Haunting Images

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Speaker 19 A beautiful woman at the heart of a generation-old mystery that tore a family apart.

Speaker 21 You can still hear them crying.

Speaker 19 A young mom, torn between her photographer-husband and her photographer-lover, found dead in her own home.

Speaker 21 It was just blood everywhere.

Speaker 19 But it would take years before DNA science would advance enough to unlock the clues inside it.

Speaker 25 It has a story to tell.

Speaker 23 But then there was this diary.

Speaker 19 It too had a story to tell.

Speaker 27 Everything she knew about him was a lie.

Speaker 19 A husband under suspicion.

Speaker 29 You start getting more convinced that he was part of that crime scene.

Speaker 30 A lover, the subject of speculation.

Speaker 22 All of a sudden, he has a motive.

Speaker 19 After more than a quarter century, would this family get justice?

Speaker 19 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 8 Here's Keith Morrison with Haunting Images.

Speaker 23 Boyd Underwood was back.

Speaker 24 Back where he always belonged.

Speaker 1 Probably shouldn't have retired in the first place, born detective like Boyd.

Speaker 33 Now the buzz cuts and shark suits all around him were a generation younger with their high-tech gear and their fancy new Anaheim PD.

Speaker 5 But who else had the experience to make sense of what was in here?

Speaker 39 This room of lost causes, so many cases gone cold, justice denied.

Speaker 24 Like the one about her.

Speaker 43 Though, God knows, back then when they gave it to him, it didn't look so hot.

Speaker 29 It was like, were you sure we were going to get involved in this, you know? In hindsight, I'm not sure that's the thing I should have done.

Speaker 23 Maybe not. But then Boyd opened that file.

Speaker 46 And what a story he found there of the beautiful woman, the curious lies, and those strange books with their long ago private thoughts.

Speaker 37 But was he obsessed?

Speaker 49 Should he have let it consume more than a decade of his life, follow him into retirement?

Speaker 23 The woman he found in here was Catherine, Kit, as people called her.

Speaker 44 And certainly, to an idolizing little sister named Donna, she was something.

Speaker 27 Everywhere she went, she was just this bright smile that brought light into a room, and you just gravitated towards her.

Speaker 52 Donna and Kit shared just about everything.

Speaker 27 And she's just shining, you know, she's just gorgeous.

Speaker 53 And she's just Kit.

Speaker 27 And there's gawky little Donna, you know, and she's just, come on, let's go, kid, let's go have fun.

Speaker 54 And then the fairy tale that began in, well, happiest place on earth, isn't that what they call it?

Speaker 23 It was 1974.

Speaker 8 Kit landed a job at the It's a Small World Attraction at Disneyland.

Speaker 3 It's where she met who else?

Speaker 56 Prince Charming. Charming.

Speaker 27 It seemed like a fairy tale. She was really happy, and we were happy for both of them.

Speaker 23 His name was Gregory Mordick.

Speaker 38 He was a foreman on It's a Small World, and he was gentle and easy, one of a kind, really.

Speaker 23 That he loved to cook was not so unusual, but he also loved sewing.

Speaker 49 And she liked that, liked it also when he told her about his college degree and his service in Vietnam.

Speaker 58 And so the wedding in 1977 was magic.

Speaker 23 Kit was happy and before long, pregnant.

Speaker 41 First with Elise, then Brianna, and then Career.

Speaker 1 Kit had studied home economics and so launched her dream to become a food stylist, which means she was the person who would make it all look so wonderful in the ads.

Speaker 27 It's something I don't have an eye for because all those corn kernels look the same to me. But when you're a food stylist, it's your job to find the best.

Speaker 61 Very. Very.

Speaker 42 Her sister Donna still has food photographs Kit designed before some of Boyd Underwood's young detective buddies were born.

Speaker 41 Published back in the early 80s by the LA Times Home magazine.

Speaker 58 And that's when the strange story really began.

Speaker 49 Maybe it was the fact she'd been married four years, was she bored?

Speaker 23 Or maybe it was the close quarters, the long hours with the photographer of the food she prepared. There was an affair.

Speaker 39 Kit was in love, and she was Catholic and consumed with guilt, and confessed it all to her husband.

Speaker 64 She went to him and said, I've been with another man.

Speaker 61 The very night

Speaker 61 told me.

Speaker 49 Gregory seemed prepared to forgive.

Speaker 26 They both still swore they cared deeply for each other, but married just tough enough for two.

Speaker 23 There wasn't enough room for three. It was over.

Speaker 23 That Christmas of 1982, Kit's big brother Joe O'Connell saw how it was with the new guy.

Speaker 52 It was obvious that they were very happy with each other.

Speaker 23 Very, very happy.

Speaker 54 His name was Henry, had his own photography studio.

Speaker 31 And Donna dropped by one morning when Kit was there.

Speaker 27 She was happy, and she was in love to someone that treated her really good and was in love with her. They would have met a great family.

Speaker 57 Kit was bursting with plans, announced she was moving moving to Los Angeles from Orange County to be closer to her food styling work.

Speaker 34 And then that weekend, it was January 1983, decades later, what happened that weekend, the mystery of it, was in a file on Boyd Underwood's desk.

Speaker 5 And a family was thinking back, trying to piece together those incomprehensible events, starting with that first call.

Speaker 27 Called her at home. It was slightly before 10 Saturday morning.

Speaker 56 Did you pick up? Nope.

Speaker 27 You know, I didn't think anything of it. She's just gone for the day already.
I missed her.

Speaker 65 She was supposed to come on Saturday night, and we didn't hear from her. She didn't come and didn't call.

Speaker 56 Older brother Joe remembers how he figured she was just busy with her move from Anaheim up to LA.

Speaker 23 No cause for alarm.

Speaker 31 It wasn't until Sunday night they decided to check on her.

Speaker 26 So Joe says he and Kit's boyfriend Henry drove down to Anaheim to Kit's house.

Speaker 65 There were no lights on in the house that we could see, so we started to walk away, thinking everything is fine.

Speaker 65 And then, as we turned to leave and walk off the porch, Henry just looked into the garage.

Speaker 66 And we saw a car.

Speaker 21 And that's when panic started.

Speaker 36 It was a blur from that point on.

Speaker 34 Everything frantic then.

Speaker 33 Joe wrapped his jacket around his arm, he remembered, getting ready to punch his fist through the window off the porch.

Speaker 34 He saw Henry run around back, and within moments heard it, Henry's scream.

Speaker 1 Henry had managed to get into the house through an unlocked patio door.

Speaker 36 He opened the front door.

Speaker 33 Joe stepped inside into a nightmare.

Speaker 66 I saw her lying there.

Speaker 21 It was just blood everywhere. She was dead.
She was murdered.

Speaker 67 Coming up.

Speaker 19 Kid's brother and boyfriend get grilled by police.

Speaker 30 Was he questioned closely?

Speaker 68 Oh, yeah, we both were.

Speaker 19 When date line continues.

Speaker 44 How violent was that scene?

Speaker 29 Her head was almost gone.

Speaker 23 The case was old and cold when he found it. But before long, Detective Boyd Underwood was sucked right into the puzzling mystery.

Speaker 1 of what happened to the beautiful young food stylist back in January 1983.

Speaker 60 Kit's brother Joe O'Connell told Boyd about finding her body, about having to tell their parents.

Speaker 26 One of the hardest things I've ever done is to call my mom and dad, tell her what happened.

Speaker 21 I can still hear them crying.

Speaker 57 Joe remembered how, having heard not a peep from Kit that weekend in'83, he and Kit's boyfriend Henry drove through the Sunday night dark to check on her.

Speaker 45 How they found her in the dining room.

Speaker 71 lying in a pool of her own blood.

Speaker 1 Her throat had been slashed. She was nude from the waist down.

Speaker 33 Henry says Joe seemed to to be a wreck.

Speaker 24 We were both crying. Both of us out of control.

Speaker 46 Maybe Kit's killer was out of control, too.

Speaker 58 The place was a mess.

Speaker 1 The TV haphazardly placed near the front door, the speakers ripped from the walls, a potted plant fallen on the floor.

Speaker 23 The chaotic scene, her skirt and underwear pulled down like somebody had raped her, killed her, started to burglarize the house, then left before he was done.

Speaker 39 But to the police back then, it looked phony, like things things had been staged somehow.

Speaker 30 No sign of forced entry, just the rear sliding door slightly ajar, the same entry, by the way, that Henry slipped through to find her body.

Speaker 69 Back then, at the end of that weekend in January 83, police set out right away to interview people in Kit's inner circle, including Henry.

Speaker 30 Was he questioned closely?

Speaker 21 Oh, yeah, we both were.

Speaker 50 Of course, detectives also called Gregory, by then Kit's estranged husband.

Speaker 73 I got a call that Kitty was dead.

Speaker 74 More than a quarter century later, he said, the memory still haunts him.

Speaker 73 I remember sitting at the table shaking.

Speaker 72 Just shivering.

Speaker 73 Shivering. I was just upset.

Speaker 23 In a flash, says Gregory, his whole world flipped upside down after that call.

Speaker 1 As Kit's estranged husband, he too was treated as a person of interest, of course.

Speaker 23 And just like they did Henry, police interviewed Gregory.

Speaker 75 And you didn't kill Catherine, no.

Speaker 76 That wasn't too beautiful for that.

Speaker 39 He had just seen Kit that weekend, he told police, when he'd gone to her house to fetch their daughters for the weekend.

Speaker 59 A moment that lives on in his memory very clearly, he told us.

Speaker 73 We got to the house about 10 o'clock in the morning to pick him up for a birthday party.

Speaker 46 He and Kit chatted briefly, he said.

Speaker 70 And while the girls finished getting ready, Gregory remembered going back and forth from the house, loading up his VW bug with presents for the birthday party, along with the girls' car seats and overnight bags.

Speaker 73 I got to the car, rearranged things a little bit, put them in,

Speaker 73 made sure the gate was closed, drove off, and went to a party.

Speaker 49 By the time Gregory had his chat with detectives, the autopsy report had come in and it pretty much eliminated him as a viable suspect.

Speaker 39 It said Kit was killed during P.M.

Speaker 3 hours on Saturday.

Speaker 36 Gregory had already taken the girls to a birthday party by then.

Speaker 39 So, if not Gregory, and who?

Speaker 1 Police wanted to know if Gregory had seen anything unusual that day. Could somebody have been lurking, waiting for him to drive off?

Speaker 73 Was there anybody else there at the time?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 68 Not in the house.

Speaker 23 Okay.

Speaker 75 You went back out to your car and front

Speaker 68 killed in the car, put the presence in?

Speaker 75 And then what'd you do?

Speaker 68 Went back, closed the gates,

Speaker 22 tried the car button.

Speaker 75 You didn't go back into the house at that time for anything.

Speaker 41 No?

Speaker 36 They'd made an agreement about that after they separated, said Gregory.

Speaker 48 Police poked around the crime scene.

Speaker 39 All they gleaned was it looked somehow staged, but no physical evidence to point who would have wanted to misdirect the police.

Speaker 23 Oh, except there was this one curious thing, a letter in her handwriting, and the intended recipient was sitting right in front of them.

Speaker 67 Coming up,

Speaker 8 there was more than just a letter that might provide a clue in this case there was a diary too everything she knew about him was a lie when dateline continues

Speaker 79 some stories never make national headlines but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too i'm kylie lowe host of dark down east a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 79 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 79 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 80 Hi there, it's Andy Richter, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, The Three Questions with Andy Richter.

Speaker 81 Each week, I invite friends, comedians, actors, and musicians to discuss these three questions.

Speaker 82 Where do you come from? Where are you going? And what have you learned?

Speaker 80 New episodes episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bow and Ted Danson, Tig Nataro, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers, and more.

Speaker 80 You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter Call-In Show episodes, where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating disasters, bad teachers, and lots more.

Speaker 80 Listen to the three questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 6 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 9 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 12 Zen is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 13 Plus, Zen offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 14 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

Speaker 11 Check out zin.com/slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 17 Warning: this product contains nicotine.

Speaker 18 Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 1 Looking back on it now, with the benefit of 21st century technology, cold case detective Boyd Underwood could see the murder of that beautiful young mother in Anaheim Hills, California could quite possibly have been solved.

Speaker 23 After all, there was blood all over the crime scene.

Speaker 26 Probably that blood had a story to tell.

Speaker 5 But back in the winter of'83, DNA was still science fiction.

Speaker 78 So the cops back then worked a few leads they did have, the sort of thing that might, they hoped, produce some circumstantial evidence of something.

Speaker 23 Like the unopened letter lying on the dining room table.

Speaker 54 Kit Mordig had written it to her estranged husband.

Speaker 10 I'm ready to go forward, the letter says.

Speaker 47 I don't want to be disgruntled or angry.

Speaker 58 I want you to know I forgive you for everything and ask your forgiveness for the very deep pain I put you through.

Speaker 30 So, pain, forgiveness, but for what?

Speaker 34 Gregory himself offered one possible answer.

Speaker 31 His dream while they were married, kids too, he said, was to launch a business, food photography.

Speaker 26 She would prep it.

Speaker 83 He, an aspiring photographer, would shoot it.

Speaker 73 It would have been an easy home-based business.

Speaker 20 Why wasn't it?

Speaker 73 Well, she decided to go out before I was ready. And that's when she met Henry and started doing food photography for him.

Speaker 23 Ah, yes.

Speaker 36 Henry, that other photographer.

Speaker 74 So she did exactly what you wanted to do, only she did it with a different guy.

Speaker 43 And then you two would work together, actually.

Speaker 73 We worked together.

Speaker 23 But that never happened.

Speaker 52 It never happened.

Speaker 55 It never happened because,

Speaker 41 well, you already know the other thing that happened, the affair with Henry, the guilt, Kit's confession.

Speaker 48 Gregory wrote about it in his diary.

Speaker 78 This is from August 31st, 1981.

Speaker 55 Kit had an affair with Henry.

Speaker 1 The act has not diminished my love or devotion to her one bit.

Speaker 77 I'm truly in love with a special person.

Speaker 78 I find myself surprisingly acceptable to this whole situation.

Speaker 54 Now let's get on with our love and life and anyone who will join us.

Speaker 1 As long as the joiner does not try to hurt what Kit and I have.

Speaker 74 It was like you were kind of accepting the idea that there'd be two men in this relationship.

Speaker 73 It wasn't so much accepting as it was going, all right, this happened.

Speaker 73 She's a wonderful person. I can see why somebody would be attracted to her.

Speaker 32 We could move on.

Speaker 66 But

Speaker 73 we moved on, but separately.

Speaker 26 Separately, because of Henry, but also because of that diary.

Speaker 48 Kit's sister Donna knew Gregory kept one.

Speaker 3 She recalled asking Kit about it.

Speaker 27 And I remember for years, why don't you ever read it?

Speaker 28 And she's, oh no, that's his.

Speaker 27 You know, that's his private work.

Speaker 54 But there it was, and temptation won.

Speaker 38 Gregory was out of town.

Speaker 23 Kit read those private pages and discovered the man she was married to had lied to her, whopping lies about graduating from college, about serving in Vietnam.

Speaker 44 Now any thought of saving the marriage was done.

Speaker 37 And caught in his lies, Gregory took refuge in his diary.

Speaker 5 This is what he wrote on September 8th, 1982.

Speaker 45 All of my deceptions have come to light.

Speaker 48 No service in Vietnam did not graduate from college, and a few more to cover an escape route from this relationship.

Speaker 30 Why would you have said this?

Speaker 73 Again, it goes back to this guy who liked to sew,

Speaker 73 who didn't fit in

Speaker 50 at Disneyland very well, wasn't invited to the parties.

Speaker 72 So...

Speaker 73 I decided to embellish my life a little bit.

Speaker 73 And all of a sudden, people liked me.

Speaker 34 But there was more.

Speaker 1 As Kit read her husband's diary, she discovered a list of women's names.

Speaker 34 Were these women he had slept with?

Speaker 41 Gregory denied it, said these were the names of women he admired.

Speaker 31 He'd never slept with any of them.

Speaker 23 But...

Speaker 27 How do you read someone's diary and you go, everything she knew about him was a lie?

Speaker 38 Months later, Kit filed for a divorce.

Speaker 45 And so when she was murdered just six days before the divorce was to be finalized, it wasn't long before her family pointed a finger at Gregory.

Speaker 39 But the police just didn't have enough evidence to arrest him.

Speaker 73 Somebody left that house with a lot of blood on them.

Speaker 73 And here I leave the house and go straight to a birthday party. It's not like I disappeared for hours.

Speaker 33 And you're saying you had no blood on you because people would have...

Speaker 73 No blood, no cuts.

Speaker 49 The host of the party said Gregory was one of the first guests to arrive and was his normal, helpful, happy self.

Speaker 50 Still, in the weeks and months that followed, the suspicion took its toll.

Speaker 23 And Gregory finally moved, left Southern California for Spokane, Washington with his girls, naturally.

Speaker 1 And gradually the investigation petered out, the case went cold.

Speaker 83 And as the years passed, the O'Connells relinquished hope that there would ever be justice for Kit.

Speaker 26 Which, of course, is where Boyd Underwood entered the story.

Speaker 83 Snooping through that old dead file, those forgotten private lives.

Speaker 3 If he just dug a little deeper, what secrets might he find?

Speaker 67 Coming up,

Speaker 19 old evidence plus new science begins to yield some clues.

Speaker 22 All of that taken together would certainly ratchet it up the case against him.

Speaker 29 You start getting more convinced that he was part of that crime scene.

Speaker 19 When Dateline continues,

Speaker 42 Gregory Mordig wanted a fresh start.

Speaker 5 He was now the single father of two small daughters, and bringing them up among suspicious in-laws in the town where their mother was murdered was increasingly unappealing.

Speaker 55 So, Gregory set up house in eastern Washington in a middle-class home in Spokane, and he went about organizing a normal life.

Speaker 59 He was, it is generally agreed, an excellent father to his two little girls.

Speaker 73 They had security. They had a parent that was very involved in their life.

Speaker 69 And for himself, Gregory went back to his first love, taking pictures.

Speaker 58 He set up a studio in downtown Spokane, photography by Gregory, and Kit's dreadful death a thousand miles south in California faded into history.

Speaker 3 Except for a family, Kit's family, convinced, right or wrong, that her killer was in fact Gregory.

Speaker 5 They had after all witnessed the shouting and shoving matches, the acrimony that preceded the breakup and the murder.

Speaker 36 By 1985,

Speaker 52 pretty much we knew that he'd gotten away with it.

Speaker 28 Did you ever give up on the idea that someday there would be justice?

Speaker 61 Sure. In this world, I did.

Speaker 45 It was 1999, long after the family had given up, when Boyd Underwood came along.

Speaker 29 One of the administrators asked me if I would look at this case in particular.

Speaker 26 And if anyone could break the case, maybe Boyd could.

Speaker 5 Anaheim Kopp since 1964 rose up the ranks to homicide detective, was even assigned to protect President Nixon on a visit during the'68 campaign.

Speaker 49 He'd heard about Kit's murder back in 1983, but by then he'd gone to work at the DA's office, where he retired in 95.

Speaker 34 So what was he doing snooping around this old file years later in 1999?

Speaker 23 Simple.

Speaker 69 Boyd wasn't the retiring type.

Speaker 41 Came back to work in new unit in the Orange County DA's office, trackers they called it.

Speaker 23 Its mission, revisit cold cases cases and close them.

Speaker 33 Here he was, the last faint chance for justice, probably go nowhere.

Speaker 47 But then something caught his attention. A piece of evidence found back in 1983 in Kit's closet, a plastic bag.

Speaker 29 The criminalists at that time just identified the evidence on the plastic bag as being human blood. It was not the same type of blood from the victim.

Speaker 40 In fact, in the early 80s, that's all science could tell them, that the blood on the bag was a different type than the victims. But silently, patiently, that DNA waited.

Speaker 40 And in 1999, it was a whole new scientific world.

Speaker 29 Back in 83, they had obtained a blood sample from the husband. We got a match.
That was his blood that was found in this plastic bag.

Speaker 64 Inside a closet.

Speaker 29 Inside the closet.

Speaker 26 Though, of course, that was also Gregory's closet for more than four years. He'd only been out of the place a couple of months.

Speaker 39 Boyd decided to have all the evidence retested.

Speaker 23 And

Speaker 63 now Gregory's DNA turned up in several places.

Speaker 49 A tiny spot on the closet doorknob, on a rear sliding glass door, and in a powder room sink.

Speaker 23 But the amount was minuscule, so perhaps it meant nothing.

Speaker 41 Gregory could have left it there when he lived in the house, except.

Speaker 29 The bathroom sink had her blood and his DNA mixed. On the sliding door, there was a mixture of her blood and his blood.
You start getting more convinced that he was part of that crime scene.

Speaker 39 Then Boyd listened to the old police interviews from 1983 and something jumped out.

Speaker 56 On the day Gregory saw Kid and picked up his girls, he said, he'd put them in their car seats, then gone back toward the house to close the front gate.

Speaker 58 When he returned to the car, he told detectives, his elder daughter asked him a question.

Speaker 58 What do you do so long, Kelly?

Speaker 77 Why would he want to put that in there?

Speaker 23 Remember, Gregory had said he never went back into the house after strapping the girls into the car.

Speaker 34 But if his daughter complained he was gone too long, maybe he did go in there and took the time to kill Kit.

Speaker 49 All in all, decided boy, there was enough evidence by 2001 to warrant a little visit with Gregory Gregory up in Spokane.

Speaker 36 And he was, as he had been years earlier, perfectly cooperative.

Speaker 63 Even let them search through his house.

Speaker 5 So Boyd and colleagues offered Gregory a chance to confess. Tell us how it happened.

Speaker 75 What happened when you went back to the house?

Speaker 75 I don't recall going back to the house. Come on, Greg.

Speaker 86 I don't.

Speaker 86 How can your blood be mixed with her blood and you not recall going back in the house? How can you not remember? You can see how weak that is.

Speaker 29 And how can your wife's head be almost severed from her body and you not remember?

Speaker 29 I mean, she just charged me.

Speaker 23 But Boyd didn't charge him. Couldn't.

Speaker 62 Because the prosecutor told him he just didn't have enough to make a case.

Speaker 63 The interview and search did produce a few old diaries.

Speaker 5 Gregory had never thrown them away, but it wasn't enough.

Speaker 62 Did you think about just giving up on it?

Speaker 29 No.

Speaker 5 There was something there.

Speaker 29 I've always thought so.

Speaker 29 I don't think I could ever give up on it.

Speaker 5 And then, summer of 2007, Boyd was grousing to one of the young guys.

Speaker 37 Felt like he had a case, but how could he sell it to the DA's office?

Speaker 55 And, well, Boyd's been around for a long time.

Speaker 70 More than DNA science has changed.

Speaker 29 I was working with a fellow, I call him propeller heads, because it's sort of computer,

Speaker 29 a step or two ahead of me anyway. So he suggested, why don't you do a PowerPoint? I said, what is a PowerPoint?

Speaker 85 He learned fast.

Speaker 34 And finally, the evidence assembled in that PowerPoint presentation, bits of Gregory's blood in the house, his and Kit's DNA mixed on that rear slider in the bathroom sink, and Gregory's diaries, persuaded the DA.

Speaker 69 Still, to solidify their case, might be wise, the DA decided, for Boyd to pay Gregory one last visit in Spokane, see if he could turn up some fresh evidence.

Speaker 57 Perhaps with luck to puncture Gregory's consistent denial that he'd gone back into the house after putting their little girls in the car that long ago Saturday morning.

Speaker 23 So, in 2008, 25 years after the murder, Boyd took one last shot. Two colleagues conducted the interview and used an old, if unlovely, tactic, perfectly legal, mind you.
They told Gregory a lie.

Speaker 23 It was in more polite parlance, a ruse.

Speaker 76 I know, give us something here. Give us an opportunity to help figure this out.

Speaker 49 The detective told Gregory that his DNA had been found on the waistband of Kit's tights.

Speaker 55 He pushed Gregory to explain how could it have gotten there?

Speaker 23 Remember, it wasn't true. His DNA wasn't found on her clothes.

Speaker 3 But listen to what Gregory says.

Speaker 76 What really happened that day? What happened when you went back in that second time?

Speaker 76 Why'd you go back in? I took the kids out to the car and forgot the birthday present. What happened when you got back in the house?

Speaker 50 Because that's where the cousins picked up the present and left.

Speaker 23 And you heard it.

Speaker 56 Gregory changed his story just enough.

Speaker 23 He put himself in the murder scene alone.

Speaker 46 with Kit.

Speaker 33 And with that, a quarter century after the murder of his estranged wife, wife, Gregory Mordick was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

Speaker 38 Boyd called Kit's brother, Joe.

Speaker 65 I think he said, we've arrested him,

Speaker 65 and

Speaker 36 I didn't know what for.

Speaker 62 Honestly, remember, I'd give it up.

Speaker 65 Why did you arrest him?

Speaker 23 Why, indeed?

Speaker 3 DNA from an uncertain time, a few ambiguous comments in a private diary, and a cop's trick that produced a slightly edited story.

Speaker 23 Was it anywhere near enough?

Speaker 55 Maybe not.

Speaker 67 Coming up,

Speaker 20 the focus was about to fall on the other man in Kit's life.

Speaker 22 If the relationship wasn't working out and he was going to lose her, all of a sudden he has a motive.

Speaker 19 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 79 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition, too.

Speaker 79 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 79 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 79 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 80 Hi there, it's Andy Richter, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, The Three Questions with Andy Richter.

Speaker 81 Each week, I invite friends, comedians, comedians, actors, and musicians to discuss these three questions.

Speaker 82 Where do you come from? Where are you going? And what have you learned?

Speaker 80 New episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bow and Ted Danson, Tig Nataro, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers, and more.

Speaker 80 You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter call-in show episodes, where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating disasters, bad teachers, and lots more.

Speaker 80 Listen to the three questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 7 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 9 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 12 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 13 Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 14 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zin.

Speaker 11 Check out zinn.com slash find to find Zin at a store near you.

Speaker 17 Warning, this product contains nicotine.

Speaker 18 Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 23 26 years later, here he was, older, grayer, so hard of hearing he wore earpieces in court.

Speaker 56 Gregory Mordick, mild-mannered photographer, sat at the defense table and listened to the prosecution accuse him of murdering the lovely young wife who'd rejected him.

Speaker 51 But was this going to be easy?

Speaker 23 No, it wasn't.

Speaker 25 I was just convinced by the evidence that this case was provable.

Speaker 1 Dan Wagner was the prosecutor assigned to the case. He believed in it, mostly because he believed in science, in the DNA.

Speaker 25 It just waits in a locker room in the dark, waiting. And, you know, this modern technology brought it out, and it has a story to tell.

Speaker 50 He showed the jury tiny drops of Gregory's blood on a closet doorknob, on a plastic bag found inside the closet. A mixture of Gregory's DNA and Kit's blood on a rear sliding door.

Speaker 43 And the Piesta Résistance, the one piece of evidence that, according to the prosecutor, inextricably linked Gregory to the murder.

Speaker 26 It came out of the bowl of a bathroom sink.

Speaker 23 Kit's blood mixed with Gregory's DNA.

Speaker 25 Given the separation that he hadn't been living in the house for months, there's no innocent explanation for his DNA. remaining on that particular spot of the sink.

Speaker 33 Then, the medical examiner who performed Kit's autopsy all those years ago took the stand, the very one who signed off on the autopsy report that said Kit was killed during p.m.

Speaker 24 hours.

Speaker 1 Now, a quarter century later, he told the jury, he'd re-examined his report and decided it was possible Kit was killed as early as 10 a.m.

Speaker 33 when Gregory was at the house.

Speaker 74 And as for motive, there were those diaries.

Speaker 70 The ones obtained by Detective Boyd Underwood.

Speaker 33 When I first saw him there downstairs in what I would call a storage room, Boyd sat in the witness stand as Prosecutor Wagner read through Gregory's diaries, painting a picture of a rejected man who seemed tormented by the possibility he'd lose his children in the divorce.

Speaker 25 The hardest part is saying goodbye to my girls, not tucking them in. This will be devastating.
This is almost incapacitating.

Speaker 25 The diaries were important. They gave us some insight into the defendant's mind, particularly how he was very attached to his daughters, more so than the average parent, let's say.

Speaker 5 But there was more in those diaries, said the prosecution.

Speaker 5 Gregory confessed in this private place that there had been violence in that marriage breakup, the last incident only weeks before Kit was killed.

Speaker 25 Goodbye, Kitty.

Speaker 25 Kitty and I had a fight this evening. She struck me, I lost my temper, and struck back.

Speaker 3 Then there was that police interview, in which, reacting to a planted police lie, Gregory appeared to admit he was in the house with Kit alone on the day of the murder.

Speaker 49 So said the prosecution.

Speaker 70 Opportunity, motive, and DNA all pointed to Gregory as the murderer.

Speaker 31 But was that evidence enough?

Speaker 22 When you get into the details,

Speaker 22 it becomes, then you see all the problems that were there.

Speaker 34 Not nearly enough, said Defense Attorney Jack Early.

Speaker 26 That vaunted DNA sample of Gregory's blood, police had a little storage problem with that.

Speaker 22 When did you discover that Mr. Mordick's vial of blood had broken in

Speaker 22 evidence room and spilled on other items?

Speaker 84 I don't think I was aware of that until maybe 1999 or 2000.

Speaker 47 Gregory's blood sample had leaked onto some of the evidence packaging, and that, said the defense, hopelessly compromised the integrity of the DNA.

Speaker 41 Besides, Hadn't Gregory lived with Kidd almost five years?

Speaker 58 Of course his DNA would be in the house, said the defense, and would have mixed with his wife's.

Speaker 59 But one place Gregory's DNA was not found, said the defense, was anywhere on Kit's body or clothes.

Speaker 37 Something you'd expect to find if he'd slit her throat and pulled off her clothes.

Speaker 34 Besides, said the woman who threw that birthday party Gregory went to after seeing Kit, he certainly didn't look like he just killed someone.

Speaker 22 Now, when he was there, did you notice any injuries to Mr.

Speaker 30 Morning?

Speaker 22 No.

Speaker 22 Did you notice

Speaker 22 any blood on him in any manner?

Speaker 79 Oh my goodness, no.

Speaker 22 Did he, was there anything unusual about him at the party?

Speaker 79 No, not at all.

Speaker 55 But if not Gregory, then who was the killer?

Speaker 28 Well, wait for it.

Speaker 47 Through this testimony, the defense made a stunning implication.

Speaker 22 Did she tell you that things weren't working out with someone named Henry?

Speaker 79 I believe that she indicated that there were some problems with him, yes.

Speaker 61 Henry?

Speaker 58 The man Kit left Gregory for?

Speaker 34 What motive could he possibly have had?

Speaker 5 Well, now, the implication got much bigger.

Speaker 22 Well, if the relationship wasn't working out and he was going to lose her, all of a sudden he has a motive. And it's very important that he moves on to Donna, the new sister, shortly afterwards.

Speaker 34 Well, yes, it's true, at least, that Henry and Kit's sister, Donna, did fall in love after the murder.

Speaker 1 Donna wrestled with her emotions in the beginning, she said.

Speaker 27 I don't deserve this. You know, they're my sister's guy.
Well, this is weird, but it's not, because when it's him and I, it's normal.

Speaker 1 They married a year after Kit's murder.

Speaker 45 The defense saw an opportunity and pounced.

Speaker 50 Remember that rear sliding door that Henry went through to find Kit's body?

Speaker 49 Henry had left the door slightly ajar, the same way the killer had, the defense pointed out.

Speaker 22 Let me ask you, do you only partially close doors when you go through them?

Speaker 87 I don't remember closing the door.

Speaker 25 So

Speaker 87 if that's how far I closed it, that's how far I closed it.

Speaker 22 There is as much evidence, as much things about Henry, as there is about Greg that don't make sense.

Speaker 41 Ludicrous, said the prosecutor, and pointed out Henry had an alibi anyway.

Speaker 23 He was a two-hour drive away in San Diego the day of the murder.

Speaker 44 So now the defense played its final card.

Speaker 57 Gregory Mordick himself.

Speaker 39 Did you kill your wife? No.

Speaker 84 Why put Gregory on the stand?

Speaker 41 One main reason.

Speaker 1 To answer for that final police interview when he'd reacted to that ruse by appearing to change his story about going back into Kit's house after he picked up his kids the day of the murder.

Speaker 22 After you put Bree in and went and closed the gate, did you ever go back into the house?

Speaker 23 No.

Speaker 22 What did you think when they told you about your DNA being found on her clothes?

Speaker 76 I was going, there's no way I didn't touch Kitty that morning.

Speaker 56 He was shocked, confused by the detective's ruse, the defense told the jury.

Speaker 86 But what about those diaries?

Speaker 37 asked Prosecutor Wagner in his cross-examination.

Speaker 49 The diaries that seemed to outline a real motive for murder.

Speaker 25 And you wrote at various times that it was almost more than you could bear thinking about that separation.

Speaker 73 Sorry, I wrote that down.

Speaker 28 Why?

Speaker 73 Because it's come to bite me now. Instead of

Speaker 73 being true feelings at the time, you're trying to make it bite me.

Speaker 47 Might never have been charged had he just thrown those diaries away.

Speaker 74 Why did you keep them?

Speaker 73 There was nothing in there except my history, our history together. What was to be thrown away?

Speaker 74 Well, what they did was they looked back and said, look, he was involved in these violent incidents, and in fact, he even admitted that he was violent in his diary, so he must have been violent enough.

Speaker 73 And Kitty started every one of them, unfortunately. I got tired of being hit, so I grabbed her arms.
And I'm the bad guy.

Speaker 23 Well, was he?

Speaker 47 After nearly a month of testimony and 26 years since Kit's murder, the jury retired.

Speaker 23 And guilty or not?

Speaker 23 Hard call.

Speaker 19 Coming up, the jury returns.

Speaker 25 And to the prosecution, it was just like a gut punch.

Speaker 66 All the wind went out.

Speaker 19 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 1 In the fall of 2009, a jury in Santa Ana, California puzzled over the case of photographer Gregory Mordick, charged with killing the wife who'd left him more than a quarter century earlier.

Speaker 56 The case was largely circumstantial.

Speaker 23 a smidgen of possibly tainted DNA, a story that seemed to change, and those sad, possibly desperate scribbles in a private diary.

Speaker 34 In a hallway outside the courtroom, Kit's family paced nervously.

Speaker 47 Her little sister, Donna, held out hope.

Speaker 27 There's no way that there's anything. They'll be back in a few minutes.

Speaker 40 In fact, it was days.

Speaker 39 But the jury did come back.

Speaker 30 Family members braced themselves.

Speaker 88 My understanding is that the jurors are, at this point in time, hung. Is that right? That's correct.

Speaker 23 They were hung.

Speaker 55 Not just hung, split, six to six.

Speaker 25 Six, six was just like a gut punch. All the wind went out.

Speaker 36 He recovered his poise, told the judge he'd try Mordick again.

Speaker 25 I was attached to the victim's family. In some respect, I felt a certain duty to them.

Speaker 1 And then September 2010, the O'Connells filed into court. Prosecutor Wagner stuck to the science, Gregory's DNA in the house.

Speaker 60 How could his DNA be present when he hadn't lived in the home for more than two months?

Speaker 73 I lived there for four and a half years.

Speaker 74 Yeah, but he'd been away for months.

Speaker 73 Two months. Two months is going to eradicate all your DNA?

Speaker 21 But if she

Speaker 58 cleans up the house once in a while, yeah, it probably would.

Speaker 50 Did she?

Speaker 73 Kitty was a terrible house cleaner. Even the police said they'd never seen such a filthy house.

Speaker 54 The defense, it turned out, had been busy.

Speaker 1 It had retested the blood evidence on that rear sliding door, the one that showed a mixture of Kit's blood and Gregory's DNA.

Speaker 3 And the result was quite quite stunning.

Speaker 1 Gregory and his daughter shared an identical blood protein.

Speaker 22 We were very excited because we were hoping just one, and as it ends up, both daughters had that.

Speaker 56 So it was impossible, Defense Attorney Jack Early said, to be absolutely certain it was only a mixture of Gregory's DNA and Kit's blood on that slider.

Speaker 1 It could have been a mixture of the entire family.

Speaker 59 piled on over the years.

Speaker 36 And then after weeks of testimony, another jury left the courtroom and the waiting began again.

Speaker 25 Based on the results of the first trial, I didn't have the same sense of confidence the second time.

Speaker 5 Gregory, however, was confident as Thanksgiving weekend approached.

Speaker 73 And everybody was going gang.

Speaker 72 We'll see you over the weekend.

Speaker 34 And then, after two days, the jury rang the bailiff.

Speaker 36 A verdict.

Speaker 89 We, the jury, in the above entitled Action, find the defendant William Gregory Mordick guilty of murder in the first degree of the crime of the death.

Speaker 23 And Gregory,

Speaker 49 before the shock set in, thought he'd simply heard it wrong.

Speaker 73 And I just couldn't believe I didn't hear the word not.

Speaker 73 I kept on looking at the court clerk going,

Speaker 73 there's a word missing.

Speaker 43 But when prosecutor Dan Wagner finally heard those words.

Speaker 66 It's a rush.

Speaker 18 It's a relief.

Speaker 25 Think about the people behind you, what they've been through. how this much,

Speaker 25 what this will mean to them.

Speaker 25 Justice for the victim.

Speaker 5 At the sentencing hearing, Kit's family pronounced the words they'd stored up nearly 28 years.

Speaker 23 There's a hole in our lives, a hole left by this murder.

Speaker 27 I wish her children had an idea of what they've missed out on their life.

Speaker 49 Oh, but they do, said Gregory in reply.

Speaker 23 They all do.

Speaker 66 The O'Connell family thinks they're the only one who has

Speaker 32 missed Kitty.

Speaker 73 And that's not true.

Speaker 79 She's missed by my family, myself, and my two beautiful daughters.

Speaker 60 Daughters who, throughout it all, have been staunch defenders of their father.

Speaker 3 In court, the elder of the two spoke for both her parents.

Speaker 53 My family and I have now been sentenced to another 25 years of pain and agony.

Speaker 66 I miss my mother very much, but it's not fair that my father's being taken away.

Speaker 51 For a long time.

Speaker 56 The sentence, 25 years to life.

Speaker 1 Well, he sat in jail waiting to be transferred to a new prison light.

Speaker 26 I asked him about his daughters.

Speaker 23 And Gregory said,

Speaker 88 At least I've got their love.

Speaker 57 And Kit's family, what do they have?

Speaker 27 They think she's in my soul. Even though she's not here physically, she's with us.

Speaker 57 And finally, one determined detective officially retired again.

Speaker 58 This case for him was,

Speaker 4 well,

Speaker 29 very emotional.

Speaker 64 Was it worth all that time you put on this thing?

Speaker 29 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 29 Sure.

Speaker 37 The case Boyd Underwood came back for, the case of his life, is closed.

Speaker 19 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.

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