You're listening in to Dateline's Morning Meeting at 30 Rockefeller Center. Our editorial team is catching up on breaking crime news around the country. I'm Andrea Canning. Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly, a podcast where I get to dig into the stories making headlines this week. Every Thursday I'll be talking to NBC News reporters fresh from the courthouse and Dateline producers on the ground, finding out what you need to know. So let's get started.
It's May 16th and here's what's on our docket this week. Keith Morrison will join me to talk about the triple murder trial of Lori Valos' husband, self-proclaimed Doomsday Profit, Chad Daybell. You just want to know how their brains work. A woman accused of murder in Boston says she's being framed by the police. We had neighbors and relatives testifying there. It is so complicated they even made her in charge.
But for our first story this week, we've got an update for you on one of the most hotly anticipated trials of the summer. With just two months to go until actor Alec Baldwin stands trial for the 2021 shooting of cinematographer Helena Hutchins on the set of the movie Rust, his defense team has launched another legal salvo to get the charges against him tossed.
Friday morning at 10 o'clock mountain time, a Santa Fe judge will listen to arguments from Baldwin's attorney that the prosecution can't even prove a criminal offense took place. This case has of course had wall to wall coverage from the very beginning. Alec Baldwin was seen outside the Sheriff's Office in tears. Prison is not necessarily the goal. But potentially putting the Hollywood star in the role of actor and defendant all at once.
Where we stand today as Hannah Gutierrez read, the movie's armorer is in prison. About a month ago she was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to serve a year and a half at the New Mexico Women's Correctional Facility. But for you, Miss Hutchins would be alive. A husband would have his partner and a little boy would have his mother. Please take her.
Baldwin who was holding the gun that killed Hutchins is facing his own charge of involuntary manslaughter unless his defense team can get it thrown out. So what's in Baldwin's new filing? How has the prosecution responded to it? And what can we expect if the judge decides Baldwin's trial is still on? Here to answer all those questions is NBC News correspondent Chloe Maloss. Chloe, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Tell us about this new motion that was filed to dismiss this case.
What are the main arguments? Yeah, this latest filing, you have Alec Baldwin's team saying that the prosecution has to prove that our client consciously disregarded safety standards on set that Alec Baldwin consciously disregarded a substantial risk to Helena Hutchins. Yeah, the defense says that Baldwin didn't know there was a risk at all, let alone ignore the risk.
Alec Baldwin has maintained in multiple interviews, even one with me, he did not pull the trigger that the gun just went off and he doesn't know how life bullets got into the gun that it was declared cold when it was handed to him, which means safe to use. Right, no live ammunition. Exactly. The prosecution, they're going to say though that Alec Baldwin, it was his fiduciary responsibility as a producer on the rust film to also hire competent people to work on the set.
And the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez reads decisions and actions ultimately fall on Alec because he was not just an actor but a producer. Do you think that there's any part of this that has Alec Baldwin's character, his personality on trial here? 100%. There were a lot of reports that Alec Baldwin and his family were being followed around by a camera crew that Rory Kennedy was one of the filmmakers and that there were two documentaries in the works.
In a recent filing, the prosecutor said that there was a plea deal on the table and that one of the reasons that they revoked it was because of these documentaries. And Alec Baldwin's team, they had a field day with it with their latest filing saying, you just showed your hand. How could you come out and tell us that this was one of the reasons that you removed the plea deal? I mean, these are not real reasons.
If the judge decides that the trial is going forward, this is going to be a really big deal in the media. This to me is very similar in terms of public attention, like public appetite to Johnny Depp and Amber Heard where we saw their defamation suit playing out on television and people were just glued to it. And people are going to be focused on Alec Baldwin, that camera on him, his demeanor, is he going to be talking outside of the courthouse? Is he going to take the stand himself?
Will Hannah testify when we know that she told her mom on a recorded call from prison that she doesn't want to help with this trial. She doesn't want to comply with a subpoena because Alec didn't show up for her during the trial. And I think we're going to hear from people in SAG about whether or not it's really an actor's responsibility to check that weapon on a movie set.
And are you allowed to point a weapon towards somebody because Alec claims that Helena said point the weapon towards me during this rehearsal in the church. And if you talk to actors, you know, many of them have come out publicly and said, you should never point a weapon towards someone because you cannot take that chance. And any idea how long the judge will take to decide on this new motion to dismiss?
So I don't think that there's any sort of a deadline, but the trial is supposed to start July 9th. And I think that we will have these answers before the end of the month. Do we have any sense of what Helena Hutchins family would like to see in this ruling from the judge? I mean, we know that some family members have settled a civil suit with Alec Baldwin. Are they on board with criminal charges? So following Hannah's conviction, Helena's mother and sister released the following statement.
We look forward to the justice system continuing to make sure that everyone else who is responsible for Helena's death is required to face the legal consequences for their actions, meaning everyone else, while there's only one other trial that's looming. And that's Alec Baldwin's. You will be there, Chloe. NBC News will be there. Yes. All right, Chloe, Maloss. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
For the break, we'll be joined by a very special guest and date line family member, Keith Morrison. He's going to fill us in on his own strange journey leading up to Chad day bells trial. Plus, we'll get the latest from inside the courtroom. For our next story, we want to take you to the Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho, and a triple murder trial that's already in its seventh week. State of Idaho versus daybell. Two dead children buried in an abandoned Chad day bells backyard.
The next month is a life of the Spounded Ed in their marital bed. That's Chad daybell, self-proclaimed Doomsday Prophet and fifth husband to Lori Vallow, who has been the subject of various date line episodes and Keith's podcast, Mommy Doomsday. In 2021, Chad and Lori were charged with the murders of Lori's two children, along with conspiring to kill Chad's first wife, Tammy. Chad was also charged with Tammy's actual murder. Lori stood trial last year.
Lori Noen Vallow, not guilty or guilty, a first-re-merder answer guilty. Now it is Chad daybell's turn, and he has pleaded not guilty. Before we get to that, we wanted to check in with a person who has been hot on daybell's trail since Lori's kids were first reported missing. He is also my good friend and colleague, Keith Morrison. Welcome to the first episode of Date Line True Crime Weekly Keith. Thank you for having me. I feel honored to be on your first show.
So what do you think is so fascinating about this story? It has sex, it has romance, it has religion, it has children in trouble, it has people doing unspeakable things. So who was Chad daybell and how did he meet Lori? When he started out, he was like a lot of young men in small town, Utah. He became a Mormon missionary. Then he came home and he married Tammy. They had five children and then he began to write books about the second coming, about life after death.
He began to have these theories that some people who were dead were not really dead and some people who were alive are really just zombies who were actually dead. But he would go to conferences and Lori went to those and was completely captivated by him and by what he was writing. This is where the love story started. That's right. And he and Lori getting together was like the Nitro and Glissoron. Yeah, a good way to put it.
The first we heard of the story came from the grandparents who were reporting their grandson JJ was missing and they had been trying to contact his mother Lori and the authorities went to do a welfare check and she was all happy and greedy at the door. But something was off so they returned later and by then they were gone. They just vanished. Took off to Hawaii. Which is where you went.
You went to Hawaii to try to find them and we did encounter them at one point at one of our producers approached them on the sidewalk. We said no comment. Where are your kids? There's a lot of people who are worried about your kids. Are you guys worried about them? There's a moment in one of your date lines where you visit Lori's storage unit in Idaho and you're surrounded by photo albums, a child's bike. And you seemed upset Keith and I don't see you get upset all that often.
Well, you open the door and there they are. They're favorite blanket. They're childhood things and you knew the children were dead. Then we found the video which showed Chad and Lori going in and out of the storage facility and he's patting her on the bomb and going on with life as if they're just having a grand old time. Is there a thought they were saving their children somehow? Because they had become zombies. They had to be killed in order to be saved.
That notion seemed to be somehow banging around in their heads. Are there any questions that you have that you think perhaps could be answered during Chad's trial? Well, I want to be able to talk to these people. You just want to know how their brains work. Do they retain these ideas even after all these terrible things have happened? Or do they try to excuse themselves from these ideas? I don't know. But I'd love to know. We would all love to know.
Keith, thank you so much for joining us today and for being a part of our first episode. We appreciate it. Thank you. As I say, I'm quite honored. As I mentioned earlier, it's week seven in the day bell trial. But here to bring us up to speed on how the case is unfolding is East Idaho News reporter and NBC News consultant Nate Eaton. He was with Keith all those years ago, staking out Lori and Chad day bell in Hawaii. Now he is sitting just feet from Chad in the Ada County courthouse.
In a break during testimony, Nate called us from his car to fill us in. Hi, Nate. Thanks for being with us. Thank you, Andrea. Good to see you. Yeah. As we said, you're fresh from the courtroom. So what's happening? Who was just on the stand? The person just on the stand was an expert in tools and they were going through the tool marks that were found on tiley Ryan's bones that were left behind and determining what could have caused those tool marks.
I have to tell you, it left an impression on the jury because it was so graphic. That is difficult testimony to hear. You sat through Lori Valos trial also. What is different about this one with Chad? I would say the main difference is he's facing the death penalty so the states are a little higher if he's sound guilty. Also the death of his wife has really been centered at this case. Tammy gave out Tammy day down.
A vivacious, healthy mother was another individual labeled as a dark spirit to be removed. You will hear from multiple witnesses that Chad predicted multiple times that Tammy would die in early fall. Tammy's autopsy photos were shown in court. Those were so graphic that we did not see them but they were shown and the medical examiner took the stand and very confidently said she died of his fixia. She had bruises on her upper arms. You could say someone was trying to hold her down.
What did you determine her manner of death to be? I'm a side. Chad was said to be acting strange after her death. Right. His story kept changing as far as how she died. He told his sister-in-law that Tammy day they'll had gained 40 pounds and die of an embolism but they called up not only the evidence from the Fitbit that she was getting 10,000 steps a day. She was active. She was in a clocking class and they called the clocking teacher. That's a first clocking teacher to the stand.
Tammy has certainly been key but we're also hearing more about the kid's murders. How does Chad tie into that? The big tie in is they were buried on his property. They were fed away from his back door but there hasn't been, if everyone's looking for a smoking gun of yes, his DNA was on the scene, well it wasn't. There was physical evidence from Laurie and her brother. Right.
Laurie, there was that hair that was found on the body of JJ and then there was physical evidence of her brother Alex's fingerprint on the duct tape that was used to wrap JJ. Do you think that it's possible that Chad could get convicted on the conspiracy to commit murder for the kids? But not first degree murder? It's very impossible and if that happens then he will not face the death penalty. Chad's defense attorney, John Pryor, there's been some drama with him.
Right. In fact, as I'm talking to you, Andrew, he's walking right by my car. We are on the lunch break so he's outside. There is a gag order otherwise I try to get him to talk to you. I was just going to say throw him a question. Yes. He does not have a lot of experience with criminal works, especially this magnitude. The judges had to call him out of time or two for talking over witnesses and judge it's non-responsive. Pryor, you just ran over me.
Stop cutting people off in your cross, please, including me. But he's doing his job. When do we expect the prosecution to rest and the defense to begin? I imagine the prosecution is wrapping up. We've had over 60 witnesses so far and then the defense will take over and they could take a week or two. All right, Nate Eaton. Thank you so much and we'll be checking back in with you again soon. Thanks, Adira. All right, coming up after the break, we've got the date line roundup.
We'll give you a few fast takes on breaking stories and we've got the latest on a case out of Boston that's getting a lot of attention. A woman accused of murder who says she's the victim of a conspiracy. Welcome back to the show. My next guest is here to give us the date line roundup. He's one of my all-time favorite producers, Mario Garcia. So tell us about what headlines caught your eye this week. Hi, Andrea. As always, you're too kind.
So we learned something new about the investigation into the death of the pastor's wife, Micah Miller. As you know, now remember, she's a 30-year-old woman whose body was found in a North Carolina state park last month and her friends and family's suspected foul play. Last week, the medical examiner's report came out with a finding and they say that Micah did in fact die from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
However, this week, the sheriff's office that's investigating the case revealed it has been working with the FBI and their investigation is ongoing. So what exactly they're investigating at this point is it's a little unclear, but we'll keep an eye on that. We'll keep you up to date. All right. And next, we're going to head to Arizona. Arizona. Yeah. We're a 40-year-old Melody Johnson was sentenced for a crime that she pled guilty to. She spiked her husband's coffee with bleach.
Prosecutors have been asking for four years in prison, but she'd already served about a year in prison. So she got three years of probation. And some people think that that sentence is very light. She also was ordered to undergo mental health treatment. I thought it was kind of interesting that the guy actually did a sting himself. He got hidden cameras and hid them and called her in the act. So that was kind of a, if you think you're coffee-taste odd, maybe set up hidden cameras.
And your final story, Mary, that you have found is out of Atlanta. It's something close to a story that you worked on. It is actually a story that aired just this past Friday called Sounded. Sounded in Fury was about a DJ that had his wife killed by his best friend. And he worked at a strip club in Atlanta, club Onyx. And it's a large club. A lot of music gets broken there.
And they say over the weekend that up, there were two mass burglars that broke into the club through the ceiling, envisioned like Tom Cruise, a mission that possible on the cables. Then they used power tools to cut open the safe. And they got away with $250,000, probably all in ones. But that's not a small hall. No, never a dull moment at club Onyx. Indeed. Thank you, Mario, for this week's Date Line Roundup. Thanks for having me.
For our next story, we're heading to a Boston suburb and a strange scene on the steps of the Norfolk County Superior Courthouse. I tried to save his life. I tried to save his life at six in the morning. I was covered in as well. I was the only one trying to save his life. A woman accused of murdering her boyfriend is surrounded by a crowd of supporters. Said it feels we're the only ones fighting for the truth of what happened to John O'Keefe. Who is she? Her name is Karen Reed.
She's accused of backing her SUV into her police officer boyfriend after a drunken fight and leaving him to die in the snow. She says that's not true and has one of the wildest defense theories we've heard here at Date Line. And we know who's spearheaded this cover up. You all know. Yes, we do. If you haven't come across this case before, it all started two years ago on a bitterly cold winter morning in January 2022.
Karen and friends of her boyfriend of two years, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, found him lying in a snow bank outside the house she dropped him off at just a few hours before. You can hear Karen screaming on a police officer's dashcam video. You can't make out what she's saying, but multiple witnesses who were there told investigators Karen said, I hit him. Oh my god, I hit him. It is now week five of the trial. And according to prosecutors, Karen's reaction was a confession.
What's more, they say there was proof her car had a broken tail light. Karen's defense team has told the jury, don't believe a word of it. They say Karen is being framed by a group of childhood friends, many of whom work in law enforcement to cover up what really happened. Their claim is that some of them beat John O'Keefe's senseless and dumped him on the street in a blizzard.
My next guest is Dateline producer Sue Simpson, who has been on this case since the very beginning and actually got a chance to talk to Karen, read herself with our own Dennis Murphy. Welcome to the show Sue. Thank you, Andrea. Nice to be here. Yeah, tell us about that interview. When did it happen and how did it happen? Karen spoke to us in March of last year and it was her first interview as far as I know to the media. And I ran over to him and his eyes were swollen shut.
He had blood dripping out of his nose. He had blood on his face. He had cuts on his face. Karen, did you say something like, I wonder if I hit him? I said, did I kill him? I said, could I have hit him? I have to tell you Andrea, it's rare that you meet someone who so articulate and so well spoken about her own case and almost you could see her acting as her own defense attorney. And it's, I mean, you and I both know very unusual for a defendant to do an interview before trial.
She appears as somebody who has nothing to hide and who has a compelling argument. Just one thing, for instance, this tail light, this broken tail light, which is at the heart of the prosecution's case, she says, look, you know, when I went out to look for him early in the morning. I've backed into John's car as I was driving out of the driveway and I hit my tail light then. There is video, which doesn't show that exact angle, but which helps to support her story.
One thing she has maintained is that she did not run over John. Absolutely. She says that she's out of the car and he left. Within minutes of him exiting my car is not answering his phone minutes. And we pressed her on this. Did you see him go into the house? She said, I saw him stick his head into the opening. So she definitely believes that he went in the house. Yeah, one of the things I'm confused about. So was she drunk or was she not? She is very clear in our interview that she was not.
Did you ever feel you were over served that night as I say? No. So a test was not done because she wasn't spoken to until the next day. Well, a test was done the next morning and she was over the blood alcohol limit. So this could be one of the defense's biggest challenges, this blood alcohol level, because you know, the prosecution believes that she had too much to drink. Simple. She ran over her boyfriend. It could be one of the biggest points.
We are still in the prosecution phase of this trial. What have been their main points so far? Well, you get the sense that their strategy now is to make sure you know that witness after witness is saying, John O'Keefe never entered that house. We are going to make sure that you know first responders heard Karen say, I hit him. I hit him. I would say though, so far the prosecution is saving the CSI portion of the trial. They have DNA. They say of John O'Keefe on the tail light, on the car.
These microchip fibers of the tail light in his hoodie. That sounds very damning. It does. The defense team is claiming that he was beat up. They are. They say that he went in the house and that somebody in the house headed in for him. Now they've got a number of candidates. One of whom is the nephew of the homeowner. The nephew was you know, in his teens and was sometimes throwing beer cans on John O'Keefe's lawn. And the defense says maybe wanted to you know, show John a lesson.
The first we should talk about Brian Albert. So Brian Albert, the homeowner, was on the stand last week and he was under cross-example nomination. He's key because he had the after party at his house. A former Boston police officer, a first responder. The defense wanted to make this point. A dead man is found on his front lawn. And Brian Albert does not come out to investigate. There was an ambulance there. So that's been a big sort of question mark. Brian Albert's story has changed a few times.
And the defense has made a big deal out of him possibly destroying data on his phone. Well, yes, so he's testified to this. He said, I upgraded my cell phone. And so the defense left upon him and said, you destroyed data. Is it a coincidence that happened a day before you were getting a state order to preserve that phone? One of the things from the defense is this accusation. This was a sloppy investigation done by the local police.
Yeah. And listen, you and I know that this is often a fallback for their fence attorneys in any case, right? In this case, you know, there are compelling reasons to believe them. You know, a tent wasn't set up over the snow when where John's body was found. They didn't even put caution tape around. There are a number of people that have been put on the stand who've said, no, I didn't talk to an investigator for nine months, ten months, a year and a half afterwards.
And a new one, collecting evidence in red solo cups. That never heard that before. That's the first, right? That is a date line first. And some people might think Karen Reed's conspiracy theory, you know, seems far-fetched, but the day of opening statements, an audit began of the local police department. It did. And in fact, there's a federal investigation into this investigation. It's really opened up a fissure in this town.
There's some fierce defenders of Karen Reed who managed to collect a crowd of followers. And they have created circus outside this gracious old courthouse. They would actually have, on occasion, boo, John O'Keefe's family. I know you've been going to the courthouse. And did I hear you right? You've been actually arriving to court at 3am. You did. I take my soccer muncher and I need to get there.
I tell you, Andrea, it's the fight of my life because only the first ten media people are allowed in this small courtroom. Yeah, but it's worth it. You're out there, you're braving the elements and you're thinking, I'm really covering a story here that is fascinating. Well, as the correspondent on this case, Sue, I look forward to putting this all together with you. I feel like you're doing the heavy lifting, showing up at 3am.
So very much appreciated for that and also for your, all your insight into this case for us for Dateline True Crime Weekly. Thank you. Thank you, Andrea. That's it for the first episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. We'll be here every Thursday from here on out. Next week we'll be talking about the latest in the trial of the man charged with murdering the Idaho College students. When can we expect a trial? And more about Brian Coburgers' alibi. He was stargazing?
And coming up on Dateline this Friday, after the death of a 44 year old mother at home is ruled undetermined, friends and family battle for justice. And she said to me, Susan, something's not right and you have to do something about this. Tune in Friday for an episode we're calling The Sisterhood. That's 9-8 Central on NBC or Stream It Saturday on Peacock. Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Franny Kelly, her associate producer as Carson Cummins.
Her senior producer is Liz Brown Curloff, production and fact-checking help by Leslie Grossman, Keani Reed and Sarah Kadeer. Veronica Mosaic is our digital producer. Rick Cwan is our sound designer, original music by Jesse McGinty, Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Paul Ryan is executive producer and Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline. Okay, busy day. Thanks everyone. Okay, bye.