The Ultimatum

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Speaker 4 Something wasn't right at our house. I saw a lot of police cars.

Speaker 4 That woman was a fighter. She would never leave her daughters.

Speaker 4 She would never do it.

Speaker 5 Michelle ran the home.

Speaker 4 She was very proud about how she was able to make ends meet.

Speaker 5 Lloyd helped with the kids.

Speaker 6 They're wonderful girls. They're amazing.

Speaker 5 The end came much too soon.

Speaker 9 She's motionless and I'm concerned.

Speaker 11 There appeared to be a body hanging from a banister.

Speaker 11 From first look, it would appear as though it was a suicide.

Speaker 5 But then they looked closer.

Speaker 12 It appeared that there was a struggle. My gut was telling me there's something wrong here.

Speaker 5 Did someone want Michelle dead? Was someone else willing to help?

Speaker 13 At that point, we're shell-shocked.

Speaker 5 A bond forged in blood.

Speaker 9 Could you cry?

Speaker 13 We call it the lion cry conversation.

Speaker 5 Betrayed by blood.

Speaker 13 What are you hoping for? Some conversation between the two of them about the death.

Speaker 12 We have an investigator look at the video surveillance, and he goes, I don't like what I'm seeing.

Speaker 7 Are you theorizing the darkest scenario? Yes, we are.

Speaker 5 Evil. The case too twisted to be true, except that it is.
I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 5 Here's Dennis Murphy with the ultimatum.

Speaker 7 The long road to Prima Ballerina, the dreams of thunderous Bravos, the cascade of roses, begins for the youngest of dancers in a ballet school of tutud 10-year-olds. Stretching, stressing.

Speaker 6 It's very disciplined.

Speaker 7 An athletic discipline of concentration and body control. Learning poise under pressure.

Speaker 14 It took a lot,

Speaker 14 especially when we were young, to stick with it, but it was worth it.

Speaker 7 A ballet academy in upstate New York was where Amina Raj got to know her friend Carrie Nyrider.

Speaker 14 I met Carrie when she was eight. She was very sweet, very bubbly personality.

Speaker 7 Both of them were girly girls but wanted to grow up to be like their dads.

Speaker 14 Our dads were both engineers so we were both going to become engineers and be professional ballerinas on the side.

Speaker 7 And everyone could see that Carrie was very close to her dad, Lloyd Nyrider. Every Saturday, he'd not only drive his daughter to class in Corning, New York, he'd stay to help out.

Speaker 17 He was the only father there that was bringing the kids in the morning at that time.

Speaker 7 Mina's mom, Cynthia, would see him on those Saturdays, but rarely his wife.

Speaker 17 Instead of doing the children's hair at home, he would always sort of bring them there and brush their hair out and put these buns together.

Speaker 7 With some skill and art?

Speaker 17 Yes, and he definitely enjoyed the admiration of the other mothers around him.

Speaker 7 As their daughters rehearsed for the annual Nutcracker, Cynthia and another friend, Rose Coluccio, became friendly with Lloyd.

Speaker 4 Lloyd was, I would say, eccentric, always

Speaker 4 the center of attention.

Speaker 17 Of course, we eventually asked about his wife, and he said that Saturday was really her days off.

Speaker 7 Lloyd's wife, Michelle, had a full plate of her own. She had a master's degree in literature, but chose to be a full-time mom, homeschooling their kids and taking an active role in charity work.

Speaker 7 Here she is making Thanksgiving dinner for the needy at their local church.

Speaker 18 It would be really odd to have Thanksgiving at home, just us, and not be here. Thanksgiving is celebrating with the community, giving back.

Speaker 7 Michelle had met Lloyd in high school. Her mom, Jeannie, remembers a teenage boy who was smitten from the first date.

Speaker 6 I think she thought he was intelligent and she could have intelligent conversations with him.

Speaker 7 So maybe a peg above the other kids in the schoolyard or her circle. Yes.
The high school sweethearts married when Michelle was just 20.

Speaker 7 They'd later settle into a farmhouse in upstate New York and have three girls, Carrie, the middle child. Michelle's younger sister, also named Carrie, admired her so much.

Speaker 7 Tell me about your sister as a mom.

Speaker 19 She always like wanted the best for her girls. She was always very supportive because, of course, when I had children, I asked her all my questions and looked up to her.
I always looked up to her.

Speaker 7 Though they lived coasts apart, Michelle's sister and her husband were close with the nieces.

Speaker 19 The oldest one really bonded with Kevin and Carrie and I very much bonded.

Speaker 7 But as with so many people, the Nye Reiter family ran into lean times, diminished prospects during the Great Recession. Lloyd moved out of state to find work as an engineer.

Speaker 4 What happened is Lloyd, it was a tough time in Corning, New York, and he took a job in New Jersey.

Speaker 7 Michelle stayed behind with the girls out in the country in Corning. But the separation put a strain on the marriage.
And in time, Michelle and Lloyd divorced.

Speaker 19 She was always positive, kind of make the most of everything. And then one day out of the blue, she called me and said, we're divorced.

Speaker 7 Okay. Right, it was very random.
After the divorce, Michelle sold the farm and the kids split up. The oldest went to live with her dad in New Jersey.

Speaker 7 while Carrie and the youngest daughter stayed in Corning with mom in a new house. But the divorce was hard on everyone.
Carrie and her mom sometimes butted heads. The arguments could get heated.

Speaker 4 She was living with her mother, finishing high school, but it got more and more strained as the years, as she approached her senior year.

Speaker 7 By late August 2017, Carrie, the one-time ballerina, had left home and was a sophomore at RIT in Rochester. Her younger sisters still live with their mom.

Speaker 7 It seemed like a typical Monday afternoon when a family friend came by the house to pick up the youngest for swim practice. But something looked very wrong.
He called 911.

Speaker 10 She's motionless, and I'm concerned.

Speaker 7 The friend said he glimpsed a shadowy female figure on the stairway.

Speaker 12 So she's just standing there not moving?

Speaker 20 Kind of hurt itself. Dark.

Speaker 16 Something very dark had happened in that house.

Speaker 7 And when the curtain was pulled back, it would reveal a monstrous story, like something out of a Greek tragedy, with an an ending no one could fathom. This is absolutely ghoulish.
Yeah,

Speaker 5 when we come back, there appeared to be a body hanging inside the door, and someone was missing.

Speaker 11 No 14-year-old was discovered.

Speaker 7 So, where is this child?

Speaker 11 That was one of the first concerns.

Speaker 7 August 28th, 2017. Police officers responded to the home of divorced mom, Michelle Nyreiter.
A friend of hers had called 911 to report a disturbing sight.

Speaker 11 There appeared to be a body hanging inside the door about 15 to 20 feet, hanging from a banister.

Speaker 7 Corning Police Chief Jeff Spalding says his officers got in and found the body. A woman with a rope tied around her neck.
It was Michelle. Apparently a suicide.

Speaker 11 From first look, yes, it would appear as though it was a suicide.

Speaker 16 No reason to think not, huh?

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 7 Officers searched the home. They found no suicide note, and the house was empty.
Daughter Carrie was away at college, but the youngest, who lived there with Michelle, was nowhere to be found.

Speaker 11 No 14-year-old was discovered.

Speaker 7 So where is this child?

Speaker 11 That was one of the first concerns.

Speaker 7 It turned out the youngest was actually with Carrie at school in Rochester, 100 miles away. Police learned that when Carrie called them herself after a friend gave her the shocking news.

Speaker 11 Yeah,

Speaker 11 we are looking into it. Can you give me any insight into what might have happened?

Speaker 7 I don't know. I decided to go home.
Carrie told police she had stopped by the house that night. When I got there,

Speaker 7 my mom started freaking out.

Speaker 11 In Carrie's words, they had a fight. Her mom went yelling and screaming.

Speaker 7 Carrie told investigators she stormed out of the house, taking her teenage sister with her. Not all that unusual.
Police learned that raised voices in that household were sadly routine.

Speaker 7 A bad divorce with kids caught in the middle. This is, as they say, a house that's known to law enforcement? Yes.
There have been, over the years, been what, 911 calls to the location?

Speaker 11 Probably in the course of two or three years, a dozen, a little more than a dozen calls.

Speaker 7 So, Chief, I'm thinking, even with this brief history you had, this fragmentary history of trouble inside the house, mother, daughter, something's going on, it does maybe give you an explanation of why she's a death by suicide.

Speaker 7 Exactly. Investigators also got in touch with Michelle's ex-husband Lloyd who lived in New Jersey.
He was rushing to upstate New York to be with his daughters.

Speaker 20 The last time I spoke with her, I couldn't even say.

Speaker 7 Lloyd told a detective by phone he wasn't completely surprised to hear the news. He said that despite her cheery demeanor, Michelle had actually contemplated suicide in the past.

Speaker 20 From before we were married, she made

Speaker 20 suicide plans with high school friends, and that was something that alarmed me way back then.

Speaker 7 Police continued to process the scene while Michelle's body was taken to the medical examiner for autopsy. What is she finding?

Speaker 11 The words, again, consistent with suicide, are used.

Speaker 7 In a round of phone calls, Michelle's sister out in California got the news about the suicide. When you first heard that, did it make sense in any kind of way to you that...

Speaker 7 Maybe she'd gotten in a bad place?

Speaker 19 I mean, I knew that she had been fighting with the girls i i really thought like maybe she had a bad moment then she had to relay the awful news to their mom she said michelle died

Speaker 6 and i said no she didn't i said no i said no she didn't that's a lie don't say that i said don't tell don't take say that

Speaker 7 the friends back in corning could hardly take it in Michelle gone and by her own hand.

Speaker 11 My mom called me.

Speaker 14 She didn't want me to see it online or on social media before I heard it from her.

Speaker 7 And you went to see her?

Speaker 14 I did. I went home.
It was

Speaker 14 so shocking.

Speaker 7 As funeral arrangements began, Michelle's friends were haunted by a request she made just months before her death.

Speaker 17 She said, Well, promise me that if anything ever happens to me, that you will look out for my daughters.

Speaker 17 And then I

Speaker 17 reassured her, naively perhaps, that

Speaker 17 she was going to live a long life.

Speaker 17 But she was pretty persistent, and so I said, okay.

Speaker 17 And we left it like that.

Speaker 4 Sorry, she got me with that story.

Speaker 7 But even in their grief, there was confusion and doubt. The friends thought the Michelle they saw in her final days was anything but suicidal.
What were her plans?

Speaker 16 Was she forward-looking?

Speaker 4 Constantly. We were always working on what was next.

Speaker 7 That wasn't where she was in her life.

Speaker 4 See, she's a fighter, right? That woman was a fighter. On Saturday morning, when the rest of us would be lounging around in our sweatpants, she'd say, it's a good day.

Speaker 4 We're going to get up, we're going to get dressed, and we're going to make the best of it.

Speaker 7 Even if Michelle were suicidal, they just could not see their friend hanging herself like that in a way that her daughters could find her.

Speaker 17 I started Googling

Speaker 17 means that females use for suicide, and I think it was what I could find it was around 9% of females will actually hang themselves. The most popular option by far is pills.

Speaker 7 But Michelle's mood and statistics aside, they kept coming back to that lack of a suicide note.

Speaker 17 Michelle had a master's in English as well as an MBA.

Speaker 17 She was a prolific writer. Michelle would have written a note of explanation.
So once there was no note, I think

Speaker 17 we decide something's wrong.

Speaker 7 Little did they know exactly how wrong this would all turn out to be.

Speaker 7 Coming up, maybe it wasn't suicide.

Speaker 12 The way that went around her chin did not seem consistent with a hanging.

Speaker 2 Maybe it was murder.

Speaker 12 My gut was telling me there's something wrong here.

Speaker 5 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 7 Police were investigating the hanging death of Michelle Nyrider as a possible suicide, but they still needed to know more about her final weeks and days.

Speaker 21 Investigative?

Speaker 21 Hey, how are you? Good, just cautious about how I approach a car. I don't want to startle anybody.

Speaker 7 The deceased ex-husband Lloyd, resettled in New Jersey, had rushed to upstate New York after Michelle's body was found. Now, sitting in a police car, he seemed eager to talk.

Speaker 21 How long has Michelle lived at the residence over on Dwight? You know, It's about five years.

Speaker 21 Okay.

Speaker 21 She bought that after we divorced.

Speaker 7 He told them about his early relationship with Michelle.

Speaker 21 We went away to school together, we did everything together, so I never thought like that, like, oh, under some circumstance, I'll just walk away. When did she guys divorce?

Speaker 21 We divorced in August 2012.

Speaker 21 And so actually, that does help me, I think.

Speaker 21 He explained that while the divorce had been finalized years earlier, their custody issues were far from settled they were still fighting over their youngest daughter she wanted to live with me and her mom threw a tantrum Lloyd suggested his ex-wife was unstable an emotional wreck michelle was screaming and furious i know of that from past behaviors that there was an occasion where michelle was having a tantrum that she would open the door and scream things down the stairs and then slam her bedroom door and did that so many times she actually actually broke the door frame

Speaker 21 from doing that that she was just completely out of control.

Speaker 7 But Lloyd admitted his information was secondhand. He'd heard the stories from his children.

Speaker 21 I don't even know if she was seeing anybody or who else she was doing things with.

Speaker 21 She really pushed me out of her life.

Speaker 12 I appreciate it.

Speaker 7 Lloyd spoke with police for over an hour.

Speaker 16 As the interview ended, he had a question.

Speaker 7 When could the kids retrieve their stuff?

Speaker 21 In case I could pass her word, is there any idea when the kids could get into the house to look for

Speaker 7 a simple suicide? The investigation wouldn't take long. But New York State investigator Eric Hurd, who was among the first on the scene, thought not so fast.

Speaker 12 My gut was telling me there's something wrong here.

Speaker 7 It wasn't just cop intuition. There was physical evidence in his experience inconsistent with a suicide.
Starting with the position of the thin nylon rope on Michelle's body.

Speaker 12 The way that went around her chin did not seem consistent with a hanging.

Speaker 7 He noticed wounds on Michelle's head, too.

Speaker 12 On her face, you see, it looks like scratch marks, like maybe she's pulling at whatever's around her neck, trying to get it off.

Speaker 7 And then there was Michelle's friend Rose. She rushed up to the scene with something urgent to say.
Apparent suicide, did that make any sense to you?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 12 She had told me, she's like, I know her friends with me. She would never do this to herself.
We were just with her the other night. We were having a great time.

Speaker 7 She wouldn't do this. It's not exactly evidence, but it's a piece.

Speaker 12 It's not evidence at that point.

Speaker 7 And when police formally interviewed the friends, they got a different picture of Michelle and the divorce.

Speaker 7 They said Lloyd was the crazy one, relentlessly badgering his ex-wife with dragged-out custody fights.

Speaker 17 It was at their house and I think Lloyd had just served another petition for child custody of the younger child.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 she was frustrated. Her life was looking very positive, and then this came up again.

Speaker 7 Objective appraisal or friends taking sides. Either way, they insisted Michelle wasn't a frazzled out-of-control single mom.

Speaker 7 She was making the best of a bad situation and dealing with an ex who demeaned her for years.

Speaker 17 Basically everything she did was criticized. He made her feel she was really ugly.
He made her feel that she couldn't make any right decisions.

Speaker 17 She was a lousy mother, that she couldn't do anything right.

Speaker 7 So homicide versus suicide. On the one hand, the nasty divorce may have given Michelle Michelle plenty of reasons to be depressed and want a way out.

Speaker 7 But it was a police photo of Michelle's bedroom that caused investigator Heard to think otherwise.

Speaker 12 You can see where her bed was pushed out of place.

Speaker 7 He spent hours poring over the pictures.

Speaker 12 Looking at the wall and kind of zooming in, you can see... things may be not visible to the

Speaker 16 title.

Speaker 12 Didn't jump out at first to anybody, but it looks like we see something that looks like blood on the wall. So that was concerning.

Speaker 7 Blood on the wall and a bed out of place. To Heard, it pointed to only one scenario.

Speaker 12 It appeared that there was a struggle.

Speaker 7 He believed Michelle had been attacked. The suicide scene staged.
At the house, there was no sign of forced entry, nothing taken.

Speaker 7 And investigators theorized that a random intruder wouldn't bother arranging such an elaborate scene. And an unknown intruder, the one our man, doesn't figure in here either.

Speaker 12 No, we never thought. Never thought that.

Speaker 7 No, they thought someone close to Michelle had to be responsible. So, what do we do now? Is the questioner? Guess it was time to go looking for suspects.

Speaker 5 Coming up, the obvious suspect, ex-husband Lloyd, had an alibi.

Speaker 21 I think I have every receipt for the last seven days.

Speaker 5 Michelle liked to save things, too. Could the mystery be solved from beyond the grave?

Speaker 6 I started finding screenshots of texts.

Speaker 7 Michelle Nyreiter's mother, Jeannie, was still dealing with the loss of her elder child. And atop that grief was a long-standing sorrow, estrangement.

Speaker 7 Michelle had abruptly stopped talking to her mom 10 years before.

Speaker 6 I missed her, I loved her. I didn't know what was going on because we had never had a fight.

Speaker 6 If we'd had a fight and hung up on each other and, you know, you get over it, but we did not have that fight.

Speaker 21 Jeannie didn't know exactly what had gone on in Michelle and Lloyd's marriage, but she knew she'd never liked him.

Speaker 4 And we listened to her like,

Speaker 9 okay,

Speaker 6 she can do better than this. Why is she?

Speaker 11 What does she see in him?

Speaker 7 And looking back, what makes you say that, Jeannie?

Speaker 6 He was arrogant from the beginning. He was always arrogant.
He was full of himself.

Speaker 7 Michelle's sister agreed.

Speaker 19 He wanted to be like, oh, I'm going to put you in your place.

Speaker 7 Did you talk to her about how things were with her and Lloyd? No. Or do you just seal that away?

Speaker 14 I knew

Speaker 6 that's a no-go topic.

Speaker 7 Michelle's family says Lloyd's my way or the highway attitude extended to the way he disciplined the children. The doting ballet dad wanted his girls to be a little too on point.

Speaker 7 He kind of raised his kids with a military bearing, huh? Yes.

Speaker 17 I mean, they had to...

Speaker 6 He would snap his fingers and they'd line up and they would stand there like little soldiers.

Speaker 19 He would make them kneel with their nose to the wall, hands behind their heads, like they're being executed.

Speaker 7 Like, this is... Sorry? For a minor household infraction?

Speaker 19 Yeah, like for nothing, sometimes. He would just be mad at them.

Speaker 7 After Michelle's death, Jeannie flew out to the East Coast to be with her granddaughters. That's when she finally learned just how bad things had become for Michelle.

Speaker 7 It was all there in her daughter's journals and boxes of court papers.

Speaker 6 I started finding court documents and I started finding screenshots of text. My daughter documented everything to death.

Speaker 7 What was the narrative picture that had come together for you of what had happened in her life?

Speaker 6 That she was just constantly abused, emotionally abused.

Speaker 7 By her husband, Lloyd?

Speaker 7 Yes,

Speaker 7 you'd believe that he'd ganged up the children against her.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 7 Michelle's mother read how the unhappy marriage turned into an unhappy divorce.

Speaker 6 He was taking her to court over and over and over.

Speaker 7 The acrimony between Lloyd and Michelle had been well known to Michelle's friends for years. They'd seen it up close.

Speaker 7 If her death was a murder, the history of that marriage and divorce told them exactly what happened.

Speaker 4 When asked at the scene what I thought, my answer was, I think he did it.

Speaker 7 Dasman, the answer.

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 21 No problems.

Speaker 7 The very same Lloyd who had calmly and clearly volunteered so much information to investigators.

Speaker 21 She was just completely out of control.

Speaker 7 Demeanor. What are you hearing in the...

Speaker 11 Oh, he was very cooperative.

Speaker 21 Would you like me to move up a little? No, you're fine. Oh, you sure?

Speaker 7 Police had reason to believe Michelle died sometime after midnight Saturday going into Sunday. So the question, where was Lloyd?

Speaker 21 Tell me the way you came up first.

Speaker 21 To go to Rochester.

Speaker 7 He told police he'd driven up from New Jersey to Rochester to help Carrie move into her college apartment.

Speaker 21 She couldn't fit everything in the car. So I had totes back in Princeton that I had to bring.
So when I arrived on Saturday, I went to the apartment and I unloaded my car, her stuff.

Speaker 21 Carrie's apartment. Yeah, Carrie's apartment.

Speaker 7 And then he said he spent the night in a nearby hotel.

Speaker 21 From 11 to 7, then you're in the hotel?

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 21 By yourself?

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 12 He said he had been to Rochester to help his daughter move into college, spent the night in the hotel, stayed in the hotel all night long.

Speaker 7 Lloyd said he drove home the next day and only returned to the Corning area after Michelle's body had been found.

Speaker 8 He could account for all of his movements.

Speaker 21 I think I have every receipt for the last seven days.

Speaker 7 Now they needed to put Lloyd's timeline under a microscope. Police pulled his phone records, and guess what? His cell never left the hotel that night.
So far, so good.

Speaker 7 And the story told by the phone meant he couldn't be an hour and a half south in Corning as Michelle was about to die. So police had to consider others in Michelle's inner circle.

Speaker 7 And that included the last known person to have seen Michelle alive. It was someone who'd admitted in a phone call with police to fighting with Michelle that very night.
Her middle daughter, Carrie.

Speaker 7 When I got there,

Speaker 25 my mom started freaking out and she was yelling and then she got quiet, so I waited to see if she'd come out and talk to me.

Speaker 11 I know you're upset, but if you can take a breath for me so that I can understand what you're saying a little better.

Speaker 26 Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm sorry.

Speaker 7 Sure, Carrie sounded distraught, but the officer who first took down her account of that night didn't like what he was hearing.

Speaker 12 He said right away, he's like, something's not right.

Speaker 7 What was he referring to?

Speaker 12 Carrie specifically was not telling the truth about what happened that night.

Speaker 2 Coming up.

Speaker 5 What was Carrie hiding?

Speaker 12 The younger sister says, I get woken. It sounds like somebody's in the house attacking my mom.

Speaker 5 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 18 Hi, I'm here to pick up my son Milo.

Speaker 17 There's no Milo here.

Speaker 7 Who picked up my son from school?

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Speaker 21 I'm gonna need the name of everyone that could have a connection.

Speaker 21 You don't understand. It was just the five of us.
So this was all planned.

Speaker 9 What are you gonna do?

Speaker 17 I will do whatever it takes to get my son back.

Speaker 21 I honestly didn't see this coming. These nice people killing each other.

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Speaker 7 Here's a truism.

Speaker 8 Cops don't like to be lied to.

Speaker 7 Especially cops investigating an unsolved death like that of the Corning mom, Michelle Nyrider. Especially if they're suspicious that the victim's 19-year-old daughter is the one doing the lie.

Speaker 7 In a statement to investigators, Carrie, the middle child, admitted she had arrived at her mother's house just shortly before her death.

Speaker 12 She had initially told us that she got there and had a fight with her mom and she left. So she led us to believe this was a 15 or 20 minute stay at her mom's house.

Speaker 7 The thing was, her cell phone records said otherwise.

Speaker 12 You can see that she's at the house for about two hours, a lot longer than we anticipated her to be there.

Speaker 7 So was Carrie hiding something about what happened after that argument those who knew her best never considered carried to be anything but honest family friend rose was one of the first people to speak with carrie after michelle was found we just sat on the phone together for about a half hour and just cried

Speaker 7 and mina said there was no way her smart and kind-hearted friend would have played any kind of role in a murder I could never picture her being violent. But police had a different take.

Speaker 7 They remembered there being turmoil turmoil in Michelle's house. All those calls to police years earlier.
Had that shouting finally boiled over, ending in murder.

Speaker 7 And there was an ear witness of sorts. Carrie's kid sister, the 14-year-old, had been sleeping downstairs.
She told a detective she remembers hearing screams.

Speaker 12 The younger sister says, I get woken. It sounds like somebody's in the house attacking my mom.

Speaker 7 She used that word.

Speaker 12 Yes, she did. Then her sister tells her, we got to leave.
Mom's upset. She's really mad.
We got to go back back to Rochester. You're coming with me.

Speaker 7 Carrie's story was way out of whack. As hard as it was to wrap their heads around it, the detectives were coming to believe that the college student daughter may have murdered her own mother.

Speaker 7 Unthinkable. This is her mother.
You know, I just keep coming back. This is the mother.

Speaker 12 The mother, her own mother, that to me was the most chilling part of this whole thing.

Speaker 7 But if it were true, the young woman was too petite, they thought, to have pulled it off alone.

Speaker 11 There's no way that Carrie could have physically carried out the act. If it was to be homicide, she would have needed some help.

Speaker 8 But from whom?

Speaker 7 They naturally looked to those closest to Carrie, and who was closer than her dad, Lloyd, going all the way back to those ballet school days.

Speaker 7 Cops also knew that Lloyd had been in the area that weekend, helping Carrie move into her college apartment.

Speaker 21 The more detail you could tell us about things, obviously, the more that is helpful to us.

Speaker 7 But what about his apparently ironclad alibi, backed up by his cell phone records?

Speaker 16 That he never left his hotel that night.

Speaker 21 From 11 to 7, then you're in the hotel?

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 7 Investigator Heard sent a colleague to spool through the hotel security cam footage.

Speaker 12 He goes, I don't like what I'm seeing. It looks like that dad and Carrie left together about 10 o'clock that night.

Speaker 11 What was that?

Speaker 7 The dad and the daughter together, leaving?

Speaker 7 And when they fast-forwarded the hotel security video, there was Lloyd Nyrider seen again, walking through the parking lot at 6.30 a.m., more than eight hours later.

Speaker 7 Are you theorizing the darkest scenario that dad and daughter are in on this thing together? Yes, we are. That's a monstrous theory.

Speaker 12 Yes, it is.

Speaker 7 The authorities held their cards close to the vest. None of their suspicions leaked out.

Speaker 7 Stuben County District Attorney Brooks Baker was consulted as investigators got search warrants so they could tap father and daughter's cell phones.

Speaker 27 Where are you now, sweetie?

Speaker 9 I'm still back at the Denny's desktop.

Speaker 16 And what are you hoping for?

Speaker 13 What we're hoping for is some conversation between the two of them about the death, about money.

Speaker 7 Hi.

Speaker 27 Hi, sweetie. I'm sorry I didn't get your call right away.

Speaker 13 And we didn't get much.

Speaker 7 Investigators decided to ratchet up the pressure. What's called in cop talk, tickling the wire.

Speaker 13 Hi, is this Carrie Geritter? Yes, this is Chief. We have an investigator from Queen Emp D call Carrie and say, hey, I want to talk to you.

Speaker 13 And the hope is that that'll get a conversation going between Lloyd and his daughter.

Speaker 27 I didn't know if you had time to meet up with me. I know it's break time and I didn't know what your plans were.

Speaker 9 Yeah, would we be able to talk on Monday? Okay.

Speaker 7 With her wire tickled, would Carrie take the bait and call her father with the latest?

Speaker 7 She did exactly that.

Speaker 10 Hi, sweetie. Hey.

Speaker 9 So I just got off the phone with Officer whatever from the Forning Police Department. He called and he's like, oh, you know, I just like to meet with people face to face as well.

Speaker 27 You know, I'd I'd like you to not do that if you can avoid it.

Speaker 10 Tell him I'm sorry, I got a counseling appointment back in New Jersey tonight. I gotta get to my counseling appointment and tell him this has been really hard on me.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 20 Could you cry?

Speaker 9 I'm lying.

Speaker 13 We call it the lie and cry conversation because it's when all of our hackles kind of went up.

Speaker 7 He's telling his daughter to lie.

Speaker 13 He's telling his daughter to lie to the investigator, lie to him, and by the way, if that doesn't work, can you cry?

Speaker 10 You cry and say, I'm sorry, I have to go.

Speaker 10 God, it would be nice if then it was just over.

Speaker 9 That would be your dream.

Speaker 10 Well, that's really all I got to suggest right now.

Speaker 7 By now, investigators had a working theory of the crime. That it was probably not the dad helping the daughter, but the reverse.
That dad, they theorized, was the mastermind.

Speaker 7 But authorities lacked hard proof of anything. They needed more.

Speaker 7 After two more months of tapping the phones, they decided showtime had arrived.

Speaker 7 They would simultaneously appear unannounced to interview both Carrie and Lloyd in separate locations and confront the two directly.

Speaker 7 In late January 2018, like commandos synchronizing their watches, they swooped down.

Speaker 7 In New Jersey, two FBI agents appeared at Lloyd's workplace. He agreed to meet with them in a conference room.
The agents gave him an update on the case.

Speaker 21 The medical examiner has determined it to be a homicide, not a suicide.

Speaker 21 And in conjunction with that, I want to ask you, did Carrie have something to do with her death?

Speaker 21 No,

Speaker 21 I just don't think Carrie has it in her to kill another person.

Speaker 21 Can you think of something, whether it was things get out of hand, she gets in a fight, it's a self-defense thing? I mean, can you see that happening with Carrie?

Speaker 21 It's hard to imagine, but can I picture it?

Speaker 21 I can't.

Speaker 13 And instead of jumping and saying, no, this is my daughter, she wouldn't do something like that.

Speaker 21 But can I picture it?

Speaker 13 It's the longest pause in the entire time you talk.

Speaker 13 I can't.

Speaker 7 So he's not Papa Lion protecting his cubbies here.

Speaker 13 No, he's how do I sort of toss her under the bus kind of thing.

Speaker 7 Lloyd had to realize the walls were closing in. Still, the interview ended with handshakes.

Speaker 21 Well, we appreciate you sitting down with us and...

Speaker 21 interrupting your day and everything, so... Well, my goal is to help.

Speaker 7 The agents allowed Lloyd to leave after his very bad day at the office. Then they tailed him and listened in as he phoned his daughter.
How are you?

Speaker 6 Not great.

Speaker 20 I'm not great either.

Speaker 7 250 miles away in Syracuse, New York, daughter Carrie had also been confronted by police. And she, too, had had a very bad day.

Speaker 16 What did she tell her inquisitors?

Speaker 2 Coming up.

Speaker 5 After one faked suicide, would this one be real?

Speaker 13 He's going to jump. He's got his phone and he wants to talk to his daughter

Speaker 7 carrie nyreiter who had always been on script about the night her mother died said they'd had a fight she'd left end of story But now she sat in a room with New York State investigators determined to get the truth.

Speaker 28 Can you tell us what you observed, what you remember?

Speaker 7 Carrie quickly caved and admitted she'd lied. Her dad had been there with her.

Speaker 28 Who went in the house first? My dad went in the house. Well, we went in the house at the same time.
Okay. And then,

Speaker 28 wait, no, that's a lie. I'm sorry, Tom.

Speaker 28 I went in the house from my ghosted out, I guess.

Speaker 7 And there was more.

Speaker 28 My dad went upstairs into my mom's room.

Speaker 28 And she was like, what are you doing?

Speaker 28 Bloody, why are you here?

Speaker 28 And so she was yelling, and then she was like, why? Why?

Speaker 7 Then it started to tumble out the nightmare story. She told investigators her dad, drowning in alimony and child support payments, had given her an ultimatum.

Speaker 22 Him or her mom.

Speaker 28 There's something along the lines of,

Speaker 28 you know, he's out of money. He can't pay rent.
He can't pay for stuff. And so basically he was going to kill himself.

Speaker 28 Or there was this way to make it so he wouldn't kill himself,

Speaker 28 which was killing my mom.

Speaker 7 Why? At the crossroads, did she decide to help? She says she saw no other alternative.

Speaker 28 When did you guys first discuss it? It was supposed to look like a suicide.

Speaker 28 The first time he told me about this.

Speaker 16 Then she told the investigators what her father did. And he's going to put a scaffold in her mouth.
Didn't be quiet.

Speaker 16 And then put the rope around her neck and

Speaker 16 hang her.

Speaker 7 Carrie's job was to disable any security devices and to distract her younger sister asleep downstairs, totally unaware of what was going on.

Speaker 28 Yeah, she woke up, but I had to take her out.

Speaker 20 I was freaking out. I didn't know what's going on.

Speaker 28 I'm like, oh my god. And then I put her in my car.

Speaker 13 Now we had the framework of the story together now.

Speaker 7 I mean, what a bombshell in the rooms of the ears that are listening to this.

Speaker 13 At that point, we're shell-shy.

Speaker 7 At last, the authorities had enough to arrest Lloyd.

Speaker 7 He'd left work, seemingly unnerved by his chat with the FBI,

Speaker 7 and New Jersey state police had tailed him as he drove to the top of a five-story parking garage, got out of his car, and sat on a ledge. Apparently, suicide seemed a better option than prison.

Speaker 13 And there he is out on the ledge.

Speaker 7 On the ledge.

Speaker 13 Five stories down into concrete, threatening to kill himself. So he's going to be a jumper.
He's going to jump. He's got his phone, and he wants to talk to his daughter.

Speaker 7 After a 90-minute negotiation, a homicide detective tackled Lloyd and put him under arrest. Back in New York, authorities read his daughter, Carrie, her rights, too.

Speaker 8 Murder charges for both.

Speaker 7 Michelle's mom across the country was in disbelief.

Speaker 17 Said, no, not Carrie, not Carrie, please not Carrie.

Speaker 7 The friends in Corning couldn't absorb it either. Him, of course, but her too? The little ballerina they'd watched grow up, now charged with murder.

Speaker 4 That's the unbelievable part.

Speaker 17 We love this child.

Speaker 7 As time has passed, Michelle's friends are starting to learn of a family's brainwashing, of a controlling father who poisoned his daughter's minds with the drip-drip of a phony story that went on for years.

Speaker 7 That their mother was no good, crazy, that they'd all be better off with her out of the picture. A father's manipulation that went all the way back to ballet class days and probably earlier.

Speaker 17 What flashed back to me was that time I saw a seven-year-old Carrie standing front and center, shaking,

Speaker 17 and

Speaker 17 I

Speaker 17 personally believe it was this accumulation of control. I felt that she had been

Speaker 17 brainwashed.

Speaker 7 And looking back, Michelle's mom is now certain it was Lloyd who was behind the unexplained rift with her daughter.

Speaker 6 I think that he'd already started alienating her, manipulating her mind.

Speaker 7 Putting a false narrative in her head about who she was and who her people were.

Speaker 6 I have often referred to him as Jim Jones.

Speaker 13 It's almost cult leader-esque what he has done to Carrie and her sisters.

Speaker 7 It appeared that father and daughter would be tried together. Both entered pleas of not guilty.

Speaker 7 But as the case moved forward, Carrie alone in her cell, removed from her father, it was as though the spell was broken. Carrie flipped and decided to testify against her father.

Speaker 21 At what point has your dad first approached you with this plan?

Speaker 7 Now she gave a second, even more detailed confession and prepared to be the star witness at her father's murder trial. And a new wrenching detail.

Speaker 16 She had helped move her mother's dead body.

Speaker 21 We dragged her around the corner and he tied the rope to the

Speaker 21 one prong of the banister and lifted her up and put her over

Speaker 21 the side.

Speaker 21 sorry that's okay

Speaker 7 but her dad's trial never happened lab results came back showing the ex-husband's dna was all over michelle's bedclothes in that house he claimed never to have been inside in october of 2018 lloyd nyreiter pleaded guilty to murder one

Speaker 7 i was stunned and he gave it up um he told us exactly what happened Lloyd gave a full statement, owning up to being the master manipulator that friends and family said they'd witnessed all along.

Speaker 13 He described the process by which he would abuse Michelle in front of his girls, belittle her, convince them that she was insane, that she was dangerous. He's a narcissist.

Speaker 13 The world revolves around him. His password to

Speaker 13 all of his accounts was, all my girls love me. Oh, you're kidding.

Speaker 7 That's how he operated.

Speaker 13 Ultimately, that power led Carrie to say yes because

Speaker 13 dad says it's so. And if dad says it's so, it must be so.

Speaker 7 Lloyd was sentenced to life without parole.

Speaker 18 Hey, last year, Lloyd.

Speaker 7 District Attorney Baker allowed Carrie to plead to a lesser charge of manslaughter. She was sentenced to one to three years.
The DA sees the daughter as a victim, too.

Speaker 13 You want to be sympathetic because she's a sympathetic character. She deserves sympathy for where she was, but she's still guilty of murder, and that's the reason justice has to happen.

Speaker 7 And friend Cynthia can't shake that emotional conversation she had with Michelle just before she died. The one where she promised to take care of her daughters.
If anything happens to me.

Speaker 17 Yeah, they came back very strong for me.

Speaker 7 Carrie was released from prison after a little more than a year. She finished her college studies and graduated.

Speaker 17 She's very remorseful. She misses her mother

Speaker 17 very much and she has said that her mother would know what to do right now if she would know how to help me.

Speaker 7 Still grieving over the death of her daughter, Michelle's mom is now facing another kind of sorrow.

Speaker 7 coming to terms with this unthinkable crime, and the granddaughter who said yes to a father's deadly ultimatum. She is a human being.

Speaker 6 She's still a child. She might be considered an adult, but I hear the child.

Speaker 7 And yet she killed your daughter.

Speaker 6 And she killed my daughter.

Speaker 6 She's a victim. I struggle with this.

Speaker 4 I struggle.

Speaker 6 I ask Michelle, I say, Michelle, what do you want me to do? What do I do with this child of yours?

Speaker 6 And I honestly believe that my daughter would want her to be accepting responsibility for what she did, and she is.

Speaker 5 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.

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