The Killing in Cobb County

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Speaker 4 He's a monster. He's people.

Speaker 4 He's pure evil.

Speaker 4 He is that character in those horror movies.

Speaker 6 He hid in the shadows, a killer in a mask.

Speaker 7 He's clearly a brilliant individual, a brilliantly scary individual.

Speaker 5 His target, a doting young mom.

Speaker 9 She was a gorgeous strawberry blonde who loved her son more than anything in the whole world.

Speaker 4 She was

Speaker 4 so scared.

Speaker 5 He struck once. Would he kill again?

Speaker 6 And would she be next?

Speaker 4 You're just

Speaker 4 so shattered and hurting so bad.

Speaker 6 Imagine being hunted in your own home, held a virtual prisoner, your children in danger from a man with a blueprint for murder.

Speaker 4 I was terrified.

Speaker 5 Tonight, she will face down evil and come forward with a new revelation that will make your jaw drop.

Speaker 4 What I did was wrong. There are no words.

Speaker 8 I have everything to lose.

Speaker 5 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 5 Here's Andrea Canning with the killing in Cobb County.

Speaker 9 A new attraction can be so exhilarating, but not always. Sometimes attraction turns into a dangerous obsession.
Lottie Spencer says she knows all about that.

Speaker 4 He'd show up at my job. He would show up at the store.

Speaker 13 No matter where I went, he would be there.

Speaker 9 Lottie says she had a stalker, a teenager who got into her house, into her car, and worst of all, into her head.

Speaker 4 I wouldn't go out to the mailbox without a gun. I was terrified.

Speaker 9 He had total control over you, it sounds like, pretty much. Lottie could feel it in her bones.
Something bad was coming, and she felt powerless to do anything about it.

Speaker 4 I knew that he was watching, and then just,

Speaker 8 I mean, here it comes again.

Speaker 9 Life used to be much simpler for Lottie. In the fall of 1995, she moved to Cobb County, Georgia, just north of Atlanta.
She lived in this house with her daughter, Christina.

Speaker 4 This is an upper scale neighborhood. Me and Christina were always outside, and my life was really good.
I was really happy.

Speaker 9 Their downstairs neighbors were Carmen Smith and her son, Nick. Five-year-old Nick had sparkling blue eyes and a million-dollar smile, just like his mom.
Kristen Horan is Carmen's sister.

Speaker 9 She was a gorgeous strawberry blonde, feisty,

Speaker 9 very outgoing young woman who loved her son more than anything in the whole world.

Speaker 9 They were just like two peas in a pod. It was a Monday afternoon, the week before Halloween.
Nick and Christina got off the school bus and walked home together. Cobb County Prosecutor Jesse Evans.

Speaker 7 First thing they did was go downstairs to see if they could find Nick's mom. Her car was there.
She should be there.

Speaker 9 While Christina stayed by the door, Nick went inside. Someone was there, but not his mom.

Speaker 7 Nick turned the corner and he saw something move across the bedroom down the long hallway.

Speaker 9 It was a dark figure wearing gloves and a mask. The stranger suddenly stabbed Nick and left him for dead.

Speaker 7 As he's laying there on the floor, he actually sees his perpetrator run from the house. Christina began really freaking out.
She was terrified.

Speaker 9 Christina ran upstairs to her apartment to get help. Her babysitter, Catherine, was there with her boyfriend, Scott.
They hurried downstairs.

Speaker 15 Christina started walking towards the sliding glass door, and I grabbed her shoulders and I stopped her, and I said, don't touch anything.

Speaker 9 The glass door was smeared with blood. The scene inside was unspeakable.

Speaker 15 Somebody said, oh my gosh, there's Nick. And you could see him through the window on the floor in a pool of blood.

Speaker 16 I said, get out of here, go down the street. And she said, what are you going to do? I said, I got to get that boy out of there.
I'm not leaving without that boy.

Speaker 9 Scott grabbed an axe from the garage for protection, then dropped it when he realized how desperately Nick needed help.

Speaker 16 He wasn't breathing at the time. I smacked him a few times and nothing happened.

Speaker 16 And so I started screaming at him and started smacking him harder. and telling him he wasn't going to die today.

Speaker 18 And all of a sudden, he kind of bolted up.

Speaker 6 At that point, I said, you're alive.

Speaker 9 Scott picked up the little boy and bolted from the house. He squeezed Nick tightly against his chest, trying to staunch the bleeding.

Speaker 15 He was running and he was yelling down the street, call 911, call 911, he's hefted up.

Speaker 14 Call 911.

Speaker 9 Lottie was at work when she got a frantic call from her daughter.

Speaker 4 She was hysterical.

Speaker 8 She was

Speaker 4 saying that Nick was hurt. And I drove home as fast as I could.

Speaker 8 I was screaming for Christine and Nick, but they weren't there.

Speaker 9 Lottie didn't see Carmen either. But when police officers arrived at the scene, they made a terrible discovery.
The vivacious flight attendant and devoted single mother was dead. She'd been strangled.

Speaker 9 Carmen Smith was just 30 years old.

Speaker 4 You're just so shattered and hurting so bad. And you're so thankful that your daughter's alive.

Speaker 8 But then you feel so bad what happened to Nick and Carmen.

Speaker 9 Carmen's sister Kristen and brother-in-law Jim barely had time to process the news about Carmen before learning that Nick was fighting for his life. They rushed to be at his side.

Speaker 19 We went straight to the hospital.

Speaker 9 You must have been thinking, how could someone stab a five-year-old, your nephew, approximately 18 times? That's a monster.

Speaker 4 Exactly, yeah.

Speaker 19 I will never forget walking into a a hospital room.

Speaker 10 Sorry.

Speaker 8 But yeah.

Speaker 10 And then you...

Speaker 19 You have to come to grips with reality.

Speaker 9 And it was a grim reality. After emergency surgery, Nick was in critical condition.
He looked so little, so fragile in his hospital bed.

Speaker 19 You never think that you can be touched by something like this.

Speaker 19 when you've got

Speaker 19 the perfect family.

Speaker 9 He'd been stabbed 18 times and had lost a dangerous amount of blood. But he survived.
Nick was going to make it. It was nothing less than a miracle.

Speaker 9 There was no easy way to tell him about his mom, but he had to know.

Speaker 9 All these years later, Nick remembers it like it was yesterday.

Speaker 20 My dad and my aunt told me that my mom didn't make it, and

Speaker 20 I mean, I didn't really understand it then.

Speaker 20 I still don't really understand it.

Speaker 9 It was such a senseless act. Nick and his family could only grieve and wonder why.
But back at the apartment, now a crime scene, a chill ran through Lottie.

Speaker 9 She told police she could explain exactly what happened.

Speaker 4 I told them that

Speaker 4 I had somebody that had been stalking me.

Speaker 4 And it was my belief that

Speaker 4 he was the one behind what happened to Nicholas and Carmen.

Speaker 6 Who was this man in the mask who had killed a young mother and tried to kill her son?

Speaker 4 He's pure evil. He's a monster.

Speaker 6 When we come back, a haunting story of Hunter and Hunted.

Speaker 4 He's always told me that he can get away with the perfect murder. His plane was in the making.

Speaker 9 It is a haunting memory, impossible to forget.

Speaker 20 It definitely changed my life course completely, so I remember it pretty well.

Speaker 9 Now in his 30s, Nick Smith was only five years old when a masked man stabbed him 18 times and killed his mother. While recovering in the hospital, Nick was told his mother was gone.

Speaker 9 Do you remember your mom?

Speaker 20 Not as well as I wish I did. Most of my memories are just stories I've been told from other people.

Speaker 9 Carmen's sister Kristen and her husband Jim helped raise Nick. Bedtime stories were often about his beautiful mother.
She was very athletic. She was in swimming and basketball, softball, track.

Speaker 9 She was in the homecoming court, prom queen.

Speaker 4 She dated, you know, the football player.

Speaker 9 She was a cheerleader.

Speaker 19 I remember her liveliness. She was very vivacious, very beautiful, and very fun.
You know, she had Nick fairly early in life and did a great job of working and providing for Nick at the same time.

Speaker 9 Do you just feel robbed that you never got to experience all those things a mother and son get to experience together? Definitely.

Speaker 20 There's a lot of people in my family who say that I act just like her.

Speaker 20 I just know that she was a happy person.

Speaker 9 A happy life that ended in an appalling act of violence.

Speaker 9 The police officers who discovered Carmen's body got an immediate, emphatic lead from her upstairs neighbor, Lottie Spencer. Did you know immediately who had done this?

Speaker 8 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 9 Who had committed this?

Speaker 14 I knew.

Speaker 9 Lottie was certain it was the work of a teenager named Wasim Daker. Wasim and Lottie had a history.
She said it would explain the hideous attack. She told detectives her story.

Speaker 9 Things had started so innocently. Don't they always?

Speaker 4 I met him at the paintball field playing paintball. So we just met by being teammates on the same team.

Speaker 9 Lottie was the captain of her team. Kind of a dead mother to the other, much younger players, especially Wasim, a Georgia Tech student, 12 years her junior.

Speaker 4 He didn't have anybody else that he can open up and talk to or share his thoughts and feelings with.

Speaker 9 So you felt kind of like a big sister to him.

Speaker 4 That's exactly how I felt.

Speaker 9 Daker was a bit of a loner. He latched on to Lottie, started calling her at work, at home, and wouldn't stop.

Speaker 4 I told him that, you know, I have a life and you're just taking too much of my time. And then he would cry and then I knew that there was a problem.

Speaker 9 What was a nuisance at first, Lottie says quickly escalated. Her phone started ringing off the hook up to 100 times a day.
Why didn't you just stop talking to this person?

Speaker 4 I should have. I felt really sorry for him.
I really didn't want him to get into trouble. It sounds so crazy.

Speaker 9 But maybe that also says about you that you're a good person.

Speaker 4 Or a very foolish person.

Speaker 9 Foolish, Lottie says, because Dacre's stalking became bolder, increasingly bizarre.

Speaker 4 He just started flipping out, yelling on the top of his lungs that he's gonna

Speaker 4 get me and slip my daughter's throat in front of me. And I would come home from work and there would be a pair of my underwear on my doorknob or a few days later a bra.

Speaker 9 What message is he sending with that?

Speaker 4 Look at me. I'm getting into your place and getting away with it.
There's nothing you can do to stop me. Another time, I came home early and went into my bedroom and there was Wasseen Daker

Speaker 4 naked, wearing garter hose and a garter belt, looking at himself in my mirror.

Speaker 9 This is any woman's worst nightmare.

Speaker 9 Lottie says things reached a tipping point when once again, Daker threatened her and her daughter, this time while brandishing a knife.

Speaker 4 He has always told me that he can get away with the perfect murder.

Speaker 4 His plane was in the making.

Speaker 9 Finally, Lottie decided to let the justice system take over. Daker was arrested in August, but released on bond.
A judge ordered him to stay away. He didn't and was arrested again in September.

Speaker 9 This time he was sent to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation. Prosecutor Jesse Evans.

Speaker 7 He's got some severe issues with obsession. I don't think that he has the ability to feel compassion for other people.
He's clearly a brilliant individual. He's also a brilliantly scary individual.

Speaker 9 While Daker was hospitalized, Lottie packed up and moved to the house in Cobb County, about 20 minutes north of Atlanta, where Carmen and Nick lived downstairs. So you moved? Yes.

Speaker 9 To try and escape him?

Speaker 12 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 9 In October, on Friday the 13th, Wasim Daker was released from the hospital. Less than two weeks later, Carmen Smith was dead.
And now Lottie Spencer was overwhelmed with guilt and anger.

Speaker 4 A seam Daker is evil. He's pure evil.
He's a monster.

Speaker 9 And that's what Lottie told police. She said her stalker must have been the one behind the attack on Carmen and Nick.

Speaker 8 But why?

Speaker 9 Daker was obsessed with Lottie. He'd never met or even spoken to Carmen, or had he.
Lottie thought she knew the answer. A phone call she says Daker made to Carmen's phone a few days before the murder.

Speaker 4 It was Friday the 20th, and like Daker's style, the calls started coming in and the phone got put off the hook and then I could hear her phone ringing.

Speaker 9 Carmen answered then hung up abruptly. What was said? Nobody knows.
But Carmen told her sister and brother-in-law that the call was from Lottie Stalker.

Speaker 19 She said, I'm going to go get a hammer and put it next to the bed. And I remember laughing, thinking, If that guy decides to get in the house, he's in trouble.

Speaker 19 But you really never think that it would go to where it went.

Speaker 9 We had talked about her, you know, packing some stuff and coming to stay with us for a while.

Speaker 9 Lottie says seeing Carmen's reaction to Daker's call was heartbreaking, and she did what she could to help her neighbor feel safe.

Speaker 4 The only entryway from within her dwelling was the sliding glass door, and so we just barricaded the door with some wood. She was

Speaker 4 so scared, she was shaking, and

Speaker 4 just

Speaker 4 she was so scared.

Speaker 9 Just three days later, that glass door was open and smeared with blood. And Wasseem Daker was the lead suspect in a horrible crime.

Speaker 12 Coming up,

Speaker 6 evidence at the scene of the crime.

Speaker 7 There was a broken knife blade and hair and fiber evidence that was recovered off of Carmen Smith's body.

Speaker 5 Will it be enough to catch the killer?

Speaker 4 He was getting away with murder. He's getting away with exactly what he told me he would.

Speaker 5 When Dateline continues

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Speaker 9 Just three days before she was killed, Carvin Smith told family and friends she'd gotten a call from Wasim Daker, the man who'd been arrested for stalking her neighbor.

Speaker 9 It was the strongest allegation yet connecting the victim to the suspect. Investigators tipped off about that call by Lottie now closed in on Daker.

Speaker 9 Did you execute a search warrant on his house that night?

Speaker 1 We did.

Speaker 9 John Dawes is a homicide detective with the Cobb County Police Department.

Speaker 8 In his room,

Speaker 17 we found a piece of paper with the address where this crime occurred. We found a torn-up letter that was his words to Lottie Spencer.

Speaker 9 Daker's torn-up letter to Lottie was hateful and threatening. Prosecutor Jesse Evans.

Speaker 7 He specifically talks about having plans and backup plans to exact revenge on Lottie.

Speaker 7 And the worst part about the letter is he gets to the end and he says, but I'm going to let you live. I'm going to get revenge on you, but I'm going to let you live.

Speaker 9 To police and prosecutors, this wasn't just a rant.

Speaker 8 It looked like a blueprint for murder.

Speaker 9 Now they tried to link Daker to the crime scene.

Speaker 7 Some of the important evidence that we start with is the hair and fiber evidence that was recovered off of Carmen Smith's body. There was a broken knife blade.

Speaker 7 It was a fairly clean crime scene other than that.

Speaker 9 Carmen had small puncture wounds on her back and terrible bruising, suggesting a ferocious struggle.

Speaker 17 She had been not only tortured and murdered, but she had been undressed at some point and redressed.

Speaker 9 At Carmen's bedside, the hammer she'd wanted for peace of mind, never touched as she fought for her life. Not far away was the suspected murder weapon, a piece of rope.

Speaker 9 Crime scene technicians dusted for fingerprints and collected blood samples. The evidence was sent to the state crime lab for analysis.

Speaker 17 The lab tests kept coming back without the physical evidence that we needed that linked him to the dead body of Carmen Smith. That's when we knew that it may always be a circumstantial case.

Speaker 9 And the circumstantial part of the case was just too weak to make an arrest.

Speaker 9 Prosecutors still believe Daker was the only viable suspect in Carmen Smith's murder and the stabbing of her son Nick, but they didn't have the evidence to prove it. The investigation stalled.

Speaker 9 So it was seemed Daker walked away from the murder.

Speaker 7 He walked away from the murder, but not from some accountability. The police felt like they had a viable way of charging him with aggravated stalking.

Speaker 9 Daker was arrested and charged with stalking Lottie Spencer.

Speaker 7 There are multiple witnesses, friends of hers, friends of his, that actually observed firsthand some of these stalking activities that were occurring at her apartment, either by hearing the phone, hearing him knock on the door at all hours of the night, seeing him come by.

Speaker 9 Daker was convicted in September of 1996 and sentenced to 10 years in prison. It was the close to the worst chapter of Lottie Spencer's life, but it wasn't a happy ending.
Did you feel like

Speaker 9 you had some peace in your life again when he was behind bars?

Speaker 4 No, I mean, because he was getting away with murder. He's getting away with exactly what he told me he would.
He needed to pay for what he did to Carmen.

Speaker 9 After the trial, Lottie decided to leave Georgia to try to start over. Nick Smith went back to the same school and the protective embrace of his family.

Speaker 20 I kind of just went back into the normal routine. I think that was the best way that I could have dealt with it.

Speaker 20 And I think my family did a pretty good job of trying to keep my life as normal as possible.

Speaker 9 And during the next 10 years, Nick's life did finally return to normal. But in 2006, Daker was released and moved nearby.

Speaker 9 All the terrifying memories of the masked man wielding a knife came rushing back. Police decided to provide security to keep Nick safe.

Speaker 20 We would have a cop sit outside of our house at night, and we had cameras installed in my house and on the outside just as a precaution.

Speaker 9 Lottie says she was also looking over her shoulder. Tell us about the day that he got out, that he was a free man again.

Speaker 4 Wasn't that a good time?

Speaker 9 Were you waiting every day for the phone to ring or that bang on the door?

Speaker 4 Yep, that was starting to unravel again.

Speaker 5 Coming up, the fear begins all over, and so does the push for justice.

Speaker 9 You had your smoking gun.

Speaker 17 Absolutely.

Speaker 5 It's another trial for Wassim Daker. And just look who's addressing the jury.

Speaker 9 After 10 years in prison, Joassim Daker was a free man, but still a suspect in the murder of Carmen Smith and the stabbing of her son Nick.

Speaker 9 He was still terrorizing you in some ways.

Speaker 20 Just the fact that he was out was kind of terrorizing.

Speaker 4 He is that character in those horror movies. He's like your worst nightmare.

Speaker 9 After his release, Daker got a job and moved to suburban Atlanta. He was a free man and enjoying life.
Here he is skydiving and loving it. Jackie, no, girl.

Speaker 9 Daker's freedom galled homicide detective John Dawes. The Carmen Smith murder was now officially a cold case.
To Dawes, Daker was the one who got away. Does a case like this haunt a police department?

Speaker 17 Absolutely, because these cases go home with you in your mind.

Speaker 9 But for years, Dawes couldn't do anything about it. And then, just by chance, he was sent to a DNA training seminar in 2008, a random assignment that would change everything.

Speaker 17 Back in the mid-90s, very, very little at all could be done with the hair except to say the color of the hair.

Speaker 17 Now, when there's any tissue from the root on the hair whatsoever, it takes just a minute amount of tissue to come up with a full-profile DNA.

Speaker 9 It's called nuclear DNA testing, and Dawes immediately thought of Carmen Smith.

Speaker 9 Carmen was a strawberry blonde, and he remembered the short, dark hairs recovered from her body, not hers, under layers of bedding.

Speaker 17 I felt it was invaluable evidence if there was enough tissue on that hair that was underneath her sweater.

Speaker 9 Dawes brought one of those dark hairs to a DNA lab in Texas and waited. It was almost 15 years after Carmen Smith's murder when the call came in.
There was a match.

Speaker 17 They have identified Waseem Daker's hair, him and only him to the exclusion of all others, on the dead body of Carmen Smith at the time she was found.

Speaker 9 You had your smoking gun.

Speaker 17 Absolutely.

Speaker 4 I got a call from Detective Dawes. I was

Speaker 8 very happy, but it was really hard for me to have to go back and

Speaker 4 tell the story of the things that he did.

Speaker 9 Lottie dreaded the thought of testifying in open court in front of Daker, but she knew there'd be no avoiding it.

Speaker 9 Daker was arrested and charged with murdering Carmen Smith and stabbing her son Nick. His trial started in September of 2012.

Speaker 8 All right?

Speaker 9 Prosecutor Jesse Evans was there for the state.

Speaker 7 This case, ladies and gentlemen, is about obsession, revenge, and choice.

Speaker 9 Evans argued that Daker was a violent stalker and that his obsession with one woman led to the murder of another.

Speaker 21 You can't get inside the mind of a psychopath and figure out why they chose to kill.

Speaker 21 Some of you would just mean.

Speaker 9 Evans said Daker had left a trail of destruction and those critical hairs.

Speaker 21 Nicole Case saw that advances in DNA technology proved positive that defendant Wassee Daker is getting killed.

Speaker 9 Defending Wasim Daker was Wasim Daker.

Speaker 24 Initially, I want to point out a couple things. There's three principles of law that I want to give you.

Speaker 9 Before he took over his own case, Daker had been represented by an experienced father and son team, Michael and Jason Treadaway.

Speaker 9 They were still advising him and believed the state's case was vulnerable.

Speaker 12 They had no case without those hairs. That's why they didn't go forward initially.

Speaker 11 They didn't have a case and they knew it.

Speaker 9 Their advice to Daker, focus on those hairs and don't obsess about Lottie.

Speaker 26 This case had to be defended by attacking the science of the state's case.

Speaker 9 But Daker couldn't seem to let go. His focus from the start was his relationship with the state star witness.
I've been in her bed.

Speaker 21 I've been in her sofa.

Speaker 9 It was a romance, Daker said. Intimate in every way.
Moddy insisted that was not true. Some of the things he said had to be just really

Speaker 9 beyond frustrating that saying you two had a sexual relationship.

Speaker 4 You know what? There was no relationship, so

Speaker 4 there's nothing, you know.

Speaker 4 More that I can say about that.

Speaker 9 Did he ever try and do anything like kiss you or, you know, since he's so in love with you?

Speaker 4 Never once, never once tried to kiss me or anything.

Speaker 9 When Daker finally turned to those hairs, he called on Dr. Greg Hampician.
The prominent DNA expert challenged the state's key evidence.

Speaker 9 The nuclear DNA test matching Daker to Carmen Smith that was done on the root tissue of a single hair. The problem, Hampikian says, is none of the hairs recovered from the crime scene had any roots.

Speaker 25 There were hairs taken from the body, and they were all clearly indicated on the reports as having no root.

Speaker 25 That's something you could do with the naked eye, and of course, the expert at the time used a microscope.

Speaker 9 Are you 100% sure the original hair had no root?

Speaker 6 The records all state that.

Speaker 25 So somehow it arrives at this laboratory, and it's a hair with a root. There's real problems with that piece of evidence.

Speaker 9 It was a serious challenge to the state's key piece of evidence. And Daker once again connected the evidence to Lottie Spencer, a liar, he said, who had ruined his life in the most treacherous way.

Speaker 21 And they would never have to seize those haters that she had made all these false allegations against me. She derailed the murder investigation

Speaker 24 by making all these false allegations.

Speaker 9 For Lottie, all of the fear and hurt from her darkest days came rushing back every time Daker mentioned her name.

Speaker 4 He was enjoying it, like he had control again. And that made me feel like

Speaker 8 really weak.

Speaker 9 Jesse Evans asked the jurors not to focus on Lottie and to think about another woman when they started their deliberations.

Speaker 21 Carlin Smith's body was laid to rest, but I assure you it was not in peace.

Speaker 9 After he took his seat, Prosecutor Evans was anxious, uncertain what the jury would do.

Speaker 18 We were really...

Speaker 7 holding our whole case together with two hairs, two hairs from the victim's body.

Speaker 7 And if there's a plausible explanation for how those hairs come back with his DNA results, if there's an explanation for that, our case is no longer viable.

Speaker 9 It took the jury just three and a half hours to reach a verdict.

Speaker 24 We, the jury, find the defendant Wasim Daker guilty as to Count 1 miles murder.

Speaker 9 Guilty of the murder of 30-year-old Carmen Smith.

Speaker 4 You know, you go all these years thinking that he got away with it and he didn't.

Speaker 9 At Daker's sentencing, the state called just one witness, Nick Smith, who was determined to face his attacker one last time.

Speaker 20 I just kind of had to not let him defeat me, in a way.

Speaker 28 When Mussolini Daker took my mother's life and saved me, my life was put on hold.

Speaker 9 Nick struggled to hold back tears.

Speaker 28 No longer will someone other than me

Speaker 28 control my life and interrupt my thoughts. He's finally caught and I'm finally free.

Speaker 28 I love you all.

Speaker 20 I never wanted to use what happened as any sort of crutch or let it get in the way.

Speaker 20 I did the best I could to that if she was still here, I think she'd be proud.

Speaker 9 The judge then delivered Daker's sentence. Life in prison plus 47 years.

Speaker 9 But a defiant Daker refused to sign the documents for his sentence.

Speaker 29 It's typical of a coward that you would act the way you're acting.

Speaker 29 And that's what you are, a coward.

Speaker 9 Case closed, justice for Carmen and Nick Smith, and the victory Lottie had wanted so badly. But the story was far from over.
Something happened at the end of the trial that would come to haunt Lottie.

Speaker 9 Something that would lead her to realize there was still unfinished and unbelievable business in her saga with Wasim Daker.

Speaker 12 Coming up.

Speaker 6 A final verdict? Yes.

Speaker 5 The final chapter?

Speaker 6 Not even close.

Speaker 5 A stunning confession is about to turn this case around.

Speaker 14 I couldn't let it go.

Speaker 15 I have a conscience.

Speaker 4 I have to live with me.

Speaker 5 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 9 second bet wasim dacer had been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison it looked like he was out of lottie spencer's life finally and forever

Speaker 9 it was

Speaker 8 very emotional but

Speaker 8 just so good

Speaker 8 so very good

Speaker 4 do you feel free finally free i feel like a lot of weight has been lifted and I'm going to close this chapter and just go on with my life in a positive way.

Speaker 9 That was Lottie in 2012. She told us she had closed that chapter, but it turns out she didn't, not by a long shot.

Speaker 9 In fact, within a year, she had turned this story completely upside down with astonishing revelations. We sat down with her again to hear her new version of things.

Speaker 9 So did not expect to be sitting here talking to you again.

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 9 It's a major turn of events.

Speaker 4 Yes, there has been.

Speaker 9 It all began with a bombshell.

Speaker 14 Mr.

Speaker 4 Daker and I had a consensual sexual relationship.

Speaker 9 Yes, Lottie now says in the mid-90s, she had an ongoing sexual relationship with Wasim Daker. That he wasn't really her stalker.
He was her lover.

Speaker 9 It was something she had flat out denied for 17 years.

Speaker 9 If what you're saying is true, you lied to the district attorney, you lied in open court to the jury, you lied to me.

Speaker 4 There are no words to describe just how very remorseful I am.

Speaker 4 What I did was wrong. I am taking 100% full responsibility for what I've done, the damage I have caused this man.

Speaker 14 And his family is, there's nothing I can do to take it back.

Speaker 8 Nothing.

Speaker 9 Lottie now says she lied under oath about the sex and about many of the stalking charges she'd made against Daker. Did Wasim

Speaker 9 threaten you with your life? No.

Speaker 9 Did he threaten anyone's life around you? No.

Speaker 9 Are you in love with Wasim Daker?

Speaker 4 No, I never was in love with Mr. Daker.

Speaker 9 And you're not today? No.

Speaker 9 But Lottie says even though she and Daker were in a relationship, she still feared him and until recently, genuinely believed he was a murderer.

Speaker 4 I was terrified of him. That was no lie.
Those emotions were real. I've had the nightmares.
I've lived in that fear.

Speaker 9 She says that fear drove her to lie to put Daker behind bars. But the euphoria she felt after the verdict started to sour.

Speaker 9 She couldn't stop thinking about something prosecutor Jesse Evans said during the trial.

Speaker 4 I learned during the closing arguments that

Speaker 4 Carmen's lifeless body was wrapped up in five layers of bedding and I was shocked and I started to get pretty scared at that moment because I had given Carmen two blankets just before her death.

Speaker 9 They were blankets that Lottie now says she and Daker had slept in together.

Speaker 4 Mr. Daker used those blankets on a number of occasions.

Speaker 4 I mean he was welcome in my home and we were friends and he had spent the night and clearly I knew that his DNA could have been on those blankets.

Speaker 9 Remember, Carmen had been found under several layers of bedding. If one of Lonnie's blankets was among them, it could explain how Daker's hair got on Carmen's body.

Speaker 10 This isn't a maybe.

Speaker 25 This is a woman who's risking perjury charges, who's turning against her own self-interest. This is a woman who can explain this evidence.
You have to take this seriously.

Speaker 9 Dr. Hampikian, who had been a paid expert witness for Dacre, continued working on the case for free in his role as director of the Idaho Innocence Project.

Speaker 9 He believed Lottie's story was a game changer.

Speaker 25 Now, there's a logical explanation of how the hairs got there. This is one of those places where you just have to shake the system and say, wait a minute, this is so obvious.

Speaker 6 He didn't get a fair trial.

Speaker 14 I couldn't let it go.

Speaker 15 I have a conscience.

Speaker 4 I have to live with me.

Speaker 9 So Lottie decided to come forward. And after filing several affidavits with the court, Judge Mary Staley granted Daker a hearing for a new trial.

Speaker 9 But Jesse Evans wasn't buying Lottie's new story. That's because while he was preparing for Daker's hearing, he believed he'd found that story's real source.

Speaker 7 There's a real issue here. Something is going on behind the scenes that we weren't aware of.

Speaker 5 Coming up, another revelation.

Speaker 2 Inside a prison cell, 4,000 pages of secrets.

Speaker 9 Do you think Wasim Daker is manipulating Lottie from prison?

Speaker 9 For almost two decades, here's how Lottie Spencer talked about Wasim Daker.

Speaker 4 Wasim Daker is evil. He's pure evil.
He's a monster.

Speaker 9 But now she calls him a victim.

Speaker 15 You know what?

Speaker 4 I messed up really bad.

Speaker 4 It's despicable.

Speaker 9 Lonnie's reversal was astonishing. After Carmen Smith's murder, she built a new life, living as a single parent in a new home.
But when she recanted her testimony, she put all of that at risk.

Speaker 9 How worried are you right now that you could go to jail for perjury?

Speaker 14 I'm very worried. I know that.

Speaker 4 I'm facing prison time.

Speaker 23 And there will be severe penalty for what what I do and I don't want to be ripped away from my little boy.

Speaker 8 I have everything

Speaker 8 to lose.

Speaker 9 A year after Daker's conviction, the hearing began on the motion for a new trial. Daker, again representing himself, called Dr.
Hampikian, the DNA expert, to the stand.

Speaker 23 If a man sleeps in a blanket, can his hair transfer to the blanket?

Speaker 17 Yes. And

Speaker 23 if a man has sex in a blanket, can his hair transfer to a blanket?

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 9 Dr. Hampeakian laid the scientific foundation, but Daker's chances really hinged on Lottie.
Next witness.

Speaker 23 Doran Spencer Blast.

Speaker 9 A hush came over the courtroom as a nervous Lottie made her way to the stand and swore to tell the truth.

Speaker 4 Just prior to Carmen Smith's murder, I gave her two blankets, blankets that I knew that you used in my Roswell apartment.

Speaker 9 She acknowledged having a sexual relationship with Daker. And then Lottie's old list of Daker's abuses started to topple like dominoes.

Speaker 23 Did the defendant ever threaten you with a handgun?

Speaker 8 Never. Did I ever physically

Speaker 23 threaten to kill you or harm you?

Speaker 4 Never.

Speaker 23 Did I ever steal your bras panties or hang him on your doorknob?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 9 There are going to be people who will see this and think you're lying now and that you were really telling the truth before.

Speaker 4 What reason do I have? I have everything to lose. I'm doing it because this is right.

Speaker 9 In a bristling cross-examination, prosecutor Jesse Evans portrayed Lottie as a troubled, unreliable woman.

Speaker 7 Did you admit to us that you had some mental issues that you were dealing with?

Speaker 4 I said I was suffering anxiety and depression. Okay.

Speaker 9 Evans' next move was stunning. He presented evidence that he said explained Lottie's incredible reversal.
Letters confiscated from Daker's prison cell.

Speaker 9 4,000 pages of correspondence between the convicted murderer and the woman who testified against him.

Speaker 4 I sent him daily devotions, Bible verses, encouraging cards. I sent him a lot of information, case files.
I actually feel like I'm his personal secretary in a way.

Speaker 9 It turns out Lottie has actually been helping with Daker's appeal. He's been giving her research assignments.

Speaker 9 She looks up cases, prints documents, mails them to prison, and then waits for his next request. Do you think Wasim Dacre is manipulating Lottie from prison?

Speaker 7 There's no doubt. By sending those letters to him, a convicted murderer, a sociopath, she's opened the door.
She's allowed him an opportunity to get back into her life.

Speaker 7 And we already know that he has a history of manipulating her.

Speaker 9 Is he manipulating you right now into doing exactly what he wants?

Speaker 4 Absolutely not. This is a repentive woman who is very remorseful and very sorry for what she has caused.

Speaker 9 But Evans says those letters tell another story.

Speaker 9 He says Lottie knew about the betting and hair hair evidence long before Daker's murder trial started and never said a word about giving any blankets to Carmen.

Speaker 7 It wasn't until after she started secretly communicating with the defendant that she then made this broad assertion that, well, I had given some blankets to Carmen.

Speaker 7 The problem with that is that I challenged her on it, describe the blankets, tell me which ones they were, and she couldn't remember.

Speaker 9 So there's no smoking gun or smoking blankets in this case? Absolutely.

Speaker 7 I don't think there are any blankets. I don't think there's any evidence of that.

Speaker 9 On the stand, Lottie not only recanted her testimony from two trials, but described the incredible lengths she's willing to go to help set Daker free. So you believe so strongly in this.

Speaker 9 You applied for a second mortgage to help in Wasim's defense.

Speaker 9 And you even took out a life insurance policy with naming Wasim as the beneficiary.

Speaker 4 My daughter is the beneficiary. She would get a third, my son would get a third, and Daker would get a third.
But yeah, I would mortgage my house and I would hire him.

Speaker 4 The best defense that he could possibly get.

Speaker 9 Despite all of Lottie's efforts, the fundraising, the correspondence with Daker, the legal research, Judge Staley didn't buy her new story. She rejected Daker's motion for a new trial.

Speaker 7 The right results were reached for the right reasons. I know that we've done things the right way, and I feel confident in the defendant's guilt.

Speaker 9 The ruling included a harsh rebuke of Lottie. The judge said she lacked credibility, and her new testimony appeared to have been concocted by the defendant.

Speaker 9 But Lottie seems unbowed, ready to carry on her fight.

Speaker 4 Somebody needs to stand up and say, wait a second, justice was not served in this case.

Speaker 9 And on that point, Lottie's not alone. Jason Treadaway, Daker's shadow attorney during trial, agrees.

Speaker 26 The circumstances of how Daker's hair came to be on that bedding, what kind of more pivotal pivotal evidence could there possibly be? I believe the man deserves a new trial.

Speaker 9 How can you believe anything Lottie says, though, now?

Speaker 26 I think when you have a man's liberty and life at stake, you have to believe what she says.

Speaker 26 How can you at least not allow 12 different people to hear her version now and let them decide if it's true or not?

Speaker 9 They were an unlikely couple when they met and were even more unlikely partners when Lottie sided with Daker after his conviction. Are you ever going to give up on Wasim?

Speaker 9 Are you in this till all appeals are exhausted? Yes.

Speaker 4 I played a role of an innocent man being falsely convicted for crimes he did not do.

Speaker 14 I've got to make it right.

Speaker 7 I have no doubt that Wasim Daker is a cold-blooded killer and that justice has been served with his conviction. I certainly hope that the Supreme Court agrees.

Speaker 7 If they disagree, guess what we do tomorrow? We try Wasim Daker and we get him convicted based on our evidence. It doesn't matter what Lottie says.

Speaker 7 This case is about Carmen.

Speaker 7 This case is about Nick.

Speaker 6 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.

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