A Walk in the Rain

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Speaker 4 tonight on Dateline.

Speaker 5 Sonia, she was my best friend. I just dropped.

Speaker 6 I just couldn't believe it. I mean,

Speaker 6 she was only 19.

Speaker 6 You get the news that a body's been found, and it turns out that's somebody you know.

Speaker 7 Yeah, no one was expecting what happened.

Speaker 8 This is out in the wilderness, in the tundra. Why is she out here like this?

Speaker 6 Very hard.

Speaker 9 There is nobody that would want to harm her.

Speaker 10 An SUV or a truck had driven through there. We thought that the person driving that vehicle could potentially be the person that killed her.

Speaker 6 All of a sudden, you guys are looking for a shooter out there.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And there's a note.

Speaker 8 I watch every move you make. I will also shoot you in the head if you get close.

Speaker 6 It's like something out of a movie.

Speaker 8 It is. He knew who to prey on.
He knew who he was looking at for victims.

Speaker 5 I didn't know who I could trust.

Speaker 6 It's nothing that I want to remember.

Speaker 4 Get ready for a mystery in Alaska, the last frontier, and the killer just might be the last person you'd suspect.

Speaker 6 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 6 Here's Josh Mankiewicz with A Walk in the Rain.

Speaker 6 When people talk about Alaska, they say it's the last frontier. And they use words like wild, untamed, beautiful.
Those people are probably not talking about Nome.

Speaker 6 We're just a couple of degrees south of the Arctic Circle, in a gold rush town whose big money days are probably behind it.

Speaker 6 A weather-beaten hamlet that's grimmer and grayer than your picture postcard vision of Alaska.

Speaker 6 The motto here, inevitably, is, there's no place like Nome. And that's probably true.
This is the end point of the famous Iditarod sled dog race.

Speaker 6 Right now, we're closer to Russia than we are to the rest of the United States. Only about 3,800 people live here, so by lower 48 standards, this is a small town.

Speaker 6 Around here, it's definitely the big city. And like any city, Nome has seen its share of evil.

Speaker 5 Where'd Sonia go?

Speaker 6 Sonia,

Speaker 6 Sonya!

Speaker 6 Sonia Ivanov saw Nome as a way station on the route to somewhere warmer. That's according to her best friend, Timoree.

Speaker 5 She definitely knew that she wanted to go to Hilo, that she wanted to live in Hawaii because we were tired of the cold weather in Alaska, and

Speaker 5 she was determined to make money and...

Speaker 6 go to college. Fresh out of high school in 2002, Sonia came to Nome Nome from Uniloclete, a native village 150 miles to the southeast.

Speaker 9 Unicleat's on a little spit, so you have the ocean on one side and the river on the other side.

Speaker 12 And it looks like an island, but it's not.

Speaker 13 It's connected by land.

Speaker 6 Sonia was the fourth of six kids.

Speaker 10 Is that here?

Speaker 6 Older sister Christina and her husband Tom say, if you think Nome is small, Unilaclete is miniature.

Speaker 6 Everybody knows everybody in a place like Uniloclete.

Speaker 9 Related to pretty much half the town.

Speaker 6 And so everybody knew her.

Speaker 6 Oh, well. Yes.

Speaker 14 Our first contestant is Sonia Ivanov.

Speaker 6 Not long after Sonia arrived in Nome, she entered something unique to Alaska. The Arctic Native Brotherhood pageant.

Speaker 6 It's not a traditional beauty pageant. Nobody's wearing a ball gown or a bikini or anything like that.

Speaker 1 No, they're all using native clothes.

Speaker 6 Her dad Larry says Sonia hoped to win some scholarship money for college. Even

Speaker 8 made from my aunt Alda that passed away.

Speaker 6 She was proud of her heritage, wasn't she? Yes, she was.

Speaker 1 She was proud to be Alaska Native.

Speaker 6 You were proud of her. Yes.

Speaker 6 Sonia found work at the admitting desk of a local hospital. And a few months later, in the summer of 2003, her BFF Timore also left Unilaclete for Nome.

Speaker 6 And so they roomed together. Without a car between them, the two walked everywhere.
Is it as safe to walk around at night in Nome as it is in Uniloclete?

Speaker 5 We thought so. We felt safe walking in Nome.

Speaker 5 It just, it felt like home, too.

Speaker 6 Well, these were kids from a small village. And Sonia's sister and brother-in-law were worried she didn't have the radar necessary for Nome.

Speaker 6 You sat her down at one point, Tom.

Speaker 13 I did.

Speaker 12 I didn't know who she was hanging out with, and that's exactly why I said, I don't know who you're hanging out with.

Speaker 12 If you went missing, I wouldn't even know where to start to look.

Speaker 6 There's a crisis of Indigenous women going missing in the U.S.

Speaker 6 The numbers are hard to pin down, but what's clear is that in Alaska, the problem is worse.

Speaker 6 The fact that Native American women disappear at a much higher rate in Alaska than almost anywhere else is not a secret, but it probably was something that she didn't know or think about. No.

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 9 At the time, we never thought about it.

Speaker 6 Yeah, we never. We never thought about

Speaker 9 the amount of missing women.

Speaker 6 Soon they would think about nothing else.

Speaker 6 Sunday, August 10th, 2003. Sonia and Timore were doing their thing, hanging out with friends.
In a town that seems to run on alcohol, they were sober. Timery remembers Sonia had just one beer.

Speaker 5 It was still kind of early. I mean, we went out, I think it was around 11 o'clock, and that's early for high schoolers,

Speaker 5 to a friend's house, and they were playing board games there.

Speaker 6 It was summer in Alaska. The sun sets just before midnight.
Around 1 a.m. Monday, Timery, who had to be at work in six hours, decided to crash at a friend's place.

Speaker 6 Sonia wasn't due at work work until Tuesday afternoon. So she had all the time in the world.

Speaker 5 She felt like being out. It was actually a little mist raining.
She loved the rain. Anything with the rain.

Speaker 5 When we parted ways, I walked towards my friend's house and she walked, continued walking down the street, but it was towards our house area. We always had this saying, peace out, pal.

Speaker 5 And then we go like this and then like this and then peace out. and we did that and she jumped in the rain and started walking.

Speaker 6 Timery watched her best friend walk off into the light rain she loved so much.

Speaker 6 And that was the last time you saw her.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 When we come back, what had happened to Sonia?

Speaker 12 When she didn't go to work, that's when we started looking.

Speaker 9 Asking

Speaker 9 people if they've seen her.

Speaker 12 I actually went to the police station.

Speaker 5 I just told them I hadn't seen Sonia and they kind of took it like it was a joke or something.

Speaker 6 Timery and Sonia were the type of best friends who were almost never out of touch. They lived together and shared makeup, clothing, even a bed.

Speaker 6 Except on that Monday morning, when Timmery got home around 5 a.m. to get ready for work, their bed was empty.
Sonia wasn't there.

Speaker 5 You know, we didn't have cell phones back in the day, so

Speaker 5 I figured she was just at a friend's house.

Speaker 6 Timery headed to the Aurora Inn where she worked the front desk.

Speaker 5 I didn't hear from her at work all day.

Speaker 5 Usually she would call me, but I mean, it wasn't super not normal.

Speaker 6 It wasn't super normal either. Timery was worried enough that she made some calls to try to find Sonia.

Speaker 5 I did call her sister to see if she stayed over there, but her sister hadn't seen her.

Speaker 6 Tom and Christina remember thinking, there's nothing to worry about. Sonia's silence could be just a byproduct of teenage drama.

Speaker 12 My wife and I discussed it and we were like, well, maybe Sonia don't want to be around Timore today, you know.

Speaker 6 That was Monday. Sonia wasn't due at work at the hospital until Tuesday.
So if Tom and Christina were right, she was just somewhere else other than with Timri.

Speaker 6 Timery, though, was getting more concerned. By evening, she knew Sonia hadn't just slept late somewhere.
And what really worried her was Sonia's makeup bag, which had not been touched.

Speaker 5 I think more in the evening when I hadn't heard from her, I kind of started to worry.

Speaker 5 because she, it's not normal for her to not go home and do her hair and makeup.

Speaker 6 Tuesday morning, still no Sonia. Timery went to work and as soon as she could, she phoned Nome Police to ask the most unlikely question.

Speaker 6 Was Sonia Ivanov in the slammer? The dispatcher told her no one by that name. was in custody.

Speaker 5 I didn't know what to do. I did a lot of calling around and nobody had seen her or anything.

Speaker 6 By the time Timri's shift was done, her concern had grown to panic.

Speaker 6 Around 5.15, she walked into Nome PD, a historically white agency that had a rep for not always taking seriously crimes against Alaskan natives.

Speaker 5 I think I was hysterically crying just because I was so scared because I mean in Unlikli, we don't have really official officers like what Nome does.

Speaker 5 I didn't even know how to, where to begin or how to tell them. I just told them I hadn't seen Sonia, and

Speaker 5 they kind of took it like it was a joke or something. They were like, Are you sure she's not up partying?

Speaker 6 Tuesday evening, Tom and Christina heard Sonia never showed up at work, and now they began to worry.

Speaker 12 When she didn't go to work,

Speaker 12 that's not Sonia. You know, that's when we started looking.

Speaker 9 Asking

Speaker 9 people if they've seen her,

Speaker 9 people that we knew she might have been with.

Speaker 12 We spent the whole

Speaker 12 in the car looking, scanning.

Speaker 6 They also tried to think of people she might be with and settled on a guy named Kunak.

Speaker 6 And he was definitely interested in Sonia. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 And did they get along?

Speaker 6 They did. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 9 I thought they were good friends.

Speaker 12 Gonna be boyfriend, girlfriend there for a while, but Sonia.

Speaker 9 He wasn't her type.

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah. So.

Speaker 6 Even so, Tom thought, maybe Sonia and Kunik were together somewhere.

Speaker 12 I actually went to the police station. I was there just looking for information.

Speaker 12 Maybe they knew where Kunik's camp was.

Speaker 6 And they say what?

Speaker 12 They were unconcerned.

Speaker 6 Let's just say that. Noam police did seem to step it up after Sonia's boss called to report her missing.
On Wednesday, an officer named Byron Redburn came to talk with Timery.

Speaker 6 He asked about Sonia's mental health and how Timery and Sonia got along. That conversation was recorded.

Speaker 15 Generally, overall, her mood is.

Speaker 6 We talked about it.

Speaker 6 On the recording, you can hear Timery's concern.

Speaker 14 I mean, I can't stand being home and just sitting there because she's not there.

Speaker 15 She's somewhere.

Speaker 6 That afternoon, the police chief asked the fire department to help with a search.

Speaker 12 That's when it really hit

Speaker 12 reality, was when we saw the search and rescue boats.

Speaker 6 Timery was also looking for Sonia.

Speaker 5 I was driving around with my friend Maya.

Speaker 9 And we pulled up to the hospital.

Speaker 5 One of, I think it was Sonia's coworker, told Maya just to bring me down to by the police station.

Speaker 5 And when I got there, there was a big gathering of people. So I was like, oh, great, they found her.

Speaker 6 She was half right. They had found Sonia.

Speaker 6 But it wasn't great.

Speaker 4 Coming up.

Speaker 12 He brought us to our porch.

Speaker 1 And that's

Speaker 12 when he told us.

Speaker 4 Down a lonely road.

Speaker 6 Near an old gold mine, a heartbreaking discovery.

Speaker 5 I think I just dropped.

Speaker 6 I just couldn't believe it.

Speaker 4 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 6 It was Wednesday evening, two and a half days since Sonia Ivanov had last been seen. No police had told Tom and Christina to sit tight.

Speaker 5 We had

Speaker 9 quit looking just because they told us to kind of wait at home.

Speaker 6 There was no way to prepare for the the story that was coming.

Speaker 6 Around 8:30 p.m., a volunteer firefighter helping with the search had followed fresh tire tracks down a rarely used road and found something.

Speaker 6 He immediately went to the police station. Officer Brian Wayovana accompanied the firefighter back to the scene.

Speaker 7 So we gathered up cameras and bags and whatever whatever we thought we needed to document

Speaker 7 and we drove here.

Speaker 7 The spot would be over there where the taller willows are.

Speaker 6 This was on a trail just off an old gold mining track called Dredge 5 Road.

Speaker 7 We tried not to disturb any evidence or make new tracks.

Speaker 7 I I saw the body was a naked woman, but I couldn't see the face. I knew most likely it was Sonia.

Speaker 6 The chief of police went to Tom and Christina's.

Speaker 12 He brought us to our porch outside, and that's when he told us they had found

Speaker 8 Sonia, and she wasn't alive.

Speaker 6 Tom called Sonia's parents.

Speaker 12 It was the hardest phone call I ever made.

Speaker 6 Outside Gnome PD was Timmery.

Speaker 5 I think I just dropped.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 6 I just couldn't believe it.

Speaker 6 While family and friends reeled, a murder investigation began. Out on Dredge 5 Road, Officer Wayovana knew the tiny Gnome PD couldn't handle this case alone.

Speaker 7 We needed to preserve the scene as best we could for the Alaska Bureau investigation team that would come up.

Speaker 6 So they covered everything, the road, the trail, and Sonia's body. They worried about weather and about grizzly bears.
Officers took shifts guarding the site.

Speaker 6 It was going to be a while before the cavalry came. Solving crime in Alaska is a little different than in the lower 48, isn't it?

Speaker 6 It is. Eric Burroughs was the case officer for the Alaska Bureau of Investigation.

Speaker 8 In the investigative world, you know, they talk about the first 24, the first 48 hours, and how important they are to a case, which is true.

Speaker 8 But in many times, in cases that I had to respond to, as well as other troopers, the first 24 or 48 hours might just be getting to the scene.

Speaker 6 All of that sounds like it's a good place to commit a murder if you're a murderer.

Speaker 8 It's

Speaker 8 called the Last Frontier state for a lot of reasons.

Speaker 8 It's not like

Speaker 8 the big city at all.

Speaker 6 The Crime Lab and its investigators are based in Anchorage, more than 500 roadless miles from Nome.

Speaker 6 Criminalist Carrie Cathcart caught the first flight out.

Speaker 6 As soon as she got to the scene, she saw clues.

Speaker 10 There was a blood pool kind of close to her body. We could tell a vehicle had driven through that.
The tire had obviously gotten blood on it. The tire tracks were still there, so we documented those.

Speaker 10 We could tell like one of the treads looked different than the other tread.

Speaker 6 Suggesting that it had three of one kind of tire and then one of another?

Speaker 10 Yes, there was at least one tire that looked different than the other.

Speaker 6 They found more evidence that a vehicle had recently been down Dredge 5 Road.

Speaker 10 There was a paint transfer on a branch on that same road and it was a little bit higher to suggest that an SUV or a truck of some kind had driven through there.

Speaker 10 And it was a very faint light blue paint transfer.

Speaker 6 So you're looking for a blue vehicle vehicle with mismatched tires. Correct.
That's probably your killer. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Then Cathcart got to Sonia's body, naked except for one sock, bruises on her face and chest, and a single bullet wound in the back of her head.

Speaker 6 Right then, any doubts about whether this was a murder evaporated.

Speaker 6 And then I'm guessing police come to you. and say,

Speaker 6 who could possibly have done this? Who didn't like her? What problems was she having?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 5 but she had no enemies. I mean, there was other girls that were possibly jealous of her, but there was nobody in general that I could think of that would even wanna

Speaker 5 do something horrendous or hurt her.

Speaker 6 Even the night Timmery reported Sonia missing, the night police seemed so disinterested, No police had asked her to write up a list of Sonia's friends.

Speaker 6 And now that Sonia had been found dead, the one friend cops were most interested in was Kunak.

Speaker 6 Real name, Daniel Angasuk.

Speaker 5 He always had a hot-headed, I'm tougher-than-you type of attitude, but underneath all that was a big Kunak teddy bear.

Speaker 6 ABI investigator Eric Burroughs says Kunak's teddy bear core was not always evident.

Speaker 8 He had a girlfriend. They believe they had a child together.
There were domestic violence issues between him and his girlfriend. He had a temper.

Speaker 8 Of course, all this was already known by the Noam Police Department. And so he becomes a person of interest initially that they want to talk to.

Speaker 6 And that wasn't just because of Kunak's temper or his interest in Sonia.

Speaker 6 Police also learned he drove a blue truck. With one tire that did not match the other three.

Speaker 6 In terms of his truck, it's not just that one of the tires is mismatched, it's that the correct tire is mismatched.

Speaker 8 Correct, yes, exactly.

Speaker 6 That couldn't be a coincidence, or could it?

Speaker 4 Coming up,

Speaker 10 we pulled a tarp out, just a significant amount of dried blood on it. There was also three rifles, and one of those had blood on the end, and he had blood on his tennis shoes.

Speaker 4 The evidence against Koenig seems to mount.

Speaker 4 Was this Sonia's killer?

Speaker 6 Sonia Ivanov didn't live to her 20th birthday. A killer had made sure of that.

Speaker 6 Her family made sure Sonia was brought home to Uniloclete for the final goodbye.

Speaker 9 We weren't going to have an open casket

Speaker 5 because

Speaker 6 of her

Speaker 9 cruising bruising and we were like, no.

Speaker 9 And she liked her makeup.

Speaker 9 And she liked to look good.

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 9 I did her makeup

Speaker 9 and

Speaker 9 that's how we were able to do an open casket.

Speaker 6 You did it. I did it.

Speaker 6 I recognized that as an act of love, but that had to be brutally difficult. It was very hard.

Speaker 6 It was all hard.

Speaker 9 There was so many people.

Speaker 9 Not just from the village, but from surrounding villages.

Speaker 9 We held her service. Was that the school gym?

Speaker 6 That would be the same gym in Unilaclete where Sonia had drained her first jump shots.

Speaker 6 What did she like about basketball?

Speaker 9 I think the camaraderie with her teammates is what she enjoyed.

Speaker 12 And she was super tall, 5'11?

Speaker 6 She was 5'11.

Speaker 6 While her family mourned Sonia, law enforcement kept working. Criminalist Carrie Cathcart processed the scene on Dredge 5 Road.

Speaker 6 And aside from the tire tracks and the blue paint transfer, she found no usable forensic evidence. Even Sonia's clothes were missing.

Speaker 10 There was no foreign DNA. She didn't have anything underneath her fingernails that wasn't hers.
And there was just a

Speaker 10 lack of evidence.

Speaker 6 The rape kit was negative.

Speaker 10 The rape kit was negative.

Speaker 6 Meaning, no evidence of sexual assault. What evidence they did have pointed straight at Kunik.
On the floorboard of his truck, they found what looked like obvious drops of blood.

Speaker 6 And using a chemical that lights up green in the presence of blood, they saw a lot more.

Speaker 10 They towed his truck to Nome PD, and we examined it, and we pulled a tarp out and what appeared to just have a significant amount of dried blood on it.

Speaker 6 As if somebody had driven through a pool of it. Right, yeah.

Speaker 10 And there was also three rifles

Speaker 10 just behind the driver's seat, and one of those had blood on the butt end of the rifle, and he had blood on his tennis shoes.

Speaker 6 As Cathcart worked on the blood evidence, Gnome Officer Byron Redvern, his tape recorder in hand, went to Kunik's apartment. I haven't talked to her in almost two weeks.

Speaker 15 Last time I seen her physically was Friday when she was on her lunch break and I didn't even say hi to her.

Speaker 15 And that's the last time I've seen her.

Speaker 6 Kunak told Officer Redburn he was 70 miles outside of town the night Sonia disappeared.

Speaker 15 I took off Sunday afternoon,

Speaker 15 a little bit after three and we didn't get back till Monday evening.

Speaker 6 He said he was hunting with friends who could back up his story. Then Redburn noticed something that looked like evidence.

Speaker 6 Kunak said that came courtesy of his baby mama. Redburn took Kunik to the hospital.

Speaker 6 Where his body was examined with the help of a nurse.

Speaker 14 We're just going to check

Speaker 15 if there's any secretion.

Speaker 6 Redburn told Kunik the nurse would take a sample of his DNA.

Speaker 15 That way, they'll have some comparison things to compare to whatever they didn't find with Sonia.

Speaker 15 And if the two don't drive, then that's good for you.

Speaker 15 But if they do dive,

Speaker 15 then that's not good for you. How can it...

Speaker 15 I wasn't even in town when anything happened.

Speaker 6 Officer Redburn told Koenig his truck matched the forensic evidence found at the scene.

Speaker 15 There's been some things coming up

Speaker 15 that make

Speaker 15 you and your vehicle interesting.

Speaker 15 Turns out, there's a bunch of tire impressions out there.

Speaker 15 They're similar to the tires that you wear in your car.

Speaker 15 Do you mismatch tires?

Speaker 15 I have mismatched tires. Because blue painted crime scene, okay?

Speaker 6 The most important questions for Kunik were about all that blood police found in his truck, in its wheel well,

Speaker 6 and on his gun.

Speaker 15 Any reason that anybody would be finding any blood on their vehicle, you know?

Speaker 6 Later on, Kunik explained how there might have been blood. He said he'd run over a rabbit, which didn't die immediately.

Speaker 15 Hit it on the head

Speaker 7 so I I could put her to sleep or

Speaker 6 his story. That blood on his shoes and truck was from the rabbit.
Or, if not the rabbit, maybe from a porcupine. Kunik said he shot one while hunting.

Speaker 10 We did not think it was a credible story.

Speaker 10 We thought it was made up.

Speaker 6 And he drove a blue truck and it had a mismatched tire on it, and he knew that area, and he knew Sonia.

Speaker 10 Correct. Yes.
Everything lined up.

Speaker 6 Police had the perfect suspect. I mean,

Speaker 6 didn't they?

Speaker 4 Coming up, an intriguing new clue. A witness who saw Sonia that fatal night.

Speaker 7 She speaks to the driver, gets into the passenger vehicle, and then they head that way north.

Speaker 4 When dateline continues.

Speaker 6 Sonia Ivanov was seven years younger than her sister Christina.

Speaker 6 When Sonia was alive, Christina and her husband Tom felt protective of her. After her death, they felt a burden on them to find her justice.

Speaker 6 And so, one week after the murder,

Speaker 6 you showed up at the police department with a picture of Sonia and stuck it on the wall.

Speaker 12 I wanted to put it up on the wall. My intention was was

Speaker 6 that

Speaker 12 we didn't want to lose focus of this is who you're working for.

Speaker 6 Tom's gesture did not go over well. He says one officer shouted at him and wanted him to leave.

Speaker 12 They just

Speaker 12 redid the police station with new drywall and he's in my

Speaker 12 in my ear just yelling at me.

Speaker 6 That didn't keep Tom from visiting the GNOME PD

Speaker 6 again and again.

Speaker 12 I would go every day about eight o'clock in the morning. I wanted to make sure that

Speaker 6 they knew we were still here.

Speaker 6 Although they didn't tell Tom, Gnome PD was pretty confident they already had their man, Kunik.

Speaker 6 Or at least they were confident until the blood work came in.

Speaker 6 The blood on his gun, the blood on the truck, the blood on his shoes. It's not human, none of it.

Speaker 10 Yeah, all the blood was animal blood.

Speaker 6 And the tire treads at the scene do not match the tires on Kunik's vehicle.

Speaker 10 The tire tracks did not match either.

Speaker 6 And the blue paint on Kunak's truck wasn't the same as the blue paint that had rubbed off on a bush on Dredge 5 Road. His story had seemed literally unbelievable.
And yet,

Speaker 6 turns out Kunik was telling the truth.

Speaker 8 He was telling the truth.

Speaker 6 Every odd detail actually checked out. They found the porcupine right where he said it was.

Speaker 8 Within like a mile or so.

Speaker 6 So he's off the hook. He's off the hook.
Which kind of leaves you with no one.

Speaker 10 Yeah, it was

Speaker 10 back to zero.

Speaker 6 After Kunik was cleared, no other blue truck with mismatched tires popped up. And while the case had been all hands on deck at the beginning, that didn't last.

Speaker 6 It was just as Sonia's family had feared. The investigation started to slow down.

Speaker 6 A week after Sonia went missing, only two of the eight gnome officers remained on her case.

Speaker 6 Byron Redburn, who had interviewed Kunik early on, and Brian Wayovana, who was among the first officers at the scene when Sonia's body was found.

Speaker 7 I thought they would assign one of the other officers who were there a little longer.

Speaker 7 But when they said that

Speaker 7 I was assigned to that case, Sonia's case, I

Speaker 7 was humbled and felt honored.

Speaker 6 Christina and Tom were encouraged because Brian was a friend. Then almost immediately Weavanna started feeling frustrated.
He says Redburn, who worked days, wasn't sharing any information with him.

Speaker 6 And Wayovana was stuck on the night shift. Not a great time to interview potential witnesses.

Speaker 7 After 3 a.m., after the bars closed, I worked alone and I thought, how am I going to work on this?

Speaker 6 Eventually, Officer Wayovana, who describes himself as a laid-back type B,

Speaker 6 did something very type A.

Speaker 7 I told my dispatcher, oh, this, I'm tired of not knowing anything. I'm going to start this whole case over.

Speaker 7 I got the folder that had all the information.

Speaker 6 That review of the file, that's all in the middle of the night. Yeah.

Speaker 6 So maybe working the night shift was good for you.

Speaker 7 Yeah, and maybe not knowing anything was good for me too, because basically I just thought, well, I'm just going to do my job.

Speaker 6 In the case file was a handwritten note about a tip that had never been checked out.

Speaker 7 I don't know when that note was written or who wrote it, but it was there and I thought, man, we got to look into this.

Speaker 6 A woman named Florence had called in after hearing of Sonia's death, saying she had important information. Wayovana decided he'd talk with Florence.

Speaker 6 And so nearly four weeks after Sonia vanished, when he was back on the day shift, Hayovana grabbed Chief Ralph Taylor and a tape recorder.

Speaker 7 Said, hey, Ralph, let's go for a ride.

Speaker 6 You sent this case in a whole new direction.

Speaker 7 I just gathered information.

Speaker 6 The witness's full name was Florence Habros. She said on the night Sonia disappeared, she and her sister had been out on the porch smoking when Sonia walked right by them.

Speaker 6 Florence said her sister knew Sonia a bit, so they all waved.

Speaker 6 Florence said she also saw a car that night, and although Florence could not tell who was behind the wheel, it was clear the driver had an eye on Sonia.

Speaker 6 The car drove off, only to reappear at the next corner, where it intercepted Sonia's path. Florence was close enough to hear Sonia's voice.
She said, what's going on?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 17 he started rolling down his window down.

Speaker 7 She speaks to the driver,

Speaker 7 gets into the passenger vehicle, and then they head that way,

Speaker 6 north.

Speaker 6 That's the direction of Dredge 5 Road, where Sonia's body was later found. Florence said she looked at the time.

Speaker 17 I went inside and chip cutting my sister had watched.

Speaker 6 It was 1.26 a.m., a little less than half an hour after Sonia told Timory, peace out.

Speaker 6 So if Florence's story was true, hers was the last reported sighting of Sonya.

Speaker 6 That alone was significant. Much more significant was this.
According to Florence, it wasn't just any car Sonia Ivanov had gotten into.

Speaker 6 It was one Sonia had to have recognized.

Speaker 4 Coming up.

Speaker 7 Someone with that kind of information, they have to be courageous to speak up.

Speaker 4 The tip that turns the case upside down and then gunfire on the tundra.

Speaker 8 He says, a shot rings out, and then another one.

Speaker 4 Was the killer hunting a new target?

Speaker 20 Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrison.

Speaker 11 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and we're back for another season.

Speaker 21 I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more.

Speaker 2 You don't want to miss it. Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrison sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 24 Just got a new puppy or kitten. Congrats! But also, yikes!

Speaker 24 Between crates, beds, toys, treats, and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune, which is where Lemonade Pet Insurance comes in.

Speaker 24 It helps cover vet costs so you can focus on what's best for your new pet. The coverage is customizable, signup is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds.

Speaker 24 Pro tip: LemonAid offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a quote at lemonade.com/slash pet.
Your future self will thank you.

Speaker 25 Your pet won't.

Speaker 26 They don't know what insurance is.

Speaker 16 A mochi moment from Sadie, who writes, I'm not crying, you're crying.

Speaker 16 This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi, because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP-1. He understood, and I felt supported, not judged.

Speaker 16 I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy.

Speaker 3 Thanks, Sadie.

Speaker 16 I'm Myra Ameth, founder of Mochi Health. To find your Mochi Moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 27 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories.

Speaker 28 Results may vary.

Speaker 6 September 2003, as the fall chill settled into known, the investigation into who killed Sonia Ivanov seemed finally to be getting a little warmer, all because of a tip that was nearly ignored.

Speaker 7 I thank God for cigarette smokers who don't smoke in their house.

Speaker 6 The smoker was Florence Habros, who'd been outside at just the right moment to see Sonia getting into a car.

Speaker 6 Happened right here, and it upended this investigation. Not just because Sonia got in the car, but because of what Florence saw on the car,

Speaker 6 actually on the door. It was a decal.
And the decal said,

Speaker 6 Noam Police Department.

Speaker 17 The police officer stopped on the site and she said, what's going on?

Speaker 6 Way Avana knew Florence's call to the cops about one of their own could not have been easy to make.

Speaker 7 Someone with that kind of information,

Speaker 7 they have to be courageous to speak up.

Speaker 6 Right after that, you tell your chief, we can't investigate this anymore. This points right back at Nome PD.

Speaker 7 We need to let the troopers know, you know, be transparent. They have deeper pocketbooks than we do and more manpower.

Speaker 6 And they're not implicated in the murder.

Speaker 7 Exactly.

Speaker 6 The Nome police chief called in the Alaska Bureau of Investigation to take over the case. Tom and Christina didn't know any of the details, but they definitely saw that the troopers had returned.

Speaker 12 There's people everywhere.

Speaker 6 One of the things that strikes me is that, you know, you get the feeling you could drive drive from one end of Nome to the other in just a couple of minutes. I mean, this is a real small town.

Speaker 8 It is.

Speaker 6 ABI case officer Eric Burroughs knew one thing before he landed in Nome.

Speaker 6 Sonia's killer had left very little evidence behind. And that made Burroughs think.

Speaker 6 You thought your murderer was evidence-aware, whoever they were.

Speaker 8 From the very beginning, yeah, because of the missing clothing. This is not a scene like in a hotel room or a bedroom where you might expect to find somebody unclothed.

Speaker 8 This is out in the wilderness in the tundra.

Speaker 8 You take the clothing because there's the transfer, blood transfer, fiber transfer.

Speaker 6 You get rid of the clothing because the murderer might have left something on it.

Speaker 8 Absolutely.

Speaker 6 Burroughs' first priority was to figure out who was driving the police car Florence said she had seen. How many other police vehicles are there that have that same similar look?

Speaker 6 And who else is authorized to take vehicles out, maybe take home cars, maybe when they're not on duty?

Speaker 8 The Nome PD had three Ford expeditions, and

Speaker 8 they had a practice called hot-seating vehicles. They only had three, so no one had a take-home vehicle.

Speaker 6 So this investigation suddenly goes from just about everybody in Nome being a potential suspect to two officers who were on duty that night. Correct.

Speaker 6 The two officers on duty that night were Matt Owens and Stan Pescoia, each driving his own cruiser.

Speaker 6 Owens had been on the Nome Force about three years, and he was the officer who'd gotten prickly when Tom tried to hang Sonia's photo on the police department wall.

Speaker 6 Peskoya also had about three years on the force, and he was the officer Timmery had described as not taking her seriously on that first day.

Speaker 8 We needed to essentially start the investigation over. Starting over with the two officers, and it was arranged for the two officers to come to Anchorage for an interview and polygraph.

Speaker 6 And then,

Speaker 6 before either officer could get to Anchorage, one more strange thing happened in Nome.

Speaker 6 One of the town's three police SUVs disappeared.

Speaker 6 It was shortly after midnight on September 23rd when a sergeant noticed the cruiser called 321 wasn't at the police department.

Speaker 6 He radioed the officer on duty, Matt Owens, and asked if he knew where it was. Owens said he did not.

Speaker 6 And when he couldn't find it anywhere else, the sergeant called the chief.

Speaker 6 It was late September, when the sun here sets around 9 p.m.

Speaker 6 So they were looking in the dark for the stolen cruiser. Pretty soon there's a fairly large mobilization for Nome.

Speaker 6 For GNOME, yes. That search leads here.

Speaker 7 It does.

Speaker 6 At 2.51 a.m., Officer Owens called in.

Speaker 8 He radios that he finds the vehicle at a place called the Bessie Pit. It's a gravel pit.
It's actually just

Speaker 8 across the road from where Sonia's body was found.

Speaker 6 Two minutes later, Owens called in again, this time urgently.

Speaker 8 He radios that shots fired. And so now that all the other officers are concerned, they flip on their lights, they're running code, and they're responding to the scene as quickly as they can.

Speaker 6 By the time the next officer arrived, everything was quiet. Owens later recounted what happened.

Speaker 8 He says, a shot rings out, and then another one, and he runs off into the tundra.

Speaker 6 After the other officers arrived, Owens came out of the pit and made his way back up here to the main road.

Speaker 6 And that's when he confessed something to his chief, something that maybe a lot of other officers would not have.

Speaker 6 Owens said he was really scared back there, and he thought a lot about his four-year-old son growing up without a father. Owens said he'd realized something about himself.

Speaker 6 Maybe he wasn't cut out for police police work after all.

Speaker 6 They searched, but couldn't find any culprit. And, ominously, they also couldn't find the Remington 870 shotgun that was kept in the back of 321.

Speaker 6 They did find broken glass. Someone had thrown a rock through the driver's side window.

Speaker 6 A CSI didn't find any fingerprints or DNA. But there was one obvious piece of evidence.
Underneath that broken glass on the driver's seat was an envelope for the cops. Oh, one more thing:

Speaker 6 it was from Sonia's killer.

Speaker 4 Coming up.

Speaker 4 Inside that envelope, an ominous threat.

Speaker 8 You leave me alone, and I will leave you alone. I will also shoot you in the head if you get close.

Speaker 6 That's like something out of a movie.

Speaker 8 It is.

Speaker 4 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 4 Nome.

Speaker 6 Where the Northern Lights have seen strange sights.

Speaker 6 This among them.

Speaker 8 I watch every move you make.

Speaker 6 Investigator Eric Burroughs is reading from a note found inside Nome Police Unit 321.

Speaker 8 Pigs, I hate cops.

Speaker 6 It's a message apparently typed by Sonia Ivanov's killer. And it's not a thank you note.

Speaker 8 You leave me alone, and I will leave you alone. I will also shoot you in the head if you get close.

Speaker 6 That's like something out of a movie.

Speaker 8 It is.

Speaker 6 The note suggested the killer had stolen a Gnome police vehicle the night of the murder and used it to lure Sonia to her death. death.

Speaker 8 As you can see, it was easy for me to take your pig car keys right there. It was not her fault.
She thought I was a pig and sh ⁇ just happened.

Speaker 8 She was just a person and I just wanted to see if I could that night.

Speaker 6 If the note wasn't convincing enough, the author included proof, a souvenir of the murder.

Speaker 8 Inside this envelope is essentially a sort of ID with Sonia's picture on it.

Speaker 6 Burroughs soon learned that a theft of a known police vehicle was not out of the realm of possibility.

Speaker 8 What we found out, these vehicles are not necessarily controlled. They'd be left in front of the police department.
They'd be unlocked, maybe keys in the ignition.

Speaker 6 At the same time, he was skeptical of the note and the story it told.

Speaker 8 There's not that many officers in Gnome. Everybody knows who the officers are.
The evidence says she leans into the vehicle and talks with him like she knows him.

Speaker 6 And if it's some unknown person who's just stolen the vehicle, she's not going to react in that way that she was familiar with the person.

Speaker 8 Correct. She would not have got in the vehicle willingly.

Speaker 6 Burroughs suspected the note and the whole 321 episode might be an attempt to take the heat off of one or both of the officers who'd been on duty the night of the murder. Matt Owens and Stan Pescoia.

Speaker 6 Both were scheduled to head to Anchorage to be interviewed and polygraphed on August 24th. That was the day after the 321 incident.

Speaker 6 Owen said he was shaken up by getting shot at, so instead of getting on the plane, he went to see a therapist who worked with the police department.

Speaker 6 That meant Officer Stan Peskoya was the first to sit down with the ABI.

Speaker 14 Which vehicle were you driving that night?

Speaker 14 I don't remember which one. I think it might have been a new expedition, but I'm not really sure.

Speaker 6 Investigators dug for details.

Speaker 14 You remember anything significant from that night, Sunday the 10th to Monday the 11th, over that shift?

Speaker 7 That night we were busy.

Speaker 6 He said he handled a domestic violence call with Matt Owens. The suspect tried to fight the officers and Pescoia had to pepper spray him.

Speaker 14 After this arrest and this fight with this guy, did that take up the rest of your shift or did you have anything else going on?

Speaker 14 I think I finished all our paperwork before bar closing by 1.30,

Speaker 14 quarter two.

Speaker 6 Remember, the eyewitness saw Sonia get into a police car at 1.26 a.m.

Speaker 8 Stan says he was at Nome PD

Speaker 8 doing reports during the time of Sonia's disappearance.

Speaker 6 And that's verifiable.

Speaker 8 As verifiable as you can with what is written in the dispatch log.

Speaker 14 Did you stop and talk with Sonia that night, and did you give her a ride somewhere? No.

Speaker 6 Pescoia said he didn't kill Sonia and he never saw her that night.

Speaker 14 Who could you absolutely vouch for for not having done this beside yourself?

Speaker 7 The officers.

Speaker 6 Meaning it was no one at the GNOME PD.

Speaker 14 Thanks for coming in there and see us. Yes, sir.

Speaker 6 Five days later, Matt Owens made the trip to Anchorage.

Speaker 14 How was your flight? It was a little rough, honestly. A little turbid.
A little bit of weather?

Speaker 6 As they had with Peskoya, ABI investigators asked Owens about the night Sonia was seen getting into a police car.

Speaker 14 I want you to run down your ship from August 10th to 11th for me. Okay.

Speaker 6 Owens' recollection of the night Sonia disappeared wasn't much different from Peskoya's.

Speaker 6 He said it was just another night in Gnome, some patrolling, some paperwork, and that domestic violence call he and Pescoia went on that turned into a brawl.

Speaker 14 He hits me upside the jaw, which is pretty damn hard. My hat goes flying, my glasses are off,

Speaker 14 and I'm trying to restrain him.

Speaker 6 Like Pescoia, he said they brought the suspect to jail and then went their separate ways.

Speaker 14 Do you know about what time that was?

Speaker 14 It's in the dispatch box, sir.

Speaker 6 Owen said he headed out on patrol, then to bar closings around 2 a.m. About an hour later, he drove Pescoia home, then returned to the police station.

Speaker 14 Just walked back in and was going to sit down and write some report and heard this, what sounded to me like a gunshot.

Speaker 6 Owen said he went back out and patrolled Nome for about an hour, trying to figure out where the gunshot sound came from. He couldn't find it.

Speaker 6 Then Dispatch sent him on a call and then he came back to the PD.

Speaker 6 At 7 a.m. when his shift ended, Owen said he picked up the sergeant.

Speaker 14 Picked him up and drove to my house and I got out and he got the driver's seat.

Speaker 6 Nothing Owen said put him anywhere near Sonia Ivanov.

Speaker 6 Even so.

Speaker 14 Did you pick up Sonia

Speaker 14 while you're on duty at night? Give her a ride somewhere? Sonia has never been in my patrol car, my personal car, never anywhere like that.

Speaker 14 You know, Stan and I are, you know, obviously not the ones that are doing this.

Speaker 6 Both officers' stories lined up. Both maintained their innocence.
Investigators felt certain. One of them was lying.

Speaker 4 Coming up.

Speaker 14 On August 11th, 2003, did you give Sonia Ivanov a ride in your patrol vehicle? No.

Speaker 14 In August of this year, did you shoot Sonia Ivanov?

Speaker 29 No.

Speaker 4 Two officers put to the test which one was telling the truth.

Speaker 20 Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 11 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and We're Back for Another Season.

Speaker 21 I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more.

Speaker 20 You don't want to miss it.

Speaker 2 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 24 Just got a new puppy or kitten? Congrats! But also, yikes!

Speaker 24 Between crates, beds, toys, treats, and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune, which is where limited pet insurance comes in.

Speaker 24 It helps cover vet costs so you can focus on what's best for your new pet. The coverage is customizable, signup is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds.
ProTip.

Speaker 24 Lemonade offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a quote at lemonade.com slash pet.
Your future self will thank you.

Speaker 25 Your pet won't.

Speaker 26 They don't know what insurance is.

Speaker 16 A mochi moment from Mark, who writes, I just want to thank you for making GOP1s affordable. What would have been over $1,000 a month is just $99 a month with mochi.

Speaker 16 Money shouldn't be a barrier to healthy weight. Three months in, and I have smaller jeans and a bigger wallet.
You're the best. Thanks, Mark.
I'm Myra Ameth, founder of Mochi Health.

Speaker 16 To find your Mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 27 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories.

Speaker 28 Results may vary.

Speaker 6 Officer Matt Owens didn't know it, but while he was talking to the ABI in Anchorage, investigator Eric Burroughs was checking him out back in Noam.

Speaker 6 What was his reputation within the Nome PD?

Speaker 8 His reputation was he didn't necessarily follow the rules. They felt that he would do the right thing in a tense situation with shots fired.
He would be adequate for backup.

Speaker 8 They didn't always do the right stuff, but, you know, he was an okay guy.

Speaker 6 Burroughs also learned Owens liked the night shift and requested to stay on it. And on those night shifts, Owens liked company.
He would often bring a friend with him for an unauthorized ride-along.

Speaker 8 They had spoken to Owens on multiple occasions about not doing that anymore.

Speaker 6 Did that seem to make any difference?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 6 Burroughs had heard Matt Owens liked to pick up women. And after interviewing some of them, he discovered Owens seemed to be using his patrol unit like a dating app.

Speaker 6 We're talking about these women in his vehicle as ride-alongs, but it's really more than that, right? I mean, they're not just observing the scenery when they're with him.

Speaker 8 The initial information that we had is that he was having sex with them on duty.

Speaker 6 And the stories you were hearing were that the women were doing this willingly or that he was using

Speaker 6 his uniform and his standing as a police officer to coerce them.

Speaker 8 It sounded like that it was probably being done willingly because these women were seen in his vehicle. They're not in the back of the vehicle being arrested.
They're under restraint.

Speaker 8 They appeared to be there on their own volition.

Speaker 6 Key to what Burroughs heard was this.

Speaker 6 Some of the women said Owens would follow them in his patrol car while they were walking and then drive ahead of them to cut them off.

Speaker 6 I guess what's significant about this is that the story that Florence and her sister tell about the police unit traveling around the block and intercepting her is the same story that other women later told you about Matt Owens.

Speaker 8 Yes, that's correct.

Speaker 6 Burroughs also found out Owens and Sonia were not complete strangers. Sonia worked nights at the hospital.

Speaker 6 So if he were to bring in somebody who needed to get stitched up, They might have to be able to get to the point.

Speaker 8 Their paths are going to cross. He knew who she was.

Speaker 6 Burroughs relayed this information in real time to his colleagues in Anchorage who were questioning Owens.

Speaker 14 On your time in Nome

Speaker 14 work and stuff, is Sonia a person that you would know if you saw her on the on the road or is she like a complete stranger to you or she would definitely be it's somebody I know who she is.

Speaker 6 Owens admitted he knew Sonia from the hospital but said that was all.

Speaker 14 If I brought a drunk up there for a title 47 or something like that and there wasn't a nurse down there I'd go up to the nurse's station and say, hey, can you get me a nurse down here?

Speaker 14 Other than that, I don't think I've ever spoken to a word for a girl in my life.

Speaker 6 He also admitted he brought civilians on ride-alongs.

Speaker 14 Would it be unusual for you on a patrol at night to pick up women or meet women or

Speaker 14 give people a ride?

Speaker 14 No,

Speaker 14 that's definitely not unusual. I do have people that ride along with me,

Speaker 14 both male and female.

Speaker 6 It wasn't the man the ABI wanted to know about.

Speaker 14 How would it look if somebody had come up and said that they know that you've picked up girls before?

Speaker 14 Off duty or on duty, and that you've taken girls, you know, gone different places with girls and had sex with them when you picked them up. On duty?

Speaker 14 That'd be crazy. I'm not going around picking up women.
On duty or off duty, I mean, even when I'm not even once, not that I know of, no, sir. I don't remember not one single time.

Speaker 14 That's not me to do that.

Speaker 6 The interview was really part one.

Speaker 6 In turn, Peskoya and Owens were each strapped to the polygraph.

Speaker 14 Is your last name Peskoya? Is your last name Owens?

Speaker 6 Then came the money questions.

Speaker 14 On August 11th, 2003, did you give Sonia Ivanov a ride in your patrol vehicle? No.

Speaker 14 In August of this year, did you shoot Sonia Ivanov? No.

Speaker 14 Testing over, police are still.

Speaker 14 Thank you, Matt, for going through that with me. I'd take a little bit of time to run through this, see what it tells you.

Speaker 6 What do you suppose that would be?

Speaker 4 Coming up.

Speaker 14 Has there been females in there that I've given rise to?

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 6 More questions for Officer Owens. The women in his patrol car.

Speaker 14 Why do we need to talk about my sex life?

Speaker 4 And those gunshots on the tundra.

Speaker 6 Does any part of the story he tells about being shot at make any sense to you?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 4 When dateline continues.

Speaker 6 Stan Peskoya and Matt Owens, the two known police officers on duty the night Sonia Ivanov was murdered, had both agreed to be polygraphed.

Speaker 6 Stan Peskoya flies to Anchorage, does an interview with you guys, takes a polygraph, and is cleared.

Speaker 2 That's correct.

Speaker 6 That left left Owens. How does Man Owens do on the polygraph?

Speaker 8 He failed.

Speaker 14 To my amazement, he didn't pass those polygons.

Speaker 6 The mood in that room changed. ABI investigators read Owens his rights.

Speaker 14 You have the right to remain silent. Do you understand that right? Yes, sir.

Speaker 6 Owens continued to say he had nothing to do with Sonia's murder.

Speaker 14 Sonia, as again, I said yesterday, has never been in my control car.

Speaker 6 He did admit he'd given rides to other women.

Speaker 14 Had there been females in there that I've given rides to?

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Investigators saw a pretty clear pattern of behavior that matched Sonia's disappearance. Owens

Speaker 6 did not.

Speaker 6 And he didn't understand why that looked exactly the same to you.

Speaker 8 No, he would say, what does my sex life with women have anything to do with her getting into a vehicle?

Speaker 14 Why is my sex life a part of this investigation or whatever? Why do we need to talk about my sex life? Because when your sex life happens on duty,

Speaker 14 my sex life does not happen on the issue. I mean, it doesn't.

Speaker 6 Owens also denied having anything to do with the theft of Vehicle 321.

Speaker 14 So every time you had that, I staged that cop car. I absolutely do.
How did I do that?

Speaker 6 Does any part of the story he tells about finding that police vehicle and being shot at make any sense to you?

Speaker 8 No,

Speaker 8 it doesn't.

Speaker 14 I was up here on highways when I rushed to see, like I said, with foot-type brake lights.

Speaker 8 Brake lights only flash if somebody's pressing on the brake pedal. Within a minute, you're down behind the vehicle and you notice the tailgate is up and the shotgun is missing.

Speaker 6 Suggesting that somebody stopped the vehicle immediately got out and got the shotgun and they're armed. Right.

Speaker 8 In all the training any police officer has done, this is not a normal situation. This is a dangerous situation.

Speaker 14 But as you come up on the driver's side, are you checking it for occupants? Not really. I can't say that I am.

Speaker 8 He doesn't clear the vehicle. He doesn't pull out his flashlight.
He doesn't pull out his firearm, even though he says he just saw brake lights.

Speaker 6 Which would be standard protocol.

Speaker 8 Absolutely.

Speaker 6 Burroughs says that what Owens claims he did after being shot at also makes no sense.

Speaker 8 He runs off into the tundra. There is all kinds of abandoned equipment, rocks, piles of gravel in the immediate area.
Great for taking cover and returning fire if necessary.

Speaker 6 Still, no matter what investigators believed, they needed proof. And they didn't have it.

Speaker 6 He's not facing any charges.

Speaker 8 Not at this point.

Speaker 6 Matt Owens had not been charged with any crime. Even so, his life was in free fall.
He returned here to Nome, but not to work. The police department had put him on administrative leave.

Speaker 6 He was in the midst of a messy divorce and a custody battle over his four-year-old son. He was living in a friend's spare room.

Speaker 6 More importantly, Matt Owens was the prime suspect in the biggest murder case Noam had ever seen.

Speaker 6 The ABI continued to investigate. They spoke with Owens' soon-to-be ex-wife, who mentioned a phone call from Matt.

Speaker 8 Owens calls his ex-wife. He has their son, and he says that he needs to drop off their son because there's a missing girl.
He has to go into work early and it doesn't look good.

Speaker 6 She said the date of the call was easy to remember because it was August 12th, Matt Owens' birthday. As for the time, she said it was before she left work, around 4.30.

Speaker 6 And at that point when he makes that call, Sonia hasn't even been reported missing yet. Yes.
The walls were closing in.

Speaker 6 Burroughs heard from a woman who spent time with Owens, who said he wanted her to leave Alaska soon. with him.

Speaker 6 The ABI wasn't going to let that happen.

Speaker 6 october 25th 2003 two and a half months after sonia ivanov was killed matt owens was arrested for her murder the next day tom and christina went to his arraignment

Speaker 6 we weren't prepared for the greeting we got which was what oh man we were met with hostilities for sure because A police officer has been arrested for a murder and people are angry at you?

Speaker 6 They were angry.

Speaker 6 He didn't do this. Officer Wayovana says it was members of Owen's mostly white church who spoke up on his behalf.

Speaker 7 They had their opinions and they voiced them. They weren't afraid to voice their opinions.
The lack of respect on their part was easy to understand if you're native.

Speaker 6 For Timory, just out of high school when her best friend was killed, Owen's arrest was stunning. You You instantly recognized that name? You already knew him?

Speaker 5 I mean, I knew him as a police officer.

Speaker 6 Did that make any sense to you?

Speaker 5 No, it didn't.

Speaker 5 I was confused because these guys are supposed to help us. They're supposed to protect us.
They're supposed to be the ones keeping us safe.

Speaker 6 Two days after his arrest, Matt Owens was fired by the Nome PD.

Speaker 6 It wasn't long before some of the women of Nome came forward to say that for quite a while, Matt Owens had been doing the opposite of protecting and serving.

Speaker 4 Coming up.

Speaker 8 Now we start getting a different set of women coming forward.

Speaker 6 These are women who wound up in this patrol car, not by their own choice.

Speaker 8 That's correct.

Speaker 4 New accusations and new evidence.

Speaker 8 We start digging, and literally, we treat it like we are panning for gold.

Speaker 4 What would investigators find?

Speaker 20 Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 11 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and we're back for another season.

Speaker 21 I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more.

Speaker 20 You don't want to miss it.

Speaker 2 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 24 Just got a new puppy or kitten. Congrats.

Speaker 24 But also, yikes, between crates, beds, toys, treats, and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune, which is where Lemonade Pet Insurance comes in.

Speaker 24 It helps cover vet costs so you can focus on what's best for your new pet. The coverage is customizable, signup is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds.

Speaker 24 Pro tip: Lemonade offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a quote at lemonade.com/slash pet.
Your future self will thank you.

Speaker 25 Your pet won't.

Speaker 26 They don't know what insurance is.

Speaker 16 A mochi moment from Sadie, who writes, I'm not crying, you're crying.

Speaker 16 This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi, because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP-1. He understood and I felt supported, not judged.

Speaker 16 I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy.

Speaker 3 Thanks, Sadie.

Speaker 16 I'm Myra Ameth, founder of Mochi Health. To find your Mochi Moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 27 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories.

Speaker 28 Results may vary.

Speaker 6 The arrest of Officer Matt Owens shocked many citizens of Nome, but by no means all of them. ABI investigators soon began hearing troubling stories about Owens' long nights on patrol.

Speaker 8 Now we start getting a different set of women coming forward that want to say something because they felt safe.

Speaker 6 These are women who wound up in his patrol car, not by their own choice.

Speaker 8 That's correct. In one case, one of them was arrested and then he sexually assaulted her.
It could have been arrested or just like, hey, do you need a ride to your home? He's on the grave shift.

Speaker 8 It's the middle of the night.

Speaker 6 Owens denied the sexual assault allegations, including those from a woman who says that after he forced her to have sex, Owens told her, no one will believe a drunk Alaska native over a police officer.

Speaker 6 So here's the really awful thing. Owens may actually have judged the situation accurately.
The six women who came forward after his arrest told stories that ranged from stalking to rape.

Speaker 6 One said she'd gone into the police department to file a complaint. Another said she'd mentioned Owens' behavior to someone else at the PD, and nothing ever happened.

Speaker 6 Eric Burroughs was running a murder investigation with a lot of missing pieces. For example, investigators found the shotgun from Unit 321 but got no usable forensics from it.

Speaker 6 And on the cruiser itself, no DNA or prints that would connect Owens to the theft or to Sonia.

Speaker 6 They hadn't found the clothing Sonya was wearing the night she died or the weapon used to kill her. And each missing piece was a problem.

Speaker 8 When you're conducting an investigation, I describe it like this. Imagine that you have three or four jigsa puzzles and all the pieces are thrown into a box.

Speaker 8 You don't have any idea what the picture is. You're trying to grab all these pieces and you hope that you can get enough of the right pieces to make a picture that everyone can see and understand.

Speaker 6 The hunt for missing pieces sent Burroughs and his team to an actual hunting camp called Coffee Creek, 70 miles north of Nome. Matt Owens was known to go there.

Speaker 8 He was observed burning some gloves that were virtually new.

Speaker 6 Burroughs wondered, if Owens torched his gloves, what else could be found there?

Speaker 8 We start digging up into the fire pit, and literally we treated it like we were panning for gold.

Speaker 8 And we got some water and we put some of the ashes in a bucket, swirl it around, and get rid of the ashes and see what we could see.

Speaker 8 And I found a... eyelet to a shoe.

Speaker 6 Like where the laces go through?

Speaker 8 Where the laces go through, yeah, an eyelet to the shoe. It obviously had been in the fire and it was corroded and stuff, but I can make out Skecher.

Speaker 6 Sonia was wearing Skechers.

Speaker 8 She was wearing Skecher shoes on the night she disappeared.

Speaker 6 They moved the entire ash pit to Nome and went through it for days. The result?

Speaker 6 More eyelets from Skechers, metal parts from a bra,

Speaker 6 and a metal button with a logo tilt. Then Burroughs turned to Christina for help.

Speaker 9 He did come over to the house and showed me a picture of stuff they had found in a fire pit.

Speaker 6 Could you identify any of that stuff?

Speaker 9 I did.

Speaker 9 They were the brand jeans that my sister wore.

Speaker 6 Presumably anybody could have burned stuff there. It doesn't have to be Matt Owens.

Speaker 8 Right, so it's not the smoking gun evidence that says, aha, Matt, this is yours.

Speaker 6 Then in the same burn pit, they found a key.

Speaker 6 And it could be connected to Owens.

Speaker 6 It was for his uncle's post office box.

Speaker 6 The hunt for the murder weapon was equally painstaking.

Speaker 7 So we knew from the autopsy that the bullet was a

Speaker 17 22 round.

Speaker 6 Which means it's from one of several possible guns. Right.
At the crime scene, investigators cut back the plants.

Speaker 8 And we actually found the bullet casing or at the shelf.

Speaker 6 Which told you what?

Speaker 8 It's an automatic as opposed to a revolver where it's going to stay in the weapon.

Speaker 6 That narrowed down the list a bit. Nome Police Officer Byron Redburn suggested investigators look for the gun in the Nome Police evidence room.

Speaker 8 So we go up to the Nome PD evidence room. The evidence locker and the evidence room key is in one of the sergeants' mailboxes.
Anybody can get it.

Speaker 6 So pretty much anybody could help themselves to anything in the evidence room and not get caught.

Speaker 8 As long as they get into the police department, yes, essentially.

Speaker 6 In evidence, they found this: a Jennings 22.

Speaker 8 The firearms analysis gave us a list of guns. The Jennings 22 was one of the guns on the list.

Speaker 6 Was it possible Owens or someone else had secretly borrowed the gun and then replaced it after they'd used it to commit a murder? That was possible, yes.

Speaker 6 However, it was hardly, and forgive me here, a smoking gun. No forensics linked Matt Owens to the Jennings, and his service weapon wasn't a 22.

Speaker 6 Investigators did manage to tie up one loose end, the truck with the mismatched tires. So, this guy and his girlfriend just happened to park out here just because they need to answer nature's call.

Speaker 6 Exactly. And they don't realize that they're, what, just a few yards from Sonia's body? Correct.

Speaker 6 It was entirely unrelated to the murder. While investigators were working the case, Matt Owens was working on bail.

Speaker 6 Officer Matt Owens is locked up on a murder charge and gets bail.

Speaker 1 Ridiculous.

Speaker 12 In a town of 3,500 people.

Speaker 9 That was sickening.

Speaker 6 After two months in jail, Owens got what he wanted, supervised release. He also hired a respected and aggressive attorney and began to prepare his defense.

Speaker 2 This isn't reporting. This is harassment.
We let you take your picture.

Speaker 4 Now beat it.

Speaker 4 Coming up.

Speaker 30 You were working the night that Sonia was murdered, right?

Speaker 29 Yes, sir, I was.

Speaker 4 Officer Owens takes the stand, and the defense points to someone else.

Speaker 14 He has an obvious and huge motive.

Speaker 6 Was the wrong cop on trial?

Speaker 4 When dateline continues.

Speaker 30 When Sonia stepped into that patrol car

Speaker 14 that night,

Speaker 14 it was like she was stepping into her own confidence.

Speaker 6 The trial of former Noam police officer Matt Owens began on January 18, 2005, 17 months after Sonia Ivanov's murder. Investigators had assembled evidence like pieces of a puzzle.

Speaker 6 Now, it was prosecutor Rick Svobotny's job to show the finished picture to the jury.

Speaker 6 He put on nearly 70 witnesses, laying out a circumstantial case against a man once trusted with a badge.

Speaker 6 There was Matt Owens' call to his ex-wife about a missing woman before Sonia was reported missing. His incredible story about finding 321.

Speaker 6 And how Owens had ample time to kill Sonia and then cover his tracks.

Speaker 14 On the morning Sonia died, died. The defendant is unaccountable for over five hours.

Speaker 6 Timore testified about the last time she saw her best friend.

Speaker 14 When you left, did you leave together? Yes.

Speaker 6 Three witnesses testified they'd seen Sonia passing by on foot that night, tracing her path from the time she left Timore until Florence Habro saw her get into a police car.

Speaker 14 Where was Sonia when the window came down?

Speaker 17 On a passenger seat.

Speaker 6 What was the strongest part of your case, do you think?

Speaker 6 Coffee Creek.

Speaker 6 Where Owens was seen tossing gloves into a burn pit.

Speaker 31 They went through it and they came up with physical evidence.

Speaker 6 The tilt jeans button, the sketcher's eyelets,

Speaker 6 and the key linked to Matt Owens.

Speaker 6 After the prosecution built its case, the defense tried to tear it down.

Speaker 6 Owens' attorney called a witness who said he saw Sonia speeding past him in a blue pickup on Monday night, half a day after the prosecution's timeline had her dead.

Speaker 32 I had gone down to Subway, and when I went in the door, there was a missing person's photo on the door. It just struck me like that looks like the girl that was in that pickup.

Speaker 31 Haven't you said nobody will ever make me say it was her?

Speaker 32 I don't know that I've said it that way, but

Speaker 32 I won't say that it was her. I've already pointed that out.
I've said that I wasn't 100% sure it was her.

Speaker 6 Under cross-examination, the state's firearms expert admitted the gun found in the evidence room was probably, but not absolutely, the murder weapon.

Speaker 6 As for the mailbox key from Coffee Creek, the defense put on the mailbox owner, who said Owens never had a key.

Speaker 6 And then, staring down the barrel of a murder charge, Matt Owens took the stand in his own defense.

Speaker 30 You were working the night that Sonia was murdered, right?

Speaker 29 Yes, sir, I was.

Speaker 6 He told the jury his ex-wife had her dates wrong. His call about the case was a week later than she thought.
He did acknowledge an interest in Sonia.

Speaker 6 He admitted looking her up on the police computer. That's right.

Speaker 31 I think from day one, when he had Sonia's name run by the dispatcher, she was a young, attractive girl, and he wanted to know something about her because maybe something could happen.

Speaker 6 On the witness stand, Owens did admit he had run Sonia's name, just to make sure she was of legal drinking age.

Speaker 30 That was just a matter of curiosity, because you didn't see her in the bar, or she wasn't in the bar at the time.

Speaker 29 Well, it was a disagreement that Officer Stotz and I had about her age.

Speaker 6 The sex-based allegations from the six women who came forward were all ruled inadmissible, so Owens didn't have to answer for them at trial.

Speaker 6 Under oath, Owens insisted he didn't kill Sonia Ivanov, and he had nothing to do with the theft of 321.

Speaker 6 Then his attorney presented an alternate theory of the case.

Speaker 6 A cop may have killed Sonia,

Speaker 6 but it wasn't Matt Owens.

Speaker 6 The defense suggested Officer Byron Redburn should have been a suspect.

Speaker 14 And who was it communicated and coordinated with the troopers about the Ivanoff case? Officer Redburn.

Speaker 6 He was the one who thought the murder weapon might be found in the evidence room.

Speaker 14 If Redburn, for whatever reason, killed Ms. Ivanoff, he has an obvious and huge motive.

Speaker 6 A motive, the defense argued, to frame Matt Owens.

Speaker 6 They told the jury Owens had reported Redburn for punching a suspect. Redburn carried a grudge about that, they said.

Speaker 6 And he was even angrier because Owens was having an affair with Redburn's daughter.

Speaker 13 As he's furious about Matt's relationship with his daughter, Jennifer Shannon.

Speaker 6 The defense did not offer any solid evidence pointing to Redburn. And And in case the jury didn't find him to be a convincing suspect, the defense offered the original one for good measure.

Speaker 30 Who does she have relationships with that could lead to homicidal actions?

Speaker 6 Well,

Speaker 14 Kunik comes right to mind.

Speaker 6 It would be incredible. In his closing argument, Prosecutor Svobodny told the jury that Sonia's killer was Matt Owens and only Matt Owens.

Speaker 14 Now you've heard the case of a cop who was a killer.

Speaker 6 After more than 40 hours of deliberation, the judge called everyone back to the courtroom.

Speaker 19 Counsel, I received a note from the jury

Speaker 19 which reads the jury is deadlocked and cannot reach a unanimous decision.

Speaker 6 The judge declared a mistrial.

Speaker 6 Matt Owens walked out the door while Sonia's parents' hearts ached.

Speaker 7 It was hard.

Speaker 7 And to go through a second trial was just as hard.

Speaker 6 Something you don't want anyone to go through.

Speaker 6 After the trial, Owen's attorneys asked for a change of venue. And so when the second trial began, seven months later, it was in Kotzebue,

Speaker 6 a plane ride away from Nome above the Arctic Circle.

Speaker 7 The person who killed Sonia was what police call Evidence Aware.

Speaker 6 The prosecution's case was a virtual carbon copy of the first trial. No telling if it would result in an identical outcome.

Speaker 6 Then, after prosecutors had rested and the defense began putting on its witnesses, ABI investigator Eric Burroughs got a phone call about new and possibly explosive evidence. You'd never heard that.

Speaker 8 Never had heard that.

Speaker 6 He relayed the new information to the prosecutor.

Speaker 8 And he said, you need to get on a plane. You need to go down to Nome.
And I said, but we've already rested. What are we going to do with this? And

Speaker 8 essentially, he's like, you let me handle that part. You do your investigator part.

Speaker 4 Coming up.

Speaker 7 It was one of those jaw-dropping moments.

Speaker 4 The race is on to find a crucial new witness.

Speaker 4 Then, tears in the courtroom.

Speaker 6 This time, there would be a verdict.

Speaker 6 Investigator Eric Burroughs hurried back to Nome, trying to gather new evidence in the last moments of a murder trial. He knew he faced long odds, but he also knew Nome gave him one big advantage.

Speaker 6 Nome is a small town, and sometimes it seems that everyone knows everyone. Take Officer Brian Wayovana, for example.
He was friends with Sonia's family.

Speaker 6 He was also the first to uncover evidence that a police officer might have been involved in her murder.

Speaker 6 Now, during Owens' second trial, Wayovana was chatting with a neighbor, and that neighbor told him something potentially explosive about Matt Owens.

Speaker 7 He asked,

Speaker 7 did it ever come up in trial that

Speaker 7 Charlotte Calandrelli saw Sonia's ID in Matt's bedroom? It was one of those jaw-dropping moments like...

Speaker 6 Charlotte Calandrelli had rented a room to Owens after he and his wife split. Burroughs believed Charlotte was probably talking about the same gym car that was found in Police Vehicle 321.

Speaker 6 So it could tie Owens both to the murder and the subsequent cover-up. If true, that would be huge for the prosecution.
That is...

Speaker 6 If the judge would allow it into evidence.

Speaker 6 I mean, this is third-party hearsay, right?

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Burroughs had to trace the new information back to its source. He first spoke with Officer Wayovana's across-the-street neighbor, a guy named Dealey Blackshear.

Speaker 6 It came up that she had seen in the area where Matt was in their house. The area where he was living? Yeah, she saw a woman's wallet and Sonia Ivanov's ID card.

Speaker 6 Crucially important was when Charlotte saw Sonia's ID.

Speaker 6 Before the patrol car shooting.

Speaker 6 Meaning, before Sonia's pool ID showed up on the front seat of 321.

Speaker 6 Now remember, Black Shear's story was still hearsay. You've got to go find Charlotte and get her to repeat that story on the stand.

Speaker 8 Ultimately, yes.

Speaker 6 Burroughs knew the Calandrellis were old family friends of Owens, and he worried Charlotte would just deny everything.

Speaker 6 So he obtained a warrant.

Speaker 13 Well, Charlotte, I may have opened my mouth and spoken out of turn.

Speaker 6 Which allowed him to record a phone call from Dealee Blackshear to Charlotte Calandrelli.

Speaker 6 The conversation that I remember, you were concerned that you had seen, along with Matt's other stuff, you had seen Sonia's ID, a wrecked card.

Speaker 13 And my recollection is that you said, I'm going to go tell the lawyers today.

Speaker 6 Well, Charlotte said she never did tell anyone except Dealey because she thought she'd seen in the the paper that the cops already had the ID.

Speaker 16 So I didn't think any more about it then.

Speaker 6 Here's what's crucial. She did not deny seeing Sonia's ID.

Speaker 6 Back in Katzebue, the prosecution asked the judge to put Charlotte Calandrelli on the witness stand, and the judge agreed. Except, just as Burroughs had feared, when Charlotte testified,

Speaker 31 Did you see Mr. Owens with any identification of Sonia Ivanov?

Speaker 6 No. No.

Speaker 6 She denied everything.

Speaker 31 Did you see him with a wallet of Sonia Ivanov? No.

Speaker 6 So the prosecution played the tape of Dealey Blackshear's conversation with Calandrelli. Then the attorneys laid out their arguments.

Speaker 33 She

Speaker 33 got into a gnome patrol car driven by the defendant.

Speaker 12 And this is the wrong man.

Speaker 6 This is the wrong cop.

Speaker 6 Once again, the case went to a jury. This time there was a verdict.

Speaker 19 With the jury Duliam Pamelton sworn to try the above-in-titled case, find defendant Matthew Owens guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree.

Speaker 6 For Sonia's family, there were tears, not quite of joy, but maybe of relief.

Speaker 13 We're happy that he's got his guilty verdict for being a cold-blooded killer.

Speaker 6 Investigator Burroughs believes Owens had his eye on Sonia for for a while, and that when he saw her walking alone that August night, he thought, now's my chance.

Speaker 8 He gets her to get into the vehicle, like he's done with so many others. He probably starts propositioning her about sex.

Speaker 8 And somewhere in there, she says, not only no,

Speaker 8 but I'm going to tell.

Speaker 6 Matt Owens had picked the wrong victim.

Speaker 5 She was outspoken. If you made her mad, she would tell you.

Speaker 6 Whatever Owens had planned for her, she was not going to just sit there and suffer.

Speaker 29 No.

Speaker 5 Nope.

Speaker 6 Matt Owens was sentenced to 101 years in prison.

Speaker 6 Owens would not speak on camera, but in a statement sent by his brother, told us, he did not kill Sonia Ivanov, and he denies engaging in stalking or abusing women in any way.

Speaker 6 He also said he couldn't get a fair trial. in the Nome area.
Ever since the murder, Sonia's story has echoed through Nome.

Speaker 6 When former Nome Police Chief Michael Heinzelman first arrived in 2018, he'd never heard of Matt Owens or the murder of Sonia Ivanov.

Speaker 6 That changed quickly.

Speaker 13 We went to a city council meeting and we had

Speaker 13 people standing up telling about how they did not trust the police department and that they remember that a police officer had murdered one of the Alaska Native ladies in town.

Speaker 13 I thought to myself, well, we're going to have a lot to really gain the trust of these folks.

Speaker 6 Not only did Heinzelman have to overcome that history, he took over a department with a dismal record of handling sexual assaults. An internal review found 460 open cases in Nome,

Speaker 6 mostly involving Alaska Native women. Today, the Nome PD has moved into a new building.
And Heinzelmann told us it's a new agency, too, one that knows it has to serve all of the people of Nome.

Speaker 6 Though there are no sworn Alaska Native officers or investigators, there is an Alaska Native victims advocate who focuses on domestic violence and sexual assault.

Speaker 6 Like the people in Nome who've never forgotten Sonia's story, Christina and Tom also have trouble trusting. They've raised their children with warnings.

Speaker 10 To be very cautious

Speaker 9 with anybody,

Speaker 6 including police officers.

Speaker 13 My message is the evil comes in different forms.

Speaker 12 You always got to

Speaker 6 watch out.

Speaker 6 Timery says she's still haunted.

Speaker 5 I had to stop going to college because every police, anybody in uniform scared me.

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 5 I didn't know who I could trust.

Speaker 6 She's moved back to Uniloclete. She feels a little safer there.
Even so, you don't get over losing your best friend.

Speaker 6 You have some guilt about this, don't you?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I think, what if I just would have stayed with her and just walked home?

Speaker 5 We should have just walked home together.

Speaker 6 You said it yourself. You felt safe.
She clearly did too.

Speaker 6 I mean, this isn't on you.

Speaker 3 It's just something that I

Speaker 6 really regret.

Speaker 6 You didn't do anything wrong here.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Thank you.

Speaker 16 Sonia, let's go get some more action.

Speaker 6 Sometimes Timmery takes herself back to the before times

Speaker 6 when she and Sonia were both alive and both carefree.

Speaker 5 She brought that camera on a lot of ball trips.

Speaker 6 She watches and rewatches the one tape she still has.

Speaker 5 She was tall and beautiful and

Speaker 5 made everybody laugh.

Speaker 6 She was a

Speaker 1 loving and caring person and

Speaker 6 goofy.

Speaker 1 She had a big heart.

Speaker 6 And we sure do miss her.

Speaker 6 Sonya,

Speaker 6 where'd you go?

Speaker 8 That's all for now.

Speaker 4 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 12 Thanks for joining us.

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