Deadly Mirage - Ep. 3: Tickling the Wire

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Speaker 3 Their eyes met in a busy grocery aisle at Costco. She was handing out tasty samples, maybe some crackers with a new savory spread.

Speaker 3 She did not know when he approached that this stranger wearing a firefighter's t-shirt was also walking into her private life. And he?

Speaker 3 Well, he never suspected the oversized role she would soon be playing in his.

Speaker 3 It was a routine encounter, like thousands of others, unremarkable in every way, except for this.

Speaker 3 That fleeting moment in the grocery aisle and the events that followed had lifelong ramifications for both of them and for everyone who knew them.

Speaker 6 It was devastating.

Speaker 3 Absolutely devastating. I don't know.
I couldn't. couldn't believe it.

Speaker 3 So was this fixed or fated, ordered, and ordained? If she'd been off that day, if he'd turned down a different aisle, would any of this have happened?

Speaker 3 That is unknowable. What is known is that the lives they led leading up to that moment gave no hint of what would come after it.

Speaker 7 I'm fascinated in relationships that end in the ultimate worst possible way.

Speaker 3 And I'm also fascinated by the secrets that lurk underneath.

Speaker 3 In this episode, you'll hear about the lives of that misaligned pair in the Costco Isle from those who knew them best and loved them most.

Speaker 6 Brina is such a positive, amazing person.

Speaker 8 Jonathan was always so thoughtful.

Speaker 10 We were best friends.

Speaker 3 You'll hear the bedroom secrets of a bedroom community on the high desert.

Speaker 9 You know, if that's what a couple agrees with in their marriage, then that's their business.

Speaker 6 He'd show them pictures, naked pictures of the women out in Silver Lakes on his phone.

Speaker 3 And you will hear that couple's earnest prayers for God's guidance as investigators listened in on their private phone calls.

Speaker 12 Helps to demand out about the right words. Please give her calmness and clarity of thought

Speaker 12 to not give too much information.

Speaker 3 I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Deadly Mirage, a podcast from Dateline.

Speaker 3 Episode 3.

Speaker 3 Tickling the Wire

Speaker 3 For weeks after the murder of Rob Lamone, Detective Randall Meyer had chased shadows.

Speaker 3 Then, thanks to a tip from the murdered man's friend, Jason Bernatine, Detective Meyer now knew several things he had not known before.

Speaker 3 He knew that Rob Lamone's wife, Sabrina, had been having an affair with a young firefighter named Jonathan Hearn.

Speaker 3 He knew the murder victim had had words with Hearn.

Speaker 3 And he knew that Sabrina Lamone had lied to him about all of that.

Speaker 13 It obviously caused some suspicion for me.

Speaker 3 She had an affair. Her husband found out about it.
It caused some

Speaker 3 sounds like some significant stress in that marriage yes

Speaker 3 the detective did not know how those lives collided or why rob lamone wound up dead on a shop floor in tehachapi in the months to come the friends and family of all three filled in the blanks

Speaker 3 the backstory on rob and sabrina began in the late 90s

Speaker 12 when Sabrina met Rob at a backyard barbecue in Prescott, Arizona.

Speaker 3 Rob would have been 21 back then. Sabrina? Just 18.

Speaker 3 Old photographs show them the way they were.

Speaker 3 Rob, a thick-shouldered construction worker with a shaved head. Sabrina, willowy and blonde, with an incandescent smile.

Speaker 3 Rob liked dirt bikes. And Sabrina?

Speaker 3 Well, she liked whatever Rob liked.

Speaker 3 There's a photo of them from those days. Rob is sitting astride a motorbike, his bald head gleaming in the sun.
Sabrina sitting right behind him, grinning from ear to ear.

Speaker 3 It was after one of those days spent careening across the sage-dotted desert outside Prescott that Rob's family met Sabrina.

Speaker 6 He brought Sabrina home and introduced us to all of us.

Speaker 3 Lydia Marrero, one of Rob's four older sisters.

Speaker 6 They just got back from riding dirt bikes, and so she was kind of embarrassed.

Speaker 6 It wasn't a real formal meeting. He was very friendly.

Speaker 11 He brought her to our home because, you know, he was living with us and introduced us.

Speaker 3 And that's the voice of Chris Wilson, another sister. Nice girl.

Speaker 11 And he said, I think I'm going to marry her.

Speaker 3 He said, I think I'm going to marry her. And you thought great or mistake? I thought great.

Speaker 11 She was nice.

Speaker 3 She loved my brother, and I could tell she did.

Speaker 3 A cursory review of the biographical details would have told the detective that Sabrina and Rob were married in August of 2000.

Speaker 3 Soon after, they moved to California, where Rob had gotten a job at the sprawling Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Rail Yard in Barstow.

Speaker 3 The happy couple settled in the Silver Lake section of Helendale to be near her parents. Robert, he doted on her.
He did mostly everything that needed to be done, and he loved her.

Speaker 11 I could just see by the way he treated her.

Speaker 3 In 2003, the Lamones added a baby boy to their family. They named him Robbie.
Three years later, they welcomed a daughter. They named her Liana.

Speaker 6 She was just

Speaker 6 such an amazing mom.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 6 Robbie and Liana always came first to her.

Speaker 3 Always.

Speaker 6 That's all she cares about.

Speaker 3 Those were the years when the Lamone home on Strawberry Lane was filled with the sounds of kids and cartoons. The clack and clatter of plastic toys.

Speaker 3 Situation normal.

Speaker 3 Then in 2008, something unseen and undetectable to others, occurred in the Lamone home. How it happened is a mystery.
Only Rob and Sabrina know why it happened.

Speaker 3 It was then that Rob and Sabrina decided to open their marriage and to enter into a sexual relationship with another couple.

Speaker 9 I didn't know Sabrina and Roberts life in depth and Helen Dell.

Speaker 3 That's Rob's sister Chris again.

Speaker 2 Nobody called me.

Speaker 3 And when I had heard that,

Speaker 9 I thought,

Speaker 9 you know, if that's what a couple agrees with in their marriage, then that's their business.

Speaker 10 Just something that she told me about, I guess.

Speaker 3 Kelly Bernatine says she heard about the Lamones' open marriage from Sabrina.

Speaker 10 It was a couple that they had done that with. It wasn't like they had this big group.

Speaker 3 Kelly says Sabrina told her their relationship with the other couple only lasted a few months. and ended when the other couple split up.

Speaker 3 However, Sabrina's sister, Julie Cordova, says she suspected that little Foresome was not a one-off.

Speaker 3 Rob would even tell my husband things.

Speaker 6 Like he'd show him pictures, naked pictures of the women out in Silver Lakes

Speaker 6 on his phone.

Speaker 3 That certainly could suggest that he wasn't ashamed of it. Here's what we're doing.

Speaker 14 Almost like they're showing you vacation pictures.

Speaker 3 Yes, yes.

Speaker 6 You know, I just thought about this. There was a close friend of theirs that came out to visit.

Speaker 3 She knew what was going on or saw what was going on.

Speaker 6 She went to Robert and she said, this needs to stop now.

Speaker 3 And he said, oh, we're just having fun.

Speaker 3 The detective did not know much about Jonathan Hearn. the third player in this particular love triangle.

Speaker 3 But a little back of the envelope math revealed Hearn had been young, just 18 years old in 2008. That was the year Sabrina and Rob Lamone opened their marriage.

Speaker 3 According to Rob Lamone's friend Jason Bernatine, Hearn had been a smooth-cheeked kid who liked to hang out at firehouses.

Speaker 3 He'd been one of several junior volunteers in the San Bernardino Youth Fire Explorer program back then.

Speaker 3 Despite that, Bernatine told the detective that seasoned firefighters could tell Jonathan was a cut above.

Speaker 3 He was thoughtful, well-spoken, and already taking college classes. He said he wanted to be a paramedic when he got older, maybe even an arson investigator.

Speaker 3 And as anyone in the firehouse who'd spent 10 minutes talking with the kid could tell,

Speaker 3 Jonathan Hearn had the brains to be whatever he wanted.

Speaker 7 So I used to always tell Jonathan, like, you're kind of wasting your life becoming a fireman, you could become much more. You could be a doctor, lawyer.

Speaker 3 That's Kelly Bernatine's husband, Jason, a San Bernardino County fireman and a close friend of Rob Lamones.

Speaker 7 Everyone else saw that in him.

Speaker 7 And he would just say, oh, you know, no, this is what I've always wanted to do.

Speaker 3 Jason is a little fuzzy on when he first met Jonathan Hearn. But he does remember working a couple of dozen shifts with him at different firehouses over the years.

Speaker 3 Jason says he was proud of the way the kid's career had taken shape.

Speaker 7 He was an explorer, and then he became a paramedic and then the apprentice and then he eventually got hired with Redlands Fire Department.

Speaker 3 Jonathan Hearn had clearly been a young man in a hurry and the more the detective learned about him, the clearer that picture became.

Speaker 3 Born the second of six children, Hearn had been raised in a devoutly religious home where church attendance and Bible study were mandatory. Like his siblings, he had been homeschooled.

Speaker 8 My brother, Jonathan, was homeschooled until the time when he was about 12, and then he was concurrently enrolled in college, and he graduated with a double associates and high school around the same time.

Speaker 3 That's Nicole Hearn, Jonathan's older sister.

Speaker 3 When I spoke with her years later, she told me her brother had been so busy with school and work in those days that he never seemed to have time for girls.

Speaker 8 He flirted around with girls and he went on dates with them, but I

Speaker 8 was never privy to anything serious with him. I had never heard of him having a girlfriend, a steady girlfriend.

Speaker 3 No, as far as anyone could tell, Jonathan Hearn's first steady girlfriend had been Sabrina Lamone, a married woman more than 10 years his senior.

Speaker 3 He'd been 22 that summer day in 2012 when he went to the Costco in Victorville to pick up some supplies for his firehouse.

Speaker 3 At some point while he was wandering through the cavernous store, he rounded a corner and saw a pretty blonde woman handing out samples.

Speaker 3 Their eyes met as he pushed the shopping cart in her direction, and an invitingly brilliant smile flashed across her face.

Speaker 3 Jonathan Hearn stopped to chat.

Speaker 3 Almost two years to the day after that fateful meeting in Costco, the Silver Lakes Wolf Pack gathered to celebrate the 38th birthday of one of its most beloved members, Rob Lamone.

Speaker 3 There was a big cake with candles and a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday.

Speaker 3 Happy birthday to you

Speaker 3 and many more.

Speaker 3 As usual, Kelly Bernatine was there to videotape the occasion for posterity. You look at that video, what do you say?

Speaker 10 I just hear her saying, After singing happy birthday and many more.

Speaker 10 You know, you always add that on to

Speaker 10 the song.

Speaker 3 It seems ironic now, of course. How could any of them have known that Rob Lamone was celebrating his final birthday?

Speaker 12 Thank you, everybody. I love you guys.
We love you, Rob.

Speaker 12 There ain't no other wrap them up.

Speaker 10 We just look at him, you know, and he says, I love you guys. Like, he always, he always says, I love you guys.

Speaker 3 Three days later, Rob Lamone was dead, and the detective found himself relying on those friends to catch his killer.

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Speaker 3 It was on a September morning in 2014, a month after Rob Lamone's murder, when Kelly Bernatine noticed a strange motorcycle parked in the driveway at the Lamone house.

Speaker 3 The bike had the word forgiven stenciled on the gas tank alongside a cross.

Speaker 3 Kelly did not know who the bike belonged to, but she had her suspicions. She wrote down the license number and gave it to Detective Meyer.

Speaker 3 Turns out it was registered to Jonathan Hearn. the man the detective suspected of killing Rob Lamone.

Speaker 3 Detective Meyer.

Speaker 13 After checking Jonathan's registration for that motorcycle, we went to the Amaha website, checked out some other motorcycles similar in the same year, and was able to look at those motorcycles compared to the video that we captured from Goodrick Road, and they were very similar.

Speaker 3 Encouraging? Yes.

Speaker 3 The detective had now identified a man who'd been sleeping with the murder victim's wife, who owned a motorcycle similar to the one caught on camera near the scene of the crime.

Speaker 3 And that wasn't all he knew. Jonathan Hearn also owned guns.

Speaker 13 The firearms that were registered to Jonathan matched the same or similar caliber bullet that killed Rob Lamon.

Speaker 3 Big bullet, big gun. Yes.

Speaker 13 He had a couple.45 caliber firearms that were registered to him.

Speaker 3 The detective was now certain. Jonathan Hearn was the killer he had been looking for.
If the man on the motorcycle was Jonathan Hearn,

Speaker 3 then he was a long way from home. And at some point, the detective figured he'd have had to stop for gas.

Speaker 13 Highway 58 and Highway 395. There's a couple of gas stations located on the corner there.

Speaker 3 How far from the scene of the murder?

Speaker 13 About an hour's drive.

Speaker 3 Since that would have been the quickest and most direct route to Jonathan Hearn's home, Detective Meyer asked a fellow investigator to visit those gas stations and look for security camera footage of a man on a motorcycle.

Speaker 3 Since the motorcyclist in Tehachapi was last seen leaving the industrial park at 5.48,

Speaker 3 the detective guessed the rider would have likely stopped for gas in Kramer Junction around 6.48 or so.

Speaker 3 It didn't take long for the other investigator to report back.

Speaker 3 Bingo!

Speaker 3 Security footage from a Kramer Junction gas station called the Pilot Travel Center showed a motorcyclist wearing a black helmet and backpack pulling up to a pump at 651.

Speaker 13 Same stature, knees, very high on the gas tank, wearing a backpack, which the subject was wearing a backpack on Gooderick Road.

Speaker 13 So at that point in time, we believe same motorcycle, same subject, but with a clothing change.

Speaker 3 So this person stopped somewhere to change clothes. Yes.
Once again, the security camera was unable to provide a clear picture of the motorcycle's license plate.

Speaker 3 It did record the rider walking into the gas station's mini-mart.

Speaker 3 That sounds like somebody who knows that that whole transaction is being recorded on video and wants to make sure that you can't identify him.

Speaker 13 Yes, that was very suspicious.

Speaker 3 After prepaying with cash at the register, The rider goes outside and without ever taking off his helmet, refills his tank and rides away.

Speaker 3 I'm sort of hearing the word search warrant here.

Speaker 13 Yes, definitely from the information we gathered, we started looking into phone records.

Speaker 3 Up until then, the detective had found a lot of probable, but not much cause. The phone records of Sabrina Lamone and Jonathan Hearn changed all that.

Speaker 3 Using an Excel spreadsheet, investigators were able to chart all of the calls and texts between the two since the day they first met in that aisle at Costco two years earlier.

Speaker 3 There were thousands of contacts.

Speaker 13 They had mobile conversations via telephone calls and text messages.

Speaker 3 Clear evidence of an affair, to be sure.

Speaker 3 But now the detective wondered if those phone records might also be evidence of a murder plot.

Speaker 3 As the detective studied two years' worth worth of calls and contacts, he noticed a sudden break in the pattern that looked suspicious.

Speaker 3 In the spring of 2014, just three months before Rob Lamone's murder, those communications between Jonathan and Sabrina abruptly stopped.

Speaker 13 Sometime in April, about the 25th of April of 2014, those phone calls stopped and a new phone showed up on Jonathan Hearn's phone records.

Speaker 3 When you run that number, who's it come back to?

Speaker 13 It came back to no subscriber information found.

Speaker 14 Meaning it's a pay-as-you-go phone, a burner.

Speaker 3 Possibly, yes. The kind of phone that somebody would use if they were either committing a crime or having an extramarital affair.
Yes, yes.

Speaker 3 The number of calls and texts from Jonathan Hearn's phone to and from that new number was overwhelming. 7,000 of them from April through October of 2014.

Speaker 13 There's conversations daily via either either phone or text message. Every once in a while, you'd have a day that there was nothing, but most of the dates there was some sort of conversation going on.

Speaker 3 In the weeks leading up to Rob Lamone's murder, those phone logs showed nearly 2,000 text messages between the two numbers.

Speaker 3 The detective suspected Sabrina Lamone was the person using the burner phone to communicate with Jonathan Hearn, but there seemed to be only one way to know for sure.

Speaker 3 The investigators asked a judge for permission to wiretap those phones. Difficult to get that warrant?

Speaker 13 Very difficult. Courts take that very seriously, and so it does take a substantial amount of effort to get that warrant.

Speaker 3 In addition to showing a judge there was reason to believe Jonathan Hearn had conspired with Sabrina Lamon to kill her husband, they also argued that a conspiracy to cover up that crime was at that very moment ongoing.

Speaker 13 Early November of 2014, I was able to get a wiretap authorized and so we were able to go up on the phones and listen to their conversations.

Speaker 3 Monitoring those phones 24-7 would be a huge job, too big for the eight officers who made up the Kern County Robbery Homicide Unit.

Speaker 3 So they enlisted the aid of other departments and agencies and borrowed the DEA's wire room in downtown Bakersfield. I'm guessing your bosses at some point said to you, you're killing us here.

Speaker 13 It is very expensive to conduct an operation like that. There's lots of manpower.

Speaker 3 You start actual surveillance on Jonathan. Yes.

Speaker 13 Just prior to the wiretap, we had surveillance out there and they were typically on them while they were moving during the day. Once the wiretap was initiated, the surveillance is 24 hours a day.

Speaker 3 The guys in the wire room did not have to wait long for their monitoring screens to light up.

Speaker 3 Just as expected, that call was Sabrina Lamone's burner phone to Jonathan Hearn's cell.

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Speaker 3 Two things were immediately clear from that very first wire-tapped call.

Speaker 3 Sabrina Lamone and Jonathan Hearn were as in love as moonstruck teenagers.

Speaker 12 I'd love you. I'd love you.
I'd love you to the end of the world, I love you. I love you, God.

Speaker 3 And in the weeks after Rob Lamon met his maker, his wife and her lover were spending a lot of time praying for guidance and forgiveness.

Speaker 12 Hi, God.

Speaker 12 We weren't on our knees for a reason, God.

Speaker 12 We have been dirtbags. We've been sinners.

Speaker 12 We've been selfish. We've sinned.
We continue and continue and continue to sin, God,

Speaker 12 that you are a Savior.

Speaker 12 God, you've given us a gift not only of salvation, but you've given Sabrina and I a purpose.

Speaker 3 In practical terms, their purpose seemed to include spending as much time as possible together.

Speaker 3 Just weeks after her husband's death, Sabrina was including Jonathan in outings with the kids.

Speaker 3 When eight-year-old Liana and 11-year-old Robbie were in school and work schedules allowed, they'd get together at Jonathan's place for sex.

Speaker 3 When the kids were in bed asleep, Jonathan dropped by for sleepovers.

Speaker 3 And when they could not physically be together, they were on the phone. At times, Jonathan and Sabrina seemed to suspect their calls were being monitored.

Speaker 12 There's a clicking on the phone. Do you hear it?

Speaker 3 However, they did not do anything about it. They didn't get new numbers, nor did they stop using that burner phone.
No, they talked and talked about mundane things, kids, work, family.

Speaker 3 Mostly, they talked about God and the importance of keeping their affair a secret.

Speaker 12 We have a purpose. We have a purpose.
And I know that God knows our hearts.

Speaker 12 I just pray, and that's my continual prayer to him, is that

Speaker 12 our purpose is not ruined by

Speaker 12 people hearing of

Speaker 12 our wrongdoing, of our affair.

Speaker 3 The one thing they didn't talk about was Rob Lamone's killing. At least, not on the phone.

Speaker 12 It's so crazy. And, you know,

Speaker 12 I mean, we'll talk in person.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 3 In an effort to get them talking about the case, Detective Meyer began providing Sabrina with little updates on how the investigation was going. Sometimes the things he told her were true.

Speaker 3 More often, they were not. Inside law enforcement, provoking conversations between people you're surveilling is known as tickling the wire.

Speaker 3 Over the next week, The detective would become very adept at tickling.

Speaker 3 The first attempt came on a Sunday morning, November 9th. The detective sent Sabrina a text asking her to give him a call.

Speaker 3 It worked like a charm. Almost immediately after he sent that text, one of the monitoring screens in the wire room lit up.

Speaker 3 Mo?

Speaker 12 Hey, I just got a text message from Detective Meyer and he asked me to call him.

Speaker 12 So I'm going to.

Speaker 12 Okay.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 I just wanted you to be praying. And I'm going to pray.
And

Speaker 12 call him.

Speaker 12 God, please help us. God, please help us to be wise.
Help

Speaker 12 Sabrina to have the right words.

Speaker 3 Their prayer was briefly interrupted. When Sabrina's daughter, Liana, walked into the room where her mother was on the phone.

Speaker 12 You're going to have to give me a couple minutes, okay, Lee? Okay, good job.

Speaker 3 Once the little girl had been sent away to watch TV,

Speaker 3 Jonathan resumed praying. God, please help her.
Please give us wisdom in Jesus' name. Amen.

Speaker 12 Amen. I love you.
Okay, I love you, TV. Bye, baby.

Speaker 3 Then Sabrina picked up her home phone and called the detective.

Speaker 12 Hi, good morning, Detective Meyer. Hey, Sabrina, how are you?

Speaker 12 Oh,

Speaker 12 I'm okay.

Speaker 3 The detective told Sabrina that although his investigation had hit a dead end, he was going to re-release the security camera video of the man on the motorcycle to the local media in hopes of generating new calls to the tip line.

Speaker 12 I know you guys probably don't get our news channels there, but I just wanted to give you a warning just in case you see it on the news. Okay.

Speaker 3 Was it true? It wasn't. No matter.
The ploy had the desired effect.

Speaker 3 After hanging up with the detective, Sabrina immediately called Jonathan as investigators listened in.

Speaker 12 Hey, everything's fine, I guess, that

Speaker 12 he just said that, you know, they don't have anything and that they're re-releasing the same video. I don't have a few any questions.

Speaker 12 No questions at all.

Speaker 12 He just said they're at a dead end.

Speaker 3 The next day, Monday, November 10th, the detective decided to give the old wire another coochie-coo nudge. He sent Sabrina another text that said, call me.

Speaker 12 Detective Meyer. Hi, Detective Meyer.
Sabrina Lamon.

Speaker 12 Sabrina, how's it going? Oh, what's up? Got some exciting news. Okay, tell me.
Crime Lab just sent me an email and said they got a good DNA example from what they believe was a sweat drop.

Speaker 12 It's the best news you've gotten so far. Really? Oh, my gosh.
That's great.

Speaker 3 Good news, if that were true. Except it was not.

Speaker 3 Then the detective asked Sabrina if she would be available to come to Bakersfield for another in-person interview.

Speaker 12 So I'm wondering if maybe you'd be available maybe Wednesday and I can get you to come over here and we can get the interview knocked out. Come to Bakersfield? Yeah.

Speaker 12 Okay.

Speaker 12 Are you going to be free Wednesday?

Speaker 12 Sure.

Speaker 3 Sabrina clearly found the whole thing a little unsettling. After months of hearing very little from the detective, She was suddenly hearing from him every day.
What did it all mean?

Speaker 3 Jonathan Hearn had his hands full when Sabrina called that Monday night to ask him about it. It was dinner time at the firehouse, and Jonathan was on kitchen duty.
Hi, D.

Speaker 12 Hi, my beautiful. I'm so sorry.
We're just still getting dinner for the other guys.

Speaker 12 Oh,

Speaker 12 I know your dates are so crazy. I'm sorry.
Oh, no, don't feel bad.

Speaker 12 I miss you so much.

Speaker 3 Sabrina told Jonathan she'd talked with Detective Meyer, and he wanted her to come to Bakersfield on Wednesday for another face-to-face.

Speaker 3 Jonathan didn't like the sound of that any more than Sabrina did.

Speaker 12 Guess I want to probably talk any person.

Speaker 12 It almost seems like suspecting like you or something or like us, you know, so I started to think like they might even be, you know, tapping into phone calls.

Speaker 3 This development definitely called for a meeting in person.

Speaker 3 The problem was, Jonathan was on the clock and couldn't break away for an in-person chat with Sabrina before her Wednesday meeting with the detective.

Speaker 12 Gosh, I'm so bummed that I'm

Speaker 12 on overtime today, and then I'm so bummed that I'm working tomorrow.

Speaker 3 Bummed? Oh, yes.

Speaker 3 Jonathan knew enough about police work from his arson investigation classes that he was certain the detective intended to bamboozle Sabrina into saying something incriminating.

Speaker 3 You know, officers are allowed to use ruse, meaning they're allowed to,

Speaker 3 if you want to get information, you're allowed to lie to get information. So it seemed like the whole thing of like, hey, I need you to call me.

Speaker 3 I'm putting in the paper again. I have nothing was like

Speaker 3 probably a ruse to get you to like relax and like open up, you know.

Speaker 12 No, no. I mean, I, yeah.

Speaker 12 Like, honestly, I feel like that's kind of what he's doing is like so he's bringing you out of your comfort zone and into his comfort zone and so you're like in his in his domain like oh yeah he was really nice right now obviously it's like okay you're driving to bakersfield to give final statements

Speaker 12 um

Speaker 12 why didn't you guys get all the final statements before

Speaker 12 you know

Speaker 3 Jonathan assumed the detective had been looking at their phone records and knew about the affair. It was those records, he told Sabrina, that had captured the detective's attention.

Speaker 12 You and I

Speaker 12 have an affair, you know, and it's like, well,

Speaker 12 of course they're going to look into that.

Speaker 3 This next meeting with the detective was going to be high stakes, and Sabrina needed to be prepped. The only solution, Jonathan thought, was delay.

Speaker 3 Tomorrow I'll just call him and say, hey, you know what? Stuff has come up. Family and NACA issues and stuff.
I'm not going to be able to make Wednesday. Could we reschedule for like Friday?

Speaker 3 You know, and just kind of like,

Speaker 3 feel him out. Like,

Speaker 12 is he jerking you around? Because he hasn't been straightforward, it doesn't seem like.

Speaker 3 The next day, Sabrina called the detective and postponed the interview.

Speaker 3 Later, when Jonathan and Sabrina finally met face to face to prepare, Jonathan quite possibly reminded her of something he'd said earlier on the phone.

Speaker 12 They need a lot of information, is what this is telling me. Is they have big holes that they need to fill.

Speaker 3 Yes, Jonathan suspected the detective would be fishing for something he did not have.

Speaker 3 So, with Sabrina still on the line, he appealed to heaven for help in keeping it that way.

Speaker 12 Helps to remand out of all the right words. Please give her calmness and clarity of thought

Speaker 12 to not give too much information

Speaker 3 coming up next on Deadly Mirage.

Speaker 12 I've been reading Psalms.

Speaker 12 The Psalms are so good. The Psalms are so good

Speaker 12 because David is a lot like you and I, Sabrina.

Speaker 3 You ever heard anybody use a story out of the Bible to justify having an affair and killing the other person's spouse?

Speaker 13 That was the first.

Speaker 6 So do you guys have an open relationship?

Speaker 12 No? I just heard some rumors out there.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I mean it. I know how rumors go.
Sure. And I know that that's probably how we were

Speaker 12 viewed by New Disney.

Speaker 3 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 3 Adam Gorfane is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer.
And Liz Cole is senior executive producer.

Speaker 3 From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Katie Lau, Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

Speaker 15 Hey, this is Jeff Lewis from Radio Andy. Live and uncensored.
Catch me talking with my friends about my latest obsessions, relationship issues, and bodily ailments.

Speaker 15 With that kind of drama that seems to follow me, you never know what's going to happen.

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