Hi, everyone.
Hi.
You're listening to the Dateline Morning Meeting.
Detectives, they start having questions.
They're suspicious.
Our producers are catching up on breaking crime news.
There's some question whether the girlfriend, you know, will she flip?
It was just a lot of hazmat people in a nice neighborhood.
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly.
I'm Lester Holt.
It's March 12th, and here's what's on our docket.
Three years after the ex-wife of a Microsoft employee is arrested for allegedly plotting his murder, the prosecution's star witness surprises everybody.
He doesn't want to testify, dealing a potential blow to the prosecution in this case.
In Dateline Roundup we've got a verdict in the murder trial of Michigan farmer Dale Warner and the latest on a new filing in the case of alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann.
According to this latest filing, investigators discovered that Heuermann contacted sex workers over some 500 times Plus.
Josh Mankiewicz will be here to tell us about his latest podcast series Trace of Suspicion.
The question that I want people to think about at the end is, what constitutes justice?
Before all that, we're headed to a Utah courtroom where emotions are running high at the trial of Corey Richens, the author of a children's book on grief, who has been accused of plotting to murder her husband.
It's week three in the trial of a Utah widow who prosecutors say poisoned her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl so she could cash in on his life insurance and pay off a mountain of debt.
Last week on the show we talked about how prosecutors allege Corey Richens got her hands on the fentanyl that killed Eric Richens.
Since then the jury has heard from witness after witness about why Corey wanted him dead, ranging from a forensic accountant who mapped out how much debt she was in to a friend who said Corey told her she could only see one solution to her problems.
She said that in many ways it would be better if he were dead.
But the witness who got everyone's attention was a man the jury has been hearing about since day one of the trial.
The man prosecutors say Corey wanted to start life over with.
Her lover, Robert Josh Grossman.
And for two hours Josh Grossman wept, groaned and sighed as prosecutors dissected the affair for the jury.
My next guest, Dateline producer Karen Israel, watched it all and is here to talk us through it.
Karen, welcome back.
Thanks for having me.
Karen, this was a big moment.
This jury was ready to hear from him.
It sure was.
And there was some drama when he walked in.
He didn't take the stand right away.
The clerk started to administer the oath, but Josh seemed to hesitate.
So then, the judge got involved, dismissed the jurors and asked Josh on the stand whether he'd tell the truth.
Do you promise, under the pains and penalties of perjury, to tell the truth when you're asked questions?
Absolutely.
There was a bit of a rocky beginning to his testimony and maybe hinted at just how nervous he was.
Yeah, I've never seen a case where the issue is over the simple swearing in of a witness.
So the prosecutors asked him to explain how he and Corey met.
What did he say?
Josh told the jury that he and Corey met in South Carolina when he responded to a Help Wanted ad for a house that she was flipping.
And in 2020, just before he moved to Utah to keep supporting her home flipping business, he said their relationship turned romantic.
During that time that you were romantically involved with Ms.
Richens, did you love her?
Yes.
During that time, did you feel that she loved you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I have a tendency of going head over heels, though, probably more than most.
So, you know, I think she did.
Did you exchange text messages with Corey Richens?
Yes.
From the time you moved to Utah, about how often?
Daily, unless she was mad at me or vice versa.
It was at that point prosecutors began asking Josh to identify text messages he and Corey exchanged.
Do you recognize this as a text exchange that you had with Ms.
Richens?
I got you, and I do for this one.
And then the texts were shown to the jury.
Karen, instead of having Josh read the text aloud, they were projected onto a big screen for jurors to read for themselves.
We're talking about dozens of texts here, and Josh got pretty emotional.
He really did.
It was a bit of a strange situation where the courtroom was completely quiet and everyone's reading these intimate texts to themselves, and then you'd hear him muttering under his breath.
What was the content of the texts?
We really saw their relationship unfolding.
Corey was opening up to him, which I found really fascinating.
We've heard from the prosecution about her being motivated by money.
She opened up to Josh about how she grew up scrubbing other people's toilets in Park City and felt looked down upon.
And she wrote that one day I'll own properties in Park City like all these rich, snooty people.
We also see the relationship get more and more serious.
For example, in one message on February 15th, 2022, Corey texted, like, actually in love with me?
If I was divorced right now and I asked you to marry me tomorrow, you would?
Josh wrote back, yes, in love with Y-O-U.
Of course I would.
And Josh was finding it hard to keep his composure.
Yes, he started to cry.
The judge asked if he needed a break.
Mr. Grossman, do you need a minute or two?
I don't know what I need.
Let's just start with that.
Why don't we take a five, pause for a moment, if you don't mind.
Let's take a five minute break, please.
Please rise for the jury.
Timing of the messages is important to prove the prosecutor's alleged motive.
Some of the ones the jury saw were set in the weeks and days before Eric's death.
How would you characterize Corey and Josh's relationship at that moment in time?
They were writing back and forth, imagining their future together. but it was almost like a fantasy.
In one text, Corey told Josh about a crazy dream she has that Josh will quit his job, Corey will divorce Eric and she'll come into millions of dollars before they'll move in together, raising kids, even having a little farm.
In response, Josh wrote, I'm definitely digging some slash all of that.
She admits in another text that that the dream is not possible, but it's fun to dream.
But these messages, they're not super concrete plans, rather just details of this fantasy life they could have together.
After Eric died, when was the next time that Josh saw Corey?
He said it was about two weeks after he died.
The two of them drove up to the Uinta Mountains together and talked about Eric's death.
You know, we sat there and talked for hours, quite a while, you know, and I had never seen her that way, obviously.
It was a heavy conversation.
And I'm not used to that with her.
In this conversation Josh said Corey had a question for him about his time serving in the military in Iraq.
What sort did she ask?
She asked if I had ever killed anybody.
Did she ask a follow up question?
Yes.
Sir, what was that follow up question?
She asked me how it made me feel or something along those lines.
And then I answered her.
I took it as not out of the normal, though, really.
It sounds like the question didn't make him suspicious or think that Corey had anything to do with Eric's death.
From his testimony, no, that conversation didn't raise any big alarm bells.
In fact, he told the jury their relationship continued.
Did you and Corey Richens stay romantically involved after Eric Richens' death?
Yes.
For how long?
You'd have to look at my phones to tell me that.
I'm going to guess six months, maybe eight, ten.
Best guess.
And then what happened?
Just had a falling out, disagreements.
Things changed after Eric passed.
I mean, I don't know what to say.
Things weren't the same.
So I don't know if that led to us parting ways or what.
But there was a lot on both of us.
You know what I mean?
I understand.
How did the defense handle Josh on cross?
The defense really leaned into him having no idea Corey was involved in Eric's death.
The defense also asked about when he found out that Corey was arrested for Eric's murder and how he felt learning this.
Never never, for a moment did I have a clue, a hint, not a fleeting thought that that something intentionally might have happened to him.
Josh testified for two hours before being released from the stand.
The state is winding down their case and the defense will have their turn next.
What are you expecting to see?
We'll likely hear from some of Corey's friends and family.
All right, we'll cover that on the show next week.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you for having me.
Coming up a courtroom twist in the case of a Florida father of four who was ambushed on his drive home.
For our next story, we're heading to a stretch of road in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.
In February 2022, Jared Brightigan was driving with his two-year-old daughter in the backseat when he spotted a tire blocking the road.
He got out to take a closer look.
Seconds later, gunshots rang out.
There's a guy in the middle of the road.
Like, the car is open, and he's laying on the ground.
And he has a little kid in the car.
Jared's daughter survived, but the 33-year-old Microsoft employee and father of four was dead.
After a year-long investigation, detectives zeroed in on the man they say was the gunman, someone who had never met Jared Bright again but ended up telling investigators he'd been hired to kill him by a man who knew Jared very well the husband of Jared's ex-wife.
Mario Fernandez-Saldana and Jared's ex, Shanna Gardner, were both charged with first-degree murder and sent to go on trial in a few months' time, with the alleged gunman on the prosecution's witness list.
But then, in a recent head-snapping development, he changed his mind, potentially upending the prosecution's case.
Dateline producer Mike Nardi was in a Florida courtroom last week to get up to speed.
He's here now to tell us what he learned.
Hi, Mike.
Hi, Lester.
Thanks for having me.
All right.
Well, first off, give us a sketch, if you will, of the family dynamics here.
What was the state of Jared and Shanna's relationship, at least to someone looking from the outside in at the time of the murder?
At the time of the murder, Jared and Shanna had gone through a bitter divorce but were co-parenting their nine-year-old twins.
Jared, like Shanna, had remarried and he had two more children with his new wife, Kirsten.
So the night he was killed he had just dropped the twins off at Shanna's house after taking them to dinner, and he was taking his other daughter home when he was ambushed.
The accused gunman was arrested back in January 2023.
He was a man by the name of Henry Tennant and was a complete stranger to Jared.
How did investigators even connect him to the murder?
You know, it's actually an example of good old-fashioned police work.
So as in any case like this, the detectives had to look at the ex-wife and her new husband.
So detectives went to a rental property the couple owned to interview the tenants.
And one of those tenants was Henry Tennant.
What's incredible is, while they're interviewing Tennant, they notice a tire outside that appears similar to the tire found at the crime scene.
Tennon lets them take the tire and they learn it was from the same facility as the tire from the scene.
And more importantly they learn, Tennon drove a blue Ford truck that matched the truck scene on security footage near the crime scene around the time of the murder.
But the real clincher, according to prosecutors, was a money trail tying Henry Tennon to Shannon Gardner's new husband, Mario Fernandez.
Mario Fernandez was arrested a few months after 10 and it took seven months for the police to arrest Shanna.
What do prosecutors say was the motive here?
Prosecutors say Shanna had shown deep hostility towards Jared even years before the murder.
As can be seen in text messages she exchanged with one of her friends, Kim Jensen, all the way back in 2015.
The friends appear to be speaking in code, looking for a magician to make someone disappear.
And they use stupid as a nickname for Jared.
And they even talked about funeral potatoes.
And Shanna directly said, I want him gone.
Hold on a second.
Funeral potato?
What's that?
That seems to be an inside joke, you know, alluding to this idea that when someone dies, it would be common to bring food like a casserole to the grieving family.
So, Mike, I'm curious, if they're already divorced, why would she want her husband dead?
Well, I think the motive is being argued, or will be argued, in sort of two parts, which is first, despite a divorce settlement and custody agreement, Shanna and Jared still seem to bicker constantly over the care of the twins.
So there was a lot of acrimony there.
And Shanna's parents are very, very wealthy, and they had established a trust for her.
The view from Shanna's family, it appears, was that Jared was after that money.
So there was language in the trust that Shanna could not control it until she had no further entanglements with Jared.
So money and rage, sort of pretty common motives for murder.
Yeah, so that sounds like, as you say, a strong motive for murder, but there's no evidence of any kind of communication tying Shanna directly to Tennant.
She's denied having anything to do with the murder.
Do we know if she ever met Tennant?
Police asked Shanna's friend, Kim Jensen, that question in an interview shortly after Tennant's arrest.
Prosecutors just released video of that interview, so we can take a listen to what she had to say.
Do you know if she ever met him?
I know.
And the only reason I ask that is because I guess he was living in Mario's property for a while.
I do not believe so, because I know that his I don't know who, but I know that at least one of his tenants are smokers and she's allergic to smoke.
I guess so.
In her interview, Jensen seemed skeptical that Mario would have hired Tannen as well.
She told police she didn't think Tannen would have been his pick for a partner in crime.
Mario was ex-military and Jensen said if he'd really wanted to kill someone, he'd have found someone better.
In my logical mind, I think if Mario did this, you'd have called one of your military sniper buddies and it'd have been quick, easy and nobody would have known the difference.
Right.
Well, Kim Jensen was talking to police before Tenon made his confession, but she certainly seemed to have her doubts about Tenon as the gunman.
Flash forward to this year, Mike.
Tenon suddenly had his own doubts about what he'd confessed to.
What's going on?
Yep.
So, bear in mind, Tennant pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree murder really early on back in 2023.
And he agreed to testify against Gardner and Fernandez.
But more recently, Tennant got a new attorney.
And about a month ago that attorney filed a motion saying Tennant wanted to withdraw his guilty plea.
And the judge granted it.
So now Tennant has officially pled not guilty to murder and will no longer cooperate with prosecutors.
When Tenon withdrew his plea, that gave Mario Fernandez's defense an opening.
You attended a hearing in Florida about that.
Explain what was going on there.
Yeah.
So Fernandez has been in jail since his arrest.
He was denied bail early on.
But in light of Tennant's change of plea, his attorneys again asked the judge that he be released on bond.
The judge agreed to hear arguments on this.
So I was in court last week when Mario's defense made its case.
The gist of the argument is without Tennant's testimony, the prosecution has nowhere near enough evidence to keep Fernandez in jail while he awaits trial.
An example the defense brought up is that in his signed confession Tennant said Mario drove the truck at the scene of the murder.
But without Tennant's testimony, nothing else ties Mario to the truck and the scene of the crime.
Mr. Fernandez does not own a Ford F-150.
There is no connection between Mr. Fernandez and a Ford blue F-150.
No DNA of Mr. Fernandez was found inside the blue Ford 150.
They also argued that they unearthed evidence proving the payments Fernandez made to Henry Tennant were legitimate, including a check to help him start his own business.
There is no follow the money.
We followed it.
We found it.
It dead end.
And that is the end of the story.
So what's all this mean for Shanna Gardner?
Well, her defense team was at the hearing listening intently.
And I'm certain if he's granted bond, Gardner's attorneys will seek hers as well.
Well, a lot of moving parts there, Mike.
Thanks for updating us.
Thanks, Lester.
Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup.
Updates on the case of the alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer and a verdict in the sex trafficking trial of two real estate brothers.
Plus, I'm joined by Josh Mankiewicz to discuss his new podcast series, Trace of Suspicion.
Welcome back.
Joining me for this week's roundup is Dateline producer Mario Garcia.
Mario, good to see you.
Thanks for having me, Lester.
For our first story, we're heading to Suffolk County, New York, in a story you know well.
Mario, you've been covering it for several years now.
That's the case of alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer, Rex Heerman, who is awaiting trial on charges that he murdered seven women and dumped their remains along Gilgo Beach and other parts of Long Island between 1993 and 2011.
He is pleaded not guilty.
What's new in the case?
Well, Lester, it's been going on and on and on and on.
But there was a new court filing last week by prosecutors which gave us some more details and some of the evidence the alleged evidence that they want to try to use in court against Herman.
According to this latest filing, investigators discovered that Herman, using two different burner phones, contacted sex workers over some 500 times between January 2021 and February 2023.
And the defense wants the judge to exclude this evidence.
Why?
Well, the defense says the phone records are irrelevant and potentially prejudicial if a jury hears about them.
They say, just because Herman is contacting sex workers doesn't prove he's done anything wrong.
But knowing he did that could turn jurors against him.
The prosecution completely disagrees and in this filing they say he had a pattern of behavior of interacting with these sex workers, and the burner phones are evidence of a consciousness of guilt that he was hiding his tracks because he knew what he was doing was something wrong.
And when do we think the judge will decide on this motion?
Well, we'll see, Lester.
There's a hearing next week.
The judge is expected to rule on this and some other pretrial issues.
But several months ago, the judge said that this trial will start after Labor Day.
But, you know, Christmas is after Labor Day.
So maybe we'll find a trial date out.
Maybe we won't on March 17th.
But it sounds like we're getting closer.
Well, next we have a big update in the trial of Dale Warner, the Michigan farmer accused of killing his wife Dee in 2021 and hiding her body in a fertilizer tank.
He pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and tampering with evidence.
Mario, we've been covering this trial for weeks now.
What's the latest?
Well, we finally have a verdict, Lester.
But it was not without some fireworks in the days leading up to that verdict.
In the closing arguments last week, prosecutors painted a portrait for the jury of the couple's broken marriage and what Dale had to lose if Dee divorced him.
Then Lester prosecutors methodically laid out a timeline of Dale's movements at the time of the murder and afterwards.
They said that the timestamps on surveillance cameras and from car apps proved that he used the farm equipment to move Dee's body to the farm spray barn and then spent two hours in that barn to cut open the fertilizer tank and then put her body in.
How did the defense respond?
The defense emphasized that there was really no physical evidence connecting Dale to Dee's murder.
Their key points.
They said the prosecution couldn't prove when and where Dee died, based on the testimony of the medical examiner, Dr Patrick Cho.
Dr. Cho doesn't know the time of Ms.
Warner's death.
Dr. Cho does not know the place of Ms.
Warner's death.
Dr. Cho does not know if Ms.
Warner was killed inside or outside.
The jury got the case last Friday, but it sounds like there was some drama during the deliberations.
Indeed.
One of the jurors didn't show up to court on the second day of deliberations because of a medical issue.
Then the judge tried to call in three alternate jurors, but things got wackier from there, Lester.
It turned out they had all discussed the case with other people already and two of them had seen media reports about the case.
Thankfully, on Tuesday, the original juror returned and deliberations got underway again.
So after eight hours of deliberation spanning two days, they had a verdict.
What was it?
The jury found Dale Warner guilty of second-degree murder and tampering with evidence.
According to our producer in the courtroom, Dale was motionless when the verdict came in until he heard second degree and then his head dipped.
Dee's family members hugged and cried afterwards.
Dale will be sentenced in May, so we'll see what happens there.
Finally Mario, we're heading to federal court in Manhattan, where another big case came to an end this week.
The sex trafficking trial of celebrity real estate brokers Oren and Tal Alexander and their other brother, Alon Alexander.
Mario, tell us about these three brothers.
Well Oren and Tal Alexander sold ultra-luxury properties to wealthy clients in New York and Miami, including Kim Kardashian and her ex-husband Kanye West.
The brothers, along with Oren's twin brother Elan, were charged by federal prosecutors with heinous crimes including rape, sex trafficking, sex abuse and sexual exploitation.
The brothers pleaded not guilty.
The trial has been going on for the past five weeks, and there were no cameras allowed in the court.
What did the prosecution present to the jury?
The prosecutors talked about the brothers having a so-called playbook of sorts, where they used their social status and wealth to lure in their victims and then incapacitated them with drugs or by force.
Eleven women took the stand and testified against the brothers.
And how did the defense respond to these allegations?
The brothers' attorneys conceded that the brothers had built a lifestyle around pursuing women, but all of the sex was consensual.
The jury didn't buy that argument, Mario.
They returned a verdict on Monday and found the brothers guilty on all counts.
Our friends over at NBC News Now had this statement from the prosecutor.
This verdict cannot undo the effects of heinous abuse the Alexanders many victims endured, but it does send a message.
New Yorkers want to bring an end to sex trafficking in all our communities.
Mario.
The brothers face life in prison when they are sentenced in August and have indicated they do plan to appeal.
We appreciate the update, Mario.
Good to talk to you.
Thanks for having me, Lester.
For our final story this week, we're joined by a very special guest.
Josh Mankiewicz is here to talk about his brand new podcast series, Trace of Suspicion.
It's a compelling tale about the mysterious death of a young Marine, his widow's unusual behavior and a fight for justice that spans more than 10 years.
And you'll never guess where it ends up.
At least I didn't.
Hi, Josh.
How you doing?
I'm good.
So, Josh, you've been covering this story for more than a decade.
What keeps you coming back to it?
This is a terrific story.
You know, every time you think you understand in this story what has happened, you're going to be wrong.
But this is the story of a guy who died sort of inexplicably.
Young guy, marine, in great shape, in good health, suddenly drops dead.
And his wife ends up getting charged with his murder.
And what happens then is just this astonishing chain of events.
But the question that I want people to think about at the end is...
What constitutes justice?
There are people who think that justice was served by this story, and there are people who think that justice was not served.
And you're going to have to make up your own mind when you listen to this.
So tell us about the couple at the center of this 23-year-old Marine Sergeant Todd Summer, his wife Cindy.
What do we know about them when this story begins?
Well, you know, he's a Marine.
She'd been married before.
She had three kids.
They had this whirlwind romance, and it was very hot and heavy very quickly.
And then Todd was willing to not just marry her, but like take on her three kids.
And then they had another kid together, a son, after they were married.
And then he gets deployed, as Marines do, and he's overseas and he's away from her.
And so suddenly she's raising four kids on an armed services salary, which is a very difficult thing to do.
And their problems just sort of compound from there.
You begin the story by painting a pretty vivid picture of the night Todd died.
Cindy describes hearing him wake up and struggling to breathe.
Let's take a listen to that.
It's very dramatic.
He got up and he walked towards the bathroom and turned around and just looked at me and like just couldn't catch his breath.
I went over to him.
I'm like, what's the matter?
He just looked at me and he said, I'm all right.
I'm OK.
I'm fine.
And then he just fell down and I just kind of freaked out.
What was it about Cindy's behavior that made them suspicious that this might have been a murder case?
First of all, this was a very healthy young Marine in very good physical condition who essentially just dropped dead after having been sick for like a week.
And as they're taking him away, Cindy says to an MP who had come because of her 911 call.
She says wow, you know, Todd and I talked about the military's life insurance policy, but I never thought we would end up actually using it.
And then, at the hospital, after her husband's pronounced dead, a senior Marine officer which is protocol comes over and says what can we do for you right now, in this instant of this terrible bereavement?
And she says to him—
Are we going to have to give back Todd's reenlistment money?
So all of those things, when looked at through the lens of suspicion, that definitely sent an investigation in one direction, whereas otherwise it might have gone in another.
Some of it was really centered around her spending patterns around all this time.
First of all, she lived very large.
She was picking up a lot of checks, and she was going out with her friends a lot.
And she got breast implants.
Yes.
And that is one of the things, along with some of her personal conduct, that pointed investigators towards looking at her for possibly having murdered her husband.
I think that if she had gotten a nose job, things might have turned out differently.
And then I guess the biggest breakthrough is this toxicology report that raised flags about Todd's cause of death.
That toxicology report comes back positive for him having a ton of arsenic in his system.
And that's when the murder investigation really starts rolling.
Cindy's obviously the enigma at the heart of this case.
You interviewed her recently.
It's the first interview, by the way, she's given about the case in years.
What was interviewing her like?
The last time I spoke with her was many years ago, and I didn't want to do this story without speaking to her again.
And I went and visited her and did the interview in person, which is uh which produced a very interesting, wide-ranging account of everything that had happened in her life.
And she's had a fascinating journey.
She really doesn't hold back.
Here's what she told you in response to people's criticism about how she acted after Todd's death.
Let's listen to that.
I'm not ashamed.
Why does it matter?
I didn't grieve how people thought I should.
I didn't do the things that they thought I should.
I did things that they didn't agree with.
My moral compass may have been off.
So two episodes are already available for listeners.
What other surprises can listeners expect as this series unfolds?
I ask people to sort of withhold judgment, because there's going to be a lot of like leaping to conclusions in this.
What you think is going on is not what you think is going on.
It's a ride all the way to the end, all the way to present day.
Josh, this is amazing.
Thank you for being here.
This series is called Trace of Suspicion, and the first two episodes are available now for free.
Wherever you get your podcasts.
If you subscribe to Dateline Premium...
You can listen to the next two episodes now, ad-free, and get early access to subsequent episodes.
Thanks, Josh.
Thank you.
That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly.
Coming up this Friday on Dateline.
Andrea's got a story of a podiatrist, a luxury car salesman and not one but two murder-for-hire plots.
I don't think I've ever seen a twist like this in a dateline before.
And you've seen a lot of dateline.
Watch Take Two this Friday at 9, 8 central on NBC.
Thanks for listening, everyone.
Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Carson Cummins, Caroline Casey, and Kiani Reed.
Our associate producers are Ellery Gladstone-Groff and Aria Young.
Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Kurloff.
Production and fact-checking help by Audrey Abrahams.
Veronica Mazeka is our digital producer.
Rick Kwan is our sound designer.
Original music by Jesse McGinty.
Paul Ryan is executive producer.
And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.
Thanks, everybody.
See ya.
