Driven to Death

Speaker 1 Bombus makes the most comfortable socks, underwear, and t-shirts.

Speaker 2 Warning, Bombas are so absurdly comfortable, you may throw out all your other clothes.

Speaker 1 Sorry, do we legally have to say that?

Speaker 2 No, this is just how I talk, and I really love my bombas.

Speaker 1 They do feel that good, and they do good, too. One item purchased equals one item donated.

Speaker 3 To feel good and do good, go to bombus.com and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's bombb-as.com and use code audio at checkout.

Speaker 6 This is the deathmobile, the last and final ride every one of us will take at the end of life's journey.

Speaker 10 If you could write a script, isn't this perfect? You have a body transport person, a deputy coroner, and at least one visit to a funeral home that night.

Speaker 11 How did you find out your father was missing?

Speaker 12 His car was still there, but he wasn't in there.

Speaker 13 His friends and family start searching, right?

Speaker 14 Yes, everybody starts to look, trying to find his last known whereabouts.

Speaker 15 Police asked for your help in finding the missing man, who you see right here is Gregory Rice.

Speaker 16 I think we just all assumed that he was going to be found in the ditch someplace.

Speaker 18 She had a feeling that he was being followed.

Speaker 10 Greg had actually said, if anything ever happens to me, it's not a suicide.

Speaker 14 It's full of scandalous secret sex.

Speaker 14 Erica Dantell began to receive anonymous text messages that said, your husband has gotten somebody pregnant.

Speaker 15 Giving you every opportunity to get yourself out of the situation.

Speaker 23 There's nothing for me to get out. I don't know where he is.

Speaker 11 What went through your mind?

Speaker 25 I was like, this can't be true.

Speaker 14 I dropped the pedal and I started crying.

Speaker 27 And you were scared?

Speaker 28 Yeah, I was scared.

Speaker 10 They were in the business of doubt.

Speaker 29 So you learned how to do autopsies.

Speaker 30 Correct. Yeah.
Took pride in getting all the answers.

Speaker 31 We don't have people standing in line to get this job.

Speaker 30 I felt like that was what I was put on this earth to do.

Speaker 32 Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Speaker 6 Every year, these shores welcome millions of tourists.

Speaker 32 They come for the sand, the sun, the surf.

Speaker 8 But it's not always fun and games.

Speaker 32 At night, a a darker more sinister side emerges

Speaker 16 we do have some problems in downtown myrtle beach after like 10 p.m

Speaker 16 that's kind of like a joke about murder beach myrtle beach the murder beach

Speaker 35 or dirty myrtle

Speaker 38 you know after dark it's its own monster it's really become a dangerous place and there are a lot of beachfront and alligator farms and ways to dispose of bodies that people are never going to be found.

Speaker 39 When a dead body is found, Megan Jackson is likely to get a phone call.

Speaker 9 The 35-year-old mother of four and her boss, Chuck Benjamin, provide a service everyone will one day need, but nobody really wants.

Speaker 32 My name is Chuck Benjamin.

Speaker 31 I pick up bodies for the local funeral homes and the coroner's office.

Speaker 31 It is

Speaker 31 about 3:40 in the morning. We are headed to one of my local funeral homes to pick up a body to take it to the airport in Charleston so it can fly out to their final destination.

Speaker 42 How long have you been doing this?

Speaker 20 Since 2011, whatever that is.

Speaker 11 12, 13 years. 14 years.

Speaker 19 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 31 This is the right schedule for today. Up 829 leaves at 1 o'clock this afternoon, so this has to be there by 11, 10.30, 11.

Speaker 43 What do your grandkids call this?

Speaker 31 The deathmobile.

Speaker 4 And you have it in your driveway ready to go? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 31 All my drivers have one in their driveway.

Speaker 44 Because you can get a call.

Speaker 42 at any moment.

Speaker 31 24-7. 365 days a year.

Speaker 45 With those hours, not to mention the grim realities of moving the dead, Chuck says it's not easy to find transporters for his business.

Speaker 31 We don't have people standing in line to get this job.

Speaker 47 He said people work one day and leave.

Speaker 16 Megan was a next-door neighbor to Joan and Chuck. She had moved from Ohio with Greg and her kids.

Speaker 31 She wanted to try when I needed somebody. So I said, well, I'll take you on a few calls.
If you like it, fine. If not, it's no big deal.

Speaker 14 She

Speaker 14 had an interest in science and blood and things like that.

Speaker 31 Very first call we went on was that somebody had been down for a week. It was decomposition on the third floor.

Speaker 30 And I mean, she'd hold her own.

Speaker 49 She could pick up a body, you know, which is clearly dead weight by herself and put it on a stretcher or in the car.

Speaker 50 And she's teeny.

Speaker 46 And just like that, Megan becomes an Uber driver for the dead.

Speaker 12 I looked up to my mom in a lot of ways. She did a lot of work.

Speaker 27 How would you describe her job?

Speaker 50 It's a pretty sad and

Speaker 12 can be an overwhelming type of job, but I think that as long as you're being respectful and caring about what you're doing, then I think it's actually a really good job to have.

Speaker 16 Everyone loved Megan.

Speaker 16 Everybody that she worked with in the the business, we worked for a variety of different funeral homes. At the time, we worked for the coroners.

Speaker 42 Megan's job requires her to work hand in hand with the Horry County Deputy Coroner, a man named Chris Dantell.

Speaker 30 Megan was a great worker. She endeared herself to all of us at the coroner's office.

Speaker 43 Did you ever go with her to work?

Speaker 12 I've done quite a few calls with her and it would be something I would actually look into doing in my future.

Speaker 46 You would think of doing the same thing. Yeah.
I

Speaker 12 never

Speaker 12 really bothered me as a kid because

Speaker 12 everybody passes at some point.

Speaker 43 As Megan thrives at work, her relationship with Greg Rice, the father of her children, fizzles out.

Speaker 8 After 15 years together, the couple splits up.

Speaker 51 but they share custody of their kids.

Speaker 10 Greg moved to the Arrowhead community where he lived in an apartment. Megan, who had inherited a good deal of money from her parents, purchased the home in Rivers Edge.

Speaker 14 On October 3rd of 2020, Megan went over to Greg Rice's home with the children. He was going to get the children for that day.
There was no answer at the door.

Speaker 18 I received a phone call from Megan asking if I heard anything from Greg because he's not answering the door, he's not answering his phone.

Speaker 33 Ryan and Greg work together building patios and are best friends.

Speaker 6 Ryan tells Megan he last saw Greg when they both left work the night before.

Speaker 18 I felt it was kind of fishy, and

Speaker 18 she ended up putting in a missing person's report.

Speaker 54 Megan files the report in person at the police station.

Speaker 51 Megan, right? M-E-A?

Speaker 22 M-E-A-G-A-N.

Speaker 22 G-A-N. What's your last name? Jackson.
Jackson.

Speaker 55 What were y'all married for? We weren't married. We weren't married.

Speaker 22 How many kids you got together? Just curious.

Speaker 21 Four. Four, really?

Speaker 22 I was with him for like four 15 years. How long have y'all been separated?

Speaker 55 Over a year.

Speaker 27 Over a year or something.

Speaker 44 Megan says she last spoke to Greg on Friday, the night before he went missing.

Speaker 44 And you talked to Greg on the phone at about 9.58, you said? Yes. And I told him that I was still gonna,

Speaker 44 are we still good for taking the kids to your house in the morning? And he said yes.

Speaker 44 And

Speaker 44 I mean, everything was fine. That was the last time you spoke to me? Yes.

Speaker 22 So you never physically saw him Friday?

Speaker 22 No.

Speaker 57 Megan was pretty much painting the picture that Greg Hood of possibly overdosed was in a ditch somewhere.

Speaker 58 What kind of drugs did he do?

Speaker 58 Like Oxie, Broxy.

Speaker 58 I can't remember what he was doing.

Speaker 22 Did he get hurt or anything? Is that why he started taking them, or just

Speaker 49 he lived right beside the intercoastal waterway? And she was saying he may have wandered off and drowned, or just wandered off and OD'd.

Speaker 15 Police asked for your help in finding Gregory Rice.

Speaker 45 It was a mystery that shook this Myrtle Beach community.

Speaker 41 One day, 46-year-old father Greg Rice is living his life, and the next day, he disappears, seemingly without a trace.

Speaker 17 So, this is where he lived right here.

Speaker 14 Yes, his children would come visit him

Speaker 14 for scheduled visits and unscheduled visits. He wanted to see his kids often.

Speaker 54 What did you find in the apartment?

Speaker 14 So, at the apartment, you know, his wallet was found, his front keys were found stuffed in a cushion on the front porch. His car was here, but not his phone.
Is that suspicious? It is suspicious.

Speaker 11 Why?

Speaker 14 Most people would have left with their wallet. Most people would have left with their keys.

Speaker 14 You know,

Speaker 14 why walk down the road? Why not take the car?

Speaker 14 Yeah. That kind of stuff.
So, yeah, that is suspicious.

Speaker 18 We set up arrangements to go to Greg's apartment and

Speaker 18 split up in teams and search his apartment and grounds around it for anything, and we didn't find anything.

Speaker 10 Investigators canvassed the Arrowhead community trying to see when he had last been seen, but none of that was really fruitful.

Speaker 14 The investigators talked to neighbors, and By all accounts, it appears that Greg Rice was a good father. He had a job, he was a hard worker.
He seemed to be just an average guy.

Speaker 10 Greg had some very good friends in the community who just found him funny and caring and really enjoyed spending time with him. The children all loved him unconditionally.

Speaker 46 How would you describe your father?

Speaker 12 He was always that person that would be there for you at the end of the day. If you had something you didn't want to say to anybody else, you would go to him.

Speaker 18 Greg had the kids almost every single weekend.

Speaker 19 That's

Speaker 18 the one thing that mattered the most with him.

Speaker 39 You did a lot of fun things with him.

Speaker 35 Yeah, I did. Like what?

Speaker 12 We used to surf together a lot. And he used to actually take pictures for

Speaker 12 the surfing competitions I used to do.

Speaker 18 Our favorite hobbies would be definitely surfing and golfing.

Speaker 36 We would golf three to four times a week.

Speaker 18 He was absolutely terrible, but

Speaker 18 a blast to play with.

Speaker 18 Yeah, he spent a lot of time in the woods.

Speaker 11 How did you find out your father was missing?

Speaker 12 My dad always came and picked up the kids, and that didn't happen this day.

Speaker 43 Savannah says her parents' relationship took a bad turn after her mother got that job working in body transport.

Speaker 12 She just kind of acted different, was homeless, could be a lot more mean

Speaker 35 than

Speaker 57 before.

Speaker 24 She was never home,

Speaker 18 would leave at all times of, you know, day and night, and just leave the kids.

Speaker 40 At some point were your parents arguing more?

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 They argued a lot, but

Speaker 12 it definitely did get worse once my mom got a job. They stopped just talking things out and everything became an argument.

Speaker 11 And then they wind up breaking up?

Speaker 56 Yes.

Speaker 19 After Megan

Speaker 14 and Greg Rice part ways, Megan purchases a home in the same neighborhood as Christopher Dantel.

Speaker 14 She moved into our neighborhood and then

Speaker 14 a few times she started kind of like popping up at different places. We would go to the same places to eat, kind of have the same routine.

Speaker 37 So quickly she went from your husband's coworker to

Speaker 41 a good friend, family friend.

Speaker 14 Very quickly.

Speaker 16 After a while, when Megan moved to Chris's neighborhood, he would just call her and say, I've got a coroner call and I need you to... you know, go to this address.

Speaker 31 She would call me, hey, Chris has got a call. Do you mind if I go on it? Well, you know what? I didn't care as long as it gets done.

Speaker 31 It gets done on the, you know, within the time parameters that I have to do it.

Speaker 14 Megan

Speaker 14 and Chris are constantly in need of each other because the coroner's office needs body transport and that would involve meeting each other all hours of the night all days of the week

Speaker 43 and then in 2020 Chris and Megan's workload explodes because of the COVID pandemic.

Speaker 36 The alarming surge in cases of coronavirus. Hospitalizations are up in 21 states.

Speaker 31 Funeral homes didn't want nothing to do with it. They didn't want to go on the calls, so they would call me because they didn't want nothing to do with COVID.

Speaker 31 We were doing

Speaker 31 2,500 calls a year. And Megan volunteered, and especially she always did Chris's calls.

Speaker 13 Megan and Chris are together for work constantly, and the new neighbors' families become COVID bubble buddies during the lockdown.

Speaker 30 After Megan moved into my neighborhood, her kids and my kids virtually had an open door policy at each of our houses. Her kids would come and go from my house.

Speaker 30 We ate dinner with them several nights a week.

Speaker 14 She was showing up with groceries when everything shut down for COVID and we were struggling financially.

Speaker 30 We were expecting a little boy.

Speaker 30 Megan had a full load of brand new nursery items and baby boy items.

Speaker 14 We never asked her to do it. She just came in and was going to be the savior.

Speaker 53 And then you hear that Greg is missing.

Speaker 14 Chris came home and he was like, Megan reported Greg missing.

Speaker 39 It would all become more troublesome when police learned Greg feared for his life.

Speaker 35 Are you suspicious about anybody?

Speaker 15 He was always worried about driving and being followed.

Speaker 52 This show is supported by Lazarus, a new thriller series from Amazon Prime Video.

Speaker 52 In Lazarus, best-selling mystery writer Harlan Coban returns to television with a twisted tale of lies, murder, and long-buried family secrets. The series focuses on forensic psychiatrist Dr.

Speaker 52 Joel Lazarus, known as Laz to his friends. When Laz first hears of his father's death, the initial theory is it was a suicide.
But the suspicious circumstances tell a different story.

Speaker 52 Soon, Laz finds himself drawn into a world of murderous conspiracies and a race to find his father's killer. Lazarus stars Sam Claflin as Laz and Bill Nye as his father.

Speaker 52 It premieres October 22nd only on Prime Video. October is the perfect time to watch a heart-pounding story of thrills and chills.

Speaker 52 And you'll love how Lazarus blends high-octane stakes with family tensions that feel oh, so real. So curl up on the couch with a warm blanket for this action-packed thrill ride.

Speaker 52 Don't miss Harlan Coban's Lazarus streaming October 22nd, only on Prime Video.

Speaker 59 The show is supported by Acorns Early, the smart way to teach kids about money.

Speaker 59 Piggy banks are cute and great for those loose quarters, but they don't teach the financial literacy lessons that kids need in the modern world.

Speaker 59 Acorns Early makes it easy to teach kids lifelong money skills they can actually use. It's a smart debit card and money app designed to teach kids money skills as they grow up.

Speaker 59 For little kids, start with the in-app chores tracker to teach your kids the value of a dollar.

Speaker 59 Then kids can set a savings goal and spend what they've earned with their very own customizable debit card to give them that extra sense of independence.

Speaker 59 And with Acorns Early's spending limits and real-time purchase notifications, parents always stay in control. Ready to teach your kids the smart way to earn, save, and spend?

Speaker 59 Get your first month on Acorns when you head to acornsearly.com slash 20 or download the Acorns Early app. That's one month free when you sign up at acornsearly.com slash 20.
Spelled out T-W-E-N-T-Y.

Speaker 59 AcornsEarly.com slash 20. Acorns early card is issued by Community Federal Savings Bank member FDIC pursuant to license by MasterCard International.

Speaker 59 Free trial for new subscribers only, subscription fees starting at $5 per month unless canceled. Terms apply at acorns.com slash early terms.

Speaker 57 Whenever someone goes missing in Horry County, we always write a story about it. We're a small enough community that if somebody's missing, it's absolutely a news story.

Speaker 15 Police asked for your help in finding the missing man who you see right here, Gregory Rice.

Speaker 61 Police kept on coming by and just questioning us. Have you seen anything out of the normal? I mean that's when red flags were starting to raise like something seriously happened to Greg.

Speaker 11 When was the last time you had seen him?

Speaker 12 The week prior. And

Speaker 12 that was the weekend that I promised I was going to come see him and I didn't get to see him.

Speaker 19 What were you going through?

Speaker 12 I was in a pretty bad shape. I wasn't handling it very well and it didn't help that my mom was still going out every night and getting drunk, coming home plastered.

Speaker 7 Did she seem worried about your missing dad?

Speaker 12 She seemed worried at first on the phone call and when she

Speaker 12 originally came home, but after that it was just kind of like

Speaker 12 nothing.

Speaker 10 From all accounts, they had a somewhat tumultuous relationship. There was a lot of friction between Greg and Megan.

Speaker 14 She never called him by his name.

Speaker 49 It was just, oh, he's this terrible guy.

Speaker 14 I'm going to drop the kids off. If I'm not back in an hour, send somebody to look for me.

Speaker 16 I wasn't surprised at them breaking up because I know things she said about him, you know, how he would drink and do drugs and things like that.

Speaker 16 I think we just all assumed that he was going to be found in a ditch someplace from a drug overdose or drunken stupor.

Speaker 18 Megan started making stories up about Greg being on drugs.

Speaker 24 Never once

Speaker 18 have I seen that out of Greg.

Speaker 14 Law enforcement, they did look inside Greg Rice's apartment for evidence of the substance abuse issue. They didn't find evidence to support that.

Speaker 42 No evidence of drug abuse, but investigators did find evidence to suggest Greg was increasingly nervous and suspicious in the days leading up to his disappearance.

Speaker 24 Detective Susie called me over the phone, asked me if I would come in for an interview, and I said, absolutely.

Speaker 22 So I'm Detective Susie.

Speaker 56 I'm the one that calls you on the phone.

Speaker 22 So you're a friend of mine? Yeah, I also work with him.

Speaker 10 They had actually worked together that last day,

Speaker 10 and Greg had actually said to Ryan, if anything ever happens to me, it's not a suicide.

Speaker 18 Greg mentioned to me that if something was to happen to him, he didn't offer himself.

Speaker 22 What do you think could have happened? What were your thoughts at first?

Speaker 22 She had something to do with it.

Speaker 22 What gave you those suspicions? Just the way Greg talked.

Speaker 18 He had a feeling that he was being followed by a silver, unmarked car.

Speaker 18 Megan made it known that she hung out with cops, was real friendly with cops.

Speaker 22 She always made the comments that she knew people.

Speaker 22 Do you think she would be capable of doing something?

Speaker 22 Not by herself.

Speaker 35 Not by herself.

Speaker 42 That statement stood out to detectives.

Speaker 22 Walk me through

Speaker 22 Friday.

Speaker 55 I know that I went to a Boilo's on Friday.

Speaker 62 What time did you go to a Boiloose?

Speaker 40 Not a clue.

Speaker 55 It was nighttime. I was there with one of the coroners.

Speaker 14 Initially, when investigators spoke to Megan, she had just gone to dinner with someone from the coroner's office. And then later, when questioned about that, she said it was Christopher Dantel.

Speaker 12 We ate at a Boiloose.

Speaker 22 Who did you do at a Boiler's with? A Boilos with?

Speaker 22 The coroner. Oh, Chris.

Speaker 63 Chris. Dantel.

Speaker 46 So you wound up getting closer to Megan.

Speaker 46 Did you see her as someone you could confide in?

Speaker 19 I did.

Speaker 19 And you did?

Speaker 35 I did.

Speaker 10 Based on interviews and just other information from the investigation, I certainly think there was a belief that Megan Jackson and Christopher Dantell were romantically involved, but it hadn't been confirmed.

Speaker 10 So that was one thing that the investigators did want to either confirm or refute that there was this affair going on.

Speaker 53 It's now been 10 days after after Greg Rice is last seen.

Speaker 13 And Megan and Chris are both being questioned by the Horry County PD.

Speaker 22 One thing that we have to do is,

Speaker 22 like, we know who you are, we work with you, but we have to 100%

Speaker 22 clear you out as, quote unquote, a suspect in his disappearance.

Speaker 22 Okay.

Speaker 22 So some of the questions I'm going to ask are intrusive. They're uncomfortable questions.
How we got your name was Megan.

Speaker 22 Said that you guys had gone out to eat eat on Friday night. And then with Greg going missing sometime around that time frame,

Speaker 22 we're trying to gather

Speaker 22 what happened on Friday. We went to,

Speaker 22 I believe, a Buila's that night. What'd you do? Immediately after you got done eating?

Speaker 63 We both got in my car.

Speaker 56 Okay.

Speaker 63 That's the uncomfortable part, right?

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 15 So y'all were in your car?

Speaker 15 Yeah, okay

Speaker 22 Did y'all have sex in your car

Speaker 22 Possibly okay, I mean

Speaker 22 it's not possibly you had adult relations, okay

Speaker 42 Eventually the naked truth bubbles to the surface What's the relationship with you and Megan?

Speaker 22 Um if I'm being honest it's

Speaker 22 something I would get divorced over

Speaker 22 So you think his intentions are to

Speaker 22 leave his wife and reality on start something. Oh, hell no.

Speaker 55 I'm never moving a man back in my house ever again.

Speaker 22 So, this is just fun.

Speaker 22 Um.

Speaker 56 I don't know what we are.

Speaker 22 Your wife doesn't know. She knows a little bit, but not the full extent of it.

Speaker 55 I just don't want to wreck, you know, his.

Speaker 22 He's got kids. I know.
Again,

Speaker 22 that's not mine.

Speaker 63 What about the Chris?

Speaker 38 Do you want me to answer it? No, just.

Speaker 22 He'll be okay. He can wait.

Speaker 54 Investigators ask both Megan and Chris for their cell phones, which they voluntarily hand over.

Speaker 55 I hear this back today, right?

Speaker 56 That's right. Yes.

Speaker 45 But it's someone else's phone that leads to a shocking revelation.

Speaker 14 Erica Dantell began to receive anonymous text messages that said, in essence, hey, your husband has gotten somebody pregnant.

Speaker 11 It must have been a hard pill to swallow that your husband had impregnated this family friend.

Speaker 27 It all turns into a twisted tale. What started out as a missing persons case uncovers a secret affair between a deputy coroner and his partner in body removal.

Speaker 10 They were in the business of death, and I really do think that that was something that drew them together.

Speaker 10 It takes a certain special kind of personality, I would say, to deal with death on such a regular basis voluntarily.

Speaker 11 So how did it go from you two being co-workers to something more than that?

Speaker 30 She said, have you ever cheated on your wife?

Speaker 30 And I said, no. And she climbed over the console

Speaker 30 and got on top of me and started to kiss me.

Speaker 42 How were you able to carry on the affair? Where would you go?

Speaker 30 Because of our job, you know, it was...

Speaker 30 We could phone calls at all hours of the day and night, and

Speaker 30 it was easy to leave.

Speaker 65 One night you realize that Chris and your mom might be more than just co-workers or friends.

Speaker 12 Well, I just had friends over one day, and

Speaker 12 they were just being wild in the bedroom. And the next day, I was like, wait, like, were you guys like sleeping together? And she told me, yeah, I thought you knew.

Speaker 12 And I was just like, no, I didn't know, but

Speaker 12 thanks for telling me.

Speaker 11 You had a great wife at home, Erica.

Speaker 30 The most amazing wife.

Speaker 11 Why did you continue the relationship with Megan?

Speaker 30 She made our lives easy. She was going to be the answer to everything.

Speaker 42 You did it for the money.

Speaker 30 It sounds terrible to put it that way, but yes.

Speaker 30 I was not at any point physically attracted to her.

Speaker 19 Really?

Speaker 30 I was attracted to the lifestyle she was providing.

Speaker 65 Did you suspect at all that she and your husband might be having an affair?

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 14 Because the way she, they acted, she treated him almost like brother and sister type.

Speaker 14 Erica Dantel began to receive anonymous text messages. And it just said, I think you should know that your husband is having an affair and got somebody pregnant.

Speaker 14 Oh, and I think you should know it's Megan Jackson.

Speaker 11 It must have been a hard pill to swallow that your husband had impregnated this family friend.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 14 It was so far out of character for Chris. He told me it wasn't happening.
He was like, who would say that? Like, what? Like, that's ridiculous. Like, somebody's messing with us.

Speaker 11 Your wife received some texts from an anonymous account. What's going through your head?

Speaker 19 Do you think about coming clean to your wife?

Speaker 30 I didn't. I downplayed it.
I didn't even know that I believed

Speaker 30 Megan was actually pregnant. I didn't know what to believe at that point.

Speaker 14 They end up calling Megan

Speaker 14 right then per Erica's request. And it's all on speaker.
And Megan dismisses them and, you know, basically, well, it must be Greg Rice.

Speaker 14 This is what Greg does. Greg causes problems.
This is what he does. He just tries to come in between any relationship that she tries to have.

Speaker 53 So, do you sort of let it go?

Speaker 14 For the time, yeah, she said she was going to take care of it and get him to leave us alone.

Speaker 66 Chris Dante is having an affair with Megan Jackson. Greg Rice may have been leaking information to Erica, Chris's wife.

Speaker 8 Authorities believe that if Greg was sending those messages, Chris and Megan would have a reason to silence him.

Speaker 33 They know, thanks to their interviews, that the pair was together the night Greg disappeared.

Speaker 22 Chris was in it the entire night.

Speaker 56 Yeah.

Speaker 35 So you have to drill down exactly where Chris and Megan were that night, right?

Speaker 40 Yes.

Speaker 43 When Greg disappears.

Speaker 35 Where did Megan and Chris start off that afternoon?

Speaker 10 They both lived in the same sort of residential community. This is Megan Jackson leaving in her car at 6:16.

Speaker 10 There was another still showing Christopher Dantell leaving just about the same time.

Speaker 43 In separate vehicles.

Speaker 10 In separate vehicles. So, this is the van that she was known to drive to transport bodies, and Christopher Dantell is always seen driving a County Explorer.

Speaker 8 Minutes later, both vehicles are seen entering a nature preserve where they stay for several minutes.

Speaker 19 The two work vehicles then leave and head to Abuelo's restaurant.

Speaker 10 Abuelo's is not that far from the preserve. They went there.
We had surveillance video of them coming in. This is surveillance video for them.

Speaker 42 That's them sitting at the counter.

Speaker 10 Sitting at the bar. And one of the reasons why this photograph was important is because it helped us cooperate phone records because you can see Megan Jackson on the phone there.

Speaker 10 And that's one way that we say, look, the phone records are correct.

Speaker 14 Looking at the forensic results of their phones, they started to get GPS locations. Then they could go back and there's license plate readers.

Speaker 6 This is the entrance to the community where Greg Rice lives.

Speaker 33 And right there on that pole is a silent watchman on duty 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Speaker 5 It's called a license plate reader or LPR.

Speaker 19 And people drive past them all the time, all over Horry County.

Speaker 8 On the night Greg disappeared, Chris Dantell and Megan Jackson drove by this one, not once, but twice.

Speaker 10 So in this photograph, we see, this is the license plate that was assigned to Megan Jackson's transport van entering into Greg Rice's community.

Speaker 10 This was right around 10 o'clock, and then just about six minutes later, you see the same van with the same license plate leaving the community.

Speaker 10 And one of the things that this helped us with is that Megan Jackson swore up and down, Christopher Dantell swore swore up and down, that they had never been to that community.

Speaker 21 Did you ever go to his apartment that Friday night?

Speaker 21 No.

Speaker 19 Had you ever been in Greg's apartment? No.

Speaker 35 I never went there.

Speaker 20 I've never been to him.

Speaker 10 So this was clear evidence that they were hiding something.

Speaker 14 On the night of October 2nd of 2020, Greg Rice's phone records indicate that he was at home most of that night until he got two calls from Megan Megan Jackson.

Speaker 14 And that was just shortly before 10 o'clock. Shortly after that, it did show his phone leave the area of his apartment, which would have been going in the same direction as Megan's phone as well.

Speaker 13 It's a short ride to the next stop of the night.

Speaker 37 And where Megan's body transport van ends up couldn't be more on brand.

Speaker 10 If you could write a script, you have a body transport person, a deputy coroner, coroner, and at least one visit to a funeral home that night. It's the business of death.

Speaker 3 You buy a pair of socks, that's two socks. You buy a pair of Bombus socks, that's four socks.
Because one purchased is one donated.

Speaker 3 Socks are the number one most requested clothing item in homeless shelters. So when you buy a pair of super comfortable Bombas socks, you're also donating a pair.

Speaker 3 Bombus customers have powered over 150 million donations. So Bombus would like to thank you 150 million times, but we only have like 30 seconds.

Speaker 3 Go Go to bombas.com and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's BOMBAS.com and use code audio at checkout.

Speaker 1 Bombus makes the most comfortable socks, underwear, and t-shirts.

Speaker 2 Warning, Bombas are so absurdly comfortable, you may throw out all your other clothes.

Speaker 1 Sorry, do we legally have to say that?

Speaker 2 No, this is just how I talk, and I really love my Bombas.

Speaker 1 They do feel that good, and they do good, too. One item purchased equals one item donated.

Speaker 3 To feel good and do good, go to bombus.com and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase that's bombbas.com and use code audio at checkout

Speaker 10 by october 23rd the investigators had done a fabulous job of gathering different pieces of electronic evidence Investigators say Megan's body transport van is seen leaving Greg's community the night he disappears.

Speaker 33 They also say Greg's phone is with Megan.

Speaker 35 According to the evidence, where do they go next?

Speaker 10 Their phone records place them at the Myrtle Beach funeral home.

Speaker 54 Chris and Megan have access to that funeral home because of their jobs, right?

Speaker 10 Yes, just based on his position as a deputy coroner and hers as a body transport person, they pretty much had free access to funeral homes.

Speaker 35 What about surveillance? video from the funeral home.

Speaker 10 That would have been wonderful, but life is rarely that easy.

Speaker 19 It wasn't working.

Speaker 35 The cameras at the funeral home weren't working. They were not working.

Speaker 42 Megan and Chris are racking up the frequent flyer miles in interrogation rooms.

Speaker 43 Now the regulars are back in the hot seat.

Speaker 10 They knew that her van had driven into Greg's community and that's certainly information that they used in their interviews.

Speaker 21 Did you ever go to Greg's house?

Speaker 63 No.

Speaker 21 Then can you explain why

Speaker 21 the van you were driving that night hits on a license plate reader going into Arrowhead?

Speaker 12 Well, it shouldn't have.

Speaker 22 I have pictures of it.

Speaker 22 I mean, that's fine, but it shouldn't have.

Speaker 22 But it did.

Speaker 24 Okay, but I can't explain it.

Speaker 22 You were driving the van.

Speaker 55 Well, I can't explain it.

Speaker 35 You and Megan were together the whole night. Megan's van drives into Arrowhead at 10 o'clock that night.

Speaker 22 We could have been by Arrow.

Speaker 56 Does she remember anywhere you would have gone?

Speaker 22 And I'll be totally honest with you, if you're sure you know already, she's giving me a

Speaker 22 while I was driving the car.

Speaker 10 Dantell used this sort of

Speaker 19 oral sex while driving

Speaker 10 as his reason for not being able to tell exactly where they went and when they went.

Speaker 20 I tell you about Arrowhead, about pulling into Arrowhead.

Speaker 56 You say, I don't remember that. I don't know about that one.

Speaker 20 All I can tell you is that I don't have anything to do with Greg being being missed.

Speaker 20 All I am guilty of is getting.

Speaker 35 You know, who has the motive? It's Chris. He has a lot to lose.

Speaker 35 He's got the motive.

Speaker 21 And I think you're covering us something up for him.

Speaker 63 I'm not.

Speaker 62 I mean, we're giving you every opportunity to

Speaker 22 get yourself out of the situation.

Speaker 23 There's nothing for me to get...

Speaker 57 I don't know where he is.

Speaker 67 I feel like I'm being investigated.

Speaker 35 For something investigated.

Speaker 30 For something that I didn't do.

Speaker 62 Chris, you are being investigated. You are.
Absolutely. A thousand percent.

Speaker 35 I hope it's worth it, Megan. I really do.

Speaker 64 I don't have anything to charge you with, but there's no doubt.

Speaker 20 I didn't do anything.

Speaker 29 Well, Chris, I'm going to tell you this.

Speaker 20 If someone asked me to put a bet on it, I would say that you did.

Speaker 42 Without more direct evidence, police let Megan and Chris go.

Speaker 45 Meanwhile, the search for Greg continues, retracing Chris and Megan's steps.

Speaker 66 maybe that body has been cremated let's go check the gas and see if an amount of gas was used that would have represented the burning of a body and there there was nothing to see there no extra gas had been used

Speaker 11 and then weeks go by with no sign of your dad

Speaker 11 It must have been agonizing for you.

Speaker 12 I just wanted him to come back. I just wanted him to be found and be okay

Speaker 12 so that I could go to his house.

Speaker 12 There was just a lot of begging and pleading for him to come back.

Speaker 35 This is the Little Pee Dee River, miles of slow moving water surrounded by natural wildlife. And that makes it a very popular recreational spot for swimming, canoeing, and catfishing.

Speaker 8 For Donna Sue Souls, it's the relaxation and family tradition of catfishing that has brought her here for decades.

Speaker 5 You said you called this your happy place.

Speaker 19 Yes. Why?

Speaker 10 It's just peaceful. It takes all my worries away.

Speaker 44 And then 37 days after Greg Rice's disappearance,

Speaker 45 a discovery.

Speaker 7 So November 7th, 2020.

Speaker 32 How did that day start out?

Speaker 26 Well we come and set up, we set about eight hooks that night and then when we turn around and come back through

Speaker 25 then that's when I mean you could smell the smell.

Speaker 39 All right tell me about the smell.

Speaker 26 It was really bad. It was horrible.

Speaker 43 On a closer look

Speaker 7 what do you see?

Speaker 49 Yeah well

Speaker 10 it looked like the tarp was just laid up there.

Speaker 26 And then

Speaker 26 once you got the paddle and we lifted it, that's when we seen the ratchet straps tied around the bottom parts of the legs. It was like around both and then around the head on the other side.

Speaker 35 What went through your mind?

Speaker 19 Well, I dropped a paddle.

Speaker 16 It scared me.

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 26 I started crying.

Speaker 25 I was like, this can't be true.

Speaker 27 And you were scared?

Speaker 28 Yeah, I was scared.

Speaker 8 The Maryland County Sheriff's Office gets a 911 call.

Speaker 11 Tell me about that.

Speaker 58 We get a call for a,

Speaker 58 some people fishing found

Speaker 58 what they thought was a body. It was a, they found a tarp and they knew something was in the tarp.

Speaker 10 The tarp had black zip ties on either end and then also ratchet straps with cinder blocks securing it, obviously trying to keep the body submerged.

Speaker 37 It sounded like a mafia hit.

Speaker 58 It would seem that way. It would seem that way.
They didn't take into account that when the decomposition starts,

Speaker 58 the gases fill up and it'll actually float.

Speaker 58 Big mistake. Big mistake.

Speaker 10 This body was extremely decomposed. There was always this thought, okay, here's a body, maybe this is Greg Rice.

Speaker 14 Things had to be done, DNA and dental records, to positively ID this person, unfortunately, as Greg Rice. The medical examiner determined that there were positively five gunshot wounds on Greg Rice.

Speaker 14 Investigators start to look at the tarp that Greg's body had been wrapped in and, in fact, discovered that the Lowe's home improvement here in Conway, South Carolina actually sold that particular name brand.

Speaker 14 And they go to that store and they start to inquire, has anybody purchased?

Speaker 14 these items and lo and behold someone had

Speaker 42 But what really blows up this investigation is a piece of evidence that's literally full of hot air.

Speaker 34 Why would you use a plastic glove, Dawd?

Speaker 12 Sex and scandal, and then murder.

Speaker 14 Let me ask you, have you seen anything like this?

Speaker 40 This is a new one for me.

Speaker 30 What am I under arrest for right now that I'm being murdered?

Speaker 29 Murdered.

Speaker 62 Murdered.

Speaker 49 It just was like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 11 You've transported hundreds of bodies in your life, and now here you are involved in a real life murder.

Speaker 36 Has Megan ever told you that she killed Greg?

Speaker 38 I asked her how she knows he's dead.

Speaker 68 She said, why?

Speaker 69 And I asked her, what do you mean? And she just wouldn't say anything.

Speaker 10 They both claimed to be not really knowing how Greg was killed.

Speaker 66 This was a high-profile case with a lot of twists and turns.

Speaker 45 They had a blow-up doll.

Speaker 14 There was a blow-up Betty doll in the front passenger seat.

Speaker 12 My mom could be an evil woman.

Speaker 30 She had threatened to kill me. Felt like for the last five years that I'd been looking in the barrel of Megan Jackson's gun.

Speaker 34 He made this big cry, oh, I'm afraid of her.

Speaker 42 Sounds like a horror movie.

Speaker 43 It's the key.

Speaker 14 I've never seen anything like it in my life. Ever.

Speaker 11 Weeks go by with no sign of your dad.

Speaker 12 I just wanted him to come back.

Speaker 46 Did your mom seem worried about your missing dad?

Speaker 12 Not really.

Speaker 66 The former partner of Megan Jackson is now missing and we've got the idea that there's this affair going on.

Speaker 14 I mean, it's scandalous. Somebody from the coroner's office and somebody from a body transport having an affair.

Speaker 57 Over a month later Greg's body was found along the little PD River.

Speaker 10 Once Greg's remains were recovered there were very specific items found used to wrap his body. Ding, ding, ding.

Speaker 13 How did detectives wind up at this store?

Speaker 14 They wound up at this store because after the murder of Greg Rice, they found Greg Rice's body and he he was wrapped in a tarp.

Speaker 14 And investigators later looked that tarp up and it happened to be a name brand that was sold here.

Speaker 14 And so they did a follow-up on that to see if there was a tarp sold anytime recently.

Speaker 6 Police are able to get a receipt from Lowe's for a tarp, cinder block, zip ties, and a Diet Soda. And that's not all.

Speaker 8 As most of us know, in stores like these, there are security cameras everywhere.

Speaker 14 And when you go back to October 3rd, the video surveillance showed the person buying those items and that person was Christopher Dante.

Speaker 49 He's very relaxed. He's very well dressed in the video.
He's wearing khaki pants and some nice shoes. He buys a Pepsi Zero.

Speaker 49 He's just nonchalantly pushing his cart with his murder dump kit through the line at Lowe's.

Speaker 66 But now you know without a shadow of a doubt that he is involved. He bought all of these things that are used.
There's more work work to be done, but we were certainly on the right path.

Speaker 10 As you drive out to the Little Pee Dee River, you pass the Pee Dee Exchange, just a little gas station convenience store, and you can actually see what we know is Christopher Dantel's vehicle driving past it one way and then returning the other way.

Speaker 10 And that coupled with LPR hits for Dantell's county vehicle really kind of cemented the fact that Christopher Dantell had driven Greg's body out there.

Speaker 54 Convinced that the coroner did a lot more than just sign a death certificate, investigators rush over to the Dantell home.

Speaker 49 Hey, Eric, hey, you're my name's Greg.

Speaker 38 Is Chris home?

Speaker 19 Yes.

Speaker 10 But he was just sleeping in bed, sound asleep, not a care in the world.

Speaker 21 Your wife and children are probably better than you just come off and stop.

Speaker 6 Over the past month, Chris has not provided detectives with much.

Speaker 20 Chris, I know you got some

Speaker 20 questions and probably some things to say. I mean, I like to have my lawyer present.

Speaker 8 But in this case, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Speaker 56 Chris,

Speaker 20 I'm not going to ask you any questions.

Speaker 20 What I do want to do, though,

Speaker 62 is always here.

Speaker 20 Let's do shopping at Lowe's.

Speaker 20 There's the body you threw over the bridge.

Speaker 20 Well, you understand, you're not leaving the building today. You're going to be going to county jail here.

Speaker 30 Okay. What am I under arrest for right now that I'm here?

Speaker 29 Murder. Murder.

Speaker 66 Murder.

Speaker 22 At what point can I speak with my lawyer?

Speaker 31 Can you get them to jail?

Speaker 54 At the same time, Megan Jackson is taken in.

Speaker 22 Well,

Speaker 55 I I don't have anything else to tell you other than what I told you.

Speaker 19 Well, so I can tell you that's not true

Speaker 15 Nobody here thinks you're a bad person

Speaker 62 Nobody thinks

Speaker 62 Happened to Greg.

Speaker 24 You have no motive to Greg

Speaker 62 But Chris does

Speaker 62 So the night of the second you guys were together all night

Speaker 55 Everything that I remember yet.

Speaker 35 Yes. I know you weren't with him on the third between 2:30 and 3 because he called you.

Speaker 35 But I know where Chris was between 2:30 and 3 on that Saturday. We were at a call.
No, you weren't.

Speaker 54 The detectives then confront Megan with some very powerful images.

Speaker 62 So, you say where Chris was

Speaker 40 at 2:55 on Saturday:

Speaker 62 some center blocks, a tarp, zip ties, rapid strap.

Speaker 35 I'm going to show you where I was

Speaker 21 past Saturday.

Speaker 21 There that is.

Speaker 56 Isn't that Greg? That's Greg.

Speaker 22 And guess what?

Speaker 48 He was wrapped in and sunk with in the river. This

Speaker 35 bot in the third. He got two, two, twisted.

Speaker 22 Explain to us what happened.

Speaker 21 That looked like the horrible person who killed their

Speaker 56 kids' father.

Speaker 10 That's who twists.

Speaker 35 You know

Speaker 56 what happened that night.

Speaker 10 At that point, they had enough probable cause and they were able to make those arrests.

Speaker 22 Chris, stand up, turn around.

Speaker 22 Mark Chris,

Speaker 22 where murder credit rice.

Speaker 11 And after your father's body is found, the police come to your house.

Speaker 12 They told us that

Speaker 12 my dad was found and

Speaker 12 my mom and Chris would be

Speaker 11 being charged. That must have been so hard for you to lose your father and then to find out that your mother might be involved.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it was

Speaker 19 a lot.

Speaker 12 Because I just never believed that my mom could do something like that.

Speaker 72 We start with breaking news. Two people have been charged with the murder of a missing man.
Police say Don Tell and Megan Jackson are connected to Rice's death. Both are charged with murder.

Speaker 16 And I was like, oh my gosh,

Speaker 19 what the heck?

Speaker 16 I had no idea.

Speaker 16 I was shocked.

Speaker 57 When we got this information, it was beyond a shocker because Chris Don Tell was a man who we would reach out to for homicide investigations.

Speaker 57 And now you have a deputy coroner who is arrested in a murder case.

Speaker 11 And you had no idea from his behavior that he might be involved.

Speaker 11 No.

Speaker 10 Erica, I really think at that point she still did not want to believe that her husband was having an affair with Megan Jackson. She did not want to believe that he had anything to do with the murder.

Speaker 27 With Chris and Megan now booked in jail, investigators continue to search their homes for any items that may be connected to Greg's death.

Speaker 50 Evidence is booky.

Speaker 11 The police say they saw some very concerning things.

Speaker 3 You buy a pair of socks, that's two socks. You buy a pair of bombas socks, that's four socks.
Because one purchased is one donated.

Speaker 3 Socks are the number one most requested requested clothing item in homeless shelters. So when you buy a pair of super comfortable Bombas socks, you're also donating a pair.

Speaker 3 Bombas customers have powered over 150 million donations. So Bombas would like to thank you 150 million times, but we only have like 30 seconds.

Speaker 3 Go to bombas.com and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com and use code audio at checkout.

Speaker 73 Thank you for calling the Bombas Comfort Line. Bombas make socks, slippers, tees, and underwear made with the highest quality materials.
Press one for comfort, two for style, three for donation.

Speaker 73 You chose style. Bambas is styles for whatever you enjoy.
You can run in bombas, lounge in babas, dress them up, dress them down, but always give back in bombas.

Speaker 73 Because with every item purchased, another is donated. Bambas, comfort worth calling for.
Go to bambas.com/slash audio and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase.

Speaker 73 That's bombbas.com and use code audio.

Speaker 20 The power buttons to the top right.

Speaker 56 This is us.

Speaker 14 When investigators with Horry County PD did a search warrant at Megan Jackson's home,

Speaker 14 she had multiple guns in the home.

Speaker 14 Strangely enough, all of them were accounted for, but they found an empty gun box that was a 22-long rifle pistol that is consistent with the murder weapon in this case.

Speaker 27 As investigators look through the home for evidence, their search takes a drastic new turn.

Speaker 38 She's got bottles in every crevice you can find.

Speaker 12 She drank a lot.

Speaker 10 It was just very clear that she was

Speaker 10 not a good mother.

Speaker 4 It's like a doomsday ring. We've got a code lock.

Speaker 10 There was a lock on the pantry door, so the children did not have free access to food.

Speaker 33 And then investigators head up the stairs to Megan's 13-year-old daughter's bedroom.

Speaker 29 What did the police find out about that?

Speaker 19 Well, they

Speaker 12 found out that she had an alarm on her door.

Speaker 35 An alarm.

Speaker 12 If she was to open the door, it would beep.

Speaker 12 Eventually it just got worse.

Speaker 10 Their doors had locks that were turned to the outside so that they would not be able to open their doors from the inside.

Speaker 49 The windows. They were nailed shut

Speaker 49 and then spray foam insulation was sprayed around the windows.

Speaker 35 It was like a prison.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 19 Yes.

Speaker 12 Pretty much.

Speaker 49 She would essentially lock them in the room so that she could go and she would go to work or do whatever she was going to do.

Speaker 16 She was busy doing this job and obviously involved with Chris. I felt bad for Savannah that she always had to be in charge.

Speaker 12 I was the parent of the house while living with my mom because she was never home.

Speaker 12 And on the weekends would be the times I would go to my dad's, but it would be also the only times I could actually have free time and hang out with my friends.

Speaker 29 So you didn't go to your dad's?

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 12 It's one of the things that I regret most in my life.

Speaker 12 Because I should have and I could have, but I didn't.

Speaker 35 And

Speaker 19 I really regret that.

Speaker 14 The situation in Megan's home besides murder was so concerning that Megan's children were placed into emergency protective custody.

Speaker 10 As a result of what investigators saw, she was charged with four counts of unlawful conduct toward a child.

Speaker 49 Nothing at all to do with the murder or the arrest for the murder. It was totally separate.

Speaker 35 Days after Greg's body is discovered, a bartender at this restaurant sees Chris and Megan's mug shots on the local news, and she remembers serving them rum drinks one night at the bar and overhearing a conversation Chris and Megan were having with a fellow patron.

Speaker 35 So the conversation they were having.

Speaker 67 They were normal conversation like what do you do? They explained well he explained that he was a coroner and she transports bodies and he was like that's got to be a weird job.

Speaker 67 Small talk like that. Later on it got into conversations about their families.
She started going into great details about how much she hates her kids, how she never wanted them.

Speaker 67 She said, I think about killing them all the time.

Speaker 11 The bartender says she overhears Megan making some disturbing comments about her family.

Speaker 30 I had heard Megan say the same things,

Speaker 35 but

Speaker 30 I didn't believe

Speaker 30 Megan would actually do that. I chalked it up to the alcohol.

Speaker 42 And a week after their arrests, Megan and Chris have their bond hearings.

Speaker 35 Prosecutors decide to try Megan first on the more serious murder charges.

Speaker 57 Megan and Chris were ultimately let out on bond, but they were on house arrest.

Speaker 10 One of the standard conditions is no contact with the co-defendants, no contact with the victims. In this case, for Megan Jackson, it would have been her children.

Speaker 64 Chris loses his job with the coroner's office.

Speaker 40 And now, armed with an ankle monitor, he returns back home where his wife is waiting.

Speaker 14 At his bond hearing, they said, you know, we've got Mr. Dantell on footage at Lowe's buying, you know, the things that Greg was found in.

Speaker 19 Now, are you a little more suspicious?

Speaker 14 Yeah, so then I was like,

Speaker 28 that doesn't sound good.

Speaker 41 Do you confront him then?

Speaker 19 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 39 Were you angry?

Speaker 19 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 46 How did he explain it?

Speaker 19 Just that.

Speaker 14 It was a perfect storm of just bad decisions and bad situations. And you know

Speaker 14 it crossed the line for the affair.

Speaker 42 And essentially their job, the circumstances of their job made it easy to hide the affair.

Speaker 54 So now Chris and Megan are back home living just a few blocks away from each other but they're barred from having any contact.

Speaker 66 I was fielding calls weekly from people in the community.

Speaker 66 Both of them continuously broke those bonds.

Speaker 10 Their ankle monitors were appearing at the same place at the same time.

Speaker 49 They said they were getting together to exchange Christmas presents at one point.

Speaker 65 He's out on bail, but he's still communicating with Megan.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 14 I found the cell phone. The only contact in it was a nickname, but I knew it was Megan.

Speaker 14 And I was like, after all this, you're still talking to her.

Speaker 64 Personal drama aside, as investigators prepare to bring these cozy co-defendants to trial, they discover a silent witness.

Speaker 14 Megan calls it Blow Up Betty.

Speaker 14 Let me ask you,

Speaker 14 have you seen anything like this?

Speaker 37 Not with a coroner and body transport people.

Speaker 40 No, this is a new one for me.

Speaker 14 So I get involved as an investigator here at the solicitor's office after their arrest. And we start looking at the evidence we have,

Speaker 14 clearing things up, and making a timeline a little more crispy.

Speaker 42 Where are we driving into now?

Speaker 14 We're in Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve. It's a recreational area.

Speaker 14 Hours before Greg Rice went missing,

Speaker 14 Megan and Chris drive into the preserve.

Speaker 49 They had them on camera going in and out of that area.

Speaker 11 What happened at the preserve?

Speaker 30 Prior to anything happening with Greg, Megan had an

Speaker 30 interest in guns and shooting. She would shoot in the woods and on this particular day, we went to the nature preserve.
Megan wanted to go shoot.

Speaker 37 What was she shooting at?

Speaker 30 She would shoot at everything from tree stumps to pieces of paper that she would fold up, just random things.

Speaker 14 There's a still image on a license plate reader that you can see

Speaker 14 Megan leaving with this object in the front passenger seat of her vehicle.

Speaker 14 It was revealed that it was a blow-up doll

Speaker 14 and the doll had a name, Blow-Up Betty.

Speaker 14 Betty?

Speaker 41 What was it used for?

Speaker 14 At the moment, we don't know. Your guess? My guess is for target practice on this day.

Speaker 8 So Blow-Up Betty is no more.

Speaker 14 I would surmise she probably isn't.

Speaker 19 Was there a blow-up doll involved in all this?

Speaker 30 Not that is relevant to the case. Megan was

Speaker 30 a unique individual, and

Speaker 42 you don't know why.

Speaker 30 No,

Speaker 30 that was just one of many eccentric diseases about her.

Speaker 39 And investigators uncover more shocking details about Megan's personal life.

Speaker 14 Before Greg Weiss went missing, Erica Dantell began to receive anonymous text messages that said, Hey, your husband has gotten somebody pregnant.

Speaker 27 It turns out what was said in those mysterious text messages was actually true.

Speaker 31 Megan, she goes, Before anyone else tells you, I want to let you know that I'm pregnant.

Speaker 47 Oh, Megan.

Speaker 49 Why are you just getting in deeper? She told Christopher Dantell that she was pregnant, and then she had told people that she had a miscarriage. She did have a baby eventually.

Speaker 38 There has never been a paternity test. Chris, of course, just accepted paternity.

Speaker 8 The baby was eventually placed in the care of a family friend.

Speaker 66 Our office is no stranger to really high-profile cases throughout the state. And this was a high-profile case with a lot of twists and turns.

Speaker 38 This was an incredibly circumstantial evidence case against both of them. The problem was what they were missing and what they didn't know.

Speaker 49 Because of the lack of physical evidence, the lack of a crime scene, one of the things that as prosecutors we always knew we needed was for one of these co-defendants to tell us what happened, to testify against the other one.

Speaker 10 We signed what we call a proffer letter saying if you cooperate, if you testify truthfully, there may be either a reduction in charges or perhaps a reduction in sentence.

Speaker 62 Y'all sure you don't know anything? Yeah.

Speaker 13 With a lawyer present, Chris Dantell meets with investigators and vows to tell the truth.

Speaker 45 about what happened.

Speaker 14 So Chris says that on this night when they went to the Myrtle Beach funeral home after they'd had dinner, that Megan had left some reading glasses.

Speaker 22 She said, I need to go see Greg.

Speaker 15 So she leaves.

Speaker 22 I stayed at Myrtle Beach Funeral Home. I did not leave.

Speaker 10 Dantell tells us Megan Jackson left for a bit, came back.

Speaker 22 She said, We have to go. I said, Is Greg here? She said, No, but we have to go.

Speaker 68 She was shaking.

Speaker 22 I never saw Greg that night.

Speaker 30 We left.

Speaker 10 And the next day it's like, you have to go get rid of the body.

Speaker 22 I asked her how she knows he's dead.

Speaker 22 She said, why?

Speaker 56 It doesn't matter.

Speaker 22 Has Megan ever told you that she killed Greg?

Speaker 22 I've asked her so many times because I wanted answers myself because I've had to answer to this and my life's been ruined because of this.

Speaker 10 He was not really knowing how Greg was killed or when he was killed.

Speaker 27 Prosecutors don't believe Chris is telling the truth.

Speaker 8 And when he refuses to take a polygraph, they turn to Plan B,

Speaker 64 Megan Jackson.

Speaker 54 What does she have to say?

Speaker 10 This is the part that I didn't tell the truth on.

Speaker 11 Chris had a favorite song, a Keith Urban song.

Speaker 14 Only You Can Love Me This Way.

Speaker 14 One night that Chris asked maybe his girlfriend, it was at the Keith Urban concert, and that song was playing.

Speaker 11 You still hear that song?

Speaker 17 Still listen to it?

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 42 Chris Dantell has been in jail for violating the terms of his bond on numerous occasions for having contact with Megan Jackson. I remember that.

Speaker 27 But his wife Erica has continued to stick by his side.

Speaker 14 So this is a photo from Charlie's preschool graduation.

Speaker 14 And that was our last family photo altogether before his bond was revoked. So just how little they were.
I mean, I thought they're different people now. They're so big.

Speaker 11 And the children, do they know that something's not right in the house?

Speaker 14 Yeah,

Speaker 14 they do not know where he is or the situation.

Speaker 11 You were trying to protect your kid.

Speaker 14 And I never thought that he'd be gone as long as he has been caught.

Speaker 8 Megan Jackson was in and out of jail as well for breaking bond conditions.

Speaker 13 And as pressure mounts, prosecutors offer Megan a chance to tell her side of the story through her own proffer.

Speaker 10 Some people call it queen for a day. Like, this is your opportunity.
You tell us everything, and we'll see if it's worthwhile.

Speaker 22 We're here today because you, through your attorney, have requested to come talk to us today. Okay, you are to provide us any and all information in a truthful manner.

Speaker 22 Should I start from the beginning?

Speaker 10 Megan Jackson says that Dantell had badgered her into luring Greg to the funeral home so that Dantell could confront Greg over spilling news of the affair. This is the part that

Speaker 10 I didn't tell the truth on.

Speaker 55 I went to pick up Greg.

Speaker 55 He got out of the car. went into Myrtle Beach funeral home and I gave him a couple minutes.
As I got out of the car,

Speaker 55 Chris started coming out the door. And then I said, well, where's Greg? And he said, he wouldn't talk to me.
He went out the front.

Speaker 10 She says that when she brings Greg back to the funeral home, she just sort of sends him in on his own and then never sees him again.

Speaker 10 That Dantell told her he had simply walked off in anger and that was it.

Speaker 10 When did you

Speaker 21 learn that Greg does dead?

Speaker 55 After you showed me the body.

Speaker 22 So, Chris never told you?

Speaker 55 Not until several weeks after.

Speaker 10 They both claim to be not really knowing how Greg was killed or when he was killed.

Speaker 10 They're both saying, I didn't have anything to do with it, but there's enough that maybe you should think the other person did it.

Speaker 22 Did you shoot Greg Rice? No. Were you present when Greg Rice was killed? No.

Speaker 22 Part of your agreement that you have is that you're consenting to a polygraph.

Speaker 38 What this case, I think, eventually just turned into is finger pointing. And, you know, she failed the polygraph.

Speaker 10 We were trying to get one of the defendants to testify against the other. We met with Megan Jackson, and it never got to the point where we believed we could ethically put her on the stand.

Speaker 10 We are putting up someone who is going to lie. And we said, okay, well, We listed them both for trial.

Speaker 66 A judge decided that the two trials had to be split.

Speaker 10 Megan Jackson's attorneys got a continuance, so we said, fine, we'll go forward with Christopher Dontell.

Speaker 49 We had a pretty rock-solid case for accessory after the fact to murder. He was on the tape at Lowe's buying the body dump kit.

Speaker 49 So we made the decision to go forward on both charges, the murder and the accessory after the fact to murder.

Speaker 57 Chris did not go to trial until about four years after the crimes were committed.

Speaker 9 We're going to go ahead and end this trial.

Speaker 49 We had picked a jury. I was actually doing the opening statement and I was halfway out of my chair when Christopher Dantel's attorney stood up.

Speaker 66 And the defense attorney says, Judge, we've got a matter we need to approach.

Speaker 49 Christopher Dantel's attorney said he'd like to plead guilty.

Speaker 49 We immediately hit pause for the trial.

Speaker 49 What in the world is going on? What's he trying to do here?

Speaker 74 The major turn of events just two days into the murder trial for former Horry County Deputy Coroner Chris Dantell.

Speaker 57 It was a really big deal. I mean, reporters were ready for a week of trial.

Speaker 19 All right, hold on, we're going to just put a microphone on here.

Speaker 57 And then all of a sudden, he just pleads guilty.

Speaker 14 For him to do that was quite shocking, but at the same time, he did not plead guilty to murder.

Speaker 38 He pled to accessory after the fact and conspiracy to commit murder.

Speaker 70 Hello, Chris.

Speaker 11 Hello. I'm John Kenyonis.

Speaker 11 Why is it it so important for you to speak with me today?

Speaker 30 The most important reason is so that the Rice family can get closure. The first day I met with my lawyer when I told her that I would plead to whatever I'm guilty of

Speaker 30 if I can help bring closure to those kids. And I've never even hurt someone, let alone murdered someone.

Speaker 38 As soon as he entered the plea, we sat down with the prosecutors and told them the story with the actual missing pieces that he was able to fill in for them.

Speaker 57 After he took the plea, Chris says that he will testify against Megan Jackson in her trial.

Speaker 30 I'm afraid of her because I watched her kill the father or kid.

Speaker 12 I actually found out about Chris's plea, and that's when I called. I said that I wanted to testify against my mom.

Speaker 69 I asked her, What do you mean? And she just wouldn't say anything.

Speaker 13 June 2025.

Speaker 27 All eyes are now on the Horry County Courthouse, where Megan Jackson's trial begins five years after the murder of the father of her children, Greg Rice.

Speaker 14 This case was a big deal. There was a lot of media buzz.

Speaker 74 A trial is currently underway for a woman charged in the 2020 murder of a 46-year-old man.

Speaker 57 Mary Ellen Walter and Lee Waller are the prosecutors in the case. Mary Ellen is known to be a bulldog trial attorney.

Speaker 75 I don't see how it's not relevant, quite frankly.

Speaker 57 And Lee is also a very hardworking prosecutor.

Speaker 14 It's the story of an affair, a pregnancy, and a murder.

Speaker 75 There's one person at the center of everything, and that person is Megan Jacks.

Speaker 10 She may look meek and mild, but she is a master manipulator. She was literally in the business of death.

Speaker 10 Megan Jackson was represented by the Britton family, Tommy Britton, the father, and then Case and Preston Britton, his sons.

Speaker 17 I'd like to see a murder weapon.

Speaker 35 Don't have it.

Speaker 36 Don't have any eyewitness testimony.

Speaker 35 I don't have any of that direct evidence.

Speaker 7 The stuff that a murder case should have.

Speaker 13 The very first witness for the prosecution, Megan Jackson's own teenaged daughter, Savannah Rice.

Speaker 10 We felt it important to open with Savannah because anytime you have a child testifying against their parent, that sends a strong message.

Speaker 10 And Savannah, I know you're nervous, I get it.

Speaker 11 And how much time had passed since you saw your mom that day in the courtroom?

Speaker 12 Almost five years.

Speaker 11 What did she look like?

Speaker 69 She just looked

Speaker 19 hollow.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 just having her sit in front of me

Speaker 12 it made me uneasy.

Speaker 12 She had come home drunk one night

Speaker 69 and I was in the kitchen and my sister wasn't she was she wasn't behaving and I told my mom and she started screaming and my sister was upstairs but then she looked at me and she said I hope what happened to your dad happens to your sister And I asked her, what do you mean?

Speaker 19 And she just wouldn't say anything.

Speaker 11 What would drive her mom to say that about a daughter?

Speaker 12 My mom could be an evil woman.

Speaker 11 This is your mother.

Speaker 9 And then the prosecution's star witness.

Speaker 51 Chris Dontell takes the stand to tell the jury his version of what happened that night.

Speaker 5 I drove her man.

Speaker 30 We drove toward Greg's apartment.

Speaker 48 I saw Greg on the road walking.

Speaker 19 I pulled up a few feet, stopped, and

Speaker 48 she opened the door and in one motion spun out of the seat, pulled a gun out and shot him

Speaker 30 over and over.

Speaker 30 I didn't see it coming.

Speaker 19 Neither did he.

Speaker 30 We picked him up out of the road and put him onto the stretcher that was in the back of her van.

Speaker 11 You've transported hundreds of bodies in your life, and now here you are involved in a real-life murder.

Speaker 53 Correct.

Speaker 70 And you drove to the funeral home as if this was just another corpse.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 30 My emotions were high, but they handled the body just like would any other body.

Speaker 14 They had all the tools in the world to assist them. in this.
You know, they had a body transport van, they had a funeral home, they had a cooler.

Speaker 30 I made a cremation container and I put it into the cooler and pushed the stretcher up next to it and started to push Greg in.

Speaker 30 I went to Lowe's sometime during the day.

Speaker 11 Did you realize there were security cameras there?

Speaker 11 I did.

Speaker 42 Tracking you behind the title.

Speaker 11 I mean, the cinder block, ratchet straps.

Speaker 30 Yeah, you've got to remember this is not something that I've ever been involved with. I had no plan.

Speaker 35 Chris tells the jury that the following night he heads back here to a place he knows very well, the Myrtle Beach Funeral Home, to dispose of Greg Rice's body.

Speaker 44 I waited till it was dark.

Speaker 30 I unfolded the tarp that I had purchased. I put in my explorer.

Speaker 48 I started out toward the river.

Speaker 30 I went back to the middle of the bridge,

Speaker 30 popped the back gate of the explorer.

Speaker 30 Took about 10 seconds.

Speaker 62 Put them in the lock.

Speaker 17 Megan's lawyers try to discredit Chris Dantell as dishonest and an admitted liar.

Speaker 35 You have lied to the police throughout this process.

Speaker 19 Correct.

Speaker 35 So what stopped you from going to one of your acquaintances and telling them what happened?

Speaker 30 The fact that your client told me that if I did that, she would kill me. And I had watched her kill the father of her kids, so I believed her.

Speaker 35 You were still having sex with baby Jackson afterwards.

Speaker 30 Correct, for a period.

Speaker 45 You could have said what happened, and you didn't.

Speaker 17 That family suffered for more than four years.

Speaker 30 She had threatened to kill me.

Speaker 17 But after she was jailed, she couldn't kill you.

Speaker 30 She kept getting out on bond. I felt like for the last five years, I'd been looking in the barrel of Megan Jackson's gun.

Speaker 34 He made this big cry, oh, I'm so, I'm afraid of her.

Speaker 16 Why did he continue to communicate with her? That's a bunch of lying.

Speaker 16 That's crazy.

Speaker 10 You know, there's the danger that the jury does not believe everything that Don Tell says, so how can we show them that the investigation has corroborated everything he said?

Speaker 10 And that's where Lieutenant Wells came in.

Speaker 76 My name is Benjamin Wells. I do digital forensics and digital extractions on mobile devices.

Speaker 57 Erica learns in a really shocking way that her husband is having an affair through anonymous text messages.

Speaker 76 Erica Dante believed that these anonymous texts were coming from Greg Rice.

Speaker 35 Through the analysis of her cell phone, it was able to be proved that Megan Jackson was the actual one sending these to to Erica Dante.

Speaker 14 They were created on her phone. They were all sent by her.

Speaker 76 That was the aha moment like wow she really is trying to you know frame Greg and this is it.

Speaker 11 Why would she tell you that she's pregnant by your husband?

Speaker 14 I think she thought oh I'll tell you this you'll leave him and then she'd have him

Speaker 14 and then that didn't work because I stayed.

Speaker 5 When it's the defense's turn, they call no witnesses.

Speaker 8 Instead, Megan's lawyers point the finger directly at Chris Dantell

Speaker 8 in closing arguments.

Speaker 48 The only person that actually has a motive to get rid of Greg Rice

Speaker 46 is Chris Dantell.

Speaker 7 And can you trust him?

Speaker 51 Two fates will be sealed.

Speaker 71 As to the charge of murder, weigh the jury.

Speaker 35 And a young woman confronts the demons who will never be able to live a normal life.

Speaker 27 Of her past.

Speaker 11 Is there anything you would want to tell your mother?

Speaker 9 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I understand the jury's reached verdict.
Is that correct?

Speaker 14 Every time a jury deliberates, you wonder how long it's going to take. But I don't think they deliberated that long on this case, truly.

Speaker 71 As to the charge of murder, we the jury, by unanimous consent, find this defendant guilty.

Speaker 19 and then you hear the word guilty

Speaker 19 relief

Speaker 70 yeah

Speaker 12 also a little bit of heartbreak it is my mom

Speaker 15 the woman charged in the 2020 murder of 46 year old gregory rice will now spend the rest of her life in prison and as for megan's outstanding charges of child neglect

Speaker 51 Those charges were dismissed.

Speaker 10 She's doing life in prison, so why put the children through that if we're not going to gain anything?

Speaker 46 A month later, it's now Chris Dantell's turn to be sentenced.

Speaker 59 How are you feeling? All right.

Speaker 17 What do you think will happen?

Speaker 12 Yeah, I just hope that he gets the time that he deserves.

Speaker 12 He hugged me as I cried and begged for my dad to come back. He told me it would be okay and that we would find my dad.
He didn't tell me that we would find him dead.

Speaker 33 His wife, hoping Chris will walk out free on time, served.

Speaker 14 Megan Jackson infiltrated all areas of our lives and became the literal Antichrist to our family.

Speaker 44 To simply keep saying I'm sorry just doesn't feel right.

Speaker 30 And I don't know that I can effectively articulate the depth of the combination of love, pain, regret, and compassion I feel for those kids.

Speaker 19 and for everyone who loved Greg.

Speaker 14 Christopher Dantel ended up being sentenced to 15 years for accessory after the fact and another five years for conspiracy and for those to run consecutive.

Speaker 42 Your reaction to what happened in court?

Speaker 30 Obviously, I'm not happy about it. I was sentenced to the maximum.

Speaker 39 If you could talk to Megan, what would you say to her?

Speaker 30 I have nothing to say to her. There's a lot of victims in this case.

Speaker 30 Gregory Rice and his family.

Speaker 30 My family.

Speaker 19 And you?

Speaker 30 I believe so.

Speaker 39 With that 20-year sentence, Chris's wife, Erica, needs to have a long-delayed conversation with her two young children.

Speaker 14 They thought that he was away for work, and so I told them that he was, in fact, in jail. That's where he had been.
And then just kind of explained the story the best I could.

Speaker 53 I spoke with Megan on the phone, and she told me that she did not shoot Greg Rice, the father of her children.

Speaker 53 She denies those child abuse allegations, saying that she loves her children very much.

Speaker 8 And in a letter to 2020, Megan writes, Chris Dantell is a liar. What he said on the stand is a lie.

Speaker 11 Is there anything you would want to tell your mother?

Speaker 56 Or ask your mom?

Speaker 12 I just want her to tell me why she did what she did.

Speaker 12 And to tell her that I hate her, because

Speaker 41 that's a strong word, hate.

Speaker 19 Yeah,

Speaker 19 I hate that woman. I hate her.

Speaker 35 Greg and Megan's youngest children are now being raised by their older half-brother, Zach, Greg's son from a previous relationship, while Savannah lives on her own in Ohio.

Speaker 54 But recently, Savannah found herself back on the shores of Myrtle Beach, where she still has her fond memories of surfing with her dad and his best friend, Ryan.

Speaker 20 This was a board that I had designed to surf with Greg.

Speaker 56 And I would like to give it to Savannah so she can at least use it and enjoy it.

Speaker 11 Your dad,

Speaker 29 what would you tell him?

Speaker 19 Did I love him?

Speaker 12 And that I want him to know that, like, I'm okay.

Speaker 12 There was a point in time living in that house where I thought I was never gonna get out. No matter how hard

Speaker 12 and horrible your environment can be, you can always make it out and you can turn your life around and be the person that you want to be.

Speaker 29 I think he would be very proud of you.

Speaker 29 Thank you.

Speaker 77 Such a brave young woman. Savannah's brother has filed a civil, wrongful death suit against those responsible for killing their father, Greg Rice.

Speaker 36 Greg Rice's ex, Megan Jackson, is appealing her murder conviction. That's her program for tonight.
Thanks for watching.

Speaker 35 I'm David Bure.

Speaker 77 And I'm Deborah Roberts from All of Us here at 2020 and ABC News.

Speaker 10 Good night.

Speaker 6 I'm John Quinones.

Speaker 68 Vanessa Guillen, a 20-year-old soldier, vanishes while on duty at an Army base in Texas. Her family demands answers.

Speaker 59 How can she go missing on a military base?

Speaker 60 That's ridiculous. The search goes on for months.

Speaker 60 Where is Vanessa?

Speaker 59 And a dark story starts to unfold.

Speaker 34 She told her family that she was being sexually harassed and wasn't reporting it out of fear of retribution and retaliation.

Speaker 6 What investigators finally uncover is horrifying.

Speaker 4 Find out how one soldier, a beloved sister and daughter, ignited a movement and sparked a reckoning in the the U.S. military.

Speaker 68 Listen to Vanished: What happened to Vanessa, a new series from ABC Audio in 2020?

Speaker 60 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.