Talking Dateline: The Night of the Audition

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Hi guys, I'm Blaine Alexander, and this is Talking Dateline.

Today's episode is a Keith Morrison story, The Night of the Audition.

It begins with the disappearance of 25-year-old Shannon Medill, a rising actress in Calvary, Alberta.

Just days after a promising audition in November of 2014, Shannon was gone.

At first, her husband said she headed 200 miles away for an acting job, but as police investigated, they uncovered secrets about the marriage, inconsistencies in Josh Burgess's story, and ultimately, his chilling confession.

So if you haven't watched this episode yet, you know what to do.

You can find it right below this podcast or stream it anytime on Peacock.

And when you come back, we'll share more of Keith's interview with the trainer who helped Shannon's mother, Lisa, channel grief into strength.

All right, Keith, let's talk Dayline.

All right, let's do it.

I have to say that just from the very first shot, the very first line, this story drew me in because it began in such a different way from a lot of our other stories, right?

I mean, usually it's this, the death or whatever has happened, kind of the mystery right off the bat.

But here we have a woman who's boxing.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, my brilliant producing partner, Tim Ullinger, decided that's a good way to start this story because it really was a very important

way for a mother to deal with.

what happened to her daughter.

I was reading about,

I'm changing the subject just a little bit for a moment, if that's permissible in this program.

I think it is, right?

Yes, please do.

Reading about this wonderful children's author named Robert Munch, who lives in Guelph, Ontario, Canada,

with his wife Anne.

But there was a phrase he did for a book.

See if I can remember it, that

was appropriate, I think,

for Shannon's mother.

I'll love you forever.

I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living.

my baby, you'll be.

I think any mother could relate to that, probably.

Absolutely.

I know that book.

I know that line.

Yeah.

I know it well.

It's beautiful.

It's beautiful.

And I think that's exactly it.

I mean,

you know, there are so many different ways to start a dateline story, to get into a dateline story, but to start immediately with

the pain of the person left behind, I think was a very striking way to do it.

Because immediately I thought, oh my gosh, what happened?

Where, Where, you know, what led her to this place?

You know, sure.

Let's talk about Shannon.

25 years old.

What did you come to find out about her?

Well, Shannon was really the heart of this thing, as far as I was concerned.

It's what really attracted me to this story as much as anything else, was her character,

the type of person she was.

She was vibrant.

She was witty.

She was funny.

She was a, you know, she spent some time doing stand-up comedy.

She was a talented young actress.

You know, some families where there is one person who is, I'm not even sure what you'd call them, but the sort of vibrant life spark in the middle of the family, unpredictable, difficult, not always successful, but you can't take your eyes off them.

And that was her.

You know, I got that sense immediately.

I have to say that watching this, obviously from the standpoint of you know, putting together dateline stories, you all had a tremendous gift, which was a trove of video of Shannon.

Yes.

And that's not something that we often have when we talk about, you know, people who've been taken away.

And so to be able to really, I mean, in so many ways, Keith, bring her to life in this story

very quickly in that piece, I felt like, okay, I know her.

I got a sense of her.

I got a sense of her personality, what she's like.

And that's not something that we can often do.

Right.

Almost in real time, because, you know, that the audition she did was just a couple of days before she was reported missing?

And in fact, you know,

we've already done the spoiler alerts, I know, but

the day she did the audition was the day she died.

That added a bit of a sort of eerie factor to it as well, didn't it?

Yeah, very much so.

Her unpredictability was such that when she didn't show up for a family dinner,

the expectation was that she, you know, had suddenly got an audition somewhere up in Edmonton.

And then later on, they found the evidence of a credit card being used in New York City.

Maybe she'd gone there.

You know, the idea that she would up and take off and go somewhere was not out of the realm of possibility.

And she was missing, and they had no reason to suspect her husband.

They seemed to have a very close relationship.

He seemed to worship her, and he also

was very happy to be included in family events.

And so they didn't have any reason to suspect that he was responsible.

Even her family seemed, I mean,

I think there was a sound night where she said up until kind of the day that, you know, there was the confession, she never thought that it would be him.

Right.

This great surprise, right?

Yeah.

Which in a lot of the stories that we do, it's thinking, okay, gosh, I hate to think this, but maybe it was her husband, maybe it was the partner, maybe it was somebody.

But the fact that they really, in their mind, stuck by him for so long was also very striking to me.

Yeah, it was striking.

One of the interesting things about this is he confessed through a doorway to a cop who was standing outside by herself.

She heard it alone, and so she had to get more corroboration before she could actually use it.

But then we started to talk about the

methodologies of

police work in Alberta and much of Canada.

And they're quite a bit different than they are here.

I say quite a bit different.

I'm not schooled in this, so I'm maybe going too far, but they are different, and it is very complicated, and it takes a long time.

So that was part of the reason this took so long to solve, months and months, because just applying for a warrant to look inside the husband's house seemed to take forever.

There had to be sort of more evidence of guilt than

I think I'm right when I say this, than there would have been required in an investigation in New York or LA or something.

I believe interesting.

Yeah.

Can we talk about this confession?

And there were two confessions, but the first through the door,

underwear clad, no recording, covered in blood confession.

I mean, there are so many bits of drama to that moment that it was almost kind of hard to sift through it.

But I just can't imagine being

the investigator who gets this confession through the door and has no way to prove it?

No recordings, no icams, no anything running.

That has to be the most frustrating thing.

I can't imagine anything more frustrating in that situation.

It was frustrating for us not having video of that.

So you can imagine what it would be like for her.

Right.

I mean, you've done a number of these stories.

There have been confessions all over the place.

Have you seen anything quite like that one?

No.

No.

He was an unusual character, you know.

I don't know if you remember a story about a

talking about Canadian stories, but a Canadian colonel who

was attacking young women.

First, he started out by sneaking into their houses and stealing their underwear, and then he graduated to killing them.

He had been a highly regarded, decorated, senior member of the Canadian military, so it was a terrible scandal.

We get to the interrogation, when they finally get to the place where they have enough evidence that they can put him into a room and they can ask him the questions about what really happened.

And because he has confessed to nothing, he doesn't even know he's a suspect suspect until that moment he's brought into the room.

Or he has lots of reason to not think he's a suspect.

And that guy who did the interrogation was so incredibly skillful.

He was very polite, very friendly, treated the colonel with great respect.

But it's that kind of interrogation, which again, I think we saw something of that in this conversation that you watched,

is

pretty successful generally.

Absolutely.

Because I wonder, I wondered watching it and now talking to you, if he had taken the complete opposite approach, come in yelling at him, cursing him, I know you did this, blah, blah, blah.

Certainly you wonder what that would have, what that would have yielded.

Because Josh all along had certainly had everybody fooled.

And so

you just wonder

certainly different approaches make all the difference.

Well, they worked at him for quite a while before this fellow came in and they weren't getting anywhere.

So

they were running out of time.

They had to get,

they only had him in there for, I can't remember how many hours, but they had to get whatever they were going to get from him within that period of time.

They weren't there yet, so they wouldn't be able to charge him, so they'd have to let him go.

So with just a few hours left, in walks this fellow who

does the victim blaming routine, and that worked.

It was very, it was fascinating to watch.

It really was.

When we come back, you'll hear from Lisa's trainer, Jeff Starling, who also lost a family member to a tragic murder, about how he turned workouts into therapy and how the gym became for him a place of healing.

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I'm always struck by someone who has knowledge and has close proximity to a family who was trying to find answers for so long and to be able to be with them as they're suffering and wondering and not really sure of what's going on and still keep that sort of a secret is

just really, really chilling.

You could go and be

apparently Mr.

Nice Guy

with the family over Christmas, take them Christmas cats.

And you know it's full well that their daughter is in a Tupperware container on his porch.

On the porch, yeah.

You know,

when you spoke with Shannon's family, and I really loved the interview with her mother,

how was that for her to find out that bit of information?

On the one hand, there is the answer, right, that you've sought for so long, but the answer is so painful.

Well, she's been dealing with that for a long time now, for about a decade.

And

I think that

she has found some measure of, I won't say peace, but some way to deal with it through

the boxing that we showed at the beginning and the end of the program.

That was hugely important to her to be able to take out the aggression and the anger.

Well, you talked about Lisa, Shannon's mom,

and just the ways that she has dealt with this, which of course has been tremendously difficult for her.

Boxing.

We start with those images of her there in that Calgary gym, and we actually hear a little bit more from a trainer.

His name is Jeff Starling, who also lost a loved one to a murder.

Talk to me about that connection.

They both went through this terrible, traumatic thing, so they understood each other.

I think had she not gotten the impression that her instructor knew where she was coming from, it wouldn't have been quite as helpful to her.

It was just, you know, it was as a way to release their grief, as a way to get it out.

It's been wonderfully helpful to both of them, I think.

Sure.

Keith, let's play a little bit of your conversation with Jeff.

So I lost my brother, my younger brother, Laurie, around the same time that Lisa lost Shannon.

And then we met at a support group for families who've been impacted by homicide.

It took a few conversations over a few months to convince Lisa to come and try this out.

She had done

exercise and movement and fitness in the past, but this was going to be a very,

a more intense relationship, coach, client.

Yeah, but we had the bond of that shared loss, which gave us

an anchor to work off.

Lisa and I kind of joke that No matter what's happening in your day, the bar always weighs 45 pounds.

And

in a time when there is so much chaos and unpredictability and people making decisions on your, you and your family's behalf that impact your life very intensely, being able to come to a place where everything is very predictable and stable and non-chaotic was very important, very helpful.

That was really powerful.

He said several powerful things in there.

One, I really loved the bar always weighs 45 pounds.

no matter what's going on on the outside.

Right.

And in a world of where everything's going crazy, you know, in your life as you're dealing with this tragedy you know that there is at least one source of consistency yeah

it's true which i think people really need one of the most fascinating things to me keith about being in this role is talking to sometimes after the cameras stop rolling and talking to families and just kind of hearing

how they've channeled their grief, what it looks like to try and heal, what it looks like to try and find some new semblance of life after an event like this.

And some people who take it and say, say, I want to help other families find justice.

I want to start a foundation in my loved one's name and do a lot of good that way.

Or certainly something like this when it comes to, you know, boxing or channeling that grief into something with someone who can understand them as well.

The first time I encountered this

was years and years ago when

good friends of my wife and I we lived in a different part of Los Angeles, but they went on a on a summer trip.

They were riding along the highway on their bicycles, and their 13-year-old daughter wanted to ride on ahead.

Maybe she was 11, a young daughter.

And so they wanted to give her a little more freedom.

You know, one of the parents was a little more protective.

The one who wanted to give her more freedom said, let her go on ahead, let her go ahead, have her private time.

So they did.

And she rode on ahead, a quarter of a mile or so, went around a bend, hit by a car,

killed instantly.

Oh my God.

So

we went with that mother and father through the process of, you know, when they brought the girl home, when they went to the

funeral home with them,

were there the day that she was able to say goodbye to her daughter's body in the casket

and saw that

a kind of raw grief that I'll never forget for as long as I live.

But the reason I'm telling you is because

she put this grief of hers to work also.

She formed an organization that

her daughter had been, who had loved dancing, you know, that age, so many girls do.

So she opened a school for little girls to learn dance in the inner city.

And it's now been like, I don't know, a quarter of a century or so that it's been.

going great guns.

And it

was the thing that saved her life.

And in a similar way, as you pointed out, if you've got that 40-pound weight you're going to have to deal with, or if you've got some specific thing that you're going to do that is going to channel this into something positive,

that's what a parent can do.

I mean, I wonder if that is one of the things that will kind of go forward,

the power of taking your grief and being able to put it somewhere or find some sort of way to move through it.

Yeah, yeah, probably.

But,

you know,

you lose somebody in a family, it does change your perspective on things a lot.

And

I think that's why that little bit of doggirl

struck me so much.

That little line, I'll love you forever.

I'll like you for always.

As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be.

And that's what her mother feels.

I can tell you for sure.

As long as she's living, Shannon will be her baby.

Well, it was a beautiful interview and a very powerful story, certainly in learning about Shannon, but just in the many ways that this person was ultimately brought to justice.

Coming up, we will answer some of your questions from social media.

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Well, as you can imagine, Keith, we have a lot of social media comments, questions.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

Sure.

sure.

So let's go to some of those.

Okay.

Southern Beach Girl.

I love that name.

Southern Beach Girl says, don't be flaky about meetups with family or friends, or they'll never know you're missing.

Well, that's a good bit of advice, I think.

I guess.

Interesting take.

Yeah.

Interesting take.

Stay in touch.

On behalf of Parents Everywhere, stay in touch.

There you go.

But no, certainly we've seen a lot of stories where people, it's been a family gathering.

I've actually done a story like that where it was a Thanksgiving gathering and, you know, their daughter didn't show up and they said, hmm, what's going on there?

And that's how they ultimately found out that she was in trouble.

We have a few audio questions as well.

Let's play one from Debbie.

Hi, my name is Debbie.

I'm from Millington, Tennessee.

Really wish I could join y'all in Nashville.

That would be awesome.

But anyway, my question is for Keith.

And I just wonder, over the years, is there one case that has just stuck with you that just still eats at you?

That's my question.

Thanks, Joyce.

Well, it's a good question, but, and, and it's, you know, I have to tell you, people have asked that before, and

there are so many of them that I can't land on any one in particular.

But I keep thinking of other stories and bringing up moments in them that live with me.

And

yeah.

You know, one of the things about this, it's not just a question of is there a murder?

Will they solve the murder?

But what a few decades of doing this kind of work will do is

give you an experience of the way human beings tick that you would never get in any other kind of reporting.

You can report on politics as I have done in the past until you're blue in the face, but it's not really going to tell you the nature of human beings like this kind of reporting will do.

What we are capable of, good and bad,

what families are like,

how everybody lies about things, how secrets are kept, how

just it goes, it's endless.

Just the way human beings behave is the fascinating takeaway from this kind of reporting.

Now,

we have a question, another audio question.

This is from Becky.

Oh, this is Becky from Streetcourt, Court, Illinois.

My question is, how is it determined which journalist does which story?

By the way, I think Keith Morrison is the best storyteller.

Thank you.

We agree, Becky.

We agree.

Blaine is a better storyteller.

Oh, no.

We arm wrestle.

Isn't that what we do?

We're going to be doing some arm wrestling in Nashville.

We get together in a room.

They throw out a title on the table and we arm wrestle over it.

And Keith is clearly the strongest among us and Josh.

They're very strong.

Right.

No,

it comes down to a number of different factors.

But, you know, I mean, a lot of us, sometimes we bring stories to the table, right?

There will be stories that we're particularly interested in that, you know, you've been following or that you have a passion for wanting to tell.

Sure.

It's a little different than

a lot of the reporting that you imagine a newspaper reporter or TV reporter doing.

It's a whole group of people who will consider all the facts of

a story that you can ascertain at least,

and have a meeting about it and go over it and will it fit into the, you know, is this the kind of story we can adequately do?

And then if we can adequately do it,

who should produce it?

Who should be the person who's the correspondent?

Who should, you know, that there's an awful lot of thought that goes into these decision.

decisions.

And, you know, we're fortunate to have some people who are pretty good at that kind of decision-making.

A whole army of a team that is fantastic at this.

Yes.

Well, no, these were great questions.

And somebody mentioned Nashville.

We'll do some arm wrestling in Nashville, won't we?

You bet.

You bet.

I'm looking forward to it.

Well, Keith, it's always such a pleasure to talk Dateline with you, my friend.

Thanks so much for joining me today.

Thank you.

It's been a delight, as always.

As always.

All right.

That's it for Talking Dateline this week.

Thank you so much for listening.

If you have a case that you want us to cover or a question for our team, you can reach out to us anytime on social at DatelineNBC.

You can also leave us a voicemail at 212-413-5252 or send us a voice memo in a DM.

Keith, you check those voice memos, don't you?

Personally.

Oh, yeah.

I'd spend most of my day doing that.

Exactly it.

And one more thing, we are just one week away from Dateline Live in Nashville.

That's taking place Sunday, September 28th.

You still have a little bit of time to get your tickets, but they are going fast.

Head to datelinenbc.com slash event.

That's datelineenbc.com slash event to grab your tickets now.

We'll make sure to see you there, of course, and we will always see you every Friday night on Dateline NBC.

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Okay, so let's not do that, but add some relaxing lighting and a comfy IKEA Hofberg Ottoman, and now it's a cozy retreat.

Nice, a cozy retreat.

Man cozy retreat.

Sir, okay.

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Dream the possibilities.