Secrets in a Small Town

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Speaker 2 I get my strength from my mother.

Speaker 2 She was my very best friend.

Speaker 1 I'd call my mom and she didn't answer.

Speaker 2 I pretty much knew in my heart that something was wrong.

Speaker 3 A mother vanished.

Speaker 2 I cried myself to sleep. It was just awful realizing that your worst nightmare had come true.

Speaker 3 A family anguished.

Speaker 4 She's gone.

Speaker 1 Do you have any idea

Speaker 1 how hard that was?

Speaker 3 Now the questions begin in a southern gothic mystery.

Speaker 1 The case is puzzling.

Speaker 5 We didn't really know what had happened.

Speaker 6 Who would ever imagine you'd have a murder in your family?

Speaker 3 Soon, there'd be secrets.

Speaker 1 We were dealing with a person that was leading a double life, and one of them would prove deadly. Have you ever said, I know that you did this?

Speaker 2 It hurts too much for me to say it out loud.

Speaker 3 Keith Morrison with Secrets in a Small Town.

Speaker 1 Suppose for a minute you were sitting in your car, smack dab in the middle of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and you pointed southwest down Highway 69 and kept a sharp eye out after half an hour or so.

Speaker 1 You'd roll into a sweet little place called Moundville. One stoplight, one main street, one general store.
Been around for a long time, has Moundville.

Speaker 1 But it's a sad truth, as the sheriff says, even here, where everybody used to know everybody.

Speaker 5 It's not that way anymore. So many different people are moving in from around the world and trying to escape the crowds.
Well, escape the crowd or running from something.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes, and where have you gone, Andy Griffith? Mayberry apparently is up and left as Sheriff Ken Ellis fights real crime nowadays.

Speaker 5 The crimes that you see in Hale County is the same crime you would see in any large city, just a smaller version.

Speaker 1 Still, Moundville is Moundville, and neighbors do tend to know more of each other's business than they might up in Tuscaloosa, for example.

Speaker 1 Which can be a bit of a nuisance, as you're about to see, if you need to keep a secret.

Speaker 1 Especially, for example, if your secret is about murder.

Speaker 1 To begin with, this thoughtful young woman was just a girl of 17 back in 2007 when things started coming apart, in the way things do when parents don't talk about it.

Speaker 1 Kelsey Mayfield saw that troubled look in her mom's eyes mostly, her mom Teresa.

Speaker 2 I could just tell she was very stressed.

Speaker 1 Ever clear to you what it was she was stressed about?

Speaker 2 Money would be the main thing. She just wanted to be sure that she had

Speaker 2 enough money to take care of her family.

Speaker 1 A lot of that going around, of course, Moundville not accepted. Like so many Americans, Kelsey's dad, Scott, had to work two jobs, neither of which paid very well, just to keep his head above water.

Speaker 2 Very hard-working man. It took two jobs to take care of our family.

Speaker 1 But money trouble aside, Teresa seemed to have a happy life, as anybody could see, including Teresa's mother, Reba.

Speaker 6 All Teresa ever wanted

Speaker 6 was to have a husband that cared for her, somebody she cared for, to have a family.

Speaker 1 And it was sweet and kind of corny. And even after after Kelsey's two little brothers arrived, she could see the signs of her parents' affection for each other.

Speaker 2 Every night before he got ready to go to work, he would give her a kiss on the cheek and say goodnight, say I love you.

Speaker 1 To the town, Teresa was the softball mom, the trunk of her car always a muddle of backs and balls, she shuttling kids back and forth.

Speaker 2 I remember that was a time where I had a softball game and Tater and Kobe had a baseball game all at the same time.

Speaker 2 And she stayed 30 minutes at Kobe's game, 30 minutes at Tater's game, game, and 30 minutes at my game.

Speaker 1 Just watching on the clock to make sure it was all equal, right?

Speaker 2 She was just an amazing mother.

Speaker 2 There was nothing that she would not do for myself or for my two brothers.

Speaker 1 And then there was that sweltering morning, June 2007. Teresa drove off to run errands and didn't come back.

Speaker 1 Kelsey was babysitting the boys then 8 and 11. Hours ticked by.
She called her mom, where are you?

Speaker 2 And she didn't answer. And then I called her back around lunch and she didn't answer.
I called her pretty much all day long.

Speaker 1 Her dad was at work. Her mom was, who knew where.

Speaker 1 Just wasn't like her to do this. Now, is she the sort of person who would take her cell phone with her everywhere?

Speaker 2 Yes. It was attached to her hip.

Speaker 1 You could always easily get hold of her.

Speaker 1 And you couldn't.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 8 By nightfall, still no word.

Speaker 1 Kelsey was in a panic. She called her dad, who by now had gone from his day job to his night shift at a local factory.
I'm sure you told your dad that you were worried.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we kept in touch during the day to see if one of us had talked to her.

Speaker 1 Did he seem to be worried? He did.

Speaker 2 And we could never get in touch with her.

Speaker 1 At midnight, it was clear something was terribly wrong. Scott left work to file a missing persons report with the Moundville police.
And then they all waited. What was it like for you that night?

Speaker 2 It was awful. I was very scared when she didn't come home.
And I pretty much knew in my heart that something was wrong.

Speaker 1 The next morning, said Kelsey, she woke up in a house that no longer felt like home. She called her grandmother, Reba, at her home in Prattville, a town two hours away.

Speaker 6 And she said,

Speaker 6 is mama down there, your house? I said, no, no, but she's not here. And she said,

Speaker 6 Mama didn't come home last night.

Speaker 1 So what was going on in here?

Speaker 6 Oh, I'm just turning upside down. You know, I'm just tying in a knot.

Speaker 1 Reba called Teresa's younger sister, Ashley, at her office at the local circuit court.

Speaker 9 Mama called me and she said, Teresa's missing. I said, Well, I said, Let me make some phone calls.

Speaker 1 Right away, Ashley called the sheriff of her town and he called Sheriff Ellis to see if they knew anything.

Speaker 9 And his response to me was,

Speaker 9 It's bad.

Speaker 9 It's bad.

Speaker 1 It certainly was.

Speaker 1 They had found Teresa's truck on a dirt road less than a mile from home. She was slumped behind the wheel and she was dead.

Speaker 1 And this much was perfectly clear. It wasn't an accident.

Speaker 3 Coming up, the investigation begins.

Speaker 1 We had to ask ourselves who to get her to this location and why was she murdered.

Speaker 3 When secrets in a small Town Continues.

Speaker 1 It was a Lover's Lane, a quiet, dusty, dead-end road miles from Main Street Moundville.

Speaker 1 The spot so uncommonly traversed, a car with engine running, taillights blazing late into the night could go unnoticed.

Speaker 1 It was here they found Teresa Mayfield's truck, body inside, gunshot wound to the head.

Speaker 1 Teresa's younger sister broke the terrible news to their mother.

Speaker 4 When I went to the house, Mama was sitting in the recliner.

Speaker 10 I knelt down on my knees and I grabbed her and I said, Mama, she's gone.

Speaker 4 She's gone.

Speaker 1 Do you have any idea

Speaker 1 how hard that was?

Speaker 1 Teresa's daughter, Kelsey, had spent a sleepless night waiting in vain for her mother to come home. How did you find out?

Speaker 2 My dad came and told my brothers and I. It was just awful realizing that your worst nightmare had come true.

Speaker 2 For a brief second, I thought she had committed suicide just because I knew how stressed out she was, but then I also knew how much she loved her family.

Speaker 1 Everybody who knew Teresa knew that. Even Sheriff Kenneth Ellis, who drove out to the crime scene, if that's what it was.
Corporal Mark Boyd, Alabama Bureau of Investigation, met him there.

Speaker 1 This case was kind of personal for you, Sheriff.

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 5 My daughter and Miss Teresa and Scott's daughter, they played softball together.

Speaker 1 So you see Teresa out at the ballpark and things. Heavy game.

Speaker 5 It felt like part of my family was gone, too.

Speaker 1 They had a look around the truck. No sign of a struggle.
Dusting revealed no viable fingerprints. There were no footprints.
Not even a loose hair. Puzzling.

Speaker 1 Was there any thought once you saw the scene that this was a suicide? There was things missing that prevented the suicide theory. Like what?

Speaker 1 If you're going to commit suicide with a gun, it's usually at the scene.

Speaker 1 It was clear Teresa had been murdered, shot with a gun which was now missing. And what was more, her cell phone, the one that was always attached to her hip, was nowhere to be found.

Speaker 1 Did it look like it could have been a robbery? Well, the wallet wasn't taken. The purse was on the console, but the contents of the purse had been been dumped out in her lap.

Speaker 1 A clumsy attempt at staging, you might say. Yes.
But there was one important clue the killer left behind. We noticed that the only window down was the driver's window.

Speaker 1 So we figured that she had to have known the person

Speaker 1 because she had let down her window. We had to ask ourselves who could get her to this location and why was she murdered.
Someone in Moundville had to know something.

Speaker 1 From there, the investigation went where?

Speaker 1 Investigating her inner circle, trying to find a motive. And usually, so I'm told, in cases like this, the husband has got to be a person of interest.

Speaker 1 Yes. So as the family gathered to mourn the loss of their beloved Teresa, Scott couldn't be with them.
He was down at the sheriff's office answering questions. He came willingly.
Yes, no issue.

Speaker 1 Did he ask for an attorney or anything?

Speaker 1 No, he did not. Corporal Boyd chatted with Scott for three long hours.
And during the whole time, he was cooperative and helpful.

Speaker 1 You know, the standard questions that we would ask is, you know, is anyone having an affair? Are you having an affair? No. Was she having an affair? No.

Speaker 1 Good marriage, happy marriage, Christian marriage. Right.
I asked him, did they argue? He said, no.

Speaker 1 Scott answered all their questions about what Teresa was supposed to be doing that morning.

Speaker 1 He told them he phoned Teresa from his morning job on a farm, a wake-up call, and then about two hours later, she called him.

Speaker 1 But the call faded out. He couldn't hear a thing.
And Scott said that it sounded like she was on the road. He thought nothing of it then, he said, but now? Was it a distress call? No way to know.

Speaker 1 But there was one thing that call certainly cleared up for investigators. Scott could not have killed Teresa.

Speaker 1 He was something like 30 miles away, up near Tuscaloosa, had a breakfast receipt to prove it. He had stopped at Hardy's and had a receipt showing that he was there.

Speaker 1 So Scott rejoined his family, caught up in the terrible business of grieving.

Speaker 2 I kept wondering, you know, why was it happening to our family?

Speaker 6 It was awful.

Speaker 6 Who would ever imagine you'd have a murder in your family?

Speaker 1 Investigators tried, with the help of friends, to fill in the gaps of Teresa's last hours. They talked to Scott and Teresa's friend Dawn Lavender.

Speaker 1 She had plans to go shopping with Teresa the morning of the murder. I'm sure Dawn was shocked and upset by what had happened.
She did cry during the interview.

Speaker 1 She was at her house waiting on Teresa to come pick her up, and she was going to ride with her. She finally got a chance to talk to Teresa around seven.

Speaker 1 And after that call, nothing. Dawn told the investigators she phoned Teresa over and over, and each time the phone went to a recording.

Speaker 1 Just to be sure of all this, they pulled Teresa's cell phone records and began plotting out a timeline of her whereabouts. But the picture the records painted wasn't quite what they expected.

Speaker 1 That morning call to Scott, the one he couldn't hear, Teresa did not call from Moundville. The cell tower shows that it's pinging from up in Tuscaloosa.

Speaker 1 Wait a minute, how could it be pinging from Tuscaloosa? That's miles and miles away. Right.
There's no way that she could have made the call and been back to the location where she was murdered at.

Speaker 1 So courtesy of the cell towers, you were able to show that Teresa could not have made that call. It had to be somebody else using her phone.
And what do you know?

Speaker 1 Her phone is missing from the crime scene. Correct.

Speaker 1 So, the person who very likely killed Teresa Mayfield must have used Teresa's cell phone to call her husband, Scott.

Speaker 1 What could that mean? Did the killer know Scott?

Speaker 1 And did Scott know something he wasn't sharing?

Speaker 1 Coming up, we were dealing with a person that was leading a double life.

Speaker 3 Secrets and lies.

Speaker 1 This was betrayal.

Speaker 2 That's a very good word.

Speaker 3 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 1 It's a funny thing about secrets. They can only stay hidden for so long.

Speaker 1 Especially in a little place like Moundville. And it didn't take very long for Sheriff Ellis and Corporal Boyd to stumble on a secret Scott had been keeping.

Speaker 5 While we was out at the crime scene, Scott had had a young lady to come pick up the boys.

Speaker 1 It was only later, when the fog of grief had lifted, that one of Teresa's relatives wondered to police who was that woman hanging around the day Teresa died. Ellis and Boy tracked her down.

Speaker 1 And what they discovered?

Speaker 1 Well, that changed everything.

Speaker 1 Or seemed to.

Speaker 1 The person they were talking to was

Speaker 1 Scott's mistress.

Speaker 5 She was under the impression that Scott was not married at that time.

Speaker 1 What did you make of that when you heard it?

Speaker 5 We knew that wasn't correct.

Speaker 1 A love triangle? Jealous homewrecker kills wife, claims husband?

Speaker 1 No, not even close. Scott's girlfriend thought his marriage was over, his divorce finalized.
What was her reaction to getting the real story? She must have been upset.

Speaker 5 More hurt, probably, than upset, because I think she'd fallen in love with him.

Speaker 1 He'd been lying like a sidewalk. That's right.

Speaker 1 And you had no idea that woman was associated with him that way either, did you? I had met her once or twice.

Speaker 2 Yeah. But I just thought they were friends.
I didn't think

Speaker 2 it was anything else.

Speaker 1 This was

Speaker 1 betrayal in all capital letters.

Speaker 2 That's a very good word.

Speaker 1 You're betrayed.

Speaker 2 Lied to.

Speaker 2 Taken advantage of in a way.

Speaker 1 Kelsey may have been surprised, but Teresa's mom and sister, they knew better because This wasn't Scott's first dance with infidelity. Oh no, there had been others.

Speaker 1 In fact, Scott and Teresa divorced during one of his affairs. That was just after Kelsey was born.
And then three years later, Teresa took him back, remarried him.

Speaker 6 She wanted to have her family back together. That was her whole thing, family.

Speaker 1 What was it like for you when Scott came into your house? What would happen in here as he walked in the door?

Speaker 9 I tried to be...

Speaker 9 Sociable, neutral with Scott, but I always had that thought in the back of my mind. He hurt my sister, and I will not forget it.

Speaker 1 For a while, things were as Teresa had always hoped, but wishes don't always come true. Soon, Scott was back to his old ways with that girl cops were talking to in Tuscaloosa.

Speaker 1 And you know how gossip can be. Scott went from sympathetic figure, bereaved widower, to cad.

Speaker 1 And maybe

Speaker 1 worse.

Speaker 1 He must have been aware of the fact that there were people suspicious of him.

Speaker 2 It bothered me hearing the bad things that people had to say about him. And I knew that my dad was never capable of doing something like that.
You know, I was going to have his back regardless.

Speaker 1 But to investigators, Scott's affair, and the fact he lied about it to police, certainly was suspicious. Ellis and Boyd asked the girlfriend to help them out by recording her conversations with Scott.

Speaker 1 Maybe he'd let something slip.

Speaker 16 Hello. Hey.

Speaker 2 Are you okay? Yes, I'm okay. They just left.

Speaker 5 Look, all I want to know,

Speaker 2 did you do it?

Speaker 16 Of course not.

Speaker 16 They told me on the get-go, I would be number one prime suspect

Speaker 16 because I'm the husband.

Speaker 2 Do you still love me?

Speaker 16 Yes, I do.

Speaker 2 If you did have anything to do with her dying, was it because you loved me?

Speaker 16 I didn't have nothing to do with it. No, no, no.
I had nothing. My hands are clean as they can be.

Speaker 1 So, infidelity?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Murder, hmm, didn't sound like it. We could prove that he was an adulterer, but

Speaker 1 we were trying to prove the murder. Guess there's no crime against being a lying sacker, you know what?

Speaker 1 It's not against the law to have

Speaker 1 a mistress.

Speaker 1 So now the corporal and the sheriff reverted to standard procedure. They followed up every tip, tracked tracked down every tenuous lead, knocked down rumors.

Speaker 1 Somebody called Scott from Teresa's cell phone that morning, whether he heard it or not.

Speaker 1 The investigation dragged on. Weeks and months went by, and there was, you know, nothing.
No rest.

Speaker 9 You have no idea how

Speaker 10 that anger will get the best of you not knowing

Speaker 10 who done this, and you want the person that done this

Speaker 15 to be punished for.

Speaker 1 Kelsey took on the most difficult job of her life. At 17 she stepped into her mother's shoes, defended her father, tried to maintain something of a normal life for her little brothers.

Speaker 2 Me trying to fill my mother's shoes, those are some

Speaker 2 big shoes to fill. I just felt like it was my responsibility to help my dad take care of my family.

Speaker 1 So you were able to continue to have a relationship of trust with your father. Right.
He was there for you guys. Yes.

Speaker 2 He tried to be strong for us

Speaker 2 so, you know, we wouldn't have a breakdown.

Speaker 1 By the first anniversary of Teresa's death, there was still no arrest, and the story was old news.

Speaker 1 So Teresa's mother plastered this poster on doors and windows and telephone poles all around Moundville, hoping it would help dislodge some clue.

Speaker 1 And then the weirdest thing happened.

Speaker 6 We found out that just about as quick as we were putting posters up, they were being taken down.

Speaker 1 Taken down by someone who didn't want Teresa's killer found, she presumed. And a dark thought crystallized in Reba's mind.
Was it Scott?

Speaker 6 You know, he'd never acted like a grieving husband. If he had,

Speaker 6 I wouldn't have

Speaker 6 had these thoughts.

Speaker 1 So your thoughts actually increased over the course of the time that you were with us.

Speaker 1 But you know what they say about assumptions. It wasn't scoffed.

Speaker 2 Me and my brothers took them down.

Speaker 2 At first, I was okay with it. But once they put the posters up and everywhere I went, I saw my mother's face.
It just drove me crazy.

Speaker 2 It broke my heart seeing her face splattered all over these postures.

Speaker 1 And so expectations faded again. A couple more months went by, and then a girl who knew Kelsey heard a strange little story.
Overheard it, actually.

Speaker 1 A guy saying he saw someone with a gun on a dirt road around the time Teresa was killed. Did she associate it with this crime?

Speaker 5 Oh, well, she knew that Miss Teresa was killed down that way, so she just reported it.

Speaker 1 Was this the break they were looking for?

Speaker 1 Well, we can tell you this: the tip led to real flesh and blood.

Speaker 1 In fact, to a quite literal snake in the grass.

Speaker 3 Coming up, a curious incident from Teresa's past. Could it shed light on the crime?

Speaker 6 I looked at her and said, you'd need to stay away from that woman.

Speaker 3 When Secrets in a Small Town Continues.

Speaker 1 Under a setting sun on a sweltering summer night, two years after her death, Teresa Mayfield's friends and family gathered to remember.

Speaker 17 I talked to her almost every day, and I miss those talks.

Speaker 1 They took turns talking about the loving daughter, the softball mom, the sweet woman gunned down on that lonely country road.

Speaker 1 A murder that was still a mystery.

Speaker 6 My family will not stop searching or doing whatever it takes to find out.

Speaker 17 Who took Teresa's life?

Speaker 1 When Scott got up to speak, you can bet people were paying special close attention.

Speaker 17 Yes, she was a loving wife, loving mother, and a loving friend to the community. Yes, she would do anything for anybody at any time.

Speaker 1 Having discovered he was not exactly husband of the year, some people still nursed a lingering suspicion, and yet here he was devoted to the care of his children and full of praise for his dead wife.

Speaker 17 She did a wonderful job raising these kids.

Speaker 17 She was the one who got them to practice on time, got them to ball games on time.

Speaker 1 When Sheriff Ellis walked up to the podium, he looked at Teresa's mother Reba and vowed he'd get justice yet.

Speaker 5 Miss Reba,

Speaker 17 I won't quit until we find out what happened to Miss Teresa.

Speaker 1 And in fact, even as he spoke, the sheriff, along with the corporal, were chasing down their first honest to God lead in, what, over a year?

Speaker 1 Didn't seem like much, really, not at first, just an overheard story from a guy in a bar, something about how he and a friend ran into someone with a gun.

Speaker 1 Not so terribly uncommon around here, mind you, except it happened around the same time and not very far away from where the murder occurred.

Speaker 1 So Ellison Boyd tracked the kid down, and he repeated the story for them.

Speaker 1 They were on a dirt road, and they came up on a snake, a rattlesnake, and they was trying to kill it. find something to kill it with.

Speaker 1 Trouble was, they were plumb out of rattlesnake killing tools, and that's when an SUV just happened to pull up on the dirt road behind them.

Speaker 1 The driver was a woman in her 40s or thereabouts, who, said the young man, offered them a surefire way to dispatch that rattlesnake. Lady in the car had a gun.
Right.

Speaker 1 It was a handgun inside a Ziploc plastic bag.

Speaker 5 I think she handed him the plastic bag for him to take it out.

Speaker 1 And that was a little weird. Why would it be in the bag? Right.

Speaker 1 A peculiar story, story, for sure. Certain details were a little fuzzy.
Kid couldn't remember the exact day, for example, but he did recall with absolute clarity who the driver was.

Speaker 1 Because he knew her.

Speaker 14 Knew her name.

Speaker 1 And here was the most curious thing of all. It was a name you've heard before.

Speaker 1 Don Lavender.

Speaker 1 Small town Moundville suddenly got even smaller. Don Lavender, you'll recall, was Teresa's friend.
The one who said she waited in vain for Teresa to pick her up on the morning of the murder.

Speaker 1 Great buddies, according to Dawn.

Speaker 1 But maybe not so much, said Kelsey.

Speaker 2 If her and mom saw each other at games or whatever, they would speak, but I mean, they weren't best friends or anything.

Speaker 1 They did go out together a couple of times.

Speaker 2 I think my mother did it just because she was bored and wanted to get out of the house.

Speaker 1 But when they did get together, at least on one occasion, said Kelsey, It was certainly memorable and not in a good way.

Speaker 1 They went out to a local casino one night, she said, and her mother came home stumbling.

Speaker 2 I thought she was drunk and I knew that that couldn't be right because she didn't drink. She didn't even know where she was at.
You couldn't hardly understand a word she was saying.

Speaker 2 She came in and my dad and I got her and put her in the bed.

Speaker 1 How long did she sleep?

Speaker 2 She slept for two days, two straight days.

Speaker 1 What did you think about that?

Speaker 2 I thought it was very strange. She didn't really remember what happened.

Speaker 2 She just knew that she had taken some

Speaker 2 pills, I believe.

Speaker 1 How'd she get them?

Speaker 2 I believe Dawn gave them to her.

Speaker 1 Remember how Teresa was stressed out those last weeks of her life?

Speaker 1 Night of the casino trip, Teresa told Kelsey, Dawn gave her Xanax, the anti-anxiety medication, just to calm her down, Dawn told her. And it certainly did that.

Speaker 1 Out like a light calm for two whole days.

Speaker 6 I looked at her and said, Teresa,

Speaker 6 you need to stay away from that woman. She is no friend of yours.

Speaker 1 And how'd Teresa respond to that?

Speaker 6 She said, I've learned my lesson.

Speaker 1 Or maybe she didn't. Because the morning of the murder, Teresa had arranged to run errands with Dawn.

Speaker 1 Or at least that's what Dawn said.

Speaker 1 And then it all clicked together. Dawn on the dirt road, a gun in a plastic bag, Teresa's car windowed down as though she knew her killer.

Speaker 1 Sheriff Ellis and Corporal Boyd picked apart Dawn's early interview with a suspicious eye. They pulled her phone records and there it was, plain as day, Dawn's lies caught by cell phone technology.

Speaker 1 It painted a clearer picture that Dawn was in the location of Teresa the morning that she was murdered. But why in heaven's name would a woman who claimed to be Teresa's friend want to kill her?

Speaker 1 Good question, which perhaps they'd get answered once they accused Dawn Lavender of murder, which they did.

Speaker 1 She, however, had but one thing to say to police. She just kept saying that it was wrong, that we made a mistake.

Speaker 3 Coming up.

Speaker 1 As far as physical evidence, we really didn't have any.

Speaker 3 But they did have a plan, an undercover sting to get the evidence they'd need.

Speaker 3 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 8 Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here.

Speaker 1 If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe.

Speaker 12 And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.

Speaker 8 Fox.

Speaker 13 There are new episodes out every Thursday.

Speaker 12 So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1 On June 11, 2010, almost three years to the day Teresa Mayfield was killed, Sheriff Ellis and Corporal Boyd drove to the wire factory where Dawn Lavender worked. She was halfway through her day shift.

Speaker 1 And they told her she was under arrest for the murder of her friend, Teresa Mayfield.

Speaker 1 She first wanted to know why we were arresting her. Then when she got to the jail, she said this was wrong, that we made a mistake.

Speaker 1 The corporal and the sheriff were only too happy to explain to then-assistant D.A. Tim Evans how one clue had led to another.
and eventually to an inescapable conclusion.

Speaker 1 But the prosecutor had questions, pointed ones.

Speaker 18 You could tell them that it was going to be difficult.

Speaker 1 Where was the smoking gun? Where was the murder weapon? Where was even one single fingerprint tying Dawn to the crime? As far as physical evidence, we really didn't have any.

Speaker 5 It was truly circumstantial because we didn't really know anything about what had happened.

Speaker 1 As far as evidence could see, the case was a maybe at best.

Speaker 1 She had no reason to kill Teresa. So, you know, to bring a case against her would be pretty tough, I would think.

Speaker 18 The case with Dawn

Speaker 1 is puzzling.

Speaker 18 When you're working with a circumstantial case, every piece of evidence is definitely important.

Speaker 1 Not that Corporal Boyd and Sheriff Ellis thought for a second that they were wrong. They believed Dawn was the killer.

Speaker 1 They told the prosecutor not only that Don murdered Teresa, but that they were convinced she tried and failed to kill her with a Xanax overdose at the casino.

Speaker 18 Yeah, and the Sheriff's Department believed that that was an attempt on her life, but we had nothing to really support that.

Speaker 1 But if Tim Evans was to get a conviction, he needed more, more evidence, some concrete proof that Dawn had pulled that trigger. Now, you can bet Dawn wasn't about to tell him anything.

Speaker 1 But that doesn't mean she wasn't talking.

Speaker 5 We had another young lady that was getting out of jail, and she came to us and said that Dawn had been talking about the murder.

Speaker 1 But that could have been just gossip, mind you, from a jailhouse snitch who couldn't back it up.

Speaker 1 But Dawn did have a cellmate.

Speaker 5 She was kind of in a jam herself, and she wanted us to try to help her. You know, we can put a word into the DA or put a word into the jury.

Speaker 1 That was enough to get some cooperation from her. Right.
The objective was simple. Get Dawn talking, wrangle from her something that at least sounded like a confession.

Speaker 1 Ellison Boyd outfitted Dawn's cellmate with a digital recorder no bigger than a matchbox.

Speaker 1 And on a Friday afternoon, as an unsuspecting Dawn sat in her cell reviewing her case file, her cellmate walked in and waited for some incriminating tidbit.

Speaker 1 What she got instead was the whole sickening story.

Speaker 1 Here's what Dawn told her cellmate about the morning Teresa was killed. Around 7 a.m., Dawn called Teresa with a lie to set the plan in motion.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't take it until more vacation days. I told her my car was dead.

Speaker 1 She claimed her car had broken down nearby. Could Teresa come pick her up?

Speaker 1 Well, of course, she said yes, finished drying her hair, got into her car, made the short drive to that dirt road, and there, standing alongside the road, was Dawn. I mean what you're doing so late.

Speaker 1 I hadn't been looking through

Speaker 1 her late my honor. And after this one gun, I was

Speaker 1 connected to a paint.

Speaker 1 Oh no.

Speaker 1 Anyway, I call it on the side of the truck. Couldn't drive with very limited.
I just like jumped off and out of truck anyway.

Speaker 1 And I had to go on dinner.

Speaker 1 With calculated, cold precision, Don Lavender lured Teresa Mayfield to that dirt road.

Speaker 1 She then shot her in the back of the head, then steered her car into the brush, hoping it would stay hidden for a while.

Speaker 20 You will have to wow and find out. I can look just like poor little innocent Army.

Speaker 1 It was all there, a prosecutor's dream confession. She even referred to herself as a cold-blooded killer.
But there was one question anyone with a beating heart wanted to ask.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 1 There just had to be an answer, of that they were sure. But would they ever get it out of her? Why in the hell did you do it?

Speaker 3 Coming up.

Speaker 5 At some point, she was calling herself a hitman.

Speaker 3 A hitman? But for whom? Another painful revelation was in store for Teresa's family.

Speaker 2 It hurts too much for me to say it out loud.

Speaker 3 When secrets in a small town continues.

Speaker 1 Dawn Lavender sounded for all the world like she was boasting as she confessed to her cellmate that she murdered Teresa Mayfield in cold blood.

Speaker 1 In fact, in recorded conversations with her cellmate, Dawn not only admitted to shooting Teresa, but said that she had tried once before.

Speaker 1 That strange night at the casino when Teresa came home stumbling, that was her first attempt at murder.

Speaker 14 She wouldn't die.

Speaker 1 But why? Why would she want to kill her friend?

Speaker 1 Because, listen to this. The answer to the whole puzzle, Revy, comes down to one little word.
Dawn uses it when telling her cellmate what she did.

Speaker 14 We drive up for Telustra.

Speaker 1 We?

Speaker 1 Dawn was not acting alone. She had a co-conspirator.

Speaker 5 I don't know if she was trying to be a show-off because she was calling herself a hitman.

Speaker 14 How much was he supposed to give me? 20.

Speaker 1 10-20. Dawn was a hired gun for...

Speaker 1 you guessed it.

Speaker 1 Scott Mayfield. She was a loving, wife, loving mother.
The man who heaped praise on his dead wife, his grieving children by his side, was, according to Dawn, the architect who designed her death.

Speaker 1 A revelation that finally made sense of a trail of disturbing stories the investigators had been running down for months.

Speaker 5 We had one guy that worked around Add Malva.

Speaker 5 Scott had offered him $500 to kill his wife. And a little while later, we got a call from another guy's son saying that his daddy wanted to talk to me.
Scott had approached him about killing his wife.

Speaker 1 His response to Scott was, get a divorce. That's what divorces are for.
And then a third man told them a story.

Speaker 1 He had told us that Scott Mayfield had hired him, had given him $15,000 to kill his wife. He did not have any intentions on killing her.
He just wanted the man's money.

Speaker 1 What's the old saying? Two is a coincidence, three is a pattern. Which is why, even before Don told her grisly tale on tape.

Speaker 1 In fact, on the same day Don was arrested, A warrant was also issued for Scott. Kelsey was outside mowing the lawn when she saw a cop car whizz by, then another, and another.

Speaker 1 She called her dad on his cell phone.

Speaker 2 I asked him where he was at, and he said the cops have me pulled over.

Speaker 1 Your dad, for heaven's sake, was being arrested.

Speaker 1 It had to be a shock.

Speaker 2 I was very confused, so I asked the arresting officer, I asked him, why are you arresting my dad? And he said it was solicitation and conspiracy.

Speaker 1 To commit murder. To commit murder, yes.

Speaker 1 In other words, he said your father was responsible for the death of your mother.

Speaker 1 Still, as he sat behind bars, awaiting his day in court, he assured his children that it was all a mistake. He was innocent.
What did you expect would happen?

Speaker 2 I thought he would be found not guilty and he'd be able to come home.

Speaker 1 And at that point, the case against Scott was almost entirely circumstantial. That wasn't until Don got to talking to that cellmate, the one with the little recording device.

Speaker 1 And sure enough, as the whole story spilled out, there was Scott's name on tape. Proof at last.

Speaker 14 I'll put up into the rear market behind that for a plan.

Speaker 1 And once the job was done, the car half hidden by the brush, Don said, she drove to Tuscaloosa and dialed a familiar number from Teresa's cell phone to let her boss know his wife was dead.

Speaker 14 Did you call Scott and let him know that he'll be gone?

Speaker 14 I'll have to trace his number.

Speaker 14 After a silence,

Speaker 14 and ask him not what I do and come up.

Speaker 1 The only thing left was to collect the $20,000 Scott had promised her and go.

Speaker 1 Except.

Speaker 14 If Scott didn't ever give you no money, I just told him, you know, we'll hire if you keep your finger mouth shut, and I'll keep mine shutting.

Speaker 1 But of of course, Don didn't keep her mouth shut about what she and Scott had done.

Speaker 18 From what I could tell, he was just a coward.

Speaker 1 He

Speaker 18 wanted a divorce, but he didn't want to live with the responsibilities that accompany a divorce.

Speaker 1 In other words, he didn't want to pay her alimony.

Speaker 5 Or child support.

Speaker 18 Evil is the only thing that you can use to describe that man.

Speaker 1 Evil.

Speaker 1 And on May 19th, 2011, almost four years after Teresa Mayfield was gunned down on that lonely dirt road, her mother, sister, and daughter sat in a courtroom and listened as Don and Scott, having pleaded guilty to both murder and attempted murder, were each sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.

Speaker 6 He looked straight at me like he was looking at a tree or something. There was no emotion.
And neither was there anything from Don.

Speaker 1 It was like

Speaker 6 they were empty inside.

Speaker 1 But for Kelsey, it was simply overwhelming.

Speaker 1 At the moment of sentencing for the very first time, she saw her dad not as the loving father who took her shopping for her senior prom dress, but as the man who orchestrated the death of her mother.

Speaker 1 Have you ever brought up the issue with him?

Speaker 1 I said, I know that you did this.

Speaker 2 One day I will. I don't have it in me right now to confront him and tell him what I know.
It hurts too much for me to say it out loud, for me to tell my dad I know what he did and that I

Speaker 2 hate what he did, but he's still my father and I'll always love him.

Speaker 1 Her mother loved him too, loved him through infidelity and trouble, loved him always,

Speaker 1 even as she loved her children, her family, as she tried her best to make life good

Speaker 1 while he plotted to kill her.

Speaker 1 A couple of years earlier, you had a great, full, lovely family life, and now.

Speaker 2 There's really not a word that you can use to describe what our family has been through in the last four years.

Speaker 2 It's been...

Speaker 2 It's been a very difficult four years.

Speaker 1 And you've got such a nice, sunny disposition. How do you do that?

Speaker 2 I get my strength from my mother.

Speaker 3 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 11 Thanks for joining us.

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