Hey everybody, we are Talking Dateline.
I'm Andrea Canning, and today it is my turn to interview Keith Morrison.
Hello, Keith.
Hi, how are you?
I know.
Well, you know, working around your schedule, you're so busy and popular.
Such nonsense.
It was hard to make this happen.
Coming from you, such total nonsense.
If this is what it takes for us to catch up, then I'll take it.
I'll take it.
We increase our Canadian content.
Of course we do.
We're 100% Canadian content right now.
We are talking about your episode called The Last Weekend.
If you haven't seen this yet on TV, do that first and then come back here.
If you haven't heard it in the podcast form and want to, it's the episode right below this one in the list of podcasts that you can choose from.
So okay, something I learned just this morning about this episode and others is that this is the fourth Dateline in Greeley Colorado.
I know.
What is in the water there?
Well, I feel like we're beginning to know Greeley, Colorado quite well, don't you?
Have you done a story from Greeley?
No, I haven't.
I feel left out.
Maybe you don't want Dateline visiting that many times.
You know, it's like any other town.
But things happen in every town around America or the world for that matter.
And Greeley seems to be more open to discussing with the public what occurs in these situations.
The police department is open and we have done other stories before, which tends to lead us to the next story in the queue.
The next one that comes along, we know the people, we call them up.
Going to Greeley is always kind of a, it's a nice drive.
And it's a pleasant place to spend a few days.
I like it.
Exactly.
It's so stunning.
And the topography does play a role in this one.
It does, yes, with the body being found on the mountain when Scott is first discovered.
He really went out of his way Kevin, to take Scott's body up on this mountain.
And Well yes, they both did.
But at whose direction, right?
Right.
The story is one which is unfortunately all too common.
Everywhere you go, in human society, I guess, and certainly in America, where you know a guy will not take no for an answer and is a controlling person.
And then things happen as a result, usually bad things.
And in this case, bizarre bad things happen, which is why it became a story for Dateline.
Okay, so I got a little confused at the end.
So Heather was somehow a part of this, but is the theory that she was coerced or that she was afraid?
Yes.
You get to the central point, I think.
And to me the whole lesson of this story is here was a good person, a good woman who was trying to live a good life, who had got herself mixed up with a bad guy.
And then forms a new relationship with this very nice man who plays the trumpet.
And the old boyfriend finds out about it.
And he is there.
And he has got her under his control again.
Commits this horrible act with her, the police think right there in the house with him, probably as bait to lure Scott Sessions to his death.
And then for the next several days afterwards, has to pretend as if nothing happened.
But it sounded so much to me like a woman living in fear under the control of one of these controlling characters.
As you know Andrea, from doing so many of these stories, it is at the heart of so much of what we do.
I was just shooting a story this week in Florida that was very similar, where the woman got caught up in something very similar and said that it was the boyfriend, the on-again, off-again boyfriend.
Yeah.
Who was, you know, controlling her and putting fear into her.
And, you know, how much of that is true?
I don't know.
But this is her story.
So do you think then that it truly was Heather who lured Scott over?
No, she was not in charge of her Facebook account at that point.
So he was in charge, you think, from the beginning?
I think.
He arrived in town.
He arrived in town in response to his understanding of what was going on.
She was seeing another guy and he didn't like it.
So he shows up.
And he devised a plan to get him over there so he could get rid of him.
She would not be trying to get this new boyfriend over while her ex-boyfriend was there.
It just wouldn't make any sense.
The moment that really makes my heart sink whenever I watch it is that piece of video that shows Heather and Kevin walking out of her house and toward his car, when she doesn't know, isn't aware of the fact that she is walking to her death.
Something we should mention because of the nature of this story and the disturbing nature of Heather and her relationship with Kevin.
The domestic violence hotline is 800-799-7233, 800-799-7233.
So if you need help, you can always reach out.
Yeah, I take it you tried to interview Kevin.
Yes, but many of these things, as you know, you make an approach, but if they don't want to do it, they don't want to do it.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
I've had a couple this year where the men have actually admitted to doing the killings, which is very, very rare, because usually it's all deny deny, deny.
But you know, even when you do get in front of them and they admit to doing it, as I discovered this year, they just kept.
I don't know.
I don't know what came over me, you know?
So even then it's hard to get answers.
And as far as Kevin, I mean-
For a small-town guy, I mean, he's really going for the Oscar in that interview room.
He was laying it on thick.
I mean, you have to wonder what was going on in his head.
There are two things happening that were interesting to me.
One is you can see the wheels turning as he's trying to come up with a story and a presentation of himself that's going to work.
Either he's going to try to show them that he's crazy or try to show them that he really cares about what happened.
You know, can I pull the wool over their eyes, or do I have to act like I'm a complete crazy person in order to get away with this?
And he didn't seem to know which one to opt for.
One of my favorite fictional detectives, Inspector Megre, a series of books written in the sort of early and mid-20th century by Georges Simenon.
One of the things he would always say to the perpetrators of these horrendous crimes that he was trying to solve is My job is not to judge, but to understand.
And he even formed relationships with some of these criminals in an effort to not condemn them but to understand what made them tick, because that was the driving force of his career.
And in a way, I can see why that's exactly what we ought to be doing.
Try to figure out why people tick the way they do.
You can't help but feel for the victims involved here, because they were such you know they were good people.
They were interesting people.
And I think that the world is missing both their talents.
And they would have been happy together.
It's just very sad.
Yeah, it seemed like a really sweet romance.
You know, Heather's coming off of this bad breakup with Kevin.
Mm-hmm.
And for Scott, it felt like, you know, he's in his 50s, right?
He's not married.
And I kind of felt like for whatever reason you got that impression like these two had finally found each other.
Sure.
And that they were going to make it.
He was finally going to get his chance, which he didn't think he was going to get, and she was finally out of that, as you say.
I mean, when I think about those two coming together, it almost is like a rom-com at first.
You know, the trumpet player meets the waitress and it's very cute in the small town, the small snowy mountain town.
Sure.
It sounds like you might, you have ideas, Andrea, you worked that into a story.
Well, it's, yeah, like every Hallmark movie.
Unfortunately this, you know, this one takes a dateline twist which is not, does not.
They never got the happy ending.
Yeah.
No, but I was so struck by the place she worked and the people who worked with her.
That cheers atmosphere in this diner where she worked and the fact that she was so popular with her friends, coworkers and with the customers there and knew them all by name and got herself all duded up to go to work.
And it just was really attracted to that character, sounded like the kind of person you'd want to know and him uh with uh a you know, really remarkable talent at uh playing the trumpet when you hear him play.
And unfortunately we, you know, because of copyright issues.
We couldn't play most of his music.
Oh, that's bah humbug.
It is bah humbug, but it's, or as we say in the podcast, bah humbug.
You do that so much better than me.
Nonsense.
But the, you know, what a loss.
Yeah, and the way his dad described him and his sister with the trumpet, that that's when he was the happiest, when he was holding that trumpet.
Yeah, he was, he was.
And in this case, Scott was adopted and he made his parents very happy.
They got their... Indeed he did.
They got their little boy.
You could really feel the love between...
Scott and his father.
It's heartbreaking.
It was heartbreaking.
And I felt, I so felt for that man who in, you know, short order lost his son to murder.
And then his wife died.
His wife was so many years.
You could see how proud he was of Scott.
Sure, and quite rightly so.
So one of the things you learned is something about Scott's sister that she told you.
Well, first of all, that he reconnected with her was very sweet.
And to see how much she cared and how much she loved the guy.
Understandably so, but to discover a brother you didn't know you had must have been such an emotional turn for her and for her life.
And that she clearly loved him was obvious when she has his trumpet, wanted his trumpet.
And wants to learn how to play his trumpet.
To be somehow closer to the memory of him.
It's a lovely thing.
That's really nice.
What sweet music she'll make, no matter how it sounds.
That's true.
We all know what a novice trumpet player sounds like.
We've all had kids who have tried to pick up the trumpet.
I just, I love that she's doing that.
That's so, so great.
Something about this story also was the ending was just really.
It just really tugged at your heartstrings.
How did you feel about it when you watched it?
Well, when you're telling a story, the end is probably the most important moment, right?
So you want to be able to leave people with something they remember.
I'm glad to know that you felt that that was accomplished.
It was, that's what we try to do.
Yeah, it was the.
You know.
They had the memorial concert for him, which I felt like, and for Heather too, which I felt was just so appropriate.
It was.
Not to get too, you know, storytelling 101, but so you want that.
You want that moment where it really tugs at you and maybe you feel a little dear because you've every right to given what you've just witnessed.
But you don't want to go too far.
So it just has to be exactly the right amount.
And getting the right amount without sort of making people think, oh boy, they're getting all sappy here.
One of the things we try to do at Dateline so much is for the viewers and the listeners to really understand who these people are and to get that to color that picture of who was Scott, who was Heather.
And I really had this sense of them by the end.
So when you do watch that memorial concert it really pays off because you've gone on a journey with them.
And unfortunately it was a sad ending to the journey, but you did a good job of making me feel like I knew them.
I just, I want to, of course, give a shout out to your excellent writing, Keith, and delivery.
Because you do it like no one else.
No, stop it, stop it.
Speaking of shout outs, for anybody who may know those who work at Dateline, I was able to work with a wonderful producer named Rob Buchanan, who's been around for many years, and worked with him.
He is a consummate pro and a wonderful guy.
I love working with Rob.
We always have fun together.
I think it was two years ago I spent my birthday with Rob.
He made sure we all went out.
We were somewhere.
I can't even remember where now.
He ordered my favorite wine.
He's a nice guy.
But your writing I was going to say.
You know, you had some lines that I picked up on, such as the bacon perfumed the room.
That wasn't my line.
That wasn't, no.
That wasn't your line?
Wasn't my line.
Okay, so was Rob's line written for you?
That was Rob, yeah.
Well, good on Rob for channeling his inner Keith Morrison, right?
And, you know, I also like the line to, you know, none of us are perfect.
Absolutely.
The human condition is so messed up.
We're all trying to get through our lives and do good things and not do bad things, and failing repeatedly.
And we're the kind of people who have to look at what can happen and think differently.
I'm not that or am I going to be a victim like this person I'm watching on television?
So it's a way of kind of.
Assessing your own life in a way and understanding what it is to be a human being.
The story itself was a fascinating police procedural with some difficulties along the way.
You know, I used to read a lot of Scandinavian crime fiction.
Really?
Yes.
And so they tend to be a little team of police officers trying to solve a terrible murder case.
And running into all kinds of complications along the way.
And this was like one of those in the sense that the process was so complicated and so exhausting.
And they did what human beings do.
They, you know, they ran out of steam at one point.
They had to take a break.
And then later on they feel exhausted about having you know, had we only done such and such, had we only followed up a little more.
Right, because she was killed in that interim period, Heather.
It made me think so much.
Now, in a lot of our datelines so often, there's this interesting tactic of how the police are onto people and they go behind their backs and they dig into their cell phone records and their Google Maps and the people have no idea that this is happening under their noses.
And it gives the police vital information about their whereabouts without them knowing.
But in this case it kind of worked well.
It worked to the disadvantage in the way that Heather was killed during this period.
It did.
And one of the other complications, of course, is you can get all that information about a person but you have to have probable cause to make an arrest.
And that's a kind of a decision somebody at a higher level than most of the people involved in the grunt work of crime solving a crime are able to make.
And this was one of those situations where, along the way as Kevin is going to find the fuel to be able to go back to that farm to burn Heather's body the way he had tried to burn Scott Sessions' body um finally, the detective catches up with him at a gas station and he has to make a decision.
Am i going to approach that guy and try to put him under arrest?
He might be armed, he might shoot me, he might god knows what might happen.
But If I decide to arrest him, I'm kind of, at this point, making a decision that's above my pay grade.
And do I have the guts to make it?
So that was an interesting story that he told.
And the position that he was in was... was one you can certainly see what it would have been like.
And that's when I find myself really getting into a story, when you can put yourself in the shoes of all the people involved.
What would I do?
Yeah, what would I do?
Exactly, thank you.
That was one of the moments that really had me riveted was this detective, because I was scared for him, because he's following this guy around who he thinks is a killer.
And this is country.
This is back country.
This is mountain territory.
He's by himself.
Yeah.
Well, the other guy's armed and he's already killed at least one person and they think maybe two, and they got to stop him before he does it again.
Do you have any Scandinavian crime novel recommendations?
Any favorites?
Yeah, there are lots of good ones.
Is there one that jumps out in your mind that you really enjoyed?
The man who became the kind of signature writer of that kind of fiction was Henning Mankel.
So anything in that collection?
Sure.
And then the girl with the dragon tattoo is in the same genre.
I was just going to ask you about that one.
That was an intense book and movie.
We're off topic here, Andrea.
Well, you know, it's talking datelines.
So you talk wherever your talk takes you, right?
Yeah, I guess that's how it works, isn't it?
And I just wanted to say on a personal note, I posted a photo of us.
It popped up on my memories from one of our holiday parties and I posted it.
I just love our Dateline community.
And it just really warmed my heart to see all the kind things that they were saying about you and your amazing family.
It's a good family.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm a lucky man in many ways.
Yeah.
And yes, we miss him a lot, but that won't go away.
This is a especially hard time of year as well when everyone is with their families.
So you are loved, Keith Morrison. and your family.
Thank you, Andrea.
Same to you.
And have a wonderful Christmas season.
Thank you.
That is our talking dateline for the last weekend.
And Keith, it has been such a pleasure getting to spend this time with you.
It's wonderful to talk to you, Andrea.
You take care.
You too.
