Deadly Mirage - Ep. 5: Busted

Transcript

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Speaker 2 It was around 11 on the morning of November 17, 2014,

Speaker 2 three months to the day after her husband's murder, that Sabrina Lamone was taken into custody at her children's school.

Speaker 2 Like Jonathan Hearn, who had been arrested earlier, Sabrina was placed in the back of a patrol car and driven to the desert town of Boron, which was the closest Kern County Sheriff's Department substation.

Speaker 2 It was there that the couple's long journey through the American justice system would begin.

Speaker 2 Jonathan Hearn's family had already been notified of his arrest.

Speaker 2 Sabrina's sister, Julie, had been told by investigators that somebody needed to make arrangements to take care of her kids because she had been detained.

Speaker 4 I was at work and I got the call.

Speaker 6 my cell phone.

Speaker 4 They said that they had arrested Sabrina and Jonathan Hearn. I needed to pick up the kids from school.
We weren't able to talk to Brina.

Speaker 8 I just couldn't, couldn't believe it.

Speaker 2 While Jonathan and Sabrina were being transported to Boron, teams of investigators fanned out to begin searches of their homes.

Speaker 9 From Sabrina's residence, we were able to obtain lots of documents regarding financial stuff from life insurance companies, from BNSF Railroad, letters from Jonathan to Sabrina.

Speaker 2 Every love letter, every racy photo, every text message, and every sales receipt were no longer just proof of a steamy, illicit affair. They were now called evidence.

Speaker 9 From Jonathan's residence, we were able to seize the motorcycle. that was ridden.
We seized two styles of helmets.

Speaker 2 In this episode, you will hear how some critical evidence was missed during those searches.

Speaker 10 There were things at Jonathan's house that I was aware of that they didn't have.

Speaker 2 You'll hear about a motive for murder far more tangible than vague notions of God's purpose.

Speaker 11 There is a financial benefit to Robert Lamon dying, $300,000 in insurance and potentially $2 million settlement with a railroad.

Speaker 2 And you'll hear how one of those suspects was seemingly able to walk away, free and clear, to start life anew.

Speaker 4 She didn't know anything about it, and I believe in her innocence.

Speaker 14 They said there just simply wasn't enough evidence.

Speaker 2 I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Deadly Mirage, a podcast from Dateline.

Speaker 2 Episode 5.

Speaker 2 Busted.

Speaker 2 The arrests of Jonathan Jonathan Hearn and Sabrina Limone on murder charges were a huge story in the high desert communities of California.

Speaker 15 24-year-old Jonathan Hearn, a firefighter paramedic, is charged with first-degree murder. Sheriff's officials say Sabrina Limon, seen here with her husband Robert, planned his death with Hearn.

Speaker 17 And they say that Hearn and Sabrina Limone exchanged thousands of text messages.

Speaker 2 The Kern County Sheriff's deputies who'd conducted the months-long investigation into Rob Lamone's death were justifiably proud of their work.

Speaker 9 Yes, it was a great feeling. Thousands of hours were put into the investigation, listening to phone calls and surveillance, and so it did feel good.

Speaker 12 And you finally got your man and your woman.

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 2 In the hours after his arrest, Jonathan said little to investigators beyond asking for a lawyer.

Speaker 2 Sabrina, on the other hand, seemed willing to talk, perhaps because her interrogators told her she was not under arrest.

Speaker 18 You are detained, but you're not under arrest. I want to make that perfectly clear to you, okay?

Speaker 2 That may have been a distinction without a difference, but Sabrina was game. She readily admitted to having an on-and-off affair with Jonathan Hearn.

Speaker 4 I had had a

Speaker 18 relationship with him.

Speaker 2 She was vague about when the affair began, when it resumed, and how often she'd spoken with Jonathan in the months, weeks, and hours before her husband's murder.

Speaker 2 Of course, the investigators already knew the answers to all of that.

Speaker 18 I do this for a living. I'm not playing games with you.

Speaker 2 For 30 minutes, they went round and round. Sabrina talking about her dead husband, her kids, and

Speaker 2 God's purpose.

Speaker 18 You keep saying it's God's plan.

Speaker 18 What?

Speaker 18 I tried to figure that out. I have no idea how could he be gone.

Speaker 18 So

Speaker 18 I have to, I put my faith in God.

Speaker 2 That's when the cops got straight to the point.

Speaker 20 We have evidence.

Speaker 18 that will prove Jonathan Hearn

Speaker 19 murdered Robert Lamon. Are you serious?

Speaker 21 He is going to prison for the rest of his life.

Speaker 15 Okay?

Speaker 21 If I wasn't clear to you in the beginning, this is your one chance not to join him. Do you understand that? This is your one chance.

Speaker 18 I understand that.

Speaker 18 I can't wrap my brain.

Speaker 21 We don't believe you. We know everything.

Speaker 21 It is your turn to tell the truth.

Speaker 2 If Sabrina's interviewers were waiting for some kind of confession, an admission that she knew her lover had murdered her husband, they were disappointed.

Speaker 18 I mean, there's no way that Jonathan's the one that murdered Robert. I mean, there's just, there's no way.

Speaker 2 The interview ended when Sabrina asked for a lawyer. At that point, she was arrested, and deputies drove her to Bakersfield for formal booking and fingerprinting.

Speaker 2 It was in Bakersfield that that she asked to speak with Detective Randall Meyer. The next afternoon, Sabrina was led to the same interrogation room where she'd met Detective Meyer a week earlier.

Speaker 23 Sorry for not being honest with you, Detective Randall.

Speaker 24 It's okay, give me a second here.

Speaker 2 She was still wearing the tight-fitting gray jeans and white jacket she'd worn the day before when deputies had picked her up at her children's school.

Speaker 24 I need to basically put it on the record that I didn't force you to come here, that you came here because you decided you wanted to talk to me, right?

Speaker 20 Okay.

Speaker 14 And I need to read your rights again.

Speaker 2 The detective was his same old congenial self. He said he understood why Sabrina had lied to him.

Speaker 24 You were probably upset and scared, and you didn't know what to say. So I know tons of stuff about all this that's gone on, and I want you to tell me the truth.

Speaker 2 The detective wanted Sabrina to tell her story again,

Speaker 2 starting with that first meeting in Costco and the critical moment when Jonathan Hearn asked for her phone number.

Speaker 23 Our friends, friends, were having a party and they were fire department people. And I said, are you going to that party kind of thing? And then he's like, well, maybe I'll see you there.

Speaker 23 Like, what's your number?

Speaker 23 And I had never. given out my number to like a stranger before and I did.
I instantly like felt guilty like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 An innocent mistake?

Speaker 2 she told the detective she thought Jonathan knew she was married even though she never wore her wedding ring while she was working but then he

Speaker 23 called and messaged me and I was just like oh my gosh like I got myself into so I didn't answer it or respond and he apologized he was like are you married I'm so sorry and then I put yeah I thought that you knew that

Speaker 2 She could have ended it right there, but she didn't do that. And Jonathan, he did not back away either.
So together they tiptoed into that treacherous swamp colloquially called Friends with Benefits.

Speaker 2 It was a gradual thing, to be sure. A romantic attraction that only became noticeable when it was absent.
It was pleasant to meet. Pleasant to talk.
Pleasant to anticipate the next meeting.

Speaker 2 Fun to exchange gifts and trinkets.

Speaker 24 goofy about that?

Speaker 23 You know, the funny thing, after I told him I was heard and he was sincerely sorry, I didn't feel that bad because I socially talked to a lot of people and

Speaker 23 I were

Speaker 23 open. Like Rob was, he was pretty casual with me.

Speaker 2 As casual as swinging on grandma's porch. Oh, yes, the swinging.
Sabrina told the detective about that too.

Speaker 23 And we have had open relationships, parties, and just kind of like that kind of

Speaker 23 a lifestyle, more like. Now, the kids weren't exposed to that

Speaker 23 firsthand.

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 25 I know we've talked about your open relationship before, and you told me you didn't have one.

Speaker 23 I was dreading. I didn't want any of this to come out, you know.

Speaker 25 Did you think this would ever come out?

Speaker 23 I've been dripping, you know. I've been

Speaker 21 shameful.

Speaker 2 There's an old saying that for some men, marriage is just a word, while to others, it's a sentence. The kind you serve.

Speaker 2 To the late Rob Lamon, marriage wasn't a word or a sentence. It was more like a theme park, and he wanted to climb onto every rod.

Speaker 2 Well, that's if you believe. Mrs.
Rob Lamone.

Speaker 2 According to Sabrina, the whole open marriage thing was all Rob's idea. And it began six years earlier when she and Rob started spouse swapping with another couple.

Speaker 23 That's where the door opened. I hate to talk about him, Ellie, you know, because

Speaker 23 I don't want to dishonor him. But.

Speaker 24 He was a man.

Speaker 23 Yeah, so he was all about it, you know, to the end of the, like, whatever we had to do.

Speaker 23 And this went on.

Speaker 2 Sabrina was fuzzy on dates. She couldn't remember exactly when she met Jonathan.
2013, maybe?

Speaker 2 She also didn't remember when they started sleeping together. Six months later? Eight months?

Speaker 2 She did, however, remember quite well the night her husband discovered a large batch of love texts from Jonathan on her phone.

Speaker 23 Robert had

Speaker 23 found my phone.

Speaker 2 Tell me about that.

Speaker 23 He's like,

Speaker 23 who's this dude? And he had seen him out once once before. So he was just like, you know, what's up?

Speaker 23 How did this go down? And

Speaker 23 I just kind of told him, like, I don't know. It just happened.

Speaker 24 So did you think it would be okay, I mean, with Rob if you were seeing Jonathan because,

Speaker 24 you know, you guys kind of had that open relationship?

Speaker 23 I guess that's how I justified it.

Speaker 2 The detective, of course, already knew a lot of this. He'd heard it from a couple of members of the Wolfpack, Rob and Sabrina's Silver Lakes friends, Jason and Kelly Bernatine.

Speaker 2 According to the Bernatines, Rob was not okay with his wife having an affair with Jonathan Hearn, an outsider who was not a Wolfpack member. Rob had demanded it stop.

Speaker 23 Jonathan apologized to Robert.

Speaker 23 Talked to him, he apologized to him.

Speaker 23 And we felt bad. And Rob and I just kind of kept going.

Speaker 23 And Jonathan and I stopped talking.

Speaker 2 Then after a few months, Sabrina said, she and Jonathan resumed their affair.

Speaker 23 I just, wow, you know, I mean, we got deep.

Speaker 2 We got deep.

Speaker 24 You and Jonathan.

Speaker 17 So Rob's going to work.

Speaker 24 And then he's working overtime shifts and stuff. And Jonathan would be at your house.

Speaker 23 Sometimes.

Speaker 25 Late at night.

Speaker 24 When the kids were sleeping or whatever.

Speaker 23 Not always. Or yeah, if they were gone.

Speaker 2 After taking a short break, so a crime lab tech could come in and take a DNA sample, fingerprints, and photographs.

Speaker 2 The detective pressed Sabrina on how much she'd known about her lover's plan to murder her husband.

Speaker 24 How did Jonathan know that Rob was going to be working at Tatfree?

Speaker 23 Well, he wasn't supposed to be working at Tashvree, but I did tell him.

Speaker 2 Sabrina told the detective she typically kept Jonathan posted whenever Rob was working one of those 12-hour shifts into Hachapi

Speaker 2 because that was time she and Jonathan could possibly spend between the sheets.

Speaker 23 We were possibly going to get together, but he was doing other stuff.

Speaker 24 He told them where the shop was at, off the freeway, right there.

Speaker 23 I'll say yes.

Speaker 23 I think I've explained just like times we went up there and

Speaker 23 the building, how the building was, you know?

Speaker 24 Did you give him the address or anything?

Speaker 23 No, I don't know the address. Okay.
I just kind of explained how it is.

Speaker 2 The detective knew firsthand the railroad shop in Tehachapi was hard to find. The building wasn't marked.

Speaker 25 It's your husband's place of business. Why would you specifically tell him that it's a business rather than freeway in Techaby?

Speaker 15 That's where he works at.

Speaker 23 I don't. I don't know why.
It's crazy than that.

Speaker 23 It was in conversation. I don't know.

Speaker 20 You know what?

Speaker 24 I think if you would have never told him that, he would have never been able to find it.

Speaker 24 Because it's not on the map. You can't Google it and find it.

Speaker 2 I've tried.

Speaker 2 Sabrina had no answer for that. For 30 seconds, she said nothing.

Speaker 2 Then she hung her head and whispered.

Speaker 2 Why did I tell him?

Speaker 24 Yes or no? Did you ever suspect him of doing it?

Speaker 23 Yes, after seeing the video and conversations.

Speaker 23 could have been me, but it could have been planted. We could keep going over all these things.
They could say this, we could do this, you know, kind of thing.

Speaker 23 We went over a lot of that kind of stuff, like a lot.

Speaker 2 Sabrina insisted it had been the affair that she and Jonathan Hearn had wanted to hide all along, not murder. She said she'd never wanted to believe.
that Jonathan was a killer.

Speaker 24 It wasn't about the affair. This is about him concealing the fact that he murdered your husband and he didn't want people to find out about it.

Speaker 24 And he thought he was doing God's work because you were living a life of sin

Speaker 25 and he wanted to save you from that.

Speaker 23 What do I do now?

Speaker 24 What do you do now? You tell me everything you know.

Speaker 24 Because I'll be honest with you.

Speaker 24 What I get out of this interview is going to make a huge decision on if you ever touch and see your kids again, ever, in your entire life.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I

Speaker 23 feel like I've been just completely out of my mind.

Speaker 2 If Sabrina Lamone knew anything more about her husband's murder, she didn't say it. Even when the detective told her that Jonathan Hearn had asked to speak to him.

Speaker 24 What do you think he's going to say?

Speaker 2 That was not true, of course. It was just more bait.

Speaker 2 A last-ditch effort to chum the waters enough so that Sabrina might flip on on her lover, close the case, maybe even salvage a plea deal for herself.

Speaker 2 Sabrina did not bite.

Speaker 24 Jonathan's going to tell me that you started all this and you talked him into it.

Speaker 23 Well, that wouldn't be true.

Speaker 24 He's going to tell me exactly what happened.

Speaker 2 Well, good.

Speaker 2 After four hours of watching Sabrina's interview from the next room, Department Brass decided they'd seen enough.

Speaker 2 Another Another investigator stepped into the room and brought it all to an end.

Speaker 15 If you don't have anything for us, I think we need to get you to jail.

Speaker 24 What I need you to do is, I need you to stand up and turn around.

Speaker 2 And with that, Sabrina Lamon, mom, widow, Wolf Pack member in good standing, was handcuffed and taken back to jail.

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Speaker 2 On November 20th, the day after Sabrina's long post-arrest interview with Detective Meyer, the Kern County District Attorney charged Jonathan Hearn with first-degree murder. That done,

Speaker 2 the DA felt the case against Sabrina Lamone

Speaker 2 was weak.

Speaker 9 The supervisors felt at that point in time that we needed some follow-up investigative work done with Sabrina.

Speaker 12 Just not enough against her at that point.

Speaker 2 Correct. The problem was this.
Out of hours and hours of wiretaps, Sabrina had said nothing incriminating.

Speaker 9 No smoking gun is what we would call it.

Speaker 9 She didn't admit to being involved or committing the murder, Rob Lamont.

Speaker 2 So a few days after being picked up by Kern County deputies, Sabrina was released from custody.

Speaker 9 I actually had met with the district attorney that was assigned to the case at the time, and

Speaker 9 she had given me what we call a wish list. It's a list of items that they would wish or want us to get done.

Speaker 12 Before they can charge her.

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 13 What were those items?

Speaker 9 Obviously, they wanted the admission, which we weren't going to get.

Speaker 9 They requested we speak to the friends again and find out if anybody had had any idea that this was occurring. Speak with Jonathan's friends to assist with the investigation.

Speaker 2 Sabrina Lamone may have been out of jail, but she was not free from suspicion. Not from the law.
And certainly not from former friends like Jason and Kelly Bernatine.

Speaker 22 And so now she's back in your town,

Speaker 22 living her life.

Speaker 12 Does she know you guys cooperated?

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Do you ever talk to her?

Speaker 23 No.

Speaker 13 Are you afraid of her?

Speaker 19 No.

Speaker 13 Are you telling me the truth?

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 14 I am not afraid of her. I'm afraid of somebody else that she might talk

Speaker 14 somebody into.

Speaker 8 Not her.

Speaker 2 The American writer Thomas Wolfe famously said, you can't go home again.

Speaker 2 A lot of the time, that's certainly true.

Speaker 2 And it didn't take Sabrina Lamone long to learn her hometown had turned on her.

Speaker 4 The people out in Silverlakes were so cruel. They would try to ram her car.

Speaker 2 That's Sabrina's sister, Julie.

Speaker 4 There was one time, and I went to the little market, and one of the friends said, oh yeah, that golfer that was out in the front yard at their house, it's gone and I should have taken that.

Speaker 5 People were like vultures and wanted things of Roberts and theirs.

Speaker 4 And it was just, it was nuts.

Speaker 13 It was just crazy.

Speaker 2 It wasn't just hard for Sabrina to show her face in town. Julie says the kids were taunted and teased.
It got so bad, Sabrina decided to homeschool them. And eventually, she decided to leave town.

Speaker 4 In fact, when we put the house up for sale, we didn't even put a sign outside because she was scared of the way that everyone was being so cruel to her and turned on her.

Speaker 2 Once the house sold, Sabrina packed up the kids and moved 145 miles away to Camarillo, a small town north of Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 There, she rented a three-bedroom condo and tried to start a new life amid neighbors who knew nothing of her old one.

Speaker 2 Of course,

Speaker 2 Leaving one's past behind is not that easy. Sabrina still had Rob's family to contend with.

Speaker 2 The kids had a grandmother who wanted to see them, aunts and uncles and cousins who wanted to know what happened.

Speaker 2 What about them?

Speaker 31 She hasn't called or made any attempt to make contact with me.

Speaker 2 That's Lydia Marrero, one of Rob Lamone's sisters.

Speaker 13 If she did call, what would you say to her?

Speaker 8 What do you want to know?

Speaker 31 What's the truth? What's happened, Sabrina? What led to this?

Speaker 31 Sabrina has more answers to the questions and she just doesn't want to admit to it.

Speaker 8 Well,

Speaker 6 when we didn't hear from her, we wondered, well,

Speaker 6 she must be guilty.

Speaker 2 And that's Chris Wilson, another of Rob's sisters.

Speaker 28 If you're arrested for a crime

Speaker 6 that you didn't commit,

Speaker 6 wouldn't you reach out to your husband's family and say, I did not do this.

Speaker 6 I had no part of this.

Speaker 12 And I'm living in this nightmare.

Speaker 6 Yes. I'm here I am and they're accusing me and I did, I had no part of this.

Speaker 22 You didn't get that call?

Speaker 6 Didn't never got that call.

Speaker 28 Never.

Speaker 8 My mom never got that call.

Speaker 13 You have any contact with her after that?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 6 I have sent the kids cards for Christmas, their birthdays. We had to find her because she moved from Hellendale.

Speaker 6 So we had to find her.

Speaker 2 Lydia says the silence from Sabrina after her release spoke volumes.

Speaker 31 Her silence, her absence from everybody, you know, all that just tells me she's very much involved. And she might feel that not talking to anybody is going to prevent any implication on her.

Speaker 2 Chris Wilson says her mom was devastated by Rob's sudden death and the loss of contact with her grandchildren. Chris says her mother's health suffered a steep decline.
And in June of 2016, she died.

Speaker 2 She was only 68.

Speaker 6 She died of a broken heart.

Speaker 13 Losing her son.

Speaker 13 As a parent, I would never want to lose my child.

Speaker 28 And mom lost her only son.

Speaker 14 She just declined.

Speaker 13 His death killed her. Yes.

Speaker 28 Yes.

Speaker 13 And she, to know

Speaker 6 how that it was his wife that it was involved that was even harder for mom

Speaker 2 that's the thing about betrayal sometimes the person we should fear most is the one we trust most

Speaker 2 that was a lesson sabrina limon was about to learn the hard way

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Speaker 2 Before they'd even met, Defense Attorney Clayton Campbell had a feeling he was going to like Jonathan Hearn.

Speaker 2 He liked Jonathan's parents when they they came in to discuss the case. They believed strongly in their son's innocence, and they seemed like his kind of people.

Speaker 2 That's because they were devout Christians, just like Clayton. They'd told him Jonathan had been homeschooled, just like Clayton.

Speaker 10 I'm a bit older than Jonathan, probably

Speaker 10 13 years or so older than him.

Speaker 2 That's Clayton Campbell, Jonathan Hearn's defense attorney.

Speaker 10 I figured we had something in common and I could relate to him in that respect. I also kind of knew,

Speaker 10 you know, how to relate to his family a little bit.

Speaker 2 The things Jonathan was accused of were nothing short of terrible. Murdering the husband of a woman he was having an affair with.
Awful.

Speaker 2 Well, the more Clayton Campbell dug into the case and examined the evidence, the better he liked his chances at trial.

Speaker 10 I thought, hey, we have an actual shot at developing a defense. And of course, we ended up with a much better shot than I thought once we started digging into the reports.

Speaker 2 After all, what did the prosecution have? An affair? Security camera video? A motorcycle and some guns?

Speaker 2 Well, Campbell thought the security video was too blurry to identify anybody. And the motorcycle?

Speaker 2 Well, there must be hundreds of motorcycles in Southern California like the one Jonathan owned.

Speaker 2 As for the two handguns that were registered to Jonathan, the prosecutor couldn't prove either of them was the murder weapon.

Speaker 10 They tested all of Jonathan's firearms. Not one of them matched the bullets that were used to kill Robert.

Speaker 2 That was encouraging.

Speaker 12 However, there was one big problem.

Speaker 22 Clayton Campbell's client wanted to confess his sins right from the jump.

Speaker 2 Just like King David did in that Bible story involving Bathsheba.

Speaker 10 His reason for that is that he actually has a conscience. He knows what he did was wrong.
And he felt that maintaining a not guilty plea was dishonest.

Speaker 10 And that what he should do is he shouldn't make the fact that he killed someone worse by lying about it and maintaining a lie.

Speaker 2 For a lot of defense attorneys, that might have been an easy call. Let the client cop to murder, collect the fee, and call it a day.
Next?

Speaker 2 Well, not Clayton Campbell. To him, this posed a moral dilemma.

Speaker 10 I have the same religious moral viewpoint that he has, but I have these professional obligations as his attorney. I'm supposed to protect him.

Speaker 10 It's very difficult to find some kind of a way out where we satisfy both his conscience, where he admits wrongdoing, and at the same time protect him from life without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 2 The lawyer prayed with his client. He pleaded with Jonathan to not confess his guilt to anyone, not even his family.

Speaker 2 So, for two years, Jonathan Hearn sat in a jail cell, presumably speaking only to God about his guilty conscience.

Speaker 2 And perhaps his prayers weren't answered, because he did receive forgiveness from an unlikely quarter. That was Rob Lamone's family.

Speaker 6 I have forgiven him for what he has done.

Speaker 2 That's Rob's Rob's sister, Chris Wilson.

Speaker 13 How can you do that?

Speaker 6 Because my faith,

Speaker 6 with my faith, I forgive him because

Speaker 28 God forgave me.

Speaker 28 I

Speaker 6 truly forgive him.

Speaker 12 But God forgave you. You didn't kill anybody.

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 2 But that's

Speaker 28 that's where I am.

Speaker 2 As the days and weeks ticked down to Jonathan's trial date, Clayton Campbell poured over the lists of evidence that prosecutors intended to produce for a jury.

Speaker 2 It was then that he noticed a lot of evidence he expected to see there was missing.

Speaker 10 There were things at Jonathan's house that I was aware of that they didn't have.

Speaker 2 Jonathan had not only told his lawyer details of the affair with Sabrina, and details about the murder of her husband. He'd also told where he'd hidden key evidence.

Speaker 2 For instance, shortly after the shooting, Jonathan told the lawyer how he had replaced the barrel on the murder weapon with a new one.

Speaker 2 The actual barrel that fired the fatal shots, Jonathan told his lawyer, was hidden in a chicken coop behind his house, along with a homemade silencer he'd fashioned out of a flashlight.

Speaker 2 Clayton Campbell saw the makings of a deal.

Speaker 10 My hope was, okay, we'd give them all that information. Then they couldn't find it, never use it against him.
If they decide to pull the rug out from under us and back out on the deal.

Speaker 9 We actually were prepared to go to trial on Jonathan starting January of 2017.

Speaker 2 That's lead detective Randall Meyer.

Speaker 9 Jonathan's attorney approached the district attorney and spoke with him and said that Jonathan could provide information that would lead to the possible prosecution of Sabrina Lamon.

Speaker 2 After years of professing his undying love for Sabrina and praying for God's help in keeping their secret, Jonathan Hearn prepared to turn on her.

Speaker 2 God's purpose, it seemed, had just become Jonathan's proffer. On the 3rd of January 2017, talks between the defense and the prosecution team began at the Sheriff's Department.

Speaker 2 For Jonathan Hearn, those meetings must have seemed heaven-sent.

Speaker 2 Because finally, he had an opportunity to confess his sins, which included at least two of the seven deadliest.

Speaker 10 Well, that first meeting,

Speaker 10 I got the feeling that Jonathan felt that this was more of his

Speaker 10 chance to basically get it off his chest and confess. And so it did scare me a little bit that

Speaker 10 he was more focused on his own guilt at that meeting than on sharing all the information they needed about her.

Speaker 2 Jonathan told prosecutors and investigators he and Sabrina spent months plotting to kill Rob Lamone. In fact, he said they had once conspired to poison him.

Speaker 33 I did

Speaker 22 plan the poisoning of Robert with some necessary assistance from Sabrina.

Speaker 2 That's the voice of Jonathan Hearn.

Speaker 33 I needed to know what kind of food he would be sure to eat.

Speaker 33 She She provided me a couple suggestions.

Speaker 33 We discussed the location where this should take place. We agreed upon Tehachapi

Speaker 33 to send him some food laced with poison.

Speaker 2 According to Jonathan, they settled on putting a fatal dose of arsenic in some banana pudding, Rob's favorite.

Speaker 2 Jonathan told investigators he had ordered the arsenic online, calculated the fatal dosage by weight, and then tested it on a dog.

Speaker 22 I experimented with that on a neighbor dog who had caused me considerable

Speaker 33 issues in the past and put the arsenic on some meat and gave it to the dog to see what would happen.

Speaker 2 Jonathan said he did not see the dog again after that.

Speaker 2 So a few days later, he made a family-sized batch of banana pudding with nillow wafers for Sabrina's family.

Speaker 2 Then, in a smaller Tupperware bowl, he said he put a single portion, and he put the arsenic in that.

Speaker 2 Jonathan said he delivered the two pudding containers to Sabrina's house one day when Rob was at work.

Speaker 33 She told me that she put the smaller portion for Robert, put it in his lunch the next day, whatever his next shift was, out to Hatch B.

Speaker 12 You guys didn't know anything about the poisoning until Jonathan gave that to you.

Speaker 13 That's correct.

Speaker 2 Detective Randall Meyer.

Speaker 12 They actually ended up giving it to Rob.

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 12 And then at the last minute, Sabrina got cold feet and told Rob not to eat it.

Speaker 9 Yes, he said they had conversations and were worried about law enforcement looking at their phone records. And so he had talked to Sabrina and they felt that they would

Speaker 9 ditch the plan for

Speaker 9 now.

Speaker 2 To back up his story, Jonathan told investigators that he stashed the leftover arsenic in the garage attached to his house, hidden in an empty paint can.

Speaker 10 I made sure we included everything that we were aware of that could possibly be discovered and harmful to Jonathan.

Speaker 2 That was a key condition of the plea deal, says Clayton Campbell. Any evidence Jonathan helped investigators find could not be used against him.

Speaker 10 All the stuff that was hidden, we wanted to make sure they got all that stuff so that

Speaker 10 it couldn't be used against Jonathan even if a deal wasn't reached.

Speaker 2 That night, Clayton Campbell went home and prayed that investigators would find everything Jonathan had told them was hidden in and around his home.

Speaker 2 After all, a couple of years had passed since Jonathan lived there.

Speaker 10 I don't know whether the paint buckets are still there, they thrown away. Who knows? And I'd seen that garage.

Speaker 10 It's like a lot of garages. There's a lot of stuff in there.
And sure enough, late at night, it must have been 10 or 11 in the evening,

Speaker 10 I hear back from Detective Meyer that they found it.

Speaker 2 With the blessing of Rob Lamone's family, the Kern County Prosecutor's Office told Clayton Campbell they would make a deal with Jonathan Hearn.

Speaker 2 In exchange for Jonathan's full cooperation in the case against Sabrina Lamone,

Speaker 2 The district attorney would let Jonathan plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Speaker 2 Instead of a possible life without parole for murder, Jonathan would receive a predetermined sentence of 25 years and four months in prison.

Speaker 2 Clayton Campbell felt good about that. Jonathan would be a free man around the time he turned 50.

Speaker 2 Considering what he'd been facing, that was good. Now,

Speaker 2 Campbell had to tell Jonathan's parents their son had just confessed to murder. murder.

Speaker 10 That was probably the hardest conversation I've ever had with a client's family,

Speaker 10 you know, is to tell these people who were very hopeful that Jonathan was innocent and that he would be vindicated, that he, in fact, was guilty and that he was admitting that and making a deal with the prosecutor.

Speaker 10 That was, you know, as you can imagine, difficult for them to hear.

Speaker 2 While Clayton Campbell was meeting with the Hearn family, Detective Randall Meyer and a team of investigators were just turning onto Ventura Boulevard in Camarillo.

Speaker 2 They were on their way to arrest Sabrina Lamone

Speaker 2 again.

Speaker 2 Coming up next on Deadly Mirage.

Speaker 11 My wife and I and Robin Sabrina would engage in sexual activities, but it was not white-swapping. Good morning, sir.
Can you tell us your name and spell your first and last name for the record?

Speaker 33 Yes, sir. My name is Jonathan Hearn.
Last name spelled H-E-A-R-N.

Speaker 13 She was nowhere involved in the murder of her husband. It was a deal that he cut to get himself out from underneath, being convicted in life without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 2 Deadly Mirage is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Tim Beacham is the producer.
Brian Drew, Kelly Laudine, and Marshall Hausfeld are audio editors. Carson Cummins is associate producer.

Speaker 2 Adam Gorfane is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer.
And Liz Cole is senior executive producer.

Speaker 2 From NBC News Audio, Sound Mixing by Katie Lau, Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.