Kathleen Dorsett

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Kathleen Dorsett and her parents were about as respectable as a middle-class family could get.

Kathleen was an elementary school school teacher.

Kathleen's mother had been a member of the Board of Education.

Tom Grissett was the guy who would want to be your neighbor next door.

And the family was especially close, too.

They had this interesting bond.

They did lots of things together.

But then a sudden disappearance.

This is not like them.

And a mysterious fire.

And maybe a car

would lead to a gruesome discovery.

There was a body in the trunk.

And leave the authorities wondering just how far would one family go to protect their own.

She and her father had hatched this idea.

The hairs on the back of my neck just went up.

That was the furthest thing that I would ever expect.

Long Branch, New Jersey, August 18th, 2010.

It was a little before dawn in this fading beach town an hour south of Newark.

Long Branch is blue-collar middle-class workers with their modest homes, nice homes, but not affluent.

Although that Wednesday morning at around 4.15, a local resident dialed 911 and reported something burning four blocks off the beach.

And maybe a car.

Moments later, another nearby resident also called in the fire, confirming that it was a car.

Is anybody in the car can you tell?

No, I don't think so.

You don't think so?

The car looks empty.

Police and firefighters were on the scene within minutes.

The initial incident was a fully involved car fire.

And when the firefighters extinguished the flames that gutted the car, what they found was startling.

There was a body in the trunk of the car.

It was very badly burned.

So badly burned, in fact, that any further identification would require either dental records or DNA analysis.

We weren't sure if it was a male, female, or who it was.

A mystery victim, a burned-out car, and a lonely beach road.

Considering this was New Jersey, the cops at the scene couldn't help but wonder, were they dealing with a mob hit?

It looked like the fireman lit on top of the body.

But who was the mysterious victim whose identity the killer had taken such pains to conceal?

And why had they done?

As it turned out, the answers would involve a crime family of sorts.

But the key to unraveling the mystery wasn't a mafia kingpin, it was a 36-year-old elementary school teacher named Kathleen Dorset.

Born in 1974, Kathleen had a comfortable childhood growing up in Ocean Township, New Jersey.

It's in a pretty suburban area.

Ocean Township is really kind of a nice place to live.

It's close to the shore.

Kathleen's father, Thomas Dorsett, was a modestly successful local businessman.

Tom Dorsett started a refrigeration business in the mid-80s, was involved in community affairs, involved with church,

everybody's best friend, the guy you would want to be your neighbor next door.

The model for the American middle class, man.

And if anything, Kathleen's mother, Leslie, was even more of a role model than her father.

Kathleen's mother had been a member of the Board of Education.

She also had been a teacher.

Leslie also took a very active role in raising Kathleen and her brother.

Leslie was very involved in her kids' lives, and the same thing with Thomas.

It was close-knit family, her, her brother, and her parents.

Kathleen did eventually move out on her own, but she didn't go far.

After college, she followed her mother's career path and took a job with the Ocean Township School System.

Kathleen was a elementary school teacher.

And by her early 30s, she had settled into a middle-class life that appeared to be as successful as her parents.

But there was still something missing.

She wanted to be married.

She looked forward to being married and having a family.

It was just that she hadn't found what she felt was the right person.

That is, until she met Stephen Moore.

Six years older than Kathleen, Stephen wasn't a New Jersey native.

Stephen's family lived in California.

And growing up just south of L.A.

in Huntington Beach, Stephen had a typical Southern California childhood.

He liked to ride bike, skateboard, listen to music.

But his real passion was inline skating.

He did competitive skating and then he won a bronze medal in the national championships.

Although when he wasn't competing, the skater took a very laid-back approach to life.

Stephen was pretty easygoing.

He never had a set job.

He always found work.

He did construction.

He worked at a sound studio.

He did whatever whatever he could to make money.

Stephen took an equally laid-back approach to relationships, too.

We tease him a lot about, you know, hey, when are you going to get married?

And hey, you know, when are you going to find somebody?

But his friend's good-natured teasing stopped once he met Kathleen.

When he met Kathleen, he called me up and I was very happy for him.

He finally met somebody.

In fact, the 39-year-old hadn't just met someone.

He was engaged.

I was very, very happy that, wow, he's going to get married.

Kathleen and Stephen married in 2007 and naturally they settled close to her mom and dad.

When she and Stephen married, they moved into a house across the street from her parents.

Their parents, they owned that house.

Not only did that mean a great deal on the rent, it was also quite convenient for Kathleen, who remained as close to her parents as ever.

Kathleen was always around her family.

Her family was always there.

She was always at their house.

And they did lots of things together.

Even if there were times when Stephen wished for a little more privacy.

They would just stop by.

They would just come in unannounced and would walk in the house.

And that felt really odd to him.

He felt really uncomfortable with them just coming over unannounced.

Still, despite Stephen's occasional annoyance with his in-laws, the marriage appeared to be a success.

They were very happy, very touchy-feely, kissing, you know, they're in love.

And it was great to see.

And in the spring of 2008, Stephen suddenly had reason to appreciate having Kathleen's parents so close.

She was pregnant.

For Kathleen, it was the fulfillment of all her dreams.

She wanted to have a baby, and Stephen couldn't have been happier.

He seemed so excited that he was going to have a baby and get that all going in his life.

But then, once their little girl was born in December of 2008, things changed.

About a month or two, three months into it, we'd talk on the phone.

He kind of would say that, you know, things were just a little different.

For one thing, the baby had produced a profound shift in Kathleen's relationship with Stephen.

She didn't want anything really to do with him.

The intimacy, the hanging out, the stuff I saw, them kissing and holding hands and all that, that was all gone.

At first, his friends advised Stephen to be patient.

I thought, okay, a new mom, done.

But by the fall of 2009, almost a year after the birth of their baby girl, Stephen decided he'd been patient enough.

He could not live in this environment anymore.

That October, he moved out of the home he'd shared with Kathleen and in with his mother, who lived nearby.

He was saying they were having problems and that they were probably going to get a divorce.

And I go, well, you know, if you're not happy, you're not happy.

Why be married if you're not happy anymore?

Their two-year marriage was over, but Stephen did want to be a part of his daughter's life.

Stephen wanted to be a father, and he didn't want to be just...

a two-day weekend dad.

You know, he wanted to be a part of his child's life.

And it appeared that everyone was amenable to that.

In fact, the terms of the divorce were extremely generous to Stephen.

The impetus behind the divorce settlement appeared to be Kathleen's parents' retirement plan.

They were building a house in Florida.

They wanted Kathleen and the baby to come with them.

And since Stephen wanted to remain a part of his daughter's life, Kathleen's parents had promised to help him move to Florida too.

The Dorsettes agreed to pay him first room and board for a period of time until he got himself on the ground and got settled.

As long as he kept it civil and kept the peace as much as he could on his side, that he'd still be able to see his child.

Stephen agreed to the terms.

The divorce was finalized in June, and Kathleen's parents put their house up for sale while the contractors put the finishing touches on their new home in Florida.

In September, they were supposed to move there.

But their plans would be delayed because on August 16th, shortly after he kissed his little girl goodbye and placed her in Kathleen's arms, Stephen Moore would vanish.

Coming up, a co-worker reports Stephen missing.

The last outgoing call that he had made was to Kathleen Dorset.

And the investigators discover the shocking secret behind his divorce.

He wasn't allowed to hold his daughter for the first six months.

When 42-year-old Stephen Moore was late for work at the Honda dealership in Eatontown, New Jersey on the morning of August 16th, 2010, it didn't take long for his coworkers to notice.

He always showed up early.

He was a very good employee.

In fact, one of Stephen's coworkers became concerned enough to check up on him.

So he looked up Stephen's emergency contact in the company files, a number that hadn't been updated since his divorce from Kathleen Dorset two months earlier.

Kathleen told him that the last time she had seen Stephen was approximately 7.30 a.m.

when he was dropping off their daughter.

Which meant he should have been at work by then.

So after waiting a little while longer with still no sign of Stephen, his co-workers decided to call the police.

They were the ones who reported him missing.

Stephen Moore, reliable guy that always shows up to work every day.

This is not like him.

There's something wrong.

It was a fairly routine report, but the missing persons investigators did follow up with a phone call to Kathleen.

Kathleen confirmed the fact that he had dropped off their child.

Kathleen explained that he had left for work right after the dropping off their child.

The investigators also did a quick search of Stephen's financial and phone records.

Not that they revealed much.

The last outgoing call that he had made was at 6.54 a.m.

that morning, August 16th, to a cell phone number that came back to Kathleen Dorset.

But did that simply confirm what Kathleen told the investigators?

That Stephen had dropped off their daughter before he disappeared?

Or did the timing suggest that she had something to do with his disappearance?

Hoping for a little insight, the investigators contacted several of Stephen's family and friends, asking for details about the couple's recent divorce.

And what they heard was disturbing.

According to Stephen's friends and family, the marriage had started out fine.

He was very, very happy that he had met somebody and that was it.

You know, he found somebody, the love of his life.

But once the baby was born, it had become clear that the little girl was the love of Kathleen's life, not Stephen.

She was just more focused on the baby, and that was it.

That much was normal for a new mother, but Stephen's friends and family claimed that Kathleen had taken it to the extreme.

She didn't trust him by himself with the babe.

You know, she just

took control of the whole thing.

Literally.

He wasn't allowed to hold his daughter after her birth for the first six months.

And according to his friends, the couple's marriage fell apart because Stephen refused to be shut out of his daughter's life.

Stephen decided that if he was going to have a relationship with his daughter, he was going to have to leave Kathleen.

Although when he filed for divorce, Stephen's friends said the initial result was a bitter struggle for custody.

She wanted that baby to herself.

However, the courts had temporarily awarded Stephen partial custody and visitation rights pending final resolution of the divorce.

Stephen was not willing to give up the visitation or the custody of his daughter.

Faced with the court's decision, Kathleen had little choice but to allow Stephen to spend time with his daughter.

But according to friends, that didn't mean she was willing to relinquish control.

She was always making phone calls to him when he had custody of her.

What are you doing?

What are you feeding her?

Wanted that control and would never leave him alone about that and would write out a list of you have to do X, Y, and Z and at different times.

But then in the spring of 2010, friends said that Kathleen's attitude had appeared to soften.

In fact, planning to move to Florida with her parents, they'd made Stephen a generous offer so that he could remain close to his daughter.

Part of the agreement was that the Dorsets would help him find a place to live and would help him financially for six months.

Friends told the investigators that they had warned Stephen not to agree.

My fear of them going down there would be that they wouldn't live up to their promises.

But while Stephen's friends worried that Kathleen and her parents might back out on their promises, they never considered the other possibility that he might not live to collect on them.

It was early on the morning of August 18th, less than 48 hours after Stephen disappeared, when the Long Branch, New Jersey police received a 911 call about a car on fire.

Is anybody in the car?

Can you tell?

No, I don't think so.

But when firefighters extinguished the flames,

human remains were located in the trunk of a vehicle.

But while the body was too badly burned to allow easy identification, the car wasn't.

The front of the vehicle, as far as fire damage, was pretty much untouched, so that the front license plate was visible.

And when the police ran the plates?

The hit returned on it, indicating that that vehicle was involved in a missing person investigation.

Specifically, the car was registered to Stephen Moore's mother.

He was reported to be operating that vehicle at the time that he went missing.

The investigators immediately contacted Kathleen.

We've notified her that we found her ex-mother-in-law's car and that there was remains of a body in the back of it.

And how did Kathleen take the news?

It didn't seem to phase her.

Kathleen's nonchalant response immediately made the investigators suspicious.

A rational person who would probably start putting two and two together that this is going to be my ex-husband in the trunk.

But there was no reaction to that.

Does she answer our questions pretty matter-of-factly?

And she more or less repeated what she'd already told the missing persons investigators, that she'd last seen Stephen when he dropped off their daughter two days earlier.

She pretty much said that it was the normal drop-off.

She wasn't the only one who said so either.

While the investigators were questioning Kathleen, her father walked over from his house across the street and told the investigators that he'd witnessed the drop-off, too.

He told us that he was in the kitchen of his residence and he observed Stephen Moore operating his mother, Evelyn Moore's vehicle.

Where Stephen went and how his mother's car had ended up on fire in Long Branch, neither Kathleen nor her father could say.

But Kathleen did have one helpful piece of information for the investigators.

I did ask her about dental records, knowing that we needed to identify the human remains, and she identified Stephen's dentist.

The investigators obtained Stephen's records from his dentist.

And the next day, August 19th, the medical examiner's office confirmed what they had already suspected.

The body in the back of the car that was burned was the remains of Stephen Moore.

The other thing the autopsy revealed wasn't entirely a surprise either.

There was trauma to his head and there was some damage to his throat area.

He was killed previous to the fire.

And the investigators figured they had a pretty good idea just who had bludgeoned and strangled Stephen before setting his body on fire.

On Friday, August 20th, when the investigators spoke to Kathleen at her parents' Ocean Township home and told her that it was definitely Stephen's charred corpse that had been pulled from his mother's car four days earlier.

The news didn't seem to phase her.

It was like I just had placed a lunch order.

Even if you have a relationship and that marriage goes south and you guys end up in a divorce, you'd still think you have some sort of care concern for that other person and you'd have some reaction emotionally.

And she didn't.

However, Kathleen was just as willing to cooperate as ever.

When the investigators asked permission to search the house and property she and Stephen rented from her parents, she not only agreed, she accompanied them across the street and played the perfect hostess.

She offered us a drink.

She offered us food, said that we could use her restroom.

She was accommodating.

Meanwhile, in the backyard, the investigators noticed something that aroused their curiosity.

A freshly mulched flowerbed near Kathleen's driveway.

Typically, if you were going to mulch, you would remove the weeds.

But this flowerbedded area just had the mulch thrown on top, and you can see weeds just popped out here and there.

That caused some great concern for the detectives because they thought that maybe there was something there.

And when one of the investigators slipped on gloves and began rooting around under the mulch, his hands came out red.

There was enough blood in there to leave blood on the glove.

And the investigators were pretty sure it was Stevens, especially after they tested the area with luminol and cadaver dogs.

Once the cadaver dog came on scene, there was a positive indication for human blood.

Once the cadaver dog confirmed that it was human blood in the flower bed, the investigators brought Kathleen in for a formal interview.

We do attempt to speak to her in regard to the scene that we find, but she was not willing to.

This is when she begins to not cooperate with us.

She decides that she's now going to have an attorney present.

The investigators stopped the interview and let Kathleen go home, but she would still need that attorney.

Because on Monday afternoon, August 23rd, the detectives returned to Kathleen's house with an arrest warrant.

When we went to arrest her, both Thomas Dorsett and Leslie Dorset were at the residence along with Kathleen's child.

Once again, Kathleen had little reaction to the news.

But as the investigators placed his daughter in handcuffs, Thomas Dorset did do something.

He removed his wallet from the rear of his pants pocket and he handed them over to his wife.

From a police standpoint, people do that when they're about to be placed under arrest.

Thomas's reaction puzzled the investigators.

We were not there for Thomas Dorset.

We were only there for Kathleen.

But even as they placed Kathleen in the back of the patrol car, the investigators couldn't help but wonder: why would Kathleen's father expect to be arrested?

Coming up, the investigators find stunning evidence against Kathleen's father.

The surveillance video depicts Thomas Dorset driving Evelyn Moore's car.

But will they be able to make an arrest?

He was unconscious with a white hose coming out of his mouth.

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On Monday, August 23rd, 2010, it had been five days since Kathleen Dorsett's ex-husband, Stephen Moore, had been found dead in the back of a burned-out car in Long Branch, New Jersey.

The last time he was seen was by Kathleen Dorset.

And the authorities were convinced that Kathleen really was the last person who'd seen Stephen alive.

They had just arrested her for his murder.

Stephen was battling child custody issues with Kathleen.

The custody fight wasn't the only reason Kathleen was under arrest either.

A search of Kathleen's backyard had revealed a possible crime scene.

Human blood was located in this mulched area towards the back of the house.

And when the investigators questioned Kathleen's next-door neighbor, they uncovered further evidence suggesting Stephen had been killed in Kathleen's backyard.

According to the neighbor, she'd just gotten up on Monday morning, August 16th, when she was startled by a strange noise from next door.

She described as an animal-like screaming.

The neighbor told the investigators that she'd run to the window to see what was wrong and called Kathleen, who was standing in the driveway.

She asked her if she was okay.

And Kathleen's response.

Kathleen Dorset screams at her, telling her to shut her window or to mind your own business.

What was going on in Kathleen's backyard?

Between the screaming and the blood in the flowerbed, the investigators figured they had a pretty good idea.

And the neighbor's story put Kathleen at the scene of the crime, too.

But had she been alone?

Earlier, when they slipped the handcuffs on his daughter, the authorities couldn't help but notice that her father, Thomas Dorset, had a curious reaction to Kathleen's arrest.

Thomas begins to empty out his pockets, his wallet, his phone, and is handing them to his his wife Leslie, assuming that he was going to be arrested next.

At the time, the investigators didn't have probable cause to arrest Thomas Dorset, but they did start looking more closely at the 64-year-old refrigeration technician as a possible suspect.

To see what his movements were and who he was communicating with and things of that nature.

Naturally, considering the fact that his daughter had just been arrested, one of the first people Thomas Dorset contacted was an attorney.

Tom called me late that evening, told me that Kathleen had been arrested, so I made arrangements to meet with him the following morning at my office at 8 o'clock to discuss Kathleen's situation.

And when the attorney drove to his office on Tuesday morning, it appeared that Kathleen's father was already waiting for him.

I could see a truck parked in my lot.

I figured that was his.

In fact, it looked as if Kathleen's father had been waiting a while.

He's appeared to be sleeping because his head was leaning, his body was leaning against the window.

Only when he got closer, the attorney realized that Kathleen's father wasn't exactly asleep.

Thomas Drissed had attempted to commit suicide.

He was unconscious with a white tube coming out of his mouth.

The other end of the hose was attached to a canister of refrigerant gas.

He was trying to commit suicide through the use of like a Freon inhalant.

I started knocking on the window, tried to awaken him.

He was unresponsive.

And when that failed, the attorney dialed 911.

A marked police unit from Neptune Township arrived and he broke the window.

They called the EMTs and they took him away.

He was in very serious condition.

In fact, Kathleen's father was still unconscious when he arrived at the emergency room.

And at that point, it was uncertain whether or not he was going to survive.

But why would he try and commit suicide?

For the investigators, it was all too clear.

My assumption of it was that he was trying to take the blame of the death of Stephen Moore and exonerate the rest of his family.

However, did that mean he was actually involved?

Or was he merely trying to sacrifice himself for his daughter's sake?

The answer would hinge on a phone call the investigators received later that same day.

The caller owned a popular seafood restaurant in Long Branch, not far from where Stephen's body had been found.

He is also friends with Thomas Dorset.

The restaurant owner told the investigators he had become concerned after seeing news reports about Kathleen's arrest.

The local news media, radio, print media, had released information about Kathleen's arrest the night before.

However, the restaurant owner wasn't just concerned because Thomas Dorset was a friend.

He told the investigators that he had been prompted to contact them because Kathleen's father had called him a few days earlier with an odd request concerning the security cameras outside his restaurant.

He and Thomas had a conversation about Thomas buying some of his video surveillance equipment to get rid of it or destroy it to replace it with new equipment.

Specifically, according to the restaurant owner, Kathleen's dad wanted to get his hands on the camera that covered the dumpster behind the restaurant.

Why would he do this?

Unless there was something on there that he didn't want authorities to see.

According to the restaurant owner, Thomas Dorset had admitted as much, although he claimed it had to do with his business servicing refrigeration systems.

He said he was illegally dumping something and he didn't want to get caught.

Or had he really been dumping evidence connected to Stephen's murder?

Either way, the investigators would get a chance to find out because the restaurant owner told them he'd turned down Thomas's strange request.

He was able to provide us with the actual video surveillance.

And when the investigators reviewed the surveillance footage, they could hardly believe their luck.

Because the tape from August 16th showed that just a few hours after Stephen Moore had been reported missing, Kathleen's father had driven up to the dumpster behind his friend's restaurant.

And guess whose car he was driving?

The surveillance video depicts Thomas Dorsett driving Evelyn Moore's car, which was the car that Stephen Moore was in possession of that day to drop his daughter off.

And he wasn't alone either.

Directly behind him, following him, is Kathleen Dorset.

Maybe not even a minute.

And then they leave.

I don't know whether they thought it was too busy over there or whatever the reason it was.

That wasn't the end of the video, though.

Because less than an hour later, Thomas Dorset was back, this time in his work van.

He's throwing stuff into the dumpster.

And contrary to what he had told his friend, the restaurant owner, there was nothing specifically illegal about them.

He's taking items out of that van that appear to be cleanup supplies.

So there's rubber-made containers, there's garbage cans, a rope, looks like a 4x4, there's a bottle of bleach, stuff that certainly could have been used cleaning up the scene.

Along with the fact that he'd been captured on tape driving Stephen's car, the same car his badly burned body had been found in two days later, it was more than enough to convince the authorities that Kathleen's father was an accomplice in the murder.

Obviously, this information really helped us.

And now Thomas is going to get arrested as well.

In fact, they arrested Thomas Dorset on the afternoon of his suicide attempt.

Not long after the doctors determined that his life was no longer in danger.

We arrested him while he was in the hospital.

Coming up, the investigators uncover another murder plot.

Kathleen Dorset wanted this murder for hire carried out.

And once again, it turns out to be a family affair.

I was shocked.

That was the furthest thing that I would ever expect from her.

By December of 2010, Kathleen Dorset sat in the Monmouth County, New Jersey jail, held on $1.5 million bail.

The 36-year-old was charged with murdering her ex-husband, Stephen Moore, over custody of the couple's two-year-old daughter.

She wanted Stephen out of her life, and he wasn't going.

He wasn't going to leave because he loved his daughter desperately.

Stephen apparently wasn't the only father who would do anything for his daughter though.

Kathleen's father, 64-year-old Thomas Dorsett, was also in jail charged with Stephen's murder.

When Stephen and Kathleen started having their problems, Tom's parental instinct was to protect his daughter.

The news that Kathleen, an elementary school teacher, and her father, a respected heating and air contractor, had allegedly conspired to kill someone stunned Ocean Township, the quiet middle-class community that the Dorsets called home.

People have had divorce cases and custody issues, and grandparents have had issues over that, but to actually have it go that far of a step to murder, I think most people were shocked about that.

But that December, just days before Christmas, the citizens of Ocean Township were in for another surprise.

On December 20th, the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office received a phone call from an investigator in neighboring Ocean County.

That law enforcement officer had received a phone call from an inmate at the Monmouth County Correctional Institute.

The inmate claimed that she knew Kathleen, too.

They had become friends in the jail.

And according to the inmate, she and Kathleen had become so close that her new friend had more or less confessed that she and her father had killed Stephen.

Kathleen talked about things that they did wrong, that they should have cleaned up the driveway a little bit better.

However, the inmate said that Kathleen's alleged confession wasn't what prompted her to contact the authorities.

Instead, she claimed that it was because her new friend had approached her a few days earlier, livid that the courts had just awarded Stephen's mother temporary custody of their daughter.

When Stephen was killed and was removed by the Dorset family, his family stepped up.

And if what the inmate told the authorities was true, Kathleen was determined to keep that from happening.

Kathleen was soliciting to get someone to kill Stephen Morris' mother

because she had custody of Stephen and Kathleen's baby.

But were the inmate's incredible accusations too good to be true?

She was, as it turns out, is kind of a professional snitch.

However, since Kathleen Kathleen was in jail, the investigators were able to at least check on some of her fellow inmates' claims.

The investigative team were able to recover telephone conversations between Kathleen Dorset and her mother.

Also, we were able to recover letters that were to be mailed out of the Correctional Institute addressed to Leslie Dorset.

And the contents of those letters and phone calls were explosive.

This one letter in particular talked about the specifics as to how Kathleen Dorset wanted this murder for hire carried out.

Kathleen tells Leslie Dorset to write down certain information.

One, to make it a natural death.

Two, to write down the address where Evelyn Moore was located.

Even more alarming, the letters revealed that Kathleen somehow learned of Evelyn Moore's new address, the safe house she had secretly relocated to after taking custody of her granddaughter.

The hairs on the back of my neck just went up.

This was a location that we believed was a safe and secure location that she could care for Stephen's child, and we went into full action to try to make sure that we could stop this.

Luckily, the letters revealed that there was still a chance.

As best the authorities could tell, Kathleen's mother had yet to find a hitman.

So the investigators decided to provide her with one.

We have an undercover officer act as this quote-unquote hitman.

Kathleen's fellow inmate, the one who initially contacted the authorities about the murder for hire plot, arranged a meeting between Kathleen's mother and the bogus hitman.

This meeting was at the Sevier Square Mall in Ocean Township.

and was all at the direction of Kathleen Dorset.

And on January 10th, 2011, Kathleen's mother, Leslie, did exactly as she had been told.

The undercover officer met with Leslie Dorset in a food court inside the mall.

At the meeting, she passed along her daughter's detailed instructions and a down payment.

Leslie Dorsett provided the undercover with $1,000.

However, there was one thing that Leslie didn't give the hitman.

Leslie Dorset was supposed to give the hitman a photograph.

She forgot it.

So the investigative team decided to continue surveillance on her and see what she was going to do.

And while the investigators tailed her, Kathleen's mother left the mall, drove home briefly, and was on her way back when she was finally pulled over by police.

There was an envelope that was located inside her vehicle with a picture of Evelyn Moore with Evelyn's name written on the back of it.

Leslie Dorset was placed under arrest for attempted murder.

I was shocked because I had obviously dealt with Leslie now over the past few months and that was the furthest thing that I would ever expect from her.

She was a housewife, a mother, and Tom's wife of 40 some odd years.

In fact, the Dorset's family attorney was so shocked by Leslie's arrest that he was prepared to fight it.

The court conducted a hearing on this in anticipation of a possible entrapment defense.

And that's when he saw the evidence against both mother and daughter.

They had them right handed, and they had Leslie pretty much dead to right in that case with a conviction for attempted murder almost a certainty.

But Leslie wasn't the one the authorities really wanted.

They were looking for Kathleen and for Tom.

Kathleen Dorsett just, you know, manipulated this whole thing.

She was the director.

She was the dictator.

And now that Kathleen's mother was in jail, facing a possible 30 years without parole, the prosecutors approached Kathleen's father, Thomas Dorset, and told him they would be willing to agree to a much lighter sentence if he and Kathleen would agree to plead guilty to Stephen's murder.

They had some leverage now because they were well aware that Tom wasn't going to let his wife spend the rest of her life in jail.

However, Leslie's shot at freedom would come at a stiff price.

The prosecutor was very firm on the position that he didn't want Tom or Kathleen ever to get out of jail.

Coming up, Kathleen's father finally makes a confession.

He hit him across the head when Steve went down.

But will he sacrifice himself to try and save her?

And her father had hatched this idea.

On August 8th, 2013, 39-year-old Kathleen Dorsett and her parents, Thomas and Leslie Dorsett, appeared in the Monmouth County, New Jersey Superior Court.

Kathleen and her 66-year-old father were both charged with the August 2010 murder of Kathleen's ex-husband, Stephen Moore.

They had this interesting bond between the two of them that is ultimately the reason why Kathleen was able to solicit Thomas to commit this murder.

68-year-old Leslie Dorset faced attempted murder charges, stemming from a separate plot to kill Stephen's mother.

I was very shocked when I found out that they were involved in this.

They seemed normal, just a normal family.

And they were involved.

All three of the Dorsettes were in court that morning to plead guilty.

Kathleen admitted that she and her father had hatched this idea.

In a tearful statement to the court, Kathleen admitted that rather than share custody with Stephen, she decided that he had to die.

Stephen Ware was nothing more than a guy that wanted to be with his daughter.

And for whatever reason,

that was grounds for his wife to kill him.

And the family's generous offer to set Stephen up in Florida.

Kathleen said it was all a hoax to put her ex-husband off guard.

The Dorsets never even made any effort to find a place for Stephen to live down there.

And then Kathleen explained how on the morning of August 16th, 2010, she'd lured Stephen to his death.

Kathleen told him she had some tools there that she wanted him to get rid of from the basement and the only way to get there was to go into the backyard.

Only when Stephen came around the corner of the house, Thomas Dorset was waiting for him, armed with a heavy object.

He hit him across the head with it and Steven went down.

And once Stephen was down, Thomas strangled his former son-in-law until he stopped moving.

They put him in the trunk of his mother's car, and Thomas drove off with it.

After her plea, the judge sentenced Kathleen to a total of 58 years in prison.

She was the one behind all this.

Kathleen's mother, Leslie, received seven years for her part in trying to kill Stephen's mother.

The state, I think, recognized that Leslie was a pawn, being, you know, played by her daughter.

Thomas Dorset, meanwhile, was sentenced to 45 years for killing Stephen after explaining that he'd only done it for his daughter.

To this day, he continues to believe that his daughter is the best daughter that any father could ever have.

Kathleen and Stephen's daughter remains in the custody of his family.

Kathleen Dorsett will be eligible for parole in 2057.

She will be 83 years old.

Thomas Dorsett will will be eligible for parole in 2040 at the age of 83.

Leslie Dorsett was released on parole in 2016 at the age of 71.

She currently lives in Manchester, New Jersey.

Did you see that?

That was incredible.

I love this.

It's all a light-hearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid.

We're your hosts, I'm Alina Urquhart, and I'm Ash Kelly.

And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy.

The stories we cover are well researched.

Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group.

With a touch of humor.

Shout out to her.

Shout out to all my therapists out the years.

There's been like eight of them.

A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing.

That motherfer is not real.

And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the Way Back Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid.

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