Under the Desert Sky

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Speaker 9 When my mom came in, she said, Nikki's not here. We're issue because this isn't funny.

Speaker 10 In the bottom of my heart, I knew something was really, really wrong.

Speaker 13 He looked underneath the sagebrush and saw what he thought appeared to be blood.

Speaker 15 A high school beauty found dead in the desert, bound and buried.

Speaker 17 What did that say to you?

Speaker 18 A great deal of rage by someone.

Speaker 20 He looked like your average high school student, tall, clean-cut, polite.

Speaker 21 A teenager with two sides.

Speaker 22 He would yell at her, he would be pushing her around.

Speaker 15 A puzzle seemingly solved, then blown apart.

Speaker 16 We recorded that conversation, and it was dynamite.

Speaker 24 Michaela was on the ground,

Speaker 24 and she wasn't really

Speaker 15 brooding. To unravel the mystery, investigators would follow a trail through high school hallways teeming with secrets and schemes.

Speaker 9 The hatred grew more and more and more.

Speaker 16 Bad idea that became a horrible idea.

Speaker 16 A bad idea that went very, very bad.

Speaker 26 He waves at you from miles.

Speaker 27 The big neon cowboy.

Speaker 28 Wendover Will is what they call him, and his job for more than 60 years has been to tempt travelers off Interstate 80 here at the Utah-Nevada border.

Speaker 30 Pull them off the road to this tiny, bright gash of high desert casino commerce.

Speaker 32 And most leave again a little lighter in the wallet, knowing precious little about the stories West Wendover loves to tell.

Speaker 33 About the racers who come here to break speed records at the nearby Bonneville Flats.

Speaker 32 About the local airbase from which the Enola Gay took off for Hiroshima.

Speaker 7 But there's also the story they whispered to each other up and down the little strip, the one that shocked them all, that puzzles them still.

Speaker 38 About the terrible night when three families lost their teenage children.

Speaker 7 About the dark mystery spawned under the pointing grin of Wendover Will.

Speaker 32 It was a Thursday afternoon, a windy, late winter day in the high desert. Here at the local high school, star runner Michaela Costanzo cleaned up after track practice.

Speaker 1 Mickey, as everybody called her, intended to walk home.

Speaker 45 Wasn't far, about a mile.

Speaker 46 Her usual ride, her sister Christina, was out of town.

Speaker 47 Before we had left,

Speaker 47 Me and or my husband would always pick Michaela up from school. And so we were like, are you sure you're going to have a way home?

Speaker 31 This is something you do every day.

Speaker 48 This is something I do every day.

Speaker 47 It was the first time I left her.

Speaker 6 Mickey was 16, a junior.

Speaker 36 Clockwork reliable, said her mother, Celia.

Speaker 10 Michaela is not your typical teenager. That girl would check in with me all the time.

Speaker 10 So we have a routine. I'm changing.
I'm going to be heading out. I'm heading out the back, you know, I'm heading home.

Speaker 12 I'm home.

Speaker 21 Always kept in touch.

Speaker 10 Always.

Speaker 10 To a fault.

Speaker 38 As the sun began to set, Celia was still working at one of the local casinos, expecting Mickey's usual check-in call.

Speaker 10 She did not call me to tell me track practice was over and she was getting ready.

Speaker 52 She didn't call me to tell me she was walking home.

Speaker 10 And so I started calling her her phone and it rang and rang and rang the first time

Speaker 10 and then I called it right back because that was unusual and it was like you hit the ignore button. This is so not her.

Speaker 28 So now Celia called Christina 400 miles away in Las Vegas to see if she had heard from Mickey.

Speaker 47 And I said, Mom, she's probably at practice. And she says, no, practice, they ended and she's not home.
And I said, calm down. She's, you're probably just missing her.

Speaker 33 Christina tried calling Mickey too.

Speaker 42 No answer.

Speaker 47 And I'm thinking, maybe for the first time in her life, she's being a normal teenager.

Speaker 39 Mickey was the youngest of Celia's three girls.

Speaker 57 She was a star, student, and athlete, mature beyond her years.

Speaker 58 She liked to write poetry, short stories, and she was pretty and very popular.

Speaker 47 She was the one out of all three of us girls that I say was just going down the path you would want any child to go down. She was doing it the right way, stereotypically.

Speaker 12 Bright, talented, good-looking,

Speaker 11 the trifecta.

Speaker 47 Yes, she had it all.

Speaker 1 One of those special kids, Cecilia.

Speaker 45 Born happy.

Speaker 19 She was always positive.

Speaker 10 She just had a different approach to life. She found the good in everything, in everybody.

Speaker 19 A depressive personality, she was not.

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 10 Oh, no.

Speaker 11 Not at all.

Speaker 61 Oh and one more thing.

Speaker 32 Mickey and DJ, her middle sister, were inseparable.

Speaker 9 I'd consider us twins. Everything we did, we had to be together.
If we weren't at the same place, we always had to know

Speaker 9 where the other was at all times.

Speaker 32 But now nobody seemed to know where Mickey was.

Speaker 32 It was getting dark in the desert, dark and cold.

Speaker 28 Celia bolted out of work early and rushed home, hoping to spot Mickey on the way or find her at the apartment.

Speaker 5 But only DJ was there.

Speaker 9 And my mom came in. She said, Mickey's not here.
We're issue because this isn't funny. So I immediately went out and searched for her.
Called her friends, called my friends.

Speaker 9 If you hear from Mickey, you need to tell me.

Speaker 63 Word spread fast across West Wendover.

Speaker 10 By the time I had already called the police, there was already over 80 people starting to look. The police asked me, did you check with this one?

Speaker 10 All of her friends, did you go anyplace that she would go? I'm like, yes. And they're all panicked and they're all out looking and everything.
So

Speaker 10 they immediately knew something was wrong.

Speaker 63 The tiny West Wendover Police Department jumped on the case right away.

Speaker 32 Veteran detective Donald Burnham was in charge.

Speaker 65 There's no point in waiting.

Speaker 14 The longer you wait, the bigger problem you have and the harder it's going to be to find them.

Speaker 38 Hours now since Mickey was due home.

Speaker 52 Scared, upset, panic,

Speaker 10 worry, because it was dark now and it was cold and she had no jacket and

Speaker 10 in the bottom of my heart, I knew something was really, really wrong.

Speaker 12 And you're trying to tell yourself, no, no, no, no, no, it can't be. Yeah.

Speaker 37 Then the police had had an idea.

Speaker 49 Maybe Mickey's cell phone, the one she always used to keep in touch, would give them a clue.

Speaker 69 So they checked her most recent calls, and there it was, one particular number that kept popping up just before Mickey disappeared.

Speaker 12 Ten digits.

Speaker 6 Would they lead detectives to Mickey Costanzo?

Speaker 70 Or something else altogether?

Speaker 64 Day two, the desert sun rose pale and cold in West Wendover, Nevada.

Speaker 72 16-year-old Mickey Costanzo had been missing for 12 hours.

Speaker 12 It was horrible.

Speaker 9 I didn't sleep.

Speaker 53 I had to stay home in case Michaela came home.

Speaker 12 And watched the door.

Speaker 10 And watched the door. And they kept saying, you have to be home.
And I'm like, this doesn't help.

Speaker 38 Mickey's sister DJ was angry or terrified.

Speaker 73 Or both.

Speaker 9 I called her phone real mad. I said, this isn't funny.
You need to tell me where you are.

Speaker 9 What's going on? And I just kept calling her phone.

Speaker 10 Crying, begging her, please answer.

Speaker 9 Please be okay.

Speaker 39 Eldest sister Christina, in Las Vegas attending NASCAR races with her husband, had been telling people, don't worry, she's just being rebellious.

Speaker 36 Not anymore.

Speaker 47 And I looked at my husband and I said, you need to take me home right now.

Speaker 47 He says, well, what changed your mind? And I said, because nothing happens in Wendover, and something did.

Speaker 61 By now in Wendover, it was a local media event.

Speaker 24 I just hope that we can find this little girl safe.

Speaker 24 Never thought anything like this would ever happen in Wendover.

Speaker 47 It's just not hard to run away from home, I don't think.

Speaker 24 Everybody's thought, but that's just like, you know, hoping.

Speaker 76 Police were hoping, too, for a break.

Speaker 71 They had no solid clues, no eyewitnesses, nothing that pointed to Mickey's whereabouts.

Speaker 14 I didn't believe she was dead. I was hoping maybe she was just somewhere and we weren't able to find her at the time.

Speaker 17 That she had just gone off to be with a friend and been irresponsible for once.

Speaker 14 We didn't know whether she'd met with foul play or if she restrained and held somewhere against her will.

Speaker 78 It was obvious we had more than just a runaway juvenile, but we just didn't know how far that it had gone but leave started talking to everybody who knew mickey like her boyfriend javier called him down to the station for questioning she but how's she been acting lately i don't know she's been acting pretty fine like if she's if something was wrong she'd van she's not one of those girls that hides her feelings like like puts her emotions in her

Speaker 36 could they believe the boyfriend When they pulled Mickey's cell phone record, something odd stood out at the very time she disappeared.

Speaker 4 disappeared.

Speaker 14 There was a lot of text and phone calls transpiring just immediately after school and up till just after five.

Speaker 17 And then they stopped.

Speaker 14 Abruptly stopped right at the time that she had left the school.

Speaker 36 Those calls and texts pinging off the local cell phone tower were all from one number.

Speaker 14 Definitely having communication back and forth.

Speaker 77 There was something going on. Something.

Speaker 14 The last calls were made to Cody Patton.

Speaker 37 Cody Patton?

Speaker 51 Who was he?

Speaker 37 Certainly not her boyfriend.

Speaker 32 But as any kid who'd been around Wendover knew perfectly well, Cody was a friend.

Speaker 76 In fact, one of Mickey's oldest friends.

Speaker 10 They grew up together. They were friends.

Speaker 12 Did they ever date?

Speaker 77 Michaela and Cody.

Speaker 10 Michaela was not allowed to date till she was 16, but I'm sure it was probably like puppy love, what I call puppy love.

Speaker 66 Cody was an 18-year-old senior at Mickey's high school.

Speaker 67 Big, handsome kid, football player.

Speaker 64 He once lived in the same apartment complex as the Costanzo family.

Speaker 42 Now he was engaged to another girl and lived with his fiancé's parents.

Speaker 50 Police brought Cody in for a talk as well.

Speaker 82 The last time he seen her was about 5:30, and that was where at front school.

Speaker 82 She was with somebody, just some. I thought it was her boyfriend, because it was a short time.
Her boyfriend being a Javier. Yeah, I thought it was.

Speaker 39 But Cody wasn't sure it was Javier, but then he seemed and probably was exhausted.

Speaker 76 He'd been out the night before searching for Mickey.

Speaker 82 Do you have any questions for me?

Speaker 73 Yeah, find her, Please.

Speaker 33 Search teams combed the desert outside of town.

Speaker 6 Police, volunteers, Mickey's sister DJ.

Speaker 9 And out searching, I remember dropping to the ground, and I said,

Speaker 9 I really don't think she's alive.

Speaker 9 They're like, can you anything positive?

Speaker 19 But where was she?

Speaker 70 She wasn't at school.

Speaker 62 She wasn't with a friend. She apparently wasn't in town.

Speaker 41 And it's a very big desert around Wendover.

Speaker 17 So much space to get lost, or to hold a person against her will, or, God knows, to hide a body.

Speaker 55 Celia's last hope through her sleepless night had been seeing Mickey show up at school in the morning, wondering what the fuss was about.

Speaker 10 When she didn't go to school on Friday morning, I knew I wouldn't see my daughter

Speaker 54 alive.

Speaker 10 And I felt like a failure as a parent.

Speaker 10 Not just for Michaela, but for DJ too, because I couldn't make her better.

Speaker 47 I went to my mom's house

Speaker 47 and I told her that I was going to go find my sister.

Speaker 47 Even though she's not okay, I will bring her home.

Speaker 47 And for whatever reason, in my mind, at that point, I knew that I was going to find find her, and I wasn't going to find her the way we wanted to, but that I was going to bring her home.

Speaker 61 All night, Christina roamed the rugged landscape, alone.

Speaker 47 I stopped and looked at any little mound of dirt that looked weird, and I went to

Speaker 48 the gravel pits.

Speaker 68 So close.

Speaker 44 Had Mickey called out, her sister would have heard her.

Speaker 90 But of course, that wasn't possible.

Speaker 58 Day 3.

Speaker 5 36 hours since Mickey Costanzo left school and vanished.

Speaker 85 Search teams prowled the desert beyond sight of Wendover's neon casinos.

Speaker 88 Faint hope.

Speaker 44 Out here, the great empty basin sprawls 180,000 square miles.

Speaker 34 And then, Saturday morning, one of the searchers noted something that looked sort of odd out here in the middle of nowhere. Fresh tire tracks veering off the dusty desert road.

Speaker 87 He followed them.

Speaker 13 He stated he'd seen some sagebrush that appeared to have been disturbed and was covering some ground.

Speaker 13 So he looked underneath the sagebrush and saw what he thought appeared to be blood and decided that he needed to call the authorities.

Speaker 36 This is the area they call the gravel pits.

Speaker 62 Police took a camera to record what they might find there.

Speaker 13 We removed the sagebrush

Speaker 65 and gently dug into the area and found what we thought was part of a human body.

Speaker 17 Did you just uncover the body then?

Speaker 65 No, no. We backed out of the area and contacted Washoe Crime Unit to come in and exhume that area for evidence.

Speaker 62 Crime scene investigators from Reno.

Speaker 37 But Reno was 400 miles away, nine hours by car.

Speaker 61 Still nothing more to do until they arrived.

Speaker 7 So they sealed off the area and waited.

Speaker 46 Just as Mickey's sister Christina, still searching, drove by.

Speaker 47 I just felt like your heart sink.

Speaker 47 I saw the unmarked police car driving on the gravel pit road that I was on the night before.

Speaker 54 And

Speaker 47 it just sank.

Speaker 45 Only one thing that could mean.

Speaker 71 So she rushed home, picked up her mother, went to see the police chief.

Speaker 47 And he said, we have found a body.

Speaker 47 So we called off the search. And I guess out of hope, I says, well, can you see her?

Speaker 47 And he says, no.

Speaker 47 I says, well, then you don't know it's her. And he says, you're right, Christina, but she's the only one missing.
So we're pretty sure it's her.

Speaker 32 But they couldn't know for sure, said the chief, till the forensics team arrived next morning.

Speaker 47 And I said, you're going to leave her out here again all night? And he said, yes, we have to. And I remember saying, then I'm not leaving.

Speaker 47 And he told us we had to. And he said, I'll have somebody out here at all the time.
And I said,

Speaker 47 It shouldn't be strangers. She shouldn't be left with strangers.

Speaker 10 For them to look at me and tell me,

Speaker 10 we'll all be here. She won't be alone.

Speaker 10 Made me feel pretty good.

Speaker 10 As good as you can feel.

Speaker 80 Then police made it public.

Speaker 16 Shallow Grave was discovered, the contents of which are unknown.

Speaker 46 Because the discovery was outside city limits, the case came under the jurisdiction of the Sheriff's Department, 110 miles away, in Elko, Nevada.

Speaker 32 Detective Kevin McKinney raced down I-80.

Speaker 71 He met the forensics team next morning.

Speaker 59 They started sifting, and it didn't take very long once it started.

Speaker 71 It was Mickey in a shallow grave beneath a clump of sagebrush five miles from home.

Speaker 25 It was very emotional.

Speaker 20 The age of the victim and the brutality, I guess disturbing would be the word.

Speaker 87 Mickey had been beaten, cut, stabbed repeatedly.

Speaker 20 Several jagged slashes across her face, neck, head. The blood loss had saturated the ground underneath her.

Speaker 14 Well, kind of personal.

Speaker 59 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 41 It was very aggressive.

Speaker 88 It was not a precision type of injury.

Speaker 36 And then those policemen had to go to Mickey's family and tell them what they found.

Speaker 9 My heart sank to the pit of my stomach and I screamed. I just dropped and I just kept screaming.

Speaker 10 The one thing I will never,

Speaker 10 ever forget in my entire life is watching my daughter DJ

Speaker 59 scream.

Speaker 10 This scream I haven't heard from her even as a baby. and fall to the ground

Speaker 52 in shock and disbelief.

Speaker 10 she physically did what I felt like I wanted to do, but I couldn't do it because I'm the mom. I had to keep myself together.

Speaker 10 I had to be the strong one.

Speaker 50 And so she had a news conference and said what at this point everybody in town was thinking.

Speaker 93 Please, ladies and gentlemen, this is not over yet until the person or persons responsible are brought to justice.

Speaker 27 But why Mickey of all people?

Speaker 88 Not an enemy in the world, at least as far as anybody knew. And yet, here at the crime scene, one clue, one weird, awful clue.

Speaker 14 There was a zip tie that was bound around her wrist.

Speaker 19 What did that say to you?

Speaker 14 Indicated to me that she was restrained and more than likely taken from that school against her will.

Speaker 88 Somebody kidnapped Mickey Costanzo and then murdered her with almost unimaginable brutality.

Speaker 73 But who and why?

Speaker 7 And then another clue.

Speaker 64 One of the officers going through surveillance video from the school found the grainy image of Mickey just outside the girl's locker room.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 85 she wasn't alone.

Speaker 32 Now the TV trucks roared in from Salt Lake and all around northern Nevada, poking about in Little West Wendover, demanding an answer.

Speaker 88 Exactly what happened to that perfect daughter, that pretty and popular 16-year-old, Mickey Costanzo.

Speaker 61 Justice demanded an answer.

Speaker 7 The police chief supplied a non-answer for the evening news.

Speaker 96 We don't have a suspect and we don't have a person of interest, but we are getting leads all the time.

Speaker 5 But we can tell you now there were a couple of things about the murder the chief did not disclose when he spoke to the media.

Speaker 28 It's true there were no hairs or fibers or fingerprints pointing to any particular suspect, but there was a person of interest.

Speaker 20 We started doing a little digging. We went back to the school.
We obtained some video surveillance.

Speaker 43 Remember what Mickey's friend Cody Patton said, that he saw her leaving the school that day with someone he assumed was her boyfriend, Javier?

Speaker 32 Now the video showed Cody was right.

Speaker 43 Mickey had indeed been with someone.

Speaker 20 Just prior to her leaving from the back of the school, we saw Cody Patton leave the same door away.

Speaker 80 Cody Patton, that's the someone she was with.

Speaker 55 Cody, the childhood friend who had been calling and texting with Mickey just before she disappeared.

Speaker 14 Cody Patton was probably the last person to have seen her due to the fact she'd left through the southwest doors and he was in that area.

Speaker 97 Now, why didn't Cody tell them that?

Speaker 56 The detectives went to Mickey's mother, Celia, to find out a little more about Cody.

Speaker 10 Cody is a very interesting young man. Cody could be the sweetest person in the world

Speaker 10 and then turn right around and just not be okay.

Speaker 10 Cody has a tough temper. Cody has a hot temper.

Speaker 61 Cody had been struggling at school and at home with his parents.

Speaker 70 So much so that Cody left and moved in with his fiancé, Tony Fratto, and her parents, Cassie and Claude, Mooreman family, very devout.

Speaker 23 I wanted to extend a hand to him to help him get through school.

Speaker 22 We became

Speaker 22 his second family, and more importantly, we were really invested in his success.

Speaker 21 But you really cared for him, right?

Speaker 99 Oh, yes. Of course.

Speaker 23 Yes. He was like a son to me.

Speaker 37 But when the police asked to talk to Cody yet again, it wasn't Claude Frato, but his actual father, Kip Patton, who brought him to the station.

Speaker 20 He looked like your average high school student to me.

Speaker 12 Tall, lean, clean-cut, polite.

Speaker 20 He was very self-confident.

Speaker 101 Did you sleep okay last night?

Speaker 75 Not bad.

Speaker 101 Why not? That was that horrible since Mickey remiss him. How come?

Speaker 101 I'll tell you my friends.

Speaker 74 Cody rehashed the story he told the cops a few days earlier, how he'd been calling and texting Mickey asking for help to move some car parts.

Speaker 36 And then he saw her walking toward the front door of the school.

Speaker 101 I said, okay, are you all right? She goes, yeah, I'm fine. I said, okay, well, no worries, have a good one.
She said, all right, bye.

Speaker 101 That was it.

Speaker 20 He had seen her at the front of the school with her boyfriend.

Speaker 20 and everyone else had last seen her exiting out the back of the school?

Speaker 76 Not to mention the security camera that showed Mickey walking toward the rear exit. No one else around but Cody himself.

Speaker 13 Okay, so what are you getting at?

Speaker 83 What I'm getting at is you're not being totally truthful with us. Yes, I am.
No, you're not.

Speaker 32 But there was no getting around it.

Speaker 36 Video doesn't lie.

Speaker 83 The video from the school indicates to us that you were waiting for her.

Speaker 83 I wasn't. Because that was the time she disappeared.
And that was the time she died.

Speaker 68 And you were involved.

Speaker 83 I wasn't involved in it. You were.

Speaker 40 I know you were now.

Speaker 83 I did not kill Keilk Stetsu.

Speaker 56 I don't think you planned on it. I don't think you intended to.

Speaker 37 I didn't.

Speaker 83 I didn't do anything.

Speaker 43 And then Cody asked if he could spend a minute alone with his dad.

Speaker 39 So the detectives left the room, and Cody's father, Kip, went in, closed the door.

Speaker 36 What happened in there?

Speaker 36 Couldn't tell exactly through the door, but it didn't sound happy.

Speaker 45 Not at all.

Speaker 28 Three days after Mickey Costanzo's brutalized body was unearthed in the Nevada desert, a family tragedy of a different kind was playing out at the Wendover Police Department.

Speaker 28 Mickey's childhood friend Cody Patton had asked for a few minutes alone with his father Kip behind a closed door.

Speaker 20 I didn't hear what was said, but at one point I heard some wailing from the father. I could hear him yell.
It sounded to me like he was crying.

Speaker 36 And then a few minutes later, the detectives walked back into the interview room.

Speaker 20 His father told him he needs to tell us what happened.

Speaker 65 Be a man.

Speaker 92 No telling what a lawyer might have told young Cody Patton, but this was a father who had just heard the worst news of his life from the lips of his own son.

Speaker 19 And so here is what he said to Cody.

Speaker 16 You gotta start fixing us now

Speaker 83 as much as you can.

Speaker 83 What you did is heinous, Cody.

Speaker 83 I don't want to abandon you at all.

Speaker 83 Okay?

Speaker 83 We're going to do it through.

Speaker 83 We're gay with this well.

Speaker 70 And this is what Cody told them.

Speaker 6 That he picked up Mickey at the school.

Speaker 28 And when they started driving, that Mickey insisted Cody break up with his fiancée Tony Frato and date her instead.

Speaker 66 That when he refused...

Speaker 83 She started yelling at me and

Speaker 83 I said it's because I'm not leaving Tony honey. She started like

Speaker 83 pounding on my chest and stuff.

Speaker 36 By this time, said Cody, they were out of the car, out in the desert.

Speaker 1 She hit him, he said.

Speaker 67 Then he pushed her.

Speaker 83 She fell down and hit her head.

Speaker 83 She just laid there and was looking at the sky. And like her eyes started to turn black.

Speaker 83 And

Speaker 83 I didn't know what to do. I just sat there and she started to like

Speaker 83 shake and sneeze.

Speaker 36 Cody insisted he tried to check her pulse and got nothing. Then he says she started flopping, so he grabbed a shovel from the car.

Speaker 83 I kind of just tried to hit her on her head right here somewhere, trying to just knock her out.

Speaker 83 And it hit like right here and it

Speaker 83 like

Speaker 83 tore up

Speaker 73 pretty bad.

Speaker 20 He was very tearful. We had to stop several times to allow him to gain his composure back.
A couple times he told us he was getting physically ill while he was describing details to us.

Speaker 97 Cody continued, saying, he panicked then.

Speaker 42 And to stifle the sound, he cut her throat.

Speaker 83 And then she stopped.

Speaker 73 I had nothing to do with me. Come and damn bread with you and freak out.

Speaker 73 So they put her in the little

Speaker 83 grave thing i dug by the big bush and covered her up and

Speaker 14 took the clothes over in the gravel pit area and burned her he stated he was alone and with michaela he never implicated anybody else even being present or aware of it he did it alone did he tell anybody why no he did not

Speaker 71 They arrested Cody then, cuffed him, charged him with murder.

Speaker 32 He'd intended to join the Marines after high school.

Speaker 36 Now he could face the death penalty.

Speaker 96 Patton has been enrolled as a student in the West Wendover Junior Senior High School

Speaker 96 and has been attending until the time of his arrest.

Speaker 62 It was after he confessed, after they'd put him in jail, that Cody finally hired an attorney, John Olson.

Speaker 2 His specialty is keeping accused killers off death row.

Speaker 84 But Cody, unlike some of Olson's other clients, didn't seem at all like a crazed killer.

Speaker 44 You obviously got to know him reasonably well.

Speaker 17 What sort of family did Cody have?

Speaker 16 Nice family. They're working people.
They seem to be fairly close. They did a lot of things together.

Speaker 28 Of course, that's Cody's attorney talking.

Speaker 36 But even Mickey's family, the very people you'd expect would demand the death penalty, in fact, felt quite a different emotion.

Speaker 47 I was completely shocked. It's not

Speaker 47 the person that I knew and my husband was there and I said Cody didn't do this. He would never hurt her and he says babe he did and I said

Speaker 47 then somebody made him do it

Speaker 47 and I said that every single day since then somebody made him do it.

Speaker 46 It was, everybody said, a measure of Mickey Costanza's sunny personality, her sweet goodness, that they had to rent Wendover's 1,000-seat concert hall to make room for her funeral.

Speaker 46 She was, people said, everybody's daughter.

Speaker 10 This entire town

Speaker 10 suffered as if this town was her parent.

Speaker 106 It really means a lot that

Speaker 106 all of you came here

Speaker 106 because we can all see how many people loved her

Speaker 106 like we did.

Speaker 68 And one by one they wept as they said goodbye and remembered Michaela so cruelly murdered as the ideal young woman, the pride of West Wendover High.

Speaker 93 She was many things to many people.

Speaker 106 A friend, a fellow student, a teammate, and an inspiration.

Speaker 26 In fact, perhaps the only friend who didn't attend the public funeral, didn't witness its outpouring of emotion and grief, was one of her oldest playmates, Cody Patton.

Speaker 71 Cody, of course, was in a jail cell, awaiting trial for murdering her.

Speaker 104 Naturally, a lot of people in town had come to see that boy as evil incarnate, the villain who'd snuffed out the life of their princess.

Speaker 26 And yet, yet, even to Mickey's family, it was more puzzling than that.

Speaker 51 It was simply inexplicable.

Speaker 47 He would never

Speaker 54 hurt her.

Speaker 47 I don't understand why he ended up confessing to it. I'm still like,

Speaker 47 there's something more to this story.

Speaker 46 More, partly because Cody's story of what happened just didn't make any sense.

Speaker 32 Especially that bit about how Mickey demanded Cody dump his fiancée Tony and date her instead.

Speaker 50 Impossible, said Celia.

Speaker 61 Mickey had her own steady boyfriend and out of respect for Tony had been going out of her way to avoid getting anywhere near Cody.

Speaker 10 Michaela never liked confrontation. She did not like drama.
She hated drama. If it was going to cause an issue, she would stay away.

Speaker 80 Anyway, everybody knew about Cody and Tony's engagement, saw them flash their engagement rings.

Speaker 92 He, the six-foot-six soon-to-be Marine.

Speaker 33 She, the wee slip of a thing who made it her business to tame his temper and set him on the road to righteousness.

Speaker 43 She even persuaded him to convert to the Mormon church.

Speaker 22 She was determined to be Cody's savior, as you will.

Speaker 23 The person that helped him to graduate, herself, she was going to make him happy. Helped him be happy, the person that helped him

Speaker 12 get into the Marines. Is that what it was?

Speaker 22 She encouraged that. She encouraged him to do his schoolwork.
She encouraged him to keep on track to graduate. She encouraged him to try and be a better person.

Speaker 91 Now the man Tony so badly wanted to save was facing the death penalty.

Speaker 43 But she stuck by him, sent him love letters, promised to be faithful and true, and often drove the four hours it took to visit him in jail.

Speaker 97 They talked on the phone sometimes, too, and this being jail, those calls were recorded.

Speaker 54 It's hard. Yeah, I know it's hard for me, too.

Speaker 54 It really is.

Speaker 80 Tony's parents visited Cody sometimes to provide support, but also to ask a particular question.

Speaker 23 I said, I don't understand this.

Speaker 23 Why did you do this? Why did this happen? And he just said, I don't know. I can't tell you anything.

Speaker 12 I don't know.

Speaker 44 But by now, Cody's lawyer had told him, stop talking.

Speaker 16 Tough case. Real tough case.

Speaker 38 Because the chances of his getting the death penalty were quite high.

Speaker 16 I think they were very high. It was the identity of the victim.
It was the brutality of the killing. It was

Speaker 16 the poignancy of some of the photographs in the case that would just break your heart.

Speaker 62 Not to mention Cody's confession, which made mounting a defense all but impossible.

Speaker 16 I think he really regretted doing that because the confession early on was the strongest piece of evidence against Cody.

Speaker 16 What Cody had in mind when he told him that he was involved in the killing or that he did the killing, God knows.

Speaker 62 But the more he studied Cody's confession, the more Olson came to believe, just like Mickey's family did, that something about it didn't add up.

Speaker 50 So Olson hired a seasoned investigator, a former Secret Service agent named Bill Savage, asked him to find out what he could about Cody, the murder, and that boy's confession.

Speaker 18 Some of the details that Mr. Patton reported didn't quite pass the sniff test to me.

Speaker 34 Mickey's wounds, for example, so severe, so brutal, they certainly didn't seem to be the result of an accident, as Cody had claimed, or from a shovel, of all things.

Speaker 18 Horrible slicing disfigurement to Mickey's face.

Speaker 17 What did that say to you?

Speaker 18 A great deal of rage by someone.

Speaker 36 Why would Cody have done that to a childhood friend?

Speaker 57 There'd be more to the story.

Speaker 28 Attorney Olson wondered if Cody's fiancé, Tony Fratto, might provide some insight.

Speaker 36 Tony had already talked to the police during their routine interviews with people who knew Mickey.

Speaker 106 I guess just kind of

Speaker 106 curious, like, where's Mickey? What's going on, you know? Where

Speaker 106 could she have gone?

Speaker 80 So, Olson spoke to Tony himself.

Speaker 27 Did she have any idea why he absolutely none?

Speaker 16 No idea.

Speaker 30 Was she as devastated as other people seem to have

Speaker 16 I would describe her aspect as deadpan.

Speaker 16 I would describe her as emotionless.

Speaker 31 How did that strike you?

Speaker 73 Odd.

Speaker 12 Very odd.

Speaker 76 Nikki's sister DJ also remembered how, after the murder, Tony just seemed to shut down.

Speaker 9 She refused to look at me.

Speaker 10 Refused.

Speaker 9 I understand that you're not going to be very social because it's your, you know, significant other doing this, but

Speaker 9 she wouldn't talk to certain people anymore that she normally would.

Speaker 57 Who knew what wheels were turning in that young woman's brain?

Speaker 95 And then, early one spring morning in April, a few weeks after Mickey's murder, Tony Frado climbed into a car with Cody's father, Kip Patton.

Speaker 7 She didn't tell her parents, they were out of town.

Speaker 42 Tony was wearing just her pajamas, brought nothing with her, as if she assumed she'd never be coming back.

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Speaker 66 It was one of Mickey Costanzo's favorite places, the high school track, where she won so many races.

Speaker 64 Now on a bright spring day in May 2011, two months after her murder, a somber celebration was underway underway here.

Speaker 68 It would have been Mickey's 17th birthday.

Speaker 10 I bought a cake,

Speaker 54 balloons,

Speaker 10 took it down to the high school, invited her friends, and that was

Speaker 10 the hardest day

Speaker 10 next to

Speaker 10 finding out she was

Speaker 59 murdered.

Speaker 42 Apparently murdered by a childhood friend, Cody Patton.

Speaker 38 He'd confessed, was sitting in jail, the death penalty, a distinct possibility.

Speaker 36 Or so everyone thought.

Speaker 38 But as they celebrated Mickey's life, there was something about her death they didn't know.

Speaker 84 Several days earlier, Cody's legal team had a surprise visitor, Cody's fiancé, Tony Frato.

Speaker 80 She arrived wearing her pajamas.

Speaker 30 And with Cody's father at her side, said she was ready to tell the lawyers a story.

Speaker 30 So, are you willing to pursue?

Speaker 16 I think so, yeah. And we talked and we recorded the conversation with her permission.
And it was dynamite.

Speaker 36 You're about to hear a whole new version of Mickey's murder that would turn the case upside down.

Speaker 36 Am I too believe that you, in fact, were present when the girl got killed?

Speaker 36 Yes.

Speaker 88 And here from the lips of this quiet little teen came a horrifying story.

Speaker 7 Cody wasn't the only killer.

Speaker 28 It began for her, she said, with a text from Cody saying, I have her, meaning Mickey was with him in an SUV he had borrowed. He wanted Tony to join them.

Speaker 57 Cody picked her up, she said, and the three drove around, ending up at the gravel pits.

Speaker 49 Then Mickey and Cody got out of the car, and she started yelling at him and then pushing him.

Speaker 49 I both arrayed just for like a split second and then heard like a loud

Speaker 49 thud on the car or whatever so I had got out to see what happened. What did you say when you got out? Um Michaela was on the ground and she wasn't really

Speaker 49 moving at that point.

Speaker 19 She said Cody started digging what appeared to be a grave.

Speaker 92 And when he'd finished with Mickey lying semi-conscious on the ground, they both started kicking her, punching her, hit her with a shovel.

Speaker 92 She wasn't moving,

Speaker 92 and so we had moved her to the grave

Speaker 92 and then we were kind of standing there deciding what what do we do. We didn't know what really we had just done.

Speaker 92 I remember like holding down her legs and

Speaker 92 we had slit her throat.

Speaker 89 It was both of us.

Speaker 7 To Cody's defense attorney, five little words that changed everything.

Speaker 44 Tony Frado freely admitting that she had also murdered Mickey.

Speaker 16 All of a sudden, it changed from one crazed killer to two people who committed a homicide. It gave us something to point the case towards other than Cody's acts.

Speaker 46 Two killers sharing the guilt.

Speaker 55 Maybe with some good lawyering, his client could escape the death penalty after all.

Speaker 76 Why Tony said those things was almost beside the point for Olson, anyway. But not for Tony's parents.

Speaker 61 Not when they found out.

Speaker 22 No one that knows Tony

Speaker 22 would have ever seen this coming. Just isn't possible.

Speaker 64 Their daughter hadn't even been a suspect, not even a person of interest.

Speaker 35 Now she confessed herself into a murder that could send her to death row.

Speaker 23 My immediate thought was that she's been coerced into saying this.

Speaker 17 Somebody's made her do it. Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 17 What person popped into your head?

Speaker 99 Cody's dad.

Speaker 61 Cody's father, Kip Patton, the man who delivered Tony to her meeting with Cody's lawyers.

Speaker 32 Patton declined a request to appear on our program, but he insisted. Tony told him what happened, and it was her idea to come forward and meet with Cody's attorneys.

Speaker 80 He just drove her there because Tony's parents were out of town.

Speaker 17 Do you think sometimes that she thought,

Speaker 17 I can't do this with my parents present. I have to wait till they're gone before I can actually go and confess to this terrible thing.

Speaker 23 I don't know.

Speaker 50 Possibly so, but we've always been very, very open.

Speaker 28 Or possibly a misguided attempt to save Cody, but she'd only succeeded in incriminating herself.

Speaker 22 She doesn't believe that she's confessing to the law enforcement. She's talking to Cody's attorneys, asking them if it's going to help.

Speaker 60 But Tony didn't have an attorney-client relationship with Cody's lawyer.

Speaker 71 No privilege, no protection.

Speaker 80 So they turned her statement over to law enforcement.

Speaker 79 And when Detective Donald Burnham reviewed the tape and transcript of Tony's confession,

Speaker 14 I determined that we had probable cause to arrest her just based on her own admission.

Speaker 36 Tony Frado, just 18, was booked, held without bail, facing, perhaps, a capital murder charge, same as Cody.

Speaker 10 I, in my heart of hearts, knew Tony had something to do with it because they were a couple.

Speaker 10 It was very hard for me to know she was at school wearing his engagement ring, acting like nothing had happened and and she knew nothing about it when I knew she knew.

Speaker 47 I said, I am so glad that she is now sitting and facing what he is.

Speaker 47 Now,

Speaker 47 now it makes sense.

Speaker 87 But little Tony Fratto hardly seemed like a killer.

Speaker 3 She was a beauty queen at 13.

Speaker 56 West Wendover Junior Miss, in fact.

Speaker 91 Devoutly religious, too.

Speaker 36 and extremely close to her parents.

Speaker 46 She always went to church with us.

Speaker 23 You know, a lot of kids, you have to force them to get out of bed and go. It was never that way with Tony.

Speaker 12 She had goals in her life.

Speaker 22 She knew exactly where she wanted to go. So a truly responsible child.
Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 76 Outside of her family, Tony had very few friends, except Cody, of course. From the moment they started dating in the ninth grade, they were virtually inseparable.

Speaker 12 She

Speaker 22 loved him. She thought she loved him.

Speaker 23 He was very, very possessive, did not like her time taken up by anyone else but him

Speaker 32 Now the Fratos remembered how possessive controlling Cody so big and strong and when they thought about it that way they wondered what was the real story behind their daughter's confession

Speaker 73 Elko, Nevada, Gold Rush Town, saloons, casinos, even brothels, four of them right in the middle of town, good business citizens, too, according to police.

Speaker 37 Nearby, there's also an historic courthouse, the stage for preliminary hearings for the teenagers accused of that brutal murder that so far not a single person could explain.

Speaker 80 Least of all, Mickey Costanzo's mother, Celia.

Speaker 76 Before the hearing, she studied every grisly photo and braced herself for what was coming.

Speaker 10 I had to know exactly what happened to my daughter.

Speaker 12 Everything. No matter how bad.

Speaker 10 Everything. Every autopsy photo that was taken of my daughter, I saw.

Speaker 10 I saw it all because I did not want to go into a courtroom and see my daughter like that. for the very first time.

Speaker 46 There were separate hearings for Tony and Cody.

Speaker 32 Two occasions for Celia to hold up under questioning.

Speaker 7 He's right over there and he's in her red jumpsuit.

Speaker 26 Two occasions to hear emotional and incriminating confessions.

Speaker 83 I tried to like check her pulse and stuff and I couldn't get anything and she was just flopping.

Speaker 32 Cody, no surprise, was bound over for trial at which everyone knew he could face the death penalty.

Speaker 38 And Tony, pale and gaunt in her dark blue jumpsuit, Tony listened to excerpts of her own quite stunning confession.

Speaker 38 After that, she

Speaker 38 wasn't really

Speaker 38 breathing or anything.

Speaker 38 So we

Speaker 38 kind of just stood there. We're crying because we didn't know what we had just done.

Speaker 99 It was brutal.

Speaker 10 It was painful. It was long.
It was torturous. And those two

Speaker 10 could not ever get away with it.

Speaker 10 They could not

Speaker 10 walk away free.

Speaker 7 But people couldn't help but notice that the two kids told very different stories.

Speaker 26 Remember, Cody said he was alone.

Speaker 26 Well, Tony insisted she was with him, and they murdered Mickey together.

Speaker 68 Tony's parents simply couldn't believe, despite her confession, that their sweet, diminutive daughter was capable of so monstrous an act.

Speaker 25 Can you imagine her doing those things?

Speaker 17 Striking her with a shovel, perhaps helping with the knife.

Speaker 23 I don't believe that she had anything to do with the knife.

Speaker 23 There were no fingerprints, no DNA, anything to indicate that she had.

Speaker 22 The striking her with the shovel was an order from Cody.

Speaker 33 An order from Cody.

Speaker 90 That was the answer to the question, said the Fratos.

Speaker 42 And behind it, a terrible secret.

Speaker 37 Over the years, said the Fratos, Cody had given Tony lots of orders.

Speaker 70 He was extremely possessive, physically intimidating, more than a foot taller than little Tony, was often angry and abusive.

Speaker 22 He would yell at her, he would be pushing her around, he would be

Speaker 22 restraining her, throwing her down.

Speaker 32 In fact, just two months before Mickey's murder, a school surveillance camera caught an agitated Cody appearing to get rough with Tony right here at her locker.

Speaker 18 There was an instance that occurred in the hallway of Wendover High School that depicts Cody grabbing Tony around the neck and realizing he's six foot six, she's five foot one.

Speaker 97 But Tony declined to file charges.

Speaker 23 Her explanation was that if something like this happens, he will not be accepted into the Marines and I don't want to stand in the way of that.

Speaker 22 You have to realize what her goals were and her expectations and her final result of all of this was to get him into the Marines.

Speaker 36 And perhaps get him out of her life?

Speaker 37 Now, after the murder and Tony's confession, the Frados looked back on their daughter's relationship with Cody with new eyes.

Speaker 66 Tony, they decided, was an abused woman.

Speaker 22 She was living in fear of what she thought the repercussions would be if she brought it out.

Speaker 66 So, fearing Cody might kill her too, Tony's parents insisted their daughter had no choice but to cooperate with Cody, the murderer.

Speaker 22 So her participation, as people say, in what happened that night was strictly out of fear,

Speaker 22 controlling, manipulation, and orders by the one that she had already been suffering abuse from for two years, three years.

Speaker 91 But she participated in the attack.

Speaker 22 Participated, participated under

Speaker 22 extreme orders. orders.

Speaker 22 She was afraid that she would be the one lying next to Michaela if she did not follow his orders that evening.

Speaker 6 To which Cody's attorney, John Olson, responded.

Speaker 73 Bologna.

Speaker 89 Why do you say that?

Speaker 73 Bologna.

Speaker 16 There's nothing in their relationship ever that would indicate that she was ever abused by Cody.

Speaker 64 Even so, Tony Frata was bound over for trial, just like Cody, and was now sitting in a jail cell facing the daunting prospect of losing her life, not to Cody Patton, but to lethal injection.

Speaker 97 Unless,

Speaker 53 what if Tony told a whole news story about her role in Mickey Costanzo's murder?

Speaker 51 A story that just might eventually set her free.

Speaker 104 Christmas time in West Wendover, Nevada.

Speaker 42 Mickey Costanzo had been dead for nine months.

Speaker 10 Christmas day,

Speaker 10 it was not fun for me.

Speaker 10 She was missing.

Speaker 10 It's not the same.

Speaker 11 And I don't ever think that's gonna go away.

Speaker 47 I used to enjoy going and buying everybody Christmas presents and wrapping them up, and

Speaker 48 it wasn't the same.

Speaker 54 And

Speaker 47 then having to

Speaker 48 remember not to buy her something.

Speaker 55 Cody Patton and his fiancé Tony Frado spent the holidays in jail awaiting trial.

Speaker 84 On New Year's Eve, Cody turned 20.

Speaker 41 Then early in 2012, a legal deal emerged. Cody would plead guilty to first-degree murder, get life in prison, but with the possibility of parole, no death penalty.

Speaker 77 And in exchange, he'd have to testify against Tony.

Speaker 38 Cody took the deal, and then just as suddenly changed his mind.

Speaker 6 Instead, Cody decided to take his chances in court.

Speaker 38 But just one day later, the DA offered Tony a deal.

Speaker 97 Not the same deal, better.

Speaker 28 If Tony agreed to testify against Cody, She'd be allowed to plead a second-degree murder.

Speaker 51 With a chance of parole after just 18 years, By then, Tony would be just 36.

Speaker 28 And Tony, offered a chance to save her own skin by throwing Cody under the bus, said,

Speaker 51 yes.

Speaker 76 She signed the plea papers right away.

Speaker 22 She said, you know what? Enough is enough. The truth needs to be told, and I'm going to tell it.

Speaker 46 So on a chilly January day, Tony Frata was led from her jail cell to an office at the Sheriff's Department to tell her story and put her hand on the Bible and promised to tell the truth.

Speaker 73 I'm

Speaker 101 a person

Speaker 101 to tell the truth, and deep down, I wanted people to know the truth because

Speaker 101 I knew Cody wasn't going to come forward and tell the complete truth.

Speaker 7 And for the next three and a half hours, Tony told a whole new story.

Speaker 64 about how Cody was upset with Mickey, how he hated the sound of her voice, how things were were building up.

Speaker 28 Then the one detail of her story that did not change.

Speaker 80 The afternoon of March 3rd, that text from Cody.

Speaker 32 One of over 100 the two exchanged that day. Police weren't able to recover any of them, but this one, said Tony, was burned in her memory.

Speaker 101 What was the content of it?

Speaker 101 All it said was, I have her.

Speaker 34 But from here, the story changed.

Speaker 32 and blame shifted toward Cody.

Speaker 28 As they drove off into the desert, said Tony, she looked back and saw Mickey stuffed in the back section of the SUV.

Speaker 85 Mickey looks scared, said Tony, with her hands up toward her face.

Speaker 39 Cody looked determined, angry, she said, but wouldn't talk to her.

Speaker 32 Then, as they approached the gravel pit, said Tony, Cody, right beside her in the driver's seat, sent her a text.

Speaker 101 And it said, we have to kill her. Just kind of looked at him and kind of let.

Speaker 30 Cody pulled over, said Tony, and ordered her to stand guard as he dug a hole.

Speaker 35 Then he took Mickey from the car, pushed her to the ground, demanded that Tony hit her.

Speaker 101 All I remember is him pulling her hair back, and I went up and hid meet her in the face.

Speaker 66 But in this new and entirely different version of her story, Tony claimed she was an unwilling participant.

Speaker 43 and insisted she packed off while Cody started punching and kicking Mickey.

Speaker 57 And then he issued an order.

Speaker 101 I remember looking up at Cody and

Speaker 101 him telling me, hit her with the shovel, hit her with the shovel. And so I

Speaker 101 hit her in the back of the shoulder with the shovel.

Speaker 91 She said Cody took the shovel back and whacked Mickey in the head.

Speaker 32 And then in that hole he dug, Cody got on top of her.

Speaker 101 And then I remember

Speaker 101 going up and holding her legs down so she'd stop kicking.

Speaker 101 And then

Speaker 101 all of a sudden, her legs went completely still and she wasn't moving. And that freaked me out.
So I backed off and jumped up and walked off a little bit.

Speaker 57 Remember, in her first confession, Tony claimed she helped cut Mickey's throat.

Speaker 61 Not anymore.

Speaker 49 Her new story, Cody used the knife alone.

Speaker 7 Well, she, horrified, then backed off, but kept watching and listening.

Speaker 101 She had looked up at Cody and asked, am I still here? Am I still alive?

Speaker 57 And then Cody ordered her to get in the car, she said.

Speaker 58 And sitting by herself, Tony said she heard the last sounds of Mickey Costanzo's life.

Speaker 26 And then she said it was over.

Speaker 95 Cody buried Mickey by himself.

Speaker 59 Once in the car, according to Tony.

Speaker 88 They drove back into town, went to McDonald's for a cold drink.

Speaker 72 And then later, they cruised across the state line into Utah, pulled off into the desert, and burned Mickey's clothes and belongings.

Speaker 101 You can't tell me to this day why this happened.

Speaker 101 They never told you that.

Speaker 76 And with that, Tony had her deal.

Speaker 28 The sworn statement she provided would now comprise much of the DA's case against her fiancé, Cody Patton.

Speaker 36 In this new version of her story, Cody was the killer, orchestrated the whole thing, and she, terrified of Cody's murderous rage, was forced to go along for the awful ride.

Speaker 76 Not at all like her original confession.

Speaker 36 But was there more to Tony's story?

Speaker 75 Well, maybe.

Speaker 61 Because just before she was arrested, Tony left something behind.

Speaker 26 Something in her very own words that just might reveal the real motive for Mickey Costanzo's murder.

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Speaker 74 There's a fine old technique in law enforcement.

Speaker 28 Got two defendants, get one to take a deal and testify against the other.

Speaker 7 Looked like that was about to work.

Speaker 62 In the case of the West Wendover murder of Mickey Costanzo.

Speaker 38 Tony Frato appeared all set to tell the world world that her fiancé, Cody Patton, after abusing her for years, forced her to witness and even, in a minor way, assist in the killing.

Speaker 62 Apparently, like everybody else, she didn't know why Cody did it, only that she, Tony, feared he'd kill her too if she didn't go along.

Speaker 31 But of course, why was the question on the lips of just about every living, breathing soul within sight of Wendover Will here?

Speaker 31 The idea that Cody would brutally murder his own good childhood friend just didn't make any sense.

Speaker 31 Any more than did the idea that Tony would go to such trouble to visit Cody in jail and whisper sweet nothings to him on the phone and send him love notes, if in fact she was deathly afraid of him, as she claimed.

Speaker 31 Well, people around here had pretty much given up on the idea of getting any kind of an answer.

Speaker 41 When suddenly out of the blue, a little gift appeared.

Speaker 27 Tony, it turned out, had been keeping a diary.

Speaker 63 Before she confessed, Tony gave it to Cody's parents, who turned everything over to defense investigator Bill Savage.

Speaker 18 In my opinion, there was some valuable information in there with regard to Tony's personality, her feelings.

Speaker 46 In this little book, Tony poured out her fears, her hopes, her deep insecurities.

Speaker 55 and what Cody's attorney thought was just perhaps a motive for murder.

Speaker 70 This, for example, example.

Speaker 79 She worried that Cody will leave me for someone else, cheat on me, that Cody and I won't last forever, we won't get married.

Speaker 84 In here, she wrote of her own terror, that her relationship with Cody wouldn't work out, and if so, that there was no point in living.

Speaker 60 I'm very angry today.

Speaker 66 So angry that I'm trying to overdose.

Speaker 76 After I got off the phone with Cody, I went and took four aspirins.

Speaker 18 In my opinion, a very troubled young lady.

Speaker 77 A troubled young lady who in many ways did not feel worthy, I gather.

Speaker 17 That's correct.

Speaker 38 And who loved this guy, but at the same time was terrified of losing him.

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 103 Afraid of losing him to the girl he had grown up with, the attractive and popular Mickey Costanzo.

Speaker 76 We might as well break up so he can get back together with her.

Speaker 66 He will be happier and can see her a lot.

Speaker 58 A lot more than he will ever see me.

Speaker 76 They are perfect for each other.

Speaker 18 Tony was jealous of Mickey, and if she were out of the picture, then Cody and Tony would be together.

Speaker 31 She was everything Tony wasn't.

Speaker 12 Yes,

Speaker 12 absolutely.

Speaker 55 They would be so happy together if I didn't steal him away.

Speaker 76 I know in my heart, he really doesn't love me.

Speaker 16 The diaries disclosed a real animosity that Tony had for Michaela.

Speaker 59 Right.

Speaker 16 No one's ever shown me any reason that Cody had to hurt Michaela.

Speaker 73 None.

Speaker 27 But Tony?

Speaker 16 Tony had reasons.

Speaker 60 Was it possible she was the one who wanted Mickey dead?

Speaker 66 That her big, strong boyfriend was just doing what she wanted?

Speaker 46 Mickey's sisters remembered.

Speaker 47 Tony used to

Speaker 47 get so upset if Michaela was seen talking to Cody. And she would just yell and holler and

Speaker 47 say

Speaker 47 horrible things to Michaela. You know, don't talk to him and call her every name imaginable.

Speaker 38 An intensely jealous young woman, said DJ.

Speaker 9 He couldn't be around girls, especially my sister, but

Speaker 9 he couldn't go do certain things. She couldn't go do certain things.
And if one did it that the other didn't like, it was World War III.

Speaker 36 And Cody was, said Christina, on a very tight leash.

Speaker 47 I must have been doing laundry or something. And here Tony came walking and he was like, gotta go.
And I was like, you can't even talk to me? He was like, no, I gotta go. I can't be seen.

Speaker 47 Show you a mad.

Speaker 17 Who was the driving force in that relationship?

Speaker 47 She was.

Speaker 76 But having heard Tony's sworn statement, Cody's lawyer knew that his client's story about Mickey dying after some sort of accident now sounded like the cover-up for a cold-blooded murder.

Speaker 92 And therefore, that Tony's testimony could send Cody, who was still facing trial, to death row.

Speaker 16 Part of Tony Frado's statement, in which she said that at some point in time in this killing, Michaela sat up in the grave and said to Cody, am I still here? Can I go home?

Speaker 70 Devastating.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 46 Which is why, just weeks before the trial, Cody decided to plead guilty to first-degree murder.

Speaker 16 That was the safest way to go.

Speaker 16 That was the way that would present at least a possibility that Cody would see daylight again, and it would take the death penalty off the table.

Speaker 45 At Cody's sentencing in front of a packed courtroom, he made his case for eventual parole, pleading with the judge for mercy and begging Mickey's family for forgiveness.

Speaker 110 He says, I'm sorry for the unimaginable pain this has caused you.

Speaker 36 And then, for the first time, Cody spoke publicly about his fiancée and apparent partner in the murder, the woman he'd protected in his confession, never revealing she was with him at the crime scene.

Speaker 80 Listen to what he said now.

Speaker 110 To the court,

Speaker 110 I just want to state that

Speaker 110 my co-defendant Tony Cryer is not all to blame.

Speaker 5 Did you hear that?

Speaker 66 Tony was not all to blame.

Speaker 40 Was Cody implying that she played a role in at least some or even most of those horrific stab wounds to Mickey's pretty face?

Speaker 110 There's no reason. There's no why.

Speaker 110 There's no

Speaker 110 justification for it.

Speaker 110 It's just

Speaker 110 again.

Speaker 110 Sorry it's not enough, but I

Speaker 110 apologize

Speaker 110 for everything.

Speaker 26 Moments later, his sentence.

Speaker 61 A chance at parole after maybe 25 years.

Speaker 17 I sent to a term of life in the Madden Department of Corrections.

Speaker 15 There shall be no possibility of parole.

Speaker 39 It was justice, said Mickey's family.

Speaker 12 But an odd feeling lingered.

Speaker 47 You have to sit there and go,

Speaker 54 oh my God,

Speaker 47 this person that I knew so well

Speaker 12 will never,

Speaker 47 ever have a chance of anything.

Speaker 21 You're conflicted.

Speaker 47 I see the good in him. I

Speaker 47 see what he did. I

Speaker 47 want him to be punished for what he did, but I see that

Speaker 47 good side of him.

Speaker 103 Both Cody and the prison where he'll spend his life turned down our request for an interview.

Speaker 5 But Tony Fratto, different story.

Speaker 103 Tony had a lot to say about that dark night in the Nevada desert and just what really happened to her romantic rival, Mickey Vestanzo.

Speaker 38 Toni Frato, the ex-junior Miss Beauty Queen, was a tiny wisp of a girl in a prison suit when they brought her to see us.

Speaker 70 Keith?

Speaker 26 We'd arranged our meeting in a small courtroom not too far from her cell.

Speaker 35 The sheriff's people agreed to let her mother watch from an adjoining room, separated by a thick plate glass window.

Speaker 4 She could hear us.

Speaker 1 We could not hear her.

Speaker 62 So, two lines of communication, ours with Tony, hers silently with her mother.

Speaker 84 We began by talking about Cody, the fiancée she seemed so afraid of losing to Mickey Costanzo.

Speaker 89 There are people who say that you were very jealous and that you manipulated him into committing murder.

Speaker 86 I was not jealous of Michaela. Yes, that one thing that I had wrote in my diary, but that was way long

Speaker 86 early in our relationship. It never was brought up again.
Nothing ever recent.

Speaker 89 Did you ever say to him, get rid of her?

Speaker 12 No, I didn't. Get rid of her or you lose me.
No.

Speaker 70 Didn't say it's her or me?

Speaker 86 No.

Speaker 77 Didn't give them that choice?

Speaker 86 Absolutely not.

Speaker 31 And then we talked about the night of March 3rd, 2011, when she and Cody took Mickey to the desert and ended her life.

Speaker 89 When you put yourself back there in your memory, what does that feel like inside?

Speaker 86 My heart just sinks and you know, to be honest, it's like it takes my breath away. Like, it's hard to breathe and everything.
It's not something,

Speaker 86 you know, you want to sit there and think about.

Speaker 89 There are differing stories, so that's why I have to ask these questions.

Speaker 88 And you hit her with a shovel?

Speaker 88 Yes.

Speaker 73 Why?

Speaker 86 Because I was told to.

Speaker 86 I did not want to do anything to her and everything. He kept telling me over and over again, just do it.
It's okay, just do it. And I just remember

Speaker 86 him putting her down and

Speaker 86 him standing over her.

Speaker 62 She was struggling trying to get free.

Speaker 59 Right.

Speaker 1 Then you backed off.

Speaker 86 Yes. I don't know what he was doing up towards the top of her body.
I could not see because he was standing in the way.

Speaker 5 And she insisted, in contradiction to that first confession of hers, that she did did not help Cody with that slashing and stabbing.

Speaker 88 And that you didn't hold the knife, that you didn't cut her.

Speaker 59 Correct.

Speaker 88 So it reduced your culpability.

Speaker 12 You can say it, yes.

Speaker 86 I'm not trying to diminish my actions or anything of what I did, but I won't take responsibility for something I did not do.

Speaker 36 Frequently, as Tony distanced herself from the crime, she looked through the glass to her mother, especially when the question turned to why.

Speaker 86 I was

Speaker 86 too much in fear.

Speaker 86 I was scared, terrified.

Speaker 26 Only reason she was there, she insisted, she was an abused woman, and she was afraid he'd kill her too.

Speaker 86 When you're

Speaker 86 going through a type of abusive relationship,

Speaker 59 you don't always fight back with your abuser.

Speaker 86 To be honest, I...

Speaker 86 After finding everything out that I know now, I believe I was next.

Speaker 16 Why would he kill you?

Speaker 86 Was because I was a witness. And I was there with Michaela.

Speaker 7 So why is Mickey Costanzo dead?

Speaker 84 You'd have to ask Cody, said Tony Frato.

Speaker 86 i don't know his motive i don't know

Speaker 86 if i knew i'd be more than willing

Speaker 86 to you know come out and say why so it would make sense he's just a lunatic or what i mean

Speaker 68 i don't know i don't have an answer for that and when he says he doesn't know why do you believe him

Speaker 86 no

Speaker 86 there's he's got to know why

Speaker 86 there's a reason why why

Speaker 59 he did this.

Speaker 71 Was this version of her story finally the truth?

Speaker 45 Perhaps.

Speaker 55 And in any event, Mickey's family would have to be satisfied with what small consolations Tony Frado offered.

Speaker 86 I know sorry is not enough.

Speaker 86 If I could go back, I would.

Speaker 86 And protect her and make sure that this wouldn't happen and everything.

Speaker 86 That, you know, she would still be here today.

Speaker 95 can you see her face now in your mind's eye

Speaker 59 it's in pieces yeah

Speaker 89 probably be seeing her for a long time

Speaker 59 the rest of my life

Speaker 77 and with that our interview ended tony frato never wavering from her story the one she told when she cut that deal with the district attorney the deal that could set her free by the year 2030

Speaker 36 but But of course, Tony couldn't know, leaving here, nor could we, that one more little surprise was waiting.

Speaker 6 Cody had said something very interesting just before Tony took her deal.

Speaker 37 Something buried deep in the court file, but now

Speaker 80 about to be revealed.

Speaker 34 They're in separate prisons now.

Speaker 28 Cody Patton at one end of the state, Tony Fratto at the other.

Speaker 31 Different stories about the murder, different sentences, too.

Speaker 72 Tony Fratto is 26 now.

Speaker 3 She'll have a chance to win parole when she's in her late 30s.

Speaker 30 But Cody Patton will most likely die in prison.

Speaker 34 So, in a way, this is an academic question, but there's one more version of the story of the murder of Miki Costanzo, which we found buried in the court file.

Speaker 7 And it just might provide an answer.

Speaker 38 Remember that plea deal Cody first accepted and then decided to pass on?

Speaker 77 Here's the story behind that very dramatic moment. Cody had just started making a sworn statement to the DA.

Speaker 41 It was going to be finally a full and frank account of what really happened and why.

Speaker 41 Here's how it began, he said.

Speaker 65 There was an incident the afternoon of the murder, just down there at the school.

Speaker 30 Tony confronted Mickey in a school hallway.

Speaker 76 Tony saw Mickey in the hallway, said Cody, and called her a slut.

Speaker 79 Said, look at there, there's that slut.

Speaker 91 The girls argued, said Cody.

Speaker 36 He intervened, told Tony, knock it off.

Speaker 73 Plausible?

Speaker 36 Maybe.

Speaker 19 Before anybody heard about Cody's statement, Mickey's sister DJ told us this.

Speaker 59 Tony really hated her.

Speaker 9 She'd walk by and Tony had say something so rude under her breath.

Speaker 88 We're talking about a couple of years though.

Speaker 59 Yeah.

Speaker 9 The hatred with Tony grew more and more and more. I don't even know why to tell you, but

Speaker 9 it just escalated.

Speaker 46 As Cody told the DA, it escalated to a fever that day.

Speaker 19 And so he suggested, why don't you guys just talk it out?

Speaker 32 And Tony agreed, said,

Speaker 72 She just wanted to duke it out with Michaela.

Speaker 56 So I relayed the message to Mickey. I said, well, she wants to fight it out.

Speaker 28 And Mickey came to the resolution.

Speaker 19 She's like, okay.

Speaker 32 So, said Cody, Mickey did get into a car with him, voluntarily.

Speaker 32 They drove around for a while, said Cody.

Speaker 64 Then they picked up Tony.

Speaker 44 They all headed to the gravel pits.

Speaker 92 And what did Cody tell the DA about what happened there?

Speaker 104 Well, it turned out nothing.

Speaker 32 Because just then Cody's attorney John Olson arrived at the hearing.

Speaker 26 The two met, conferred briefly, and Cody stopped talking.

Speaker 67 He had changed his mind, rejected the plea deal, never told his story again.

Speaker 104 And his statement was filed away.

Speaker 31 But Olson, who has never disputed that Cody was involved, does have his own opinion about what probably happened at the gravel pits.

Speaker 16 My guess would be that there was an opportunity for Tony to confront Michaela.

Speaker 42 And they went out to the desert to have the confrontation away from crying eyes.

Speaker 16 I think something bad happened.

Speaker 25 A bad idea that became a screw-up.

Speaker 16 A bad idea that became a horrible idea.

Speaker 16 A bad idea that went very, very bad.

Speaker 71 Wasn't an idea hatched on the spur of the moment?

Speaker 73 Oh, no.

Speaker 79 At least not according to DJ,

Speaker 76 who said she witnessed the hostility escalate for months.

Speaker 62 She heard Tony badmouth Mickey time and again.

Speaker 104 And she saw Cody play one nasty prank after another, including one that seemed like more than just a prank.

Speaker 9 He had a little box cutter blade, and he swiped it across her arm. And at first, she said, I didn't even know.
And then I look down and I'm bleeding, and I look at him, and he's laughing.

Speaker 77 Was that kind of the straw that broke the camel's back with her?

Speaker 9 That was. She said, he's not worth it.

Speaker 9 And then I really don't want a person like that in my life at all.

Speaker 56 And from then on, Mickey avoided Cody, never spoke to him, cut him out of her life.

Speaker 9 He grew really angry at her after that.

Speaker 9 Would do things to try to make her mad, just so she'd talk to him.

Speaker 9 It was a real shock to him to all of a sudden have her there, too thick and thin, and then wherever.

Speaker 34 An angry and abandoned Cody, a jealous Tony? Maybe that's why Mickey had been so worried, said DJ. about what those two might be up to.

Speaker 9 She says he keeps trying to get me to go with them. Just constantly, that's what he wanted.
It was try to get her.

Speaker 30 To get her to go out?

Speaker 9 With him and Tony.

Speaker 31 And she was fully aware that she was public enemy number one as far as Tony was concerned.

Speaker 47 She just said, I don't understand.

Speaker 9 I don't get it. It's not right.
Something's just wrong.

Speaker 76 The Costanzo family says Mickey would never have gone with Cody and Tony voluntarily. And there is evidence of that.

Speaker 32 The zip tie found around Mickey's arm.

Speaker 88 Something else.

Speaker 77 Mickey's family is convinced that Cody and Tony knew that the few days around the time of the murder were the only days they'd find Mickey alone after school.

Speaker 10 The timing was too perfect. It was the one time, the one time, that DJ was at college.
Christina and Donald were at NASCAR. I was at work.

Speaker 10 It's the one time in all of this time that Michaela would have actually had to walk home.

Speaker 5 Which, when we heard that, made us wonder.

Speaker 76 In our interview, did Tony slip and reveal a hidden truth?

Speaker 62 Remember, she claimed she was an abused woman, an unwilling accomplice, there only out of fear.

Speaker 4 But listen to this.

Speaker 28 Does it indicate the very planning revealed in Cody's statement to the DA?

Speaker 32 Planning that included picking a place for the showdown?

Speaker 86 Well, when we finally got out to the designated area and everything.

Speaker 59 Just, what do you mean the designated area?

Speaker 86 Where everything went down.

Speaker 14 That area was designated?

Speaker 86 Well, just the area where we ended up.

Speaker 36 No plan to go there, insisted Tony.

Speaker 61 So, designated area, maybe, maybe not.

Speaker 70 But also, a festering jealousy, scores of text messages, a zip tie, and one more explosive ingredient.

Speaker 12 An affair.

Speaker 62 Police revealed that Cody had been seeing an older woman, the very woman from whom he borrowed the SUV used the night of the murder.

Speaker 36 Tony knows that now, of course, that the other woman wasn't Mickey.

Speaker 61 But did she know it then?

Speaker 69 The night they killed her?

Speaker 10 A woman knows. Whether you're

Speaker 10 that age or my age, you know something's maybe not right. Who that person might be, I don't think she would have ever in a million years thought it was an adult, so the next person she

Speaker 10 in her mind would think

Speaker 10 would be my daughter, even though it's completely wrong.

Speaker 61 Does that sound like Tony was an abused woman obeying an angry boyfriend?

Speaker 66 Or a scorned woman determined to rid herself of a perceived rival?

Speaker 36 An unanswered question.

Speaker 28 Which is probably the best we'll get, said Attorney Olson.

Speaker 16 Outside of the participants who are alive, nobody knows.

Speaker 16 Nobody knows, and nobody's going to know.

Speaker 36 They're never going to reveal it. No.

Speaker 62 But then, would any answer ever be good enough?

Speaker 10 I want the truth. Will I ever get it? No.
They'll never tell me. And there is nothing they can say or do that will make it better.

Speaker 10 They cannot fix this.

Speaker 77 Three families broken in West Wendover.

Speaker 60 Cody Patton will never come home.

Speaker 64 Tony Frato might someday, but

Speaker 51 too late for them.

Speaker 12 I don't think I will

Speaker 70 still be alive when she gets out.

Speaker 59 I don't think that there will be a time that we'll be together like that again.

Speaker 42 West Wendover High School has retired Mickey Costanzo's basketball jersey.

Speaker 32 It hangs now in a place of honor.

Speaker 45 Outside, the students got together to paint and sign a huge rock, a memorial in her favorite color.

Speaker 97 Up in the high desert mountains outside Wendover is a ranch with a small family cemetery.

Speaker 31 It's a peaceful, sacred place where Michaela Costanzo, where Mickey, now rests.

Speaker 10 The ranch is home. She's exactly where

Speaker 10 she would want to have been. She's laying right next to my father.

Speaker 10 And she is in the most beautiful spot

Speaker 10 in the world to me.

Speaker 10 She's like sitting on top of the world.

Speaker 10 We all knew that

Speaker 10 my mom, myself, we'd all eventually be there.

Speaker 10 Just not in the order that it seems to have happened.

Speaker 88 And here, on the little strip on I-80, Wendover Will still waves his grinning welcome, but he points to a place a little older now, sadder, as if the neon lights strung up among the desert casinos had picked up a layer of grief.

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