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Hey, good morning. Welcome back. It's time for another Dateline story meeting.
Anything new from Friday? Our producers are catching up on breaking crime news.
We have detectives. We have prosecutors.
We have a doctor. What's the motive? We don't know.
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning.
It's August 7th, and here's what's on our docket.
In an Arizona courtroom, two men face charges of murdering a woman who was about to testify in a robbery case.
And her parents have tough questions for law enforcement.
She's dead because she did the right thing.
So because she did that, I no longer have my baby here.
In Dateline Roundup, we've got updates for you about Sean Combs and Karen Reed, and excerpts from recently released jailhouse calls made by the man convicted of murdering Kentucky mom Crystal Rogers.
Plus, we'll be talking to an expert on crime scenes.
He'll tell us how investigators can make or break a case within minutes of arriving at the scene.
You have one chance to get it right. But before all that, we're heading to a place we've talked about a lot on the podcast this year, Norfolk Superior Court in Massachusetts.
It's the same courthouse where Karen Reed stood trial this summer.
Now another big murder case is gearing up for trial.
The last time anybody heard from Anna Walsh, a 39-year-old mother of three, was on New Year's Day 2023.
Her husband told investigators she had a work emergency and had to catch a flight early on January 1st.
But there is no evidence she ever made it to the airport.
And when she didn't show up for work, her employer reported her missing.
Two and a half weeks later, her husband, Brian, was charged with her murder.
He's pleaded not guilty, and her body has never been found.
Last week, between court filings, the judge's rulings, and a pretrial hearing, we got a preview of the prosecution's case against Brian Walsh.
We also got some surprises. NBC Boston's Matt Fortin, a digital reporter and host of the podcast The Searches for Anna Walsh, joins us now with the latest.
Hey, Matt, thank you for coming on the podcast.
Thanks for having me, Andrea. I appreciate it.
Let's start by telling us about Anna Walsh.
Who was she and what does the prosecution allege happened to her?
Anna Walsh was an immigrant from Serbia.
She moved to America when she was a young woman, and she started by cleaning hotel rooms.
And by the end of her life, she was a pretty high-powered real estate executive working in Washington, D.C., And she was the mom of three young boys, her husband, Brian.
He was mostly a stay-at-home dad, partly because he was on house arrest, actually, at the time for a separate federal case.
What was Brian charged with? He was accused of selling bogus Andy Warhol paintings.
He was convicted of those charges. And at the time that Anna went missing, he was waiting to be sentenced for So what then happens to Ana?
She just goes out of contact, right? No one can find her?
Yes. Brian has claimed that the last time he saw Ana was New Year's Day 2023, that she took a rideshare, either Uber or Lyft, to Logan Airport in Boston, and she was flying to Washington, D.C. that morning.
This is not adding up, right, for investigators?
Correct. They called Lyft and Uber, and there was no evidence of a rideshare going to that house that morning.
No one at JetBlue could say she was on an airplane that morning.
They asked Brian if they could look through his cell phone and look through some other devices in the house...
So going through those phones, those iPads, there was an iPad that was mainly used by one of their very young sons that investigators said that they found a number of Google searches that were entered on the morning of New Year's Day that all had to do with what to do with a dead body.
Quote, how long before a body starts to smell?
Quote, dismemberment and the best ways to dispose of a body.
Oh. And this is on the child's iPad? On the child's iPad, they say, yes.
Okay, so he ends up getting charged with murder?
Yes, Brian Walsh does get charged with murder.
And as he's going into court, every time it seems like there is more and more potentially damning evidence that prosecutors are rolling out.
They discuss at that murder arraignment a search of 10 trash bags that were thrown away in Swampscott.
That's a town north of Boston where his mom lives.
And they ended up going through these trash bags, and they find gloves, a hacksaw, a piece of a necklace that Ana had been pictured wearing, and a COVID-19 vaccine card that had Ana Walsh's name on it.
And many of these were stained in blood.
Matt, what do prosecutors think was Brian's motive if he did this, if he killed his wife?
So there's been a few theories that prosecutors have floated, and I think it's going to be interesting to watch which one they really go with when this trial happens.
For one, she was having some sort of affair, it seems, with somebody in Washington, D.C.
There's also the issue of prosecutors said, look, he was the beneficiary of a life insurance policy and he had half a million dollars to pay in restitution.
From the artwork. From the artwork case.
Correct. Correct. And we're talking about a lot of money, $2.7 million for her life insurance policy.
Yeah. And then keep in mind that when she goes missing, when she was allegedly killed by Brian, he had not been sentenced in the art fraud scheme yet.
So prosecutors said he could have been thinking, if she's out of the picture and I'm a single parent, the judge may be more lenient to let me remain on house arrest and avoid prison time.
What is the defense saying about these allegations?
How have they so far defended Brian Walsh?
Brian Walsh's team says he didn't know about any sort of affair going on.
Even though Brian Walsh's mother hired a private investigator in December of 2022 to follow Ana to try to confirm infidelity.
They also say he was already paying his restitution, so there would be no reason to try to go after a life insurance policy.
That would not be necessary. And they're saying that this whole theory about trying to avoid jail time, that's just kind of a hypothetical.
And the defense is also making a lot of noise about the original lead investigator on Brian Walsh's case.
Former Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor, who was also the lead investigator on the Karen Reed case, he was fired a few months ago for his behavior during that investigation.
I interviewed him for our Dateline episode.
Matt, how is the defense tying Proctor's work on Karen's case to this one?
So their case is, how do we know that he also did not have misconduct in the Brian Walsh investigation?
Because he has demonstrated that he has biases toward murder suspects.
Could he have had also a bias toward Brian Walsh?
And they've been trying to get access to the contents of Proctor's cell phone from the time... around the investigation.
Yeah, so there are a number of defendants in Norfolk County that are trying to get what have become known as the Proctor files.
They were initially obtained through a federal investigation into the Karen Reed investigation.
That is over. So they were supposed to be destroyed 30 days after Karen Reed's retrial ended.
And there had to be an emergency stop put on that by these other defendants basically saying, hold on, these can't be destroyed yet because we need to try to get these.
But regardless of Michael Proctor and if specifics from his device are obtained, I think it's more likely that you're going to have a jury of just random people in Massachusetts who are familiar with Karen Reed and who are a lot more skeptical of police in Massachusetts, especially from this county.
Yeah. Matt, let's talk about the developments over the last couple of weeks.
The judge ruled on some motions. The Walsh defense team, they were really trying to, for obvious reasons, get these Google searches thrown out under the argument that he did not consent to that wide of a scope of a search through his devices.
The judge did not agree with the defense's argument.
There was also some new filings from the prosecutors as they're working to get out-of-state witnesses called to Massachusetts.
They want to talk to that private investigator that they say Brian's mom hired.
They want to fly him in from Washington, D.C. to testify at this trial.
They also want to hear from Ana's best friend in D.C. who they say will testify to the fact that Ana was very, very upset and... talking about a strained marriage weeks before she was allegedly killed by her husband.
The judge had something pretty important to say on Friday.
Yes, she disclosed on Friday during a very short hearing a potential appearance of a conflict that an attorney working with the prosecutors is a mentor and a friend of hers.
The judge didn't recuse herself, but gave the defense time to think about how they want to handle that information.
And the trial is still scheduled for October, right?
Yes, October 20th. Matt, thank you so much.
Thank you, Andrea. And if you want to hear more about this case, listen to Matt's podcast series with NBC Boston called The Searches for Anna Walsh.
Coming up, after a 22 year old woman was kidnapped from her apartment complex and murdered, her friends wondered if they were next.
I'm Blaine Alexander with a Dateline 24-7 Marathon.
We are in the heat of summer, and as the temperatures rise, these steamy affairs are about to reach their boiling point.
I was thinking about me and only me. She was maybe a little bit too much for him to handle.
I know where he was that night. It really just blew my mind.
The whole neighborhood was shocked. What are we supposed to do now?
Our heated affairs marathon, Saturday through Tuesday on Dateline 24-7.
Dateline is hitting the road for a first-of-its-kind event, and you're invited.
Join the entire Dateline team in Nashville, Tennessee for Dateline Live.
Hear from Lester, Blaine, Andrea, Josh, Keith, and Dennis, plus live demonstrations, a VIP reception, and more.
The true crime original like you've never seen before.
Buy tickets to Dateline Live now at datelinenbc.com.
It would be a crime to miss it. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and I hope you'll join us for Season 4 of Dateline Missing in America.
In each episode of Dateline's award-winning series, we will focus on one missing persons case and hear from the families, the friends, and the investigators all desperate to find them.
You will want to listen closely. Maybe you could help investigators solve a mystery.
Dateline Missing in America. All episodes available now wherever you get your podcasts.
On the night of April 16, 2023, Mercedes Vega walked into the parking garage of her apartment complex in Tempe, Arizona.
The 22-year-old was on her way to work. She performed at a strip club called Les Girls.
But her dream was to become a personal trainer.
She was saving up money for that. Security cameras captured her entering the garage at 9.17 p.m., but Mercedes never made it to the club.
CBS 911, where's your emergency? The next morning, Mercedes' body was recovered from a burning car more than 50 miles from her home.
Within hours, sheriff's deputies knocked on her parents' door with the news.
But after that, for years, they say, they were left with more questions than answers.
Here's her mother. Tell me. That all changed last week when after more than two years of fighting for justice for their daughter, Mercedes' parents, Erica and Tom Pillsbury, sat in a courtroom facing her accused killers.
Here to tell us more is NBC News digital breaking news reporter Tim Stello.
Tim, thanks for coming on the podcast. Of course.
So let's rewind to the early days of the investigation.
What did Mercedes' parents, Erica and Tom, know about this?
So the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office told them that they'd found Mercedes' body in the backseat of a Chevy Malibu.
She had been beaten, shot, and burned. But that was about all they knew.
That is so awful. Tim, a year went by with no arrests.
Dateline spoke to Mercedes' parents on the one-year anniversary of her murder.
What did they have to say then? They were understandably frustrated by the lack of answers.
Mercedes' friends and co-workers at the strip club had started coming to Erica with their own fears that they could be next.
So Mercedes' parents went on social media to share their daughter's story.
I need the people of the Phoenix area to be aware that my child's killers are still at large.
They even took their pleas to the front doors of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.
Erica and Tom let them march. And they told you something astounding.
They thought they knew who had killed their daughter.
That's right. A few years before Mercedes' murder in October 2020, she was parking outside her apartment building after work when a masked man ran toward her, drew a gun, and demanded her belongings.
That's according to a Phoenix Police Department incident report.
Mercedes reported the incident to police and ended up identifying a man named Kujo Young in a police lineup.
He was charged with armed robbery and he pleaded not guilty and was released on bond.
By April 2023, the robbery case against Young was still ongoing and Mercedes was supposed to testify about it at a court hearing scheduled for the exact day that she was found dead.
And there's more. Mercedes' co-workers told you that they were also attacked by someone that looked like Cujo Young?
That's right. Mercedes wasn't the only dancer at La Girls who said they'd been targeted by a masked gunman after a shift.
In the months before and after Mercedes' robbery, two other women shared very similar experiences.
Young was charged with attempted armed robbery in one case.
That case is ongoing. No charges were brought in a third case.
And when Cujo Young was arrested, he denied knowing anything about this, but acknowledged going to the club, the girls, often.
Tim, Mercedes' parents told investigators their suspicions about Young right away, but it took prosecutors more than two years to charge him with her murder.
And we should say he wasn't the only person charged in the case.
Two other men, Jared Gray and Sincere Hayes, were charged, too.
That's right. Authorities have provided few details about the connection between the three men, though a probable cause statement identified a geographic link, Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Young is from there and Hayes and Gray traveled to Phoenix from there around the time of Mercedes' murder.
Authorities have suggested that Young may have bought his co-defendants plane tickets from Tennessee to Arizona.
And fingerprints found in Mercedes' car and in the Chevy Malibu were linked to both men.
Mercedes' parents were in court last Friday to watch Cujo Young and one of his co-defendants being arraigned.
This is number 16 on the calendar, State of Arizona versus Young.
Yeah, he did not speak other than to answer a few brief questions from the judge.
Can I get your name and date of birth, please?
Kujo Young, March 5th, 1996. Kujo Young has pleaded not guilty.
What about the other two men, Tim? Censior Hayes pleaded not guilty.
Jared Gray, he has not yet been arraigned.
Mercedes' parents have used their daughter's story to start a discussion about protecting victims who speak out against their attackers.
Mercedes' parents say that she might still be alive if her robbery case hadn't been continuously delayed and if Mercedes had added protection as she waited to testify.
She's dead because she did the right thing, because she decided that she was going to stand up for herself when so many other people were afraid to do so.
So because she did that, I no longer have my baby here.
And we should say, this is just the parents' theory right now.
Prosecutors haven't outlined any alleged motive in the case yet and haven't made any comment on Erica's allegations that Mercedes didn't receive enough protection.
Tim, this is such a sad story, but Erica did tell us one thing that's brought her comfort since she started speaking out about her daughter's death.
Let's take a listen. Young women walk up to me and say, are you Mercedes' mom?
Because of what we've learned about her, we constantly check in on each other.
We never go anywhere without another person.
And the trial is set for 2026? That's right.
Tim, thank you so much for bringing us up to speed on this.
Absolutely. Thanks for having me. If you want to read more of Tim's reporting on the case, head to NBCNews.com.
Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup.
Sean Combs and Karen Reid are back in the news.
And caught on tape, hear what Crystal Rogers' killer, her former boyfriend, Brooks Houck, has to say about his life behind bars.
Plus, ever wondered what it's like to show up to the scene of a crime and be the person in charge of collecting all that critical evidence?
We've got a conversation with a crime scene expert.
Welcome back. Joining us now for this week's Roundup is Dateline producer Sue Simpson.
Sue, welcome back to the podcast. Hey, Andrea.
All right. So for our first story, we're heading to a place you know very well, Sue, Canton, Massachusetts.
Earlier in the show, we were talking about Karen Reid in connection to the Brian Walsh case, but Karen is still making headlines herself.
What's the latest news, Sue? That's right, Andrea.
As listeners may remember, Karen Reid was acquitted in June of killing John O'Keefe.
He, of course, was her Boston police officer boyfriend, and she was accused of backing into him with her SUV after a night of drinking.
She was found guilty of operating a vehicle under the influence.
So we have a few developments here. The first is that Karen is trying to get her Lexus SUV and her cell phone back.
Those were both taken from her very early on as part of the investigation.
Last week, her defense attorneys filed a motion arguing that they should be released from state police custody.
So that is in relation to the criminal trial.
But let's not forget, there is still a civil suit pending against Karen Reed.
What's going on with that? Right. A year ago, John O'Keefe's family filed a wrongful death suit against Karen and the two bars they accused of over-serving her that night.
Both bars have denied the claims made in the lawsuit, and Karen's attorneys have filed a motion to dismiss it.
No surprise there. This week, we discovered that Karen's team wants documents from the criminal case.
Her attorney sent subpoenas to the Massachusetts State Police and to the Norfolk County DA's office.
And they want all the records about witnesses who testified, as well as records about the lead investigator, former Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor.
Interesting. And there was one more piece of news about the civil...
Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. One more. Alan Jackson of the Criminal Proceedings will be joining Karen Reid's defense team for this suit.
On Tuesday, he said, quote, the band is not just staying together, getting back together, but we're intending on writing a few new chapters.
Wow. And we know some of that includes some production stuff in the works, like a movie.
That's right. Yeah, we'll see. For our next story, we have some jailhouse calls to play for you.
They were made by Brooks Houck, the former boyfriend of Crystal Rogers, the Kentucky mom who disappeared a decade ago.
Last month, Houck was found guilty of her murder.
Sue, what did he say on these calls? So our NBC affiliate Wave in Louisville got calls that Houck made after his conviction.
And he sounds emotional, Andrea, in these calls.
And he talks about being in shock and denial over potentially spending the rest of his life in prison.
Houck spoke with his current girlfriend.
You've got a lot of life left to live. Maybe we're not done yet.
I love you so much, honey. I don't deserve you.
And he also called his brother Nick. You have a journey ahead. that my life has taken has completely turned around today.
Do you understand that? After a jury speaks like they did, you know, that's a permanent decision.
Houck will be sentenced later this month on August 21st.
For our final story, we've got an update in the case of Sean Combs, and it's been a busy week for his defense team.
As listeners may remember last month, Combs was convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution in his federal trial.
He was acquitted on the more serious charges, including sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
Now Combs is waiting for his sentencing.
So what is the latest, Sue? Andrea, the first thing to remember is Combs is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.
He's been there for almost a year, since last September when he was arrested.
Combs' defense team has filed multiple unsuccessful motions to get him released on bail.
Their latest motion offered up a huge bond of $50 million.
But here's what really made news. The defense also filed a letter from an ex-girlfriend of Combs, almost, you know, like a character witness.
And what's wild is that she's a woman who was known as Victim 3 in the federal indictment against Combs.
She didn't end up testifying in his federal trial, though.
What did she say in this letter, Sue? So she said that over the course of her relationship, Combs made visible efforts to become a better person and to address the harm he'd caused, and that she did not view him as a threat, and that his children were dependent on him for emotional and financial support.
OK, that didn't work. The judge denied the motion on Monday.
That's right. He said Combs' defense team did not prove their client isn't a flight risk.
And Sue, there's another update. It's kind of a big one.
A source close to the defense told NBC that they have now reached out to President Trump asking for a pardon.
That's right, Andrea. It'll be interesting to see what happens next for sure.
Combs' sentencing is scheduled for October 3rd and we'll keep you posted.
Sue, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Andrea.
Most investigations we talk about here on the podcast begin with the critical work of crime scene texts.
Whether it's a fingerprint, a bloodstain, or a piece of shattered glass, they're the ones who carefully gather these clues, knowing that each one could be the key to solving a crime.
Joining me to discuss how these texts set the stage for the entire investigation is former L.A.
County Sheriff Crime Lab Director Barry A.J.
Fisher. Welcome to the podcast, Barry. Thank you.
Pleasure to be here. Let's walk through what actually happens once a crime scene is identified.
What is your top priority when there's been a crime?
Well, the top priority is not to screw it up.
Okay, yeah, that's important. Typically what will happen is that a detective will come out to a crime scene, do a cursory survey, and decide that they need some technical assistance from CSIs, which means that they would need help photographing the crime scene, collecting fingerprints, collecting evidence, tagging and bagging, if you will,
Obviously, the yellow tape goes up. You have protective gear, you know, your suits that you have to wear, masks, whatever that may be.
Well, you don't want to bring anything to the crime scene that doesn't belong there or remove anything.
What we try to do is to tell investigators to be particularly careful.
Don't smoke at the scene. Don't bring your coffee cups and leave them behind.
Don't pick up a glass off of the countertop to grab a drink because you could inadvertently be wiping away fingerprints or distorting them.
Or confusing the crime scene by, you know, leaving your DNA.
Exactly. How important are photographs? The crime scene photographs are a way to allow the detective or the CSI to recount, recall what happened. he saw at the crime scene.
In addition, it's a way to show what the relationship was of the various items of evidence.
The latest technology will scan a scene and put it together in a way that you could look at it from the victim's perspective, from the suspect's perspective, kind of spin around the room and look at it from different angles.
So how do you start making sense of what the scene is telling you?
You look for obvious things. If you go into a kitchen area and food is still warm, that would give you an idea of an approximate time frame that you're dealing with.
If there are newspapers or letters around, you can get an idea of the date, perhaps.
And once you leave the crime scene, obviously there's a lot more work to do.
You need to be careful to store the material in an appropriate way, have identifying information on them so they could later be shown through a chain of custody process to come from a particular crime scene.
And of course, the notes that you make at the scene are particularly important because Sometimes you may not be getting to that evidence right away, and you want to be able to show how all the pieces fit together.
Yeah, I mean, this is anecdotal based on my experience, but I feel like a defense attorney will say in court that the detectives, the crime scene techs, they botched the crime scene somehow with evidence collection or whatever it may be.
Well, that's kind of their job to sow doubt on the part of the jury.
And the job of the forensic scientist, the CSI, the detective, is to explain that they did... a competent job.
It's pretty easy to just go into a crime scene, do a slapdash kind of job, and move on.
But taking time, we always tell people, you have one chance to get it right.
Yeah. Barry, this has been a fascinating conversation.
Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.
It's been a pleasure to be with you today.
That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly.
To get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium.
Coming up this Friday on Dateline, a classic episode that still haunts me.
In 1982, a husband said he came home to find his wife murdered with an axe.
Over 40 years later, investigators finally zeroed in on her killer.
This case really was about looking at what doesn't fit.
All victims deserve justice, regardless of how much time has passed.
Watch my episode, The Bad Man, this Friday at 9, 8 central.
And one more thing before we go. Dateline is hitting the road, and we want you to join us.
On Sunday, September 28th, the whole team, Lester, Keith, Blaine, Josh, Dennis, and me, will be in Nashville for Dateline Live.
It's a first-of-a-kind event featuring onstage panels, audience Q&As, and a VIP reception.
Tickets are on sale now at datelinenbc.com slash event.
You can also find a link in the description of this episode.
Thanks for listening. See you later. See you later.
