Deadly Entanglement

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Speaker 4 Tonight on Dateline.

Speaker 5 I hear on the news that Desiree Sunford had been found murdered. And I screamed.

Speaker 6 We were searching through the house, and I could see Desiree on the floor.

Speaker 7 She was shot very violently.

Speaker 6 Scott was very talkative.

Speaker 8 I actually stayed with a friend.

Speaker 7 What's the friend's name?

Speaker 9 Oh, her name's Paige.

Speaker 11 You're wondering, who is Paige?

Speaker 12 That's right. Is he having having an affair?

Speaker 10 Desiree, Paige, and Scott all knew each other well.

Speaker 4 Yes. I was accepted as a part of their marriage.

Speaker 10 Paige called this tip-in.

Speaker 15 She says, I know who the killer is.

Speaker 12 That's right. A name that had never come up before.

Speaker 16 She's trying to set me up saying that killed someone.

Speaker 4 I think it makes me sick.

Speaker 18 The psycho squiggled her way into their life and created chaos.

Speaker 7 Talk about twists.

Speaker 21 I was completely blown away.

Speaker 22 I risked my life to do the right thing.

Speaker 22 And I'm being crucified.

Speaker 2 A husband, a wife, a mistress.

Speaker 3 Did a three-way affair lead to murder? I'm Lester Holt. This is Dateline.

Speaker 12 Here's Blaine Alexander with deadly entanglement.

Speaker 24 We've all had that fear.

Speaker 4 That middle of the night, home alone in a dark, empty house kind of fear.

Speaker 6 I can't imagine what went through her mind.

Speaker 31 We hear a noise and the imagination runs wild.

Speaker 34 Of course, we usually just shrug it off, go back to sleep, and wake up the next morning perfectly fine.

Speaker 36 This

Speaker 38 is not that story.

Speaker 26 The woman in this story woke up alone to that very nightmare.

Speaker 40 It was around 3.30 a.m.

Speaker 29 Someone was in her house.

Speaker 6 They'll be there to help her. They'll be there to defend her.

Speaker 27 Someone who was there, only to kill.

Speaker 15 And it was pretty clear that this wasn't just a robbery on ROM.

Speaker 12 That's correct.

Speaker 36 A diabolical plot born of sex and obsession, where the killer was as unexpected as the victim.

Speaker 20 Who would want to kill Tez?

Speaker 44 She had no enemies,

Speaker 20 and there was just no reason, no reason at all to kill her.

Speaker 33 Yakima County, Washington, where a marriage of mountains and countryside creates a stunning backdrop.

Speaker 38 Picturesque, certainly.

Speaker 29 But people here are no strangers to crime.

Speaker 29 Retired Yakima County Sheriff's Deputy Ed Levesque has patrolled nearly every square mile of this county and seen everything from petty theft to homicide.

Speaker 6 It's been a ride. I've seen a lot, learned a lot.

Speaker 52 So a late-night call to report a possible break-in wasn't rare.

Speaker 54 Like that call on April 7th, 2013.

Speaker 4 Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 6 It came out as like a welfare check. Sometimes they're absolutely nothing, and sometimes they're bad.

Speaker 6 Hi, ma'am.

Speaker 23 This is Scott Sunford.

Speaker 54 31-year-old Scott Sunford was driving home to Yakima County when he saw a notification.

Speaker 29 An alarm had gone off at his house where his wife Desiree was home alone.

Speaker 57 I had three senses trips and I've been out of town with family for a funeral.

Speaker 4 My wife was home and I have...

Speaker 58 Did somebody break into the residence?

Speaker 57 I don't know. I've been out of town.

Speaker 22 I'm just on my way back.

Speaker 57 And I haven't been able to get a hold of the wife.

Speaker 42 Deputies were dispatched to the scene, but Scott got there first.

Speaker 52 He called 911 again.

Speaker 57 I just got home, and the board that I have over my back door has been broken and I still haven't heard back from my wife. I need an officer here now.

Speaker 61 She stayed home at this address?

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 63 Ed Levesque and two other sheriff's deputies raced to get to Scott, but the house was way out of town.

Speaker 6 You have to drive down a series of Tulane County roads. There's no streetlights out here.

Speaker 6 Further out you go, the less homes you'll see.

Speaker 46 Scott was still on the line with 911.

Speaker 23 I'm in the driveway. I haven't tried to enter it yet or anything.

Speaker 64 He even gave the operator his wife's phone number to call.

Speaker 59 It went straight to voicemail.

Speaker 58 Maybe a message, and I'll get back to you when I can.

Speaker 50 When Deputy Levesque and his partners finally arrived, they saw a man standing outside, pointing a gun and a spotlight at the house.

Speaker 6 My first thought was that there was a police officer already here. And as I approached, I could see that he was not a police officer.

Speaker 6 However, it was a guy standing just outside the driver's side of that door with the door open.

Speaker 21 And I saw that he had a pistol pointed at the house.

Speaker 54 It was Scott.

Speaker 6 I says,

Speaker 6 What are you doing with the gun? Did you go inside the house and check on your wife? He says, no, I don't know what I'm going to find in there.

Speaker 62 Just steps into the dark house.

Speaker 43 The deputies found Desiree on the floor in her underwear, a bandage on her leg.

Speaker 7 I could see part of her body.

Speaker 6 And as I got closer, I could see that she had obviously suffered multiple gunshots.

Speaker 7 And I could see casings on the floor.

Speaker 21 I could see a lot of trauma, a lot of blood.

Speaker 6 And it was... obvious that she was deceased.

Speaker 6 You know, I've been to quite a few homicides that involved

Speaker 6 firearms, you know,

Speaker 6 but not like this.

Speaker 6 Looking at how many times she had been shot, it was obvious to me that person wanted to make sure she was dead.

Speaker 13 So it was that very moment, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, that a wild mystery began.

Speaker 10 Are there parts of this case that still kind of linger in your mind, that still kind of bother you?

Speaker 12 There were some red flags that just didn't seem to add up.

Speaker 5 His attitude, his behavior, his demeanor, his actions were just gross.

Speaker 67 She just never seemed like she would be that person that would be willing to accept another person in her home.

Speaker 67 In her marriage.

Speaker 68 What were you thinking when you heard that name?

Speaker 5 My exact thought was, who the hell is that guy?

Speaker 56 All through the night, detectives and forensic techs arrived at Desiree Sunford's home, now a crime scene.

Speaker 54 Desiree's husband, Scott, remained outside the house, no longer holding his gun.

Speaker 6 We secured the gun and we put him in the back of the patrol car.

Speaker 42 Meanwhile, local police broke the terrible news to Desiree's mother, who then called her son, Desiree's brother Casey.

Speaker 71 Desiree's dead.

Speaker 4 That's all she could say.

Speaker 72 I think I blacked out a little bit or something because I was...

Speaker 72 Next thing I remember, I was on the floor just

Speaker 72 talking to, crying into the phone with mom.

Speaker 26 It was impossible for Desiree's loved ones to believe she was gone.

Speaker 30 Kayla Lewis was one of her closest and oldest friends.

Speaker 37 What stood out about Desiree?

Speaker 20 Desiree was, are we allowed to cuss?

Speaker 4 Sure. Okay.

Speaker 4 I'm sorry.

Speaker 35 Give me what you feel.

Speaker 20 She was just a badass.

Speaker 20 She rode her Harley and carried a sidearm and she loved art.

Speaker 47 She did a lot of art herself.

Speaker 20 But she was just a good person all around.

Speaker 66 And And Desiree loved cars, classic cars.

Speaker 64 Her dad taught her how to restore anything from a truck to a convertible.

Speaker 26 And even after he died from cancer when she was 12, she kept working under the hood.

Speaker 26 Oh my gosh,

Speaker 72 we surprised her with her first car with the Chevelle

Speaker 72 for her 16th birthday. It was a special day, very special day.

Speaker 76 I'm doing the key.

Speaker 29 Of course, at 16, she had another focus, boys.

Speaker 52 One in particular, Scott Sunford.

Speaker 34 Her friend Kim Odell says Desiree got a kick out of Scott's goofy side.

Speaker 67 He was always the jokester, always the prankster, always having a good time.

Speaker 20 As long as I've known her, it's always been Desiree,

Speaker 20 Her Chevy, and Scott.

Speaker 77 Those three.

Speaker 20 Those three things.

Speaker 37 When did they seriously start talking about marriage?

Speaker 67 She wanted to be done with school and then get married and then start having a family.

Speaker 15 That plan changed a little bit, though.

Speaker 67 It did because he was enlisted and then had to go to Iraq.

Speaker 62 Scott proposed in 2003.

Speaker 63 He was 22. She was 21.

Speaker 26 The wedding was just days before he deployed.

Speaker 72 Everybody seemed happy. Desiree and Scott seemed happy.

Speaker 52 While Scott was deployed, Desiree finished college and even earned a graduate degree.

Speaker 55 Eventually, she got her dream job as an art teacher at Wapato Middle School outside of Yakima.

Speaker 56 Michelle Howell and Desiree bonded as young teachers.

Speaker 5 It was nice to have somebody that was relatively my age that was right there.

Speaker 47 You know, every school has a cool teacher where you just want to go and sit and eat your lunch or just go and sit and just talk. It sounds like Desiree.

Speaker 80 She was one of them.

Speaker 11 Was a cool teacher. Yep.

Speaker 5 She was definitely one of them.

Speaker 49 By 2012, Scott was back in Washington working at a National Guard training center.

Speaker 60 The couple adopted a dog and named her Ada.

Speaker 62 They scraped together enough money to buy a home way out in the country.

Speaker 29 She's married her high school sweetheart.

Speaker 79 They have a home together.

Speaker 20 Yeah, and she was so proud of that.

Speaker 42 Desiree and Scott seemed well on their way to building a happy grown-up life.

Speaker 83 But then on April 2nd, just five days before she was murdered, Desiree came home to find someone had broken into their house and stolen an iPad and a laptop.

Speaker 85 The burglary shook her up.

Speaker 30 Scott put up a plywood board over the broken back window, and to calm Desiree's fears, they installed an alarm system.

Speaker 47 Did Desiree still feel comfortable inside her home?

Speaker 5 Once the board got up back on the back door, it wasn't the end of the world. She was like, she knew she had her alarm system.
She knew that she could take care of herself, handle herself.

Speaker 54 Desiree owned firearms too and always kept a gun at her bedside.

Speaker 50 But neither the alarm nor her gun stopped her killer.

Speaker 56 And now the terrible news of Desiree's death was everywhere.

Speaker 5 I was getting ready for work Monday morning and I hear on the news that local art teacher Desiree Sunford had been found killed or murdered. And I stopped and I screamed.
I'm like, tell me it's a lie.

Speaker 5 Tell me it's a lie. Tell me it's a lie.

Speaker 29 Now, down at the sheriff's office, investigators were digging into the case.

Speaker 65 Do I have your permission to keep recording?

Speaker 38 Absolutely.

Speaker 59 Starting with Scott Sunford.

Speaker 7 Are you going to keep talking to me now about what happened out at your house?

Speaker 87 Of course.

Speaker 45 Scott explained he had been out of town the day before at his aunt's funeral when the weather got bad.

Speaker 28 He called Desiree.

Speaker 9 It was probably 11 or so, and I told her,

Speaker 8 you know,

Speaker 9 it's kind of rainy, it's windy, tired as hell, long day, and they want to do a breakfast get together in the morning. I'm going to stay here for the night.

Speaker 29 He said he didn't start for home until 5.30 the next evening.

Speaker 9 All along the drive, I just kept calling her randomly, trying to get a hold of her, and

Speaker 9 he just wasn't getting anything from her, and it was kind of freaking me out.

Speaker 73 He checked his phone again.

Speaker 29 That's when he noticed the alarm had gone off hours earlier.

Speaker 26 He made that first call to 911.

Speaker 58 Did somebody break into the residence?

Speaker 66 I don't know.

Speaker 54 Investigators were curious about Scott's last-minute decision to stay overnight.

Speaker 85 They would become even more curious when he told them where he stayed.

Speaker 65 You stayed at your dad's in Kennewick?

Speaker 8 No, I actually stayed with a friend.

Speaker 7 What's the friend's name?

Speaker 9 Oh, her name's Paige.

Speaker 86 She's a mutual friend.

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Speaker 47 When Desiree Sunford was shot to death during an apparent break-in at her home, deputies at the scene noticed right away her husband, Scott, seemed strangely calm.

Speaker 6 He had no emotion whatsoever. None whatsoever.

Speaker 6 It wasn't like he was trying to absorb bad news. I don't believe he ever asked me questions about how his wife died

Speaker 120 now scott was sitting in an interview room i just didn't know what the hell was going on

Speaker 46 and something about him didn't sit right with the detective either he asked scott why he stayed on with the 911 operator instead of rushing inside to see if his wife was okay My stomach was churning.

Speaker 120 I was shaking.

Speaker 120 I had convinced myself by that point something had to be wrong.

Speaker 65 Well, I'm just just thinking,

Speaker 65 you're a big guy, so if anyone's going to be willing to go charging in the house and make sure their wife's okay, it would seem to me that it would be you.

Speaker 21 Well,

Speaker 120 it's not that I was afraid of anybody being in there.

Speaker 120 You know, I'll take on 100 people for her. That's fine.

Speaker 65 What did you think you might see if you went inside?

Speaker 120 Roll around a thousand of the worst things you could think of.

Speaker 12 It just was not the normal response for an individual thinking his wife was hurt or in danger.

Speaker 29 Yakima County Sheriff's Detective Dave Johnson, now retired, worked Desiree's case.

Speaker 10 And this is somebody who presumably could have handled the situation. He knows his way around a firearm.

Speaker 47 He's got a gun.

Speaker 12 Yes, he's well trained. He has served in combat.
So he would be able to handle the situation, in our opinion.

Speaker 15 The detective interviewing Scott asked about his military service.

Speaker 120 I got blown

Speaker 54 The detective switched topics and asked Scott about spending the night away after his aunt's funeral.

Speaker 65 Then you stayed at your dad's in Kennewick?

Speaker 9 Uh, no, I actually stayed with a friend.

Speaker 7 What's the friend's name?

Speaker 9 Oh, her name's Paige.

Speaker 10 At this point, you're wondering, who is Paige?

Speaker 12 That's right. It's not a normal event unless he's having an affair with this lady.

Speaker 120 She's a mutual friend?

Speaker 64 A mutual friend of his and Desiree's.

Speaker 65 Did Desiree know that you were going to Paige's?

Speaker 101 I don't know, honestly.

Speaker 65 It's not something you're discussed with her now.

Speaker 29 The red flags are just piling up on this guy at this point.

Speaker 12 It is. There's more to this relationship than what he's telling us.

Speaker 65 Was it uh just a platonic friendship? Or were you did you did you have a sexual relationship with Paige?

Speaker 120 You know, I shouldn't go there because it's kind of rude.

Speaker 8 But uh

Speaker 120 well Des didn't want me to say anything to anybody. At one point, her and Paige had a a little thing going for a while there.

Speaker 120 A little experiment.

Speaker 65 Okay, so it was

Speaker 65 it was Desiree and Paige who had the sexual relationship. Yeah,

Speaker 65 but not you and Paige?

Speaker 65 We all did. Sometimes you and Paige too.
Honestly, we all did.

Speaker 70 Okay.

Speaker 10 I bet you didn't see that one coming, did you?

Speaker 12 We did not know. That was something sometimes you think you heard everything and

Speaker 12 something new comes up.

Speaker 10 Did it seem as though he was trying to almost downplay his affair with Paige by saying that Desiree was involved? Desiree knew about it. She was good with all of it.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it was no big deal. We needed to find out as much as possible about their relationship.
Was there a major jealousy going on?

Speaker 52 The detective asked Scott if he knew of anyone who had a problem with Desiree.

Speaker 120 Nothing.

Speaker 86 I mean, who hates an art teacher?

Speaker 101 It's an elective.

Speaker 30 The detective took a break and stepped out.

Speaker 7 Just sit tight for a second.

Speaker 9 Keep it together.

Speaker 29 And Scott kept the conversation going with himself.

Speaker 29 Talk it off.

Speaker 17 No tears. Don't think about your wife.
Don't think about it.

Speaker 7 Stop shaking.

Speaker 7 Stop shaking.

Speaker 7 Calm down.

Speaker 7 Put tear now, man. Suck it up.
Suck it up.

Speaker 12 All the suspects I've interviewed over the years,

Speaker 12 that's one of the first times I've seen that. He was just like he's really psyching himself up, that he wanted to have his emotions in control.

Speaker 14 Was that suspicious to you?

Speaker 12 Very suspicious, very suspicious.

Speaker 48 Meanwhile, investigators had been gathering evidence.

Speaker 10 There was some DNA under Desiree's fingernails.

Speaker 12 That's correct. That was sent to the lab.

Speaker 28 There was also a shoe print on the carpet, a few feet from Desiree's body.

Speaker 12 The person who made that print had stepped in some blood.

Speaker 21 You were wearing those shoes

Speaker 21 when you left the house.

Speaker 10 How important was that piece of evidence?

Speaker 12 If we found the correct shoe that would match that, that would be very huge.

Speaker 29 They also collected security video from the area, looking for Scott's car.

Speaker 30 And they took his phone.

Speaker 60 Then they let him go.

Speaker 7 So we can about wrap it up here.

Speaker 12 There was nothing that we could

Speaker 12 even come remotely close to charging him with the murder of his wife.

Speaker 12 Just because he was acting funny.

Speaker 11 But by the time he walked out of the sheriff's office, detectives weren't the only ones wondering about Scott.

Speaker 4 After a rock,

Speaker 10 he was a different Scott.

Speaker 67 Different.

Speaker 51 The students at Wapato Middle School were struggling.

Speaker 26 Desiree Sunford, the cool art teacher in room 147, was gone.

Speaker 5 When kids started finding out, those were tough conversations.

Speaker 37 How were they taking it?

Speaker 5 We had a couple kiddos get really angry.

Speaker 5 Really angry.

Speaker 55 Fellow teacher Michelle Howell was heartbroken too, but she put on a brave face.

Speaker 5 In education, you can't think about yourself. You got to think about your kids.

Speaker 83 Still, she realized just how raw her emotions were when a student came up to her during lunch break.

Speaker 5 And she goes, I'm sorry that your heart hurts. And I just broke down.
And she goes, I'm going to let you cry.

Speaker 10 Sure.

Speaker 5 But the commentary that swirled around what happened and how it happened and who did it,

Speaker 5 that's where the tininess of this valley starts to really play in.

Speaker 47 So there were all sorts of wild theories flying around.

Speaker 15 Stupid theories.

Speaker 5 There were supposedly that

Speaker 5 one of our kids had done it and then an angry parent had done it. You just wanted to put cotton in your ears so you don't listen.

Speaker 20 Who would want to kill Dez?

Speaker 20 Nobody.

Speaker 28 People in Desiree's hometown of Moses Lake were both sad and stumped.

Speaker 20 She had no enemies. She was an amazing person.

Speaker 20 And there was just no reason, no reason at all to kill her.

Speaker 48 At first, Kayla thought it could have been related to the burglary that happened a week earlier.

Speaker 10 Did you think the person came back?

Speaker 44 Yeah, I mean, that would be, I mean, a logical

Speaker 20 explanation.

Speaker 50 When Kayla checked in with Desiree's mother, Connie, she learned about Scott's strange behavior at the crime scene.

Speaker 20 She told me that Scott called the police because he didn't want to go in

Speaker 20 and she was

Speaker 5 very upset about it because he, you know, is military.

Speaker 20 He had a weapon, but he wouldn't go in to see if his wife was okay.

Speaker 37 You've known him for much of his life.

Speaker 47 You've known him for years.

Speaker 80 Were you upset?

Speaker 4 I think

Speaker 20 initially

Speaker 20 I just questioned it, like, why?

Speaker 20 But I think if I were put in the same position, I cannot tell you how I would react.

Speaker 48 And Kayla wasn't surprised that Scott seemed unemotional at the crime scene.

Speaker 37 For the Scott that you know, that's not outside of his character.

Speaker 4 Correct.

Speaker 20 He was not an emotional person,

Speaker 20 so it wasn't out of character for him.

Speaker 79 Michelle wasn't willing to give Scott that pass.

Speaker 5 You could not pay me enough. to stand outside if I thought that someone I loved or someone that I cared about was hurt or dying or dead inside anywhere.

Speaker 37 So when you heard that, what did that make you think?

Speaker 5 I was super confused.

Speaker 5 I was really confused.

Speaker 22 Why would you wait?

Speaker 5 Like, why, what would stop you? Like, what if she was still alive?

Speaker 62 Desiree's brother, Casey, wondered if Scott knew more than he was letting on.

Speaker 4 I never told mom

Speaker 4 this.

Speaker 4 I never told anybody. And I kept saying to myself, if Scott had anything to do with this, it's one of those gut feelings That there was

Speaker 72 something he wasn't saying, telling us.

Speaker 48 Kim Odell had the same gut feeling.

Speaker 54 She had known Scott since middle school, and she saw how much his time in the army had changed him.

Speaker 4 After Iraq,

Speaker 10 he was a different Scott.

Speaker 4 Different.

Speaker 67 How? Completely different.

Speaker 67 Just a darker sense of humor about things.

Speaker 37 Did Desiree ever say anything about it?

Speaker 108 A little bit here here and there.

Speaker 37 So she noticed a shift too?

Speaker 5 She did.

Speaker 67 I think we all did, especially those of us that were

Speaker 4 close before and after.

Speaker 36 People in Desiree's life noticed Scott seemed more detached, less loving.

Speaker 55 And there was another reason their marriage may not have been rock solid.

Speaker 37 Had you heard that Desiree was stepping out on Scott?

Speaker 4 I did.

Speaker 56 Years earlier, Kim found out Desiree had cheated on Scott before they were married.

Speaker 37 Did she ever tell Scott about this? She did. Did they have to try and patch things up?

Speaker 29 What did that look like?

Speaker 67 I think that there was a lot of trust lost in that, and I think that it was slowly them trying to rebuild.

Speaker 54 Between Desiree's infidelity and the change she saw in Scott, Kim wondered if Scott had just snapped.

Speaker 4 I thought Scott lost his mind.

Speaker 67 Scott found out about things that had had happened in the past, and he lost his mind.

Speaker 84 Desiree's loved ones were grasping for answers, but what they didn't know was detectives thought they might already have one in Paige Blades, who was about to tell investigators her story.

Speaker 21 Was there any ever any jealousy or anger over the relationship?

Speaker 4 No,

Speaker 4 she became,

Speaker 4 I wouldn't say so much jealous, but a little bit more possessive of it.

Speaker 48 Detectives wasted no time in contacting the other woman in Scott's and maybe Desiree's life,

Speaker 15 Paige Blades.

Speaker 11 How quickly did you go see her?

Speaker 12 It was later that morning.

Speaker 12 It was around eight, nine o'clock that morning.

Speaker 11 Paige said she didn't have money for gas, so detectives drove almost two hours to her house.

Speaker 29 She was 23, shared a young son with an ex-boyfriend, and she worked at a food processing plant in Moses Lake.

Speaker 21 I understand that you're a friend of

Speaker 21 Scott and Desiree.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 10 How long did you talk with her?

Speaker 12 We probably talked with her an hour, hour and a half.

Speaker 10 How did she come across to you in that conversation?

Speaker 12 Didn't seem to be too concerned.

Speaker 86 Can you just kind of tell me in your own words about your relationship with him?

Speaker 123 How long you've known him?

Speaker 4 I met Scott in

Speaker 4 February 2011

Speaker 4 and we became friends.

Speaker 4 I met his wife, Desiree, in May of the same year. We were friends.
We all hung out. We did stuff together.

Speaker 86 What was the nature of your relationship with Scott?

Speaker 4 He's my best friend. He helped me sober up.
He helped me

Speaker 4 with a lot of personal issues that I was going through.

Speaker 34 Paige said she and Scott soon became more than friends.

Speaker 4 We became intimate probably later that first year.

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 his wife knew about it. I was accepted as a part of their marriage.
I was...

Speaker 4 I had a relationship right along with both of them.

Speaker 4 I

Speaker 4 worked in their bed. I shared food costs.

Speaker 21 I cooked.

Speaker 4 I cleaned.

Speaker 21 So you were involved in a sexual relationship with Scott and

Speaker 86 Desiree knew about it.

Speaker 4 I was also sexual with her as well, yes.

Speaker 29 Just as Scott had told them, Paige said it was all good.

Speaker 66 That Desiree was perfectly comfortable with the arrangement.

Speaker 29 Until she wasn't. That was about seven months before her murder.

Speaker 4 She became,

Speaker 4 I wouldn't say so much jealous, but a little bit more possessive of him.

Speaker 4 And it kind of went away. When she started feeling uncomfortable, we kind of ended up, it was completely amicable, agreed upon.
We stayed friends.

Speaker 4 There's never been an issue.

Speaker 10 So now you're getting a different picture, perhaps, of this relationship than the one that Scott was portraying. That Desiree wasn't completely on board with their dealings.

Speaker 12 That's correct.

Speaker 15 Paige said her relationship with Desiree may have cooled, but the affair with Scott continued right up until the night of Desiree's murder.

Speaker 12 Scott was still

Speaker 12 involved with her, and I'm not sure if Desiree knew that he was still

Speaker 12 involved with her.

Speaker 21 When was the last time that you saw Scott?

Speaker 4 Last Saturday, two nights ago.

Speaker 4 He came, he had a funeral in Tri-Cities, and he ended up coming back here to spend the night.

Speaker 50 As she talked, detectives thought she sounded a little too practiced.

Speaker 86 Your story seems very, it's almost too clean.

Speaker 21 It seems like rehearsed and perhaps coached from Scott

Speaker 7 because your stories match too well.

Speaker 12 We asked her if Scott had told her to give him an alibi or tell her what to tell the police or anything like that. She said, no, he never talked to her

Speaker 12 other than he notified her that Desiree had been killed.

Speaker 121 If you know anything regarding this death and you're trying to make up a story or protect Scott, the truth is going to come out eventually.

Speaker 121 And the longer you hide things, if you're not being honest with us and truthful with us, you could be charged.

Speaker 4 I understand.

Speaker 10 Did she come across as believable to you?

Speaker 12 For the most part, yes.

Speaker 47 But there was still a bit of doubt there somewhere.

Speaker 12 There was. We weren't sure if she was really telling us the truth.

Speaker 10 Do you kind of put a bookmark next to her name thinking she's somebody we're going to have to dig further into?

Speaker 12 Yeah, we need to find out how deep a relationship they have. Did they see each other more than what she was telling us or what Scott was telling us?

Speaker 21 Is there anything that you would like to add to this statement?

Speaker 4 I hope to catch him.

Speaker 42 Later, when detectives spoke to those close to Desiree, Paige's in Scott's stories of a lovely, amicable three-way didn't seem plausible.

Speaker 48 Kim said she'd never heard of Paige.

Speaker 37 Desiree never mentioned her as a friend. Nope.

Speaker 37 When you first hear about her and kind of her connection in their world, what did you think?

Speaker 67 It just seemed an odd situation. Like as far as them having a relationship, the three of them, I didn't ever see it from her.

Speaker 15 I just didn't see that she would ever venture into that.

Speaker 75 Kayla hadn't heard of Paige either.

Speaker 4 Never heard of her name before.

Speaker 79 She also didn't buy the idea of a three-way affair.

Speaker 4 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 20 It's like one of those crazy movies.

Speaker 20 The things you only see in movies.

Speaker 37 So the idea of her allowing another woman to even enter the relationship, that's not the Desiree, you know.

Speaker 20 No, that's not the Desiree I know.

Speaker 62 But could Desiree have hidden such an affair?

Speaker 29 To detectives, anything seemed possible in a case that would be loaded with secrets.

Speaker 4 We had just found out about three weeks before the shooting that I was pregnant.

Speaker 89 Hi, I'm Jenny Slate. And believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

Speaker 90 I'm Gabe Leidman.

Speaker 91 I'm Max Silvestri.

Speaker 44 And we've been friends for 20 years.

Speaker 78 And we like to reach out to kind of get advice on how to live our lives.

Speaker 94 It's called I Need You Guys.

Speaker 95 Should I give my baby fresh vegetables?

Speaker 89 Can I drink the water at the hospital?

Speaker 90 My landlord plays the trombone and I can't ask him to stop.

Speaker 97 You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

Speaker 4 I need you, girl.

Speaker 100 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here, wishing you a very happy half-off holiday because right now, Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited.

Speaker 88 To be clear, that's half price, not half the service.

Speaker 102 Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price.

Speaker 4 So that means a half day.

Speaker 98 Yeah?

Speaker 104 Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

Speaker 105 A front payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required.

Speaker 106 New customer offer for first three months only. Speed flow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy.

Speaker 107 Taxes and fees extra.

Speaker 108 See Mintmobile.com.

Speaker 112 If you're an experienced pet owner, you already know that having a pet is 25% belly rubs, 25% yelling, drop it, and 50% groaning at the bill from every vet visit.

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Speaker 26 Two weeks after Desiree was killed, her family and friends gathered for a funeral as unique as the woman herself.

Speaker 4 They had

Speaker 4 her Harley in there and

Speaker 37 inside the church.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 20 There was a beautiful poem that

Speaker 17 I don't know who read, but it was

Speaker 61 The Dash.

Speaker 20 And it was basically talking about, you know, the day you're born and then the Dash. and then the day you die.
And they want to focus on the dash, that time.

Speaker 37 When you think about that poem with Desiree, did you feel that she lived that dash to the fullest?

Speaker 4 Oh yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 What are their Harley driving,

Speaker 20 gunslinging,

Speaker 4 art teacher?

Speaker 17 Car restoring.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 73 She did it all.

Speaker 18 She did.

Speaker 45 Scott was there at the funeral, of course.

Speaker 29 But for Michelle, that memory is not a pleasant one.

Speaker 5 If I lost my spouse, if I lost someone that I loved and someone I cared about, sure as hell wouldn't be smiling at their funeral.

Speaker 108 Scott was smiling.

Speaker 5 Multiple occasions. We watched him on his phone walk outside because the back part of the church that we were in, this open venue, there was a wall of windows.

Speaker 5 And he's on his phone smoking a cigarette outside with a smile on his face.

Speaker 29 Detective Johnson was hearing similar stories that Scott just didn't seem like the grieving spouse.

Speaker 12 Just a couple days after the funeral, he was talking to a young lady at a motorcycle dealership. He asked for a hug, which is kind of normal and, you know, need a little emotional support.

Speaker 12 But then he asked her out to dinner.

Speaker 10 Like on a date.

Speaker 125 Yeah.

Speaker 12 It just didn't seem to add up that

Speaker 12 he was really devastated by the death of Desiree.

Speaker 10 Now, devil's advocate, you never know how somebody's going to react in a traumatic situation. This is a military man.

Speaker 14 Perhaps he just was stoic by nature.

Speaker 10 This was perhaps his defense mechanism when hearing this hard news.

Speaker 12 That's correct. Each individual handles different stress in their lives, handle it different.
And we had no what, did not know what would be normal for his reaction.

Speaker 29 But their suspicions were based on more than his demeanor. About two months after the murder, investigators got what sounded like explosive news.

Speaker 10 You get a tip that Paige was pregnant with Scott's baby when the murder happened. What did you think when you heard that?

Speaker 12 That definitely would be a motive to get Desiree out of the picture.

Speaker 15 Does that change this picture for you at all?

Speaker 12 It makes us work harder to find out if there's any connection that would... Did Paige commit this crime?

Speaker 12 Or did Scott have Paige do it for him? It was just more unanswered questions for the investigation.

Speaker 29 But then some questions were answered when the lab results came back.

Speaker 30 The DNA found under Desiree's fingernails was male DNA, but

Speaker 10 wasn't Scott's DNA.

Speaker 12 It was not.

Speaker 26 Results on the bloody shoe print also came in.

Speaker 54 No connection to Scott.

Speaker 12 We had nothing in the house that matched any type of shoes that he had in the house.

Speaker 29 And the evidence from his phone?

Speaker 124 When you were going through that cell phone data, did it tell you where Scott and Paige were at the the time of the killing?

Speaker 12 It showed that he was in the Tri-Cities area during those times. It was on the route that he would take, so nothing was suspicious.

Speaker 52 They confirmed that Scott's phone wasn't at the scene of the crime.

Speaker 29 Neither was Paige's.

Speaker 29 And all those gas station security cameras they checked, there was no sign of Scott's car near his home at the time of the murder.

Speaker 10 It's like you've got a lot of shiny pennies, but they're not adding up to much at this point.

Speaker 47 Does your investigation start to go cold?

Speaker 125 Oh, yes.

Speaker 29 But as the investigation of Scott seemed to cool, interest in Paige was about to get white hot with revelations of some hostile texts.

Speaker 37 There was one where Paige texted Desiree and said, I'm fairly convinced that in the event of your demise, I would be the chosen one.

Speaker 4 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 52 A wannabe boyfriend with a bizarre motive.

Speaker 71 He worships the gun I walk on.

Speaker 122 He's obsessed with me.

Speaker 73 And even an attempted sting.

Speaker 61 Will you talk about it if I came over next weekend?

Speaker 48 Just how did Paige fit into this twisted case?

Speaker 84 We would try to find out for ourselves.

Speaker 37 There are people who would look at this and say that you came into their marriage and basically just tore it apart.

Speaker 22 No, I definitely wasn't there to destroy their marriage.

Speaker 53 What had seemed to be mounting evidence against Scott Sunford was amounting to very little, and the investigation into Desiree's murder seemed like it had gone quiet.

Speaker 80 How hard was that time for you?

Speaker 4 It was awful.

Speaker 67 It was awful. There was all the other headlines, all the the other things going on,

Speaker 67 and

Speaker 67 she was forgotten.

Speaker 47 But her students didn't forget, and they still wanted answers.

Speaker 5 When they became eighth graders, they were like, whatever happened to that teacher? Like, did they ever figure out who did it? And I would just say, I don't know.

Speaker 5 And I would move on. It's not really a conversation you want to have with a 13 or 14 year old.

Speaker 51 Michelle thought an art project dedicated to Desiree might help.

Speaker 5 We spent a Saturday creating this piece of artwork that is up in our library. We innovated her classroom and used all of her pastels and just built this thing.

Speaker 5 And then I took it to my classroom and he had the kids who wanted to come in and be part of that and put their artwork on there for her and create a tile of their own for her, is what we called it.

Speaker 125 And they did.

Speaker 22 That's beautiful.

Speaker 85 Meanwhile, investigators were taking a harder look at Paige Blades, the third wheel in the Sunfords marriage.

Speaker 30 Turns out, there was another man in Paige's orbit.

Speaker 33 She'd brought him up in her interview with the detectives.

Speaker 21 During the time that you've known Desi and Scott, have you ever known them to have problems with anyone else?

Speaker 123 Do they have any other enemies or people that don't like them?

Speaker 21 Um,

Speaker 4 my ex hates both of them with a passion.

Speaker 4 But aside from that, I can't really think of anybody.

Speaker 21 And who is your ex?

Speaker 4 Dylan Williams.

Speaker 86 Have you ever known him to be a violent person?

Speaker 4 Oh, he has violent tendencies, but he's not...

Speaker 4 he's not violent without provocation.

Speaker 21 So what do you mean by violent tendencies?

Speaker 4 If he's attacked, he'll attack.

Speaker 127 And you said that he

Speaker 21 hates

Speaker 21 Scott.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 26 detectives learned Paige's ex-boyfriend Dylan had actually been involved in a shooting death two years earlier.

Speaker 56 He told officers two men came to his home in Moses Lake and assaulted him.

Speaker 29 So he shot one of them in self-defense. It was ruled a justifiable homicide.

Speaker 10 You did bring Dylan in to talk to him, correct?

Speaker 12 Oh, certainly. We wanted to find out the relationship that he had with Paige.
Did he know anything about the relationship between Scott and Paige? Did he know anything about Desiree?

Speaker 10 Did you ask him where he was the night that Desiree was killed?

Speaker 4 Certainly.

Speaker 10 What did he tell you?

Speaker 12 He was home in Moses Lake area.

Speaker 30 At the time of Desiree's murder, he had two firearms registered in his name, but neither was the same caliber as the gun that killed Desiree.

Speaker 84 And his alibi checked out.

Speaker 13 What's more, when Paige gave birth toward the end of the year, Dylan asked for a paternity test.

Speaker 34 It showed the baby was his, not Scott's.

Speaker 42 So in the end, Paige's baby didn't matter to the case, but that didn't mean there weren't serious problems between Paige, Scott, and Desiree in the months before the murder.

Speaker 26 Investigators learned a whole lot about that when the digital evidence finally came back.

Speaker 51 There it was, a trove of eye-opening texts between Desiree and Paige that told a dramatically new story about the two women and Scott.

Speaker 12 He was not being very honest with us. He was not being forthright about his relationship with his wife, or it really is a relationship with Paige.

Speaker 26 The texts began more than a year before the murder and early on showed a close friendship between the two women.

Speaker 51 Desiree wrote, You're my only close girlfriend.

Speaker 35 Paige answered, that's good to know.

Speaker 73 I am able to talk to you more openly than I am with most.

Speaker 60 They alluded to one night that wasn't strictly platonic.

Speaker 54 Desiree wrote, and honestly, I did enjoy that night.

Speaker 28 There are aspects there that are different with a woman than a man.

Speaker 26 Paige responded, I very much miss having a woman to play with.

Speaker 13 But there was no evidence that they were engaged in an ongoing affair.

Speaker 66 In fact, about three weeks later, The texts showed Desiree getting tired of Paige living in her home.

Speaker 84 She wanted more privacy with Scott.

Speaker 48 Desiree wrote, it's starting to wear out, so the idea of you here for a week and who knows what next scares me.

Speaker 43 Where the hell is our time?

Speaker 53 Paige responded, typically that means there's a problem in your marriage and you might want to decide what to do with it.

Speaker 55 Desiree wrote, me not wanting a friend here all the time with my husband means there's marital issues?

Speaker 45 WTH.

Speaker 10 What does this tell you about Paige and Desiree and their relationship?

Speaker 12 It was deteriorating. They weren't the friends that they started out to be and that

Speaker 12 there was becoming a wedge in Scott and Desiree's relationship. That Desiree was becoming more jealous of Paige and just did not want her involved in their

Speaker 12 in their at their home.

Speaker 59 The texts revealed something else.

Speaker 55 Not only was Desiree unhappy, she had no idea Scott and Paige were intimate.

Speaker 45 She texted Paige, I still have to say that you two doing anything sexual would bother me.

Speaker 34 Paige answered, he and I doing anything sexual is out of the question.

Speaker 10 In her messages, it doesn't seem that Desiree has any knowledge or thought that Paige and Scott are intimate at all.

Speaker 12 Far as we can tell, that Desiree did not know that this affair was going on.

Speaker 52 From the texts, it's clear Desiree was worried about her marriage and Paige was making it worse.

Speaker 54 In some exchanges, she was downright brutal.

Speaker 37 There was one where Paige texted Desiree and said, I'm fairly convinced that in the event of your demise, I would be the chosen one.

Speaker 4 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 37 Desiree says, huh?

Speaker 37 And Paige goes on to say, if you ever die and he needs a wife, I'm half convinced that would be me.

Speaker 47 Even just watching you, I can see that still upsets you.

Speaker 20 Yes, it does.

Speaker 44 Like, why would you even say that?

Speaker 82 After that, Desiree finally pushed back, telling Paige to stay away for good.

Speaker 11 Texting, I'm going to ask nicely for you to distance yourself from me, my home, and my family.

Speaker 29 Paige's response, not a problem.

Speaker 81 I've been wanting to do away with you for quite a while now.

Speaker 48 And then she hurled a couple of obscenities at Desiree.

Speaker 10 I would imagine this is an important detail in your investigation.

Speaker 12 It gave us an indication that maybe there is a motive, that they wanted Desiree out of their relationship, so Scott and Paige to move on with their life.

Speaker 40 As provocative as the texts were, they didn't reveal a murder plot.

Speaker 60 But another call to the tip line was about to change everything.

Speaker 12 Well, that gives us a new spark in our investigation. Now we have a name.

Speaker 55 A name and a wild story about a stranger with a strange obsession.

Speaker 89 Hi, I'm Jenny Slate. And believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

Speaker 90 I'm Gabe Leidman.

Speaker 91 I'm Max Silvestri.

Speaker 44 And we've been friends for 20 years and we like to reach out to kind of get advice on how to live our lives.

Speaker 94 It's called I Need You Guys.

Speaker 95 Should I give my baby fresh vegetables?

Speaker 89 Can I drink the water at the hospital?

Speaker 90 My landlord plays the trombone and I can't ask him to stop.

Speaker 97 You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

Speaker 4 I need you, girl.

Speaker 100 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here, wishing you a very happy, half-off holiday, because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited.

Speaker 88 To be clear, that's half price, not half the service.

Speaker 102 And Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price.

Speaker 103 So that means a half day.

Speaker 98 Yeah?

Speaker 104 Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

Speaker 105 Upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required.

Speaker 106 New customer offers for first three months only. Speed slow out at 35 gigabytes of networks busy.

Speaker 107 Taxes and fees extra.

Speaker 108 See Mintmobile.com.

Speaker 112 If you're an experienced pet owner, you already know that having a pet is 25% belly rubs, 25% yelling, drop it, and 50% groaning at the bill from every vet visit.

Speaker 115 Which is why Lemonade Pet Insurance is tailor-made for your pet and can save you up to 90% on vet bills.

Speaker 114 It can help cover checkups, emergencies, diagnostics, basically all the stuff that makes your bank account nervous.

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Speaker 118 Get a quote at lemonade.com/slash pet and they'll help cover the vet bill for whatever your pet swallowed after you yelled drop it.

Speaker 59 Almost 14 months had passed since Desiree Sunford's murder.

Speaker 33 When, out of nowhere, a woman called the Yakima Sheriff's Tip Line and left a message.

Speaker 113 What did the caller say?

Speaker 12 It said that the person that killed Desiree Sunford was a Marty Grizmer.

Speaker 10 And that's it.

Speaker 78 No other details.

Speaker 12 No other details. It's just a name that had never come up in the investigation before.

Speaker 10 And that just breathes new life into this investigation.

Speaker 12 Now

Speaker 12 we got somebody to go after.

Speaker 51 Who was Marty Grismer?

Speaker 33 To figure that out, job number one was to find the tipster.

Speaker 12 So we had to do some tracking to find out who called that tip in.

Speaker 48 They traced the phone call, and when they got their answer, they couldn't believe it.

Speaker 10 Who was it?

Speaker 12 It was Paige Blade.

Speaker 10 You've not spoken to her in months, but now suddenly she's saying she knows who the killer is. Where did that come from?

Speaker 12 It came out of the blue.

Speaker 7 Well, I really appreciate you coming forward with this information.

Speaker 12 We brought Paige G. Akima.
We sat down and...

Speaker 12 Okay,

Speaker 12 you just can't drop this bomb on us. How do you know this? Tell us everything that you know about this Marty Grismer.

Speaker 70 What does he do for a living?

Speaker 73 He's a teammate at the plant that I work at.

Speaker 70 You guys dated for a short time? Right, very

Speaker 4 briefly.

Speaker 29 Marty had recently gotten married.

Speaker 34 Still, Paige said he kept asking her for sex and would hit on her at work.

Speaker 35 She let him know that wasn't happening, ever.

Speaker 29 But he was a friend, a really good friend.

Speaker 34 He's the one that got me the house.

Speaker 128 He bought my car outright, cash.

Speaker 128 I still haven't paid him back for it. He pays my insurance.
He's done my grocery shopping. He's taken very well care of me.

Speaker 15 He was like her fixer, she said.

Speaker 52 Would do anything for her.

Speaker 34 Something she suggested he took too far.

Speaker 4 We had just found out about three weeks before the shooting that I was pregnant. Marty was one of the first people that I told.

Speaker 4 And apparently, he decided that

Speaker 4 if the baby was Scott, like it was supposed to be, then Desiree would cause issues.

Speaker 33 And Paige claimed, claimed, Marty recently told her he took care of those issues.

Speaker 70 Let me just make sure I understand.

Speaker 70 He believed that, well, you were pregnant. At that time, you thought it was Scott's baby.
He believed it was Scott's baby. He thought that Desiree was going to make problems for the two of you.

Speaker 70 And so he decided the best way to fix that problem was to eliminate her so that you could be happy.

Speaker 128 So that we could move forward, yes.

Speaker 25 The baby wasn't Scott's, of course.

Speaker 26 Paige insisted Marty didn't make this confession until more than a year after Desiree's murder.

Speaker 15 She said she was shocked when Marty told her, especially since her relationship with Scott had cooled.

Speaker 63 And Scott was with another woman.

Speaker 33 She said Marty offered to take care of that too.

Speaker 4 I was explaining to him what was going on

Speaker 70 you and Scott.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 128 he just, he asked me, do you want me to take care of her like I did the last one?

Speaker 26 And that, she said, is when she decided to call the tip line.

Speaker 10 When you look at the motive for Marty, that he killed Desiree so that this woman that he was obsessed with could be happy with another man. who wasn't him.

Speaker 3 Have you ever heard a motive like that?

Speaker 12 No, I've never had a case like that before. It just didn't make sense.

Speaker 42 Paige said Marty described Desiree's murder in detail.

Speaker 29 She said Marty had been to the house before and knew there was a key hidden near the front door.

Speaker 4 He got the key.

Speaker 4 He went in the front door because he knew that that was the closest to the bedroom. The alarm went off when he opened the door.

Speaker 4 And Ada came out barking.

Speaker 4 Des came out right behind her and he shot her. He shot her three times.

Speaker 4 She went down.

Speaker 14 These were very specific details about this crime.

Speaker 12 That's correct.

Speaker 10 Details that only the killer or somebody there would have known.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 43 And those details were gruesome.

Speaker 4 I don't remember how many poets he said. It was a full clip.
He got closer to her as she was trying to crawl away.

Speaker 12 He made it look like a burglary. He took the board off the door and

Speaker 12 make it look like that's how the entry was.

Speaker 4 He went back inside again, grabbed a jewelry box off of her dresser, and he left.

Speaker 12 Locked the door,

Speaker 12 put the key back where it was hiding. And this all happened around 3, 3.30 that morning.

Speaker 29 He even told her the type of gun he used.

Speaker 70 Marty said it was a 9mm. Did he say what kind of, what brand?

Speaker 73 I don't think he mentioned the brand

Speaker 4 it all lined up with what detectives found at the crime scene paige said marty told her he headed home and got rid of the evidence started the fire in the burned barrel burned all of the clothes his shoes his gloves

Speaker 10 got in his hard hour before he went to work What was her demeanor when she sat down and told you what Marty had said?

Speaker 14 Did she seem scared?

Speaker 12 Very emotional. She broke down and cried.

Speaker 12 She just couldn't believe that he would do such a thing.

Speaker 124 Did you believe her?

Speaker 12 We didn't have any reason not to believe her at this point.

Speaker 12 She certainly brought Marty to the front of the investigation, and we needed to do as much research and investigating how he would be involved.

Speaker 54 And they had an idea of how to find those answers.

Speaker 127 If you initiated another

Speaker 86 conversation with him, do you think he would talk to you about it more?

Speaker 71 I'm sure he would.

Speaker 122 He worships the girl may walk on.

Speaker 4 He's obsessed with me.

Speaker 79 But Marty wouldn't make it easy.

Speaker 129 Evidently,

Speaker 43 Paige Blades had just told Yakima detectives that Marty Grismer, her co-worker and sometimes fixer, had confessed to murdering Desiree Sunford.

Speaker 10 What did you think as you're listening to this?

Speaker 12 We were wanting to believe her that this was the suspect that was involved. We were also

Speaker 12 wanting her to maybe get him to tell this story again.

Speaker 29 Ideally, they'd record that conversation.

Speaker 30 So they asked Paige to meet Marty again.

Speaker 55 This time, wearing a wire.

Speaker 93 Today's date is August 8, 2014.

Speaker 43 Eight days later, she and Marty got together at a Starbucks near work.

Speaker 130 What is the word that we are using? If something's bad happens, that you were going to say.

Speaker 131 Avalanche.

Speaker 12 We had a team of undercover officers. We were hoping to actually hear what Marty had to say about it, in his own words.

Speaker 29 Paige tried to coax the story out of Marty.

Speaker 131 Because I know that you said that there was no evidence.

Speaker 131 So I'm just wondering for sure, for sure, if there's nothing left.

Speaker 129 I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 129 I don't have anything.

Speaker 129 Never done anything.

Speaker 131 You can't freak me out, put me in full-on panic mode.

Speaker 129 And then just be like, nope, I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 12 But it did not go as we planned. Marty seemed to be looking around like he was being set up.

Speaker 10 Kind of like he was onto you.

Speaker 12 Maybe. Maybe caught a glimpse of somebody, or Paige was hinky about how she was trying to ask him.

Speaker 29 As undercover officers snapped photos of Paige and Marty leaving the coffee shop, Paige persisted.

Speaker 61 Will you talk about it if I come over next weekend

Speaker 131 in your house where you know that nobody is listening?

Speaker 129 I'm about to strip you down first, okay?

Speaker 131 Strip me down first?

Speaker 129 I make sure you got nothing on here, yeah.

Speaker 4 Oh, right, yeah.

Speaker 30 The conversation ended there.

Speaker 12 We didn't get anything.

Speaker 12 He was acting suspiciously,

Speaker 12 but you can't take that into court.

Speaker 37 Disappointing for you?

Speaker 12 It was. We thought

Speaker 12 he would tell her everything again, but that just didn't happen.

Speaker 52 Marty had no criminal history.

Speaker 48 His DNA wasn't in the system.

Speaker 51 So they scoured every other part of his life and took a closer look at his family.

Speaker 12 He wasn't going to get any type of relationship with Paige. So he married this other woman.

Speaker 12 Beth.

Speaker 125 Yes.

Speaker 12 He was just moving on with his life.

Speaker 40 This is Beth Maxwell.

Speaker 13 She met Marty on a dating site in May 2013, a month after Desiree's murder.

Speaker 37 What was it about Marty that caught your eye?

Speaker 132 He didn't judge me, like, because I'm a bigger girl, so, you know, it's something that I get judged for a lot. He just accepted me for who I was.

Speaker 29 The polite man she met online seemed like a true gentleman in person.

Speaker 132 He just was a charmer, kind of. He was what I wanted, what I've always wanted.
He opened the car door for me.

Speaker 26 And Marty quickly fit into Beth's life.

Speaker 83 becoming a father figure to her young son.

Speaker 132 He was amazing. He was the dad that I've always wanted my son to have.

Speaker 37 Was that a big factor in you saying, hey, this guy's the one?

Speaker 20 Yeah, it was.

Speaker 132 And my son picked up on it right away, too. Like, he's like, that's my Marty dad.
That's what he called him.

Speaker 40 It was a whirlwind romance.

Speaker 52 After just four months together, they got married.

Speaker 108 Why so quickly?

Speaker 132 We were like, why wait? Like, if that's what we feel, why not just go for it?

Speaker 33 It all seemed too good to be true.

Speaker 54 So much so that Beth felt blindsided by Marty's choice of a best man.

Speaker 29 His best friend, Paige.

Speaker 37 I want to make sure I'm getting this right.

Speaker 29 Marty's best man...

Speaker 132 What's Paige?

Speaker 4 A woman. Yes.

Speaker 34 How did that sit with you?

Speaker 132 Uh, it didn't sit great with me.

Speaker 50 Beth met Paige for the first time on their wedding day.

Speaker 132 She wanted to dress exactly like Marty. It was a big fight.
She seemed very controlling, like this is what she wanted done, so he had to do it her way.

Speaker 30 The honeymoon phase was short.

Speaker 52 Beth noticed that Marty prioritized Paige above all else, including her.

Speaker 132 I found out that he had bought her a car, was paying her rent.

Speaker 4 Had he bought you a car? No. He never bought me a car.

Speaker 132 He bought her food a lot of times.

Speaker 4 Bought her food?

Speaker 132 Like groceries and stuff, yeah.

Speaker 47 That's a love language. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 62 You were married to a man who was seemingly completely devoted to another woman.

Speaker 124 You believed that Paige had feelings for your husband.

Speaker 132 I think so.

Speaker 108 And that he had feelings for her. Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 132 I started really having issues with it because I'm like, why is the best friend getting treated better than the wife?

Speaker 84 In fact, one of Beth's friends told her Paige had bragged about her power over Marty.

Speaker 132 She actually told my best friend that she could steal Marty away.

Speaker 37 Did you believe that she had some control over him in some way?

Speaker 132 He was just that obsessed over her, and there was just no changing it

Speaker 4 at all.

Speaker 132 Beth was wondering just what she'd gotten herself into when when there's a knock at the door and there's six to seven people at my door.

Speaker 37 Police officers.

Speaker 132 Police officers. Yeah, detectives.

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Speaker 56 19 months after after Desiree's murder, police and sheriff's deputies were at Marty Grismer's door.

Speaker 10 What did you say to him to convince him to come with you?

Speaker 12 We just told him that we're investigating the death of Desiree Sunford. He said, no problem, I'll...

Speaker 12 He got a shirt, got dressed,

Speaker 12 came down to the office. He didn't lawyer up.

Speaker 127 I've never been in a police department before.

Speaker 34 They started out easy.

Speaker 7 What's your relationship with Paige?

Speaker 101 Oh, it's been complicated over the years.

Speaker 16 I mean, she was the best man at my wedding. So I mean she was my best friend for a while there.

Speaker 127 Were you two involved in a sexual relationship at one time?

Speaker 16 Not exactly no. We just fooled around a bit on the early on.

Speaker 43 Marty said Paige told him all about her affair with Scott.

Speaker 127 Did you hear

Speaker 21 Paige and Scott talk about

Speaker 127 Scott's relationship with Desiree and Paige's relationship with Desiree? Were you aware of that whole love triangle that was going on?

Speaker 16 Yes, Paige had told me about that.

Speaker 86 So I understand you that Paige and Desiree had a falling out?

Speaker 16 I guess, I mean to an extent, yeah.

Speaker 21 Did you ever hear Paige or Scott talk about wanting to hurt Desiree or wanting Desiree gone or wanting her out of the picture?

Speaker 16 Nothing specifically, no. I think Paige had said she wanted him to divorce his wife.

Speaker 127 Did she talk about how she would get her out of the picture?

Speaker 70 No, I never got any indication of violence from her before.

Speaker 127 So, what was your, was she talking strictly divorce?

Speaker 16 Well, I don't know if it was that or if it was just, you know, trying to expose things just to get Besier to pick fights and get her to leave him. I don't know.

Speaker 10 As you're listening to him, what are you thinking? This is your first time that you're face to face with Marty.

Speaker 12 Okay, Marty, if you didn't do it and Paige or Scott did it, you're covering it for him.

Speaker 40 Whatever happened with Scott and Desiree and Paige, Marty said he was an impartial observer and only that.

Speaker 10 And all through that first part of that interview, his guard is pretty much down.

Speaker 12 Correct. He

Speaker 12 didn't seem to be under too much stress at that point.

Speaker 30 Detectives listened to Marty for about half an hour. And now, the softball portion of the interview was over.

Speaker 86 Have you ever told Paige that you would take care of anyone for her or anyone that makes her mad you take them out for you?

Speaker 4 No,

Speaker 127 I've never said that to him in the everlasting.

Speaker 15 They told Marty they'd been doing some research about him, had gotten a call from his boss.

Speaker 7 And they said that you were suspended from work

Speaker 21 for having gun parts

Speaker 21 at work. Okay, tell me about that.

Speaker 16 What kind of gun parts are we talking about? I had a gun bill that I left.

Speaker 21 A gun barrel. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Marty was kind of a gun nut. He liked to buy guns and buy gun parts.

Speaker 29 Except he seemed to have forgotten how he got this particular gun barrel.

Speaker 70 Okay, and who did you get it from?

Speaker 16 I don't recall. I've had it for quite, I've had a fucking year or so.

Speaker 30 The fact is, detectives knew all about the gun barrel.

Speaker 54 They'd gotten it from Marty's boss and had rushed it to the lab.

Speaker 52 And what do you know?

Speaker 12 The lab came back that the barrel that we found, that barrel, was used to kill Desiree.

Speaker 10 So now you've got hard evidence linking him to this crime.

Speaker 12 That's correct. That is the smoking gun, so to speak.

Speaker 10 Almost exactly that.

Speaker 12 Exactly.

Speaker 11 Marty seemed to realize this interview was going in a very bad direction.

Speaker 12 There's a vein in the side of his head that just was really protruding. He was under a great deal of stress during this interview.

Speaker 12 And you could tell by his his eyes and that he was just

Speaker 12 trying to think before he spoke. He was in hyper-stress.

Speaker 25 And that was only going to get worse as detectives got to the point.

Speaker 127 Did you ever offer to kill Desiree Sunford for Paige?

Speaker 16 No, I haven't. I've never offered to kill anyone for anything.

Speaker 123 It's not in my nature.

Speaker 70 My difficulty for you is that

Speaker 86 Paige is saying that you are the one who shot and killed Desiree Sunford.

Speaker 21 She said that you confessed that to her.

Speaker 16 Can't believe that bitch is doing that.

Speaker 123 I mean, and

Speaker 123 trying to win the f ⁇ ing life show, what?

Speaker 127 Help us figure out where you got that barrel, okay?

Speaker 21 Because Paige has put you smack in the middle of a murder investigation.

Speaker 16 She's trying to engineer, set me up to do something saying to you that

Speaker 127 killed someone, although that

Speaker 127 makes me sick

Speaker 34 his emotions were all over the page to a point where he was almost physically sick like getting ready to vomit yeah he said he was about ready to get sick and then he said he remembered something he said paige did have his gun fitted with that barrel at the time of the murder so you loan the gun to paige i loaned the gun to her over last year this was around february although she had it for a while Until May, he said, well after the murder.

Speaker 29 And then Marty turned the tables on Paige and said he had long suspected she had something to do with Desiree's murder.

Speaker 16 I have no reason to hide anything anymore.

Speaker 16 I have to protect my wife. I have to protect my son.

Speaker 127 I can't protect others.

Speaker 133 When did you come to the conclusion that

Speaker 121 you were saying Adam 2 plus 2

Speaker 133 that are for the guns, you must have done it. When did that

Speaker 127 hit you?

Speaker 16 A couple months after I got everything back.

Speaker 29 The detectives weren't buying it.

Speaker 55 It was his gun barrel, and they found it right where he left it.

Speaker 121 You know exactly what happened.

Speaker 16 How would I know exactly what happened?

Speaker 12 Because you're involved up to your eyeballs in this case.

Speaker 133 All the evidence is on your shoulders right now.

Speaker 16 I didn't kill anyone.

Speaker 133 But you're going to jail.

Speaker 86 What have you been arrested for?

Speaker 133 Chris Reemer.

Speaker 66 And that is what they did.

Speaker 12 He just couldn't believe that he was being charged with murder.

Speaker 39 But two other people remained on the detective's radar, Scott and Paige.

Speaker 12 It was just that thought in the back of our head that still she's got to be involved and Scott's got to be involved.

Speaker 12 We still have nothing to tie them other than this relationship that they were all involved in.

Speaker 29 We also had a few questions for Paige.

Speaker 52 Did you and Scott conspire with Marty to have her killed?

Speaker 55 November 13th, 2014.

Speaker 41 19 months after Desiree Sunford was found shot to death in her home, Marty Grismer was charged with her murder.

Speaker 54 Desiree's friend Kayla thought someone else should have been locked up along with him, Paige Blades.

Speaker 17 I am thinking the psycho Biach

Speaker 18 squiggled her way into

Speaker 5 their life

Speaker 20 and created chaos.

Speaker 20 And now my friend is dead over it. A needless death.

Speaker 20 I just,

Speaker 4 it's unreal.

Speaker 20 I honestly think that she asked Marty to do what he did.

Speaker 51 Even after Marty's arrest, Paige's role in the Sunfords' marriage remained something of a mystery to Desiree's family and friends, and to investigators, too.

Speaker 10 You were still looking at her. You still didn't think her hands were completely clean here.

Speaker 12 It was just that thought in the back of our head that still she's got to be involved, but we still have nothing to tie them other than this relationship that they were all involved in.

Speaker 29 Do you think that there are things that people get wrong about you?

Speaker 22 There are a lot of things that people get wrong about me.

Speaker 22 There are a lot of assumptions.

Speaker 36 Paige Blades is 35 years old now, the mother of four kids.

Speaker 15 She works in customer relations.

Speaker 30 And she says she still has strong feelings for and about Desiree Sunford.

Speaker 22 I love Des.

Speaker 22 And I don't say that past tense. She's still special to me.
There's no part of me that ever wanted anything bad to happen to her.

Speaker 29 It's been more than a decade since Paige's entanglement with Desiree, Scott, and Marty.

Speaker 37 Do you feel like you're a different person now?

Speaker 22 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 22 I am

Speaker 22 a completely different person.

Speaker 47 Paige says she's worked hard to battle addiction, money problems, and the ghosts of a turbulent, abusive childhood.

Speaker 38 She admits to a pattern of troubled relationships like what she had with Scott and Desiree.

Speaker 22 We became very good friends and eventually friends with benefits and

Speaker 22 eventually we didn't have a relationship anymore.

Speaker 79 She met Scott in early 2011.

Speaker 75 They were partying.

Speaker 82 hanging out.

Speaker 54 Paige says when she finally met Desiree, they became fast friends.

Speaker 34 And in fact, it was Desiree's idea for her to stay with them.

Speaker 22 They were in a one-bedroom apartment and they had a California king bed. And she was like, there's plenty of room.

Speaker 47 All three of us shared the bed. So she invited you into the bed.

Speaker 15 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 22 And she's the one who put Scott in the middle.

Speaker 37 During that bed arrangement,

Speaker 29 were you all sexually active?

Speaker 39 Yeah.

Speaker 29 Everybody with each other?

Speaker 22 Not all together.

Speaker 22 But I was sexually active with Scott and I was sexually active with Des.

Speaker 29 In those text messages, Paige and Desiree carried on flirty exchanges.

Speaker 66 But in other messages, it seems Paige wasn't being honest about her relationship with Scott.

Speaker 37 At one point, Desiree texted you, I still have to say that you two doing anything sexual would bother me. And you responded, yeah, he and I doing anything sexual is out of the question.

Speaker 54 Was that true?

Speaker 22 I honestly don't remember that conversation.

Speaker 124 Did you ever mislead Desiree

Speaker 47 into thinking that you and Scott weren't sexually active?

Speaker 22 Not as far as I know or remember.

Speaker 42 Paige says she does remember when Desiree's patience reached the breaking point.

Speaker 37 She writes this, I'm done with the drama and the BS. I'm going to ask nicely for you to distance yourself from me, my home, and my family.
And you respond in part, not a problem.

Speaker 37 I've been wanting to do away with you for quite a while now, and then go on to call her some names that I can't repeat on TV.

Speaker 29 It sounds like you didn't take too kindly to her telling you to stay away.

Speaker 76 That

Speaker 22 was the big fight. I know that I was out of line with how I responded to her.
There were a lot of other things that were going on in my life at the time that were compounding stress.

Speaker 24 Paige moved out, but she kept seeing Scott.

Speaker 37 There are people who would look at this and say that you came into their marriage and basically just tore it apart.

Speaker 22 No, I definitely wasn't there to destroy their marriage.

Speaker 37 Did you want to be with him?

Speaker 37 No.

Speaker 37 Would you have wanted to be his wife, have a relationship with him solely?

Speaker 22 No, him solely?

Speaker 108 No.

Speaker 37 I'll get you to respond to one more text thread between you and Desiree. You write, I'm fairly convinced that in the event of your demise, I would be the chosen one.

Speaker 69 Desiree says, huh?

Speaker 37 And you say, if you ever die and he needs a wife, I'm half convinced that would be me. What was that about?

Speaker 4 I still don't remember.

Speaker 22 And that one's come up quite a few times, too.

Speaker 29 At the time, Paige shared details of her life with another friend, Marty Grismer.

Speaker 22 He was my rock for a little while. He would go on a grocery run for me if I needed, or if I needed to borrow gas money, then I would get it from him.

Speaker 22 He was the only person that I had that I could turn to if I had a struggle.

Speaker 37 Why was Marty doing all of these things for you?

Speaker 22 I assume that it had something to do with his... undying love for me, as he would say.

Speaker 34 Paige says she told Marty all about her rift with Desiree, that she was still seeing Scott and pregnant with his child.

Speaker 26 Paige insists she never thought his moral support would turn to murder and was shocked when Marty confessed to killing Desiree.

Speaker 42 He went into excruciating detail of what he did to Desiree.

Speaker 37 This was somebody who was your friend.

Speaker 29 How hard was this for you to listen to?

Speaker 22 It was not just hard. It was a devastating blow.

Speaker 22 Who was this person

Speaker 22 that I had let into my life?

Speaker 47 So some people would look at this and say, you had to have planted some sort of seed in his mind by talking about Scott, by talking about the fact that you believed you were pregnant with his baby.

Speaker 11 That would make him think, if I get rid of Desiree,

Speaker 31 I'm making Paige happy.

Speaker 22 I honestly don't know.

Speaker 22 I don't know or understand how Marty's mind works. I honestly never have.

Speaker 37 There are many people who believe that you conspired with Marty, that you wanted Desiree out of the picture so that you could be with Scott. And that you essentially put Marty up to killing her.

Speaker 108 Never.

Speaker 29 No truth to that.

Speaker 22 None whatsoever.

Speaker 22 I.

Speaker 22 I've heard that quite a few times, but never in a million years.

Speaker 22 There was never any reason

Speaker 108 for that to happen.

Speaker 124 Did you and Scott conspire with Marty to have her killed?

Speaker 22 No, absolutely not.

Speaker 29 Her friends would say: if you hadn't been in the picture, if it weren't for you, Desiree would have never gotten killed, that she would still be alive today.

Speaker 37 How do you respond to that?

Speaker 22 I don't think that's fair.

Speaker 22 I believe that if Marty hadn't been in my life, Des would still be alive. I understand that to a lot of people, it probably seems like and feels like I am central

Speaker 18 to everything.

Speaker 22 But from my own side, I'm on the outside looking in.

Speaker 22 I didn't feel like I was the one in the center.

Speaker 29 Maybe not, but her testimony would be key to the case against Marty. Prosecutors had to worry: whose case would she actually help?

Speaker 47 Theirs or the defense's?

Speaker 87 This case and investigation raised a lot of questions,

Speaker 87 and some of those questions will never be answered.

Speaker 30 Paige Blades may have turned Marty in,

Speaker 49 but no one close to Desiree saw that as a selfless act.

Speaker 67 No.

Speaker 67 No.

Speaker 67 I believed she was feeling the guilt, and I don't think there was.

Speaker 67 I'm gonna be the one to solve it. I don't.
I think it was a guilty conscience.

Speaker 45 But there's no denying it was Paige's tip that got them to Marty.

Speaker 14 Still, it wasn't an easy case.

Speaker 30 There was no crime scene DNA matching Marty, no shoe of his that matched the bloody shoe print, and no video of him in that area at the time of the murder.

Speaker 55 Then, as Marty sat in jail awaiting trial, a call came in from the plant manager at Marty's job.

Speaker 12 They were cleaning out a dumpster and they found the jewelry box. They found the laptop and the iPad.

Speaker 84 The stolen laptop and iPad.

Speaker 29 Taken from Desiree and Scott's house when it was burglarized five days before the murder. But that jewelry box was key.

Speaker 27 It connected Marty directly to the murder.

Speaker 45 Paige had told investigators that Marty said he took it the night he killed Desiree.

Speaker 75 It was all found along with a big clue as to who left it there.

Speaker 48 A receipt with the name Marty Grismer.

Speaker 103 That's big.

Speaker 12 That's huge. Marty must have done the first burglary, too.

Speaker 12 And he didn't get rid of anything. He was not very bright to keep all this stuff involved in a burglary and a homicide.

Speaker 55 A month later, detectives got a call from Marty's cellmate at the jail.

Speaker 10 And he's had some interesting conversations with Marty.

Speaker 12 Yeah, Marty's talking about the evidence that's against him.

Speaker 63 And he was also talking about Paige.

Speaker 52 The cellmate said Marty was furious with her.

Speaker 123 He's telling me that Paige didn't stab him in the back, after he did everything for this girl.

Speaker 26 She had turned him in.

Speaker 29 Paige would be the star witness against him at his trial.

Speaker 69 So Marty suggested a way his cellmate could solve his problem, kill Paige and a friend of hers.

Speaker 4 He said, well, I don't mind giving you $20,000, $30,000 to make these two people disappear.

Speaker 10 That's quite a swing going from doing anything for Paige, obsessed with her, will kill for her, to,

Speaker 10 according to the cellmate, wanting to put out a hit to get rid of her.

Speaker 12 Yeah, he's trying to save his own skin at this point.

Speaker 64 No hit ever happened, and the cellmate got cold feet and refused to testify, which didn't help prosecutors who were already dealing with a difficult circumstantial case full of imperfect evidence and maybe worse, two possible alternate suspects.

Speaker 10 You had wondered about Scott and Paige's involvement from the very beginning. Were you concerned that the defense might try and use that as an alternate theory?

Speaker 12 Certainly.

Speaker 12 It could easily have been used. That's why we offered the plea.

Speaker 87 This case and investigation raised a lot of questions,

Speaker 87 and some of those questions will never be answered.

Speaker 126 In December of 2017, Marty Grismer was offered a deal.

Speaker 74 His first-degree murder charge would be reduced to second if if he took what's called an Alfred plea, admitting there's enough evidence to convict without actually admitting guilt.

Speaker 28 Desert Ray's brother felt there was no choice.

Speaker 72 Prosecutor told us he'll at least get something

Speaker 72 if he takes this plea.

Speaker 4 And we're like, well, we've got to

Speaker 72 at least

Speaker 72 give him something.

Speaker 72 We can't run the risk of him walking free.

Speaker 56 Casey attended the sentencing hearing with his mother, Connie.

Speaker 15 She spoke to the court.

Speaker 134 Your Honor, I can only speak to you about one thing at this point.

Speaker 134 Sentence this evil being to the harshest prison in our system.

Speaker 134 He deserves to be among other people.

Speaker 28 In the end, Marty Grizmer was sentenced to just 15 years in prison.

Speaker 29 He's scheduled to be released in 2029.

Speaker 56 Desiree's friends and family were angry.

Speaker 34 They didn't think Desiree got justice.

Speaker 37 Was that good enough?

Speaker 20 No, it's not good enough because he's still not admitting any guilt and he's only getting 15 years.

Speaker 13 They also remain angry at Scott.

Speaker 29 While he was never charged in the case, They're certain his affair with Paige led to Desiree's murder.

Speaker 20 The bottom line is that Desiree would still be alive today if Scott had been faithful.

Speaker 39 Scott moved away after Desiree died.

Speaker 42 He's now remarried.

Speaker 29 As for Paige, she was never charged either.

Speaker 45 But still, Desiree's loved ones cannot shake the idea that she was involved.

Speaker 37 There are many people who believe that you got away with murder.

Speaker 26 That you should be in prison too.

Speaker 4 I've heard that.

Speaker 37 What would you say to them?

Speaker 22 I had nothing to do with it. It's incredibly unfair that I risked my life to do the right thing.
And I'm being crucified for

Speaker 22 existing.

Speaker 51 Still, the people who loved Desiree say they try not to dwell on Scott or Paige.

Speaker 52 They want to focus on the good.

Speaker 27 on Desiree.

Speaker 20 If you were lucky enough to get to know Desi, you'd want everybody else else to know it too.

Speaker 26 Desiree's mother, Connie, had to sell her daughter's beloved Chevelle to pay for her headstone.

Speaker 17 Hey, Des.

Speaker 4 It's been a while.

Speaker 26 Connie died before it was installed.

Speaker 29 She's buried next to her daughter.

Speaker 37 It's a beautiful headstone.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 20 She loved the dolphins and she did love roses.

Speaker 6 That's her Chevy,

Speaker 18 her little Tweety bird.

Speaker 73 She loved Tweety.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 51 It's all her, Desiree Sunford, the beloved Harley riding art teacher.

Speaker 20 It just makes everything so real when you come here and see it. Sure.
Sure.

Speaker 20 That she's not going to just show up in your driveway on a Harley.

Speaker 3 That's all for this edition of Dateline. And check out our Talking Dateline podcast.
Blaine Alexander and Josh Mankowitz will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode.

Speaker 3 Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 Central.
I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.

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