Down the Rabbit Hole

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Speaker 19 Tonight on date live.

Speaker 20 I just kept hearing her scream over and over again and I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 21 I get a call from my sister. She said someone broke into the house and I think mom's hurt.

Speaker 23 This was a brutal cold-blooded killing.

Speaker 21 It's no secret that my dad and my mom had been arguing. How did he come off?

Speaker 24 It seemed like he should have been more upset.

Speaker 25 She was having an affair with a co-worker, so we had to check him out.

Speaker 21 I said, Carrie, who killed my mom? And she said, I think it was Zane.

Speaker 26 Who was Zane?

Speaker 20 He's a nice talker.

Speaker 27 I'm scared he's gonna hurt me.

Speaker 28 Someone's framing me.

Speaker 29 Framing you.

Speaker 30 Yes.

Speaker 23 I saw there was a confession. A lot of the things didn't make sense.

Speaker 31 They created this bubble around the two of them that was void of reality.

Speaker 32 You telling me the truth?

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 33 Do I look like a bad kid?

Speaker 34 No. I'm a good kid.

Speaker 21 They were playing out a lifetime movie.

Speaker 8 How do you get your head around this thing like that?

Speaker 21 You don't. I wonder how is it that I didn't see it?

Speaker 19 It was a murder that seemed simple to solve. There was a witness, even a confession.
So, why was the mystery growing by the minute? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 19 Here's Keith Morrison with Down the Rabbit Hole.

Speaker 36 They were young and foolish and drawn to their phones like moths to a flame.

Speaker 7 God, I swear I love you.

Speaker 27 I love you, too.

Speaker 38 So much to talk about.

Speaker 39 So much to plan.

Speaker 40 I just want to live my life the way I want to live it.

Speaker 31 They, together,

Speaker 31 created this

Speaker 31 dramatic world.

Speaker 22 I worry about you constantly.

Speaker 43 You're on my mind all day.

Speaker 46 Wanting to feel that love so badly, you'd do anything to keep it.

Speaker 41 You know how it happens.

Speaker 13 So did Shakespeare.

Speaker 11 Young lovers caught up in their overheated dramas so fierce, so intense,

Speaker 8 so dangerous.

Speaker 45 Stop blaming yourself for it.

Speaker 18 Things happen for a reason.

Speaker 27 But

Speaker 51 all anyone knew when this drama began was contained in a different kind of phone call.

Speaker 54 Okay, ma'am, what's your name?

Speaker 20 Carrie Murphy.

Speaker 56 It was the middle of the night, middle of July, in Umbo, Texas, just outside of Houston.

Speaker 59 The tearful 16-year-old girl was pleading with 911 to send help.

Speaker 55 Somebody was in her house.

Speaker 58 and was attacking her mother.

Speaker 22 All I did was hear my mom scream, stop, stop, stop.

Speaker 54 Okay, but did they break in or did they just come in?

Speaker 27 They broke in.

Speaker 37 So right away, they sent Deputy Constable Fred Hooper over there.

Speaker 2 And about all he knew was that a panicky teenager had told 911 her mother was being attacked.

Speaker 21 My heart's pumping, not knowing what to expect, and still thinking that the suspects could possibly be on scene.

Speaker 6 By then, a second deputy had arrived, and he and Hooper prepared to confront what was possibly an ongoing crime.

Speaker 51 You must have, you know, gone in with your guns drawn and the whole thing, huh?

Speaker 27 Correct.

Speaker 21 We started at the

Speaker 21 side gate.

Speaker 48 Small house, fenced backyard.

Speaker 5 They passed the trampoline, a swing set, and a pile of bricks.

Speaker 24 And on the way going to the back door, we noticed that there were two windows that were broken.

Speaker 21 We got to the back door. It was open, so we made entry into the house.
Straight in front was the kitchen. And as you walked into the

Speaker 21 back door to the right, there was the living room.

Speaker 65 And then a door to the main bedroom.

Speaker 60 And there she was, lying on a waterbed.

Speaker 21 She was covered in blood.

Speaker 11 Was she still alive?

Speaker 66 Did she have some vital signs?

Speaker 21 She did not appear to be alive.

Speaker 68 Could you see any obvious wounds besides all this blood?

Speaker 21 She had lacerations that we could see.

Speaker 64 Her name was Mary Ann Murphy.

Speaker 14 She was the mother of the girl who called 911.

Speaker 11 Deputy Hooper cautiously moved through the house, looking for the intruder.

Speaker 21 The only person in the home was the mother.

Speaker 66 So if there was anybody there, they were long gone.

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 71 By then, the victim's daughter, her name was Carrie, had called her older brother.

Speaker 9 Scott Murphy was 21 years old.

Speaker 72 working overnights at the airport doing electrical repairs.

Speaker 21 And all she said was,

Speaker 21 someone broke into the house and I think mom's hurt. I dropped everything in my hand, every tool.
I dropped it and I made my way home.

Speaker 63 On the way there, Scott called their dad, Dawn, who was also working nights.

Speaker 21 When I got to my parents' street and there was 15 to 20 cop cars outside, that's when I knew something was bad.

Speaker 7 So you arrived, got out of the car, what happened?

Speaker 21 I was very loud, very boisterous. Where's my mom? Where's my sister?

Speaker 74 Scott couldn't see that Carrie was huddled up in Deputy Hooper's car.

Speaker 21 And an officer advised me to step away from the house.

Speaker 75 They wouldn't let me in.

Speaker 21 So I began to get aggressive and

Speaker 21 get very

Speaker 21 hands-on with the officer. He was

Speaker 21 hysterical, which I understood because

Speaker 21 If it was me, I probably would have felt the same way. At that point, I was then cuffed and put in the the back of a car.

Speaker 27 And

Speaker 21 at the time, I was very angry. I remember being in the back of the cop car,

Speaker 21 kicking the door, trying to kick windows, trying to get out of my handcuffs.

Speaker 68 What was going through your mind with all this going on?

Speaker 21 All I'm thinking is, why won't they let me see her?

Speaker 21 Why won't they let me go to her?

Speaker 66 Did it dawn on you at some point? There was probably a reason for that.

Speaker 21 When my dad showed up, and my dad looked at me, and he just put his finger up and he mouthed the words, stop.

Speaker 69 Wait.

Speaker 21 And so, I mean, I may have been in my 20s, but my dad says, stop.

Speaker 21 Stop.

Speaker 63 Scott's father had a talk with the officer.

Speaker 44 And in a matter of minutes, Scott was let go.

Speaker 21 So I went up to my dad and my dad, my dad was a very hard man. He was loving and he was a committed father, but his love was

Speaker 21 tough.

Speaker 21 And my dad looked at me and he said, do you have your big boy pants on? And I said, yes, sir.

Speaker 21 And he looked at me and he shook his head and he said, she didn't make it.

Speaker 21 That means your mom didn't make it. And I looked at my dad and I just kind of glared at him.

Speaker 21 And I looked at him and I said, dad, I'll kill him.

Speaker 21 And he said, son, there are some things you don't say out loud.

Speaker 62 Scott had no idea who killed his mother, and his lust for revenge wouldn't do much good.

Speaker 4 Scott had some things to learn about pain and loyalty and betrayal before the killer was revealed.

Speaker 51 Quite a bomb that went off in that family.

Speaker 76 Yep.

Speaker 77 Or a virus that infected everyone. It can't change the way that God

Speaker 78 does his way.

Speaker 51 Does he give you nightmares?

Speaker 46 You could call it a nightmare.

Speaker 79 Or

Speaker 16 love, if you wish.

Speaker 60 The kind that curdles into something else altogether.

Speaker 6 The street was a jumble of lights and cars and curious neighbors when Detective Juan Viramontes of the Harris County Sheriff arrived.

Speaker 11 Who was the first person you talked to and what did you hear?

Speaker 80 The first officer that I spoke with was the first responding officer.

Speaker 24 Let him know what had taken place.

Speaker 13 Did they see or talk to Carrie at all?

Speaker 24 No. At that point, Carrie was still in my patrol vehicle.

Speaker 48 Carrie, the victim's daughter.

Speaker 59 Deputy Hooper had talked to her about what happened in the house, and he briefed Detective Viramantes.

Speaker 80 She heard a male's voice that was telling her mother to shut up. And then she ran out of the house and tried to get some help from anybody that would be outside.

Speaker 82 Inside, at the scene of the killing, an interesting bit of evidence.

Speaker 24 We discovered a gun laying by the mother's head

Speaker 24 underneath the pillow.

Speaker 59 It was Mary Ann's own handgun, a semi-automatic.

Speaker 83 She didn't get a chance to use it, obviously.

Speaker 24 No, sir.

Speaker 24 Not from what we can tell. No.

Speaker 6 Must have been asleep when she was attacked.

Speaker 42 Couldn't get to the gun in time.

Speaker 84 Your mom was pretty handy with a gun, wasn't she?

Speaker 21 She was. It normally sat on a leather case on the headboard.
And when the police found it, it was on the bed, on the actual mattress, which means at some point, it had been touched.

Speaker 66 Yeah.

Speaker 21 And knowing my mom, she would have went for it.

Speaker 72 And if she hadn't been asleep, if she hadn't also been deaf in one ear and thus caught by surprise, She'd have taken any attacker down, figured Scott.

Speaker 12 Because it was hard to get the best of Mary Ann Murphy.

Speaker 46 She was strong, a strong woman, strong values, and she stuck to them and she made us stick to them as well.

Speaker 42 Heather Tucker grew up with Marianne's daughter Carrie.

Speaker 85 She had known Mary Ann her whole life.

Speaker 11 You spent a lot of time at her house.

Speaker 50 Yes.

Speaker 46 Tell me about that. Marianne was funny.
She was sarcastic.

Speaker 46 She was comfortable around Carrie's friends.

Speaker 21 When Heather came to the house, it wasn't Miss Murphy. It wasn't anything like that.
It was, hey, mom.

Speaker 46 She treated us well, but she would also kind of like talk back to us. I remember we introduced one of our new friends to her for the first time and we warned him that Mary Ann was deaf in one year.

Speaker 4 He's like, oh, okay.

Speaker 46 And so he walks up and he very loudly is like, hi, ma'am. Nice to meet you.
And she said, damn it, boy, I'm deaf, not stupid.

Speaker 7 Oh, Miss Mary Ann.

Speaker 86 Okay.

Speaker 86 Where do I start?

Speaker 48 Katie was another childhood friend of Carrie's.

Speaker 87 She liked Mary Ann the the minute she met her.

Speaker 86 I remember walking in through their garage and she just had such like joy. Like I just remember thinking, oh my God, like

Speaker 86 she looks nice. She was always

Speaker 86 doing things for Carrie and buying her things and

Speaker 86 taking her to and from wherever Carrie needed to go.

Speaker 21 She had what I would call sometimes the Dr. Jekyll Mr.
Hyde effect. She could, you know, be getting on to you about, you know, you did something wrong, you didn't do the dishes right.

Speaker 21 The phone would ring and she'd just, you know, hello, and just be the sweetest person on the phone. And then she'd hang up and be right back to getting on you.

Speaker 21 But

Speaker 21 when it came to her kids,

Speaker 21 when it came to her family, period, all she wanted was for us to thrive.

Speaker 11 Was she the boss in that household?

Speaker 46 I considered her the boss. I think anybody would consider her the boss except for maybe Don,

Speaker 7 her husband.

Speaker 9 They were so different, mom and dad.

Speaker 11 Very different careers, too.

Speaker 38 Mary Ann worked for the Department Department of Public Safety.

Speaker 65 Dawn was a machinist.

Speaker 21 My mom grew up very country,

Speaker 21 very strict. Her dad was a cop,

Speaker 21 ex-military, so he had a very strict regiment. My dad, on the other hand, was the proverbial, you know, from the wrong side of the tracks.

Speaker 21 Fast cars, loud cars, street racing, fighting.

Speaker 3 They didn't make a lot of money.

Speaker 65 But the Murphys did okay.

Speaker 63 Scott got a kick out of his mom, respected his father, and doted on his little sister.

Speaker 21 I changed her diapers as a baby.

Speaker 21 I painted her fingernails red, white, and blue for 4th of July. I was the first one to teach her how to braid her hair.

Speaker 6 And now he could see that his baby sister, still only 16 years old, had been through a terrible ordeal.

Speaker 51 Terrified, hiding in her room, running to the neighbors.

Speaker 8 Police needed to get what information they could from their fragile witness.

Speaker 80 One of the things I wanted to do, do, of course, is transport her to the homicide office and conduct an interview in a more appropriate setting.

Speaker 62 Detectives strapped in for a long night.

Speaker 20 I kept screaming my mom's name. I was like, mom, mom, mom, please answer me, answer me.

Speaker 77 As their young witness told her terrible story.

Speaker 28 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 91 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 89 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 96 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 6 Carrie Murphy was a 16-year-old mess.

Speaker 85 By the time the detectives sat her down at the station around sunrise, the night she'd been through, tough for anybody.

Speaker 65 And this young somebody had just lost her mother.

Speaker 20 You want some water?

Speaker 16 They did what they could to make her comfortable.

Speaker 15 They would need her to figure out what happened to her mother.

Speaker 26 Well, you need to use the restroom before we start landing.

Speaker 20 You're okay?

Speaker 26 As far as that goes, I'm correct.

Speaker 99 She wouldn't be able to tell them a lot.

Speaker 66 She didn't see much, she said.

Speaker 66 But she heard a lot, and she'd help if she could, tired as she was.

Speaker 26 We brought you here just to talk to you, you know, try to get some information about what happened at home.

Speaker 20 Right.

Speaker 56 It was the sound of her mother screaming, she said.

Speaker 11 It woke her to an intruder in the house.

Speaker 20 My mom's screaming, stop, stop, help me, help me, help me, stop.

Speaker 20 And I got scared.

Speaker 80 She says she got up and got a knife that she had in her room and waited a few minutes.

Speaker 26 You were in your room and your mom was in her bedroom.

Speaker 20 Right.

Speaker 74 Okay.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 20 I just heard like a man's voice go, shut up, shut up. And

Speaker 20 I got scared. I didn't know if I should run out.
I didn't have a phone on me. I couldn't call 911 right then.
I just didn't know what to do. And I froze.
and

Speaker 20 I heard like footsteps like running

Speaker 20 and like hard footsteps running and

Speaker 20 I'm sorry. I walked out of my room and I kept screaming my mom's name.
I was like mom, mom, mom, please answer me, answer me and she didn't say anything.

Speaker 80 She waits a few more minutes and then she runs out the house. And as she's running out the house, she mentions the

Speaker 80 paper that she saw outside as she was running.

Speaker 20 And I slipped on this piece of paper in the yard, so I picked it up and then I ran to a neighbor's house.

Speaker 101 On that piece of paper was Mary Ann's address and a list of hours when she would be at home.

Speaker 51 Weirdly, there was another note too, right on the dining table.

Speaker 74 Deputy Hooper saw it first.

Speaker 24 The note stated, good luck in court without your mom.

Speaker 37 The killer added, the B-word.

Speaker 6 Carrie said she didn't see that note.

Speaker 9 She was in such a rush to get out.

Speaker 57 But she told detectives something that seemed to explain its meaning.

Speaker 20 And he was speeding.

Speaker 12 She told them she was supposed to be in traffic court in just a few hours.

Speaker 103 She'd been in a car accident with a man a few weeks before.

Speaker 20 He hit me in the

Speaker 20 back, and then I did a 180, and then he hit me in the front. He got mad because when he opened the door, He was like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but it's your fault.

Speaker 26 But they gave you a ticket for a round-side line change.

Speaker 20 Yes, sir.

Speaker 15 But Carrie said that wasn't the end of it.

Speaker 67 Something strange happened with that same man only a few hours before the murder.

Speaker 62 She was at a restaurant with her mother and some family friends.

Speaker 20 And I had noticed this man, like, staring at my table. I looked back 20 minutes later, and he was still staring.

Speaker 48 Later, she said she realized.

Speaker 59 That was the man from the accident.

Speaker 26 And this person that was there, you said it looked like the guy that she had an accident with. Yes, sir.

Speaker 101 She was at home later that night when another odd thing happened.

Speaker 50 And this gave her the creeps.

Speaker 20 And I was doing

Speaker 20 scrapbooking, like, yeah.

Speaker 20 And I noticed like I kept seeing the same headlights. The same headlights had passed like three times in the past five minutes.

Speaker 20 I got kind of suspicious, so I started watching out of the kitchen window.

Speaker 55 She said she told her mother about it, but Marianne didn't do anything.

Speaker 6 She said she called her brother, too.

Speaker 21 She said a blue truck that was driving around the block over and over and over again. So I left my house a little early to go to work, and I went by my parents' house.

Speaker 21 So I just kind of sat out in the driveway.

Speaker 21 And I waited for, I want to say, 15 to 20 minutes.

Speaker 50 He didn't see anything wrong, so he headed to work.

Speaker 6 Sure as he could be that things were okay,

Speaker 55 though they were anything but.

Speaker 66 but.

Speaker 57 And now this case seemed to be pointing in a specific direction.

Speaker 11 And the question,

Speaker 81 was Carrie the real target?

Speaker 26 Do you have any enemies?

Speaker 20 No. No.
I'm a very nice person.

Speaker 26 You've had any problems with anybody other than this person in the accident?

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 26 And you have a picture of him or

Speaker 26 you have that paperwork there at your house?

Speaker 20 Yes, it's in a blue folder on the table.

Speaker 13 A stranger with a grudge?

Speaker 9 It wouldn't be the first time someone killed out of misguided rage.

Speaker 57 But this investigation was just getting started, so detectives would also be looking at someone who was not a stranger.

Speaker 21 It's no secret that my dad and my mom have been arguing.

Speaker 100 Katie Katie remembers how she heard the awful news.

Speaker 62 She was at work when a former teacher called to say Mrs.

Speaker 48 Murphy had died.

Speaker 86 And so then I hung up the phone, I called my mom, and we go directly to Carrie's house. And I knock on the door and I'm like

Speaker 86 saying her name. I'm like, Carrie.
I wait, no answer. And then I was walking back to the car and a reporter stopped me and they were like, do you know Carrie? Are you friends with Carrie?

Speaker 18 A reporter?

Speaker 11 Katie's first clue that something was seriously wrong.

Speaker 6 That Mrs. Murphy didn't just die.

Speaker 50 Katie also didn't realize that Carrie was still talking to Detective Viramantes and other detectives. Had been since the wee hours.

Speaker 6 She had told them about the man from the car accident.

Speaker 44 the sheer terror she felt that night and the awful things she witnessed.

Speaker 20 I just kept hearing hearing her scream over and over again.

Speaker 52 Detective Vera Montes analyzed the crime scene in the hours after the murder.

Speaker 13 He explained to us what he saw that night as he walked from room to room there in the dark.

Speaker 55 He began at the back door where Carrie said the intruders had broken in.

Speaker 80 The first thing I was looking for was to see if there was any forced entry into the house. There was no signs of damage, no signs of forced entry.
It looks kind of like the way it looks now.

Speaker 80 Another thing I noticed was the window broken. Both panes on the window were broken.
There was some glass inside the residence, and there was also glass outside.

Speaker 80 There was a brick here on the kitchen floor, which it didn't make sense because most of the glass would have been contained to the inside of the house, not outside.

Speaker 56 It looked like someone threw a brick through the windows twice.

Speaker 3 And then he noticed that note on the dining table.

Speaker 80 It was handwritten and it said something to the effect that good luck in court without your mom, bitch.

Speaker 64 Strange.

Speaker 62 A killer taking time to leave a note?

Speaker 39 And one so incriminating.

Speaker 80 There were items on the floor. It appeared that somebody had just swept everything off the kitchen counter and it was just laying here in this area here.

Speaker 42 He got to the bedroom where Mary Ann was killed.

Speaker 80 It appeared that she had been stabbed multiple times, over 50 times at least. Even though she was covered in blood, the blood was contained to the body and a little bit on the bed.

Speaker 53 No bloody footprints or handprints anywhere else in the house.

Speaker 65 So somebody had done something to contain the blood.

Speaker 6 The veteran detective just knew.

Speaker 3 The house was telling him something.

Speaker 80 So the fact that there was no signs of forced entry, there there was more glass outside the residence than inside.

Speaker 80 So that led me to believe that this was a stage scene, that someone was trying to make it seem like either it was a home invasion or a burglary gone wrong.

Speaker 79 But who would do that?

Speaker 65 Maybe an outsider, sure.

Speaker 72 Somebody with a deadly grudge.

Speaker 41 But...

Speaker 80 Anytime that there's a female, a mother, or a wife got killed at the residence, we start looking at people that live with her.

Speaker 77 Like the husband, Carrie's friend said her dad was kind of scary.

Speaker 86 He was like rough around the edges, pretty strict. Like I remember the perception, the way Carrie talked about her dad was like, should I be afraid of him?

Speaker 46 Don wasn't necessarily friendly.

Speaker 46 He wouldn't go out of his way to start a conversation with me. We definitely minded him.
Everybody minded him.

Speaker 51 How did he get on with Marianne?

Speaker 46 I never really saw them interact much, just because at that point when I was hanging around, he was working nights, so he'd be sleeping or he would just be sitting in his chair trying to relax.

Speaker 87 It didn't take long for investigators to learn that Marianne and Don were sleeping separately.

Speaker 10 There was more than a little tension in that relationship.

Speaker 66 He had been having some trouble with alcohol, right? He had.

Speaker 21 My dad had been, he had been struggling with some alcohol addiction.

Speaker 7 For a long time?

Speaker 21 It had always been an issue growing up, but over the past probably year and a half, it had been a pretty regular thing for him to put down a few, and then sometimes more than a few.

Speaker 51 Well, how'd your mom feel about that?

Speaker 21 Oh, my mother was

Speaker 21 less than happy about that. She wasn't a drinker.
So to her, if you have more than two drinks, you're drunk. Of course.

Speaker 21 And once, you know, two became four and four became eight, eight became 16. That's when the,

Speaker 21 this is not going to happen. And she was very, very vocal about that.

Speaker 10 Deputy Hooper talked to Don the night of the killing.

Speaker 9 When you first saw him, what did he look like?

Speaker 51 How did he come off?

Speaker 7 What were you thinking?

Speaker 24 I guess you could say he was more calm. Under the circumstances of the situation, It seemed like he should have been more upset, but he wasn't.

Speaker 38 Don Murphy would speak with detectives, detectives, submit to fingerprinting, and answer questions concerning his whereabouts around the time of the murder.

Speaker 57 But as far as detectives knew, their best and only witness was a tearful 16-year-old girl whose story was about to change.

Speaker 20 I do know.

Speaker 48 You need to put it out there, Kiera.

Speaker 20 I'm scared he's going to hurt me.

Speaker 62 In the long, difficult hours after his mother's murder, Scott Murphy understood the detectives were just doing their jobs.

Speaker 21 I mean, they fingerprinted me. They fingerprinted my dad.
It's no secret that my dad and my mom had been arguing, so it made sense.

Speaker 47 Scott remembers, well after they left the sheriff's office, how his tough-as-nails father seemed lost.

Speaker 21 My dad, just by himself, he picked up a piece of sidewalk chalk and he just started to write on the ground by himself and in just big, big letters. It said, I'm sorry.

Speaker 108 What was Don Murphy sorry for?

Speaker 57 Did it seem to you that it was in the realm of possibility that he had something to do with this?

Speaker 21 Never. My dad doted on my mother.
He loved her from the day that he met her. And I don't care how mad she got at him or how mad she made him.
He was never going to hurt her.

Speaker 106 And now that she was gone, Scott saw his father falling apart.

Speaker 21 I mean, he started to tear up and he looked me in the eyes and he said, I can fix a lot of things, but I can't fix this.

Speaker 71 Nobody could fix it.

Speaker 102 The detectives hoped Carrie could make sense of it.

Speaker 56 They were still talking to her the morning after the murder, still wanting to know how did the killer get in the house?

Speaker 54 They came in through the front door or the back door? Back door. Okay, but did they break in or did they just come in?

Speaker 27 They broke in.

Speaker 26 Did you notice if they kicked the door in or if they pried the door open?

Speaker 20 No, I didn't pay that much attention.

Speaker 42 By then, the detectives knew the back door was intact.

Speaker 26 How do you think they got in?

Speaker 26 Whoever got in the house?

Speaker 20 I don't know. Well, you said there was glass break.

Speaker 26 Right, there was... Yeah.

Speaker 73 But the killer, they explained, didn't get in through that broken window either.

Speaker 30 There's no way for somebody to have reached in and unlocked the back door.

Speaker 34 There's not?

Speaker 30 No, there's not.

Speaker 104 That doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 76 No, it doesn't.

Speaker 26 Before you heard your mom scream for help, did you hear any glass breakage? Any glass break?

Speaker 20 No, my radio was turned up.

Speaker 63 But the neighbors heard the glass break, and it was right before they saw Carrie.

Speaker 80 One of the neighbors said that they heard glass breakage, and within 15 seconds, they seed Carrie walking out from the backyard.

Speaker 65 Now that did not compute.

Speaker 6 The investigators' questions were getting more pointed.

Speaker 30 They heard the glass break.

Speaker 30 Okay.

Speaker 30 And they heard the second glass break.

Speaker 34 There was two windows broke?

Speaker 30 Yes.

Speaker 30 And within seconds, they see you come out of the backyard.

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 59 The neighbors were high on weed, she said.

Speaker 6 They must be mistaken.

Speaker 16 The girl was kind of a puzzle.

Speaker 72 Even right after the killing, as she was waiting in the back seat of Fred Hooper's patrol car.

Speaker 24 She just seemed a little too calm. for someone whose mother had just been attacked.
Any more detail? Well, she asked, am I going to have to go to court while she was in the back seat?

Speaker 24 And I thought that was strange.

Speaker 77 Strange that she was still concerned about traffic court for that car accident when her mother had just been murdered.

Speaker 8 But then, Deputy Hooper already knew there was something fundamentally wrong with Carrie's story.

Speaker 10 He had known from the moment he found Marianne's body.

Speaker 24 The mom was

Speaker 24 laying there covered in blood,

Speaker 18 and

Speaker 24 the blood had started to dry.

Speaker 30 And went in the house and saw your mom.

Speaker 11 And now in the interview room with the sun rising, detectives listened with growing skepticism as Carrie tried to explain why it took so long to call 911.

Speaker 20 He was in the kitchen for a long time. Like I heard him rustling with like papers and stuff.
in the kitchen.

Speaker 30 A stranger isn't going to spend all their time if he killed your mom and then just lobby gag around in the kitchen.

Speaker 52 They pushed her on the question about the blood.

Speaker 30 There's too much of her blood that's already dried.

Speaker 30 And if...

Speaker 20 You really don't want to hear this?

Speaker 27 Well. I'm sorry.

Speaker 30 Well, that's where we're having the problem in,

Speaker 30 is that time frame

Speaker 30 that if you heard her screaming and you ran out and within minutes the police are there

Speaker 30 it's obvious that she had been there for some time

Speaker 30 Not just minutes.

Speaker 20 I'm really not understanding. I'm sorry.
I'm really not understanding.

Speaker 30 What are you not understanding?

Speaker 20 Like, what y'all are trying to say. Are y'all trying to say I killed my mom?

Speaker 30 I'm trying to say that you have some more information that you're not telling me.

Speaker 20 No, sir. I do not.

Speaker 20 I do not. I told the cops and y'all everything I know.
I'm.

Speaker 30 But Carrie, your story does not fit.

Speaker 69 Then.

Speaker 6 Well, maybe she was tired, maybe she'd run out of answers.

Speaker 60 But suddenly, Carrie Murphy had something important to tell homicide detectives.

Speaker 59 It wasn't some stranger or some guy from a car wreck who killed her mother.

Speaker 87 It was someone she knew.

Speaker 20 I do know.

Speaker 30 You need to put it out there, Carrie.

Speaker 20 I'm scared he's gonna hurt me. Well,

Speaker 26 who is he, Kerry?

Speaker 20 His name is Zane.

Speaker 26 What's his name?

Speaker 20 Zane.

Speaker 26 Zane?

Speaker 27 Hmm.

Speaker 26 Who is Zane?

Speaker 20 He's my stalker.

Speaker 80 Zane was a kid from the neighborhood that she didn't care for him, and she believed that he had broken into the house and

Speaker 80 killed her mom.

Speaker 10 20-year-old Zane Ahmed used to go to Carrie's high school, but he dropped out in the 11th grade.

Speaker 49 Carrie said she'd known him a little over three years and that he had become obsessed with her.

Speaker 20 He got mad

Speaker 20 when

Speaker 20 I told him I wouldn't go out with him and he's been told to stay away from my house and he just keeps coming back.

Speaker 8 So there it was.

Speaker 84 A news story about Zane and another guy who was masked.

Speaker 37 They were the killers and they threatened to kill her too.

Speaker 20 And he held an eyelid to my throat and he's like, if you tell anybody I kill you and he backed me up against the house And he had his hands starting from here, going across like this.

Speaker 20 And the knife was in his hand over here. And I was standing like this.
And

Speaker 20 the guy that he was like, oh, do something else to her, do something else. He ran the knife down my chest and to my stomach and down my leg.

Speaker 20 And he was like, you better make this sh ⁇ look like a robbery. And put the note in my hand.
And he closed my hand and he was like, don't you say sh ⁇ .

Speaker 20 And then he grabbed the bricks and he threw them through the window.

Speaker 60 Maybe that explained why the neighbors heard the glass shatter just moments before they spotted Carrie leaving the house.

Speaker 35 If this guy, Zane, was truly dangerous, Carrie's fear and lies made sense.

Speaker 49 Still, detectives had to know:

Speaker 4 was he a killer or an accomplice?

Speaker 26 Then you didn't let them in, you didn't give him a key?

Speaker 27 No.

Speaker 28 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition, too.

Speaker 91 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 43 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to to light.

Speaker 96 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 107 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.

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Speaker 107 ONDEC does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

Speaker 33 A Mochi Moment from Sadie, who writes, I'm not crying, you're crying.

Speaker 33 This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi, because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP-1. He understood, and I felt supported, not judged.

Speaker 33 I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy. Thanks, Sadie.
I'm Myra Ameth, founder of Mochi Health. To find your Mochi Moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 110 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary.

Speaker 64 What happened inside the little house in Humboldt, Texas, on that dark summer night?

Speaker 12 Detectives were learning this much.

Speaker 3 Carrie had lied about an unknown intruder, and then she blamed a kid named Zane.

Speaker 8 So is this new story true?

Speaker 84 One thing they were learning, Carrie and her mom were not getting along.

Speaker 26 Do you have your cell phone with you right now?

Speaker 20 No, I do not.

Speaker 26 Okay, well, is it back at home or where is it at?

Speaker 20 I don't know. I'm grounded.
My mom had it.

Speaker 86 Carrie would tell me stories about them fighting all the time. I had already known like Carrie was grounded for something or like that her mom yelled at her for

Speaker 86 something.

Speaker 63 Maybe a polygraph would lead to the real story.

Speaker 11 Her father signed off on it, so Carrie took the test.

Speaker 85 But in the end, it wasn't helpful.

Speaker 10 Not to Carrie, anyway.

Speaker 6 The results suggested she was not being truthful.

Speaker 69 Carrie, you want some more water? Yes, please.

Speaker 63 So they started again.

Speaker 26 You're giving us already two versions, okay?

Speaker 27 No.

Speaker 20 I'm just so scared.

Speaker 26 Well, tell me what happened.

Speaker 9 Did she do any more than one version of the Zane story, or was it pretty consistent?

Speaker 80 No, no, she changed that story as well.

Speaker 20 My mom screaming my name.

Speaker 6 Her new story contained some added elements.

Speaker 16 She remembered she actually saw the attack and tried to help her mother.

Speaker 20 I grabbed my knife and

Speaker 20 I ran in her room and

Speaker 20 this guy grabbed me.

Speaker 26 Which guy?

Speaker 20 The guy that I didn't

Speaker 104 and

Speaker 20 Zane and my mom.

Speaker 20 He was struggling and biting her and kept pushing her down.

Speaker 9 Well, that's a big change from the earlier story.

Speaker 18 Exactly.

Speaker 20 She was like, that's enough, that's enough.

Speaker 27 As they let her talk, her story shifted, grew to tales like beanstalks.

Speaker 26 Carrie, look at me. How did they open the door?

Speaker 20 They were, they picked the lock.

Speaker 26 And you didn't let them in. You didn't give them a key?

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 2 In fact, the more she talked, the more sure they were that Carrie Murphy was guilty of something.

Speaker 5 If she didn't kill her mother, it seemed like she must have helped somehow.

Speaker 111 You can't even come up with a lie that quick.

Speaker 57 No. A different detective took the chair and played bad cop.

Speaker 111 Listen to me. You need to stop your lies.
Stop your lies.

Speaker 106 You were there.

Speaker 80 When your mom was screaming for her life, as she was stabbed multiple times, I saw what y'all or you did to your mother.

Speaker 20 I didn't do that.

Speaker 16 Don't tell me that, Doug.

Speaker 81 And then the detectives asked a question that opened the door just to crack.

Speaker 111 How do you think your mom is reacting right now to you?

Speaker 20 I'm mad?

Speaker 111 Why would she be mad at you?

Speaker 20 Because I didn't help as much as I could have.

Speaker 101 Because you didn't want to.

Speaker 27 Part of me did. You didn't want to.

Speaker 20 Part of me did. Part of me did it.

Speaker 111 Were you generally mad at your mom about something? What were you mad about your mom?

Speaker 20 The fact that she tried to control my life. Okay.
And everything I did, she called me stupid or dumb or told me I wasn't good enough.

Speaker 12 And then one more story came out.

Speaker 11 She was guilty of something.

Speaker 10 Of making a terrible mistake.

Speaker 20 I let them in because they said they were going to bang on the wall and scare her and then run out.

Speaker 20 They didn't tell me their full plan.

Speaker 12 She did let Zane and another guy in the house, but he was supposed to frighten her mother, not kill her.

Speaker 80 She had only asked him to go in there and scare her.

Speaker 7 I see.

Speaker 74 And that he got carried away.

Speaker 80 He got carried away.

Speaker 52 You tell me that's true.

Speaker 20 Yes, that's what I've been holding back.

Speaker 20 That's... I killed my mom.
I let him in.

Speaker 20 I didn't know he was going to do that, though.

Speaker 6 After something like nine hours of talking to Carrie, the detectives called her father and brother and told them, come and get her.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 66 Why'd you let her go home at that stage?

Speaker 80 With the juveniles, they are dealt differently. I was only going to get a statement from her that we were treating her as a witness.

Speaker 83 When Scott and his dad arrived at the sheriff's office, Scott sensed that something was up.

Speaker 11 There was a reason detectives had kept Carrie as long as they did.

Speaker 21 We picked her up and we got in the car and we all just kind of sat there and I looked in the rearview mirror

Speaker 21 and I said, Carrie,

Speaker 21 who killed my mom?

Speaker 21 And she looked at me with tears in her eyes and she said, I think it was Zane.

Speaker 57 Does that make sense to you?

Speaker 21 It made sense.

Speaker 72 Carrie left out the part where she let Zane in the house, but even so,

Speaker 47 Zane seemed like a viable suspect to Scott.

Speaker 21 I had heard my sister talk about him. I had heard a couple of her friends talk about him.
And like it was all in passing. He was creepy, he was strange, he was weird.

Speaker 21 And at one point, I was told that he was stalking my sister.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 8 Who told you that?

Speaker 21 My sister, actually.

Speaker 12 That night, U.S.

Speaker 62 Marshals, armed with an arrest warrant, went looking for Zane.

Speaker 16 They found him, and when they did, they came across a whole new mystery.

Speaker 44 Zane himself.

Speaker 28 Someone's framing me.

Speaker 29 Framing you?

Speaker 30 Yes.

Speaker 23 A lot of the things he said didn't make sense.

Speaker 60 It wouldn't be long before investigators found themselves heading down a kind of rabbit hole.

Speaker 17 The bunny phone.

Speaker 38 The bunny phone.

Speaker 59 The car was silent as Scott and Carrie and their dad drove away from the sheriff's office.

Speaker 6 They took Carrie to a friend's house.

Speaker 4 Soon after that, Heather pulled up and found Carrie outside.

Speaker 46 I got out and I ran to her and I hugged her and we just cried there in the middle of the street.

Speaker 11 Did she tell you what happened?

Speaker 46 She told me that she had been taken down to the station and that the police had asked her questions and she said that she felt as if the police were trying to make it seem like she did.

Speaker 74 What was that like for you to hear?

Speaker 46 I was angered. I was upset.
I thought that's so unfair.

Speaker 46 Why would they do that to Carrie?

Speaker 9 Did she say anything about Zane at that point?

Speaker 46 She did tell me that it was Zane.

Speaker 80 They were able to get a warrant for his arrest just based on what Carrie provided.

Speaker 6 A violent defenders task force led by U.S.

Speaker 36 Marshals found 20-year-old Zane Ahmed at home, put him in cuffs, and brought him to the sheriff's office.

Speaker 60 Now you know who

Speaker 13 Carrie is?

Speaker 112 Yes, sir.

Speaker 71 Well, I mean, what's y'all's relationship?

Speaker 112 I thought we was friends, you you know, and I'm just curious what what did I do? I have not done nothing to her.

Speaker 113 When's the last time you seen her?

Speaker 105 Seen her since like what?

Speaker 112 Like I ran into her the mall like way back.

Speaker 48 She said you came by her house last night.

Speaker 80 I was at home all night last night.

Speaker 41 I didn't go anywhere.

Speaker 112 I was at home. I had never been to Carrie's house.
I'm telling you the truth, sir. I haven't been to her house.

Speaker 9 He denied everything.

Speaker 59 said he didn't know where she lived so he certainly wasn't stalking her although he did admit he had a short-term memory problem all right so is it possible with your short-term memory thing that you had gone to carrie's house at some point in time and

Speaker 77 just don't remember no

Speaker 35 that's not even possible

Speaker 112 Because I don't know where Carrie lives in the first place.

Speaker 17 The detectives got to the point.

Speaker 112 Do you know Carrie's mom? No.

Speaker 48 Do you know what happened to her?

Speaker 113 No.

Speaker 113 You don't know that she got killed? No, sir.

Speaker 60 What do you know about that?

Speaker 21 Nothing.

Speaker 80 He said he didn't know what we were talking about, that he was at home playing a video game.

Speaker 9 Guitar hero.

Speaker 36 He said he was playing with his nieces and nephews.

Speaker 28 Someone's framing me.

Speaker 29 Framing you?

Speaker 30 Yes.

Speaker 83 So Carrie's just making this all up.

Speaker 113 Yes.

Speaker 32 And you don't know why?

Speaker 112 No.

Speaker 49 After hours of denials, detectives had a thought.

Speaker 80 He was asked if he would submit to a polygraph.

Speaker 80 He agreed to that.

Speaker 6 Odd how some investigations can just turn on a dime.

Speaker 49 This one certainly did.

Speaker 80 He was told that he had done poorly on the exam, so he was eventually taken back to the interview room.

Speaker 21 He had the right to remain silent.

Speaker 62 Could they have seen this coming?

Speaker 16 Who knows?

Speaker 41 But right then,

Speaker 84 Zane confessed to the murder of Marianne Murphy.

Speaker 80 He basically just said that, yes, he did it. He went in there and then

Speaker 80 he stabbed Miss Murphy.

Speaker 6 His story began just like the one Carrie told.

Speaker 112 She contacted me and said, hey, do you do me a favor? I'm like, yeah, what's up? She's like, can you scare my mom? I'm like, yeah, sure.

Speaker 30 Did she say why she wanted her mom scared?

Speaker 68 No, sir.

Speaker 112 And so

Speaker 112 I got ready.

Speaker 112 I had, I wore black,

Speaker 112 all black.

Speaker 112 I had a hoodie over my face so no one could see me. I had a um

Speaker 45 weapon on me, but I wasn't going to use it.

Speaker 112 I was just going to scare her mom.

Speaker 48 His friend drove him to Carrie's house before 9 p.m., he said.

Speaker 112 I knocked out her window.

Speaker 32 Okay.

Speaker 32 And did she come outside?

Speaker 112 She saw me from the window and then she opened the door.

Speaker 10 He said he went to Marianne's bedroom.

Speaker 112 She jumped out of bed and as she really yelled, like screamed, jumped out. I just got frightened.
My heart was beating real fast and I accidentally stabbed her.

Speaker 112 I don't remember how many times I stabbed her.

Speaker 32 What about wherein?

Speaker 112 I know one in the stomach, but the rest is like

Speaker 112 one on the stomach.

Speaker 112 Don't take one in the arm and one in the back.

Speaker 62 So what did they charge him with?

Speaker 80 They charge him with murder.

Speaker 8 Now they had to decide what to do with the girl, the teenager who was angry with her mother.

Speaker 21 24 hours later, they were calling back. They said, we need y'all to bring her in.

Speaker 63 So

Speaker 10 very angry.

Speaker 28 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 91 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 89 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 96 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 107 Need to restock restock inventory, cover seasonal dips, or manage payroll?

Speaker 107 OnDeck's small business line of credit provides immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, exactly when your business needs it.

Speaker 107 With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and full control over repayment, you can tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat.

Speaker 107 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 107 OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota, all loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

Speaker 33 A mochi moment from Tara, who writes, For years, all my doctor said was eat less and move more, which never worked. But you know what does? The simple eating tips from my nutritionist at Mochi.

Speaker 33 And after losing over 30 pounds, I can say you're not just another GLP1 source, you're a life source. Thanks, Tara.
I'm Myra Ammet, founder of Mochi Health.

Speaker 33 To find your Mochi Moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 110 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary.

Speaker 11 Teenagers

Speaker 70 Not so unusual for a 16-year-old to act out against a parent, but this teenager seemed to have turned on her mother in the worst possible way.

Speaker 79 What happened?

Speaker 83 exactly?

Speaker 11 Carrie told detectives so many tall tales, it was hard to keep them straight.

Speaker 12 First, she said a stranger did it.

Speaker 36 Then she said Zane did it because he was obsessed with her.

Speaker 11 And then she said she asked Zane to come to the house to scare her mother.

Speaker 62 But for reasons even Zane couldn't explain, he went on a killing frenzy.

Speaker 2 So they weren't done with Carrie.

Speaker 14 Not yet.

Speaker 49 Who was this girl?

Speaker 46 I've known Carrie as long as I've been aware.

Speaker 7 What was she like?

Speaker 66 In your recollection as a little kid.

Speaker 46 She had a strong personality. She was possessive even at a very young age.
But she was my friend. And I loved her like a sister.

Speaker 86 I met Carrie in sixth grade.

Speaker 86 I was new to the school, and I met her in choir.

Speaker 11 By the time they got to high school, Carrie was struggling to fit in.

Speaker 86 Our school demographic was majority black and Hispanic. And because she was so tall and rosy red cheeks, she stood out naturally.

Speaker 11 So did she feel like comfortable in her skin?

Speaker 46 Once Carrie started really growing and getting taller and just changing in general, she definitely started to get a little more self-conscious about her appearance.

Speaker 46 She started wearing a little more makeup, dressing differently, just trying things out to see what stuck.

Speaker 66 Trying to fit in probably as much as anything.

Speaker 49 Right.

Speaker 49 Was she accepted?

Speaker 46 For the most part, yes.

Speaker 70 At home and for a long time, Carrie and her mom seemed to be close.

Speaker 21 She was a mama's girl. If my mom went to the store, my sister was going with her.

Speaker 11 But in the teenage years, things changed. She started doing what she wanted when she wanted.

Speaker 21 Once it became to the point where my sister was acting out and, you know, sneaking out of the house, that's when it became a hard stop.

Speaker 21 And she pulled the classic, you live in my house, you live by my rules.

Speaker 72 Now Marianne was dead.

Speaker 62 And investigators asked Carrie to come back down to the station for another round of questions.

Speaker 13 But Carrie, she had other ideas.

Speaker 80 And she says she wanted to retract everything that she said, that everything that she said was a lie, that she had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 84 Never asked Zane to scare her mother, never let him into the house.

Speaker 58 All Zane, every single bit of it.

Speaker 80 Yes, and that's when she lawyered up.

Speaker 21 When she asked for a lawyer, they officially charged her with the murder of her mother.

Speaker 8 How do you you get your head around this thing like that?

Speaker 21 You don't. You watched this little girl grow up.
She had a purple room with pink and green pinstripes. Her and my mom were supposed to go clothes shopping the next day for, you know, school.

Speaker 11 Scott wanted to believe his sister.

Speaker 21 We realized she's telling multiple stories, but I was trying to find the truth. in the multiple stories.

Speaker 11 Anna Emmons was also searching for the truth.

Speaker 103 She was the chief prosecutor assigned to juvenile cases, and in this case, she had a confession from the apparent killer.

Speaker 38 That changing story from Carrie and some serious doubts.

Speaker 23 I saw there was a confession from an adult male and I was worried about it.

Speaker 7 What was wrong with it?

Speaker 23 A lot of the things he said didn't make sense.

Speaker 15 Like, for example, how he got into the house.

Speaker 112 Front door to back door?

Speaker 18 Front.

Speaker 114 And so you came in the front yes sir but carrie said the killers came in through the back door and the location of the murder zane got that wrong too

Speaker 23 we went upstairs we went to go see where her mom is she said she was sleeping he said he went up a flight of stairs and that this is a one-story house if you had just simply been inside the house at the time of the murder, you would know.

Speaker 8 And you would know what you did to your victim. victim.

Speaker 112 I stabbed her four times.

Speaker 23 She was stabbed over 70 times.

Speaker 51 Quite a difference.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 23 Quite a difference.

Speaker 6 As she reviewed the seven-hour interrogation, she could hear Zane zigging and zagging.

Speaker 112 I want to start over everything right now. Okay.

Speaker 82 After confessing to the murder, he suggested he wasn't there at all.

Speaker 112 This is what really happened, and this is coming from my heart and everything.

Speaker 112 Sunday morning, I was at home

Speaker 112 until

Speaker 112 3 o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 29 Okay, you're losing me.

Speaker 30 What time did you go over to Carrie's house then?

Speaker 112 I didn't go to Carrie's house. My brother, my dad, everybody in my family can tell you I was at home all day that Sunday.
I didn't go anywhere. And this is the truth.
I'm just scared right now.

Speaker 114 Really scared.

Speaker 112 I'm trying to do my best here.

Speaker 29 You can't say I didn't do it and I did do it.

Speaker 112 I just want to go home.

Speaker 103 But no one was letting him go home, especially when minutes later, he was back to saying he did kill Carrie's mom.

Speaker 29 Do you really remember how many times and where you stabbed her?

Speaker 29 You just don't want to tell me.

Speaker 112 I don't even remember how many times I stabbed her.

Speaker 23 I had great concerns with it being an actual confession.

Speaker 62 The prosecutor had another important question, and it had to do with motive.

Speaker 14 Zane didn't really have one.

Speaker 12 But as investigators started poking around in their victim's life,

Speaker 59 well, what do you know?

Speaker 52 A secret emerged.

Speaker 85 Something about an affair.

Speaker 108 Had she ever told you if her husband knew about her seeing you?

Speaker 10 What a mess.

Speaker 65 One kid, this guy Zane, actually confessed to killing Mary Ann Murphy, but he couldn't get his facts right.

Speaker 75 The other, the daughter Carrie, cast about like a kid fishing for a good story.

Speaker 3 And neither one made any sense.

Speaker 68 What a puzzle that one was.

Speaker 80 yes it was

Speaker 80 and you know we have to just keep working at it

Speaker 25 detective sydney miller joined the widening investigation i actually join in and searching for witnesses and you know talk to people so we can figure out what happened here

Speaker 38 with carrie and zane locked up investigators took a closer look at the victim's life at Marianne's phone contacts, for example.

Speaker 79 And

Speaker 17 what a surprise.

Speaker 25 She was having an affair with

Speaker 68 a co-worker.

Speaker 79 An affair?

Speaker 84 Was that something you felt you needed to look into?

Speaker 86 Of course.

Speaker 42 They found the boyfriend at work.

Speaker 69 Has she ever been to your house? Yes.

Speaker 22 She's come up there and seen me, but

Speaker 22 I work here, so... Okay.

Speaker 22 Sometimes on Saturdays, she'd drop by from Premier, so

Speaker 32 sometimes found both, I'd smoke a cigarette, and then she'd co-do her to whatever she had to do.

Speaker 65 They also spent time together on the phone.

Speaker 108 Was y'all's texts being sexual in nature?

Speaker 21 More likely. What do you mean more than likely? Wouldn't you know?

Speaker 32 No, there's the majority of our texts were sexual in nature.

Speaker 49 And now, quite unexpectedly, there was a potential love triangle in the middle of their murder investigation.

Speaker 108 Had she ever told you

Speaker 105 if her husband knew about her seeing you?

Speaker 27 No.

Speaker 59 As far as the boyfriend knew, husband Don didn't have a clue about Mary Ann's secret life.

Speaker 22 She was spending a lot of time away from the house because she didn't want to be home when he was there, because she didn't want to see him drama.

Speaker 37 They checked out the boyfriend's alibi.

Speaker 13 It was solid.

Speaker 11 The husband's too.

Speaker 82 Detectives crossed both men off their list.

Speaker 55 Apparently, this marital drama had nothing to do with Mary Ann's murder.

Speaker 21 I couldn't be mad.

Speaker 21 My dad was not giving her the attention and the affection that she deserves sometimes, and so it made sense to look elsewhere.

Speaker 79 By then, the new investigators were looking for more witnesses.

Speaker 9 One was a girl they heard about from Carrie's father.

Speaker 15 Talk to Rebecca, he said.

Speaker 16 Carrie's very good friend.

Speaker 86 When Carrie started to

Speaker 86 become friends with Rebecca, I remember I got warning from someone and they were like, oh, your friend's talking to Rebecca?

Speaker 68 And I'm like, Yeah, like they're friends.

Speaker 7 And they were like, Oh,

Speaker 7 okay,

Speaker 86 well, be careful.

Speaker 16 Why careful?

Speaker 15 Well, for starters, Rebecca Keller was four years older than Carrie.

Speaker 62 They got to know each other and choir.

Speaker 63 Carrie was a 15-year-old freshman.

Speaker 11 Rebecca was a 19-year-old senior.

Speaker 69 And, well, no other way to put it, they fell in love.

Speaker 16 Caught fire, really.

Speaker 21 Rebecca was her first love.

Speaker 66 The intensity of that first love at that age is,

Speaker 68 well, intense.

Speaker 21 I mean, you hit the nail on the head there.

Speaker 86 Carrie and Rebecca were so enmeshed and so desperate, if you will, for like love. And when they found that within each other, they

Speaker 86 clung to it. They wanted to protect it.

Speaker 14 But Mary Ann did not approve.

Speaker 86 I don't think Mary Ann cared that like they were like lesbians or whatnot. Like I think

Speaker 86 the age gap was the problem.

Speaker 21 She did not trust someone who was 18, 19 years old and actively dating a 15, 16 year old. They argued a lot over Rebecca.

Speaker 12 And Carrie was changing.

Speaker 21 She was a bubbly person.

Speaker 21 And then out of nowhere, it got dark. The eye makeup got darker her personality got dark

Speaker 62 Mary Ann tried to stop it banned Rebecca from the house took away Carrie's phone

Speaker 48 didn't work

Speaker 21 they had been caught in the shower together when Rebecca was not even supposed to be in the house and that was a problem

Speaker 84 Then there was the day when Rebecca came over and refused to leave and Mary Ann called the police And the officer who responded was none other than Deputy Constable Fred Hooper.

Speaker 24 The mother explained that she didn't want the girlfriend there, and I took her to jail.

Speaker 58 What was the charge? Just trespassing.

Speaker 24 Just trespassing, yes.

Speaker 11 So detectives knew about Rebecca from the start, but they didn't chase her down because they had that confession from Zane.

Speaker 112 I'm going to be talking to Rebecca.

Speaker 82 Now, about a week into the investigation, Rebecca got a visit from law enforcement.

Speaker 38 They found her at home, talked to her in their car.

Speaker 108 Okay, now Rebecca, you are friends with, you know, Carrie Murphy.

Speaker 96 Yes.

Speaker 25 She was forthcoming.

Speaker 105 Y'all been friends since school?

Speaker 25 Yes. She talked about how they were in a dating relationship.

Speaker 32 They kind of skipped over into a relationship.

Speaker 25 Yeah. And how she had gotten in trouble.
and that she was not supposed to be around her anymore.

Speaker 5 She admitted that, yes, she had dated Carrie.

Speaker 27 But all that talk about desperate love, nah, just another teen fling in the rearview mirror.

Speaker 69 Didn't work out? It didn't work out.

Speaker 22 We just stay friends.

Speaker 34 That's usually how it happens.

Speaker 16 She said she barely even spoke to Carrie anymore and hadn't since a month before the murder.

Speaker 32 So you hadn't talked to her since

Speaker 32 then.

Speaker 47 Though Rebecca did remember seeing the awful news about the murder.

Speaker 69 I was in shock milk.

Speaker 34 You know, I used to talk to that lady every

Speaker 94 concert that we had at school.

Speaker 32 But with her trying to stop you from going away, I mean, was she just.

Speaker 34 She was trying to protect me, keep me out of trouble, and to keep Carrie out of trouble.

Speaker 32 So you don't have any idea why this happened?

Speaker 57 No, sir, I don't.

Speaker 32 And you tell the man the truth in what you're telling me?

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 34 Do I look like a bad kid?

Speaker 45 No.

Speaker 34 I'm a good kid.

Speaker 41 Good kid?

Speaker 11 Too bad Mary Ann had taken Carrie's phone away weeks before the murder.

Speaker 84 It might have backed up Rebecca's story or

Speaker 17 knocked it down.

Speaker 39 Too late for that now.

Speaker 41 And then?

Speaker 41 Well, well,

Speaker 48 guess what turned up?

Speaker 25 Carrie had a second phone.

Speaker 7 A burner phone.

Speaker 7 A burner phone.

Speaker 114 Now, why would Carrie need a burner phone?

Speaker 28 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition, too.

Speaker 91 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 89 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 96 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 16 If you had to pick one key to unlock the whole miserable business, well, then maybe it was the phone.

Speaker 3 The bunny phone.

Speaker 59 Remember when her mother was murdered, Carrie ran to a neighbor's house to call 911.

Speaker 80 They saw her with the phone in her hand, and they asked her,

Speaker 80 you know, why you're not using your phone. You have a phone.
And she told one of them that it was a phone that her mom didn't know about.

Speaker 7 A burner phone. A burner phone.

Speaker 6 The kids called it the bunny phone because bunny was everyone's nickname for the person who provided it, Rebecca Keller.

Speaker 67 Detectives started tracking it down a few weeks into the investigation.

Speaker 21 And you know, they're like, you know, where is it?

Speaker 7 I have it.

Speaker 21 Can we have it? Absolutely, you can have it. And yeah, I just handed it over.

Speaker 16 And the records for that bunny phone were a revelation.

Speaker 102 For one thing, The Carrie Rebecca love affair wasn't over.

Speaker 11 It was as intense as ever.

Speaker 6 The bunny phone revealed they talked constantly.

Speaker 73 So now, Rebecca, Bunny, had some explaining to do.

Speaker 22 You're not in custody. You haven't been charged with anything.

Speaker 69 Okay.

Speaker 32 I just want to get a statement from you.

Speaker 48 And this time they brought her in.

Speaker 34 Well, I know the reason why I got that phone is because remote recruits.

Speaker 47 And just like her girlfriend had done over and over, Once she was caught in a lie, Rebecca started changing her story.

Speaker 25 In In the second interview, we confronted her about having this communication and she openly admitted, yeah, I lied about it.

Speaker 63 She admitted that she and Carrie still talked a lot.

Speaker 57 And there was one call of particular interest to the investigators.

Speaker 41 A nearly three-minute call around 1 a.m.

Speaker 84 the night of the murder.

Speaker 34 She's like, something bad has happened and I really need you right now. I was like, okay, what happened? Tell me what happened.
She's like, my mom has been killed. I was like, by who?

Speaker 34 She's like, I don't know. I'm really scared.
Okay.

Speaker 34 I was like, okay, well, you need to call the cops.

Speaker 40 She's like, okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 50 But that was it. All she knew.

Speaker 48 Rebecca said she had no idea what happened at Carrie's house that night because she was working at Joe's crab shack.

Speaker 103 So naturally.

Speaker 25 We go to the crab shack. We talk to the manager.
He tells us that, no, Rebecca doesn't work there.

Speaker 6 She'd been fired two months earlier.

Speaker 11 Did she not think they would check?

Speaker 84 The lie landed Rebecca back at the sheriff's office for round three.

Speaker 113 I thought we've gone over this story.

Speaker 22 There's been some

Speaker 113 majority of it that you've told lies about it.

Speaker 60 With her alibi up and smoke,

Speaker 6 Rebecca told yet another new story.

Speaker 8 It all started, she said, because Carrie hated, really hated her mother.

Speaker 34 She started saying, I hate my mom. I wish my mom was dead.
And I kept telling her, why?

Speaker 34 Why? It's your mom.

Speaker 75 Carrie complained about her mother for weeks, said Rebecca.

Speaker 103 Until

Speaker 34 she started telling me, I'm on plan. I've been planning this plan for three months.
And I was like, what plan? She's like, I'm not going to get you involved. I'm not going to get you involved.

Speaker 34 Her plan was to wait until her mom fell asleep. She was going to go in there with

Speaker 34 some knife. And she told me, she's like, yeah, I want to stab my mom 28 times.
I was like, no, I don't want to hear this.

Speaker 91 I'm hanging up. And I hung up on her.

Speaker 5 And then came the evening of the murder.

Speaker 62 Carrie texted Rebecca on the bunny phone.

Speaker 4 It was happening.

Speaker 34 She started saying, yeah, I'm going to tell my brother that this guy, there's this random car going by.

Speaker 12 Again, Rebecca said she begged Carrie to keep her out of it.

Speaker 34 I want to go to college. I want to get a good paying job.
I was like, I'm not talking to you about this anymore. I'm done with it.

Speaker 59 Around 1 a.m., Rebecca said, Carrie called

Speaker 8 one more time.

Speaker 34 And she's like, I just did it. And I was like, did what? She's like, I just killed my mom.

Speaker 25 I mean, this was a turning point in the case.

Speaker 34 She tried to tell me, like, how she did it. She's like, I stabbed my mom 17 times.
I slit her throat.

Speaker 80 According to Rebecca, this is all Carrie.

Speaker 111 I told her, I was like, you need to call the cops and tell them that you did do it.

Speaker 34 And she's like, no, no, no.

Speaker 104 I'm going to cover it up.

Speaker 34 I'm going to cover it up.

Speaker 25 She's pointing a finger and pinning it all on Carrie.

Speaker 59 Kind of a big deal, ratting out her girlfriend, Carrie, like that.

Speaker 106 So the detectives asked, just to be sure, would Rebecca sit for a polygraph?

Speaker 38 And she said,

Speaker 44 yes.

Speaker 17 And she passed.

Speaker 25 I mean, she passed with flying colors. She showed no deception.

Speaker 41 The truth, finally?

Speaker 84 Maybe.

Speaker 56 But then, a young man named Martin Juarez, a kid with a car and a nagging memory, offered a fascinating story of his own about a certain event that very night in Humboldt, Texas.

Speaker 25 He said that when she got to the car, she had been running and she's just telling him to go, go, go, go, go.

Speaker 4 Run, bunny.

Speaker 18 Run.

Speaker 53 There he was, waiting in his car in the dark.

Speaker 70 Waiting and waiting on the night of the murder.

Speaker 6 Martin Juarez later told detectives he thought he was doing his friend Rebecca a simple favor, dropping her off near Carrie's place.

Speaker 25 And Rebecca told him, Hey, I'll just be here about 20 minutes and then I'll be right back. He said an hour had passed and he hadn't heard from her.

Speaker 112 And when she finally did return, She looked exhausted when she was running.

Speaker 112 I couldn't really tell if she had anything on her.

Speaker 25 And he said that when she got to the car, she looked like she was out of breath and she's just telling him to go, go, go, go, go.

Speaker 11 Of all the young friends detectives tracked down after the murder, Martin Juarez was maybe the most informative.

Speaker 6 Yes, he took Rebecca to Carrie's neighborhood that night, but there was more.

Speaker 3 A few weeks after the murder, he found Rebecca here in this park and he confronted her about that night.

Speaker 62 And it was right here, he told detectives, that Rebecca broke down and confessed to the murder.

Speaker 32 She came up and told me the truth that she had did it, that she had two blades, that she went into her mom's room and

Speaker 112 she had took one knife instead of her.

Speaker 8 Rebecca was there?

Speaker 5 And she was the killer?

Speaker 30 He had a right to remain silent.

Speaker 3 Now she was under arrest and backed into a corner.

Speaker 102 Yes, she said she was there that night.

Speaker 71 She loved Carrie so much.

Speaker 3 She allowed herself to be drawn into Carrie's plan to kill Marianne and cover up the crime.

Speaker 77 But love only takes you so far. Rebecca insisted it was Carrie who did the stabbing.

Speaker 34 I heard her mom saying, stop, stop.

Speaker 34 And then she was screaming. She's like, okay, you can stop stabbing me now.
And then Betsy.

Speaker 22 And then

Speaker 34 five minutes later, Carrie comes out with a bloody knife and bloody gloves. And I got the trash bag ready.
And I told her to strip down. And she stripped.
And

Speaker 34 she put all of her clothes in there.

Speaker 71 That bit made sense to the detectives.

Speaker 11 They had been wondering how the killer contained the blood so effectively.

Speaker 36 Rebecca also explained the note,

Speaker 62 that lame lame effort to point the finger at the guy in the car accident.

Speaker 34 I was supposed to

Speaker 34 write the note, but it was my different handwriting than hers.

Speaker 6 Anyway, said Rebecca, when they'd cleaned themselves up.

Speaker 34 She asked me to get rid of the bag, so I took it to the school

Speaker 34 and dropped it in the droppage can, the doctor's.

Speaker 59 That would explain the dried blood on Mary Ann's body.

Speaker 5 Rebecca left, but Carrie stayed behind and continued to clean up for hours before she called 911.

Speaker 36 And Zane?

Speaker 20 His name is Zane.

Speaker 26 What's his name?

Speaker 20 Zane.

Speaker 12 Well, that was Carrie's backup lie, improvising right on the spot when she realized the story about the accident wasn't landing the way she'd hoped it would.

Speaker 30 Did Carrie ever tell you that she was going to try to blame us on Zane?

Speaker 34 No, I didn't have any knowledge about that.

Speaker 41 Yep, she said said all of it was Carrie's doing.

Speaker 63 And she, Rebecca, was simply the supportive girlfriend.

Speaker 2 But that wasn't going to keep her out of jail.

Speaker 25 In the state of Texas, you know, if you aid assist someone in a crime like that, then you would be charged with the same murder.

Speaker 105 So Rebecca was charged with murder, locked up at the Harris County Jail.

Speaker 3 Zane's family said all along he was no killer.

Speaker 63 They gave the prosecutor video of Zane playing guitar hero with his family the night Mary Ann was murdered.

Speaker 6 So what did you do about Zane in the end?

Speaker 23 Well, after we looked into it and got the evidence, we were comfortable with moving forward with dismissing his case.

Speaker 71 We asked Zane why he confessed that night.

Speaker 83 He told us he was terrified.

Speaker 9 He didn't know what else to do.

Speaker 67 He also said he didn't stalk Carrie.

Speaker 49 He wasn't obsessed with her.

Speaker 73 He didn't even like her.

Speaker 4 Not in that way.

Speaker 21 This was a brutal, cold-blooded killing.

Speaker 9 Prosecutor Anna Emmons had seen enough.

Speaker 8 She knew this case belonged in adult court.

Speaker 23 And if someone's going to go to that length to harm their mother and be part of that,

Speaker 23 That's a danger to the community.

Speaker 55 Ergo, they become an adult.

Speaker 23 Yes, and she was certified to go to the adult system.

Speaker 62 The judge in the case agreed to set bail for Carrie.

Speaker 62 Scott cobbled together the money and picked her up.

Speaker 17 He also made room for her in his home.

Speaker 77 She was, after all, his little sister, and in a way, the only family he had left.

Speaker 21 By the time she was certified as an adult,

Speaker 21 My dad had experienced some extreme mental decline.

Speaker 27 Oh, boy.

Speaker 21 And at this point,

Speaker 10 I was on my own.

Speaker 21 My mom died in July of 2012 and by December of 2012 my dad was talking to Christmas trees. He was you know having conversations with shadows and his

Speaker 21 short-term memory was just declining

Speaker 21 and I was 21. I didn't I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 74 Of course he asked Carrie what happened and she repeated the old story about Zane.

Speaker 9 And Scott knew knew that wasn't true.

Speaker 64 It had to be Rebecca.

Speaker 21 They arrested Rebecca for a reason.

Speaker 58 So was Rebecca. Not your sister, but Rebecca.

Speaker 8 The girlfriend.

Speaker 21 Right. It had to be her.
It couldn't be my sister. She's my sister.

Speaker 21 She wouldn't kill her mom.

Speaker 64 And if he had any nagging doubts about that, Scott packed them away.

Speaker 12 All he could do now was take care of his little sister and keep her safe and prepare for the trial.

Speaker 21 If I went Christmas shopping, she went with me.

Speaker 21 If I had little money to burn, it was probably going to her.

Speaker 74 All the while, Carrie's friends watched her behavior with something like disgust.

Speaker 11 She seemed to be enjoying herself maybe too much.

Speaker 86 It seemed as if

Speaker 86 she was fine and like nothing had like never happened. Like that she didn't lose her mom.

Speaker 86 Or that she wasn't just in in jail.

Speaker 46 She was moving on with her life. Nobody seemed worried.
Nobody was crying in that sense. At least not that I saw.

Speaker 46 It's just shenanigans. Lots of shenanigans.

Speaker 56 Oh, but something else was going on, too.

Speaker 15 Secret, but not secret.

Speaker 15 Scott paid Carrie's bail, but no one paid Rebecca's. So, while Carrie was partying on the outside, Rebecca was confined to a harsh gray world behind bars.

Speaker 2 Separated for good?

Speaker 18 Why, no,

Speaker 41 not at all.

Speaker 34 This is a call from an inmate at Harris County Jail.

Speaker 93 When I get out, we'll talk about everything.

Speaker 22 About the case, about

Speaker 22 what really happened at night, everything you want to talk about.

Speaker 8 So much to talk about.

Speaker 53 So much to plan.

Speaker 35 The question at the heart of it was, of course, why?

Speaker 9 Why would Carrie turn on her mother in such a horrific way?

Speaker 84 To be with her girlfriend, yes, but...

Speaker 10 Had to be more than that.

Speaker 103 And sure enough.

Speaker 48 Did you believe that

Speaker 30 when Carrie got her phone taken away from her, that her mom was going to find something on that phone and try to file on you?

Speaker 34 Yes.

Speaker 13 There it was.

Speaker 62 The twisted rationale that triggered the murder.

Speaker 21 I mean, there would have been proof of, you know, sending nudes to a minor. At that point, she would have had proof of statutory rape.

Speaker 11 Mary Ann could have had Rebecca charged with a serious crime.

Speaker 3 Sex with a minor.

Speaker 62 So, according to Rebecca, Carrie did it.

Speaker 36 Committed matricide for her.

Speaker 31 Together, they created this dramatic world, this backstory, this us against the world.

Speaker 4 Greg Holton was the prosecutor.

Speaker 31 The first impression you get as a prosecutor is you see their mugshot.

Speaker 12 There is Carrie, steely-eyed, almost smirking.

Speaker 49 But Rebecca, well, older,

Speaker 41 looked lost, red-eyed,

Speaker 49 scared.

Speaker 31 Even though she was 20 years old, she looks about 15, and it takes a minute to figure out the dynamic between the two of them.

Speaker 13 Did you say you saw her as a follower, saw Rebecca as a follower?

Speaker 14 I think that's right.

Speaker 31 I think in many ways, Carrie called the shots in their dynamic.

Speaker 6 But easy case?

Speaker 14 Maybe not.

Speaker 4 There were

Speaker 35 issues.

Speaker 7 Like what?

Speaker 31 Like the false confession.

Speaker 6 That's a big one.

Speaker 84 It's kind of incomprehensible and juries have trouble believing that.

Speaker 31 Exactly.

Speaker 36 A good defense attorney would run with that.

Speaker 84 And legally it didn't matter.

Speaker 85 But wouldn't jurors want to know which girl wielded the knife?

Speaker 6 Weren't they actually pointing fingers at each other along the way a lot?

Speaker 31 They would pledge their allegiance to each other and then talk to the police and say,

Speaker 31 I didn't do it, but I know who did.

Speaker 16 So who finally told the real story?

Speaker 4 Why, they did.

Speaker 59 On the phone, they couldn't help themselves.

Speaker 21 There was a no-contact order issued, and the first thing they did is break that no-contact order. And they spoke on the phone for almost 14 months.
They were playing out a lifetime movie.

Speaker 21 Baby, that's bad.

Speaker 21 I love you.

Speaker 21 I love you, too.

Speaker 27 I love you, too.

Speaker 16 There was Carrie, tucked away in her warm, cozy life on the outside.

Speaker 84 And Rebecca...

Speaker 26 You may start the conversation now.

Speaker 11 Making the best of her hard gray reality behind bars.

Speaker 115 God, I swear I love you. I love you, too.

Speaker 115 Good.

Speaker 115 That's a good one.

Speaker 115 My penguin.

Speaker 61 You want to know all my penguins? No, you're my penguin.

Speaker 4 They talked about their longing for the past as they planned for the future.

Speaker 61 I started picturing, like, the day I'd move out and like move in with you and shit.

Speaker 115 Already picturing that, Hobby.

Speaker 64 Carrie had lots of stories about life on the outside.

Speaker 39 We're talking about homecoming?

Speaker 39 Oh.

Speaker 22 Well, why can't I be included in the conversation?

Speaker 56 Sometimes Rebecca sounded needy.

Speaker 39 Carrie annoyed.

Speaker 7 Seriously?

Speaker 7 What?

Speaker 22 Seriously, what, man? I'll be trying to f ⁇ ing call you all damn days.

Speaker 34 What did we talk about earlier?

Speaker 40 Don't blow my phone up.

Speaker 61 And I'm sorry that I'm so f ⁇ ing busy that I can't talk to you all the time.

Speaker 31 Law enforcement was listening.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 31 So there was no urgency

Speaker 31 to stop them from talking if they wanted to incriminate themselves.

Speaker 6 Sometimes they seemed disconnected from what they had done.

Speaker 61 You have no idea what it's like not having your mom and having nobody but your brother to depend on. It's not your fault.

Speaker 115 Stop blaming yourself for it. Things happen for a reason, but you can't change the way that God

Speaker 115 does his way.

Speaker 31 They created this bubble around the two of them

Speaker 31 that was void of reality.

Speaker 31 It was void of empathy. And ultimately, it was void of morality.

Speaker 11 Between April 2013 and April 2014, they talked more than 800 times.

Speaker 39 And all that time, law enforcement was listening for anything that could erase that pesky thing called

Speaker 8 reasonable doubt.

Speaker 99 For months, they seemed to play the game, avoided incriminating themselves.

Speaker 22 I just don't know how I'm going to react when we go in the house.

Speaker 115 Colonel New, which you're going to need to

Speaker 41 And then it happened.

Speaker 2 They were talking again

Speaker 56 about going back to the scene of the crime.

Speaker 31 Rebecca and Carrie are talking about when they get out and they're going back to the house. And there's this question of it will be, it will be hard for Rebecca to go back there and to cope with it.

Speaker 31 And Carrie tells her in some form or fashion, get over it. We've got to deal with it.

Speaker 22 And Rebecca says, You didn't see what I saw.

Speaker 61 Actually, I did.

Speaker 27 In person?

Speaker 115 Actually, I did.

Speaker 27 What do you mean you did?

Speaker 61 I wasn't in my room the whole time.

Speaker 27 What do you mean?

Speaker 61 Was it in my room the whole time?

Speaker 27 Did

Speaker 27 you?

Speaker 61 The doorway?

Speaker 27 Doorway of what?

Speaker 34 My mom's room?

Speaker 27 No, you weren't, because you went there.

Speaker 7 I didn't see him.

Speaker 115 We won't talk about that.

Speaker 27 Oh my god, bro.

Speaker 27 Don't turn me fall.

Speaker 115 I thought I told you to stay here.

Speaker 27 I don't, but I'm hard-headed.

Speaker 63 This sounded like the real story at last.

Speaker 59 Rebecca held the knife.

Speaker 11 Carrie stood stood by in silent approval.

Speaker 31 It was a significant jail call

Speaker 24 to put the knife in one of their hands.

Speaker 47 Greg Holton played the tapes for Scott.

Speaker 67 And Scott abandoned all hope that his sister might not be the monster he feared.

Speaker 21 I could see everything for what it was. And at this point, I'm ready to accept that this was my sister.

Speaker 16 Scott urged Carrie to take a plea.

Speaker 21 And I mean, she fought me on it. She fought me.

Speaker 21 So I just, I gave her the facts.

Speaker 21 And in the end, she took the deal.

Speaker 12 Rebecca pleaded too, and when she did, she still said it was Carrie who wielded the knife.

Speaker 59 Not that it mattered.

Speaker 58 She got 60 years.

Speaker 73 She also told Daitline she was manipulated by drugs and by Carrie.

Speaker 64 Carrie is serving 30 years.

Speaker 66 How often do you talk to her now? How often do you see her?

Speaker 21 I only see my sister

Speaker 21 when I feel it necessary, when there's been

Speaker 21 an important moment in the family.

Speaker 6 Their father remains in a residential care facility.

Speaker 21 His brain's broken. He thinks my mom's still alive.

Speaker 58 What about you, Scott?

Speaker 66 How was your life?

Speaker 21 I won't lie to you. For a very long time,

Speaker 21 I didn't think I was going to bounce back.

Speaker 21 I got pretty low.

Speaker 21 But now,

Speaker 21 now I am lucky enough

Speaker 21 to have a wonderful life. I'm married to a beautiful woman.
I have two amazing kids.

Speaker 21 My family is my world. I don't take it for granted.
I know how quickly it can be taken away.

Speaker 7 Hang on to that, for sure.

Speaker 21 If no one minds, there is one thing that I want to bring up. Yeah.
Since my mom was killed, there's been a lot of focus on what happened that night. And I mean, it's terrible.
It's tragic.

Speaker 105 But that's not the whole story.

Speaker 21 21 years before that, there was nothing but a lifetime of good memories. You know, pancake breakfast on Sunday, building playhouse with dad.

Speaker 13 There was a happy life in that house.

Speaker 21 She was a mom. She was a wife.
She was a daughter. And she was loved her entire life.

Speaker 21 That's what defines my mom. Not the night that she was killed.

Speaker 19 And that's all for this edition of Dateline. Check out our Talking Dateline podcast.

Speaker 19 Keith Morrison and Josh Mankiewicz will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 19 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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