Toxic

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Speaker 3 In the pit of my stomach, I just knew something's not not right here.

Speaker 3 I just felt something bad had happened. He must have been so,

Speaker 4 so scared.

Speaker 5 They were so happy at first.

Speaker 3 Kevin just fell in love with her. Morgan was very, very charming.

Speaker 5 But when the marriage went bad, he went missing.

Speaker 3 He just disappeared.

Speaker 5 Was this a husband who didn't want to be found? Was this a wife who had something to hide?

Speaker 6 They're getting in the truck. They're leaving.

Speaker 5 What had happened behind closed doors?

Speaker 7 She laughed and said, no, there's no affair.

Speaker 5 Someone was keeping secrets. And even police couldn't wrap their heads around this one until they found it.

Speaker 4 A trail of texts.

Speaker 7 We were like, holy smokes, it's right there.

Speaker 4 It sure was.

Speaker 5 Every stunning detail.

Speaker 9 Snapple iced tea. It seemed like the perfect tool to put the poison inside of.

Speaker 5 Was this a loving spouse or a lethal one? Police were in for a killer surprise.

Speaker 3 Mike, I feel like the gates of hell are opening. I don't know what they were thinking.

Speaker 5 Tonight, Hoda Copy with a tale of a love triangle turned toxic.

Speaker 10 How much do we reveal to the ones we love? Do we keep our betrayals hidden behind closed doors?

Speaker 10 Or do we hide in plain sight, masking our deeds with words?

Speaker 3 Text message says, I'm fine, just clearing my head.

Speaker 10 That was Kevin Mangle for a time. Clearing his head, he told his family and friends.
Facebook status wants to be left alone.

Speaker 11 Maybe he just had enough and needed a vacation for himself.

Speaker 10 But there was a trail of electronic messages that seemed to tell another story, a far more sinister one.

Speaker 4 We were floored. It was all there for us to read.

Speaker 7 You can't make this stuff up.

Speaker 10 Which was fact and which was fiction.

Speaker 3 These text messages don't even seem real. Like they don't, they just don't seem real.

Speaker 10 Long before Kevin Mengel had a cell phone or a Facebook page, he was a high school guy in suburban Philadelphia with a cute little sister to worry about.

Speaker 3 Kevin was the stereotypical older brother. He would follow me around and tell all his friends they weren't allowed to talk to me and things like that.

Speaker 10 Was he being protective?

Speaker 3 Very protective.

Speaker 10 For as long as Michelle can remember, Kevin Mengel was a family man, a big brother who felt he needed to look after his younger siblings after their parents divorced.

Speaker 3 Kevin had a terrible time with it

Speaker 3 and just always told us that he would never get a divorce. He would never get a divorce.

Speaker 10 Instead, Kevin grew up in search of perfect romance.

Speaker 3 Kevin always had girlfriends.

Speaker 10 But he was always sort of a monogamous guy. When he was with one girlfriend, he was with a girl.

Speaker 3 Yes, and Kevin was very committed to making sure that he stayed in a relationship and he gave it his all.

Speaker 10 Kevin was 20 when he met the one, his forever girl, Morgan, from a few towns away where she graduated from an exclusive Catholic girls' school.

Speaker 3 Morgan was very, very charming. I mean, she was very sweet and very attentive to me.
I mean, always came over to the house just to hang out with me.

Speaker 10 Outgoing and charismatic, Morgan made an effort to win over Kevin's friends too, Mike and his fiancée Noelle.

Speaker 11 Very nice, very upbeat, very very friendly, always smiling.

Speaker 10 And Kevin, well, he fell hard for Morgan's charm.

Speaker 12 He just he loved her.

Speaker 11 He was head over heels for her.

Speaker 10 So Kevin was about to get what he'd always wanted, a wife and kids, but just not in that order. Morgan gave birth to their first child a few months before they got married.

Speaker 10 Still, theirs was no shotgun wedding. The young couple celebrated in traditional style.

Speaker 3 Kevin was on top of the world.

Speaker 4 It was the perfect picture, wasn't it?

Speaker 3 It was the perfect picture.

Speaker 10 Kevin loved being a dad, and he and Morgan had two more children. But his relationship with his own father was rocky, had been since his parents' divorce.

Speaker 13 And we were both stubborn and we're both pick-headed. So he didn't call me, I didn't call him, and then it got into a little bit of a battle.

Speaker 8 And years went by.

Speaker 13 And years went by.

Speaker 10 But by June 2010, Kevin and his dad had patched things up, grown closer than ever. They made plans for the whole family to celebrate Father's Day together.

Speaker 13 He was so excited. He said to me, Dad, I can't wait to come out for Father's Day.
And I said, I can't wait to have you. I said, I love you, and this is so wonderful.

Speaker 3 He just seemed to be at a peace that...

Speaker 3 I had not ever seen him at.

Speaker 10 Then it was the morning of the Father's Day party when it happened. Sister Michelle called their mom to check in.

Speaker 3 She didn't sound right. And I said, are you okay? And she said, Kevin left.
And she just started crying hysterically. And Kevin left, Kevin left.
And I said, Mom, something's not right here.

Speaker 3 He left the three kids. He left Morgan.
I don't know where he went. He won't pick up his phone.
He just sent me a text message.

Speaker 10 Kevin, the till death do us part romantic, leave his wife and kids? Perhaps Morgan put it best when she typed out their Father's Day regrets to Kevin Sr.

Speaker 13 We received a text message from Morton saying due to unforeseen circumstances we will not be able to be there today. Happy Father's Day.

Speaker 10 Unforeseen circumstances?

Speaker 10 What exactly did that mean?

Speaker 3 We all knew how excited he was for Father's Day.

Speaker 3 It would be the one day Kevin would not miss ever, no matter what happened.

Speaker 10 No matter what happened, where had Kevin Mengel gone?

Speaker 5 Coming up, Kevin's family was concerned, but the police, not so much.

Speaker 7 There was no reason to believe that anything had happened to Kevin.

Speaker 5 And we'll learn that maybe there was a reason for Kevin to hit the road.

Speaker 3 I thought Morgan was having another affair.

Speaker 10 When Kevin Mangle was a no-show for the family family barbecue on Father's Day, his sister Michelle was disappointed and more than a little confused.

Speaker 3 He had called my husband to say how excited he was to spend Father's Day that Sunday with all of us.

Speaker 10 So it was supposed to be a big Father's Day celebration.

Speaker 3 And he couldn't have been more excited.

Speaker 10 Kevin's younger brother Chris also knew how much he was looking forward to being with his family. After all, Kevin had just reconciled with their dad after many rocky years.

Speaker 8 I thought, man, this is odd.

Speaker 6 Why would he do this now? It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 10 The story Morgan, the wife, told was that Kevin had taken off, told her that the marriage was over. In fact, by Father's Day, he'd already been gone for two days.

Speaker 3 Kevin's fine. He's clearing his head.

Speaker 10 What do you mean, Kevin's fine?

Speaker 3 He's fine. He just had to leave, get away, and clear his head.

Speaker 10 So she's trying to tell you he needed space.

Speaker 3 He needs space.

Speaker 13 I could see him blowing off and taking off and saying, I'm just going to get away.

Speaker 13 And so that that part of me said, okay, he just did that and he's going to come back in here today or tomorrow or whatever.

Speaker 10 We just have to be patient.

Speaker 8 Yeah, we just have to be patient.

Speaker 10 Patient because those close to Kevin and Morgan had seen the couple's ups and downs before. Their breakups, in fact, were almost an annual event.

Speaker 3 It was like clockwork. Every August around their anniversary, we would expect the phone call that Morgan picked up and left.
And Kevin would call us crying hysterically.

Speaker 3 He would just be completely distraught. He said, I love her.

Speaker 12 I can't help it. I love her.

Speaker 10 And soon, Morgan would return. Kevin's world would write itself and they'd be as good as newlyweds for a while.

Speaker 8 She could act like nothing ever happened. And acting all lovey-dovey, sitting down on his lap.

Speaker 10 But now, what was weird about this separation was that Kevin had taken off. Not the other way around.

Speaker 3 She always took the kids and she always left. Kevin never once walked out on her.

Speaker 10 His family worried this must have been the fight to end all fights. And it wasn't like Kevin not to call his family for support.
The only person he reached out to was his mom.

Speaker 10 A few days after he disappeared, he sent her a cryptic text message that seemed to alarm her more than put her at ease. And so Kevin's mom did something that seemed a little drastic.

Speaker 10 She called the West Goshen Police to report him missing.

Speaker 7 We thought maybe she was overreacting to Kevin leaving.

Speaker 10 Detective David Maurer.

Speaker 7 There was no reason to believe that anything had happened to Kevin. She was receiving text messages from Kevin's phone.

Speaker 3 Their feelings were that if somebody is communicating with him, then he's not missing.

Speaker 10 Kevin's dad agreed.

Speaker 13 I was a little concerned that she may end up with a little bit of egg on her face because he was going to show up and...

Speaker 10 Right. She'd call the cops.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 10 And not long after after that initial missing person report was filed with the police department, an officer called the family back to say Kevin had been spotted not far from his home.

Speaker 7 And one of the officers stopped at a check caching place right up the street from where Morgan and Kevin live.

Speaker 7 And the owner of the check caching place was very familiar with Kevin and he saw him across the street. So that lended some credibility also that Kevin was in the area.

Speaker 10 He was close to home sending texts to his wife and mother, just refusing to see or speak to his family. And he did finally respond via text to his father.
What'd you get back?

Speaker 13 Doing okay, just need time away.

Speaker 10 And Kevin's sister received this message.

Speaker 3 Hey, sis, I'm fine. Worry about Morgan.
She's the one you should be worried about.

Speaker 10 But Morgan, it appeared, was doing just fine. The couple owned a landscaping business, and Monday morning, Morgan showed up to meet the crews and told them she was now in charge.

Speaker 10 Employee Al Funari recalls she had the garage looking spotless.

Speaker 19 There's always oil drips on the ground. This day, you could have ate off this floor.

Speaker 10 But this was new too. As Al went about his Monday landscaping jobs, he noticed Morgan, the boss's wife, flirting with a 21-year-old employee named Steve Chappelle.

Speaker 19 Morgan looks at me and says, Steve knows what color underwear I have on. And Steve's like, yeah, pink with black stripes.

Speaker 11 Right off the bat.

Speaker 10 And when Al had a question about an assignment.

Speaker 19 I would call Morgan and Steve's there.

Speaker 19 Steve's answering her phone.

Speaker 10 Why was this kid who mowed lawns and was barely old enough to buy a beer suddenly acting like the new man in charge?

Speaker 10 Kevin's sister Michelle remembered him as a quiet, unassuming young guy who'd done some work on her yard just weeks earlier.

Speaker 3 This kid Steve could not have been more polite to us.

Speaker 10 So what would Kevin think now of his employee spending the workday at the pool with his wife and kids, as Michelle observed when she took a drive by?

Speaker 3 I drove by her development and she was sitting out at the pool with Steve and the kids.

Speaker 10 Okay, you see Steve sitting with her and you were thinking what?

Speaker 3 I thought Morgan was having another affair.

Speaker 10 It was no secret among those who knew the couple that Morgan had strayed before. Could Kevin have suspected Morgan was at it again? And was that the final straw that drove him out? No way to know.

Speaker 10 He still was not taking calls. And then five days after he disappeared, Kevin finally had something to say to everyone who knew him in the most public way possible.
He posted an update on Facebook.

Speaker 10 Status wants to be left alone.

Speaker 3 He wants to be left alone. And some of his friends backed off then.
You know, his friends also were looking for Kevin.

Speaker 3 And then after that Facebook thing came up, they were like, this must just be another Morgan and Kevin fight.

Speaker 11 Maybe he just kind of had a nervous breakdown or maybe he just had enough of needed a vacation for himself.

Speaker 10 But to Kevin's immediate family, this Facebook update was far from reassuring. To them, it was an ominous red flag.

Speaker 3 Every other update that Kevin had put on there had come from his cell phone because it chose the little cell phone and this one came from a computer.

Speaker 10 Which seems so odd. The family knew that Kevin did everything on his cell.
What's more, the wording in the text messages he'd been sending just didn't sound like Kevin.

Speaker 10 For example, Michelle wondered: when did he start calling her sis?

Speaker 3 In the pit of my stomach, I just felt something bad had happened to Kevin.

Speaker 10 And if the cops would not investigate, the family decided it was time to do some detective work themselves.

Speaker 6 I'm afraid his wife and the new boyfriend are making a move right now to leave.

Speaker 20 They're leaving.

Speaker 15 Coming up, a confrontation.

Speaker 3 I said, I'm not okay with this. He just disappeared.
I don't believe you.

Speaker 15 What would it take to alert the police?

Speaker 7 Things just aren't adding off. I say, would you mind coming back to the police station?

Speaker 8 I do have a couple more questions for you.

Speaker 15 When Dadline continues.

Speaker 21 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 21 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 21 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 21 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 3 I remember sitting at my mother's house and she just saying, like, I feel like the gates of hell are opening.

Speaker 10 It was a Thursday afternoon, summer 2010, and a violent summer rainstorm had barreled through the towns ringing the outskirts of Philadelphia, bringing down trees and power lines.

Speaker 10 Almost a week had gone by since Kevin Mengel left his wife and kids.

Speaker 3 People gathered at my mom's house. Everybody just sat there waiting.

Speaker 10 Kevin's parents and siblings had not spoken with him, heard his voice, that is. The only communication he was making was on Facebook and through text messages.

Speaker 13 I think I may have said in there, call call me or one of the family members. And he said, I am speaking to a family member, I'm speaking to my wife, and that should be enough for everybody.

Speaker 10 But it was not enough because now a bizarre and horrifying thought had begun to take root and grow. The Mengel family suspected that all those messages were not coming from Kevin at all.

Speaker 3 I left another message for him saying, can you just tell me the name of the street that we grew up on? Like, just tell me that and I'll leave you alone.

Speaker 10 The police initially didn't even consider Kevin a missing person, but now the family begged them to take another look.

Speaker 3 We went back to the police again and pleaded. We tried to think of anything.
The kids are home alone. She's not there.
You know, anything that we could do to get them to go over there.

Speaker 10 Detective Maurer agreed to stop by the apartment and talk to Morgan.

Speaker 7 And she seemed genuine, like she

Speaker 7 wanted to help me.

Speaker 10 Morgan invited the detective in and told him the same story. Kevin had walked out on her and the kids and she had proof.
Text messages in her own phone from Kevin breaking it off.

Speaker 7 She had received a message from Kevin that he was leaving and she showed me these text message exchanges, something to the effect, are you kidding me? And he said, no, I'm done.

Speaker 7 I can't do this anymore.

Speaker 10 The detective also spoke with Steve Chappelle, Kevin's young employee, who'd been hanging around the apartment complex with Morgan and the kids.

Speaker 7 He just seemed like a kid, a young kid. He was 21 years old.

Speaker 10 And Morgan scoffed at the idea that they were anything more than friends.

Speaker 7 She laughed and said, No, I'm a married mother of three. I'm 34 and he's 21.
That's absurd. There's no affair.

Speaker 10 Absurd is precisely what friends Mike and Noel would have said had they heard that. They knew firsthand that Morgan had a long history of cheating, sometimes even with Kevin's closest friends.

Speaker 12 She would tell me how they would have sex in her and Kevin's bed when he would go out, how they would have sex in the cars, the, you know, the business cars.

Speaker 9 I said to myself, you know, she's not right.

Speaker 11 There's something wrong with her.

Speaker 10 And Kevin's family, by now, they were sure Morgan and the young landscaper were up to something. Michelle confronted Morgan directly.

Speaker 3 I said, I'm not okay with this. Like, he just disappeared.
Like, I don't believe you. Like, I don't.

Speaker 10 Adding to their worry, they say Morgan had not let them see the three kids since Kevin disappeared, and they worried she might leave town.

Speaker 10 They asked the detective if he would do surveillance on the apartment, but he said no.

Speaker 7 I said, based on the fact that we had a witness that saw him, the fact that I now know that Morgan and Kevin have a troubled relationship, I thought that maybe Kevin really was just fed up and

Speaker 7 had enough of Morgan and left.

Speaker 10 So the Mengel family took the investigation into their their own hands. Brother Chris decided to stake out the apartment overnight.
He brought a video camera with him.

Speaker 10 Early Friday morning, he filmed Steve Chappelle coming and going as if he now lived there, taking Kevin's place.

Speaker 10 And what was strange, it looked as though Steve was packing up Morgan's truck.

Speaker 20 We'll come in there.

Speaker 20 Okay, yeah, they're getting in the truck now.

Speaker 10 To Chris, it sure looked like Morgan and Steve were getting ready for something.

Speaker 6 He has a bunch of crap with him. Morgan has a bunch of stuff, too.

Speaker 10 He frantically called the police looking for Detective Maurer.

Speaker 6 I'm afraid his wife and the new boyfriend are making a move right now to leave.

Speaker 20 They're leaving. They're leaving.

Speaker 10 Only they didn't go far. Chris followed them as they drove over to the landscaping business.
It turns out the detective was already there.

Speaker 10 He decided to go poke around, half expecting to run into Kevin back at work.

Speaker 7 She gets out of the passenger side and walks directly by me. Then I walk over to Chappelle, who's still sitting in the passenger seat, and he's got a dead stare straight ahead.

Speaker 10 And there was something inside the truck that the detective thought was peculiar.

Speaker 7 The back seat was full of clothes. I could see a laundry basket and bags and backpacks.
And he says, oh, Morgan's going to do laundry across the street.

Speaker 23 And I said, well, Morgan's got a washer and dryer in her apartment. I saw it yesterday.

Speaker 7 Things just aren't adding up. I said, would you mind coming back to the police station?

Speaker 4 I do have a couple more questions for you.

Speaker 10 And in that moment, as the detective turned his back on Steve, something unexpected happened. Something Chris Mangle, still filming, caught on video.

Speaker 10 Steve jumped in the driver's seat, pulled out of the lot, and sped away. That's him.

Speaker 6 That's a dude with a red hat.

Speaker 20 Just Steve.

Speaker 7 Morgan walks over and sits down on

Speaker 7 a step, puts her hands in her head and says,

Speaker 7 Oh my, maybe he did do something to Kevin.

Speaker 4 Coming up.

Speaker 24 Steve had said to me that he loved me and would do whatever it took to have me.

Speaker 15 Morgan breaks her silence. What had she been hiding?

Speaker 8 I'm floored, and I'm like, well, why didn't you tell me this?

Speaker 10 This sounds so hokey, but three months before, I had a terrible nightmare that something had happened to Kevin and that kevin was hurt and i woke up crying hysterically in my bed michelle hopkins kevin mangel's younger sister was now in a waking nightmare her brother kevin had been missing for a week and the young man who appeared to be having an affair with her sister-in-law had just fled from police why did he just steal her pickup truck and flee when i asked him to come back to the police station The situation suddenly looked much worse than Detective David Maurer had thought.

Speaker 10 He brought Morgan to the station and called called his partner and longtime friend, Darren Sedlak.

Speaker 9 He said, can you get in here? Something's going on. I'm not sure what, but Chappelle just stole Morgan's truck and fled and we can't find him.

Speaker 7 We had no idea that it was going to turn out the way that it did.

Speaker 10 Their first priority was to find Steve Chappelle, who was now on the lamb. They tried tracking his cell, which was in the truck, but it was turned off.

Speaker 10 But Morgan's phone was in there and it was turned on.

Speaker 10 She gave detectives permission to track it.

Speaker 9 So we focused all of our efforts on Morgan's telephone.

Speaker 10 Meanwhile, Morgan was downstairs in the interview room as detectives tried to find out what Steve was running from.

Speaker 18 Do you think maybe Steve hurt Kevin?

Speaker 24 I don't know, but by his reaction today.

Speaker 18 He takes your truck without your permission and, in my terms, flees the scene.

Speaker 10 Although Morgan had previously denied the affair with Steve, the much younger landscaper, she was now telling the detectives they were having a relationship.

Speaker 10 A result, she said, of an unfulfilling marriage.

Speaker 24 It was just a bad marriage.

Speaker 18 Okay.

Speaker 24 A really bad marriage. The yelling, the screaming, the fighting, the I can't ever do anything right.

Speaker 25 So tell us about your affair. How did Steve treat you?

Speaker 24 Talked to me like I was a human being with feelings. Paid attention to me.

Speaker 10 And she repeated yet again how Kevin had walked out on her and the kids one week earlier.

Speaker 24 He was leaving.

Speaker 24 He wanted a fresh start.

Speaker 17 And did you respond to him?

Speaker 24 I said, are you kidding me? He told me he was not kidding and to tell the children that he loved them.

Speaker 17 Now I have to ask, in the truck, I saw a bunch of clothes in the back of the truck.

Speaker 18 Who did they belong to? Steve.

Speaker 24 He said he was taking his stuff, his clothes that he had accumulated at my house, home.

Speaker 17 He's been staying there?

Speaker 24 A few nights, yes.

Speaker 17 Did you ever think that maybe Kevin would come home and Steve would be there and there would be an issue?

Speaker 24 No, I hadn't thought about that.

Speaker 7 And I said, if I get in a fight with my wife, I said, nobody's moving into my house.

Speaker 17 As a husband, as just

Speaker 17 a sensible person, that to me that

Speaker 24 it's poor judgment.

Speaker 10 Poor judgment and a bad marriage was all Kevin's wife would admit to. But the family knew that Morgan had a history of deception, a strange one that went back many years.

Speaker 3 There's something that is innocent looking in her face that you just believed her. Whatever she said, you just believed her.

Speaker 10 One of her biggest lies, they say, was back when Morgan got pregnant before the couple was married and refused to tell the truth about it.

Speaker 14 We were looking at her saying,

Speaker 14 you're pregnant. And she said, I am not pregnant.

Speaker 3 And she would wear two girdles at a time and heavy sweaters. And I said to her, Morgan, did you tell Kevin?

Speaker 3 And she said, no, I just told him that I'm on birth control and it's causing my stomach to swell.

Speaker 10 And when the baby was born, Kevin was in shock.

Speaker 3 We got a phone call the next day from my brother Kevin hysterically crying, telling me that I'm an aunt.

Speaker 10 Was he crying tears of joy?

Speaker 3 I don't think so at that time. I think he was so scared.
And it caused the first real fight between my brother and I because I was so very disgusted by Morgan.

Speaker 10 So when Kevin went missing, the family had been convinced from day one that Morgan was hiding something. And now the detective was too.

Speaker 10 After hours in the interrogation room, she gave the first hint that she knew more than she was saying about her young boyfriend Steve.

Speaker 24 Steve had said to me that he loved me and would do whatever it took to have me. And then last night he said he had an uneasy feeling.
He apologized to me and said it was his fault.

Speaker 24 I asked him what was his fault and the only response I got was the entire situation.

Speaker 18 Do you think

Speaker 18 Steve hurt Kennedy?

Speaker 24 At this point, yeah, I do.

Speaker 10 Morgan asked for a cigarette break. Detective Maurer went outside with her.

Speaker 10 She'd been talking all this time without a lawyer, and the detective wanted to keep the conversation going, hoping she'd reveal something.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 10 she ever?

Speaker 7 We're standing in the shade because it's still extremely hot and there's no air conditioning in the building because of that thunderstorm.

Speaker 7 And she says, Steve told me that he hit Kevin in the back of the head with a shovel. And I'm like, whoa, we run back in and I turn the recording back on at that point.

Speaker 17 Morty, you just told me something. Would you mind repeating that?

Speaker 24 Steve hit Kevin in the back of the head with a shovel.

Speaker 10 Here was Morgan laying the blame on Steve, telling police he had attacked and killed Kevin at the landscaping garage on the day he'd supposedly left her and the kids. The detective was stunned.

Speaker 10 That earlier sighting of Kevin alive and well in town, had it been a mistake? How long had she been lying to police?

Speaker 7 I'm floored and I'm like, well, you know,

Speaker 7 why didn't you tell me this?

Speaker 8 I said, when your

Speaker 7 boyfriend tells you that he hit your husband in the back of the head with a shovel, you call the police.

Speaker 17 Are you trying to protect Steve?

Speaker 24 Not at this point.

Speaker 10 Morgan said that Steve had only just revealed to her what he'd done, but the detective suspected he wasn't getting the full story.

Speaker 10 Hoping to trip her up, he asked her to write down a timeline of events for the week Kevin disappeared.

Speaker 18 You gotta write it down? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 10 Most of what she wrote stuck to the story, but this was a strange detail.

Speaker 7 But she writes Snapple on one of her statements. I said, what does Snapple mean?

Speaker 15 Coming up.

Speaker 25 I want to hear everything. You better start at the beginning because the game's over.

Speaker 15 A tough new interrogation and a new revelation. That single word Morgan had written involved a deadly surprise.

Speaker 25 Who handed the snapple to your husband?

Speaker 15 When dateline continues.

Speaker 21 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 21 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 21 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 21 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 10 The first break in the case of missing husband Kevin Mengel had come out of the blue.

Speaker 10 Morgan, the wife, under questioning by police, revealed that her lover Steve had killed her husband in the landscaping garage.

Speaker 10 She was saying Steve had done the deed a week earlier and only admitted it to her later. She hid his secret out of fear.

Speaker 24 I didn't know if he was gonna whack me upside the back of the head with a shovel.

Speaker 24 If I and you guys showed up and he flipped out.

Speaker 17 The man you're having a relationship with tells you that he hit your husband, the father of your children, in the back of the head with a shovel. And you don't tell me that information.

Speaker 18 Bit of shock.

Speaker 17 I personally feel it's because you had some role in this.

Speaker 24 I had no role in this.

Speaker 10 But Detective Maurer did not believe her. He looked over the timeline she'd written out, puzzling over that one word, snapple.
Why did she write that down?

Speaker 10 The detective took a break, went upstairs to speak with his partner, Detective Sedluck.

Speaker 9 And it was sort of like a mental slip. And then I asked him if he minded if I had a shot.
I wanted a chance to talk to her myself.

Speaker 10 And so the detective decided to play good cop, bad cop with Morgan.

Speaker 25 I want to hear everything. And you better start at the beginning, because the game's over.

Speaker 10 And now Morgan was about to offer a new piece to the puzzle, a truly shocking one. It had started as a joke, she said, the two lovers imagining Kevin out of the picture.

Speaker 24 Joking around, oh, you know what, we could take Kevin out. Yeah, right.

Speaker 10 What would happen, they wondered, if they put something in his favorite drink?

Speaker 24 He put

Speaker 24 nicotine, straight nicotine, in a snapple that he bought.

Speaker 10 Following a recipe he found online, Steve cooked up some chewing tobacco into a toxic substance called liquid nicotine. He then slipped the poison into Kevin's snapple.

Speaker 25 And then who handed the snapple to your husband?

Speaker 24 It was on the truck.

Speaker 25 I did. Did you say anything to your husband like,

Speaker 25 that drink's for you?

Speaker 24 No, the rest of us don't drink snapple.

Speaker 25 Okay, and then what?

Speaker 24 I left and got my kids off to school.

Speaker 10 But Morgan insisted she never expected any real harm to come to Kevin, never expected Steve would take it as far as he did.

Speaker 10 And besides, it wasn't the poison that killed Kevin, but the blows to the head, which Steve had done alone inside the landscaping garage.

Speaker 24 I wasn't being serious. Apparently, it did turn into a serious conversation

Speaker 24 on his end.

Speaker 24 And yes, I did hand Kevin a snap-a-bottle with nicotine in it.

Speaker 24 After that, I was not involved in it.

Speaker 25 You guys killed someone. And you expect me to believe that you didn't talk about it?

Speaker 24 No,

Speaker 24 I didn't want to talk about it. Looked at my kids and felt terrible.

Speaker 25 So terrible that you made up text messages to his family members about him calling you.

Speaker 24 I'm texting you. I did not do that.
Who did? Steve did that.

Speaker 10 It was Steve, she said, who used Kevin's phone to send messages to his family pretending Kevin was still alive. And Steve, and Steve alone, who had buried Kevin in some woods a few towns over.

Speaker 18 And where did he tell you that he took Kevin?

Speaker 24 Behind a high school. There was a development being built.

Speaker 10 The interrogation had turned deadly serious, but the detectives thought that Morgan's demeanor was odd.

Speaker 10 When Detective Maure asked if he could take pictures for evidence, he says she didn't look like someone facing a potential charge of murder.

Speaker 7 And while I'm taking these pictures, she's actually smiling for the camera, which is is weird.

Speaker 10 And in the middle of his bad cop interrogation, Detective Sedlek says it was almost as if she was flirting with him.

Speaker 9 My questioning was not nice by any means, and I just couldn't believe that she was smiling and looking up at me.

Speaker 25 Is this funny? No.

Speaker 24 Am I laughing? You just smiled. No, I didn't.

Speaker 10 The detectives felt they had enough. They issued a warrant for Steve Chappelle, who was still on the lamb.

Speaker 7 And Morgan?

Speaker 9 We handcuffed her inside of the interview room and told her that she was under arrest for the murder of Kevin Mengel Jr.

Speaker 10 They sent a police officer to talk to Kevin's father.

Speaker 13 He said that we believe that your son has been murdered.

Speaker 13 It was

Speaker 13 not easy to sit and listen to.

Speaker 10 Kevin's three children were spending the day at his sister Michelle's house when she learned that Kevin was not coming back.

Speaker 3 Kevin's kids came in and they just came up and

Speaker 3 they just started hugging me and they're like, what's wrong? They just, I think they knew.

Speaker 10 Michelle had known all along, she says, in her gut, that Kevin was dead.

Speaker 10 But how it happened, Michelle could not believe what police were telling them. She remembered Steve Chappelle as that scrawny, unassuming guy who worked for Kevin mowing lawns.

Speaker 10 In fact, he'd done some work on Michelle's yard just a few weeks earlier. Michelle felt badly when he told her he just had his wisdom teeth out.

Speaker 3 I was so worried about him for the two days that he was there and

Speaker 3 to think what he did to my brother.

Speaker 10 And her sister-in-law, it felt impossible to take that in.

Speaker 3 When I saw her muck so, I didn't even recognize her. She just had a different look about her.
She's been in my life for 15 years and I didn't even know who she was.

Speaker 10 The next morning, detectives recovered Kevin's body buried in a shallow grave behind that high school right where Morgan said it would be.

Speaker 10 And the following day, Steve Chappelle was picked up nearly 2,000 miles away in Colorado.

Speaker 3 I still can't imagine him doing it. I can imagine Morgan doing it.

Speaker 3 I don't know what they were thinking.

Speaker 10 Figuring out what they were thinking was now the job of the county prosecutor, and it would prove to be more complicated than expected.

Speaker 25 Did she say you need to go dig a hole?

Speaker 10 Morgan had pointed the finger at Steve, but now he was back and about to tell a very different version of events.

Speaker 28 On the day of the murder, she's texting him about, has the poison worked yet? And when it's not working fast enough, she says, Couldn't you just pick up a shovel?

Speaker 10 The truth? Well, that takes us right back to where our story began.

Speaker 10 The tale of the texts has another chapter to come.

Speaker 15 Coming up, who was the mastermind?

Speaker 20 Morgan?

Speaker 28 She used him as a pawn to do her actions.

Speaker 15 Or Steve?

Speaker 16 He is a cold-blooded killer.

Speaker 15 A few surprises were still in store. We were like, Holy Smokes.

Speaker 10 Morgan Mangle and her young lover, Steve Chappelle, were both sitting in jail for the murder of Morgan's husband, Kevin.

Speaker 10 Morgan had confessed to playing a small part in the crime, helping Steve Chappelle come up with the plan to spike her husband's Snapple iced tea with poison.

Speaker 10 Only it was a joke, she said, that was taken too far.

Speaker 28 What were your first impressions of her?

Speaker 14 Very good.

Speaker 16 I mean, the allegation compared to the person I was speaking to did not seem to fit.

Speaker 10 Morgan's attorney, Jack McMahon, says the case for murder against Morgan was weak. She wasn't at the crime scene when Kevin was killed and had no convincing motive for wanting her husband dead.

Speaker 16 In fact, financially, she was way worse off with her husband's death than she would have been with him alive because he was the lifeblood of the company and there was no life insurance.

Speaker 10 You think that she sort of had some musings about, oh, I wish my husband wasn't around. I wish someone would take care of it.

Speaker 16 I think Morgan was a person walking around with dynamite, so to speak, and with these musings and saying these to various people.

Speaker 16 And Stephen Chappelle was the match that lit that dynamite and exploded. But somebody took action, and that person that took action was Chappelle.
He is a cold-blooded killer.

Speaker 10 A cold-blooded killer? He hardly looked like one when police picked him up in Denver and got him into the interrogation room. He was meek.
His voice was quiet and shaking with fear.

Speaker 10 District Attorney Pat Carmody.

Speaker 28 He admitted the whole crime. He said that he was in love with this woman, and he thought this was the way to get her forever.

Speaker 10 Steve said Morgan was not kidding when she came up with the plan to kill Kevin.

Speaker 29 She just wanted him dead and that she wanted to be with me forever.

Speaker 10 And Steve said that after the murder, far from being scared, Morgan was grateful.

Speaker 29 Asked me if I was all right and kissed me.

Speaker 29 She came back with water

Speaker 29 and began like rinsing off the area where it happened.

Speaker 10 Which is why the garage looked so clean when employees arrived for work that Monday morning after Kevin's so-called departure.

Speaker 28 She walks in the garage, steps over her dead husband, kisses Chappelle, tells him to get a tarp, and let's get to work cleaning the scene.

Speaker 10 So now Steve and Morgan were pointing fingers at each other about who really planned the murder. And the DA?

Speaker 10 He believed Steve. He offered him a lesser charge of murder to testify against Morgan and charged Morgan with premeditated murder, a mandatory life sentence.

Speaker 28 I think she found the most gullible person she could. She used him as a pawn to do her actions.
He held the shovel, but Morgan held the strings.

Speaker 10 So you think Morgan was in charge of this operation?

Speaker 3 100%, I believe that. Morgan had a way with men.
She just did. She had a way with men.
And I think

Speaker 3 the same way that she had my brother, you know, under her spell, she had this kid as well.

Speaker 10 And the DA says it was Morgan herself who had been sending those fake text messages to Kevin's family after the murder, not Steve. Cell phone tracking records proved it.

Speaker 28 She's texting Kevin's family, assuring them that he's okay. He just wants to be left alone.
She's the most evil woman I've dealt with.

Speaker 10 Morgan Mengel went on trial in late January, 2012, a year and a half after Kevin Mengel had been murdered.

Speaker 10 But in addition to Steve Chappelle waiting in the wings to testify, the DA had something else, something extremely rare in a murder trial.

Speaker 10 A play-by-play of the crime, courtesy of text messages between Morgan and Steve as it happened.

Speaker 7 We were like, holy smokes, there it is, it's right there.

Speaker 10 The detectives had discovered the trove of messages during their interrogation when they pulled Morgan's phone records looking for Steve.

Speaker 7 We knew the exact time of death, we knew how it happened,

Speaker 4 and so we were floored.

Speaker 10 The texts are chilling. Four hours before the murder, Morgan texts Steve.
We ready? She types. Steve responds, yep, at the shop now.

Speaker 10 Then a half hour before the murder, Morgan asks Steve about the poison snapple.

Speaker 10 He drinking it, she asks. Steve writes back, yeah, kinda, really just waiting for him to bend over.
I have a shovel in my hand.

Speaker 8 Ha ha.

Speaker 10 Morgan's response, nice, babe. Steve doesn't reply.
Morgan writes, you backing out?

Speaker 28 There's a gap there where nothing happens. And she then gives him the final taunt, you backing out.

Speaker 28 And when she says that, he texts back, it's done, get here now.

Speaker 3 These text messages don't even seem real. Like, they just don't seem real.

Speaker 10 As incriminating as those messages sounded, Morgan's defense was ready to press her case in court, claiming she was no murderous mastermind.

Speaker 16 I'm not so sure, even to this day, that she had a fully formed belief that Stephen Chappelle was actually going to do this.

Speaker 10 But the defense defense never got a chance. A few days into the trial, a police officer said something on the stand, hearsay that could prejudice the jury, and the judge sent everyone home.

Speaker 10 Chester County Judge declares a mistrial in a love triangle murder case. For Kevin's family, the delay was torture.
More waiting for answers to questions they never wanted to ask.

Speaker 3 I wanted to know if he knew it was happening. I wanted to know if he begged.

Speaker 10 Why did you want to know?

Speaker 8 Kevin was so sweet and kind.

Speaker 3 And I know he must have been so, so scared.

Speaker 10 The story of those final moments could only be told by Steve Chappelle. But even from jail, as they awaited their fates, Morgan was trying to keep him quiet.

Speaker 10 She wrote him a letter saying she had given birth to his twins. So her game plan was if he thinks we have kids together, he's not going to rap me me out.

Speaker 28 Yes, and she would always ask him then, letters, have you figured out who has a better chance to get out of here? I need you to do this for me so I can raise our children.

Speaker 10 Except, of course, it was another lie, another manipulation. In February 2013, the prosecution and defense were back inside the Chester County Courthouse for Morgan Mengel's retrial.

Speaker 10 Steve was set to testify. But then, another surprise.
The day the testimony was set to begin, Morgan stopped the trial from happening and changed her plea.

Speaker 10 She admitted to first-degree premeditated murder. Even her own attorney was stunned.

Speaker 8 I believe Morgan

Speaker 16 saw the handwriting on the wall. She realizes that whatever action she took resulted in his death and resulted in Chappelle killing him.

Speaker 10 Steve was sentenced to 40 to 80 years.

Speaker 10 And Morgan, life without parole.

Speaker 10 For the Mengel family, there is finally some justice, they say, in knowing Morgan will remain behind bars forever.

Speaker 3 I want her to be in jail for the rest of her life. I want her to know that I'm going to be there when her daughter walks down the aisle.
I'm going to be there when her daughter has a baby.

Speaker 3 I'm going to be there with her sons when they meet their wives and graduate from high school.

Speaker 3 I'm going to get to see all of that. She's not.
She's in hell. And she's going to live this way for the rest of her life.

Speaker 5 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.

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