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Hi everybody it's Josh Bankowitz and we're talking Dateline today with Keith Morrison.
Hi Keith. Hello Josh.
I'll take mm -hmm as great to see you Josh.
We're going to be talking about Keith's episode which is called Secrets of the Sliding Door.
Now if you haven't seen this yet you can stream it on Peacock and then you can head back here for the chat.
So here's a quick recap after a high school teacher named Simonette Mapes -Krupe was found stabbed to death inside her Staten Island, New York home, one of the five boroughs.
Her place had been ransacked.
Detectives started with a couple of theories.
Was this a home invasion?
Was it a gang shooting?
But it was only when they found the mysterious phone number of a woman who identified herself only as Ms. Pumpkin on Simonette's phone.
The detectives uncovered a killer that was much closer to home and, of course, because this is Dateline, it was her husband, Jonathan Krupe.
Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Now... What? Well, you know...
You put the spoiler alert right out there, just for fun.
Have you ever listened to Talking Dateline before?
They already have seen the episode.
No, only if they follow your inane directions, Josh.
I never do. I mean, seriously.
Yeah. Come on. Are we having technical difficulties here?
No, you never knew.
Okay. Well, spoiler alert, I knew, and all the people watching and listening knew.
Sure. Later, we're going to be joined by another Keith.
That's Keith Greenberg, who's one of the producers on this episode.
And we'll also have a couple of extra clips from interviews with Simonette's friends and family that did not make it into the show.
Simonette, known as Sissy, right?
Yep. Sissy, the lovely Sissy.
is she was a just a delightful person and somebody who cared a great deal about other people so you know she is she is deeply missed even now and i think that really emerged from your episode we're also going to be listening to and answering some of the questions that you sent into us on social media and other ways like that phone line that rings on keith's desk yeah so stick around for that yeah uh all right keith let's talk dateline so um the question that i had again and again and again while i was watching this episode is about ms pumpkin ah yes of course yeah the intriguing character in the story
i'm pretty sure ms pumpkin is not the name she was born with i think you're probably uh accurately correct about that you know this is a pretty pretty familiar trope in both journalism and in, you know, movie making and TV, which is, you know, the quote hooker with the heart of gold, unquote, the person who is engaged in the commercial sex trade, but is a solid citizen like everybody else and wants to help out.
And sort of once she realized, Ms. Pumpkin, that the guy that she knew by a different name was, was in fact the suspect in this case.
She, it sounds like she pretty much did everything she could to help out law enforcement.
Well, yes. You know, I'm not sure she was falling head over heels to do so.
But at the same time, well, let me say this about Ms. Pumpkin.
As far as I can tell, she was a kind of a modern person in the sense that she was not in any way, she did not feel diminished by what she did.
It was a business. She ran it as a business, but she also was doing other things with her life.
I was struck by what the prosecutor said about Ms. Pumpkin afterwards, which was, you know, sort of, you know, what a nice person she was.
Yeah. She said, this is going to sound strange coming from me, but when you step up, when you are needed, when it is time to do the right thing and then you do the right thing, it doesn't make any difference how you're making your money.
me no it doesn't it doesn't at all and um and that particular prosecutor was an astute judge of character uh right away there were theories of what happened um uh to sissy and you know sort of home invasion slash burglary is sort of one of the first things that uh the the people's minds go to except you know the biggest danger when you surprise a burglar in your home is that you're between them and the door.
I mean, burglars do not come into your home to kill you.
Burglars come into your home to steal your stuff, and what they really want is for you to not be there at any part.
So the fact that she was, in fact, killed by whoever this was and that she was stabbed so many times, that does not feel like a burglary.
And in addition to that, the house was so completely ransacked from top to bottom, and yet nothing significant appeared to have been taken.
so somebody wanted to make it look like a total mess, somebody wanted to make it look like a robbery without actually robbing.
Upstairs in one of the bedrooms was a purportedly valuable collection of sneakers, which Kruppi collected over the years and traded and paid, you know, it was a kind of a secondary income for him.
And those could have brought somebody some money, and those were not stolen.
And they were not taken, yeah.
This kind of begs another question because I'm talking to someone right now who is famous for wearing sneakers.
So I think our listeners would like to know how many pairs of sneakers do you have, Keith?
You know what I don't know?
But I'll tell you what I have is a closet with a bunch of, I don't know, probably a dozen pairs of those kind of sneakers, those particular sneakers.
with uh are you afraid to say the brand because you don't have a marketing agreement with the conference are these these guys right here come on here we go here we go i'm talking gail we got a shot of keith's feet trying to make it trying to make it over there come on there we go all right never mind i never made it there uh gentle listener keith has just knocked over the microphone by attempting to show us his sneakers all right uh back to um Back to our story.
So, nobody stole Jonathan's sneaker collection, which was clearly pretty marketable.
Sure. It was the kind of thing a thief would steal.
Yes. So, then they look at the alibi because, you know, the husband's always the first one you look at.
Well, he lives there.
Yeah. You know, he had a great alibi.
In fact, he had an alibi that was proven all day long by digital evidence, that he'd gone to the school, he'd talked to an administrator there, he had picked up some supplies.
He had gone here, he'd gone there, he'd gone the other place.
And he'd gone to get the car, I don't know.
And then he said he went to the Home Depot in the afternoon before he came home, and that's when he discovered her body.
The one problem with the alibi was there was no video at the Home Depot.
So, you know, if Jonathan had not mentioned the trip to Home Depot on which he could not be found, would that have made his alibi?
Well, he had to be somewhere.
Yeah. I was going to say that might have made his alibi a little bit stronger.
But on the other hand, then it would have left a gap.
Exactly. Yeah. But the gap would have been at a time when they knew she was already dead.
that's true you know it's a good call it's hard to know um it's hard to know whether it would have been better or not but that was the choice he made when we get back we've got two interview clips to play that did not make it into the broadcast from sissy's friends and family i'm josh mankiewicz and i hope you'll join us for season four of dateline missing in america in each episode of dateline's award -winning series we will focus on one missing person's 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.
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Hey, everybody. I'm Al Roker from The Today Show.
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So now we're joined by Keith Greenberg, one of the producers of this episode, and also my favorite Keith, I'm going to say.
That's not a hard call, Josh.
You know, we haven't talked quite enough about Sissy.
I mean, she absolutely could have gotten a job teaching on Staten Island right near her family.
Oh, sure. But instead, she chose to go to a much tougher neighborhood in Brooklyn, and that really kind of tells you a lot about her.
Sure. And I'm sure you spoke to some of her students too, didn't you, Keith?
I did, yes. You know, I think that she truly believed...
She had at one point contemplated becoming a nun, and I do think she was dedicated to a life of service.
She was very good to animals and very kind to animals.
She would pick up strays, and she felt her life was to serve these children.
And in some ways, she's still doing it because they all have taken something of her with them.
She would take her underprivileged kids out out for dinner together to celebrate various things, places that they would never otherwise have been able to go.
But she wanted them to see what life could be if they continued with their studies.
She was a very popular teacher.
So we spoke with some of her friends and family, obviously, for this episode, but not everything made it into the episode.
We have an extra clip here of Sissy's cousin, Victoria, and her childhood friend, Eric.
Let's listen to those.
Sissy was about 10 years older than I am, and I looked to her like a big sister.
Growing up, I had a difficult home life, and she helped my brother and I have a sense of family and guidance.
Sissy laid down the blueprint for how I wanted to be as a woman.
I literally lived next to Simonette Mapes.
My room was right next to her room, so she'd knock.
on my uh on my wall um and then we kind of talk a little bit through the wall i mean little walls are kind of paper thin back then um and simonette i tell you she she had a heart of gold to be honest with you she was extremely nice extremely um kind um and just a very loving heart yeah that gives you an idea it really does i mean it really gives you a sense of who she was and what a loss this was so uh sissy's mom who really i thought was kind of the emotional heart of this story um and you really got a great sense in this episode of sort of the anguish that she went through and is still going
through because this doesn't go away uh uh you know they had that conversation the night before she was murdered and that's the kind of thing if you're a parent it, you just end up replaying again and again and again and again, looking for, you know, what did I not hear?
What should I have asked?
I mean, that has to be miserable for her to go through.
I mean, I think maybe they had a sense, her family and Sissy also had a sense that, you know, Jonathan was maybe not the right guy for her, but that he was a threat to her life.
I don't think they sensed that at all.
No one ever sensed that.
The students never sensed that.
He was loved at his school.
He was someone, one of his former students called him, quote, a big little kid.
He would talk to the class in cartoon voices and came to school once dressed as the character Wolverine.
And I remember the brother telling me a story when we were just chatting that one time he brought Jonathan Krupe to a bachelor party and Jonathan Krupie didn't seem to know how to behave properly in a strip club he seemed embarrassed and so uh her family thought he was the last person who could be involved in something like this uh here's a here's something that uh that wasn't in the episode which is that uh we know that Jonathan Krupie was sentenced to 25 years in prison but after he was incarcerated incarcerated um apparently he created an online dating profile yeah uh and on his profile this sounds
like a macabre joke but it's not um he wrote i'm not married and i don't have any kids no baby mama drama here i'm guessing that his uh the the simonette's family is uh not thrilled about the about that yeah yeah they were aghast you know and he's a bright guy So he's also, from what I understand, teaching in prison.
And so, you know, he's doing time, but it might be considered easy time by the standards of her family.
I'm sure to her family, it's easy time.
It probably is. Up next, we are finally going to answer some of the questions you've been leaving for us on Keith's voicemail.
let's uh let's go to viewer mail viewer what a good email all right fine yes that's always keith morrison's favorite part of oh yes absolutely yeah we play some of the 911 call um and you know uh you know you listen to enough dayline you're you're you're gonna hear a lot of 911 calls yeah um some of them frantic some of them anguished some of them phony um i will say that again i didn't know anything about this story when i when i watched the episode a couple of days ago and my first thought was okay well this is the guy because yeah this sounds utterly phony i just came home my wife is dead oh
my god i think I think my house was robbed.
General Lafonte on Facebook wrote, you can hear the fake in his voice.
Danielle Dennis on Facebook said from the 911 call he was instantly guilty.
That's exactly what I thought.
I was like, wow. You're incriminating yourself just by your tone of voice.
Just by talking, yeah.
It was true and it really came true on that 911 call and the prosecution was able to use that.
But the thing about 911 calls, though, is that they can be very tricky.
You know, you can make a judgment about them right away, and quite frequently in some investigations, judgments are made, and it often will lead the police in the wrong direction, sometimes tragically.
So, you know, they take it with a grain of salt.
I mean, look, I did a story several years ago in New York State.
in which a woman, um, called nine one one.
And she said, I've just found my mom and, uh, she's been stabbed.
And, uh, I think she was walking downstairs and she was holding a knife and the cat must have tripped her.
And then, so she fell down the stairs and she stabbed herself and the cops are like writing all this.
They're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, just a second.
Right. And she says, and by the way, I pulled out the knife.
Uh, so you're going to find my fingerprints and dna on the knife and my my mom is worth quite a bit of money but this is not how i wanted to get the inheritance that's great the cops are just like the cops are just like okay please continue because we're eating this up and it's not her she was not guilty in any way years ago years ago did a story about this poor sad sack of a fellow whose daughter was murdered in the middle of the night in a bedroom just down the hall from his um by somebody a stranger came came into the house.
He didn't know what had happened.
He woke up in the morning, he found her dead, and he assumed that she had strangled on a blanket that was wrapped around her neck.
So he called the police and he was very, but he was just a low, very shy, low key person.
And his 911 call sounded fake.
It sounded like he didn't care.
It was just one of those tragic cases that started with a 911 call that sounded fake, but wasn't.
roxanne de meza from uh also i think on facebook has a theory about the dna on the door she says maybe rather than accidentally putting miss pumpkin's dna on the doorknob jonathan did it on purpose to throw off investigators so that they would look for a female killer possible i'm gonna say that shows a higher degree of planning on jonathan's part than i think he was was capable of at the time i think you have to agree keith greenberg is nodding yes i would have to concur with that uh he was not a criminal mastermind even though he thought he was uh you know he was a he lived in a bit of a fantasy and i
think he read too many comic books we uh we checked the talking dateline voicemail uh and came across um a bunch of uh interesting things uh First of all, Keith Morrison, you have an overdue bill at Sneakers R Us.
That's true. You want to get in there and do that.
I'm always behind on that one.
Here's one for both of us.
Hi, my name is Piper, and I have a question for, I guess, the whole team.
Do you ever finish an interview with someone, specifically the person who perpetrated a crime, and just wonder how they can deadpan lie to you?
Or do you ever just get so angry that people are so clearly lying?
And have you ever mouthed off to any of them to just tell them that you think they're horrible people?
Thanks. Keith, you want to answer?
Well, you know when you're talking to somebody who's accused of committing murder, and probably did, they've got a story that has been very carefully rehearsed over and over again.
They're going to tell you that story, and they're going to tell it with a straight face, and they're going to be on their absolute best behavior, even if they've been convicted of a crime and they've been sitting in jail for a while.
Their whole thing is that's not me.
This is all my ex -wife's family and the cops.
They're all in league together to make me look like a terrible person.
them but there have been a couple of occasions where um somebody has their their excuse was so egregious and so take advantage of people so horribly that i did get somewhat cross with them i have to confess yeah here's my answer to this which is if you're a reporter you got to get used to people lying to you because it's not just murderers that lie to us it's a huge number of of people that i've covered in what's now nearly a 50 -year career and instead of getting angry your obligation as a journalist to the audience and to the or your readers of your newspaper reporter or print is to expose those
lies not yell at them so there have been times when i i you know you can say a lot more with a look on television than than you know with a with a uh with any any particular comment, but sir, yeah, Keith and I, and Andrea and Blaine and Lester and Dennis, we've all said, yeah, come on, come on, come on, try something else.
Yeah. They're pitching a story and you know that there's an old rule when you're interviewing people involved in something like this is that everybody lies.
Everybody lies all the time.
So you just adjust your behavior you accordingly.
That's it for Talking Dateline this week.
Keith, thank you. My absolute pleasure.
Oh, you're talking to the other Keith.
Of course you are. I'm always talking to the other Keith.
Well, I must say other Keith, it's been a delight having you on the program.
Somebody who actually is astute and remembers all the details.
I appreciate it very much. Well, thank you very much. And I enjoyed being here.
And remember, if you have any questions for us about Dateline, you can always reach us 24 -7 on social media at DatelineNBC, or you can leave us a voicemail and we know who answers those voicemails now.
That number is 212 -413 -5252.
Thanks for listening.
See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.
