The Premonition

Speaker 1 Struggling to see up close?

Speaker 2 Make it visible with Viz.

Speaker 1 Viz is a once-daily prescription eye drop to treat blurry near vision for up to 10 hours.

Speaker 1 The most common side effects that may be experienced while using Viz include eye irritation, temporary dim or dark vision, headaches, and eye redness.

Speaker 1 Talk to an eye doctor to learn if Viz is right for you. Learn more at Viz.com.

Speaker 4 From the Creator of Homeland, Claire Danes and Matthew Rees star in the new Netflix series The Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 4 The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt and justice and doubt, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 7 Tonight on Dateline.

Speaker 8 He had a premonition.

Speaker 8 He believed someone was plotting his murder. I wonder what it must have been like when he saw the face of the person who was about to end his life.

Speaker 11 I saw John Lang right there. His clothing was drenched in blood.

Speaker 12 You could see the bloody footprints that went through the hallway and out the back door.

Speaker 13 This was clearly a killing of passion.

Speaker 14 You're talking about someone who is a very strong, powerful, aggressive killer.

Speaker 15 You're in charge of the investigation. You really cast a wide net.

Speaker 9 I did. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, no arrest came.

Speaker 16 Something's not right. Just had the whole town just uneasy.

Speaker 7 The dentist who predicted his own death and the loved ones who would not stop until the case was solved.

Speaker 15 What are you thinking? I mean, he could be our prime suspect, and I'm being told not to interview him.

Speaker 17 I just had to keep going.

Speaker 17 He probably was one step ahead of me every time.

Speaker 7 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Daideline.

Speaker 7 Here's Andrea Canning with The Premonition.

Speaker 18 He told me that he wanted to send me $10,000 to hold to investigate his murder because he was convinced that he was going to be killed and that his murder would be covered up and that the evidence would be buried along with him and that it would go unsolved.

Speaker 15 That's one of the craziest things I've heard in this job.

Speaker 18 It's almost like he was writing a story about his life, yes.

Speaker 15 A terrible premonition. It all happened here in the town where he grew up.
John Yelnick's life story came to an end in Blairsville, Pennsylvania. It was April 13th, 2006.

Speaker 15 A little boy from next door, nine-year-old Zachary Youse, was the first to discover the awful thing that happened to the 39-year-old dentist. I know this is really hard.

Speaker 15 Why did you go over to John's house that day?

Speaker 11 That day I was just looking for somebody to hang out with.

Speaker 15 Zach was hoping to see John's son. They'd been such good friends.

Speaker 15 Instead, Zach saw something no child should ever have to see.

Speaker 11 So I'm walking up to his porch and I noticed the broken glass on the steps.

Speaker 11 He had red carpet, so I didn't notice the blood at first, but I noticed that his panel side window on the left was broken and there was blood kind of smeared a little bit going down the front.

Speaker 15 He was scared, scared, but he kept going.

Speaker 11 I put my hand through the window, I unlocked the door, went inside, and I saw John laying right there.

Speaker 15 How bad was it?

Speaker 3 He had a slit on his throat.

Speaker 11 His clothing was drenched in blood.

Speaker 15 You see this horrific scene and do you run home?

Speaker 11 Yeah, I run to my porch.

Speaker 15 He wanted to tell his big brother to come.

Speaker 11 And I was just like, Craig, Craig, Craig.

Speaker 15 In minutes, the family was on the phone with 911.

Speaker 15 When dispatchers put out the call, first responders were mistakenly told it was a heart attack. So when Blairsville patrolman Don Isherwood pulled up, he was surprised by what he found.

Speaker 12 Well, as I approach, the neighbor kids and the father were on the porch. And then as you approached the stairs, you could see the broken glass from one of the window panes.
And the glass was

Speaker 12 out over the steps and onto the porch.

Speaker 15 What are you thinking now?

Speaker 12 Well, you can see blood rolling down from the shards of the blood, so um this was no heart attack. Doesn't look like a heart attack now, no.

Speaker 15 The terrible truth was on the other side of the door.

Speaker 12 So you walk in here and you see the struggle and the poor doctor's body was lying right here.

Speaker 15 So that must have been a real shock to the system.

Speaker 15 Because you didn't know yet that the man's been stabbed to death right here.

Speaker 12 It was pretty gruesome. There was you could see the bloody footprints that went through the hallway.
and out the back door.

Speaker 15 Are you thinking right away that those footprints likely belonged to the the killer?

Speaker 12 Yeah, the first thing I looked at was the doctor was in bare feet, so you know that someone else was in here.

Speaker 15 He knew he needed help right away. His superior, Corporal Janelle Lydick, was driving around with her kids when she got the call.
And even then, the details were confusing.

Speaker 17 They said there's a cardiac arrest.

Speaker 15 Is that kind of weird that you're being requested?

Speaker 15 For a

Speaker 15 cardiac arrest.

Speaker 17 For a cardiac arrest, it is. So I actually turned the car around with my whole family in it, four kids and my husband, and just pulled up in front of the house.

Speaker 15 What do you see?

Speaker 17 Blood is the first thing that I noticed on the walls. And I stepped in a little bit further and I saw a body on the floor.
And I'm like, okay, you go clear the house.

Speaker 15 It would be Lydic's first murder investigation. And events were unfolding quickly.
She and Isherwood were the only officers there. And she was afraid the killer was still nearby.

Speaker 15 And not only this is a crazy scene, but your four kids are out in the car and your husband. Yep.

Speaker 17 This was.

Speaker 17 I don't know if somebody else is in a house, so I stood between the house and them and waited.

Speaker 15 So you're protecting the scene and kind of protecting your four kids who are out in the car.

Speaker 17 Exactly.

Speaker 12 And then after I come down.

Speaker 15 She sent patrolman Isherwood room to room to look for the assailant. And that's where he found another horrible sight.

Speaker 12 So as I come down into the basement to clear, first thing I notice is a large puddle of blood in this area here.

Speaker 12 Starting to think, well,

Speaker 12 did the scene begin down here?

Speaker 12 And then when I looked up, I realized that the blood was dripping through the floor. So that's.

Speaker 15 That just tells you how gruesome it was that there was that much blood.

Speaker 5 Correct.

Speaker 15 At about the same time, John Yelnick's cousin, Mary Ann Clark, was running some errands. Easter was just three days away.

Speaker 16 And as I'm driving through Blairsville, I hear fire whistles blowing. And I didn't think anything of it.
I went home, but as I'm going into my house, my phone's ringing.

Speaker 16 And it was a good friend of mine who lived by John. And she said, something bad's happening at John's house.
And I said, well, it can't be. He should be at my parents now.

Speaker 16 And she said, no, there's something bad. So I went over.

Speaker 15 What happened when you approached the house?

Speaker 16 I see the local funeral director walking my way. And when we

Speaker 16 confronted each other, I said,

Speaker 16 you know, did John have a heart attack? And he said, no, it's much worse.

Speaker 15 Who finally told you what had happened inside that house?

Speaker 16 Janelle Leidick,

Speaker 16 an officer with the Blairsville Police, came out and said that John had been murdered.

Speaker 15 That premonition about his own murder had come true, but he also predicted it would go unsolved. Would he be right? Not if John's loved ones had anything to do with it.

Speaker 16 I was determined it's not going to happen. It's not going to go away.

Speaker 7 When we come back, who would want to kill John Yelnick?

Speaker 8 Do we now lock our doors? Do we now get security systems? This is unheard of.

Speaker 7 The case of the small-town dentist would take some strange turns.

Speaker 15 Your mom had the medium psychic sisters come over to help out? Yeah.

Speaker 7 Unusual investigators and an unbelievable obstacle.

Speaker 15 Did you quickly start to have an uneasy feeling about the thoroughness of this investigation?

Speaker 16 Yes, almost instantly.

Speaker 15 Blairsville is a little town about an hour from Pittsburgh. Not a place where big news stories are a common occurrence.

Speaker 15 But a prosperous young dentist had been murdered in a horrible way, and that got people's attention. Jennifer Mealy, who was a local TV reporter in Pittsburgh, was among the first on the scene.

Speaker 8 I still remember being taken back by what I saw.

Speaker 8 Not only were there people everywhere, there were police and firemen and ambulance

Speaker 8 everywhere lining the street.

Speaker 12 After the scene was secured, that's when I began canvassing the neighborhood and talking with the neighbors to see if anyone heard or saw anything during the night.

Speaker 15 One thing seemed clear. The neighbors were terrified.

Speaker 8 Because no one in this community wants to think this was a random crime. Do we now lock our doors in Blairsville? Do we now get security systems in Blairsville? This is unheard of.

Speaker 8 Things like this don't happen here.

Speaker 15 Most of the neighbors could only tell police that John Yelnick was a nice guy. John's closest friends, like Dennis Vaughan, would agree.

Speaker 19 I met John in 1985. We were both attending the same college, and I was struck immediately by his personality.

Speaker 19 You always knew where John was at a function or at a party, usually because there was a crowd of people around him.

Speaker 15 Maggie McCartan met John later in life, but they had a lot in common.

Speaker 9 Anytime you were around him, it was he was making you laugh, he was making you smile. He had,

Speaker 9 he and I kind of shared that same affiliation for old TV. So, you know, we'd try to one-up each other on TV trivia.

Speaker 15 Was he kind of old school, given his choice in TV? And was he kind of old-fashioned?

Speaker 3 He was very old-fashioned.

Speaker 19 He literally was born too late in a lot of ways. All of his entertainment choices, movie, television, music, all tended to skew towards older things.

Speaker 3 And in his personal life, he was old school too.

Speaker 19 Did not own a cell phone. Up until the day he died, he didn't own one.

Speaker 15 John's friends became his family. And his real family? Well, that was pretty small.

Speaker 16 His father died when he was just months old in a tragic car accident.

Speaker 15 So for years, mom was his world.

Speaker 16 His mother doted on him.

Speaker 15 John was smart.

Speaker 16 John was very bright. Yes.
He was always on honor roll in high school, dean's list in college, and he wanted to be a dentist.

Speaker 19 And he did. He ended up being a partner with his own dentist later after he graduated, moved back to his

Speaker 19 small town of Blairsville.

Speaker 15 His partner was his childhood dentist, the guy who inspired him to go into family dentistry. And he really liked working with kids.
He loved working with kids. Working on kids' teeth.
Yes.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 19 And I think it was mutual. I think the kids enjoyed coming to see him, too.

Speaker 11 He would try to make me laugh to open my mouth to check my teeth, but, you know, sometimes it wouldn't work.

Speaker 15 Was he a good dentist?

Speaker 24 Yeah, he pulled out a tooth.

Speaker 11 I remember that day very vividly, and he gave me a toy out of the box.

Speaker 15 John Yelnick dated around for a few years, but when he was in his late 20s, he met the one. Michelle Kamler, and his life would never be the same.

Speaker 19 Michelle worked for a while as a Budweiser girl, going in a bathing suit around to bars, giving samples and things, getting her picture taken with the customers.

Speaker 19 He would tell his friends and people that he finally got the homecoming queen.

Speaker 15 Dr. Maria Takaleski met John in dental school and they stayed close.

Speaker 9 John had dated pretty girls in the past, but none that looked quite like Michelle. She was beautiful.

Speaker 9 That was the first thing he was taken with, that someone that was so pretty was interested in John.

Speaker 15 John brought her to Dennis's housewarming party.

Speaker 19 I think he was very proud walking around having her on his arm.

Speaker 15 Everyone at the party noticed John's new girlfriend, including Dennis' father.

Speaker 19 And he made the comment something along the lines of, John better watch out for this one.

Speaker 15 But John was moving full speed ahead. Michelle had two kids, which was fine with him.
He'd always dreamed of having a big family.

Speaker 15 And when John's mother fell ill with pancreatic cancer, Michelle dropped everything to take care of her in her final months. Michelle stepped up to the plate and helped John care for his mom.

Speaker 19 Yeah, Michelle pretty much provided full-time care for John's mother while she was sick and while he was tending to his dental practice. She was there most of the time caring for her daily needs.

Speaker 15 Michelle seemed to be everything John needed too. And in a matter of months, she had a two-carat diamond ring on her finger.

Speaker 16 Some friends felt that maybe that was a little too generous and that maybe he should have just got the smaller diamond.

Speaker 15 Hey, when you're in love, you're happy.

Speaker 20 You're in love.

Speaker 16 So they got the big ring and the tennis bracelets and all of the lovely things that the girls like.

Speaker 15 I'm sure he thought she was worth it. I'm sure.
Not too long after they met, Viva Las Vegas.

Speaker 16 Viva Las Vegas. Before any of us knew, they were planning to go to Las Vegas and get married.

Speaker 15 New Year's Eve. John's happy?

Speaker 16 John's happy.

Speaker 5 Yes. He got his homecoming queen

Speaker 20 and bride all in one package.

Speaker 16 So yes, John was on top of the world.

Speaker 15 John's new life as a husband and stepdad was just what he wanted. The one-time bachelor was now involved with school, sports, travel hockey.

Speaker 15 He even helped take Michelle's kids on road trips with the rest of their team.

Speaker 25 I'm out of here.

Speaker 15 There's Michelle. John's behind the camera.
Michelle, you wanted this light tape. But something was missing.

Speaker 19 He was happy as a stepfather, but at the end of the day, he just wasn't fully satisfied, I think, until he could have a child of his own. That was always something very important to him.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 so they tried.

Speaker 19 And finally, they made the decision then that they would just adopt and ultimately made a couple of trips to Russia that resulted in them one time coming home with a

Speaker 1 little baby boy.

Speaker 15 JJ, suddenly, all of John Yelnick's love and hopes were wrapped up in this little boy. How excited was John?

Speaker 19 John was thrilled.

Speaker 19 I'd never seen him that happy ever. And John was just beaming from ear to ear.
He was just so proud of

Speaker 19 this little boy.

Speaker 15 They bought a big house with a pool, a bar, and a hot tub. Life was rich and full for a while.

Speaker 15 But that wasn't the house where police were standing now. This was a small house where John Yelnick was killed.
What was the house telling you about the victim?

Speaker 12 As you walked through, it was very neat and orderly. After I went upstairs, you could see

Speaker 12 the recently renovated child's room with the new carpeting and paint, and you even had a TV with a video game set up to play.

Speaker 15 And there among the shards of glass and blood-soaked floorboards, police noticed something else.

Speaker 15 With Easter just three days away, there were Christmas presents still unopened. How had it come to this? What happened to John Yelnik's carefully crafted life?

Speaker 7 Coming up, a violent struggle.

Speaker 14 His head is pushed through this multi-paned glass arrangement on the right side of the door.

Speaker 7 What kind of clues would be left in the chaos?

Speaker 17 I needed any evidence that they may have collected, including the fingernails of John Yelnik.

Speaker 7 When dateline continues.

Speaker 4 Looking to crack the code on your career? Well, maybe it's time to get your degree. Southern New Hampshire University offers over 200 programs you can complete online.

Speaker 4 No set class times means you can do it all on your schedule. And with some of the lowest online tuition rates in the U.S., they make getting your degree affordable, too.

Speaker 4 Get started at SNHU.edu slash dateline. That's snhu.edu slash dateline.

Speaker 25 Most holiday gifts end up in a drawer or the back of your closet or accidentally left at your cousin's house. Not this one.
Mint Mobile is offering unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 25 That's their best deal of the year, aka a holiday gift you'll actually use every single day. Don't get them socks.
Get them premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 25 Shop Mint Unlimited plans at mintmobile.com slash dateline. That's mintmobile.com slash dateline.
Limited time offer. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for 6 months, or $180 for 12 months.

Speaker 25 Plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra.
Initial plan term only.

Speaker 25 Greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when the network is busy. Capable device required.
Availability, speed, and coverage vary.

Speaker 20 See Mintmobile.com.

Speaker 28 If you're a custodial supervisor at a local high school, you know that cleanliness is key and that the best place to get cleaning supplies is from Granger.

Speaker 28 Granger helps you stay fully stocked on the products you trust, from paper towels and disinfectants to floor scrubbers.

Speaker 28 Plus, you can rely on Granger for easy reordering so you never run out of what you need. Call 1-800GRANGER, clickgranger.com, or just stop by.
Granger for the ones who get it done.

Speaker 15 At first glance, the scene of Dr. John Yelnick's murder was all blood and chaos.
But investigators are trained to make sense of the chaos.

Speaker 15 And that's where a local legend, forensic pathologist, Dr. Cyril Wecht, entered the case.

Speaker 14 This case of Dr. Yelnick was certainly one of the most violent deaths I've seen.

Speaker 15 Dr. Wecht consulted on sensational cases from the Kennedy assassination to the murder of Jean Bonet Ramsey.

Speaker 15 He'd done more than 20,000 autopsies.

Speaker 15 And with his lab just minutes from Blairsville, the local coroner asked that he perform the autopsy on John Yelnick. Dr.
Wecht also decided to visit the murder scene.

Speaker 14 My own inspection of the death scene indicated that Dr. Yelnick had been injured already in the back part of the house.

Speaker 15 Dr. Wecht believed the assailant then chased John Yelnick through the house.

Speaker 14 It's a very mobile situation.

Speaker 14 You're fleeing from me and I'm chasing you and I'm inflicting injuries as you go along.

Speaker 15 Dr. Wecht explained why the window by the front door was broken and covered in blood.

Speaker 14 His head is pushed through this multi-paned glass arrangement on the right side of the door, looking at it from the inside.

Speaker 15 John Yelnik suffered massive, possibly fatal injuries to his neck when his head was pushed through the glass, but the attack wasn't over.

Speaker 4 Dr.

Speaker 14 Yelnick then finally fell to the ground, obviously, and his throat then was slashed.

Speaker 15 As a forensic scientist with more than 50 years experience, Dr. Wecht surmised the killer had to be strong and large enough to overwhelm the nearly six-foot-tall dentist and to slash him with a knife.

Speaker 14 The blade would have been maybe six inches or more and as I recall, I think a one-sided blade.

Speaker 15 That was the story of John Yelnick's death. Over in Blairsville, the crime scene was also telling a story about his life.

Speaker 12 In the living room, there were papers and maybe TV guide and magazines.

Speaker 15 There was something on the table that was very important, very telling to what this victim was going through.

Speaker 17 Yeah, the divorce papers were on the coffee table, and they were covered in blood also.

Speaker 15 John Yelnick was literally about to get divorced. Like when

Speaker 17 it was the next day.

Speaker 15 Hours.

Speaker 17 Yes, he was to sign the papers the next day.

Speaker 15 John Yelnick's dreams of a Brady Bunch family had fallen apart. He and his wife, Michelle, were in the process of divorcing.

Speaker 15 After they cashed in the house, John moved to this modest home and set Michelle up here with the kids. That's where Janelle Lydick sent an officer to break the news to Michelle.

Speaker 15 John shares a son, JJ, with his estranged wife, Michelle. Was it imperative that you notify her right away about the death?

Speaker 17 They were still married, so she would be the next of kin and the person we had to notify.

Speaker 15 Michelle was living in her new place with a new boyfriend, a Pennsylvania state trooper. They'd been together for nearly two years.

Speaker 15 How did you feel about her dating a state trooper?

Speaker 16 When I first heard it and I knew that she and John were headed for a divorce, I thought, you know what, couldn't be any better role model or better influence on John's son or on Michelle's children.

Speaker 15 JJ and the older two were in bed by the time police arrived at Michelle's home. She had already heard that John had died, but told police she heard it was a heart attack.

Speaker 15 They let her know he was murdered. John's friends got the news the next day.

Speaker 19 I was picking up my children for the weekend. It was Easter weekend, and I saw a lot of missed messages, texts, and voicemails.

Speaker 19 So I listened to one of the voicemails, and it was just somebody sobbing.

Speaker 15 Who was it? Who had left a message?

Speaker 5 John's neighbor.

Speaker 19 What did she tell you? She said that John was dead.

Speaker 15 Maria was home with her family.

Speaker 20 Her husband took the call.

Speaker 9 And I remember just looking at him and saying, no.

Speaker 9 And I started pleading to God, please don't let him have been killed. Please don't let him have been killed.
And I fell to the floor and just sobbed.

Speaker 15 Back in his forensic lab, Cyril Wecht was saving blood samples, tissue. He collected photos and clipped Yelnick's fingernails, along with the precious DNA that might be underneath them.

Speaker 15 You sent one of your officers to the autopsy of John Yelnik? I did. Why did you want someone to be there?

Speaker 17 I needed any evidence that they may have collected, including the fingernails of John Yelnik.

Speaker 15 That's when she did something unusual. Officer Lydick stashed them in the evidence fridge at police headquarters instead of immediately sending them to the state police lab.

Speaker 15 This may have been her first homicide investigation, but her instincts were telling her, protect the evidence and move very carefully.

Speaker 7 Coming up.

Speaker 8 Neighbor after neighbor told us we needed to hone in on the next door neighbors.

Speaker 7 What was going on next door?

Speaker 15 So you just straight up asked her, were you having an affair with John Yelnick? Yes.

Speaker 15 Funerals are never easy. John Yelnick's was particularly grim.

Speaker 9 John was wearing a turtleneck in the casket and when I went early the next morning, I moved the turtleneck down and saw the slash

Speaker 9 where his head was almost severed. John never wore a turtleneck in his life, but it was the only way to cover up how he died.

Speaker 19 It was an emotional roller coaster in a lot of ways, but it was also an opportunity to get together and share John's stories.

Speaker 15 Tears and memories. Now it was time for friends to talk to the police.

Speaker 19 The morning after I was at the police station and was questioned

Speaker 19 because I was one of the last people at his house just just a few days earlier.

Speaker 15 Did they have to look at you as someone they needed to eliminate? Yes.

Speaker 19 Yeah, so they asked a lot of questions of me and my relationship with John and things of that.

Speaker 15 The Blairsville police spent a lot of time speaking with John's friends, neighbors, and even drinking buddies, establishing alibis and checking out shoe sizes to compare against the bloody prints left in the house.

Speaker 15 They already knew the prints didn't belong to Zach, the boy who found the body. Were you certain that those footprints were the killers?

Speaker 17 They had to be. I don't know who else it could have been.
It had to be.

Speaker 15 So find out who belongs to the footprints and you'll probably find your killer. It's a big clue.

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 15 They started with the neighbors. And in this town, where everyone knows everyone, police learned a lot.

Speaker 15 Your officers are told that there was some commotion or some noise at 1.30 in the morning.

Speaker 29 Right.

Speaker 15 According to Jennifer Mealy, one neighbor said the sound was just awful.

Speaker 8 So, you have one neighbor who hears what he believes to be a pig squealing in the early morning hours of the murder.

Speaker 15 Another neighbor heard what sounded like an argument, a man yelling something specific.

Speaker 17 I'll never loan you money again.

Speaker 15 The neighbor across the street is hearing someone say, I'll never loan you money again.

Speaker 17 Correct.

Speaker 15 Interesting, since they're among John Yelnick's papers, police found a blood-spattered check from Zachary's mother, Melissa Use, who lived next door.

Speaker 8 Neighbor after neighbor told us we needed to hone in on the next-door neighbors. The next door neighbors had the biggest connection to John Yelnick.

Speaker 15 Did John ever talk to you about Melissa Use?

Speaker 16 No, no, I knew that they went to high school together, and I knew that Melissa was wanting to open a bakery. And I knew John being John, he didn't care about money at all.

Speaker 16 And so he was giving, loaning her money to start up a bakery in Blairsville.

Speaker 15 $15,000?

Speaker 16 Yes, $15,000.

Speaker 15 Melissa's married.

Speaker 16 Melissa's married.

Speaker 15 But rumors

Speaker 15 start up that John and Melissa are having a fling.

Speaker 16 I never heard those rumors until after the murder

Speaker 16 that there was people were seeing them on the porch or that there was, you know, neighbors paying attention and thought that something was going on because her husband was in the Navy and he would be gone for periods of time.

Speaker 15 If the rumors of an affair were true, police had to consider the possibility that Tom Yuse, Melissa's husband, and the father of the boy who found the body, was involved in the crime.

Speaker 15 That must have really bothered you, that the fact that that wasn't.

Speaker 5 John would never do that.

Speaker 11 John was never that kind of person. He would never do that to somebody.

Speaker 11 And, you know, my mom was like family to him.

Speaker 15 Was that something that you had to look at closely? Yes.

Speaker 17 I had to look at everything.

Speaker 15 How do you go about that?

Speaker 29 What's your strategy? I was bold.

Speaker 15 So you just straight up asked her, were you having an affair with John Yelnick? Yes. What did she say?

Speaker 17 No. We're just really good friends for a long time.

Speaker 15 Did you believe her?

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 15 Lydick also spoke with Tom Yous. And did he think that they were having an affair, his wife and John?

Speaker 17 He wouldn't answer the question directly.

Speaker 15 That's kind of strange.

Speaker 17 He kept saying about, I have to take care of the kids.

Speaker 15 Officer Lydick decided to keep Tom Youse on her list of possible suspects. Not that they were sharing this information with anyone.
The police were playing this case pretty close to the vest.

Speaker 29 When

Speaker 8 a murder investigation in a rural community begins,

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 8 release of information often comes in drips.

Speaker 8 So it wasn't a big city murder, so it wasn't a big city press conference about what happened.

Speaker 15 But at one point, the police did offer information to calm the public's fear.

Speaker 19 And I think the first press information, if I'm not mistaken, locally in Blairsville was a statement from the chief of police in Blairsville saying that the people of Blairsville shouldn't be worried.

Speaker 19 This is an isolated incident. And so I took that to mean, okay, they know that John was targeted, so they must know more.

Speaker 15 Did police know enough that they were about to catch a killer? Not in this case. Not even close.

Speaker 31 Coming up.

Speaker 32 She goes, I need you girls to help me.

Speaker 7 Enter the investigators from another realm.

Speaker 15 Psychics come into this?

Speaker 16 Yes, because we were so looking for clues, leads.

Speaker 7 When dateline continues.

Speaker 15 The people who lived on John Yelnick's quiet little street were startled awake by the sound of yelling, even screaming, on the night of the murder. And one of the neighbors heard a kind of argument.

Speaker 8 Someone yelled, I will never loan you money again.

Speaker 15 John Yelnick may have loaned money to Zach's parents, but police learned he also loaned money to a number of people. One of them was a cousin, Tracy Jacobs.
All right, Tracy Jacobs.

Speaker 15 Someone else you looked at. Why?

Speaker 17 He also borrowed money. He wanted to start a lawn mowing business or lawn care business.

Speaker 15 He borrowed $20,000, to be exact.

Speaker 17 I didn't know anything about him, so I wanted to find out more about him and try to find out if it's a possibility.

Speaker 15 Jacobs told police John had never asked him to pay back the money, and police couldn't find evidence of any bad blood there. Did you have him take a polygraph? I did.
And?

Speaker 17 He came back clear. He passed.

Speaker 15 So no, Tracy Jacobs. Police questioned other people with financial ties to John Yelnick, including his business partner.
Turns out they were talking about splitting up the practice.

Speaker 20 What happened there?

Speaker 17 We looked into him only because he was trying to get out of the partnership.

Speaker 15 In the end, police cleared the business partner, but suspicions about Tom use seemed to linger. Had it gotten out around town at school that your dad was being looked at?

Speaker 11 Yeah, at school, actually. Kids would tell me all the time,

Speaker 11 you know, we heard your dad did it. And I would tell them, like, he did not do it.
He did not do it. You know, like, where did you even hear that?

Speaker 11 And,

Speaker 11 you know, they're like, oh, my parents said it, or, you know, the TV said it, or, you know, they said that he was a suspect or whatever.

Speaker 15 It must have really hurt.

Speaker 11 It did. It hurt a lot.

Speaker 15 Melissa was worried about the toll this was taking on her family. So she launched a very different kind of investigation.
Your mom had the

Speaker 15 medium psychic sisters come over to help out.

Speaker 15 Meet Suzanne and Jean Vincent, Pittsburgh's psychic sisters. How did you get involved in this case?

Speaker 32 We got involved in this case when we went up to a psychic tea party.

Speaker 15 Melissa Use attended that tea party and the sisters say they sensed her fear and despair. The police were looking at her husband Tom as a suspect or a person of interest.

Speaker 34 She could not sleep. She was very fearful.
The kids were fearful. The whole family was, a murder, a bloody murder was right next door to their house.

Speaker 15 Melissa was so desperate to clear her husband's name, she asked the sisters for help.

Speaker 32 And she goes, I need you girls to come back and help me. Would you please come back to Blairsville and do a walkthrough through John Yelnick's house? And we said that we would.

Speaker 15 Psychics come into this?

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 16 You know, at the time,

Speaker 16 because we were so looking for clues, leads, you know, you bring in whoever might help in that area.

Speaker 15 As they walked through the house and yard, they reported feeling warm spots, cool spots. And they said they saw a black SUV and a woman with dark hair, among other things.

Speaker 32 As we were going through the house, we had a flash of dog tags. And then we had a flash that this person was in the military as we were walking through the house.

Speaker 15 The psychics later made a few more visits. Eventually, the media took an interest.
Even the police came along to hear what the sisters had to say.

Speaker 15 What's happening in that house as you're all going through the house with these psychic sisters?

Speaker 17 I just kind of followed along and in the back of my mind saying, really?

Speaker 15 I guess the question really is,

Speaker 15 at this point, were you becoming a little bit desperate or frustrated? So maybe, maybe they could shed some light on it?

Speaker 17 No, I was more upset with the family pushing it to get get things done when I still had more work to do.

Speaker 15 So you were kind of placating them? That like, here, I'll do this for you.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I figured it couldn't hurt and I had the time and I'm like, okay, let's go down. Let's what they have to say.

Speaker 15 Did you learn anything from them?

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 15 Did you feel like they were helping from what you were hearing?

Speaker 16 Let's say what didn't learn anything new.

Speaker 15 The psychics told Melissa they could see that her husband had nothing to do with the murder. The police were already coming to that conclusion.
For one, he had the wrong shoe size.

Speaker 17 He has like a size 13 shoe or something like that. Huge shoe.
And their footprints were not anywhere near that.

Speaker 15 Police also learned that Tom Youth had a good relationship with John Yelnick. And when he passed a polygraph, he was taken off the list.

Speaker 15 So as neighbors, friends, and distant relatives fell off the radar, police started to home in on someone else.

Speaker 31 Coming up.

Speaker 15 What did you learn about John and Michelle's marriage?

Speaker 17 It wasn't good.

Speaker 7 Stunning moments from a stormy marriage.

Speaker 19 Michelle started yelling, screaming at him. How dare you? You need to get out.

Speaker 9 The cops came to his dental office and arrested him.

Speaker 27 Finding the music you love shouldn't be hard. That's why Pandora makes it easy to explore all your favorites and discover new artists and genres you'll love.

Speaker 27 Enjoy a personalized listening experience simply by selecting any song or album and we'll make a station crafted just for you.

Speaker 5 Best of all, you can listen for free.

Speaker 27 Download Pandora on the Apple App Store or Google Play and start hearing the soundtrack to your life.

Speaker 35 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 38 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 39 Zen is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 26 Plus, Zen offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 40 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

Speaker 39 Check out Zin.com slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 42 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 37 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, Ondeck's loans up to $250,000 help make it happen fast.

Speaker 37 Rated A-plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star trust pilot reviews, ONDEC delivers funding you can count on.

Speaker 35 Apply in minutes at on deck.com.

Speaker 43 Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by ONDAC or Celtic Bank. ONDAC does not lend in North Dakota, all loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

Speaker 15 Blairsville police officer Janelle Lydick worked around the clock chasing down leads in the brutal slang of John Yelnick.

Speaker 15 You really cast a wide net looking for suspects.

Speaker 17 I did, because at that point, the neighbors could have been suspects. Anybody was.

Speaker 15 It was hard not to take the murder personally. You live just a few blocks from John Yelnick.

Speaker 17 I live three blocks away from him.

Speaker 15 So this murder happened in your backyard?

Speaker 17 And it happened two doors down from my kids' best friends,

Speaker 17 where they would stay or play.

Speaker 17 So I was not comfortable in letting my kids go there anymore for a while.

Speaker 15 Even more recent, Lydick was keen to make an arrest and quickly. Still, she believed this was no random killing.

Speaker 15 The more people she talked to, the more Lydek suspected John's marriage had something to do with it. What did you learn about John and Michelle's marriage?

Speaker 17 It wasn't good almost the whole way through.

Speaker 19 I've often wondered at the end of the day when everybody else was gone and it was just John and Michelle sitting in the house after the kids went to bed, what would they talk about?

Speaker 15 Did he confide in you about his relationship?

Speaker 19 Over time, he started to open up to me more and more and expressing to me that he was unhappy.

Speaker 15 They were just so different.

Speaker 15 Dennis says Michelle enjoyed showing off her big house with the pool and its hot tub and wine cellar. John seemed embarrassed by it and told Dennis his favorite room was in the basement.

Speaker 19 Of all things, it was the furnace room. This tiny little, wasn't much bigger than a closet.
He said, you know, this is really the only place in this whole house that I feel comfortable.

Speaker 19 The furnace room. The furnace room.
This dark, dingy, spider webby

Speaker 3 room.

Speaker 15 But that's what I say to you.

Speaker 5 It broke my heart.

Speaker 15 Maria says it was obvious Michelle just wasn't that into John.

Speaker 9 John was affectionate toward Michelle, but I never saw Michelle be affectionate back to John.

Speaker 9 She always seemed distant or almost put off by him. It was always like,

Speaker 9 or, you know,

Speaker 9 he was just there.

Speaker 15 Four years after their quickie wedding in Las Vegas, the marriage imploded. What was causing this battle to brew?

Speaker 19 The biggest event that I'm aware of from what John shared with me was when Michelle came to John and said that she had been involved in an extramarital affair.

Speaker 10 That'll do it.

Speaker 15 John had a confession, too. He told Michelle he'd had a brief fling with someone in his office.

Speaker 19 According to John, Michelle basically lost it,

Speaker 19 started yelling, screaming at him, how dare you have an affair.

Speaker 15 Even though she had one.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 19 And at that point, she said, we're going to get a divorce. You need to get out.

Speaker 15 So he did. The day John moved out was the day Maggie McCartan met him for the first time.
Her boyfriend was John's close pal, and they went to help him pack up.

Speaker 9 I felt terrible for him, and I felt very bad for JJ.

Speaker 9 Both were incredibly sad.

Speaker 15 Maggie says Michelle seemed anything but.

Speaker 9 She talked a lot about the fact that

Speaker 9 she was seeing someone else, that he was great in bed, that he had a lot of money and was buying her all these presents, saying this to someone she just met.

Speaker 15 You're a stranger to her.

Speaker 9 A stranger to her and in front of her little boy.

Speaker 15 After the split, John moved into that modest house in Blairsville. He saw JJ whenever he could.

Speaker 9 He'd go to the amusement park. He would take him to movies.
He would take him on trips. Anything that JJ really wanted to do, John was up for.

Speaker 3 He was an awesome dad.

Speaker 11 JJ loved him.

Speaker 15 Which is why what happened next shocked everyone. A year and a half after they first separated, Michelle accused John of child abuse.
choking the five-year-old and punching him in the face.

Speaker 15 Maggie said it couldn't be true. So you and your boyfriend were with John the weekend that he is accused of choking his son.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Did you see anything that would suggest that that could be true?

Speaker 9 Never. I never saw him raise a hand to that boy, much less a voice.
He was just not that type of person. He was a very gentle, loving father.

Speaker 15 A judge ordered John to stay away from JJ and Michelle. Not long after, Michelle reported John for violating the order.

Speaker 9 The cops came to his dental office and arrested him and kind of took him out the back.

Speaker 9 And try as he might, because he did try to keep his sense of humor about it. He called me and said, hey, I was just in the clink.

Speaker 9 You know, they hauled me away in silver bracelets trying to make light of it. But I knew that that for him was a turning point.

Speaker 15 John denied everything, but after months away from JJ, agreed to take anger management classes so he could see him again. He also got himself a hotshot divorce attorney.

Speaker 15 When Michelle tried to stop John from taking JJ on a trip to Disney World, Effie Alexander was ready to fight for him in court.

Speaker 18 Coincidentally, John's son went to the same school as the judge's children.

Speaker 18 So every excuse that Michelle threw at the court as to why he shouldn't go, the judge literally picked up the phone and called the principal. during the hearing.

Speaker 18 And it was all, it wasn't true that he can't miss school, that they have a policy, that he'll get behind behind in homework. He was six years old.
He was in first grade.

Speaker 15 The judge said JJ could go, and that's when things got weird.

Speaker 9 John calls me and says, hey, I went to pick up JJ

Speaker 9 for this trip, and his head was shaved.

Speaker 15 Did he have a theory about

Speaker 15 why this was happening?

Speaker 9 No, other than I think just he thought, at least what he shared with me, was she shaved his head so that, you know, he'd look like a prisoner in these pictures.

Speaker 15 John's John's friends say the father and son had a great time on the trip, but there was something that upset John. Hearing JJ talk about Michelle's boyfriend, the state trooper.

Speaker 9 If he was mad at John, he'd say, well, I'm just going to go and trooper's my daddy or not my daddy anymore.

Speaker 15 JJ wasn't the only issue John and Michelle were battling over. They were bickering over money, too.
John's receptionist later told police Michelle made angry calls to the dentist asking for money.

Speaker 15 Maggie, Maggie, you talk about John almost being a hostage.

Speaker 9 Absolutely. She'd call and, you know, scream at the

Speaker 9 young ladies who worked in his dental office. And I think he was just so embarrassed and mortified, he just kept giving her more and more to try to

Speaker 9 appease her.

Speaker 15 A less than attractive portrait of the beautiful Michelle was coming together for police as they talked to some of the people who knew her.

Speaker 17 She was money hungry.

Speaker 17 That's That's the very first thing I heard about her.

Speaker 20 Gold digger?

Speaker 17 Gold digger.

Speaker 15 Which made the investigator wonder, Michelle was the beneficiary of John's will and his million-dollar life insurance policy. Of everyone around John, maybe she had the most to gain from his death.

Speaker 31 Coming up.

Speaker 9 He was sobbing, and he said, I don't know if I'll ever see my son again.

Speaker 7 An explosive new front in the battle with Michelle. And later, concern grows.
Would John's killer be caught?

Speaker 16 Something's not going well here. There's just no reason for this to take so long.
This had the whole town just uneasy.

Speaker 7 When dateline continues.

Speaker 7 Continuing with our story. Small town dentist John Yelnick has been murdered in his own home.

Speaker 11 I saw John laying right there.

Speaker 8 I still remember being taken back.

Speaker 7 He had fought fiercely for his life and we're about to learn he had also feared his death.

Speaker 18 He wanted to send me $10,000 to investigate his murder because he was convinced that he was going to be killed.

Speaker 7 A chilling premonition that had come true. Could police catch this killer?

Speaker 16 Something's not right. Something's not going well here.

Speaker 7 Doubts creep in about the investigation.

Speaker 15 To the family, to even people watching this, they'll say, that's Detective 101.

Speaker 17 He probably was one step ahead of me every time.

Speaker 7 Here again, Andrea Canning.

Speaker 15 The poison in John and Michelle's broken marriage had never been more obvious to John's cousin, Mary Ann, than on the day of his funeral. Did Michelle come to the funeral?

Speaker 16 No, Michelle did not come. Did she get the flower? Did you talk to her?

Speaker 15 Did she give a reason? Nothing. Did his son come?

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 16 The funeral director told marianne that michelle who was still john's next of kin hadn't wanted anything to do with the body you know how do you dismiss a human being much less you know your husband and the father of your child and say you don't care what happened what they do with the body

Speaker 15 john's friends and family told investigator lydick how ugly the divorce had been the incessant wrangling over money and little jj

Speaker 15 and then things got worse the accusations

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 15 It was an explosive allegation. A year before the murder, Michelle said John sexually abused JJ.

Speaker 15 She reported that to the Pennsylvania State Police. Six-year-old JJ told investigators a story that backed up his mother's allegations.

Speaker 15 People might wonder how a boy that young could come up with stories like that if they weren't true. Why would he tell stories like that?

Speaker 16 Right. I don't know.
A boy that age shouldn't,

Speaker 16 unless unless he's being coached home or being told what to say.

Speaker 15 John was ordered yet again to stay away from JJ and was summoned to the trooper barracks to explain himself. Dr.

Speaker 33 Jonik seemed like a nice guy. He seemed pretty mob-mannered.
I mean, he wasn't jumping up and down screaming or anything.

Speaker 15 Retired trooper Jeff Whitmer spent 15 years as a criminal investigator. He sat in on the interview as John denied everything.

Speaker 33 He was calm. He really was.
And like I said, I think he really wanted to at least help us get to the bottom of things.

Speaker 15 John agreed to take a polygraph and passed. No criminal charges were ever filed.

Speaker 15 But it was up to a judge to say whether John could see JJ again. His divorce attorney showed the judge what she considered to be proof the abuse never happened.

Speaker 15 A home video John had made the day he was supposed to have molested JJ.

Speaker 18 The video showed that JJ loved this day with his dad. He smiled and was so happy.
And at the end, he turned around and said, I don't want to go home, Daddy. I love you.
I had so much fun.

Speaker 18 And he looked right into the camera and said it.

Speaker 15 The judge also spoke to JJ in her chambers. That day in chambers, did John's son actually say, you know what, it didn't happen?

Speaker 18 No, John's son didn't say it didn't happen.

Speaker 15 So he kept saying it was happen that it happened.

Speaker 18 He repeated what was alleged repeatedly.

Speaker 15 And she just wasn't buying it.

Speaker 18 She wasn't buying it. And no judge that has experience with those types of allegations would have bought it.
It just sounded too rehearsed and too coached.

Speaker 15 The judge made a finding that there had been no abuse and dismissed the court order preventing John from seeing his son. How happy was John?

Speaker 18 John was so happy, but he was also leery that, you know, I won the battle, but I'll never win the war because I know Michelle.

Speaker 15 It's not over.

Speaker 18 It's not over.

Speaker 15 Michelle denied ever coaching JJ. But John's friends were sure she had fed him the story as a way to hurt John during their bitter divorce.

Speaker 9 This was a way of her manipulating him to give her whatever she wanted in the divorce. She was using a child as a pawn in this game of

Speaker 25 money.

Speaker 15 After so long a part, John was excited to pick up JJ for a Thanksgiving visit. Zach went with him.
It didn't go well.

Speaker 15 What happened during this pickup?

Speaker 11 So JJ was deathly afraid.

Speaker 4 Blake was screaming, kicking, hooting, hollering.

Speaker 11 Michelle was, you know, saying, oh, you're scaring him, you're scaring him.

Speaker 9 John called me and never heard him crying like this. He was sobbing.
And he said, I, I don't know if I'll ever see my son again.

Speaker 15 So this was irreversible damage, it must have felt like.

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 15 Because how do you, how do you turn that ship around?

Speaker 9 You can't.

Speaker 9 You can't.

Speaker 15 John was defeated. JJ didn't visit him for Christmas that year.
Those presents police found in John's house after the murder were JJ's, unopened, still waiting for him.

Speaker 15 Friends say after the failed reunion, John wanted the divorce negotiations done so he could focus on repairing his relationship with JJ.

Speaker 15 In January 2006, John and Michelle finally reached an agreement. Michelle would get 60% of their assets and they'd share custody of JJ.

Speaker 15 That must have felt good in this this ongoing saga.

Speaker 18 It was a relief only because I felt we had been very generous towards Michelle. I felt that the deal was fair.

Speaker 15 But Michelle seemed to get cold feet. During the separation, John had been paying her spousal support amounting to $2,500 a month.
The divorce agreement cut that off. Michelle wasn't happy about it.

Speaker 18 She had her attorney call me. That didn't work.
She had other people talk to John. That didn't work.

Speaker 18 But she knew what had been fail-proof in the past when she called john and asked for money he always gave it to her so she resorted to that she resorted to it but this time it didn't work well he held his ground at my advice

Speaker 15 not long after someone vandalized john's car

Speaker 15 John's divorce attorney says this incident sparked John's extraordinary premonition about his own murder.

Speaker 18 John called me one day shortly after his his car had been vandalized and he just really blew me away.

Speaker 18 He told me that he wanted to send me $10,000 to hold to investigate his murder because he was convinced that he was going to be killed and that his murder would be covered up and that the evidence would be buried along with him and that it would go unsolved.

Speaker 15 That's one of the craziest things. I've heard in this job.
Predicting your own murder and wanting to set aside money for the investigation. That's almost a ridiculous plot line.

Speaker 18 It's almost like he was writing a story about his life. Yes, it was so chilling.

Speaker 7 Coming up, a suspect gets a closer look.

Speaker 19 He would stand over John in a menacing manner.

Speaker 7 And new questions about the police investigation.

Speaker 9 I thought, are you smoking something? Because this does not make any sense.

Speaker 27 Pandora makes it easy for you to find your favorite music, discover new artists and genres by selecting any song or album and will make you a personalized station for free.

Speaker 27 Download on the Apple App Store or Google Play and enjoy the soundtrack to your life.

Speaker 35 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 38 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 39 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 26 Plus, Zen offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 40 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

Speaker 42 Check out zinn.com slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 42 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 44 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, Ondeck's loans up to $250,000 help make it happen fast.

Speaker 44 Rated A-plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star trust pilot reviews, ONDEC delivers funding you can count on.

Speaker 44 Apply in minutes at on deck.com depending on certain loan attributes your business loan may be issued by on deck or celtic bank on deck does not lend in north dakota all loans and amount subject to lender approval

Speaker 15 john yelnick's divorce papers had been found by crime scene investigators just a few feet from his body He'd been planning to sign them that day and finally be free of his toxic marriage.

Speaker 18 They were blood splattered. They were sitting sitting on his table.

Speaker 15 I mean, that's such a just an eerie visual, you know, to think of the divorce papers with blood on them from this murder. Literally.

Speaker 18 Literally. Like the blood was on the papers that he was to sign to finalize his divorce.

Speaker 15 John's friends were sure his divorce battle with his estranged wife, Michelle, had something to do with his death. They got together after his funeral to swap theories.

Speaker 15 So is everyone kind of on the same page, their friends, about who could have done this?

Speaker 9 I don't think there was anybody who came up with an alternate theory. If they did,

Speaker 9 they didn't voice it at that time.

Speaker 15 And that theory focused not so much on Michelle, but rather her boyfriend, Kevin Foley, who happened to be a Pennsylvania state trooper.

Speaker 15 John told friends Trooper Foley didn't seem to like him one bit.

Speaker 19 John would go to pick up or drop off JJ,

Speaker 19 and from what John described, he would stand over John in a menacing manner or stand out on the porch with his arms crossed and stare John down, things like that.

Speaker 15 After Michelle accused John of abusing JJ, he told friends the trooper got even more aggressive, making verbal threats. Maria says John was scared.

Speaker 9 I said, John, we have to do something. I'm coming out to Blairsville and we're going to go see the police.
And he said, Maria, what police can we go see?

Speaker 9 We can't go to the Blairsville Police Department. They hauled me out of my office.
We can't go to the state police because Foley's one of them. He said, we don't have anyone to go to.

Speaker 15 Other friends say they found it hard to believe that a state trooper sworn to protect people and uphold the law could be a danger.

Speaker 16 My mom would call and say, like, John's still being bothered. And my response out of being so naive, I don't know what the word is, was always, State police don't do that.

Speaker 15 Now John was dead, and Marianne was one of nearly 10 people who told the Blairsville police that Trooper Foley should be their number one suspect.

Speaker 19 We thought that that message had been received loud and clear because we spoke with law enforcement, anybody who would listen.

Speaker 18 We were giving them all the information we had. I gave them the

Speaker 18 memo that I had put in the file after John had offered to pay $10,000 to investigate his murder because that was the best I could do.

Speaker 15 In the small town of Blairsville, where local and state police often crossed paths, Trooper Foley was no stranger to police officer Janelle Lydick.

Speaker 17 He was a criminal investigator.

Speaker 15 So in a normal world, after this murder happened, Kevin Foley potentially could have been called to aid in the investigation.

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 15 That's irony.

Speaker 17 That's why it was so difficult.

Speaker 15 Lydick says the trooper was already on her list of suspects, thanks to a patrol officer who'd seen him with Michelle after the murder.

Speaker 17 She said that Foley had a mark on his forehead, and she asked how he got that. And he said he just came back from hockey and got hurt in hockey.

Speaker 15 Did it seem like a plausible explanation, given that he plays hockey?

Speaker 20 I don't know.

Speaker 17 It threw up a little bit of red flag.

Speaker 15 Lydic listened to the friend's stories about Foley with interest. But because of who Foley was and the pressure she says she was under, she made an unusual decision.

Speaker 15 Before she zeroed in on Foley, she says she wanted to eliminate everyone else first.

Speaker 17 I went backwards from the way I think that most people do it. I looked at everybody it could possibly have been first.
I wanted to make sure that nobody else could have possibly have done it.

Speaker 15 You went from the outside in. Correct.

Speaker 15 When John's friends called police to ask for status updates, they heard the same thing. We're looking at this case outside in.
Did that make sense to you?

Speaker 9 Not at all.

Speaker 9 I thought, are you smoking something because this is does not make any sense you start with and see where the case leads you i mean you don't have to watch cop shows to realize that's the way it's done and yet they told you it's not like you see on tv right that's the line many many times it does seem outrageous that this person is not being looked at closer and they want to make me or friends feel like we're expecting the impossible

Speaker 16 Why is that so impossible to do?

Speaker 16 Why is that expecting too much?

Speaker 17 I know they wanted me to go up and arrest Foley right away. And it's like, you can't do that.
You just can't walk up and arrest somebody when you have the possibility of it could not be him.

Speaker 15 At the end of the day, Lydic admits it was hard to think of Foley as a killer. In the past, she trusted him with her life.

Speaker 17 I've worked with him, you know, on other cases. He's been my backup.
You know, I let him behind me with a gun, and I was okay with that. I was safe.
And so I guess I didn't want to believe that.

Speaker 15 Remember, before he was killed, John had predicted his murder would go unsolved. Now, his friends and family worried he was right.

Speaker 7 Coming up, what was going on inside the investigation?

Speaker 15 That's a real head snapper.

Speaker 15 The district attorney telling you not to interview someone who had a real issue with John Yelnick. Did you feel like it was wrong? Yes.

Speaker 7 When dateline continues.

Speaker 15 Those close to John Yelnick thought his murder should be easy to solve. They told police on day one, the prime suspect should be Michelle's boyfriend, state trooper Kevin Foley.

Speaker 9 We'd all take turns calling the police. What's the status? What's going on? Why haven't anything happened?

Speaker 15 Did you quickly start to have an uneasy feeling about

Speaker 15 the thoroughness of this investigation?

Speaker 16 Yes, almost instantly. Like something's not right.
Something's not going well here because there's just no reason for this to take so long.

Speaker 15 Marianne Clark seethed. Michelle had custody of JJ and was living with the trooper.

Speaker 16 We'd be hearing all the stories about Kevin and Michelle adopting another child and just going on with life as though, you know, nothing's wrong.

Speaker 15 Trooper Whitmer worked in the same state police barracks as Kevin Foley. He agreed with the family that Foley should have been looked at harder right away.

Speaker 15 He says Foley didn't hide his dislike of the dentist.

Speaker 33 You know, he'd come into work, he'd be venting, you know, like talking about John did this or John won't do that.

Speaker 15 Whitmer was dispatched to the crime scene within hours of John's body being found and says colleagues were already talking about Kevin Foley.

Speaker 33 A couple people were coming up to me

Speaker 33 and like making references to Kevin. Like,

Speaker 33 boy, where was Kevin last night? I hope he had an alibi last night, that type of thing, you know, kind of gallows humor type thing.

Speaker 15 Foley was put on desk duty back at the barracks. Whitmer says it made for an awkward working environment.

Speaker 33 We were told informally not to talk to Kevin about. the homicide or the investigation.
There wasn't anything in writing, but the word was out. Don't bring it up to him.
Don't talk to him about it.

Speaker 15 When an an investigator went to the barracks to interview troopers about what they knew, Officer Lydick says they didn't say much.

Speaker 17 They may have not lied, but I don't think they gave us everything.

Speaker 15 Is there that kind of code of silence with some of them, like protect the brother at all costs kind of thing?

Speaker 17 Yeah, and I think, in my eyes, I think that's what the family thought I was doing, too.

Speaker 15 Does the same thin blue line apply here?

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 15 Trooper Whitmer believes it was complicated, but not corrupt.

Speaker 33 There is a reluctance to think the worst about someone, you know, especially someone you work with. You know, because, you know, if you're wrong, you still got to work with this person.

Speaker 15 Lydick says from the beginning, she felt in over her head, and she worried what her fellow officers would think of her. How intimidating was it to be investigating a state trooper?

Speaker 17 Very.

Speaker 17 Because I had probably 50% of them like, how could you possibly do this?

Speaker 17 How could you investigate one of your own?

Speaker 15 Lydic says she and her chief hesitated to send a key piece of evidence to the state crime lab. John's fingernail clippings.

Speaker 15 You just, you wanted to be extremely careful about who was handling your evidence.

Speaker 17 Correct.

Speaker 15 And something else that didn't happen, something big,

Speaker 15 a formal interview with Kevin Foley. I think to the family, to even people watching this, that they'll say,

Speaker 15 you know,

Speaker 15 that's detective 101 interview the strange spouse and her and her new boyfriend especially when there was feuding going on this was a bitter divorce battle but he's a state trooper it's not like i could walk up to him and he knew it he knew what i was planning he he probably was one step ahead of me every time but why not even try

Speaker 15 that first day to interview them I don't know.

Speaker 17 I don't know why we didn't do that. I didn't because I was with the scene.
I was there for 24 hours.

Speaker 15 Lydick says the decision to not interview Foley right away wasn't her call. It was the decision of then district attorney Bob Bell.

Speaker 15 I mean, that's a real head snapper.

Speaker 15 The district attorney telling you not to interview someone who had a real issue with John Yelnick.

Speaker 17 I don't know his reasoning behind it. I didn't ever ask.

Speaker 15 Did you push back at all?

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 17 He was a district attorney. He was there for years.
He knew.

Speaker 17 Hopefully he knew what he was doing.

Speaker 15 Did you feel like it was wrong?

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 15 The DA, Bob Bell, knew there were suspicions about Foley right away. Foley's supervisor in the state police called the DA that night as soon as he heard about the murder.

Speaker 15 telling him to get a search warrant for Foley's house.

Speaker 15 But he didn't. John's family and friends wondered if DA Bell was giving the trooper special treatment.

Speaker 15 So you asked the DA

Speaker 15 what his relationship was with Trooper Foley.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I just finally raised the question with him.

Speaker 19 Have you worked with Kevin Foley before in cases? Do you have a relationship with him? And he said, no, I don't know.

Speaker 15 Mary Ann says she heard the same thing when she spoke to Bell at the crime scene.

Speaker 16 I told him that we felt strongly that Kevin Foley was behind it. And his reaction was,

Speaker 16 do we have a state trooper named Kevin Foley?

Speaker 15 But Bell did know Foley. They'd worked cases together.

Speaker 15 Dennis did a quick Google search and found this photo of them in the local newspaper. You didn't need to be a detective to figure that out or find that photo.

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 15 The former district attorney denies ever saying he didn't know Foley, but told us they were not friends.

Speaker 15 As for why he didn't immediately get a search warrant for Foley's home, he says there wasn't enough probable cause.

Speaker 15 He also told us he didn't want Officer Lydick to interview Foley because she was too inexperienced.

Speaker 15 This was a tricky investigation, given the fact that this is a small area, everybody knows everybody. We got state troopers, we got local police.

Speaker 16 And I, you know, having no experience in any kind of police work or anything like this, like I had at the time no clue of how very tricky it was and how instantly everything could just be mishandled.

Speaker 15 As for the state police, troopers from a barracks not connected to Foley stepped in to help with the investigation and later took it over. They did some things that the Blairsville police hadn't.

Speaker 15 They eventually obtained a search warrant for Foley's car, but found nothing. Ditto for the house he shared with Michelle.

Speaker 15 The investigation dragged on. Months Months became a year.
And Mary Ann ran out of patience. She decided to make some noise.
She organized a vigil. The vigil was to keep investigating.

Speaker 15 Was that the idea?

Speaker 15 To keep it out there?

Speaker 16 Yes, to keep it out there and to remember John. And just to, you know, for people who were still waiting, neighbors.
I mean, this had the whole town just uneasy.

Speaker 15 But their wait was about to come to an end with a big change in the case.

Speaker 7 Coming up, what would those fingernail clippings in the fridge reveal? And a vehicle caught on camera the night of the murder.

Speaker 13 If he's the killer, then we should see his truck.

Speaker 7 Was it Kevin Foley's?

Speaker 27 Finding the music you love shouldn't be hard. That's why Pandora makes it easy to explore all your favorites and discover new artists and genres you'll love.

Speaker 27 Enjoy a personalized listening experience simply by selecting any song or album, and we'll make a station crafted just for you. Best of all, you can listen for free.

Speaker 27 Download Pandora on the Apple App Store or Google Play and start hearing the soundtrack to your life.

Speaker 35 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 38 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 39 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 26 Plus, Zen offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 40 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen. Check out Zinn.com slash find to find Zin at a store near you.

Speaker 42 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 44 Need to restock inventory, cover seasonal dips, or manage payroll? OnDeck's small business line of credit provides immediate access to funds up to $200,000 exactly when your business needs it.

Speaker 44 With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and full control over repayment, you can tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat.

Speaker 44 Apply today at on deck.com and funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by ONDEC or Celtic Bank.

Speaker 44 OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

Speaker 15 Marianne Clark was relentless. From the beginning, she challenged and criticized the investigation into her cousin's murder.

Speaker 16 It was a daily battle. It really was a daily battle.

Speaker 15 You weren't going away.

Speaker 16 No, that's what I said. I'm not going away.
Whatever this takes, and

Speaker 16 something

Speaker 16 has to break eventually. Something has to happen.

Speaker 15 To try to make something happen, Marianne called Pennsylvania's Attorney General, the highest law enforcement officer in the state, asking him to take over the case. Tony Krastick was the deputy AG.

Speaker 13 Marianne Clark had been involved in politics at the local level. She knew the then Attorney General on a first-name basis.

Speaker 15 It's pretty admirable that she wasn't going to give up on justice for her cousin.

Speaker 13 She did not give up, no.

Speaker 15 Mary Ann's efforts paid off. One year after John was killed, Tony Krostick took over the case and called a meeting with John Yelnick's friends and family.
How did you feel leaving that meeting?

Speaker 4 Rejuvenated?

Speaker 9 They just came in with an air about it. They knew what they were doing.
I mean, we all felt a lot more hopeful than we had in a long time.

Speaker 16 We just all felt a sense of like things things are going to start happening and he had the power to do it.

Speaker 15 When the prosecutor first looked at the case, he thought it was absurd that Kevin Foley and John's wife Michelle had not been immediate targets of the investigation.

Speaker 15 Despite all the ugliness that swirled around the Yelniks' broken marriage, she spewed hate about how she felt about John Yelnick.

Speaker 13 That was the life Kevin Foley was living that Michelle was just constantly saying what a horrible man he was. She fueled that hatred.

Speaker 15 Investigators never questioned Michelle or Kevin. And by the time Krastak took over, it was too late.
Kevin Foley had lawyered up and wasn't talking.

Speaker 15 Why were Michelle and Kevin not taken down to the police department and questioned, like other people were?

Speaker 13 I mean, obviously you have the two main suspects. I can't in any way excuse the failure to at least attempt to interview Michelle and Kevin.

Speaker 15 Despite that, Krastick didn't see a conspiracy to protect the trooper.

Speaker 15 In fact, he says a lot of evidence had been gathered by Blairsville PD and the state police, and he wasn't sure why DA Bell hadn't done more with the case.

Speaker 13 Well, the case had kind of languished a bit. They're kind of treading water.

Speaker 15 The DA told us he was being cautious, wanted more evidence, and welcomed the AG's help.

Speaker 15 In the case file, Krastick saw that investigators had gone back to interview more of Foley's fellow troopers, and the prosecutor found what they said alarming.

Speaker 15 What did they learn from them about Kevin's relationship with John?

Speaker 13 Need to say, I wish John Yelnick was dead. I wish he died a horrible death.

Speaker 13 I wish he died in a car crash.

Speaker 13 This was daily. This was after Hello.

Speaker 15 Krastick was given security camera video from the two convenience stores near John's house that showed a truck passing by at around 1 a.m.

Speaker 15 About 30 minutes before John's blood-curdling screams were heard by neighbors. An FBI specialist had tried to match the video to Foley's truck.

Speaker 13 The analyst found that there were similarities, but also dissimilarities. She could not exclude that vehicle.

Speaker 15 It's not perfect, but it sure doesn't look good for Kevin Foley.

Speaker 13 If he's the killer, then we should see his truck. We see his truck.

Speaker 15 Forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht had described the crime scene as one of the most violent he'd ever seen.

Speaker 15 The killer had chased John around the house and then slaughtered him, most likely using a single-edged blade.

Speaker 13 This was clearly a killing of passion. Kevin Foley was a knife guy.
He had this commemorative state police knife, which was a very sturdy knife.

Speaker 13 He'd played with it so often, he'd flick it open, close it, flick it open, close it.

Speaker 15 The murder weapon was never found. But Krastik was convinced Kevin Foley had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to kill John Yelnick.

Speaker 15 But still, it wasn't an airtight case. The prosecutor needed more.
Remember John Yelnick's fingernail clippings? A year after the murder, they still hadn't been tested for DNA.

Speaker 22 I said, well, do I have to make a phone call?

Speaker 13 Because they're going to be tested.

Speaker 15 The clippings were sent to the FBI lab. When the results came back, they pointed to Foley.
But it wasn't a perfect match.

Speaker 15 Wasn't it true that the DNA really could have matched thousands of people in the Blairsville, Pittsburgh area?

Speaker 13 Absolutely. Yet they still included Kevin Foley, along with all the other evidence.

Speaker 15 That's not a slam dunk in a trial.

Speaker 13 Well, it's not a slam dunk, no.

Speaker 15 Maybe not enough for a slam dunk in a trial, but altogether, enough to bring charges.

Speaker 15 On September 27th, 2007, nearly a year and a half after John Yelnick was killed, Kevin Foley, a Pennsylvania state trooper, was arrested and charged charged with first-degree murder. D.A.

Speaker 15 Bell was there for the announcement, praising law enforcement.

Speaker 45 It is a testament of how well they worked together and never had a give-up attitude that has caused this case to be resolved as it has been today.

Speaker 15 A state police commander talked about how difficult that resolution was.

Speaker 23 It was obviously a very dark and disturbing day for the Pennsylvania State Police.

Speaker 15 Take us to the moment when you find out that Kevin Foley has been arrested.

Speaker 16 Well, it was my birthday. It was like the best day ever.
It was such a sense of like

Speaker 16 finally justice is being served.

Speaker 7 Coming up, the trial begins, and those bloody shoe prints make a mark.

Speaker 24 That was an aha moment.

Speaker 7 Then, a groundbreaking DNA gamble.

Speaker 15 Had it been used before in court, or was this the first time?

Speaker 13 This is the first time.

Speaker 23 Talk about questionable.

Speaker 22 It doesn't sound like science to me.

Speaker 7 When dateline continues.

Speaker 15 the murder trial of trooper Kevin Foley started in March 2009 in the old courthouse in Indiana, Pennsylvania, a small town best known for being the birthplace of an American icon, Jimmy Stewart.

Speaker 8 Drive down the street, you see statues of Jimmy Stewart. I mean, what's more American than that?

Speaker 15 But this case was not going to be tried by some homespun country lawyers. The Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania had come to town with a very modern, high-tech presentation.

Speaker 8 To walk in a historic courtroom and see flat-screen televisions and every kind of electronic multimedia device possible, in this case, they put it to use.

Speaker 15 As the trial got underway, prosecutor Tony Krastick described John Yelnick's murder in great detail, using 3D animated computer graphics to give jurors a virtual tour of the crime scene, and projecting disturbing photos of John's body on the widescreens for all to see.

Speaker 15 Dennis, you're particularly bothered by the slash on his hand.

Speaker 19 Yes. This was the hand that picked up little JJ.
This was the hand that I shook at my wedding. That was the picture that made it seem more real to me than any of the others.

Speaker 19 The others looked like horror movie stills, but that hand just went right to my heart.

Speaker 15 Krastick addressed Foley's motive by calling his fellow troopers to the stand.

Speaker 15 They described how Foley would get enraged when talking about the unproven allegations of child abuse and said he hated John and wanted him to die.

Speaker 15 On the night John was killed, the prosecutor thinks that hatred may have boiled over because John was going to sign his divorce agreement the next day, drastically reducing his monthly payments to Michelle.

Speaker 13 Maybe he was going there to try to bully him into continuing the alimony, trying to just threaten him in some way. All of a sudden, he starts to fight him.
Now we have a fluid scene.

Speaker 13 So now the passion takes over.

Speaker 15 Krastick methodically laid out his case for the jury. He called Terry Shallow, a director from the athletic shoe company ASICs.
He'd analyzed the bloody shoe prints found at the crime scene.

Speaker 24 We knew that it was an ASIC shoe. And we thought almost immediately that it was a particular style of shoe called the Gel Creed.

Speaker 15 Shallow told the jury the Gel Creed was a limited edition shoe not sold in western Pennsylvania, but he said there was still a way for the trooper to get a pair.

Speaker 24 We had a law enforcement purchase program where police officers and even firefighters could order from ASICS directly at a discount.

Speaker 15 So Shallow checked ASICs' records and right there in the files, he found something to connect Foley.

Speaker 24 We had direct evidence from a purchase order with his signature on it. And that was an aha moment.

Speaker 15 Krastick introduced the DNA evidence from John's fingernails. Remember, the FBI analysis wasn't conclusive.
They reported a ratio of 1 in 13,000.

Speaker 15 That result didn't exclude Foley, but it didn't mean the DNA was his beyond any doubt. So Krastick turned to Dr.

Speaker 15 Mark Perlin, whose bioinformation company, CyberGenetics, had developed an innovative new computer technique for analyzing DNA data. Had it been used before in court, or was this the first time?

Speaker 13 This is the first time.

Speaker 15 At the time of the trial, FBI DNA analysis was still being done by agents, not a supercomputer.

Speaker 30 It's like comparing a Ferrari with a go-kart.

Speaker 15 Perlin's computer analysis in the Foley case had come up with an astonishing result. The prosecutor thought it was the smoking gun.

Speaker 15 According to Perlin, this was definitely Foley's DNA: 189 billion to one. 189 billion to one.
What exactly does that mean?

Speaker 30 In this case, what it means is that a match between

Speaker 30 Dr. Yelenick's fingernails and defendant Kevin Foley is 189 billion times more probable than a coincidence.

Speaker 15 To defense attorneys Richard Galloway and Jeffrey Monzo, the DNA evidence was more a smokescreen than a smoking gun. You tried to discredit the science, the DNA.

Speaker 15 What was your strategy with that?

Speaker 22 Talk about questionable science, junk science. The evidence was sent to the FBI, which is the premier lab for DNA testing.
They found it to be 1 in 13,000. That is exceedingly low.

Speaker 22 And eventually, they send it to this new guy, Perlin. And Perlin says, I put it into my machine and it comes out the other side and it's 1 in 5 billion.

Speaker 15 189 billion. Okay.

Speaker 22 If you include Mars and Venus and everywhere, that's such a disparity that it doesn't sound like science to me.

Speaker 15 Dennis Vaughan was paying close attention to the jury during the back and forth on the DNA and didn't like what he saw.

Speaker 19 I was watching the jury intently during that, and to me, it looked like there were a lot of glazed expressions. And so I was worried that they were going to miss the point.

Speaker 15 Defense attorneys told the jury Kevin Foley was an innocent man, that on the night of the murder, he played hockey and then went home.

Speaker 15 They tore into the investigation, not for the reason John's friends and family complained about. They said the opposite.
This was a rush to judgment.

Speaker 22 Right from the get-go in the newspaper, they were pointing to Kevin Foley.

Speaker 15 The defense pointed the finger at others, including John's neighbor, Tom Huse.

Speaker 15 And they called a different neighbor who described hearing that argument the morning of the murder.

Speaker 23 He clearly heard someone yelling, I'll never loan you money again, and heard glass breaking. Of course, a window was shattered in this case.
Kevin fully didn't owe Dr.

Speaker 23 Yelnick any money, so that certainly didn't fit in with Kevin.

Speaker 15 The defense also told the jury about a convict who reportedly made a jailhouse confession that he killed John Yelnick. The state found that to be somewhat laughable, this inmate.

Speaker 39 That was their way of rejecting him in front of the jury.

Speaker 22 Doesn't seem to be something you can easily laugh off.

Speaker 15 The defense called its most important witness, the defendant Kevin Foley. The trooper acknowledged his dislike for John Yelnick, but denied any involvement in his murder.

Speaker 15 And maybe more important than what he said was the way he said it. To many, Foley seemed calm and steady on the witness stand.

Speaker 23 Kevin was someone you believed in, and I thought it was good that the jury got to meet him, so to speak.

Speaker 15 After watching Foley's testimony, John's friend Dennis was troubled.

Speaker 19 For me to be able to come to terms with what happened, I had to paint in my mind that Foley was a boogeyman, that there was something inherently evil.

Speaker 3 He wasn't.

Speaker 19 He was just like anybody else. And I still have trouble

Speaker 19 accepting that.

Speaker 15 Michelle Yelnick, the victim's wife, the defendant's girlfriend, and the woman at the heart of the story, was conspicuously absent from the courtroom.

Speaker 9 Throughout the trial, we thought, okay, maybe she'll make an appearance, maybe they'll call her to the stand.

Speaker 9 They had said in their opening arguments that she would provide alibi witness testimony, never showed up.

Speaker 15 John Yelnick feared he would be killed and predicted there would be no justice afterward.

Speaker 15 But after eight days of testimony, his murder case went to the jury. The justice system was about to speak.

Speaker 13 Coming up, they came back with a question, which was please redefine beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 7 An agonizing wait for a verdict.

Speaker 2 What would it be?

Speaker 16 We're sitting in that courthouse on pins and needles.

Speaker 7 And what was in store for Michelle?

Speaker 15 Was an effort made to try to find evidence against her?

Speaker 6 There's always more to the story. To go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, listen to our Talking Datelines series with Andrea and Blaine available Wednesday.

Speaker 15 It had been a tense trial, and Dennis Vaughan was there almost every day.

Speaker 19 It felt like a very winding road. There was evidence that seemed kind of shaky at times, and I'm watching the jury.

Speaker 19 And I was just absolutely emotionally and physically exhausted just from going through that whole process.

Speaker 15 The jurors deliberated for four hours and then asked to speak with the judge.

Speaker 13 They came back with a question

Speaker 13 which was, please redefine beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the worst possible question that a prosecutor can hear.

Speaker 15 Did that make your heart skip a beat?

Speaker 13 Well, yeah, I wasn't feeling all that well, but it didn't improve my condition, no.

Speaker 15 The jury went back to deliberations. Two more hours passed.

Speaker 8 In most of the murder trials that I have covered, I could have told you ahead of time what the verdict was going to be. I really wasn't sure what the verdict was going to be in this case.

Speaker 19 I kept thinking to myself that how I see the world from this day forward

Speaker 19 really is in the hands of 12 strangers.

Speaker 15 While Michelle never showed up in court, Marianne learned she was paying close attention.

Speaker 16 As we're sitting in that courthouse on pins and needles, we find out through a family member that Michelle was at home with welcome home signs and balloons and planning a big party for that night whenever he was acquitted.

Speaker 15 Finally, after six hours, the jury returned to the courtroom with a verdict. There would be no welcome home party for Kevin Boley.
The jury found him guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 15 What's that moment like for you?

Speaker 13 Well, it's more one of relief than anything else. It was a real sense of satisfaction.

Speaker 17 I don't have any doubt that he did it. It was like, okay,

Speaker 17 we got the right guy.

Speaker 15 A bad apple in law enforcement.

Speaker 34 He was.

Speaker 15 Marianne had been a passionate advocate for her cousin. For her, the verdict was an emotional release.

Speaker 16 You just wanted to collapse. I mean, because all of this work, all of this time, it was

Speaker 16 justice, justice, justice for John, finally.

Speaker 15 As pleased as Marianne was about the verdict, There was something that nagged her.

Speaker 15 One person she believed still had not been held accountable. John's wife, Michelle.

Speaker 16 I don't think she planned how it would be. I think she made it clear she wanted John gone.
I think she was the one that had to gain from it.

Speaker 15 In fact, before the trial started, Mary Ann had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Michelle and Foley. In a court filing, Michelle denied any involvement in John's death.

Speaker 15 She also said she was not aware of and did not fuel any alleged hostility Kevin may have had toward John. Mary Ann dropped the suit after the trial, and Michelle never faced any criminal charges.

Speaker 15 Do you think Michelle Yelnick got off easy in all of this?

Speaker 13 I didn't have the evidence to charge her. If I had the evidence to charge her, I would have done that.
To the extent that she may have provoked this, to use that expression,

Speaker 13 well, that's something that she has to live with if she can.

Speaker 15 Was an effort made to try to find evidence against her?

Speaker 13 Oh, constantly, yes. But we took that side of the case as far far as we could.

Speaker 15 Not long after the trial, Michelle moved out of state to build a new life with JJ and her other children.

Speaker 9 As soon as he was convicted, her bags were packed and she took off to Georgia.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 never had to face us.

Speaker 15 Maria Takaleski has unfinished business with her friend John to relay a message to JJ.

Speaker 9 He said, if they had me killed, tell JJ that I loved him and that he was my whole life and

Speaker 9 someday get in touch with him and make sure he knew how much I loved him.

Speaker 15 Kevin Foley was given a life sentence for murdering John Yelnick. That ended the legal case, but what happened in court here had a profound effect on the justice system.
Dr.

Speaker 15 Mark Perlin's technique for DNA analysis is now considered state-of-the-art technology and is accepted in courtrooms around the world.

Speaker 15 And in the quiet community where John Yelnick lived and died, the emotional ripple effects are still being felt.

Speaker 8 It was stunning to have a state trooper from their community convicted of murder. It really is going to be decades before this community will get over something like this.

Speaker 15 It's been years since John Yelnick was killed. But for those who loved him, the grief is still very raw.

Speaker 9 I don't think think you ever get over a murder.

Speaker 9 You learn to live with a new reality, but it's always with you. I wanted people to understand he was a good man who didn't deserve this to make sure people understood how much he was loved.

Speaker 19 One of my favorite photographs that I have of myself and John is in a frame engraved with my brother from another mother.

Speaker 19 If there was ever a person that I knew that deserved deserved to die peacefully in bed surrounded by a loving family, it was John.

Speaker 7 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Friday at 9-8 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.

Speaker 5 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 7 For all of us at NBC News, good night.

Speaker 25 This time of year, many are checking off their holiday gift lists. But identity thieves have lists too, and your personal information might be on them.
Protect your identity with LifeLock.

Speaker 25 LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second and alerts you to threats you could miss. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock will fix it guaranteed or your money back.

Speaker 25 Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com/slash dateline. Terms apply.