Part of the Plan

Speaker 1 Struggling to see up close? Make it visible with Viz. 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 1 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 1 The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt and justice and doubt, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 2 Tonight on Dave Live.

Speaker 1 I cried the whole time.

Speaker 3 I know that a lot of parents lose their kids.

Speaker 3 Why would anybody shoot him?

Speaker 4 Somebody had killed a United States serviceman. There was blood smeared on different walls and on a vehicle inside.

Speaker 5 He was a great father. He was always looking out for you.

Speaker 6 What we were kind of thinking was they had maybe you had like a loan shark situation, like they had borrowed money from someone.

Speaker 7 We live in a gambling town. Is he a gambler?

Speaker 4 She was the first one to come in and really explain how it all had happened.

Speaker 8 What I was asked to do did not involve anything to do with murder.

Speaker 9 I'm really afraid for my life.

Speaker 4 It was chilling. It was almost more than you could bear as a human being.

Speaker 3 I can only imagine what he went through.

Speaker 7 He served his country and then was cut down in the prime of his life. His story needs to be told.

Speaker 2 A haunting plot, a heinous crime, and a heartbreaking question.

Speaker 1 Why? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Nate Live.

Speaker 1 Here's Keith Morrison with part of the plan.

Speaker 4 Every bad guy that's ever lived is coming through Vegas at one point in his career.

Speaker 1 As a homicide detective for Las Vegas Metro PD in Nevada, Todd Williams saw it all.

Speaker 4 Whether you're a plumber or a policeman, you want to go where the work is, and there's lots of good police work here in Las Vegas.

Speaker 1 That's certainly one way to look at it. Williams did the work for 30 years, never once sharing his cases with the media.

Speaker 4 I've always refused these.

Speaker 1 How come?

Speaker 4 I just didn't feel like murder was entertainment or should be entertainment. That's the best way I could describe it.

Speaker 4 So I've got my reasons for doing this now.

Speaker 1 Reasons that perhaps will make sense once you hear the whole story.

Speaker 1 Which began for Todd Williams on a cold December night in 2010.

Speaker 1 In a family home on a quiet street 13 miles and a world away from the Las Vegas Strip.

Speaker 1 Oh my God, see, what's going on there? Where horror had just come to call.

Speaker 1 My army did nothing about his mind. I need to calm down just a moment.
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 The woman's husband was Nathan Payette.

Speaker 1 A U.S. Air Force Airman.
He's breathing out of his mouth.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Is he awake? Is he talking to you? No, he's not talking. His eyes are open.

Speaker 1 Oh, God, please. Quickly, we need to start doing CPR right now.

Speaker 1 He's wearing a military uniform, oh my god. He's in a military uniform, yes.
Get the uniform off. Oh, God, he's shot in his stomach.

Speaker 1 Okay, put him flat on his back.

Speaker 1 The operator helped the woman perform CPR.

Speaker 1 Okay, faster, much faster.

Speaker 1 With the couple's four children just a few feet away.

Speaker 1 Keep doing it. Keep doing it.
I don't know what your name is, but keep doing it, okay?

Speaker 1 My name is Michelle.

Speaker 11 Michelle, keep doing you're doing a good job.

Speaker 1 Michelle continued until the paramedics finally arrived and rushed Nathan to the hospital. They kept him alive, but he wasn't good.
He'd been shot multiple times.

Speaker 1 Michelle pulled herself together and called Nathan's family, who lived thousands of miles away, in Guam.

Speaker 1 Her father-in-law picked up the phone, and then he called his wife, Nathan's mom, Carmelita Payette.

Speaker 3 I was just getting ready to get off work.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 You know, I was just like,

Speaker 3 what?

Speaker 3 And I told my co-workers I had to leave. So on my way home, I managed to call Michelle.
And she was hysterical. And I told her, I said, you know,

Speaker 3 you have to pray that, you know, he lives through this.

Speaker 1 It was too late for prayers

Speaker 1 by 1249 a.m. Nathan Payette was dead

Speaker 1 he was only 28 years old

Speaker 1 within the hour detective Williams and his partner Detective Laura Anderson were called to this new community called Mountains Edge

Speaker 7 it was out in the middle of nowhere Very remote location.

Speaker 1 Wouldn't expect a lot of that violent crime there.

Speaker 7 Exactly. It was a quiet suburban neighborhood

Speaker 1 not that night

Speaker 4 when i got there the garage door was open and the lights were on in the garage and when you walked in the garage you could see a large amount of blood deep into the garage around a weight bench a bench press

Speaker 4 There was blood smeared on different walls and on a vehicle inside.

Speaker 1 And a trail of blood that led into the house and ended at a bloody military uniform left behind on the floor

Speaker 1 and that struck me

Speaker 4 that somebody had killed a united states serviceman

Speaker 1 the first responding officers filled them in looked like maybe a carjacking gone bad they said

Speaker 7 usually the information we're given initially most of the time is wrong so we take that with a grain of salt okay

Speaker 1 Nathan's cell phone and car keys and wallet appeared to be untouched.

Speaker 4 Nothing that we could tell was taken. Nothing from the garage.
The vehicle was obviously not taken. It felt more deliberate simply because of the area we were in, the time of the night it took place.

Speaker 4 It just seemed more purposeful than just a carjacking.

Speaker 1 Nathan Payette was targeted, must have been. But by whom?

Speaker 1 So Detective Williams set out to canvass the neighbors.

Speaker 1 What did they see or hear?

Speaker 1 Somebody shot U.S. Air Force Airman Nathan Payette inside his own garage, just feet away from his wife, his children.

Speaker 12 911 emergency, we heard some gunshots.

Speaker 1 Neighbors had called it in just seconds after they heard gunfire.

Speaker 12 How many shots did you hear?

Speaker 12 They saw a car speed off, a black

Speaker 12 sports car, kind of.

Speaker 4 And specifically, they saw the car start, the lights came on like most cars do automatically, and then the car lights went off and the car sped away.

Speaker 4 So that gave us the impression that that's something we needed to pay attention to.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that'd make you burke up, all right? Yes.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, more than 6,000 miles away in Guam,

Speaker 1 the Payat family waited for updates from the mainland.

Speaker 3 So I called the hospital and they couldn't really give me much information at the time.

Speaker 1 By the time Carmelita finally got hold of Michelle, the news was as as bad as news could be. Nathan didn't make it.
They couldn't save him.

Speaker 3 My heart didn't break.

Speaker 7 It was shattered.

Speaker 1 She gave birth to that young man. She had to know what happened to him.
Had to.

Speaker 3 How did he get shot? Why would anybody shoot him? We knew that he wasn't involved in drugs. You know, who would want to actually do something to him like that?

Speaker 1 So many questions.

Speaker 1 The same questions detectives Williams and Anderson were asking Nathan's wife, Michelle, in their patrol car in the hours after Nathan was killed.

Speaker 13 Along with Musa Teter T.

Speaker 1 Williams, Michelle told them Nathan worked a graveyard shift at Nellis Air Force Base to accommodate Michelle's work and school schedule. But that day, Michelle said she left work early.

Speaker 1 She wasn't feeling well. And they all piled onto the living room couch, Michelle, Nathan, and the kids, and fell asleep until Michelle woke up.
It was past 11 p.m.

Speaker 14 I woke him up because I looked at the time and I told him he's late.

Speaker 16 You know, so he was rushing.

Speaker 14 He went upstairs and, you know, he got in the shower and did his thing.

Speaker 14 He got dressed.

Speaker 16 And then, you know, he walked downstairs

Speaker 1 and made his way to the garage to put his boots on before getting into his truck. It was parked in the driveway.
That was his routine.

Speaker 14 I hear the garage door open, so I lay down, you know, next to my daughter on the couch.

Speaker 14 And then I hear two bangs,

Speaker 17 and I didn't go outside.

Speaker 17 God, excuse me. It's okay.

Speaker 17 Because my kids got startled. So I just stayed there.

Speaker 17 And then I hear the door open

Speaker 14 to get into the house,

Speaker 17 and he just walks in

Speaker 17 and he just draws.

Speaker 19 I'm good.

Speaker 1 That is when Michelle called 911.

Speaker 1 About an hour later, Nathan was pronounced dead.

Speaker 13 Now, I'm going to ask you some questions that are kind of sensitive in nature and they're personal, okay?

Speaker 13 But it's something that we have to do for our investigation, okay?

Speaker 13 What's the status of your marriage? Do you have a good marriage with him?

Speaker 17 It's good.

Speaker 1 I mean, although they didn't see each other much during the week, said Michelle, they made sure the weekends were spent together as a family.

Speaker 3 I love you.

Speaker 1 His digital footprint proved it.

Speaker 5 Even Michelle, she's bedridden now.

Speaker 1 As detectives were finding out, she's like, forget this place.

Speaker 7 Does he have any kind of habits? What are his vices?

Speaker 7 And the only thing we could find was that he was a dedicated family man, loved his family, and there was nothing but pictures of his wife and kids on his phone. He was just a good guy.

Speaker 7 He was just a good man.

Speaker 1 And when Detective Anderson asked Michelle about any extramarital affairs, Nathan had been faithful, she said, and so had she.

Speaker 1 In fact, she said they promised that if it ever crossed either of their minds, they'd talk about it first.

Speaker 14 We've always told each other that if, you know, we're making each other unhappy or, you know, we feel that, you know, something's not there.

Speaker 14 And if you want to go out and venture off, then just let each other know.

Speaker 1 She and Nathan were were high school sweethearts. They'd been married for eight years.
The only thing she was guilty of was being flirtatious.

Speaker 4 Is there anybody specific you flirted with?

Speaker 14 No, there's nobody specific.

Speaker 1 Michelle did say that she and Nathan were struggling financially.

Speaker 14 You know, we were behind on our bills.

Speaker 1 Michelle said she didn't believe Nathan owed anyone money. But some members of Nathan's family weren't so sure.

Speaker 5 It was pretty evident, you know, that they were struggling financially. We looked in

Speaker 5 the pantry. We looked in the refrigerator.
It was

Speaker 6 almost no food.

Speaker 1 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 1 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 1 Get started at SNHU.edu slash dateline. That's snhu dot edu slash dateline.
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.

Speaker 1 Mint Mobile is offering unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. That's their best deal of the year, aka a holiday gift you'll actually use every single day.
Don't get them socks.

Speaker 1 Get them premium wireless for $15 a month. Shop Mint Unlimited plans at mintmobile.com slash dateline.
That's mintmobile.com slash dateline. Limited time offer.

Speaker 1 Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required, $15 per month equivalent.
Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only.

Speaker 1 Greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when the network is busy. Capable device required.
Availability, speed, and coverage vary. See Mintmobile.com.

Speaker 21 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 21 Granger helps you stay fully stocked on the products you trust, from paper towels and disinfectants to floor scrubbers.

Speaker 21 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 1 Within hours of hearing her son Nathan was dead, Carmelita and her husband were on the way to the airport.

Speaker 3 We needed to be there to help Michelle with the kids because we figured she'd be really totally out of it.

Speaker 1 And then they sat on that airplane from Guam to Vegas, hours and hours and hours, helpless in their grief.

Speaker 3 I cried the whole time.

Speaker 1 How could you not?

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 I know that a lot of parents lose their kids. You know, a lot of people have gone through the same pain,

Speaker 3 but it's something you don't want to even wish, even upon your worst enemy.

Speaker 1 Nathan was Carmelita's youngest son, her baby boy,

Speaker 1 who everyone adored.

Speaker 5 He loved to have fun. He loved to joke.

Speaker 1 When Nathan's older brother Eric got married, he chose Nathan as his best man.

Speaker 5 Well, it really wasn't a hard choice. He and I were really close growing up.

Speaker 1 He made a little speech or something, didn't he?

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Really happy for you guys.

Speaker 5 He definitely wasn't somebody with a lot of words. So it was a pretty short speech.

Speaker 1 Those are often the best.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5 You know, and it was really just about, you know, celebrating, you know, us. And really, what I really loved about it, too, was, you know, he truly welcomed Veronica, you know, to the family.

Speaker 5 So here's to America and Veronica. Happy for you guys.
Love you guys.

Speaker 1 Cheers.

Speaker 1 Cheers.

Speaker 1 Something that was ingrained in Nathan is a native Guamanian or Chamorro

Speaker 1 who was born and raised in Guam. Take it away.

Speaker 1 Where family is everything.

Speaker 6 They just always want to be together.

Speaker 6 It's amazing and it's beautiful, and I'm super fortunate to have had that as a part of my life.

Speaker 1 Eric's wife, Veronica, felt a connection with Nathan and his wife, Michelle, almost right away.

Speaker 19 I may be.

Speaker 1 By then, Nathan had joined the military and moved to the mainland, where he and Michelle seemed to be thriving as a couple.

Speaker 6 They actually had a really good balance of taking care of each other and picking up where the other one just couldn't, or trying even harder, or providing more, whatever it was, like they were good about that.

Speaker 1 In 2007, Nathan was assigned to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. There, Nathan and Michelle and their children were finally able to lay down some roots.

Speaker 3 He did make a lot of new friends. He also was very instrumental in gathering a lot of the chamoros.

Speaker 3 On Sundays, they would go to this park, and that ended up being a regular thing where they would get together there, barbecue, and the kids would play like ball, softball.

Speaker 1 And just before he was deployed to Iraq in 2009, Nathan and Michelle bought a brand new home in Mountains Edge.

Speaker 1 Nice house?

Speaker 5 Oh yeah, it was really nice.

Speaker 6 It was a nice upgrade for them for sure.

Speaker 5 It had a nice large kitchen, just enough room for the family to get together.

Speaker 1 So when Nathan returned from deployment, so many gatherings were in order.

Speaker 1 But that first Thanksgiving back was going to be at Eric and Veronica's place in San Diego, California, a drive of more than 300 miles from Las Vegas.

Speaker 5 You know, Nathan called me up and he said, you know, I'm sorry we're not going to be able to come down this time.

Speaker 5 We just can't afford it. And so

Speaker 5 we didn't like that idea. So we went up there instead.

Speaker 5 And when we did, it was pretty evident, you know, that they were, you know, struggling financially.

Speaker 5 You know, we looked in

Speaker 5 the pantry, we looked in the refrigerator.

Speaker 1 It was

Speaker 1 really almost no food.

Speaker 1 And things were tense between Nathan and Michelle.

Speaker 5 You almost felt like they were just tolerating each other. And every now and then, he and I would step outside and try to have a conversation, just the two of us.

Speaker 5 And she would come out and kind of try to be in that conversation.

Speaker 1 Didn't want you talking to him alone.

Speaker 5 It absolutely felt like she did not want us to be, you know, able to speak alone.

Speaker 1 When it was time to leave Las Vegas, Nathan made it a point to walk Veronica and Eric to their car to say goodbye.

Speaker 5 He watched us drive all the way down the road. I could see him in the rearview mirror just standing there and just

Speaker 5 knowing he had more to say and wanted to say something, but he

Speaker 5 couldn't.

Speaker 1 A few days later, Nathan Payette was dead.

Speaker 6 We went through every possible

Speaker 5 scenario.

Speaker 6 I think the biggest one that we were kind of thinking was they had maybe had, like a loan shark situation had gotten out of control, like they had borrowed money from someone and it went sideways.

Speaker 1 So, was it a lone shark

Speaker 1 or something entirely different?

Speaker 18 Can you describe your relationship with Michelle Hayette?

Speaker 1 It was the end of 2010,

Speaker 1 December, the coldest month of the year in Las Vegas. Zero resemblance to the island where Nathan Payette grew up riding the waves.

Speaker 3 He loved swimming, and as he got older, he started into surfing. So,

Speaker 3 you know, a lot of times on weekends or even during the weekdays, he would

Speaker 3 just go with his friends and they'll, you know, do their surfing.

Speaker 1 Good at it?

Speaker 3 It was pretty good, yeah.

Speaker 1 Guam was home, and Carmelita, who'd just landed in Vegas to help Michelle with the kids, was planning to make arrangements to bring Nathan's body back with her.

Speaker 3 To me, he had to come back to Guam.

Speaker 1 Michelle, still barely holding it together, met her in-laws at the Vegas airport.

Speaker 3 When I got to her, you know, I just, I had to be the one to really hug her to keep her from falling.

Speaker 1 That very same day, as Michelle was falling into the arms of her mother-in-law, detectives were working a lead Michelle herself had given them just hours after the murder.

Speaker 23 Do you know of anybody that owns a black car?

Speaker 4 I asked her if she knew anybody that had a black car simply because some of the witnesses had seen a black car leaving.

Speaker 13 Um, yeah, one of my coworkers.

Speaker 4 Which one would that be?

Speaker 14 Uh, Michael.

Speaker 1 Michael Rodriguez. They worked together at a telemarketing company.

Speaker 23 What's your relationship with Michael?

Speaker 13 Just coworkers.

Speaker 14 He was one of the people I flirted with, but that was it.

Speaker 4 We went to the business address that Michelle Payette said that she worked with Michael Rodriguez. And when we got there, in the parking lot was a black Cadillac.

Speaker 1 So they waited, watching for four and a half hours. And finally, a man matching Michelle's description of Michael Rodriguez got into the Cadillac and drove away.
So they pulled the car over.

Speaker 24 Tyler Williams?

Speaker 1 And the man, who confirmed he worked with Michelle, agreed to come into the station.

Speaker 25 Any questions you guys have more have to answer?

Speaker 1 He admitted straight out. He was a convicted felon.
He'd served time for attempted forgery and theft, but he was working now and was engaged to be married. And

Speaker 1 seeing other women, too.

Speaker 1 Lots of women. And that included his co-worker, Michelle Payette.

Speaker 18 We

Speaker 18 have

Speaker 18 had,

Speaker 18 per se,

Speaker 18 I don't know how you used word it.

Speaker 18 A little bit more than friends because, you know, she's cried to me, I've cried to her at times.

Speaker 1 Michael said Michelle would complain to him about not feeling loved in her marriage. There was also money trouble.
Michelle and Michael bonded.

Speaker 18 Has it ever been sexual?

Speaker 18 We've joked about it, yeah, but no.

Speaker 1 Detective Williams had heard enough to know he had to find out where Michael Rodriguez was the night Nathan was killed. And Michael said he was at a Walmart looking for love or something like it.

Speaker 1 Which is how he found Shannon.

Speaker 9 You eyeball her, she eyeballs you, you wi-fi, you start talking to you.

Speaker 1 And one thing led to another, and they ended up at the Sunset Station Hotel and Casino before midnight.

Speaker 10 He got to the door and

Speaker 10 clothes came off.

Speaker 1 Michael told the detectives he'd been drinking that night. Couldn't be exact on his times, but that Shannon would verify his story.

Speaker 1 So he gave them her cell number and detectives listening from another room called Shannon.

Speaker 4 She didn't have to think about it. She knew exactly where she was and what she was doing when she was with him.

Speaker 1 She backed him up. So then they called the hotel and discovered Michael did check in that night, but the check-in time he'd given them was off.

Speaker 1 The detectives didn't confront him about that, not yet. First, they needed to look at the hotel's security video.

Speaker 1 But there was something else, maybe important.

Speaker 1 Michael said he and Michelle had been in touch that day.

Speaker 23 We had talked

Speaker 18 private to her going home because she was feeling sick and I kept hiring her to go home that day.

Speaker 1 By then, Detective Anderson had Michelle saved text messages from that same night. Michelle had given her permission to search her cell phone.

Speaker 1 But they didn't make a lot of sense. So maybe Michael could explain a text that he sent Michelle at 11, 12 p.m.

Speaker 1 Hope you are feeling better. Just about done with Van Dyke's contract for tomorrow.
He's a pain in the ass.

Speaker 15 If you're messing around with Shannon, why are you talking about a contract with Van Dyke with Michelle?

Speaker 18 Well, because honestly, Michelle's having a lot of money trouble, and I'm trying to get money into her pocket.

Speaker 1 At 11.24 p.m., Michelle texted Michael.

Speaker 15 And she says, I can't go to sleep right now. I got woke up from a man screaming in the light.

Speaker 16 He's rushing out the door.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 15 That's what happened six minutes later.

Speaker 15 Her husband shot in the garage and killed.

Speaker 15 And what I find interesting, Michael, is that you haven't asked us one single time why you're here.

Speaker 7 As a female detective, you get men that look at you like, well, you're just some stupid lady. Why are you talking to me?

Speaker 7 And that was what he started to do to me, which really did not set well with me.

Speaker 15 You may talk your way out of here tonight, but I'm coming after you.

Speaker 16 I know you killed Nathan, and you can

Speaker 16 look me all you want, but you know I'm right.

Speaker 15 You will see me again.

Speaker 27 Guarantee that.

Speaker 23 My friend, she's just as right as rain, Mike.

Speaker 25 Bottom line is I didn't kill that man.

Speaker 25 Who did?

Speaker 25 I don't know.

Speaker 9 I don't think.

Speaker 1 Detectives didn't believe Michael Rodriguez,

Speaker 1 but they didn't have enough evidence to arrest him.

Speaker 23 Before you go.

Speaker 1 It was time to talk to Michelle again.

Speaker 22 Hi there, it's Andy Richter, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, The Three Questions with Andy Richter.

Speaker 22 Each week, I invite friends, comedians, actors, and musicians to discuss these three questions.

Speaker 28 Where do you come from? Where are you going?

Speaker 22 And what have you learned? New episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bow and Ted Danson, Tig Nataro, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers, and more.

Speaker 22 You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter call-in show episodes, where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating disasters, bad teachers, and lots more.

Speaker 28 Listen to the three questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 29 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason. But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 29 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand. Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program.
There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

Speaker 29 Check out Zinn.com slash find to find Zinn at a store near you.

Speaker 29 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 30 If you're an experienced pet owner, you already know that having a pet is 25% belly rubs, 25% yelling, drop it, and 50% groaning at the bill from every vet visit.

Speaker 30 Which is why Lemonade Pet Insurance is tailor-made for your pet and can save you up to 90% on vet bills.

Speaker 30 It can help cover checkups, emergencies, diagnostics, basically all the stuff that makes your bank account nervous. Claims are filed super easy through the Lemonade app and half get settled instantly.

Speaker 30 Get a quote at lemonade.com slash pet and they'll help cover the vet bill for whatever your pet swallowed after you yelled drop it.

Speaker 1 It was going on a week after Nathan Payette was shot to death in his own garage.

Speaker 1 The U.S. Air Force held a memorial for Nathan.
His brother Eric spoke.

Speaker 5 He believed in his family. He believed in what he could do.

Speaker 1 Family and friends filled the pews. But one person, one very very significant person, was missing.
Michelle Payette.

Speaker 1 Early in the investigation, detectives had asked Michelle to take a lie detector test, but she'd refused and told Carmelita about it.

Speaker 3 I said, Michelle, if you have nothing to hide,

Speaker 3 then you should just go do it now. Get it over with.

Speaker 1 The morning of Nathan's memorial, detectives called Michelle and asked her to come into the station.

Speaker 1 And this time, Carmelita, who was there when the call came, made sure Michelle had someone to take her to the station.

Speaker 19 Prince Sedam.

Speaker 1 And when she got there, I just want to get on with my life after this.

Speaker 20 And raising the kids, I understand.

Speaker 1 A story came pouring out.

Speaker 25 First, it started out just smoking and everything, you know, just talking.

Speaker 1 That is how she said her relationship with Michael Rodriguez began. And no, it wasn't as innocent as she'd made it out to be.

Speaker 25 He told me I was beautiful. He told me, you know,

Speaker 16 that I was a great person and everything like that.

Speaker 25 And,

Speaker 16 you know, you like to hear stuff like that because after a while, you know, in a marriage, you know, you don't hear stuff like that all the time.

Speaker 1 And it wasn't long before they began having sex.

Speaker 1 Then one night, said Michelle, she and Michael were hanging out in his car drinking, and she vented about Nathan.

Speaker 8 That was telling him, like, man, I'm so tired of, you know, my husband's paychecks are not cutting it.

Speaker 1 Then she said, Michael seemed to get an idea. He pointed out to Michelle that Nathan must have a military life insurance policy.

Speaker 11 And he goes, well, you know,

Speaker 11 we can get rid of your husband.

Speaker 1 With her husband gone, Michelle stood to benefit $650,000.

Speaker 3 He said, don't say that.

Speaker 9 Don't think like that.

Speaker 1 But her story?

Speaker 1 Michael ignored her objections. And on December 1st, he put his plan into action.

Speaker 23 What was Michael's plan?

Speaker 26 He just said, my friend is going to, you know, take care of everything. We're going to handle everything.

Speaker 26 And you have nothing to do with it.

Speaker 1 The plan, she said, was to make it look like a robbery gone bad.

Speaker 1 Michelle had only one job to do, unlock Nathan's truck so that Michael and a second person could enter, wait inside, and kill Nathan inside the truck.

Speaker 1 She said she went along with it, but secretly tried to sabotage the plot. She didn't unlock Nathan's truck as directed.

Speaker 1 Instead, said Michelle, she turned off her husband's alarm to intentionally make him late for work and that way he wouldn't be outside when someone came to shoot him.

Speaker 1 And remember those work-related texts on Michelle's phone that Michael couldn't quite explain? Just about done with Van Dyke's contract? Michelle spelled it out.

Speaker 23 Now, would the contract be code for contract on your husband?

Speaker 18 Yes.

Speaker 25 To kill your husband. Yes.

Speaker 1 But Michelle swore she was doing everything she could to make sure the contract wouldn't be carried out.

Speaker 8 I waited till like 11:15 to wake up my husband. You know, I was like, okay, they're going to leave.

Speaker 25 Like if he doesn't come out.

Speaker 1 In fact, she said she thought maybe Michael had left. And so she sent him another text.
My husband just woke me up and he's trying to rush out the door. I guess he's late.
LOL.

Speaker 1 Sorry, that contract is a pain.

Speaker 16 That meant, you know,

Speaker 16 that, you know, I was trying to save my husband.

Speaker 1 Detectives weren't buying it. To them, those text messages seemed like proof Michelle was very much a part of the plan.
So that's a sign. Okay, he's leaving now.
Get ready.

Speaker 7 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Minutes later,

Speaker 1 Nathan Payette was dead.

Speaker 1 But did they arrest Michelle? No,

Speaker 1 they did not. They let her go, just like Michael Rodriguez.

Speaker 7 We have to be able to have all of our ducks in a row before we make any arrests.

Speaker 1 They may destroy evidence. They may, you know.

Speaker 7 That's the chance that we take.

Speaker 1 But about half an hour later, Michelle was escorted back in after telling a police officer right outside she wanted to hurt herself.

Speaker 7 I think in a moment of desperation, she wanted to throw herself in front of traffic.

Speaker 1 Michelle was transported to a nearby hospital and put on a 72-hour psychiatric hold.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, Someone else was walking into the police station. And what a story she would tell.

Speaker 10 But I'm really afraid for my life, and you don't need to be.

Speaker 14 You really don't need to be, okay?

Speaker 24 Just going ahead and sit right here.

Speaker 31 No, no, right over here, son.

Speaker 1 Remember Shannon? The young woman Michael Rodriguez hooked up with the night of the murder?

Speaker 1 She was his willing alibi. First time detectives talked to her on the phone.

Speaker 1 It wasn't long before Shannon realized she'd been duped and she could not stay quiet. So she went to the police station to tell her story.

Speaker 9 What I was asked to do did not involve anything to do with murder.

Speaker 1 On Wednesday, December 1st, Shannon said she went over to her friend Jessica's apartment.

Speaker 24 She says,

Speaker 15 She doesn't give me any information other than if the cops ask you, you were with Michael tonight.

Speaker 11 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 31 And I'm like, Jessica, what are you talking about? Is someone getting hurt?

Speaker 15 And she says, no, no, no, they're just going

Speaker 31 to rob a heroin dealer.

Speaker 1 Meeting Michael and a man named Corey Hawkins, Jessica's boyfriend. Shannon was doing drugs that night, so her memory, she said, was fuzzy.

Speaker 1 But at some point in the night, she remembered Jessica starting a fire. And Michael and Corey rushing into the apartment.

Speaker 15 They take off their clothes.

Speaker 27 He's like, bitch, be the f ⁇ .

Speaker 27 This is done.

Speaker 18 It's Michael.

Speaker 31 And I look at Jessica and I'm like scared. I'm scared.

Speaker 26 She's like, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

Speaker 27 So I get in his car.

Speaker 1 Shannon left with Michael, leaving Jessica and Corey behind in the apartment with the clothes they'd taken off burning in the fireplace.

Speaker 27 And he starts spitting out. All these crazy things.
He's like, I didn't want to ask my girlfriend. We were together this night, tonight.

Speaker 1 Janet said Michael made it clear to her that she was his alibi for whatever he was up to. Then she said they drove to the Sunset Station Hotel and checked in.

Speaker 27 We're holding hands and he was like cuddling with me and I thought that was weird that he was doing it to be seen on camera.

Speaker 1 And they were.

Speaker 1 The detectives finally had the security video. And it showed that Shannon and Michael arrived after midnight.

Speaker 7 As we found out, he had enough time to commit the murder and to be at Sunset Station where he ended up with Shannon.

Speaker 1 The next day, Shannon got that call from the detective and said exactly what Michael told her to say. But then the detective said something that made her panic.

Speaker 27 He was investigating a murder, and that's when I lost my mind.

Speaker 1 After that call, said Shannon, she had to know.

Speaker 1 So she saw Michael again.

Speaker 9 He admits to me that he murdered

Speaker 25 a coworker's husband.

Speaker 15 Michael says this, yes, okay.

Speaker 1 Michael told Shannon his co-worker was a battered wife. By Michelle's own admission, Nathan never laid a hand on her.

Speaker 26 It sounded like to me that he had a relationship with this woman and that he was in on it too because he kept talking about all the money she was going to get.

Speaker 26 And he thinks he pulled one over on me and everyone else, but he didn't.

Speaker 27 Like, he needs to pay for what he did.

Speaker 1 Later that night, detectives arrested Michael Rodriguez, along with Shannon's friend, Jessica Austin, and Jessica's boyfriend, Corey Hawkins.

Speaker 1 They arrested Michelle a couple of days later, when she was released from the hospital.

Speaker 3 You know, the right to remain silent.

Speaker 1 The detective spoke to Michelle one more time.

Speaker 19 I don't know what to tell you, Kaya.

Speaker 25 I did have part to do with it, and I'm not going to lie to people.

Speaker 24 Michelle, part to do with it, you had everything to do with this.

Speaker 26 If you could have stopped this, you're the only one in the entire world.

Speaker 16 And I tried to.

Speaker 1 Five years later, Michael Rodriguez went to trial, and Shannon was the star witness.

Speaker 21 He admitted to me that he shot a man.

Speaker 6 Michael did not have this specific titanium.

Speaker 1 But Rodriguez's defense attorney told the jury, it was Corey Hawkins who killed Nathan Pyette.

Speaker 6 There's no other evidence that the state has presented that Michael was the actual shooter.

Speaker 1 And the jury got the case,

Speaker 1 it didn't take long to reach a verdict.

Speaker 5 Guilty of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon.

Speaker 1 Guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy.

Speaker 1 He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 5 It's my last name.

Speaker 1 Next was Michelle Payette.

Speaker 1 At the very last minute, she pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and conspiracy.

Speaker 1 The Payette family asked the death penalty be taken off the table.

Speaker 6 The tomorrow culture,

Speaker 6 we don't get to play God.

Speaker 5 My friend I wasn't necessarily what we wanted. I mean, I think for

Speaker 5 her to know that her family was going to move on without her, that her kids were going to grow up knowing what had happened,

Speaker 5 that was, I guess, more satisfying than

Speaker 5 the death penalty.

Speaker 1 The day she was sentenced, Michelle addressed the court.

Speaker 11 I made a huge mistake

Speaker 11 and a really bad one.

Speaker 11 And I'm so sorry.

Speaker 1 Michelle was sentenced to life without parole.

Speaker 1 Corey Hawkins received the same sentence after he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and conspiracy. And in exchange for her cooperation, Jessica Austin was offered a deal.

Speaker 1 She pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of conspiracy. She was given probation.

Speaker 1 It's the case Detectives Anderson and Williams told us they still can't quite get over.

Speaker 4 To find out that his own wife had caused that was just almost more than you could bear as a human being.

Speaker 1 It's the reason Detective Williams decided to speak with us.

Speaker 1 To tell Nathan's story exactly how it happened so that everyone knows the truth, especially his children.

Speaker 4 I would like them to know, as sad as it is, what their mother did.

Speaker 4 It would bother me a great deal if she pretended to her children or to her family that she was just an innocent bystander in all of this, and she was not.

Speaker 1 You became parents all all over again. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Nathan's parents took custody of the children.

Speaker 4 Why did you decide to do that?

Speaker 3 I think Nate would have wanted it. You know, he always said he wanted the kids to be close to us and he wanted to raise them on Guam.
I just felt like it was the right thing to do.

Speaker 1 And every so often, Carmelita and the kids stop by Nathan's gravesite on the island.

Speaker 3 They take turns going up and, you know, to say their prayers and to tell him what's going on with them.

Speaker 1 And for Carmelita, too,

Speaker 1 a moment to visit with her son,

Speaker 1 who is back home on the island he loved so much.

Speaker 2 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. I'm Lester Holt, for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 2 Good night.

Speaker 1 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 1 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 1 Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com/slash dateline. Terms apply.