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I think the question that so many people have is what in the world do you do? Especially if, uh, maybe somebody is hesitant to, to accept it, to recognize it, to want to or feel like they can walk away.

But Keith, if you could just give me a summary of a quick overview of this case.

Well, this is a story of a young woman just starting out in life.

She had two children already at the age of 23 and was now starting a career at the same time.

So she was a very busy woman.

She had been married to a local police officer.

The relations between the two were not that great.

And so it's one of those classic cases where you would expect when they discover her body in a bathtub and the water flowing over the bathtub to the floor that... of the home that she lived in, that, you know, one of the first things they might do is have a good look around and see if there was a struggle, and if there was, to take some, whatever evidence they could, but also immediately go and speak to the husband, because, you know, quite often it is the husband in a case like this, but it finally took a new investigator to re-look at the evidence, and by that a lot of it was gone, of course, but to Dredge up what he could to get the case filed.

I think the question that so many people have is, what in the world do you do? Especially if maybe somebody is hesitant to accept it, to recognize it, to want to or feel like they can walk away.

She spent time tutoring

And she was a runner.

She did everything well, and was pretty, and was popular, and the whole [laughs] nine yards.

But she had a friend who wasn't really a boyfriend.

He was a buddy with whom she'd grown up in the same proximity, Cody and Micki.

Uh, for a minute or two, when they were 12 or 13, they thought, "Well, we, we could be boyfriend and girlfriend," but of course, that didn't last.

And he went on to become a 6'6" dude who planned to join the Marines when he got out of high school, and he fell in love, fell hard, for a fellow high school student, uh, named Toni, when they were in about grade 11, I guess.

She was last in school.

She spent time tutoring.

And she was a runner.

She did everything well, and was pretty, and was popular, and the whole [laughs] nine yards.

But she had a friend who wasn't really a boyfriend.

He was a buddy with whom she'd grown up in the same proximity.

Cody and Micki, uh, for a minute or two when they were 12 or 13, they thought, "Well, we, we could be boyfriend and girlfriend," but of course, that didn't last.

And he went on to become a 6'6" dude who planned to join the Marines when he got out of high school, and he fell in love, fell hard for a fellow high school student, uh, named Toni when they were in about grade 11, I guess.

She was last in school.

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He says he didn't see the murder happen, but he went along with Paul to cover it up, and it took him a really long time to do the right thing.

-what the story was about.

It's about a very successful couple in Charleston, South Carolina, a banker and his wife.

They were society people.

They have parties all the time.

They seemed to have the perfect life.

It wasn't perfect.

It was a bitter divorce, and then we discover that the husband was seeing a woman who happened to know somebody who kind of spent some time in the underworld and spent some time in prison, and secretly arranged to have this man kill the wife, Nancy Latham.

Mm-hmm.

Hey, Keith.

Thank you, Andrea.

It's nice to be here.

Let me give you a quick recap of, uh, of what happened in this story, what it's all about.

It, it's a, a young woman who had gone to a, uh, music video taping, and when she arrived back to the parking lot where she left her car, she was attacked and killed in a very violent way.

And it was a story of really the next couple of decades of back and forth and who was responsible, and they, uh, found somebody, tried him three times, finally convicted him of murder.

And then several years later, an autodidact, a very smart guy, happened to see Dateline on his computer and turned the whole thing upside down.

And it, it drew me in, and if not for that, we wouldn't have Ray Jennings out of prison right now.

Was that their secret weapon? Is that how they were able to do what they did over such an extended period?

Uh, you know, uh, Susan, I don't know whether you heard about how they came up with the notion of doing it that way, but they, they were very patient, and they...

You know, they would spend two years waiting, uh, f- for the time when an insurance company would trust them to, to give them the money [chuckles] from the, from the death of these homeless men who they took in, housed, fed, took care of for all that time so that they could score from the insurance policy when the men unfortunately, suddenly died.

And they would, of course, be the ones behind that unfortunate sudden death.

So they, they had to be patient because the insurance companies would flag a policy if somebody tried to claim it, so they, y- they, they just had to avoid the appearance of, um, of criminal activity, uh, enough to...

So the insurance company wasn't going to pay attention to it.

And since these were not gigantic policies, um, maybe they wouldn't bother spending the amount of time it would take to investigate it.

What do we know?

Uh, Keith, just give us the, the overview, your view from, of, of this story.

Well, [chuckles] this was a, a, a case that might not ever have seen the light of day if a, uh, a member of the medical staff in the emergency department of the hospital in Baytown, Texas, saw something that didn't look right and made a phone call to the sheriff's department.

And a deputy went over to the, um, hospital, talked to the people there, and, um, was sufficiently concerned that he placed a call to the duty detective, who happened to be this young woman named Skylar Rocks, who was brand new to the, uh, detective service.

She went over to the hospital, and after talking to Sarah Hartsfield, immediately smelled a rat, and she fussed around, trying to get information for a while.

And when finally it became apparent that she wasn't gonna be able to make this a big investigation until she got some support, she went to the, um, district attorney.

DA happened to be a woman who was, uh, pretty aggressive in her, uh, treatment of crime [chuckles], um, and also there was a female prosecutor.

So the three of them together said, "Yeah, this is a case.

It seems a little blunt.

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That, uh, there's a real learning curve to knowing how to do a Dateline story, to knowing how to, to pro...

To- to do a story that's two hours long, that has to spin out over 11 or 12 acts.

Max was just 14 at the time Carrie went missing.

You know, there was an, uh, uh, a very intense bond in this three generations of Farvers.

Carrie was very close to her mother and her relationship with her son Max was unusually close.

You know, a mother-son relationship can be that way where if the mother is single and, and she has one child, a, a son, it's almost like they're one person in a way.

And they felt so close a bond that both her mother and son were so flummoxed by the whole business.

And Carrie, when she apparently decided to take off and she was sending them text messages and electronic communications for years that were hurtful and strange and an indication that some psychic break must have happened, and they didn't know what it was.

They got the police to help them and it didn't go anywhere, they couldn't find her and it just got worse and worse.

This is, this is frightening stuff.

Yeah.

And, and, you know, there, there's something, uh, really foundational about human beings in that we all, from the time we're very small children, we need to know where the dark places are, and we need to be able to keep ourselves safe from the dark places and know what's under the bed.

And a lot of these stories have to do with that very topic and the need to be aware of what people are capable of, the need to be aware of what they're also capable of on the positive side, that, that, uh, these are explorations of human nature which are far more illuminating, to me anyway, than, than almost any other kind of news reporting.

To put it mildly.

Yeah.

And yet, I would go back and do it again.

It was, um, it was weirdly enjoyable and terrifying and awful at the same time.

(laughing)

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Yeah

...

Mm-hmm.

... alleged confession so normally when you- Well- ... have a confession, y- Yes, so the expert to whom I spoke we've used before, Steve Drizen, he's a, uh, kind of a world-renowned, uh, expert on these things.

He didn't see the actual interview but, um, but the way it was conducted, uh, is one which, you know, he says has happened all too often which does encourage somebody who may be a little bit gullible or somebody who may believe in the, uh, uh, in the, in the justice system sufficiently that he thinks, you know, if a cop says something it's bound to be true.

Um, somebody who can be led.

Uh, if it's, if it's that kind of person then the technique that they did in fact use in this conversation could well have produced a false confession or a false...

So it wasn't quite a confession, it was kind of, sort of going along with what they had said.

Yeah.

...

Huh.

Uh, and there's- there's real love that exists among all of them.

So John Tokuhara was- was one of those folks from Waipahu who had gone to the mainland to become a acupuncturist and- and- and returned home.

Didn't have to, wanted to, wanted to be at home with his folks.

And lived with his mother, ran a clinic that was quite popular, um, and everybody assumed that, you know, he- he was just, he was just living a kind of a regular single guy life.

It was only later on when things had happened that discoveries were made that John Tokuhara had a, had a very, uh, interesting and somewhat active, uh, romantic life behind the scenes because people loved him.

Women loved him.

Yeah.

Oh.

... that- that mother and father through the process of, uh, you know, when they brought the girl home, when they were ... went to the, um- the funeral home with them, uh, were there the day that she was able to say goodbye t- to her daughter's body in the casket, uh, and saw that- that- the- a kind of raw grief that, uh, I'll never forget for as long as I live.

But the- the reason I'm telling you is because, um, she put this grief of hers to work also.

She, uh, formed an organization that- that ... her daughter had been a- who l- had loved dancing.

You know, that age, so many girls do.

One case.

Well, that's a good question but, and- and it's, you know, I have to tell you, people have asked that before and- and, um, I...

There are so many of them that I can't land on any one in particular.

Mm-hmm.

She did not...

Uh, she didn't hesitate to be, uh, absolutely in his corner, in, in every respect and, and, you know, use the explanation that he was using.

Uh, that, uh, George's sister simply wouldn't let go of the idea that he couldn't possibly have done this, and she knew him as well as anybody could know him.

That's the, you know, one of the tragic things about a story like this, is that you, you recognize that, um, nobody really knows, even those closest to them.

There, there are...

You know, we all have secrets and we keep them buried deep sometimes.

(laughs)

There, there takes, there's a certain trust that goes into just building a business with somebody, right?

I would, you'd think so.

Um, he had met Ed Shin at a previous job, um, and I guess they got along well.

He recognized, uh, Ed's capabilities, but he didn't know him very well clearly, didn't know him well enough, uh, didn't realize that Ed had a dark side, had a, had a whole life that was hidden from public view.

There are s- there are people who can do that.

They can have double lives.

They live a life which is y- y- you admire, everybody admires, and then, uh, they become the, um, Jekyll and Hyde character and on the other side of it, they are doing terrible things, or they're, you know, pah, they're caught up by habits that they cannot control.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, the big question in all of this, uh, and, and from the beginning has been who is Bryan Kohberger? And in this episode, you described him as a man who lived in the shadows.

To some degree, uh, perhaps.

Uh, he was known to, um, to, like, spend a lot of time alone.

He was known to like to be out at night by himself.

He, he seemed attracted to the, to the darkness.

And, and that was just an aspect of his personality, which may or may... may not have meant anything, but lives in the shadows might be a little strong.

But it, it...

Tell us a little bit about that.

Wow.

Well, I mean, uh, imagine this.

You've got kids yourself, Andrea, and you know what, how, how, you know, desperate a, a mother is to keep her, her children safe.

Her daughter was, um, intending to go that weekend to spend several days with her best friend, Maddie Mogen.

And, um, only at the very last minute, she had to stay at home to watch over the family dog.

Describe this video for us.

You, you have to see it to, uh, to get a full appreciation of it.

But there, uh, is certainly some pretty dramatic evidence of, um, of a white car, uh, in, uh-

... of what this woman is accused of. She is deeply, deeply disturbed.

Uh, well, yes. The legal system, um, considers her sane enough to go on trial and sane enough to represent herself in the courtroom. And she's a bright woman, there's no question about that, very quick with a retort or whatever, but, uh, I, I really do wonder, um, whether she is sane, honestly. That's just my, my question. There were months and months where they, uh, delayed her trial in Idaho, the trial for killing the children. She was deemed not psychiatrically, uh, uh, capable of facing trial, of, I guess, understanding the charges against her adequately, and so she went off for treatment. She was treated for, um, delusional disorder of extreme religious variety for months, and finally she was declared sane enough to go on trial. She was put on trial and she was convicted.

But why kill your children though, if it's about money, lust, and power?

Anybody who has stood in their way, they had to get them out of the way, and Chad conveniently had come up with this philosophy, this religious idea, and he came up with it while he was a, a sexton in a cemetery. He dug graves. But he had this notion that he was talking to dead people all the time, and that the, the veil between life and death is really permeable, and you could go back and forth, and he could go to heaven and see Jesus and, uh, and come back again. And if he declared that somebody had turned dark or had become a zombie or gave him a name like Ned Schneider, uh, it meant that, uh, they had been possessed, uh, by evil, uh, by the devil.

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Um, how did they even do that?

One of the titles that we thought we might choose for our story, we didn't in the end, but w- we were thinking about it, uh, was Blood Shadow.

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Wasn't it that they, uh, um, thought she might have put the body on, his body on a tractor?

So you have to really wanna do it.

Some of the loveliest people I know, um, do that kind of work.

They tilted windmills their whole lives and don't make very much money for it.

Uh, anyway, that's, uh, that's one of the aspects of this, uh, uh, of this story that appealed to me.

Um, and, and, and there's also a MacGuffin in it in, in the sense that they probably wouldn't have discovered so easily what happened, or at least gotten on the right trail to find out what happened, had it not been for the fact that it was in Macon, Georgia, and it was hot as hell that day.

The torso was, was creating an odor.

Right.

But then there's a scripted series that comes along that takes a point of view, and therefore will fudge on certain details and will reduce the effect of some things and increase the effect of some other things.