police or just talk with police once and then say, look, if you're going to treat
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me like a suspect i'm not going to talk with you anymore um but you know once her body was found
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and once dna is found from the the tobacco that was spit on the ground near the body um then that's
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going to lead back to bryce that leads me to talk about the clues in this case which were really
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good ones um especially if you're really eagle-eyed apparently unlike me you know he
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spit in that body cam video, the police body cam video, which I noticed. I really noticed him
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spitting. But then the chewing tobacco, when they say they found it at the scene, I didn't put two
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and two together with the chewing tobacco and the spitting. So I missed that clue, but then thought,
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wow, somebody out there watching Dateline surely picked that up. Oh, surely. And the other one that was so good was the desert landscape in the photo with the mountain ridge
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and how they were able to line that up. That was a great, that was, I mean, there was very good police work in this.
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And that was part of it was lining up the mountain ridge that really existed behind them in the photo.
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Yeah, it was really right out of a movie. You know, that clue, I feel like. It was an exact match, right?
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I mean, it was pretty amazing. Yeah, no, they did a great job with that. Now we're going to take a quick break
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and then we'll be back with a special guest, Dateline producer, Ann Priceman. What we're going to do now is we're going to bring in Anne Priceman, who, as I said, is a good friend of mine.
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And I've done many Datelines with her, and she was your producer on this episode.
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She was. And she is going to tell us a little bit about her experience with the story and answer some questions from social media.
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So let's bring in the incredible Anne Priceman. Hello. Great to be with you. Anne, so you made a vlog while you were out filming this episode.
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Let's just play it for our listeners really quickly. Hi, I'm Anne. And I'm Rachel.
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And today we're taking you along on a shoot for an all-new episode of Dateline. We're in Elko County, Nevada, which is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been while traveling for Dateline.
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In fact, this area is known as the Swiss Alps of Nevada. After a couple of hours of filming, we headed back to town.
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Although we ran into a problem. A lot of big problems, actually. So we're driving back from our B-roll shoot.
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And we're having some trouble getting home. Eventually, they moved out of the way and we made it back to town.
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So what the listener can't see is that you're driving through this gorgeous valley
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and then your SUV is suddenly surrounded by a herd of huge dairy cows. Eventually, they turned around and they're like, oh, there's a car.
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It's the same philosophy that Ann uses when dealing with me, which is you just wait and eventually it works out.
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You're patient enough. Josh, you made a vlog as well in Canada. I did because I had that trip, which, by the way,
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was the other kind of story that we were just talking. about, which is it was not a friend of the victim. It was somebody completely random. And that was
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kind of a, kind of a swerve for us in that there was no relationship at all between killer and
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victim and where we were going in Canada was so far away and it was so hard to get there.
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And it took so long. It was a real planes, trains and automobiles experience. So I made a,
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I made a little video travelogue. If you hadn't have documented it, I don't know that I would have believed it, that you were in Moosinie, Canada.
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I know. And it took two days to get there and two days to get back. I was only there a little while.
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I was so proud of you for braving the cold, Josh, you California guy. I know that you and Keith grew up with that but I did not All right So we are going to dig into some social media questions The first one is from Dalaran7 at Daniel R Hawker1
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He talks about how this is a very tragic story and sad story that all parents should watch with their kids and tell them, this is why we ask questions.
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This is why we keep tabs on you 24-7. This can be, this episode, a teachable moment for sure.
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if you feel comfortable either having your kids watch it or just telling them what happened.
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Yeah. I mean, I think that's right. I think Jimmy Lackey did everything right. I mean,
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he paid a lot of attention to where his daughter was, who she was hanging out with,
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what was going on in her life. He was not some absentee father. He was very, very involved.
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And yet this still happens. So, I mean, if there is any kind of teachable moment here, it's
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that you say to your kids, you know, even people that you feel comfortable with,
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It doesn't mean that nothing can ever happen. You just have to be aware all the time.
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Yeah. And it's kind of an instinctive thing, right? There's no manual. You kind of just have to figure it out and hope for the best and do everything you can,
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which is what Jim was clearly doing, which leads me to our next viewer, Jossie at Jocelyn
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D20, who said, and I think she speaks for all of us, this dad has me in tears. You know, and when we were originally talking with him, we sat down.
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He's very sort of taciturn. He doesn't talk a lot. But man, once we started him talking about this story, he was great all the way through.
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And he was one of the main storytellers of the story, which, you know, sometimes on Dateline, the people that know the victim the best aren't their parents, but not Jimmy Alackey.
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He was a player in her life all the way through. And he told this story better than anybody.
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And Katie Bumble said, Brittany's father left a deep impression on me. May all daughters have a dad who loves them this much.
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I mean, his pain was so palpable. I mean, we're around for what we do. A lot of victims.
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But this was so different. Like you felt it. You almost took it on yourself. So on to Bryce, the killer.
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Nancy Carol Harvey on Facebook said, I knew right away Bryce did it, talking about the cowboy hat and the truck.
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There are so many of the same color truck in that town and cowboys. That definitely set investigators off on a whole other path, which they, I mean, if you were JT and you lived in Elko County, you probably were getting investigated.
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So, I mean, it was a clue just broad enough to guarantee a lot of investigator hours.
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It's the land of F-150s. And cowboy hats. Yeah. It's cowboy country. I think people around here forget that there's a whole other world out there in America.
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You know, there's places where there's not Starbucks on every corner. Josh found a Starbucks in town.
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I did find it. Okay, maybe there's one on the corner. It wasn't actually a Starbucks, I think.
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It was a Starbucks type place. One of our cameramen is a coffee aficionado. This is obviously a sidebar.
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But so every place you go, he finds the little specialty roaster place. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing.
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There is a Starbucks in every town. And you don't need a Starbucks if they have these little cute specialty coffee places.
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But there are places that serve coffee, and I will find that. Yeah. Okay. This is from the Dateline team.
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Brittany's main hobby was horseback riding, and she loved the rodeo, of course. During the show, we asked viewers what their favorite hobby was as a teenager.
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We got all kinds of answers, but we want to know, Josh and Anne, what were your favorite hobbies as teenagers?
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And do you still do them today? Anne, you go first. This question underlies how much of a dork I was.
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I watched a lot of TV. Oh, gosh, me too. wonder why we're in this business my parents hated it too by the way i don't know about you
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my parents were like stop watching tv no i mean i was gen x and a little bit latchkey so again
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love boat reruns and magnum pi were my jam absolutely yeah um i remember uh one of my
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favorite hobbies was watching keith on television when i was a small child so that was wait when
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wait are you joking or you mean when he was an anchor in la no i mean when i'm joking when i
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when I grew up, I read a lot. I'm still doing that. I watched a lot of television. I watched
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a lot of crime dramas on television, kind of like now. My mom used to say to me, you know, Josh,
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television is not a life. Well, wrong again, mom. To all of our parents. All right. Well,
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on that note, thank you, Anne, for joining us today. That was a nice special treat.
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Thank you for having me. Thank you, Josh, as well, for sharing all your insights into this episode.
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Thank you, guys. Okay, and that is Talking Dateline for this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can reach out to us on social media at Dateline NBC.
00:22:17
Also, be sure to check out the newest season of our podcast, Dateline Missing in America, featuring missing person cases brought to our attention by our followers on social media.
00:22:28
Listen to the first episode now wherever you get your podcasts. And see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.