Secrets in the Mist

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Speaker 15 A hopelessness. You know, where did she go? Who did she see?

Speaker 15 I just want to know what happened to my sister.

Speaker 17 A young mother is missing in a case gone cold.

Speaker 18 It was so important to me to know the truth behind that evening.

Speaker 17 Then detectives had an aha moment.

Speaker 16 To solve the case, they would turn to something you probably use every day.

Speaker 22 Facebook.

Speaker 23 Why don't you establish a Facebook account? I thought that could actually accomplish a great deal.

Speaker 20 And that's when everything started to change.

Speaker 15 Something happened to her.

Speaker 17 In court, you'll see it all come pouring out. A hidden crime and a son's heart-pounding moment.

Speaker 25 This is a horrible crime.

Speaker 18 I'm glad we know the truth.

Speaker 26 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 20 What were the secrets in the mist?

Speaker 27 January 2013, Point Vicente, California.

Speaker 29 The wet, gray morning cold has settled in to stay.

Speaker 32 At noon, a police boat sets off into the pea soup fog.

Speaker 34 The Hail Mary pass, apparently a slim chance to find the truth at last.

Speaker 29 But why out there?

Speaker 36 Why, after all those lost 30 years?

Speaker 38 Maybe some cases are destined to stay cold, easier that way.

Speaker 5 Before they came along with their wild ideas about murder and Facebook of all things.

Speaker 9 And now this, their doomed errand into the fog.

Speaker 14 Her name was Carol Jean Meyer, though she was Carol Lubon when all this happened back in March 1981.

Speaker 10 The night of the slamming doors, the harsh words, the car roaring away.

Speaker 32 And it's an old story anyway. Pretty girl gets pregnant at 15, marries the guy.

Speaker 44 Pretty soon she's at 20-something with two kids and a hankering to live.

Speaker 26 Really live for a change.

Speaker 44 And this particular pretty girl?

Speaker 15 She was fun. She was outgoing.
She had a lot of friends.

Speaker 3 She had these two sisters. Terry was the younger one.

Speaker 46 Gail the older.

Speaker 47 We were very close and made each other laugh all the time.

Speaker 5 But Carol Luvon wasn't laughing at the end of March, 81.

Speaker 14 For one thing, she wanted to be somebody, her own somebody.

Speaker 15 I know that Carol wanted to complete school and further her career, and that's when she went back to study architecture.

Speaker 35 Sure, her husband was a nice kid, and she loved him once with all the intensity of first love.

Speaker 48 The handsome high school football player who'd hang around on her front porch.

Speaker 15 His friends would come over. I thought that was kind of cool.
All his football athlete friends.

Speaker 2 Dear Mike stepped up and married her after the baby was born.

Speaker 15 He was a good father.

Speaker 47 He just seemed to really enjoy his kids.

Speaker 32 Enjoyed Carol's family, too, especially her dad, Milt.

Speaker 47 So Mike became kind of like his son.

Speaker 14 Milt brought young Mike into the family house painting business.

Speaker 47 We just took to him immediately.

Speaker 47 Everybody felt that way about Mike, his friends, everybody. He was always a very likable person.

Speaker 5 Friendly, loyal, but not exactly ambitious.

Speaker 14 He didn't seem to mind at all settling down to a modest existence, them and the two kids all cramped up in a two-bedroom, one-bath house in Torrance.

Speaker 11 But Carol did mind it very much.

Speaker 47 I think she may have outgrown him somewhat.

Speaker 32 She'd had a secret affair by then, maybe more than one. She got herself a cute little red car, an Audi Fox, ordered personalized plate, CJ's Fox.

Speaker 51 The car is long gone now, so we did this one up to look just like it.

Speaker 51 And quite often she'd get in her little car alone and go roaring off to school or to meat markets like the local Red Onion was back then.

Speaker 15 I know she was going to the Red Onion. I never went there with her, so I don't know what she was like.

Speaker 10 She had another corner of her life that you

Speaker 37 weren't part of. Yeah.

Speaker 34 And then that night in March, kids off to bed.

Speaker 6 Their son, Mike Jr., was just a boy, 10 years old.

Speaker 18 I was in bed. I had just got a new stereo for my 10th birthday and I was listening to the headphones.

Speaker 53 From his bed, he could see something happening out in the hallway.

Speaker 18 I remember them getting into an argument, which was unusual.

Speaker 52 Because they just didn't.

Speaker 18 Not that I knew of. And I remember her marching past and going out the front door and slamming the door.

Speaker 34 You heard the slam.

Speaker 18 I heard the slam of the front door. I know that.

Speaker 7 And the next morning.

Speaker 18 We got up and she wasn't there.

Speaker 43 Mike Sr.

Speaker 44 told Carol's dad that Carol had demanded he sign papers to sell their house and he didn't want to.

Speaker 5 And she got mad and they argued and he went to bed.

Speaker 1 And when he woke up in the morning, she was just gone.

Speaker 47 So we just assumed she needed to get away for a few days. But as the days went on, we got extremely worried.

Speaker 54 Nearly a week after Carol departed, Her red Audi fox showed up in the parking lot of the red onion, dusty as if it had been there a while.

Speaker 18 I remember being upset about it. She was gone and I didn't know where she went.

Speaker 7 They drove around, looking for her, went to bars, Carol's picture in hand.

Speaker 55 And?

Speaker 15 Nobody had seen her.

Speaker 56 What feeling went with that?

Speaker 15 A hopelessness.

Speaker 15 You know, where did she go? Who did she see?

Speaker 3 The Torrance Police Department opened a file, but they couldn't answer any of the questions.

Speaker 1 Like, had she just finally gotten fed up with Mike and this little place and gone off to start new life somewhere else?

Speaker 57 Or had she been in an accident or something worse?

Speaker 3 More than a week after Carol disappeared, there was still absolutely no sign of her.

Speaker 57 And then something strange happened here at the house, something very strange.

Speaker 57 Could it be that Carol, unbeknownst to anyone, sneaked back in here when nobody else was around?

Speaker 8 Imagine what it was like back then in that little house.

Speaker 34 Mike thinking things over.

Speaker 34 On a hunt, she said, he placed tape on Carol's dresser drawers, a little trap.

Speaker 32 One day he took the kids to Universal Studios, and sure enough, when they returned, he noticed the tape was broken, and some mail on the counter was moved as well.

Speaker 32 A few weeks later, it happened again.

Speaker 34 Some of Carol's clothes went missing, along with some money.

Speaker 14 from a place no burglar would know to look, under the butter dish in the refrigerator, where Mike said he and Carol kept $100 in emergency cash, and now $60 was missing.

Speaker 52 Just like Carol, said her sister Gail.

Speaker 47 She would have not taken all of it. That was in Carol's personality, to just be very fair.

Speaker 45 Made sense then.

Speaker 34 And then there were those mysterious phone calls.

Speaker 15 We'd get the calls on special days, her birthday, my birthday.

Speaker 15 My grandmother would get calls.

Speaker 13 And just silence on the other end.

Speaker 53 Yeah.

Speaker 44 What did you do?

Speaker 15 We would say, Carol, we love you. We hope you come back.
We felt like she was finding a happier life somewhere.

Speaker 13 And understood that to make that successful, she might have to make a complete and total break.

Speaker 31 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Almost three months after Carol vanished, the detective handling her case put it in the inactive file.

Speaker 34 In his report, he wrote, no foul play involved.

Speaker 18 I remember thinking about her all the time, and I used to play records over and over that she liked. And

Speaker 27 just thinking where is she where when is she coming back eventually mike started dating a 19 year old named carrie brought her into the fold

Speaker 41 we were happy that mike was going on with life and so they did all go on with life

Speaker 14 and many years went by

Speaker 3 until the morning in a whole new millennium when a torrents detective happened on the case of the missing young mother and somewhere in the back of his brain, a little light turned on.

Speaker 54 I just had a hunch that this just didn't sound right to me.

Speaker 21 Coming up, doubts about Carol's disappearance grow, and others also would have suspicions about what really happened. Later, they turn to a surprising source to help solve the mystery.

Speaker 23 Why don't you establish a Facebook account for Carol?

Speaker 17 Would they find the answer on Facebook?

Speaker 12 In March of 1981, Carol Lubon, a lovely young mother of two, known to be unhappy in her marriage, suddenly vanished, departed for parts unknown, leaving behind not just her husband, Mike, but her son, Mike Jr., then just 10 years old.

Speaker 18 I never felt that my mother abandoned me. I was never upset with her.
Ever. Really? I never thought she did.
I don't know why. I just was upset she wasn't there.

Speaker 18 I thought she would be there, show up at a graduation or something.

Speaker 59 I always thought, well, she could show up. She could show up.

Speaker 41 But she didn't.

Speaker 14 And at family gatherings, as the years went by, Thanksgiving, Christmases, That awful question, why would she leave them?

Speaker 7 Remained the unmentionable elephant in the room.

Speaker 18 When it came to my family, I think they didn't talk about it because they figured it would upset me or my sister, so they just kind of like, it was a taboo subject. They didn't really talk about her.

Speaker 15 My family's pretty closed to talking about heavy things. So something like that, rarely talked about.

Speaker 5 It was an ultimate heavy thing. Yeah.

Speaker 26 Could you see it in your mother's eyes?

Speaker 54 Or your father's?

Speaker 15 In my father's for sure.

Speaker 52 What would you see there?

Speaker 15 A lot of emotion, a lot of sadness. I'm going to cry thinking about it.

Speaker 40 In 1987, almost six years after Carol vanished, the Torrance Police Department revisited the case, and time seemed to have altered Mike's memory a little.

Speaker 34 A few more details had come back to him.

Speaker 34 Remember, soon after Carol vanished, Mike said they argued.

Speaker 8 He went to sleep alone, woke up in the morning early, and she was gone.

Speaker 10 But in 1987, he remembered they argued, went to bed together.

Speaker 1 She got up at 5.30 in the morning to go to the bathroom. He woke up, then drifted back to sleep and woke up to the sound of a car engine starting and driving away.

Speaker 1 Odd, but memories do play tricks.

Speaker 3 Anyway, it didn't seem terribly significant, so the case went back into the file and got colder.

Speaker 4 Mike took over the house painting business from Carol's dad and went on to marry Carrie and have two more sons.

Speaker 34 Cale and Terry raised their own families and it was having babies that started to change Terry's way of looking at her sister's disappearance.

Speaker 15 As unhappy as you might be in your life,

Speaker 15 you might leave your husband, you would take your kids with you.

Speaker 13 And so when you began to suspect that she wouldn't leave her children,

Speaker 57 what did that mean to you?

Speaker 15 That something happened to her.

Speaker 48 In 1996, 15 years since they'd heard from Carol, the police came around again.

Speaker 14 This time they scanned the Lubon's backyard with ground-penetrating radar, even dug up the ground.

Speaker 45 Didn't find a thing.

Speaker 43 Funny thing, though, about four months later, the local paper, the Daily Breeze, did a little story, interviewed Mike, and This time his memory was slightly different.

Speaker 26 He remembered that on that terrible morning when Carol left, he heard the garage door go up before she drove away.

Speaker 49 Just one more little detail, though nothing profoundly different.

Speaker 32 And of course, no evidence whatsoever of any crime.

Speaker 38 Case went away again.

Speaker 6 And then one day in 2002, a detective named Walt Del Sine was rummaging through some cabinets behind his sergeant's desk.

Speaker 54 I was just being nosy. I thought, what is this?

Speaker 32 It was the Carol Lubon case folder.

Speaker 41 At that point, more than 20 20 years old and cold as they come.

Speaker 54 I'd never even heard of it before. And I go, this is interesting.
I wonder if this lady's still missing.

Speaker 37 Of course, she was.

Speaker 22 So again, he read through the police reports.

Speaker 53 Couldn't help but notice the subtle changes in Mike's story.

Speaker 54 And I thought, that was kind of strange because I wouldn't think you would forget the last time you saw your wife.

Speaker 10 And so he went to see Carol's parents, her mom, Melva, her dad, Milt.

Speaker 54 And he looked up at me. He was starting to cry.
And I'm like, Milt, are you okay? And he said, he goes, oh, he goes, I just so happy. I can't believe you guys are still interested in this case.

Speaker 58 How much did that have to do with you driving ahead on this case, that conversation?

Speaker 61 A lot.

Speaker 54 I'm the father of three daughters as well. And I thought, what if this is my middle daughter?

Speaker 35 Milt died one month later.

Speaker 34 never knowing what happened to his beautiful middle daughter.

Speaker 7 But when Terry went to her father's funeral and saw Mike there, a private thought ate at her.

Speaker 5 Mike must know something.

Speaker 15 I didn't say anything. I tried to keep away.
He was, of course, paying his respects to my family, but I couldn't carry on a conversation with him.

Speaker 26 Meanwhile, Walt Delcine had become a little obsessed.

Speaker 4 He had many other more pressing cases, but something kept pulling him back to Carol Lubon.

Speaker 54 I actually would shuff some of my work away. I got in a little trouble for that sometimes.

Speaker 58 For years, Detective Delcine chipped away until finally, in 2010, eight years after he found that musty old blue file, he decided to pay a surprise visit to Mike Lubon.

Speaker 6 His colleagues thought he was a bit nuts.

Speaker 54 There was those that thought, well, yeah, what do you think he's going to admit it to you? And I go, well, I played enough sports in my time.

Speaker 54 I know you're not going to get anywhere if you don't try. You never know.

Speaker 54 Hi, Detective Delcine.

Speaker 63 We want to talk about Carol.

Speaker 41 What story would Mike tell this time?

Speaker 14 Coming up.

Speaker 21 This version was straight out of 007.

Speaker 63 I think I did that James Blonde thing with the paper on the door.

Speaker 64 Paper balls.

Speaker 4 But one detail did ring true.

Speaker 63 She said, you make my skin crawl.

Speaker 54 I'll bet you she did say that.

Speaker 14 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 7 For eight years, Dorrance Police Detective Walt Delcine worried away at the Carol Lubon file, drawn by an irresistible hunch that this young mother did not disappear voluntarily.

Speaker 12 But actual evidence of a crime?

Speaker 56 Just wasn't any.

Speaker 28 So finally, in 2010, 29 years after Carol supposedly walked out on her family and never came back, Delcine decided it was time for a surprise visit to Michael Lubon.

Speaker 30 He went over with his sergeant.

Speaker 54 He invited us in. We did catch him unexpectedly, but that was the plan.

Speaker 54 But was Mike upset or thrown off not at all very nice like i anticipated he would be because i'd now heard from everybody in the family how mike's a good guy so together they went over again the details of that last night back in march 81

Speaker 1 and right away mike remembered a little more about the night carol presented him with a real estate contract and a demand they sell their tiny house

Speaker 65 she came in and gave the baby she said no

Speaker 65 did she just say Turn her and walk away with it?

Speaker 64 What happened?

Speaker 63 She said, you make my skin crawl.

Speaker 1 You make my skin crawl?

Speaker 55 Yeah.

Speaker 24 Ah.

Speaker 54 And I thought, Bing,

Speaker 54 I'll bet you she did say that. So I pushed him some more for more details.

Speaker 8 And the details were, once again, a little different about when and where he last saw her, for example.

Speaker 5 It wasn't when he went to bed around 10 p.m., as he said on one occasion, or 5.30 the next morning, as he also said.

Speaker 38 No, this time Mike said he last saw Carol about 10:30 or 11 p.m.

Speaker 33 in the bathtub.

Speaker 2 I don't see you in the tub.

Speaker 63 I used the bathroom.

Speaker 32 And then he said, maybe around midnight or one or two, he heard the garage door go up, and he went to the door and actually saw Carol's car driving away.

Speaker 24 I see. You got taxes.

Speaker 6 See taillights, yeah.

Speaker 65 And you're sure it was her car?

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 38 Also, remember that story about putting tape on the dresser drawers after Carol left and that later he found it broken?

Speaker 49 Didn't remember that now.

Speaker 66 I don't know what that is.

Speaker 65 Okay, you don't know what that is?

Speaker 25 No.

Speaker 50 But as he sat here in 2010, he did remember some other traps he'd set, even more elaborate.

Speaker 63 Like, I would take like baby powder and put it on the wrap inside the door. So if somebody stepped in, I'd see there would be.

Speaker 46 Peace powder?

Speaker 64 Okay.

Speaker 65 And what else? Anything else?

Speaker 63 I think I did that James Wand thing with the paper on the door.

Speaker 64 Paper balls.

Speaker 64 Paper balls. Okay.

Speaker 65 Okay, that's about it.

Speaker 14 By now, Detective Delcine was working with his colleague Jim Wallace and Deputy DA John Lewin. Lewin specializes in tackling the most difficult of cold cases.

Speaker 54 Do you remember when you saw the results of that interview? What you thought?

Speaker 67 Yeah, I thought that his memory had grown in areas where it shouldn't and in areas where he should be saying the same story was different. And that's the hallmark of deception.
Sure.

Speaker 57 But the mind plays tricks. The mind invents things and

Speaker 1 inserts them into your memory and you believe them as strenuously as if they actually happened.

Speaker 67 That's an interesting theory. I don't think it's really supported.
Memories can be lost, but memories don't increase in details over the years, and they don't increase in different details.

Speaker 67 And that's a sign of what we call a lie.

Speaker 67 His version of what happened from the start made no sense to any of us.

Speaker 23 This is what makes the case.

Speaker 11 And why would Mike lie?

Speaker 31 To the cold case team, it seemed obvious.

Speaker 54 He killed her that night. She stopped living that night.
And everything else that's going that doesn't make sense, it's all because it's a lie. If you know it's a lie, then it all lines up.

Speaker 35 Remarkably, Mike Lubon continued to talk to them three more times of his own free will, very friendly.

Speaker 49 Without an attorney, he even let the prosecutor take a crack at him.

Speaker 67 If you were me, if you were in my position, tell me what you would think.

Speaker 68 Probably what you're thinking.

Speaker 65 Which is that I did it.

Speaker 68 Well, Mike, I can tell you.

Speaker 67 You know,

Speaker 67 sometimes, you know, the kind of murder cases we get.

Speaker 67 We get cases where the husband finds out that his wife is cheating on him and he kills her.

Speaker 68 So

Speaker 68 nothing to do with that.

Speaker 13 Did you catch what Mike said?

Speaker 27 It had nothing to do with that.

Speaker 55 Lewin did.

Speaker 67 When you just look at sentence structure and you look at how people talk and communicate, it wasn't about that. What is the it?

Speaker 28 You gave that great significance, didn't you?

Speaker 67 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 42 So they kept at Mike.

Speaker 49 And at one point, it seemed to them he was on the verge of confessing.

Speaker 64 Listen,

Speaker 52 why don't you give me a little

Speaker 68 few days or something to think about all of it?

Speaker 29 I'll cooperate when I come back.

Speaker 12 But when he came back, he didn't give them anything.

Speaker 3 And they were right back where they started.

Speaker 30 Suspicion, sure, but no evidence of a crime.

Speaker 12 No way to even prove Carol was dead.

Speaker 32 That is, until Detective Jim Wallace hit on an idea to use a tool that didn't even exist when Carol Lubon fought with her husband on a March night in 1981.

Speaker 14 Coming up.

Speaker 21 The long arm of Facebook.

Speaker 23 It's a kind of a place where we say, here I am, but it's also a place where you can find people.

Speaker 21 The result, a dramatic turn in the case and fresh heartbreak for Carol's family.

Speaker 47 Another nightmare on top of the first nightmare.

Speaker 14 Deputy DA John Lewin and the Torrance Police Department, Cole Castie, believe Mike Lubon killed his wife Carol back in 1981.

Speaker 2 But they had one big problem.

Speaker 32 They couldn't prove Carol was dead.

Speaker 23 The biggest assumption is going to be, well, how do you know she's not just out of the country or across the country or changed her identity?

Speaker 33 Kind of an important question with no answer.

Speaker 27 And then in January 2011, Jim Wallace got the flu.

Speaker 2 Lucky break.

Speaker 45 No, really.

Speaker 23 And I was laying in bed and my wife came in. And unfortunately, when you work these cases, all you talk about,

Speaker 23 because we are a dedicated coal case team, is you're talking about the case you're working on. I'm sure she was tired of hearing it.

Speaker 23 But she mentioned to me, why don't you establish a Facebook account for Carol? I thought, that could actually accomplish a great deal.

Speaker 1 Of course, back in 1991, when Carol disappeared, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born yet.

Speaker 22 But 30 years later, Detective Wallace knew social media and its potential to connect to millions of people around the globe instantly.

Speaker 36 it could determine once and for all, he thought, whether Carol was alive or dead.

Speaker 23 Because all of us know from using Facebook that it's, number one, it's a kind of a place where we say, here I am, but it's also a place where you can find people.

Speaker 28 Surely if Carol was still alive, Wallace thought, someone on Facebook or Twitter would know something.

Speaker 1 Of course, Wallace also knew Carol would look vastly different 30 years after her disappearance, so he found an age progression artist to create an image of what she might look like today.

Speaker 69 And then he placed that photo and others like it on Facebook and other sites.

Speaker 23 And it turned out it was a great point of contact for me to contact 350 friends and family of Carol. Right away we said, has anybody seen Carol?

Speaker 23 And we discovered immediately that nobody had seen Carol since the night she disappeared.

Speaker 32 And if Carol merely googled her own name, she'd find herself at Wallace's website, Carol JeanMeyerLubon.com.

Speaker 49 But that never happened, which meant something very significant, said the detective.

Speaker 23 She's not looking for herself.

Speaker 6 She's dead.

Speaker 61 Or a farmer's wife in Uruguay who doesn't go on the computer much.

Speaker 29 Maybe.

Speaker 7 Lots of people are not on Facebook.

Speaker 61 I don't check or Google things.

Speaker 13 It doesn't mean that she is dead, for sure.

Speaker 52 Absolutely.

Speaker 5 It just means you've made a fairly good case.

Speaker 23 In this large cumulative thing that we're looking at, it's yet another piece that points to the same conclusion.

Speaker 4 If Carol was dead, if Mike killed her, taking the accusation to court would be risky. Totally circumstantial, of course, no body, an unclear motive, a sympathetic defendant.

Speaker 32 But Prosecutor Lewin decided to roll the dice.

Speaker 49 30 years after Carol Lubon vanished from her family's life, on April 13th, 2011, Mike was arrested for Carol's murder.

Speaker 54 When you went to the family and said, we're going to charge him, what was her reaction? Mixed at best.

Speaker 45 Mixed?

Speaker 12 That's a mild word.

Speaker 62 How about upset, horrified, mystified.

Speaker 1 In fact, most of Carol's family members believed the idea Mike could have murdered Carol was just ludicrous.

Speaker 47 Well, he was a member of our family, you know, and nobody wanted to see him be arrested or him be the reason or any of that.

Speaker 47 It's like

Speaker 47 another nightmare on top of the first nightmare.

Speaker 23 This was a case where I think the family would have been more than happy to believe that Carol is still out there somewhere. She's not dead.
And their beloved son-in-law is not a killer.

Speaker 5 But of all Mike Sr.'s family members, perhaps no one was as torn as his namesake firstborn son, Mike Jr.,

Speaker 2 who loved his father unreservedly.

Speaker 1 followed him into the family painting business, worked side by side with him for decades,

Speaker 2 and who had confessed to detectives that, like his aunt Terry, he too had doubts about his father.

Speaker 5 Doubts that had taken root shortly after Mike Sr.'s second wife left him.

Speaker 18 He talked about my stepmother constantly for years. It was non-stop.

Speaker 52 And why was that so significant to you?

Speaker 18 Because he never talked about my mother.

Speaker 55 At all.

Speaker 18 Never.

Speaker 8 But Mike never confronted his father.

Speaker 18 I just knew in the back of my mind that this could be a possibility. And I really honestly, at that time, I never wanted my father to go to jail.
I just wanted to know.

Speaker 18 It was so important to me to know the truth behind that evening.

Speaker 5 To get the truth and avoid a trial, Prosecutor John Lewin was willing to make a deal.

Speaker 67 We had offered him voluntary manslaughter

Speaker 67 if he gave us Carol's body.

Speaker 53 And he turned it down flat.

Speaker 43 He did, repeatedly.

Speaker 49 Mike pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 6 The case was going to trial.

Speaker 8 And if members of Carol's own family didn't believe Mike did it, what would a jury think?

Speaker 52 Coming up, a father in court and a son on the stand.

Speaker 2 I was really, really

Speaker 18 stressed out about that.

Speaker 67 And he watches his dad answer this. Isn't it true, Mr.
Lubon, that Carol lived her last breath in that bathtub when you murdered her?

Speaker 52 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 44 It was September 11th, of old days.

Speaker 38 September 11th, 2012, 31 years, 5 months, 12 days after the last known sighting of Carol Lubon.

Speaker 14 An inauspicious day to begin the prosecution of a popular man?

Speaker 45 Could be.

Speaker 48 But Deputy D.A. John Lewin went ahead anyway.

Speaker 67 What What I'm going to be able to prove beyond any reasonable doubt, ladies and gentlemen, is that despite the fact that Mike Lubont is a decent man,

Speaker 67 he murdered his wife.

Speaker 43 Of course, Lewin knew that to prove a murder had occurred, he had to show the victim was in fact no longer alive.

Speaker 36 For that, he turned to Detective Wallace, who explained to the jury the Facebook and social media presence he created for Carol had turned up a whole lot of nothing.

Speaker 67 Have you been contacted by anybody, either by phone, email, in writing, who says, you know what, I've seen Carol Lubon

Speaker 67 after the day she disappeared?

Speaker 62 No.

Speaker 5 How we killed her?

Speaker 6 Though, as Lewin and his team also let the jury hear, family members like Carol's sister Gail believed what Mike told them.

Speaker 4 Carol had run off.

Speaker 73 Has it been hard for you to accept the possibility that she may be dead?

Speaker 41 Oh, yes.

Speaker 73 Is it made even more difficult by the fact that you care deeply for the defendant?

Speaker 55 Yes.

Speaker 1 And younger sister Terry, even though she had suspected Mike for years,

Speaker 67 do you still think of Mike Lubon Sr.

Speaker 67 as a part of your family?

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 41 But most anguished of all,

Speaker 1 Mike and Carol's son, Mike Jr.

Speaker 72 Is there anything about the way you remember your mom

Speaker 72 that would make you think

Speaker 73 or made you feel

Speaker 72 that she would leave you and never come back and never say goodbye?

Speaker 24 No.

Speaker 26 He loved his dad, but also secretly doubted him.

Speaker 48 Something he'd never revealed until now.

Speaker 18 I was sweating so profusely during that whole trial. He never knew I had these feelings.
So on the stand publicly, I had to basically say, yeah,

Speaker 18 I'm thinking maybe there's some weird things about your story. And it was the first time that my father really would have known I felt that way.

Speaker 19 So I was really, really

Speaker 18 stressed out about that.

Speaker 73 How hard is it for you to be here today?

Speaker 2 Very.

Speaker 72 Do you want to believe that your dad is responsible for your mother's disappearance?

Speaker 75 Do I want to believe it?

Speaker 18 Yes. No.

Speaker 72 Let's assume that your dad, in fact, did kill your mom. Would you want to see him punished for it?

Speaker 18 No, not particularly.

Speaker 13 Prosecutor Lewin knew the ambivalence of these family members did not help his case.

Speaker 24 But...

Speaker 67 In the end, my job isn't to make sure that the family members get what they want. My job is to make sure that, you know, Carol's killer is held responsible.

Speaker 5 But was Mike a killer?

Speaker 60 His attorney, Kevin Donahue.

Speaker 42 I think the police are just wrong.

Speaker 37 No forensics, no witnesses, not even a body.

Speaker 53 The defense might have stopped right there.

Speaker 41 Instead, they decided to gamble.

Speaker 1 Mike was a nice guy.

Speaker 39 Jury should see that.

Speaker 1 And if the details had been a little different each time he was asked to tell the story, here was his chance to straighten it all out for the jury.

Speaker 35 How odd then that Mike, under oath now, amended his story just a little again.

Speaker 32 Like when he added the detail that Carol was in the bathtub when she said something mean to him.

Speaker 75 She said, you make my skin crawl.

Speaker 45 Also slightly different, the way he discovered she was gone.

Speaker 75 I opened the front door and went out and the garage door was up and the car was gone.

Speaker 27 In earlier versions, didn't Mike say he heard the garage door go up?

Speaker 5 and then saw taillights as Carol drove away.

Speaker 39 Why had his story changed again?

Speaker 3 What's the deal with with that?

Speaker 43 Did you hear the garage door?

Speaker 66 I don't think so.

Speaker 3 Why do you think that now? What has jogged your memory?

Speaker 66 Because I think

Speaker 75 over the years, I thought about this night so many times. And I just, you know, I'd seen that car back out of that driveway many, many times, you know,

Speaker 52 when she was leaving.

Speaker 66 So I think I just thought repeatedly in my mind that that's what I thought happened.

Speaker 66 I saw the car. I can see it right now.

Speaker 42 He never thought for a moment, he said, it would be the last time he'd see his wife.

Speaker 75 I thought maybe she had gone out that night and went dancing and stayed the night with a friend.

Speaker 40 What did happen to her?

Speaker 27 Mike insisted he simply didn't know.

Speaker 3 Did you have anything to do with killing her?

Speaker 75 No.

Speaker 4 Did you have anything to do with her disappearance? No.

Speaker 66 Other than I didn't sign the papers and it made her upset, but that's it.

Speaker 13 Successful testimony?

Speaker 8 Maybe.

Speaker 5 But now the downside.

Speaker 3 You'd have to answer questions from John Lewin.

Speaker 67 Do you lie sometimes?

Speaker 46 No.

Speaker 67 You never lie.

Speaker 52 I don't say never.

Speaker 19 I mean, a white lie?

Speaker 19 Who knows?

Speaker 67 Well, I'm asked, have you ever lied about something serious that wasn't a white lie in your life? In your entire life, you've never lied once about anything that wasn't a white lie?

Speaker 66 I'll just say, not that I can remember.

Speaker 35 In fact, I got a hard time remembering a lot of things Prosecutor Lewin asked about.

Speaker 2 I don't remember it. I don't remember going to bed.

Speaker 66 I don't remember saying that.

Speaker 55 I don't know.

Speaker 34 But how on earth, asked Lewin, could he not remember the last time he saw his wife?

Speaker 67 Would you agree that that would be one of the most significant events, details of your entire life?

Speaker 66 Yes, but I doesn't mean I had to remember it.

Speaker 45 Lewin

Speaker 7 wasn't buying it.

Speaker 67 Isn't it true, Mr. Lubon,

Speaker 67 that the last place that Carol lived, her last breath, was taken in that bathtub when you murdered her.

Speaker 67 Why are you looking at the judge?

Speaker 43 I'm waiting for him to correct you. No,

Speaker 2 I didn't murder her.

Speaker 43 I'm sorry.

Speaker 27 In the bathtub?

Speaker 67 And, Mr. Lubon, if you had murdered her, you would tell us today that you did.
If I had

Speaker 67 admitted it, you would have admitted on the stand today.

Speaker 51 Yes.

Speaker 67 Do you think that statement's believable?

Speaker 66 I think so.

Speaker 67 I'm done.

Speaker 32 Of course, believability was a question for the jury to decide.

Speaker 2 And decide they did.

Speaker 32 Though, as you'll see, that wasn't the end of the story.

Speaker 11 Not by a mile.

Speaker 14 Coming up.

Speaker 21 A son overcome with emotion.

Speaker 21 A final push for the truth.

Speaker 67 Please, for your family, for your kids, tell us what happened.

Speaker 21 And then, a final fateful twist.

Speaker 18 It just is the ultimate answer. This is it.

Speaker 53 Okay, let's call the jurors out.

Speaker 5 There are few things in American life as dramatic, as weighted with consequence, as the the moment the jury, verdict in hand, files into a courtroom.

Speaker 27 Had they been persuaded that Mike killed Carol or even that she was dead?

Speaker 1 Mike's family held its collective breath.

Speaker 32 So did the prosecutor and the police.

Speaker 54 You know, you don't know what to expect.

Speaker 5 And now, here was Mike's fate.

Speaker 74 We, the jury, the Bove and Title Action, find the defendant, Michael Clark Lubon Sr., guilty of the crime.

Speaker 48 Guilty of second-degree murder.

Speaker 14 Mike Lubon was going to prison.

Speaker 48 And longtime Detective Jim Wallace felt surrounded by a very unfamiliar reaction.

Speaker 23 I've had cases before where you get done, you know, and you walk out of the courtroom and the family throws their arms around you. They're just so grateful, right? That's not this case.

Speaker 47 I was just very surprised that the jury would convict him on such little evidence. And I don't think any of us are happy to see Mike go to jail.

Speaker 6 And you you still believe Mike is a nice guy, believable guy?

Speaker 26 Yes.

Speaker 6 What Gail and the rest of the family wanted most were some answers.

Speaker 15 It's not so much that I want Mike to pay for what he did. I just want to know what happened to my sister.

Speaker 14 And at the sentencing hearing in December 2012,

Speaker 1 Mike's own son echoed those sentiments.

Speaker 18 Guilt or innocence aside, I've never wanted my father to go to prison. I've only asked that if he knows anything to please let me know.

Speaker 10 And then Mike Jr.

Speaker 2 made a heartbreaking plea to the court.

Speaker 18 He's been a good father and a good person. If he's sent to prison today, I want him to know I'm going to miss our time together.

Speaker 18 It's going to be hard to see the world change without him.

Speaker 18 I humbly stand before the court today to request leniency from my father when getting his sentence. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Speaker 2 After that,

Speaker 24 well,

Speaker 13 then the strange tale of the much-loved convicted killer took quite a remarkable turn.

Speaker 34 It happened that very day in court.

Speaker 32 Prosecutor Lewin.

Speaker 67 I'm asking right now as we sit here, Mr. Lubon's going to have a chance.
Please, for your family,

Speaker 67 for your kids,

Speaker 67 just let it go. Tell us what happened.

Speaker 33 I just have a moment.

Speaker 14 The judge granted a recess so Mike could speak with his attorney privately.

Speaker 35 Did he actually have something to confess?

Speaker 1 They returned a few minutes later.

Speaker 6 And we're asking to continue the sentencing.

Speaker 45 Time to think?

Speaker 3 The judge pushed back sentencing by a month.

Speaker 67 My hope was that he would tell us what happened, that he would tell us what he did with Carol, and that he would be honest about both.

Speaker 26 For almost four weeks, they waited.

Speaker 27 Until January 7, 2013.

Speaker 32 All eyes were on Mike Lubon as he entered the courtroom and then shifted as one to prosecutor Lewin, who told the court that that very morning Mike finally revealed to him the secret he'd been keeping almost 32 years.

Speaker 31 And so now Lewin did the talking.

Speaker 42 And Mike, for once, said not a word.

Speaker 67 All of the information about them fighting about the selling of the house, he says that was truthful, that occurred.

Speaker 12 Then Carol stormed out.

Speaker 41 And it might have blown over, as arguments do, but she came back 1.30 a.m.

Speaker 7 and said the one thing that would not blow over.

Speaker 24 Not ever.

Speaker 67 She told him that she was going to be taking somebody else, another man, to her sister Terry's upcoming wedding. He said he was very upset.

Speaker 1 She tried to comfort him then, he said.

Speaker 67 And she was telling him, don't worry, you'll find somebody else,

Speaker 67 etc.

Speaker 7 And that was the last thing Carol Lubon ever said.

Speaker 67 He didn't want to hear it, and he said that he pushed her. She fell and hit her head on a heavy end table in the living room.
He said that she didn't bleed, but he knew instantly that she was dead.

Speaker 35 Detectives hooked Lubon up to a polygraph machine.

Speaker 59 How much of this was true?

Speaker 67 After the polygraph, the test was done. He confronts him and says, you didn't pass.
Now the defendant changes his story and he says, okay,

Speaker 67 I punched her in the head and I punched her hard. But he said only one time.

Speaker 45 Then he told Lewin what he did with Carol's body.

Speaker 67 After he killed her, he put her in the garage behind some carpet.

Speaker 20 He took her car the next morning to

Speaker 67 the Red Onion parking lot, dumped it there. At some point, she was placed in the trunk of Mr.
Lubon's vehicle.

Speaker 9 And then he said he took her to the ocean, put her on a raft, paddled out to sea, and dropped her down, a cinder block tied to her body.

Speaker 41 It was a shock, of course, a big shock.

Speaker 5 For so long, the family, or most of it, believed Mike.

Speaker 32 And now in this very public way, they finally knew that Carol was dead and he, their sweet Mike, killed her.

Speaker 26 But the whole truth?

Speaker 34 Was it actually out there somewhere?

Speaker 14 And so, on that cold and foggy January day, Mike, surrounded by a retinue of cops and lawyers, floated out into the mist to find Carol.

Speaker 41 Find whatever was left.

Speaker 15 If they find the cinder block in the ocean after the search, if they find that, that will give me half of the closure I need.

Speaker 40 She didn't get it. Because after the boat ride, Mike admitted his ocean tale was one more lie.

Speaker 32 And perhaps it was finally for the sake of his son, the son who never abandoned him, that he finally passed a polygraph and led investigators to the place he now says Mike's mother has been all these many years.

Speaker 18 The police searched, but couldn't find her remains.

Speaker 67 And now after so much time, no one knows if they ever will.

Speaker 18 I don't really know why getting her back is... the ultimate bookend for me.
I want to know that she's, you know, properly buried or cremated or whatever we would choose to do with her.

Speaker 56 Why is that so important?

Speaker 18 I think it just is the ultimate answer. This is it.
There's no more wondering.

Speaker 54 No.

Speaker 41 I don't know about that.

Speaker 1 But his father in prison, 15 to life?

Speaker 14 Good deal of wondering left to do about that man.

Speaker 31 And what he took away.

Speaker 59 Do you still love him?

Speaker 46 Yeah, I do.

Speaker 18 I mean, I always will. I just got to figure out how I'm going to process these

Speaker 18 facts I know.

Speaker 18 I don't know yet. I kind of thought a perfect punishment for my father was I was going to ask him to write one sentence about my mother to me every week he's in prison, you know, just to...

Speaker 18 So he has to think about her and I have to...

Speaker 18 I can remember her again.

Speaker 3 As those weeks turned to years, Mike Sr.'s children never gave up on him. They wrote letters in support of his parole, but in prison he stayed.
Then, in September 2021, a surprising twist.

Speaker 3 Prosecutor John Lewin, on behalf of the district attorney's office, filed a motion to have Mike Sr.'s conviction reduced from murder to voluntary manslaughter.

Speaker 43 Lewin said he believed the story that Mike Sr. told after his conviction.

Speaker 3 that Carol was killed as a result of an argument about her wanting to sell their home and take the man she was having a secret affair with to her sister's upcoming wedding.

Speaker 13 Had he been aware of these circumstances, said Luhan,

Speaker 43 he would not have pursued murder charges.

Speaker 32 A hearing was held about a month later and the motion was granted by the trial judge, who agreed with Luhmann's assessment.

Speaker 3 In November 2021, Lubon's murder conviction was reduced to voluntary manslaughter.

Speaker 34 He was sentenced to six years in state prison, the maximum penalty for voluntary manslaughter at the time Carol was killed.

Speaker 3 Later that month, he was released from prison, having already served more than 10 years behind bars.

Speaker 4 As for Carol Lubon,

Speaker 30 her remains have yet to be found.

Speaker 4 That's all for now.

Speaker 71 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 21 Thanks for joining us.

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