Secrets in the Mist

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Speaker 12 A hopelessness.

Speaker 12 Where did she go? Who did she see?

Speaker 12 I just want to know what happened to my sister.

Speaker 14 A young mother is missing in a case gone cold.

Speaker 15 It was so important to me to know the truth behind that evening. Then, detectives had an aha moment.

Speaker 17 To solve the case, they would turn to something you probably use every day.

Speaker 15 Facebook.

Speaker 19 Why don't you establish a Facebook account? I thought that could actually accomplish a great deal.

Speaker 17 And that's when everything started to change.

Speaker 12 Something happened to her.

Speaker 17 In court, you'll see it all come pouring out.

Speaker 14 A hidden crime and a son's heart-pounding moment.

Speaker 15 This is a horrible crime. I'm glad we know the truth.

Speaker 11 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 17 What were the secrets in the mist?

Speaker 23 January 2013, Point Vicente, California.

Speaker 24 The wet, gray morning cold has settled in to stay.

Speaker 22 At noon, a police boat sets off in the pea soup fog.

Speaker 5 The Hail Mary Pass, apparently a slim chance to find the truth at last.

Speaker 24 But why out there?

Speaker 16 Why after all those lost 30 years?

Speaker 8 Maybe Maybe some cases are destined to stay cold, easier that way. Before they came along with their wild ideas about murder and Facebook of all things.

Speaker 29 And now this, their doomed errand into the fog.

Speaker 30 Her name was Carol Jean Meyer, though she was Carol Lubon.

Speaker 29 when all this happened back in March 1981.

Speaker 17 The night of the slamming doors, the harsh words, words, the car roaring away.

Speaker 5 And it's an old story anyway.

Speaker 33 Pretty girl gets pregnant at 15, marries the guy.

Speaker 22 Pretty soon she's at 20-something with two kids and a hankering to live, really live, for a change.

Speaker 36 And this particular pretty girl?

Speaker 12 She was fun, she was outgoing, she had a lot of friends.

Speaker 33 She had these two sisters.

Speaker 22 Tari was the younger one,

Speaker 35 Gail the older.

Speaker 37 We were very close and made each other laugh all the time.

Speaker 28 But Carol Luvon wasn't laughing at the end of March, 81.

Speaker 38 For one thing, she wanted to be somebody, her own somebody.

Speaker 12 I know that Carol wanted to complete school and further her career, and that's when she went back to study architecture.

Speaker 2 Sure, her husband was a nice kid, and she loved him once with all the intensity of first love.

Speaker 38 The handsome high school football player who'd hang around on her front porch.

Speaker 12 His friends would come over. I thought that was kind of cool.
All his football athlete friends.

Speaker 5 Dear Mike stepped up and married her after the baby was born.

Speaker 12 He was a good father.

Speaker 37 He just seemed to really enjoy his kids.

Speaker 8 Enjoyed Carol's family, too, especially her dad, Milk.

Speaker 37 So Mike became kind of like his son.

Speaker 22 Milk brought young Mike into the family house painting business.

Speaker 37 We just took to him immediately.

Speaker 37 Everybody felt that way about Mike, his friends, everybody. He was always a very likable person.

Speaker 9 Friendly, loyal, but not exactly ambitious.

Speaker 40 He didn't seem to mind at all settling down to a modest existence, them and the two kids all cramped up in a two-bedroom, one-bath house in Torrance.

Speaker 3 But Carol did mind it very much.

Speaker 37 I think she may have outgrown him somewhat.

Speaker 29 She'd had a secret affair by then, maybe more than one.

Speaker 8 She got herself a cute little red car, an Audi Fox, ordered personalized plate, CJ's Fox.

Speaker 5 The car is long gone now, so we did this one up to look just like it.

Speaker 28 And quite often she'd get in her little car alone and go roaring off to school or to meat markets like the local Red Onion was back then.

Speaker 12 I know she was going to the Red Onion. I never went there with her, so I don't know what she was like.

Speaker 43 She had another corner of her life that you

Speaker 25 weren't part of. Yeah.

Speaker 41 And then that night in March, kids off to bed.

Speaker 45 Their son, Mike Jr., was just a boy, 10 years old.

Speaker 15 I was in bed. I had just got a new stereo for my 10th birthday, and I was listening to the headphones.

Speaker 46 From his bed, he could see something happening out in the hallway.

Speaker 15 I remember them getting into an argument, which was unusual.

Speaker 6 Because they just didn't.

Speaker 15 Not that I knew of. And I remember her marching past and going out the front door and slamming the door.

Speaker 47 You heard the slam.

Speaker 15 I heard the slam of the front door. I know that.

Speaker 8 And the next morning.

Speaker 15 We got up and she wasn't there.

Speaker 17 Mike Sr.

Speaker 50 told Carol's dad that Carol had demanded he sign papers to sell their house and he didn't want to and she got mad and they argued and he went to bed and when he woke up in the morning she was just gone.

Speaker 37 So we just assumed she needed to get away for a few days but as the days went on we got extremely worried.

Speaker 7 Nearly a week after Carol departed, a red outie fox showed up in the parking lot of the red onion, dusty as if it had been there a while.

Speaker 15 I remember being upset about it. She was gone and I didn't know where she went.

Speaker 3 They drove around looking for her, went to bars, Carol's picture in hand.

Speaker 7 And?

Speaker 12 Nobody had seen her.

Speaker 1 What feeling went with that?

Speaker 12 A hopelessness.

Speaker 12 You know, where did she go? Who did she see?

Speaker 54 The Torrance Police Department opened a file, but they couldn't answer any of the questions.

Speaker 54 Like, had she just finally gotten fed up with Mike and this little place and gone off to start new life somewhere else?

Speaker 51 Or had she been in an accident or something worse?

Speaker 33 More than a week after Carol disappeared, there was still absolutely no sign of her.

Speaker 50 And then something strange happened here at the house, something very strange.

Speaker 31 Could it be that Carol, unbeknownst to anyone, sneaked back in here when nobody else was around?

Speaker 5 Imagine what it was like back then in that little house, Mike thinking things over.

Speaker 27 On a hunt, she said, he placed tape on Carol's dresser drawers, a little trap.

Speaker 5 One day he took the kids to Universal Studios, and sure enough, when they returned, he noticed the tape was broken, and some mail on the counter was moved as well.

Speaker 18 A few weeks later, it happened again.

Speaker 22 Some of Carol's clothes went missing, along with some money from a place no burglar would know to look, under the butter dish in the refrigerator, where Mike said he and Carol kept $100 in emergency cash, and now $60 was missing.

Speaker 5 Just like Carol, said her sister Gail.

Speaker 37 She would have not taken all of it. That was in Carol's personality, to just be very fair.

Speaker 4 Made sense, then.

Speaker 5 And then there were those mysterious phone calls.

Speaker 12 We'd get the calls on special days, her birthday, my birthday. My grandmother would get calls.

Speaker 45 And just silence on the other end.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 36 What did you do? I would say, Carol, we love you.

Speaker 12 We hope you come back. We felt like she was finding a happier life somewhere.

Speaker 45 And understood that to make that successful, she might have to make a complete and total break.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 38 Almost three months after Carol vanished, the detective handling her case put it in the inactive file. In his report, he wrote, no foul play involved.

Speaker 15 I remember thinking about her all the time, and I used to play records over and over that she liked, and I'm just thinking, where is she?

Speaker 55 When is she coming back?

Speaker 29 Eventually, Mike started dating a 19-year-old named Carrie, brought her into the fold.

Speaker 37 We were happy that Mike was going on with life.

Speaker 57 And so they did all go on with life.

Speaker 25 And many years went by.

Speaker 34 Until the morning in a whole new millennium when a Torrance detective happened on the case of the missing young mother and somewhere in the back of his brain a little light turned on i just had a hunch that this just didn't sound right to me

Speaker 17 coming up doubts about carol's disappearance grow and others also would have suspicions about what really happened later they turn to a surprising source to help solve the mystery why don't you establish a facebook account for carol would they find the answer on facebook

Speaker 5 In March of 1981, Carol Lubon, a lovely young mother of two, known to be unhappy in her marriage, suddenly vanished, departed for parts unknown, leaving behind not just her husband, Mike, but her son, Mike Jr., then just 10 years old.

Speaker 15 I never felt that my mother abandoned me. I was never upset with her, ever.
Really? I never thought she did. I don't know why.
I just was upset she wasn't there.

Speaker 15 I thought she would be there, show up at a graduation or something. I always thought, well, she could show up.

Speaker 55 She could show up.

Speaker 52 But she didn't.

Speaker 18 And at family gatherings, as the years went by, Thanksgiving, Christmases, That awful question, why would she leave them?

Speaker 29 Remained the unmentionable elephant in the room.

Speaker 15 When it came to my family, I think they didn't talk about it because they figured it would upset me or my sister. So they just kind of like, it was a taboo subject.
They didn't really talk about her.

Speaker 12 My family's pretty closed to talking about heavy things. So something like that, rarely talked about.

Speaker 8 That was an ultimate heavy thing. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Could you see it in your mother's eyes?

Speaker 20 Or your father's?

Speaker 12 In my father's for sure.

Speaker 45 What would you see there?

Speaker 12 A lot of emotion, a lot of sadness.

Speaker 28 I'm going to cry thinking about it.

Speaker 22 In 1987, almost six years after Carol vanished, the Torrance Police Department revisited the case, and time seemed to have altered Mike's memory a little.

Speaker 2 A few more details had come back to him.

Speaker 8 Remember, soon after Carol vanished, Mike said they argued, he went to sleep alone, woke up in the morning early, and she was gone.

Speaker 58 But in 1987, he remembered they argued, went to bed together.

Speaker 9 She got up at 5:30 in the morning to go to the bathroom. He woke up, then drifted back to sleep, and woke up to the sound of a car engine starting and driving away.

Speaker 35 Odd.

Speaker 36 But memories do play tricks.

Speaker 53 Anyway, it didn't seem terribly significant, so the case went back into the file and got colder.

Speaker 2 Mike took over the housebating business from Carol's dad and went on to marry Carrie and have two more sons.

Speaker 52 Cale and Terry raised their own families and it was having babies that started to change Terry's way of looking at her sister's disappearance.

Speaker 12 As unhappy as you might be in your life,

Speaker 12 you might leave your husband.

Speaker 42 You would take your kids with you.

Speaker 51 And so when you began to suspect that she wouldn't leave her children,

Speaker 45 what did that mean to you?

Speaker 12 That something happened to her.

Speaker 22 In 1996, 15 years since they'd heard from Carol, the police came around again.

Speaker 57 This time they scanned the Lubon's backyard with ground-penetrating radar, even dug up the ground.

Speaker 52 Didn't find a thing.

Speaker 48 Funny thing, though, About four months later, the local paper, The Daily Breeze, did a little story, interviewed Mike, and this time his memory was slightly different.

Speaker 30 He remembered that on that terrible morning when Carol left, he heard the garage door go up before she drove away.

Speaker 41 Just one more little detail, though nothing profoundly different.

Speaker 5 And of course, no evidence whatsoever of any crime.

Speaker 40 Case went away again.

Speaker 38 And then one day in 2002, a detective named Walt Del Sine was rummaging through some cabinets behind his sergeant's desk.

Speaker 19 I was just being nosy, I thought, what is this?

Speaker 5 It was the Carol Lubon case folder.

Speaker 34 At that point, more than 20 years old and cold as they come.

Speaker 55 I'd never even heard of it before.

Speaker 19 And I go, this is interesting. I wonder if this lady's still missing.

Speaker 24 Of course, she was.

Speaker 22 So again, he read through the police reports.

Speaker 46 Couldn't help but notice the subtle changes in Mike's story.

Speaker 19 And I thought, that was kind of strange because I wouldn't think you would forget the last time you saw your wife.

Speaker 32 And so he went to see Carol's parents, her mom, Melva, her dad, Milt.

Speaker 19 And he looked up at me. He was starting to cry, and I'm like, Milt, are you okay? And he said, he goes, he goes, I just so happy.
I can't believe you guys are still interested in this case.

Speaker 13 How much did that have to do with you driving ahead on this case, that conversation?

Speaker 24 A lot.

Speaker 19 I'm the father of three daughters as well. And I thought, what if this is my middle daughter?

Speaker 30 Milt died one month later, never knowing what happened to his beautiful middle daughter.

Speaker 1 But when when Terry went to her father's funeral and saw Mike there, a private thought ate at her.

Speaker 27 Mike must know something.

Speaker 12 I didn't say anything. I tried to keep away.
He was, of course, paying his respects to my family, but I couldn't carry on a conversation with him.

Speaker 5 Meanwhile, Walt Del Cene had become a little obsessed. He had many other more pressing cases, but something kept pulling him back to Carol Lubon.

Speaker 19 I actually would shuff some of my my work away. I got in a little trouble for that sometimes.

Speaker 13 For years, Detective Delcine chipped away until finally, in 2010, eight years after he found that musty old blue file, he decided to pay a surprise visit to Mike Lubon.

Speaker 13 His colleagues thought he was a bit nuts.

Speaker 19 There was those that thought, well, yeah, what do you think he's going to admit it to you? And I go, well, I played enough sports in my time. I know you're not going to get anywhere if you don't try.

Speaker 19 You never know.

Speaker 19 Hi, Detective Delcine.

Speaker 59 We want to talk about peril.

Speaker 25 What story would Mike tell this time?

Speaker 29 Coming up.

Speaker 17 This version was straight out of 007.

Speaker 60 I think I did that James Blonde thing with the paper on the door.

Speaker 61 Paper on the door. Paper poles.

Speaker 14 But one detail did ring true.

Speaker 60 She said, you make my skin crawl.

Speaker 19 I'll bet you she did say that.

Speaker 17 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 31 For eight years, Dorrance police detective Walt Delcine worried away at the Carol Lubon file, drawn by an irresistible hunch that this young mother did not disappear voluntarily.

Speaker 5 But actual evidence of a crime?

Speaker 52 Just wasn't any.

Speaker 8 So finally, in 2010, 29 years after Carol supposedly walked out on her family and never came back, back, Delcine decided it was time for a surprise visit to Michael Lubon.

Speaker 4 He went over with his sergeant.

Speaker 19 He invited us in. We did catch him unexpectedly, but that was the plan.

Speaker 49 But was Mike upset or thrown off?

Speaker 24 Not at all.

Speaker 19 Very nice, like I anticipated he would be, because I've now heard from everybody in the family how Mike's a good guy.

Speaker 31 So, together, they went over again the details of that last night back in March 81.

Speaker 9 And right away, Mike remembered a little more about the night Carol presented him with a real estate contract and a demand they sell their tiny house.

Speaker 59 She came in and gave the baby she said, no,

Speaker 59 did she just say, turn her and walk away with it? Or what happened?

Speaker 60 She said, you make my skin crawl.

Speaker 31 You make my skin crawl?

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 24 Ah.

Speaker 19 And I thought, Bing.

Speaker 19 I'll bet you she did say that. So I pushed him some more for more details.

Speaker 4 And the details were, once again, a little different about when and where he last saw her, for example.

Speaker 27 It wasn't when he went to bed around 10 p.m., as he said on one occasion, or 5.30 the next morning, as he also said.

Speaker 40 No, this time Mike said he last saw Carol about 10.30 or 11 p.m.

Speaker 5 in the bathtub.

Speaker 60 I didn't see you in the tub. I used the bathroom.

Speaker 39 And then he said, maybe around midnight or 1 or 2, he heard the garage door go up, and he went to the door and actually saw Carol's car driving away.

Speaker 65 I see.

Speaker 24 You got her lights.

Speaker 59 See taillights. And you're sure it was her car?

Speaker 7 Yep.

Speaker 40 Also, remember that story about putting tape on the dresser drawers after Carol left and later he found it broken?

Speaker 5 Didn't remember that now.

Speaker 40 But as he sat here in 2010, he did remember some other traps he'd set, even more elaborate.

Speaker 60 Like, I would take, like, baby powder and put it on the wrap inside the door. So if in some time he stepped in, I'd see there would be that.

Speaker 27 Baby powder?

Speaker 24 Okay.

Speaker 59 And what else? Anything else?

Speaker 60 I think I did that James Bond thing with the paper on the door.

Speaker 61 Paper balls. Okay.

Speaker 60 Okay. That's about it.

Speaker 22 By now, Detective Delcine was working with his colleague, Jim Wallace, and Deputy DA John Lewin.

Speaker 8 Lewin specializes in tackling the most difficult of of cold cases.

Speaker 19 Do you remember when you saw the results of that interview? What you thought?

Speaker 66 Yeah, I thought that his memory had grown in areas where it shouldn't, and in areas where he should be saying the same story was different. And that's the hallmark of deception.
Sure.

Speaker 31 But the mind plays tricks. The mind invents things and

Speaker 51 inserts them into your memory and you believe them as strenuously as if they actually happened.

Speaker 66 That's an interesting theory. I don't think it's really supported.
Memories can be lost, but memories don't increase in details over the years, and they don't increase in different details.

Speaker 66 And that's a sign of what we call a lie. His version of what happened from the start made no sense to any of us.

Speaker 19 This is what makes the case.

Speaker 4 And why would Mike lie?

Speaker 25 To the cold case team, it seemed obvious.

Speaker 19 He killed her that night. She stopped living that night.
And everything else that's going that doesn't make sense, it's all because it's a lie. If you know it's a lie, then it all lines up.

Speaker 41 remarkably mike lubon continued to talk to them three more times of his own free will very friendly without an attorney he even let the prosecutor take a crack at him if you were me if you were in my position tell me what you would think

Speaker 67 probably what you're thinking which is that i did it well mike i can tell you

Speaker 45 you know

Speaker 66 sometimes you know the kind of murder cases we get

Speaker 67 we get cases where the husband finds out that his wife is cheating on him and kills her. So

Speaker 51 did you catch what Mike said?

Speaker 22 It had nothing to do with that.

Speaker 52 Lewin did.

Speaker 66 When you just look at sentence structure and you look at how people talk and communicate, it wasn't about that. What is the it?

Speaker 51 You gave that great significance, didn't you?

Speaker 56 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 31 So they kept at Mike.

Speaker 49 And at one point, it seemed to them he was on the verge of confessing.

Speaker 61 Listen,

Speaker 65 why don't you give me a little

Speaker 65 few days or something to think about all of it?

Speaker 39 I'll come up for you when I come back.

Speaker 51 But when he came back, he didn't give them anything, and they were right back where they started.

Speaker 20 Suspicion, sure, but no evidence of a crime.

Speaker 39 No way to even prove Carol was dead.

Speaker 5 That is, until Detective Jim Wallace hit on an idea to use a tool that didn't even exist when Carol Lubon fought with her husband on a March night in 1981.

Speaker 8 Coming up, the long arm of Facebook.

Speaker 19 It's a kind of a place where we say, here I am, but it's also a place where you can find people.

Speaker 17 The result, a dramatic turn in the case and fresh heartbreak for Carol's family.

Speaker 37 Another nightmare on top of the first nightmare.

Speaker 22 The Deputy DA John Lewin and the Torrance Police Department, Cole Castie, believe Mike Lubon killed his wife, Carol, back in 1981.

Speaker 4 But they had one big problem.

Speaker 16 They couldn't prove Carol was dead.

Speaker 19 The biggest assumption is going to be, well, how do you know she's not just out of the country or across the country or changed her identity?

Speaker 34 Kind of an important question

Speaker 5 with no answer.

Speaker 22 And then in January 2011, Jim Wallace got the flu.

Speaker 52 Lucky break.

Speaker 57 No, really.

Speaker 19 And I was laying in bed and my wife came in and unfortunately when you work these cases, all you talk about,

Speaker 19 because we are a dedicated coal case team, is you're talking about the case you're working on. I'm sure she was tired of hearing it.

Speaker 19 But she mentioned to me, why don't you establish a Facebook account for Carol. I thought that could actually accomplish a great deal.

Speaker 33 Of course, back in 1981 when Carol disappeared, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born yet.

Speaker 46 But 30 years later, Detective Wallace knew social media and its potential to connect to millions of people around the globe instantly.

Speaker 24 It could determine, once and for all, he thought, whether Carol was alive or dead.

Speaker 19 Because all of us know from using Facebook that it's, number one, it's a kind of a place where we say, here I am, but it's also a place where you can find people.

Speaker 32 Surely if Carol was still alive, Wallace thought, someone on Facebook or Twitter would know something.

Speaker 46 Of course, Wallace also knew Carol would look vastly different 30 years after her disappearance, so he found an age progression artist to create an image of what she might look like today.

Speaker 43 And then he placed that photo and others like it on Facebook and other sites.

Speaker 19 And it turned out it was a great point of contact for me to contact 350 friends and family of Carol. Right away, we said, has anybody seen Carol?

Speaker 19 And we discovered immediately that nobody had seen Carol since the night she disappeared.

Speaker 26 And if Carol merely googled her own name, she'd find herself at Wallace's website, CarolJeanMeyerLubon.com.

Speaker 26 But that never happened, which meant something very significant, said the detective.

Speaker 19 She's not looking for herself.

Speaker 6 She's dead.

Speaker 57 Or.

Speaker 19 A farmer's wife in Uruguay who doesn't go on the computer much.

Speaker 24 Maybe.

Speaker 3 Lots of people are not on Facebook.

Speaker 50 I think. Don't check or Google things.

Speaker 22 It doesn't mean that she is dead, for sure.

Speaker 38 Absolutely.

Speaker 44 It just means you've made a fairly good case.

Speaker 19 In this large cumulative thing that we're looking at, it's yet another piece that points to the same conclusion.

Speaker 5 If Carol was dead, if Mike killed her, taking the accusation to court would be risky.

Speaker 29 Totally circumstantial, of course, no body, an unclear motive, a sympathetic defendant.

Speaker 5 But Prosecutor Lewin decided to roll the dice.

Speaker 26 30 years after Carol Lubon vanished from her family's life, on April 13, 2011, Mike was arrested for Carol's murder.

Speaker 20 When you went to the family and said, we're going to charge him, what was their reaction?

Speaker 19 Mixed, at best.

Speaker 52 Mixed?

Speaker 5 That's a mild word.

Speaker 39 How about upset, horrified, mystified.

Speaker 40 In fact, most of Carol's family members believed the idea Mike could have murdered Carol was just ludicrous.

Speaker 37 Well, he was a member of our family, you know, and nobody wanted to see him be arrested or him be the reason or any of that.

Speaker 37 It's like

Speaker 37 another nightmare on top of the first nightmare.

Speaker 19 This was a case where I think the family would have been more than happy to believe that Carol is still out there somewhere. She's not dead, and their beloved son-in-law is not a killer.

Speaker 1 But of all Mike Sr.'s family members, perhaps no one was as torn as his namesake firstborn son, Mike Jr.,

Speaker 41 who loved his father unreservedly, followed him into the family painting business, worked side by side with him for decades,

Speaker 39 and who had confessed to detectives that, like his aunt Terry, he too had doubts about his father.

Speaker 38 Doubts that had taken root shortly after Mike Sr.'s second wife left him.

Speaker 15 He talked about my stepmother constantly for years. It was non-stop.

Speaker 20 And why was that so significant to you?

Speaker 15 Because he never talked about my mother.

Speaker 52 At all.

Speaker 15 Never.

Speaker 4 But Mike never confronted his father.

Speaker 15 I just knew in the back of my mind that this could be a possibility. And I really honestly, at that time, I never wanted my father to go to jail.
I just wanted to know.

Speaker 15 And it was so important to me to know the truth behind that evening.

Speaker 40 To get the truth and avoid a trial, Prosecutor John Lewin was willing to make a deal.

Speaker 66 We had offered him voluntary manslaughter if he gave us Carol's body.

Speaker 48 And he turned it down flat.

Speaker 33 He did, repeatedly.

Speaker 2 Mike pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 31 The case was going to trial.

Speaker 27 And if members of Carol's own family didn't believe Mike did it, what would a jury think?

Speaker 29 Coming up.

Speaker 17 A father in court and a son on the stand.

Speaker 15 I was really, really

Speaker 15 stressed out about that.

Speaker 66 And he watches his dad answer this. Isn't it true, Mr.
Lubon, that Carol lived her last breath in that bathtub when you murdered her?

Speaker 17 When dateline continues.

Speaker 20 It was September 11th of old days.

Speaker 39 September 11th, 2012, 31 years, 5 months, 12 days after the last known sighting of Carol Lubon.

Speaker 36 An inauspicious day to begin the prosecution of a popular man?

Speaker 28 Could be.

Speaker 29 But Deputy DA John Lewin went ahead anyway.

Speaker 66 What I'm going to be able to prove beyond any reasonable doubt, ladies and gentlemen, is that despite the fact that Mike Lubon is a decent man,

Speaker 66 he murdered his wife.

Speaker 29 Of course, Lewin knew that to prove a murder had occurred, he had to show the victim was in fact no longer alive.

Speaker 8 For that, he turned to Detective Wallace, who explained to the jury the Facebook and social media presence he created for Carol had turned up a whole lot of nothing.

Speaker 66 Have you been contacted by anybody, either by phone, email, in writing, who says, you know what? I've seen Carol Lubon

Speaker 66 after the day she disappeared?

Speaker 51 No.

Speaker 22 How we killed her?

Speaker 49 Though, as Lewin and his team also let the jury hear, family members like Carol's sister Gail believed what Mike told them.

Speaker 3 That Carol had run off.

Speaker 63 Has it been hard for you to accept the possibility that she may be dead?

Speaker 57 Oh, yes.

Speaker 63 Is it made even more difficult by the fact that you care deeply for the defendant?

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 22 And younger sister Terry, even though she had suspected Mike for years,

Speaker 66 Do you still think of Mike Lubon Sr. as a part of your family?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 57 But most anguished of all, Mike and Carol's son, Mike Jr.

Speaker 63 Is there anything about the way you remember your mom

Speaker 63 that would make you think

Speaker 63 or made you feel

Speaker 63 that she would leave you? and never come back and never say goodbye.

Speaker 7 No,

Speaker 35 he loved his dad, but also secretly doubted him.

Speaker 30 Something he'd never revealed until now.

Speaker 15 I was sweating so profusely during that whole trial. He never knew I had these feelings.
So on the stand publicly, I had to basically say, yeah,

Speaker 15 I'm thinking maybe there's some weird things about your story. And it was the first time.
that my father really would have known I felt that way. So I was really, really stressed out about that.

Speaker 63 How hard is it for you to be here today?

Speaker 4 Very.

Speaker 63 Do you want to believe that your dad is responsible for your mother's disappearance?

Speaker 8 Do I want to believe it?

Speaker 15 Yes. No.

Speaker 63 Let's assume that your dad, in fact, did kill your mom. Would you want to see him punished for it?

Speaker 4 No, not particularly.

Speaker 22 Prosecutor Lewin knew the ambivalence of these family members did not help his case.

Speaker 21 But...

Speaker 66 In the end, my job isn't to make sure that the family members get what they want. My job is to make sure that, you know, Carol's killer is held responsible.

Speaker 31 But was Mike a killer?

Speaker 26 His attorney, Kevin Donahue.

Speaker 9 I think the police are just wrong.

Speaker 25 No forensics, no witnesses, not even a body.

Speaker 43 The defense might have stopped right there.

Speaker 65 Instead, they decided to gamble.

Speaker 57 Mike was a nice guy.

Speaker 44 Jury should see that.

Speaker 6 And if the details had been a little different each time he was asked to tell the story, here was his chance to straighten it all out for the jury.

Speaker 4 How odd then that Mike, under oath now, amended his story just a little again.

Speaker 39 Like when he added the detail that Carol was in the bathtub when she said something mean to him.

Speaker 60 She said, you make my skin crawl.

Speaker 5 Also slightly different, the way he discovered she was gone.

Speaker 60 I opened the front door and went out, and the garage door was up and the car was gone.

Speaker 36 In earlier versions, didn't Mike say he heard the garage door go up and then saw taillights as Carol drove away?

Speaker 44 Why had his story changed again?

Speaker 54 What's the deal with that?

Speaker 9 Did you hear the garage door?

Speaker 60 I don't think so.

Speaker 33 Why do you think that now? What has jogged your memory?

Speaker 60 Because I think

Speaker 60 Over the years, I thought about this night so many times. And I just, you know, I'd seen that car back out of that driveway many, many times, you know,

Speaker 60 when she was leaving. So I think I just thought repeatedly in my mind that that's what I thought happened.

Speaker 60 I saw the car. I can see it right now.

Speaker 31 He never thought for a moment, he said, it would be the last time he'd see his wife.

Speaker 60 I thought maybe she had gone out that night and went dancing and stayed the night with a friend.

Speaker 52 What did happen to her?

Speaker 36 Mike insisted he simply didn't know.

Speaker 53 Did you have anything to do with killing her?

Speaker 60 No.

Speaker 38 Did you have anything to do with her disappearance?

Speaker 60 No.

Speaker 60 Other than I didn't sign the papers and made her upset, but that's it.

Speaker 51 Successful testimony?

Speaker 7 Maybe.

Speaker 31 But now the downside.

Speaker 51 You'd have to answer questions from John Lewin.

Speaker 66 Do you lie sometimes?

Speaker 21 No.

Speaker 66 You never lie.

Speaker 60 I don't say never. I mean a white lie?

Speaker 60 Who knows?

Speaker 66 Well, I'm asked, have you ever lied about something serious that wasn't wasn't a white lie in your life? In your entire life, you've never lied once about anything that wasn't a white lie?

Speaker 60 I'll just say, not that I can remember.

Speaker 30 In fact, mine got a hard time remembering a lot of things Prosecutor Lewin asked about.

Speaker 60 I don't remember. I don't remember going to bed.
I don't remember saying that.

Speaker 35 I don't know.

Speaker 45 But how on earth, asked Lewin, could he not remember the last time he saw his wife?

Speaker 66 Would you agree that that would be one of the most significant events, details of your entire life?

Speaker 60 Yes, but I doesn't mean I had to remember it.

Speaker 47 Lewin

Speaker 2 wasn't buying it.

Speaker 66 Isn't it true, Mr. Lubon,

Speaker 66 that the last place that Carol lived, her last breath, was taken in that bathtub when you murdered her?

Speaker 66 What are you looking at the judge?

Speaker 60 I'm waiting for him to correct you. No, I didn't murder her.
I'm sorry. In the bathtub?

Speaker 66 And, Mr. Lubon, if you had murdered her, you would tell us today that you did.

Speaker 5 If I had, I would have admitted it.

Speaker 66 You would have admitted on the stand today.

Speaker 46 Yes.

Speaker 66 Do you think that statement's believable?

Speaker 60 I think so.

Speaker 66 I'm done.

Speaker 18 Of course, believability was a question for the jury to decide. And decide they did.

Speaker 41 Though, as you'll see, that wasn't the end of the story.

Speaker 3 Not by a mile.

Speaker 17 Coming up, a son overcome with emotion.

Speaker 17 A final push for the truth.

Speaker 66 Please, for your family, for your kids, tell us what happened.

Speaker 17 And then, a final fateful twist.

Speaker 15 It just is the ultimate answer. This is it.

Speaker 48 Okay, let's call the jurors out.

Speaker 40 There are few things in American life as dramatic, as weighted with consequence, as the moment a jury, verdict in hand, files into a courtroom.

Speaker 40 Had they been persuaded that Mike killed Carol, or even that she was dead?

Speaker 22 Mike's family held its collective breath.

Speaker 39 So did the prosecutor and the police.

Speaker 19 You know, you don't know what to expect.

Speaker 9 And now, here was Mike's fate.

Speaker 68 We, the jury, the both entitle action, find the defendant, Michael Clark Lubon Sr., guilty of the crime.

Speaker 29 Guilty of second-degree murder. Mike Lubon was going to prison.

Speaker 4 And longtime Detective Jim Wallace felt surrounded by a very unfamiliar reaction.

Speaker 19 I've had cases before where you get done, you know, and you walk out of the courtroom and the family throws their arms around you. They're just so grateful, right?

Speaker 15 That's not this case. I'm going to come talk to you.

Speaker 37 I was just very surprised that the jury would convict him on such little evidence. And I don't think any of us are happy to see Mike go to jail.

Speaker 45 And you still believe Mike is a nice guy, believable guy.

Speaker 39 Yes.

Speaker 22 What Gail and the rest of the family wanted most were some answers.

Speaker 12 It's not so much that I want Mike to pay for what he did. I just want to know what happened to my sister.

Speaker 22 And the sentencing hearing in December 2012,

Speaker 34 Mike's own son echoed those sentiments.

Speaker 15 Guilt or innocence aside, I've never wanted my father to go to prison. I've only asked that if he knows anything to please let me know.

Speaker 58 And then Mike Jr.

Speaker 4 made a heartbreaking plea to the court.

Speaker 15 He's been a good father and a good person. If he's sent to prison today, I want him to know I'm going to miss our time together.

Speaker 15 It's going to be hard to see the world change without him.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 15 I humbly stand before the court today to request leniency from my father when getting his sentence. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Speaker 24 After that?

Speaker 21 Well,

Speaker 45 then the strange tale of the much-loved convicted killer took quite a remarkable turn.

Speaker 32 It happened that very day in court.

Speaker 5 Prosecutor Lewin.

Speaker 66 I'm asking right now as we sit here, Mr. Lubon's going to have a chance.
Please, for your family,

Speaker 66 for your kids,

Speaker 66 just let it go. Tell us what happened.

Speaker 38 I just had a moment.

Speaker 9 The judge granted a recess so Mike could speak with his attorney privately.

Speaker 26 Did he actually have something to confess?

Speaker 40 They returned a few minutes later.

Speaker 45 And we're asking to continue the sentencing.

Speaker 52 Time to think?

Speaker 9 The judge pushed back sentencing by a month.

Speaker 66 My hope was that he would tell us what happened, that he would tell us what he did with Carol, and that he would be honest about both.

Speaker 40 For almost four weeks they waited until January 7th, 2013.

Speaker 59 All eyes were on Mike Lubon as he entered the courtroom and then shifted as one to Prosecutor Lewin, who told the court that that very morning Mike finally revealed to him the secret he'd been keeping almost 32 years.

Speaker 25 And so now Lewin did the talking.

Speaker 30 And Mike, for once, said not a word.

Speaker 66 All of the information about them fighting about the selling of the house, he says that was truthful. That occurred.

Speaker 7 Then Carol stormed out.

Speaker 27 And it might have blown over, as arguments do, but she came back 1.30 a.m.

Speaker 3 and said the one thing that would not blow over.

Speaker 21 Not ever.

Speaker 66 She told him.

Speaker 66 that she was going to be taking somebody else, another man, to her sister Terry's upcoming wedding. He said he was very upset.

Speaker 40 She tried to comfort him then, he said.

Speaker 66 And she was telling him, don't worry, you'll find somebody else,

Speaker 66 etc.

Speaker 3 And that was the last thing Carol Lubon ever said.

Speaker 66 He didn't want to hear it, and he said that he pushed her. She fell and hit her head on a heavy end table in the living room.
He said that she didn't bleed, but he knew instantly that she was dead.

Speaker 4 Detectives hooked Lou Bonn up to a polygraph machine.

Speaker 44 How much of this was true?

Speaker 66 After the polygraph, the test was done, he confronts him and says, you didn't pass. Now the defendant changes his story and he says, okay, I punched her in the head and I punched her hard.

Speaker 66 But he said only one time.

Speaker 52 Then he told Lewin what he did.

Speaker 39 with Carol's body.

Speaker 66 After he killed her, he put her in the garage behind some carpet.

Speaker 54 He took her car the next morning to

Speaker 66 the Red Onion parking lot, dumped it there. At some point, she was placed in the trunk of Mr.
Lubon's vehicle.

Speaker 5 And then he said he took her to the ocean, put her on a raft, paddled out to sea, and dropped her down, a cinder block tied to her body.

Speaker 20 It was a shock, of course, a big shock.

Speaker 31 For so long, the family, or most of it, believed Mike.

Speaker 18 And now in this very public way, they finally knew that Carol was dead, and he, their sweet Mike, killed her.

Speaker 39 But the whole truth?

Speaker 27 Was it actually out there somewhere?

Speaker 4 And so, on that cold and foggy January day, Mike, surrounded by a retinue of cops and lawyers, floated out into the mist to find Carol.

Speaker 5 Find whatever was left.

Speaker 42 If they find the cinder block in the ocean after the search, if they find that, that will give me half of the closure I need.

Speaker 36 She didn't get it.

Speaker 18 Because after the boat ride, Mike admitted his ocean tale was one more lie.

Speaker 36 And perhaps it was finally for the sake of his son, the son who never abandoned him, that he finally passed a polygraph and led investigators to the place he now says Mike's mother has been all these many years.

Speaker 15 The police searched, but couldn't find her remains.

Speaker 8 And now, after so much time, no one knows if they ever will.

Speaker 15 I don't really know why getting her back is the ultimate bookend for me. I want to know that she's, you know, properly buried or cremated or whatever we would choose to do with her.

Speaker 50 Why is that so important?

Speaker 15 I think it just is

Speaker 15 the ultimate answer. This is it.
There's no more wondering.

Speaker 35 No, not about that.

Speaker 22 But his father in prison, 15 to life?

Speaker 40 Good deal of wondering left to do about that man and what he took away.

Speaker 20 Do you still love him?

Speaker 52 Yeah, I do.

Speaker 15 I mean, I always will. I just got to figure out how I'm going to process these

Speaker 15 facts I know. I don't know yet.

Speaker 15 I kind of thought a perfect punishment for my father was I was going to ask him to write one sentence about my mother to me every week he's in prison, you know, just to, so he has to think about her and I have to,

Speaker 15 I can remember her again.

Speaker 33 As those weeks turned to years, Mike Sr.'s children never gave up on him. They wrote letters in support of his parole, but in prison he stayed.
Then in September 2021, a surprising twist.

Speaker 33 Prosecutor John Lewin, on behalf of the district attorney's office, filed a motion to have Mike Sr.'s Sr.'s conviction reduced from murder to voluntary manslaughter.

Speaker 22 Lewin said he believed the story that Mike Sr.

Speaker 22 told after his conviction, that Carol was killed as a result of an argument about her wanting to sell their home and take the man she was having a secret affair with to her sister's upcoming wedding.

Speaker 51 Had he been aware of these circumstances, said Lewin.

Speaker 25 He would not have pursued murder charges.

Speaker 22 A hearing was held about a month later, and the motion was granted by the trial judge, who agreed with Lubin's assessment.

Speaker 22 In November 2021, Lubon's murder conviction was reduced to voluntary manslaughter.

Speaker 41 He was sentenced to six years in state prison, the maximum penalty for voluntary manslaughter at the time Carol was killed.

Speaker 22 Later that month, he was released from prison, having already served more than 10 years behind bars.

Speaker 16 As for Carol Lubon,

Speaker 5 her remains have yet to be found.

Speaker 60 That's all for now.

Speaker 11 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 17 Thanks for joining us.

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