Death at the Spa

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Speaker 1 Tonight on dateline.

Speaker 3 Everybody get back!

Speaker 3 It isn't explained.

Speaker 4 We have one confirmed fatality at this time.

Speaker 5 I knew.

Speaker 3 You knew she was gone.

Speaker 5 I knew it was her.

Speaker 3 He's a cute little bunny.

Speaker 5 She was just beautiful inside and out.

Speaker 3 This is murder by bombing. Exactly.

Speaker 6 The husband was aware that Ildico was cheating on him.

Speaker 3 How many other guys were there?

Speaker 5 A good five or six.

Speaker 6 Elizabeth hated her.

Speaker 3 She sent Ildiko photos,

Speaker 3 which we won't show on television.

Speaker 7 What's the most common motive in human history for murder?

Speaker 8 It's love.

Speaker 3 If this is intentional, I would be a person of interest just naturally.

Speaker 7 It was one of those moments where my hair stick on the back of my neck.

Speaker 3 You thought that's the end?

Speaker 9 No.

Speaker 5 If you watch Jaitline, there's always an end.

Speaker 5 That wasn't it.

Speaker 10 A bomb in a day spa and a victim with a string of lovers means no shortage of suspects.

Speaker 2 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 10 Here's Josh Mankiewicz with Death at the Spa.

Speaker 3 Aliso Viejo is a leafy green wedge of the suburban suburban sprawl that makes up Southern California's mythic Orange County.

Speaker 3 It's just down the road from where the real housewives live their best lives.

Speaker 3 Not a lot happens at Aliso Viejo. And around here, they like that.

Speaker 3 Except on May 15, 2018, just past 1 p.m.,

Speaker 3 Something did happen.

Speaker 3 Something big.

Speaker 3 I heard it.

Speaker 5 I was on my lunch break at home, and I'm like, that's weird.

Speaker 3 Holly's Salceda was about a mile away from what sounded to her like a huge explosion. Others close by saw the aftermath seconds later and began recording.

Speaker 3 A two-story commercial building had been severely damaged. Holly's co-workers confirmed it.

Speaker 5 I said, well, what street was it on? And they said, Mary Blue.

Speaker 3 When Holly heard that, she worried. Her friend, Ildiko Kraniak, owned a day spa on Mariblue.

Speaker 12 Please, there's someone inside.

Speaker 3 Had a gas leak inside the building caused the explosion?

Speaker 3 Or could this be terrorism, either foreign or domestic?

Speaker 3 Within minutes, an Orange County Sheriff's deputy arrived on scene. Hey, anybody get back! Everybody, get back! Dash camera recording.
It is an explosion.

Speaker 13 There is a fire.

Speaker 4 Is anybody hurt? What do you have in this click?

Speaker 6 283, I've got body parts.

Speaker 3 Loss of life was a guarantee. Someone had been blown literally to bits.

Speaker 3 Severed limbs lay on the ground. Debris from the building was strewn across the street.
The sulfurous smell of fireworks and a plume of white smoke filled the air.

Speaker 3 Valerie Stone was at work several miles away when she heard about the explosion. She immediately thought of her boyfriend, who helped run a spa on Mariblue Street.

Speaker 14 I was texting back and forth with Stephen.

Speaker 3 Stephen Beale was at home that day, so right after he heard from Valerie, his thoughts turned to Ildico too.

Speaker 3 They were business partners at the spa. He texted her in an apparent panic.
There was an explosion there? Ildico, are you okay?

Speaker 3 He got no response.

Speaker 14 He was calling every number he had for her, trying to reach her, and no answer.

Speaker 3 Stephen wasn't the only one trying to reach Ildico. Sarah Thomas had been at the spa that morning getting her lashes done.

Speaker 3 Just a few hours later, Sarah saw the building where the spa was located on the news.

Speaker 15 I didn't really know what to think of it. I just thought, like, oh my gosh, there was a gas explosion like when I left.

Speaker 3 Did you try to contact Ildico?

Speaker 15 I did. I texted asking if she was okay.
You know, you see it and you don't want to believe it either. You're hoping that maybe it just looks like it's in that area.

Speaker 5 There was a news conference. My coworkers put it on.

Speaker 4 We arrived at the scene of an obvious explosion.

Speaker 5 I didn't have to listen to it. I knew what they were going to say.

Speaker 4 We have one confirmed fatality at this time.

Speaker 4 There were two injuries. Both were transported to area hospitals.

Speaker 3 Holly dialed Ildico's cell phone with dread.

Speaker 5 My iPhone was going to green when it should be going to blue. I knew.

Speaker 3 You knew she was gone.

Speaker 3 Police weren't saying it, but they knew the same thing. 48-year-old Ildiko Kranjak was dead.
The two women critically injured had been Ildico's clients at the spa.

Speaker 3 One of them told a first responder how she saw Ildiko open a box, and then an instant later came a bright light and then darkness as the shockwave hit and the building crumbled on top of them.

Speaker 3 Orange County Sheriff's Investigator Jack Ackerman had been called to the scene. To him, the explosion sounded alarmingly familiar.

Speaker 16 In March of that year in Texas, there had been a person doing package bombs.

Speaker 10 Tonight, a suspected serial bomber may have struck again.

Speaker 16 In my head, I thought maybe somebody was doing a copycat of that.

Speaker 3 So Ackerman wondered, were there more packages out there? Maybe headed for other targets.

Speaker 16 We started the process of trying to interview people who might be close contacts with the victims.

Speaker 3 They set up a tip line. Hundreds of calls came in, including one from Stephen, Ildico's business partner.

Speaker 16 He possibly had information to provide us.

Speaker 3 Stephen indicated he knew Ildico well because he was Ildico's ex and helped her manage the spa.

Speaker 3 He told the dispatcher he'd tried in vain to reach Ildico.

Speaker 3 Ackerman's team drove 32 miles north of Aliso Viejo to where Stephen lived to ask some questions and also make sure he was safe.

Speaker 16 We didn't know if the business was the target. We didn't know if Ildico was the target.
We didn't know if Mr. Beale was the target.

Speaker 3 When they got to Stephen's house, their concerns felt quite legit because

Speaker 3 some boxes had just been delivered.

Speaker 3 It was a horrific scene. A package bomb had gone off at a day spa in Aliso Viejo.
A woman had been killed, two others injured.

Speaker 17 This isn't a town where, you know, crime is rampant or things like this happen.

Speaker 3 When things like this do happen, the FBI responds. The Bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Force mobilized.
Special Agent Ashley Merrickle was assigned to speak with the surviving victims.

Speaker 3 Lead Agent Nick Vicencia went straight to the scene.

Speaker 18 We had a massive debris field, a huge crime scene, and we wanted to initially come up with an investigative plan and a plan to process the crime scene as soon as possible.

Speaker 3 A bomber was on the loose, and other potential targets were out there. Agent Vicencia knew timing was everything.

Speaker 3 He set up a command post staffed around the clock.

Speaker 3 Orange County Sheriff's deputies had arrived at the home of Ildico's business partner, Stephen Beale, and saw he'd just received some packages.

Speaker 16 Our team made quick contact with him so that we could make sure it was safe for him.

Speaker 3 They had Stephen step outside.

Speaker 6 Can they go inside and take a look at those packages?

Speaker 3 Please.

Speaker 19 Right as you open the door, the packages are to the left.

Speaker 21 There's three and they're in a stack.

Speaker 3 Stephen sat with investigators in their car while the bomb squad went to work in his house.

Speaker 3 They were not devices. They were benign.

Speaker 16 They were benign, right? So he had been doing some remodeling in his house and he was getting packages with various items for remodeling.

Speaker 3 Stephen didn't appear to be a target. So was Ildico?

Speaker 3 Ackerman believed the answer was yes.

Speaker 16 Based off of her injuries and our experts and the interviews with the surviving victims, it was more likely going to be a homicide.

Speaker 3 This is murder by bombing.

Speaker 16 Exactly.

Speaker 3 Investigators asked Stephen Stephen the usual first question. If you were going to try to figure on who would want to hurt her or her business, who would your best guess be?

Speaker 21 I cannot come up with a single thought for who would ever want to hurt her.

Speaker 3 Of course, his own ties to Ildico put him on the list of people to rule in or out.

Speaker 3 Stephen understood that. and consented to a search of his home while he continued to talk about Ildico.

Speaker 21 She was always smiling. She had great advice for people.
She, you know, she cared, she went out of her way to,

Speaker 22 you know, ease your burden.

Speaker 3 Investigators were speaking with Ildico's friends too, and her story quickly started to emerge.

Speaker 4 Bunny, look at it.

Speaker 3 He's a cute little bunny.

Speaker 14 Look at the ears.

Speaker 5 She was just beautiful inside and out.

Speaker 3 Ildico was a well-respected aesthetician who'd been recommended to Holly. How was she?

Speaker 5 Wonderful. From the very beginning.

Speaker 3 Wonderful technically or wonderful as a person? Or both? Both.

Speaker 5 Both. Yeah, she made me feel like a friend right from the start.

Speaker 3 Holly was going through some hard times then and Ildiko was a good listener. They connected the same way hairdressers sometimes become a data bank of their clients' secrets.

Speaker 5 I confided in her, she confided in me.

Speaker 3 They had some things things in common. They were both boy moms.

Speaker 5 She loved her son. He was number one.

Speaker 3 Talked about him all the time? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 5 Just like I talked about mine.

Speaker 3 There was another frequent topic, Ildico's relationships with man.

Speaker 3 And not just the one she had with her husband of 22 years.

Speaker 5 I knew she had her boyfriends on the side.

Speaker 3 How many other guys were there?

Speaker 5 Um, a good five or six.

Speaker 5 There was always someone.

Speaker 3 Holly didn't approve of Ildico's affairs, but she did understand them.

Speaker 5 She just wanted to be loved and she loved attention from men.

Speaker 3 Her husband's not one of those men?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 3 What was wrong in that marriage?

Speaker 5 I do believe from what she said he was a good man. You know, he took care of her mother.

Speaker 5 very good to her mother, but she just wanted to feel loved and they grew apart.

Speaker 3 When Ildico and her husband Ronilo Vastile met, Ildico had recently moved to the U.S. from her native Hungary.
Ildico's cousin Ava Boney says their relationship was beautiful.

Speaker 24 They were a very cute couple and they were in love.

Speaker 3 You could tell.

Speaker 25 Yes, of course.

Speaker 24 Just the warmness what they have between them.

Speaker 3 They had a son who was now in college. And along the way, something in the marriage changed.
Ava wasn't sure what.

Speaker 24 She would not give me her private life,

Speaker 24 nor asking me my opinion. That was her life.

Speaker 3 Like Holly, Ildico's friend and client Sarah knew about Ildeco's extramarital adventures. Did Ildico's husband know what was going on in her romantic life?

Speaker 15 I assumed so. She did make it seem like they had an arrangement.

Speaker 3 Was Ildico planning to end that arrangement? When Sarah saw her the morning of the explosion, Ildiko talked about a man she had recently started seeing.

Speaker 15 She said, I want to be with him, I don't want to be dating all these people, and that she was going to move forward with this guy.

Speaker 3 A couple of hours after that conversation with Sarah at her spa, Ildiko was gone.

Speaker 3 Now, an intense investigation was underway into Ildiko's life. Investigators learned she had recently returned from Hungary.

Speaker 3 Agents pulled her travel info for the days leading up to the explosion, and they requested her cell phone records. They also spoke with Ildiko's husband, Ronilo, who actually found them.

Speaker 18 When the explosion happened, he came down to the scene. He tried to ask if Ildiko was okay.

Speaker 3 Those feel like the actions of a person who didn't have any involvement.

Speaker 17 It felt to us what we observed was a frantic individual looking for information.

Speaker 3 Ronilo said he was at work when his brother told him there was an explosion on Mariblue and one person had died.

Speaker 3 He said he wasn't sure if Ildico had returned from Hungary, so he texted asking if she was back in town. Ildico did not respond.
And that's when Ronilo says he drove to Ildico's spa.

Speaker 17 Can we tell him anything? You know, did we see if her car was in the parking lot?

Speaker 3 Investigators couldn't answer any of Ronilo's questions, so they told him to go home to the house he shared with Ildico.

Speaker 18 We put a surveillance team on him right away.

Speaker 18 So we were watching his movements.

Speaker 3 When Ronilo made it home, Ildico's cousin Ava met him there.

Speaker 24 I asked him, what does he know? And he said he doesn't know anything.

Speaker 3 And then came a knock at the door.

Speaker 24 Five to six, like a military style with the rifle. People enter the house.

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Speaker 3 48-year-old Ildiko Kroniak had been killed by an explosion after she opened a package at her day spa.

Speaker 3 Investigators had ruled out any connection to those Texas bombings and now believed Ildiko was the intended target. The big questions were, why?

Speaker 3 Who built the device? And how did it get to her spa?

Speaker 18 With an explosive device, they all have their unique signatures. The chemicals, how it was contained, how it was delivered, how it's gone off.

Speaker 18 So you're kind of working from inside out to trying to find the person or persons responsible for it.

Speaker 3 FBI bomb technicians told lead agent Nick Vicencia, the device that killed Ildico was a flash powder bomb. Hidden inside the cardboard box Ildico's client saw her open right before the blast.

Speaker 3 Agent Miracle spoke with her. It was definitely rectangular.
It was probably a shoebox height, but I don't remember it being that wide.

Speaker 17 Her recollection of that was very good.

Speaker 3 As they continued to collect evidence from the debris, Bombtechs were identifying the components of the explosive device. They found the jacket of a CVS brand 9-volt battery completely split open.

Speaker 3 Cells from the battery were found lodged in the ceiling, right above where the bomb went off.

Speaker 3 Investigators believed that battery powered the bomb. The bomb itself tells you that you're looking for someone who has some specific specialized skills.

Speaker 3 This is not a device that just anybody could make.

Speaker 18 Correct. We were looking for anybody with experience with chemicals and electric fusing systems.

Speaker 3 That's a fairly sophisticated piece of knowledge in both those cases.

Speaker 18 Very much so.

Speaker 3 Investigators needed to find whoever that was.

Speaker 3 The night of the explosion, what looked like a SWAT team showed up at Ildico and her husband Ronilo's house. Nilo, as he was called, was there with Ildico's cousin Ava.

Speaker 24 I asked them why you guys are here and Nilo was very calm, but I was keep asking them and they couldn't give me any answer. They told me that we don't know anything, ma'am.

Speaker 3 Then, says Ava, 20 to 25 agents went through the house inch by inch.

Speaker 3 The search continued overnight and into the next day. A news chopper captured the scene.

Speaker 45 Okay, good. Oh, got them bringing stuff out.
Ooh.

Speaker 45 There we go. Gonna follow Hamaldo with the package.

Speaker 3 When it was over, did the house look like a tornado had hit it?

Speaker 24 Yes, it was upside down.

Speaker 45 Yes.

Speaker 3 By now, it was clear to Ava. Ildico had been killed in the explosion at her spa

Speaker 3 and that law enforcement was taking a hard look at Ronilo. Did you at any point think that Nilo could be a suspect?

Speaker 24 Never ever in my life.

Speaker 3 I mean in this country, sadly, marriages break up and husbands kill their ex-wives. I mean that happens.

Speaker 24 Yeah, but I would never ever believe that that Nilo. I would believe that the neighbor or anyone else, but not them.

Speaker 3 The investigators wanted to know a lot more from Ronilo his relationship with his wife. Ildico and her husband still lived together, but essentially lived separate lives.

Speaker 17 They lived in the same home. They were raising a child together.
They had dinner on a regular basis together.

Speaker 3 But, I mean, Ildico was dating men who were not her husband, and he was aware of that.

Speaker 18 I think he had a sense of it.

Speaker 3 Maybe, but during his interview, Ronilo expressed nothing but love and respect for Ildico to investigators. And they found nothing suspicious in Ranilo and Ildico's home.

Speaker 8 This is going to be a very difficult situation.

Speaker 3 One day after the explosion, law enforcement finally released Ildico's name.

Speaker 3 Ava stood outside Ildico's place as a family friend spoke to the press.

Speaker 46 This is a complete shock to family and friends. We are in full support of our public authorities to do their jobs in hopes of finding answers to many of the unanswered questions.

Speaker 3 Who'd want to kill Ildico?

Speaker 25 I didn't think anybody would.

Speaker 3 You'd never heard her express any fear of anybody.

Speaker 15 No, but I knew that she had complicated relationships. I don't know, maybe somebody she was,

Speaker 15 I don't know what she was mixed up in.

Speaker 3 Maybe Ronilo did. When he spoke with investigators, he did share a couple of interesting details.
There was a handyman named Max who had a key to Ildico's spa.

Speaker 3 Ronilo quoted Ildico as saying, Max Max would sometimes park overnight in the lot and sleep in his car.

Speaker 18 So we definitely wanted to talk with the handyman.

Speaker 3 When they did, nothing alarming stood out. They moved on.
Ronilo also talked about a woman who'd been sending him angry messages recently.

Speaker 3 She was upset that Ildico had gotten between her and her husband. Stephen Beale had mentioned this same couple.
That'll put somebody on the radar screen pretty quickly.

Speaker 18 Yes, and it did quickly.

Speaker 3 Ildiko Kroniak had been in someone's crosshairs. As a result, she was dead.

Speaker 3 Now investigators had heard twice about a couple Ildiko had somehow become entangled with. A couple that lived in Aliso Viejo, just a few miles from her spa.

Speaker 3 They were Elizabeth and Gabor Pap,

Speaker 3 names familiar to Ildico's friends. Tell me about Gabor.

Speaker 5 She had a little fling with him.

Speaker 3 Holly said Ildico met Gabor in 2015.

Speaker 5 They had an intimate relationship, as far as I knew.

Speaker 3 It was a complicated relationship, too. The major complication here being that she and Gabor were both married.
He thought he was going to leave his wife and end up with Ildico.

Speaker 3 That did not happen. Instead, there was a confrontation at Ildico's spa after Elizabeth said she found Gabor and Ildico having sex.
Voices were raised and it got physical. Unclear who started that.

Speaker 3 In the end, Gabor returned to Elizabeth. Two years later, Ildiko poked Gabor on Facebook.
According to Elizabeth, she also began seeing Ildico drive by their home. And Elizabeth responded.

Speaker 3 She sent Ildiko some photos, which

Speaker 3 we won't show on television. Right.
But they were intimate photos, sort of taunting Ildiko that.

Speaker 3 I got him, he's mine now. Right.
What did Ildiko say about getting those photos from Gabor's wife?

Speaker 5 She thought she was crazy sending another woman photos like

Speaker 3 Even so, Holly says Ildiko never expressed any fear of Elizabeth or Gabor.

Speaker 3 Should she have taken the history of that love triangle a little more seriously? FBI agents were wondering the same thing.

Speaker 3 Less than 24 hours, you're talking to the Paps about their relationship with Ildico. Correct.

Speaker 3 Elizabeth told the agents a long, tawdry story about Ildiko's affair with her husband, about the shouting fight at Ildico's spa, and about how Ildico had tried to reconnect with Gabor.

Speaker 3 That's when the scorned wife, Elizabeth, texted the scorned husband, Ronilo.

Speaker 3 She almost destroyed my family. Enough is enough.

Speaker 3 And then this, just a month and a half before the explosion. Nilo, please ask your wife to stop contacting me or my husband.
She did it again. Any contact from her is not welcomed for us.

Speaker 3 Ronilo texted back, suggesting she block Ildico on Facebook. To which Elizabeth responded, Really, you're so blind and accept what your wife is doing instead of stepping up.
Be a man.

Speaker 18 Elizabeth was very forthright of her feelings for Ildico.

Speaker 3 She admitted she didn't like Ildico, and it stemmed from an affair that Ildico had with her husband.

Speaker 18 Correct.

Speaker 3 The Paps gave investigators consent to search their devices and their home.

Speaker 18 There was no evidence that

Speaker 18 her or her husband had any knowledge or materials to detonate a device in this manner.

Speaker 3 You didn't find anything.

Speaker 18 Nothing.

Speaker 3 No evidence of bomb-making, maybe, but Elizabeth sure seemed on the verge of detonating. Whenever she talked about Ildeco,

Speaker 3 she told the Bureau, they should have no trouble finding suspects because the men in Ildiko's life were a never-ending revolving door.

Speaker 3 And agents knew they'd have to speak with every one of them.

Speaker 3 It doesn't sound as if Ildiko was very concerned for her own safety.

Speaker 15 She didn't think there was anything to be nervous about.

Speaker 3 Sarah, on the other hand, worried, and she couldn't help but wonder about a guy she saw Ildeco with the morning of the explosion.

Speaker 15 She came out of her room, rushed, with keys and mail in her hand, and that's when the guy was starting to come towards us and she sort of shooted him off.

Speaker 3 What did he look like?

Speaker 15 He appeared to be pretty tall, bigger, gray-haired. I asked her who it was and she said, oh, just a friend.

Speaker 3 Ildico didn't share any details.

Speaker 15 It was all sort of insignificant to me. It didn't seem out of the ordinary.

Speaker 3 Until later.

Speaker 15 Until you leave a place and a bomb goes off, then everything seems weird.

Speaker 3 Which is why she contacted law enforcement. And soon, FBI agents were at her door.

Speaker 15 They asked me to try to identify who I saw that day, which I could not do.

Speaker 3 They show you any photos?

Speaker 15 Yeah, but they were like yearbook size, like this small, really grainy, bad photos on a paper like this.

Speaker 15 And so all I could tell them at the time was it's definitely not him.

Speaker 3 Turns out the man Sarah saw that morning showed up at the spa after the explosion because he had lunch plans with Ildico.

Speaker 3 His name was Scott Malally, and investigators spoke with him.

Speaker 18 He told us that he and Ildiko met at a casino a few weeks prior. He dropped her off in the airport when she went to Hungary, and he offered to pick her up.

Speaker 3 Ildico agreed, and so he picked her up from LAX the night before. They spent the evening together, and he drove Ildico to her spa the next morning.

Speaker 3 And so there certainly wasn't any bad blood into it then. No.

Speaker 3 When investigators looked at the video from LAX, there he was, with Ildico, at baggage claim. He seemed to be telling the truth.
Even so, they checked his records and searched his car and home.

Speaker 3 And there was this.

Speaker 3 Before landing at LAX, Ildico made a stop at the San Francisco airport. Investigators obtained that video, too.

Speaker 3 There was Ildeko, and

Speaker 3 she wasn't alone.

Speaker 3 Who was that?

Speaker 3 Investigators needed to find out.

Speaker 3 When investigators obtained Ildiko Kroniak's travel information, they saw that before landing in LAX on her way home from Hungary, she'd made a stop at the San Francisco airport.

Speaker 18 We got the airport video, we saw her coming through customs.

Speaker 3 They also saw that Ildeko wasn't alone. This turned out to be a man named Laszlo Zabo.

Speaker 3 Who is that?

Speaker 18 It was a person she was often on dating and she went on the trip to Hungary with.

Speaker 3 He and Ildiko flew back to the States together and parted ways in San Francisco before Ildico caught a flight to L.A.

Speaker 3 and met Scott. You talk with him? Oh, yes.

Speaker 3 Laszlo told investigators he'd been in Hungary for the last few weeks and he hadn't visited Southern California in months.

Speaker 3 Investigators had plenty to keep them busy, including Ildico's business partner, Stephen Beale, whose house they were searching.

Speaker 3 His girlfriend Valerie said on the day after the bombing, Stephen couldn't stop thinking about Eldico.

Speaker 14 And he's like, God, I got this weight, you know, on his shoulders. And he's like really concerned about what's going on with the investigation.

Speaker 14 And so at that point, we decided to go to the police department.

Speaker 16 He comes down to our Elise Oviejo substation and says hey, I'd like to talk to the investigators in charge of the investigation.

Speaker 3 So Investigator Ackerman from the Orange County Sheriff's Department and an FBI agent sat down with Stephen. That conversation was recorded.
Real quick before we start, I just want to,

Speaker 3 you're here voluntarily. You came in, drove in on your own?

Speaker 16 Yes. And he just randomly starts sharing bits of information about the relationship and the business.

Speaker 3 Stephen was a grandfather now, a widower with four adult children. He and Eldico met in 2016 when they both swiped right on a dating app and then immediately hit it off.
We went away a lot.

Speaker 3 We were exclusively dating

Speaker 3 with one another and all of those sort of texts that you send at three o'clock in the morning when you can't sleep saying, you know, I miss you. I wish you were here.
You know, I

Speaker 3 like pillows not to say, you know, all of that, right? Over time, Steven says he got involved with Ildico's spa.

Speaker 3 We've both signed the lease together, right?

Speaker 3 You know, so, and we're building that business

Speaker 3 quite successfully. And while their business appeared to be thriving, their romantic relationship started falling apart.

Speaker 3 About a year and a half into it, Stephen said Ildico seemed to be hiding something. I confronted her with some changes in her behavior.
Like, what happened to me?

Speaker 3 Well, when we first started dating,

Speaker 3 She gave me access to, you know, she gave me her sign-on credentials for her United account, numerous little things like this.

Speaker 3 And then

Speaker 3 she,

Speaker 3 at one point,

Speaker 3 just for seemingly no reason, she,

Speaker 3 like, changed her password.

Speaker 3 Stephen knew full well Ildiko was married to someone else. But until then, he thought he was the only other man.
in her life.

Speaker 3 Now he realized, world traveler Ildiko was also a frequent flyer in the world of romance.

Speaker 3 The issue was for me,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 why and why are you trying to hide it? You know, because the reality is, if she had said, she had come to me and said, you know,

Speaker 3 I really think that I want to like

Speaker 3 open up our relationship a little bit. I don't want to be exclusive.
I want to, you know, date other men.

Speaker 3 I wouldn't say, okay.

Speaker 3 But it was the hiding it that was

Speaker 3 deceit's planned to seek sure to probably hear.

Speaker 3 Stephen said the path of their relationship reminded him of a song.

Speaker 3 You know, when you wake up in the morning and you're humming the Carol King song, One of Us is Changing, or Maybe We Should Stop Trying, you know,

Speaker 3 you know something is

Speaker 3 amiss.

Speaker 3 And now it was too late. Ildico had been killed by a package bomb that ripped open their spa.
Stephen once again said he had no idea who could be behind it.

Speaker 3 Like, your whole deal is, you know, means, motive, and opportunity. And I don't know people that I don't know anybody that has the motive.
Okay. What about the means?

Speaker 3 I don't know what's in my garage. I don't know what chemicals they found.
So I, you know, I suppose I could probably fall into that category if the chemicals are right.

Speaker 3 Law enforcement tends to pay attention when you tell them you could be a suspect in the crime they're currently working on.

Speaker 3 And investigators who were at that moment still searching Stephen's house had found large quantities of explosive chemicals in Stephen's garage. Stephen said there was a simple explanation for that.

Speaker 3 He used to make his own fireworks and was a longtime rocket hobbyist. A friend of mine and I,

Speaker 3 we would build model rockets, and I started this years ago when my kids were little and it got to be almost an obsession. And so, like, we built a 25-foot-tall, six-inch-diameter four-stage rocket.

Speaker 3 It had been years since he built one, he said. And those chemicals were just sitting in the garage, unused.

Speaker 3 Investigator Ackerman wanted to know more.

Speaker 3 When they do their analysis of chemicals found there, chemicals found...

Speaker 3 in your

Speaker 3 drone. Would it just be a coincident if it's the same?

Speaker 3 Again, I don't remember what chemicals are around in the house because I haven't taken them down. I haven't looked at them.
I haven't thought of them. I didn't even know where they were.

Speaker 3 If there's an oxidizer, I mean, sure, there was some sort of an oxidizer that was in the bomb that was placed because you have to.

Speaker 3 And it

Speaker 3 clearly is possible that I have that oxidizer.

Speaker 3 An oxidizer? Meaning a chemical agent that helps ignite fuel and cause an explosion. Would someone with your type of experience be able to convert that into something on a bigger scale?

Speaker 3 I saw the devastation

Speaker 3 in the pictures and news reports. I have no idea how you would

Speaker 3 put something together that would

Speaker 3 cause something like that. Ackerman now had his doubts about that.
I don't know what Mr.

Speaker 3 Beale was thinking when he came in there and talked to you, but if he was trying to get himself out of the spotlight, it feels like he did exactly the opposite.

Speaker 16 He definitely put himself as more of a person of interest as that interview went on.

Speaker 3 And Stephen Beale wasn't done.

Speaker 16 He gives us a lot of these extraneous details to things that really don't make much of anything except for kind of allude to what's going through his mind, maybe.

Speaker 3 Like the idea he was about to reveal for a screenplay about

Speaker 3 an assassin.

Speaker 16 I can't believe he's telling me this story.

Speaker 27 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 23 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 30 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 32 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 20 Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here.

Speaker 3 If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe.

Speaker 49 And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.

Speaker 20 Fox.

Speaker 48 There are new episodes out every Thursday.

Speaker 9 So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 36 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 13 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

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

Speaker 22 Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program.

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

Speaker 38 Check out Zen.com Zinn.com slash find to find Zin at a store near you.

Speaker 43 Warning, this product contains nicotine.

Speaker 44 Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 3 Stephen Beal had walked himself into the Eliso Viejo sheriff's station. And over several hours, he had talked himself into more trouble than he was already in.

Speaker 3 The whole interview is odd to me from the beginning, because why is he there? Right.

Speaker 3 The interview had veered into some truly bizarre territory. Stephen told them about a screenplay he was writing, about a soccer mom who was a part-time assassin.
Now, she's very good.

Speaker 3 She plans every step of the way. She covers your tracks.

Speaker 3 He also told several jokes. Then he performed a magic trick on someone in the process of investigating a murder.

Speaker 16 He did the, you know, pull a coin from behind my ear kind of

Speaker 16 trick.

Speaker 3 You're kidding me.

Speaker 16 No, I was blown away.

Speaker 3 Unusual? Yes.

Speaker 3 Then again, Stephen was also an aspiring actor.

Speaker 21 How many more people are going to have to die before you do something useful?

Speaker 3 Stephen had worked for years as an executive consultant, he said, and was on disability now.

Speaker 3 He was apparently looking forward to turning this new unfortunate set of circumstances into something positive, as he shared a conversation he'd had with his girlfriend Valerie after the explosion.

Speaker 3 She said, you know,

Speaker 3 actually, when you get past all of this, you need to do a stand-up comedy routine about it.

Speaker 3 Because there's a lot of really, you know, potentially humorous anecdotes that are just wrapped up in the most intense life situations. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And, you know, if the audience can relate to what you're going through and it's delivered in a humorous manner, people love

Speaker 3 to be entertained.

Speaker 16 I've never experienced that in all the interviews I've done in my police career. I think he thinks he's outsmarting everybody.

Speaker 3 Wrong again.

Speaker 3 By then, Ackerman was not entertained. He was convinced.

Speaker 3 You said you have the means. Now look at the traditional traditional motives

Speaker 3 of homicide.

Speaker 3 And there's a couple motives there that stand out.

Speaker 3 Do you think that you fall into the categories of having those motives?

Speaker 3 Love Gunron? No. Love Smore?

Speaker 3 No, not at all. Okay.

Speaker 16 I rely on evidence.

Speaker 16 But in my heart...

Speaker 3 You got a gut, too, though.

Speaker 16 Yeah, in my heart, my gut, I'm thinking he's the one definitely who killed her.

Speaker 3 They had no evidence linking Stephen Beale directly to Ildico's murder. However, in the search of his home, investigators found what looked like sticks of dynamite you'd see as props on a movie set.

Speaker 50 This morning we learned 59-year-old Stephen Beale was arrested on.

Speaker 3 So the feds arrested him, not for murder, but for being in possession of unregistered destructive devices.

Speaker 3 Ackerman had some reservations about the arrest. He He knew evidence in the case was still scarce.

Speaker 16 I wanted to get to the bottom of a homicide and not arrest somebody for having some type of devices.

Speaker 3 So, you wanted to follow him around for a couple of days and see what happens?

Speaker 16 I wanted to follow him around. I wanted another chance to interview him, talk to him again at a later date, any variety of other investigative techniques.
Yeah, it was what I would have preferred.

Speaker 3 And the Bureau wanted him locked up. Yes.
Right now, she's in law. Then, about a week later,

Speaker 3 Stephen Beale made headlines again.

Speaker 50 This was a very unusual move by federal prosecutors. They went to a judge over the weekend to ask that charges be dismissed against Stephen Beale.

Speaker 3 Federal prosecutor Mark Tackla.

Speaker 7 The FBI lab examiner could not rule out these items as possibly being used in rocketry.

Speaker 3 So you end up dropping the charges. Correct.
And he walks out of the lockup.

Speaker 8 He does.

Speaker 3 Ildico's friends didn't know what to think.

Speaker 15 I just didn't know if they were ever going to find the person responsible.

Speaker 5 I was very upset. I didn't understand it.

Speaker 3 You thought that's the end?

Speaker 5 No,

Speaker 5 because if you watch Jaitline, there's always an end. And that wasn't it.

Speaker 3 Oh, she's right. This wasn't the end.

Speaker 3 Because a mundane ingredient of the bomb that killed Ildico was about to become a key piece of evidence.

Speaker 3 when videos surfaced of this guy purchasing a 9-volt battery just days before the bombing, it was one of those moments where my hair sticks on the back of my neck. And later, a sting operation.

Speaker 14 I had assigned documents so they could go in and put cameras and listening devices in our room. It was a nightmare.

Speaker 3 That does not point to the killer. There's not just two people in the room, there's like what 25, except 23 of them are watching and listening.

Speaker 14 It was

Speaker 14 extremely stressful.

Speaker 3 For some people, finding love is easy. Others don't have the same kind of luck, like Valerie Stone.

Speaker 14 I've dated people who are still stuck on their exes, and

Speaker 14 that obviously doesn't work out.

Speaker 3 In her online dating profile, Valerie Valerie warned those guys away.

Speaker 14 You must not be stuck in the past or stuck on your ex or

Speaker 14 something like that. And because I was so tired of it.

Speaker 3 You want to weed out those guys who can't move on. Exactly.

Speaker 14 I mean, who wants to be in a relationship with someone who doesn't really want to be with you?

Speaker 3 Then she came across Stephen Beale's photo and she swiped right. So did he.

Speaker 3 A few days later, they met for dinner and she says they instantly connected.

Speaker 15 It was great.

Speaker 14 We just, no holds barred on the conversation. We talked about anything and everything, complete honesty.

Speaker 3 And right away, Stephen brought up Ildico, his ex.

Speaker 14 He was completely upfront. He says, we're no longer dating.

Speaker 14 She's moved on. She's dating other people.

Speaker 3 Any indication he was thinking about her? Not at all. Stephen told Valerie he and Ildico were still business partners, but that was all.

Speaker 14 I was completely okay with it. They were friends.
He had nothing but nice things to say about her. I never saw anything in terms of anger towards her.

Speaker 3 And you were probably listening for that, weren't you?

Speaker 25 You bet I was.

Speaker 3 Only a month after that first date, Stephen Beale was at the center of the investigation into Ildico's murder and had been arrested. for possession of unregistered destructive devices.

Speaker 3 Okay, now, Valerie, reality check. Is Is there any feeling in your head saying,

Speaker 3 maybe this is not the guy I thought he was, maybe this is not the person I should be involved with?

Speaker 14 Yes, the thought had crossed my mind. I guess the thing is, is I've had so many poor relationships that, and this one was going well up until this horrific incident happened,

Speaker 14 that

Speaker 14 it was kind of like,

Speaker 14 But if he's not guilty,

Speaker 14 where could this possibly go? How good could this be?

Speaker 3 now maybe that sounds like I'm desperate desperate's not where I was going foolish might be where I was going okay I also need to point out to you that there are other men out there online and elsewhere who are not targets of law enforcement true he didn't have handcuffs on up until that point

Speaker 3 because that point is the point where a lot of people might think to themselves, this is where I get off the Stephen Beale Express. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And here you are.

Speaker 3 When the government dropped those charges, Valerie was there to take Stephen home, still wearing his jail-issue jumpsuit with his belongings in his hand.

Speaker 3 And you and Stephen both think, that's it. We're done.
Nightmare over. Yep.

Speaker 3 The next day, says Valerie, she and Stephen were running errands. When suddenly they realized they had company.

Speaker 14 We're going down the freeway and I see an Orange County sheriff. Next thing I know, he's behind me and his lights are on.

Speaker 3 I was just like, oh, God.

Speaker 14 I pull over. They're like, well, you see who's in your car with you? And I'm like,

Speaker 14 yeah. And you guys released him from jail.

Speaker 14 Dropped the charges. Dropped the charges.

Speaker 41 What's the problem?

Speaker 3 Deputies searched their car while Valerie hit record.

Speaker 14 Those are posters.

Speaker 33 You can open them.

Speaker 14 We spent about three hours on the side of the road. Wow.

Speaker 14 And they brought in a bomb-sniffing dog, and I swear there were probably 13 cars behind us.

Speaker 3 They uncovered exactly nothing. To Valerie, it felt like harassment.

Speaker 3 And even though Valerie and Stephen were allowed to leave, Stephen's daughter, Charlene Brown, says she knew the search for evidence against her father was not over.

Speaker 51 They want to bring whoever did this to justice, and they clearly want it to be him.

Speaker 3 For investigators, combing through that evidence was a huge task.

Speaker 18 We continued to analyze hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of CCTV footage, tens of thousands of digital media from both Ildico, Stephen Beale, other family and friends, business records, financial records.

Speaker 18 And it takes a long time to process micro bits of evidence when a bomb goes off.

Speaker 3 Just sort of slowly building a case.

Speaker 18 We wanted to to do it right, yeah.

Speaker 3 Then came what looked like a major clue. A deep dive into Stevens' financial records led to this purchase.

Speaker 18 We found him buying a 12x6x6 box.

Speaker 17 And we were able to

Speaker 17 obtain CCTV footage of him buying that. That was at a store right around the corner from the spa.

Speaker 18 About a week before the bombing.

Speaker 3 The box matched the description of the one the surviving witness said ildica was opening at the moment of her death then there was this bank records also showed stephen beal getting cash from this atm

Speaker 3 when an investigator familiar with the area saw that he remembered that just down the street was a cvs store

Speaker 3 he checked the store's security video and that guy you saw at the register it's stephen beal one week before the bombing buying a CVS brand single 9-volt battery and paying in cash.

Speaker 18 That changed everything for me. It was very compelling.
At one point, you have to stop and say, when do the coincidences stop?

Speaker 3 That's the battery, and that's your bomber. Right.

Speaker 18 Correct.

Speaker 3 What's more, investigators were now hearing stories suggesting Stephen and Ildico's relationship was not at all like the one Stephen had described to investigators.

Speaker 3 There was was one night she told him she was out to dinner with Holly, and he apparently didn't take her word for it.

Speaker 5 He did not believe that she was with me, so he kept blowing up her phone, texting her, calling her.

Speaker 5 He assumed she was with another man. When we walked out of the restaurant, he was there.

Speaker 5 He was pretty angry that night.

Speaker 3 And pretty jealous.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 3 Well, stories about jealousy are not evidence of murder. And if Stephen had trouble moving on earlier, that seemed to have passed.

Speaker 3 A couple of months after the explosion, Stephen certainly seemed serious about Valerie. He wrote me a love letter, and at the end of the letter asked me to marry him.

Speaker 3 Did you have to think about it at all?

Speaker 39 Nope.

Speaker 14 I didn't. I'd moved into the house.

Speaker 14 I mean, I'd been through everything in his household. Socks, drawers, you know, I mean...

Speaker 3 You'd done your own warrantless search.

Speaker 25 Yeah, exactly. I mean, I did my due diligence in the house.

Speaker 14 You know, I didn't see anything that was

Speaker 14 of concern.

Speaker 3 You said yes right away. I did.

Speaker 3 Charlene approved.

Speaker 31 I think she's good for him. I think he's good for her.

Speaker 3 And she doesn't shy away from a guy who has already seen the inside of the lockup.

Speaker 51 I said to her that if you at any point decide to walk away, not that it matters what we think, but none of us would blame you.

Speaker 51 I mean, if I'd been dating someone for four to six weeks and this all happened,

Speaker 51 I'll be honest, I'd probably peace out of there,

Speaker 3 right?

Speaker 51 But she stuck around. But she stuck around.

Speaker 3 That loyalty of Valerie's was about to be tested. You get another proposal.
Yes. This one from some guys in gray suits.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And you had to say yes to that, too.

Speaker 14 I didn't feel I had a choice.

Speaker 27 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 11 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 30 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 32 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 20 Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here.

Speaker 3 If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe.

Speaker 49 And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.

Speaker 20 Fox.

Speaker 48 There are new episodes out every Thursday.

Speaker 9 So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 36 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 13 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 40 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 22 Plus, Zen offers a robust rewards program.

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

Speaker 43 Warning, this product contains nicotine.

Speaker 44 Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 3 Valerie Stone and Stephen Beale were engaged. He gave her a ring, a diamond solitaire.
Let's see it.

Speaker 14 Little over a carrot.

Speaker 3 Very nice. It is.

Speaker 3 Sometimes an engagement is when when people drop by with gifts. Not these guys.

Speaker 14 They pull up in a black suburban and ask me to get in, so I get in and they tell me we're going to go off site. We need to talk to you.

Speaker 3 It was the FBI. They showed up at her work and drove Valerie to a nearby park.

Speaker 14 And they say, okay, leave all your electronics in the car.

Speaker 3 Then she says two agents walked in one direction while the agent in charge walked in the opposite direction with Valerie.

Speaker 14 He has a file and he shows me some pictures of the inside of the building after the explosion. And then I think there was one of Stephen buying boxes or something.

Speaker 3 All of that's supposed to both

Speaker 3 horrify you as to what the crime actually was and also suggest that they have evidence that he's involved. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 The feds were asking Valerie to become what they call a cooperating witness. You might call that an informant.

Speaker 14 They were trying to get me to get him to admit that he is the one who

Speaker 14 packaged up the box and that he had used the box that he had bought to make the bomb.

Speaker 3 Valerie says she believed that if she turned them down, her reputation would suffer. And she also felt it was the right thing to do.

Speaker 14 I said,

Speaker 14 I want you guys to catch the person who did this, you know?

Speaker 3 Even if that's Stephen.

Speaker 14 Even if it's Stephen. I told him I didn't think it was.

Speaker 3 But if it is, I'm okay with him being locked up.

Speaker 14 It was such a horrendous crime that whoever did this to Ildico

Speaker 14 deserves to be behind bars. And if it was Stephen, it was Stephen.

Speaker 3 How would she bring herself to get the man she loved?

Speaker 3 to admit to such a terrible crime.

Speaker 14 I was like, oh, well, we're doing this malibund wine hike.

Speaker 3 Valerie says the FBI wanted in on the romantic getaway she and Stephen had planned. And they offered some free upgrades that aren't usually included in the resort fee.

Speaker 14 And they're like, okay, well, we'll pay for the hotel. So

Speaker 14 for them to pay for the hotel, I had to sign documents so they could go in and put cameras and listening devices in our room. It was a nightmare.

Speaker 3 There's not just two people in the room. There's like, what, 25.
Yeah. Except 23 of them are watching and listening.
You guys have fun that weekend?

Speaker 3 Not a lot.

Speaker 31 No.

Speaker 14 It was

Speaker 14 extremely stressful.

Speaker 3 Your boyfriend's thinking, this is great. We can leave all our troubles behind and have a nice weekend together.
You're thinking, maybe I can get him to confess to a murder. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Are you a better or worse actress than you thought you were?

Speaker 14 Probably better than I thought I was.

Speaker 3 They also bugged Valerie's car and her phone. And it turns out they did have a gift, a necklace, with a hidden listening device, to be worn the entire weekend.

Speaker 3 And Stephen did not say, where'd you get that?

Speaker 14 Actually, I had a reason. I said, oh, look what I found.
I hadn't seen this in forever. I thought I'd lost it.

Speaker 3 I mean, that to me is like you delivering for them.

Speaker 14 I was trying. I mean,

Speaker 14 I tried very hard.

Speaker 3 Agents Vicencia and Miracle were there for it. And you guys have a nice weekend?

Speaker 18 No, we didn't really enjoy the weekend.

Speaker 3 Perhaps because the itinerary was derailed. She brought up Ildico, brought up the bombing, tried to get him to discuss it.

Speaker 6 Correct.

Speaker 3 And he didn't really incriminate himself at all.

Speaker 18 He didn't really talk about it at all.

Speaker 3 The FBI wouldn't give us the tape, but apparently the operation was a bust.

Speaker 14 I was doing everything within my power to get him to do something and nothing. No confession.

Speaker 3 FBI agents continued to keep a close eye on Stephen.

Speaker 3 Stephen Beale. Online.

Speaker 3 They found his acting reels.

Speaker 53 I believe, though, that an actor has to have a life outside of the camera.

Speaker 53 Art illuminates life, but also life illuminates art.

Speaker 18 He spent more money getting classes

Speaker 18 and lessons than he did ever making any money from acting.

Speaker 3 Welcome to show, Biz. Yeah.

Speaker 3 What do you mean by that?

Speaker 3 So when Stephen was cast in the play 12 Angry Jurors,

Speaker 3 the FBI was in the audience. We were there too to watch the aspiring actor play the role of a jury four person

Speaker 3 in a murder trial.

Speaker 3 The bureau went to the play because agents were investigating Stephen's disability claims.

Speaker 3 They learned he'd been on disability for more than a decade.

Speaker 3 Because Stephen said he suffered from aphasia, difficulty communicating, memory loss,

Speaker 3 and an inability to read.

Speaker 17 He was able to memorize lines and recite them, which was contrary to what

Speaker 17 he was providing on the disability forms as things that he was not able to do.

Speaker 3 He had to know he was still on the FBI as such. Yeah, he did.

Speaker 51 And yes, he was concerned about it. But you can't let that stop you from living your life.
Something he loves to do.

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 51 Pretty interesting play that he chose to be into.

Speaker 3 Maybe a surprising choice or maybe not a surprising choice. Maybe a poignant choice.

Speaker 3 Because the message of that play is how people can believe one thing, all of them, and then it turns out what they thought they believed actually isn't true. Right.

Speaker 3 Now, Stephen Beal's off-stage life was about to take yet another turn. You thought this was over?

Speaker 14 I thought it was over.

Speaker 16 Heartbreaking.

Speaker 14 It was just the beginning.

Speaker 3 March 3rd, 2019. It was a Sunday.
Stephen had left to run some errands.

Speaker 14 I was still in bed. He kissed me goodbye.

Speaker 3 Then Valerie's phone rang. Stephen was calling.

Speaker 14 And And he's like, I've just been arrested, and then hands the phone to the special agent in charge.

Speaker 3 This time, it was the charges and not the vacation that received an upgrade.

Speaker 36 Mr.

Speaker 41 Beal was arrested pursuant to a federal criminal complaint that charges him with a malicious destruction of a building resulting in death.

Speaker 41 The charge carries a potential sentence of life in federal prison without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 3 This adds up to a murder charge in terms of what he's facing. Correct.
What sort of got you over the hump?

Speaker 18 The lab finished, you know, its analysis and conclusions of all the hundreds of pieces of evidence that we submitted to them.

Speaker 3 It sounds like there wasn't any one particular thing.

Speaker 17 It was sort of the totality of everything adding up.

Speaker 14 He's in shock.

Speaker 3 And you must have been too.

Speaker 14 I really was. I was, there's like no way.
There's no way they have a case against him.

Speaker 3 And so days, weeks, months went by. Stephen Veal sat behind bars without bond.
Valerie, once again, stood by her man. You've never felt like you were at risk by being with Stephen.

Speaker 14 Never.

Speaker 3 If all this ends with an acquittal and he walks out of jail a free man,

Speaker 3 you still have no worries.

Speaker 30 Nope.

Speaker 3 You believe him.

Speaker 3 Wholeheartedly. You love him.

Speaker 45 Yes.

Speaker 3 Do you believe him because you love him?

Speaker 31 No.

Speaker 14 No, I believe him because I believe he's not a sociopath or psychopath or.

Speaker 3 Murderer is the word.

Speaker 14 Yeah, he's not a murderer either.

Speaker 3 Proving that Stephen Beale was a murderer became the job of federal prosecutors Mark Takla and Anna Martinez Salak.

Speaker 3 You confident you got the right person?

Speaker 7 Absolutely.

Speaker 45 100%.

Speaker 3 The case finally went to trial in 2022, four years after the explosion. Prosecutors reminded the jury, Ildiko wasn't the only victim.

Speaker 3 Two other women have for years dealt with the medical repercussions from that blast. The government played for the jury an excerpt of a poem Stephen Beale recorded for Ildiko while they were dating.

Speaker 21 I love how when I dream of my life partner, the only person that I can see is you.

Speaker 3 They told the jury Stephen Beale was obsessed and infatuated with Ildiko, and when he learned of her deceit, he was humiliated.

Speaker 3 The government showed photos found on Stephen Beale's phone of Ildiko's text conversation in Hungarian with her San Francisco guy, Laszlo Zabo.

Speaker 3 Prosecutors said Stephen found those texts while on a trip with Ildiko just two months before the explosion.

Speaker 7 And so the only reason that we could determine why he would take those pictures is is so they'd get those translated later on.

Speaker 3 In those texts, Laszlo and Ildico are discussing plans to go dancing during Ildiko's trip to Hungary.

Speaker 3 According to prosecutors, it was then that Stephen made his plan to kill Ildiko.

Speaker 45 He knew how to make rockets and fireworks, and those are the exact

Speaker 45 things

Speaker 45 one needs to know how to make to make a bomb. And he used that to to end her life.

Speaker 3 Prosecutors also showed jurors a video investigators found of Stephen demonstrating how to safely mix explosive chemicals when making homemade fireworks.

Speaker 54 The advantage of this method is that even if you're using highly sensitive materials, this is extremely gentle and will not cause

Speaker 54 the formulation to spark or self-ignite.

Speaker 7 It shows his expertise.

Speaker 3 Hard to argue that the guy in that video wouldn't have known how to build an explosive device.

Speaker 8 And could do it safely.

Speaker 7 You know, the person has to be really confident that they're able to put this thing together without killing themselves. And that is a special, special skill set in electrical and chemistry.

Speaker 3 The government told the jury Stephen used materials he had in his home to build the bomb, including an oxidizer, which caused the bomb's distinct grayish-white smoke.

Speaker 45 The forensic evidence was clear.

Speaker 45 The chemical residue that was found at the scene that was determined to be part of the bomb was from the same specific types of chemicals that Stephen Beale kept in his home.

Speaker 3 Prosecutors said that just days before the explosion, Stephen Beale bought two items to complete the bomb package. a box and that CVS brand 9-volt battery.

Speaker 3 What are the odds that somebody else purchased a battery from that lot available during that time? Same kind of battery as was in the bomb.

Speaker 45 I'm not a statistician. I can't talk to probability.
But what I can say is that Stephen Beale purchased the exact same type, make, and model of battery that the evidence shows was part of the bomb.

Speaker 3 And because Stephen was involved in Ildico's business and had full access to her schedule, prosecutors said he found the perfect moment to plant the bomb.

Speaker 3 And then he waited.

Speaker 45 He repeatedly, for no reason that we could discern, was checking her appointment schedule and her Facebook account over and over.

Speaker 45 on the day he knew she would be returning to the United States to the spa to see clients.

Speaker 3 And there was this. Prosecutors told the jury Stephen was searching for information online about whether a narcissist could beat a polygraph test.

Speaker 7 And so that suggested that he's thinking of a polygraph.

Speaker 3 And he thinks of himself as a narcissist. Correct.

Speaker 3 According to Stephen Beale's defense team, what that really showed was a massive case. of tunnel vision.

Speaker 6 The entire force of their investigation was proving Stephen did it rather than finding out who actually killed Ilviko.

Speaker 3 And they were about to tell the jury how the government's case appeared to be a strong one.

Speaker 3 But not if you look just below the surface.

Speaker 27 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 23 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

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Speaker 3 Was this the murder trial of an obsessed, spurned lover? No, said his defense. Stephen Beal was simply a hopeless romantic.

Speaker 6 One of the themes is that Mr. Beale was a jilted ex-lover.
It's a nice soundbite. It's great for TV.

Speaker 6 But the evidence directly refuted that.

Speaker 3 Craig Harbaugh was Stephen Beale's lead defense attorney.

Speaker 3 He told the jury the relationship between his client and Ildeko Kroniak was complex, that even after he'd moved on, Stephen still cared for her and she for him.

Speaker 3 These texts were exchanged just a couple of weeks before the explosion. Ildico to Stephen, miss you.
When do we get to cuddle?

Speaker 3 Seconds later, Stephen to Ildico, miss you too, love.

Speaker 6 The strongest piece of evidence is Mr. Beale's total lack of motive.

Speaker 3 He said there were plenty of others with a motive to kill Ildico. People who weren't thoroughly examined like Elizabeth Papp, the woman who despised Ildico for getting involved with her husband.

Speaker 6 Elizabeth hated her, wanted her out of her life, and made it very clear in all of her communications.

Speaker 3 It got to the point where Elizabeth reached out to Ildico's husband, Ronilo.

Speaker 6 She demanded that he do something about it, challenged his masculinity when he wouldn't stop Ildico.

Speaker 3 That was about a month and a half before the explosion.

Speaker 3 When Elizabeth took the stand, She said she had nothing to do with Ildico's murder, even though she knew that after the explosion, law enforcement would seek her out.

Speaker 3 And when they did, the defense argued the FBI's search of the Paps' home was perfunctory at best, as demonstrated by these photos taken at the scene.

Speaker 6 The photographs are completely illegible. They're completely dark in contrast to the hundreds of photos taken of Mr.
Beale's home.

Speaker 3 The Paps, particularly Elizabeth, were dismissed too quickly as possible suspects, said the defense. As was Max the handyman, who had full access to Ildico's suite.

Speaker 6 She was reporting her fear of Max being there.

Speaker 3 The defense pointed out to the jury that the cameras in the building were not working at the time, and a handyman would have known that.

Speaker 6 So he knew he could get in and out of Ildico's spa without ever being seen.

Speaker 3 And of course, there was Ildico's husband, who had some pretty obvious reasons to be angry with her.

Speaker 6 The husband was aware that Ildiko

Speaker 6 was cheating on him while they lived under the same roof.

Speaker 3 And as for the government's evidence against Stephen Beale, the defense argued there were easy explanations for some of it. For example, that 9-volt battery he bought with cash.

Speaker 6 It makes sense that Stephen would have purchased that battery. Ildiko needed 9-volt batteries as a regular part of her business.

Speaker 3 And the box the government said contained the bomb? Stephen was remodeling his home, packing up his belongings and moving them around. The defense argued purchasing a box wasn't unusual.

Speaker 6 He used his Staples Rewards card, not hiding who he was.

Speaker 3 The defense said the government could not prove that box had been used to make the bomb, despite one of the blast survivors saying it was very similar.

Speaker 3 And they said the chemicals the FBI found at his home were simply part of a harmless hobby, building rockets and fireworks. And as for Stevens' online research about passing a polygraph exam,

Speaker 3 the defense had an explanation.

Speaker 6 Mr. Beale had been offered an audition

Speaker 6 to be a polygrapher. That search was within days of that audition.

Speaker 3 Simply put, said the defense, law enforcement got the wrong guy.

Speaker 6 Mr. Beal

Speaker 3 is a warm,

Speaker 6 funny,

Speaker 6 kind of quirky older man, has raised children, has grandchildren,

Speaker 6 loves his hobbies, which unfortunately those hobbies made him a target of law enforcement here.

Speaker 3 Seven weeks of trial, 66 witnesses. Now, Stephen's fate was in the hands of 12 strangers, the jury.
Probably he did it, but I'm not firmly convinced he did it. Probably's not good enough.

Speaker 3 Probability is not good enough.

Speaker 3 Stephen Beale's life and Stephen Beale's art were on a collision course.

Speaker 3 Here he was acting. In real life, Stephen was literally a captive audience, as the case against him was laid out for jurors, critics, who would have the final say.

Speaker 3 We sat down with three of those jurors, Maricella, Klaus, and Malcolm. He had the materials and he would have known how to do it.
Yeah, absolutely he did.

Speaker 25 And I think we all agreed on that.

Speaker 55 Those were some of the first things we checked off, that no matter what side he fell on in it, we all agreed that he had the means to do it. He had the knowledge to do it.

Speaker 3 The question was whether he acted on that knowledge. That's where jurors struggled.

Speaker 3 They didn't disagree about whether Stephen had purchased a 9-volt battery, only about whether it was part of the bomb. To Klaus, there was no doubt that it was.

Speaker 56 There's only one way something gets shot into the ceiling at that kind of speed, and that's if it's sitting right on top of the thing that detonates.

Speaker 3 Maricella wasn't so sure. You were not convinced, ultimately, that the 9-volt battery was part of the bomb.

Speaker 55 Not beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 3 And there was the motive or lack of one.

Speaker 3 Based on what you heard in that courtroom, was Stephen Beale obsessed with her and was he so furious that she no longer wanted to be with him that he killed her as a result?

Speaker 3 It wasn't obvious from the testimony that he was the kind of person who would fly off the handle.

Speaker 3 I asked prosecutors about that.

Speaker 3 I don't really see the venom here from Stephen to Ildico. Where's the text where he says, you'll never be with another man? Where's the text where he says, you will pay for this?

Speaker 7 He was an individual that was trying to win her back. And so I think that reaction that you're asking about might not have been the best way for him to interact with Ildico to keep her in his life.

Speaker 45 That's not who Stephen Beale is. Stephen Beale is a calm, calculating individual.
Stephen Beale thinks he is the smartest person in the room.

Speaker 3 Well, even the sharpest among us are sometimes tripped up by the complex details of the webs they weave.

Speaker 3 During that very first interview outside his home, you may have noticed Stephen was talking about Ildico in the past tense.

Speaker 3 She was

Speaker 21 always smiling. She had great advice for people.
She, you know, she cared. She went out of her way to

Speaker 22 ease your burden.

Speaker 3 No question, she was no longer among us. But up to that point, law enforcement had not yet identified Ildico as the person who had died in the explosion.

Speaker 3 Jurors took an initial vote.

Speaker 56 Eight to four.

Speaker 3 Which way?

Speaker 56 Eight to four to convict.

Speaker 3 I said, probably he did it, but I'm not firmly convinced he did it. Probably is not good enough.
Probability is not good enough.

Speaker 55 There were raised voices, there was pointing, there was

Speaker 52 a little bit of

Speaker 56 acrimony. Yeah,

Speaker 3 definitely. And then they're out forever.
Not a good sign.

Speaker 45 Not a good sign.

Speaker 6 Your mind is racing and speculating what I could have done better.

Speaker 3 Finally, jurors sent the judge a note.

Speaker 3 A hung jury.

Speaker 3 No way around it.

Speaker 3 What was that like?

Speaker 3 Horrible.

Speaker 5 I was so disappointed just for her family.

Speaker 3 The judge declared a mistrial. For prosecutors, a setback.

Speaker 3 Maybe a temporary one. Was there ever any thought about whether or not you were going to go ahead and retry?

Speaker 45 No.

Speaker 8 We were always going to retry that case.

Speaker 3 For Stephen Beal, a victory, also perhaps temporary.

Speaker 6 Acquittal would have been better, but certainly

Speaker 6 a hung jury is better than a wrongful conviction.

Speaker 3 Stephen remained in jail, waiting for another trial. That began in June 2023, and prosecutors again presented their evidence.
The box, the battery.

Speaker 3 What they said was Stephen's obsession with Ildiko, and his expertise with explosive materials.

Speaker 45 There was just simply no one who had that amount of overwhelming evidence against them.

Speaker 3 Not her husband, not the handyman, not anybody that she had dated, not the past. No one.
Just Stephen Beale.

Speaker 45 Just Stephen Beale.

Speaker 3 This time, they concluded their case with a recreation of the explosion that killed Ildiko.

Speaker 3 and played it for jurors side by side with the video and photos of the actual aftermath at the spa.

Speaker 7 It really showed how that bomb could have gone off and what the effect on Ildiko would have been.

Speaker 45 It also matched the chemical used in the bomb, which matched the chemicals the defendant had at his residence.

Speaker 3 The courtroom was silent as the images played. complete with photos of Ildico's scattered body parts.

Speaker 7 And the eerie piece about about that demonstration was the mannequin had disintegrated, the hands and arms were blown into bits, the legs were severed from the mannequin's body in very much the same way that Ildico was found after she died.

Speaker 3 It was a vivid reminder of what happened to Ildico,

Speaker 3 as well as a demonstration, said the prosecution, of what Stephen Beale was capable of.

Speaker 3 To prove Stephen Beale was no murderer, this time the defense would rely on the woman who'd been by his side all those years,

Speaker 3 his fiancé, Valerie. You still think he's innocent? I do.

Speaker 3 Stephen Beale's fiancé, Valerie Stone, had stood by him for five years.

Speaker 14 All I want is a not guilty verdict because I know he didn't do it.

Speaker 3 Now she would take the stand for him in court as the defense's star witness. For this trial, Stephen had a new defense team, Megan Blanco and Anthony Solis.

Speaker 3 They told the jury, Stephen Beale was merely a rocket and firework hobbyist. He wouldn't have built a bomb.
And they said, he certainly wasn't furious enough at Ildico to kill her.

Speaker 3 Instead, he'd moved on. And the proof of that was Valerie.

Speaker 47 He starts a new relationship.

Speaker 39 Psychologically, that is not what jilted lovers do.

Speaker 3 The defense wanted the jury to hear about that relationship directly from Valerie.

Speaker 57 We called Valerie Stone to the stand to help give the jury a better understanding of what was going on in Mr. Veal's life.
And Ms. Stone was able to tell the jury that he had moved on.

Speaker 57 She was able to explain to the jury what their relationship was like.

Speaker 3 Valerie testified about that wine hike in Malibu, the bug necklace she wore, and how the FBI's sting went nowhere.

Speaker 57 They instructed her to ask him specific questions in an attempt to elicit some incriminating evidence from him, and nothing came of it.

Speaker 3 Stephen Beale never said anything that ended up getting introduced.

Speaker 16 No, there's no admission.

Speaker 3 And she told the jury after that was all over, she confessed to Stephen. She'd been an informant.
She says he wasn't angry at all.

Speaker 57 A horrific crime that required a lot of planning. It required a lot of emotion.
And we just didn't have that.

Speaker 3 Now the case was again in the hands of a jury.

Speaker 3 In less than two hours, Five years after the explosion that shook Aliso Viejo, the jury reached a verdict. Guilty.

Speaker 3 Ildico's cousin Ava.

Speaker 24 I was very happy to hear that.

Speaker 24 Very relieved. It's not going to bring her back, but we did something together.
All these

Speaker 23 people who worked on this case and helped us.

Speaker 3 After the verdict, I spoke with Valerie again.

Speaker 3 It has been, and I checked, 897 days since you and I last sat down. It's a long time.
Now, during that time, a few things have happened for both of us.

Speaker 3 You moved out of Southern California to another state. Yep.

Speaker 3 I went on a big diet. I lost 70 pounds.

Speaker 3 Here's something that didn't happen during those 897 days, which is you didn't break up with him.

Speaker 3 You guys are still together.

Speaker 3 Valerie says she still believes Stephen is innocent, that if he were guilty, he would have confessed during that sting she was part of.

Speaker 14 I did everything that they asked me to. They asked me to try and get him angry to see if he'd, you know, have an outburst.
He never did.

Speaker 14 He was always calm, cool, and collected.

Speaker 3 Okay, it's possible I've seen too many movies, but maybe there was a reason. for Stephen not taking the bait.

Speaker 3 During those conversations, you hold up a piece of paper like that? Nope. You didn't warn him?

Speaker 39 Nope.

Speaker 14 Did not.

Speaker 3 Because she was on the witness list for both trials, Valerie missed a lot of what happened in court. What came next wasn't pleasant for either of us.

Speaker 3 I read her some text messages between Ildico and Stephen that were presented to the jury. Those were texts Valerie hadn't seen.

Speaker 3 If you'll recall, she and Stevens started dating in mid-April 2018, and it was then he said his relationship with Ildiko

Speaker 3 was over.

Speaker 14 He was still friends with her.

Speaker 14 They weren't romantically involved any longer.

Speaker 3 Are you convinced of that?

Speaker 14 Absolutely.

Speaker 3 Building a relationship with you is the single most important period of my life. Ildiko, you rock my world.

Speaker 3 You are the woman that I've always dreamed of.

Speaker 3 I will love you forever.

Speaker 3 That was on April 22nd of 2018. Oh, wow.
April 28th. He texts Ildico.

Speaker 3 I'm also missing you.

Speaker 33 Wow.

Speaker 14 That kind of makes me feel

Speaker 14 right now.

Speaker 3 I'm sorry about that.

Speaker 3 I do want to say

Speaker 3 that perhaps not everything that somebody says in a text to somebody else has to go through a lie detector. Yeah.
Like,

Speaker 3 sometimes, I know this is going to come as a shock to you, men say things to women that are not 100%

Speaker 3 true.

Speaker 3 Sorry.

Speaker 14 Now I really need to reevaluate things.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's been five years

Speaker 3 alone and hoping. Yeah.

Speaker 3 You owe yourself something here, too, not just him. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Valerie now says she's ready to move on.

Speaker 3 In January 2024, 64-year-old Stephen Beale appeared in court again, this time to hear his sentence, which was life in federal prison plus 30 years.

Speaker 3 Ava spoke outside the courthouse.

Speaker 52 After five years of waiting and wondering, our family and friends have peace in knowing that Mr. Bill will spend his remaining days in prison.

Speaker 52 She will live forever in our hearts and never be forgotten.

Speaker 3 What do you miss most about her?

Speaker 24 Her calling and checking on me like every day that

Speaker 24 what are you doing?

Speaker 23 You come over, we go here and there, and then just her laugh.

Speaker 24 She has this energy that you go in and you depress, and you leave the salon and you're flying because she brings up something positive about you.

Speaker 3 So go see Ildico and come out feeling great. Yes, exactly.
For Ildico's loyal client/slash friend, Holly,

Speaker 3 that's exactly the way Ildeco made her feel.

Speaker 5 She was a sunshine

Speaker 5 in some of my darkest days.

Speaker 3 And I just miss her and love her.

Speaker 10 That's all for this edition of Dateline. And check out our Talking Dateline podcast.
Josh Mankowitz and Andrea Canning will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode.

Speaker 10 Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8th Central.

Speaker 3 I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC NBC News. Good night.

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