Part of the Plan
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Tonight on Dateline... I cried the whole time. I know that a lot of parents lose their kids. Why would anybody shoot him?

Somebody had killed a United States serviceman. There was blood smeared on different walls and on a vehicle inside. He was a great father. He was always looking out for you. We were kind of thinking that they maybe had like a loan shark situation. Like they had borrowed money from someone. We live in a gambling town. Is he a gambler?

She was the first one to come in and really explain how it all had happened. It was chilling. It was almost more than you could bear as a human being. I can't imagine what he went through. He served his country and then was cut down in the prime of his life. This story needs to be told.

A haunting plot, a heinous crime, and a heartbreaking question. Why? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with Part of the Plan. Every bad guy that's ever lived is coming through Vegas at one point in his career.

As a homicide detective for Las Vegas Metro PD in Nevada, Todd Williams saw it all. Whether you're a plumber or a policeman, you want to go where the work is, and there's lots of good police work here in Las Vegas. That's certainly one way to look at it. Williams did the work for 30 years, never once sharing his cases with the media. I've always refused these. How come?

I just didn't feel like murder was entertainment or should be entertainment. That's the best way I can describe it. So I've got my reasons for doing this now. Reasons that perhaps will make sense once you hear the whole story. Which began for Todd Williams on a cold December night in 2010. In a family home on a quiet street 13 miles and a world away from the Las Vegas Strip.

where horror had just come to call. The woman's husband was Nathan Payette, a U.S. Air Force airman.

Okay.

The operator helped the woman perform CPR. With the couple's four children just a few feet away. Michelle continued until the paramedics finally arrived and rushed Nathan to the hospital.

They kept him alive, but it wasn't good. He'd been shot multiple times. Michelle pulled herself together and called Nathan's family, who lived thousands of miles away in Guam. Her father-in-law picked up the phone, and then he called his wife, Nathan's mom, Carmelita Payette. I was just getting ready to get off work. I'm sorry. You know, I was just like, what? And I told my co-workers I had to leave.

So on my way home, I managed to call Michelle. She was hysterical. And I told her, I said, you know, you have to pray that, you know, he lives through this. It was too late for prayers. By 1249 a.m., Nathan Payette was dead. He was only 28 years old. Within the hour, Detective Williams and his partner, Detective Laura Anderson, were called to this new community called Mountain's Edge.

It was out in the middle of nowhere. Very remote location. Wouldn't expect a lot of violent crime there. Exactly. It was a quiet suburban neighborhood. Not that night. When I got there, the garage door was open and the lights were on in the garage. And when you walked in the garage, you could see a large amount of blood deep into the garage around a weight bench, a bench press. Mm-hmm.

There was blood smeared on different walls and on a vehicle inside. And the trail of blood that led into the house and ended at a bloody military uniform left behind on the floor. And that struck me that somebody had killed a United States serviceman. The first responding officers filled them in. Looked like maybe a carjacking gone bad, they said. Usually information we're given initially, most of the time is wrong.

So we take that with a grain of salt. Interesting. Okay. Nathan's cell phone and car keys and wallet appeared to be untouched. Nothing that we could tell was taken. Nothing from the garage. The vehicle was obviously not taken. It felt more deliberate simply because of the area we were in, the time of the night it took place. It just seemed more purposeful than just a carjacking. Nathan Pyatt was targeted, must have been. But by whom? So Detective Williams set out to canvass the neighbors.

What did they see or hear? It was kind of like a bang, bang, bang, bang.

Somebody shot U.S. Air Force Airman Nathan Payette inside his own garage, just feet away from his wife, his children. Neighbors had called it in, just seconds after they heard gunfire. What did it do?

And specifically they saw the car start, the lights came on like most cars do automatically, and then the car lights went off and the car sped away. So that gave us the impression that's something we needed to pay attention to. Yeah, that would make you perk up, all right. Yes. Meanwhile, more than 6,000 miles away in Guam, the Payette family waited for updates from the mainland. So I called the hospital and said,

They couldn't really give me much information at the time. By the time Carmelita finally got hold of Michelle, the news was as bad as news could be. Nathan didn't make it. They couldn't save him. My heart didn't break. It was shattered. She gave birth to that young man. She had to know what happened to him. Had to. How did he get shot? Why would anybody shoot him? We knew that he wasn't involved in drugs.

You know, who would want to actually do something to him like that? So many questions. The same questions Detectives Williams and Anderson were asking Nathan's wife, Michelle, in their patrol car in the hours after Nathan was killed. Along with me is Detective T. Williams. Michelle told them Nathan worked a graveyard shift at Nellis Air Force Base to accommodate Michelle's work and school schedule. But that day, Michelle said she left work early. She wasn't feeling well.

and they all piled onto the living room couch, Michelle, Nathan, and the kids, and fell asleep. Until Michelle woke up. It was past 11 p.m. I woke him up because I looked at the time and I told him he's late. So he was rushing. He went upstairs and he got in the shower and did his thing. He got dressed and then he walked downstairs.

and made his way to the garage to put his boots on before getting into his truck. It was parked in the driveway. That was his routine. I hear the garage door open, so I lay down, you know, next to my daughter on the couch. And then I hear two bangs, and I didn't go outside. Oh, God, excuse me. It's okay. Because my kids got startled, so I just stayed there.

And then I hear the door open to get into the house, and he just walks in, and he just drops. Okay. That is when Michelle called 911. About an hour later, Nathan was pronounced dead.

Now, I'm going to ask you some questions that are kind of sensitive in nature and they're personal, okay? But it's something that we have to do for our investigation, okay? What's the status of your marriage? Do you have a good marriage with him? It's good, I mean... Although they didn't see each other much during the week, said Michelle, they made sure the weekends were spent together as a family. I love you! Wow!

His digital footprint proved it. Even Michelle, she's bedridden now. As detectives were finding out. She's like, forget this place. Does he have any kind of habits? What are his vices? And the only thing we could find was that he was a dedicated family man, loved his family, and there was nothing but pictures of his wife and kids on his phone. He was just a good guy. He was just a good man. And when Detective Anderson asked Michelle about any extramarital affairs...

Nathan had been faithful, she said. And so had she. In fact, she said they promised that if it ever crossed either of their minds, they'd talk about it first. We've always told each other that if, you know, we're making each other unhappy or, you know, we feel that, you know, something's not right,

And if you want to go out and venture off, then just let each other know. She and Nathan were high school sweethearts. They'd been married for eight years. The only thing she was guilty of was being flirtatious. Is there anybody specific you flirted with? No, there's nobody specific. Michelle did say that she and Nathan were struggling financially. You know, we were behind on our bills.

Michelle said she didn't believe Nathan owed anyone money. But some members of Nathan's family weren't so sure. It was pretty evident, you know, that they were struggling financially. We looked in the pantry, we looked in the refrigerator. It was pretty empty. There was almost no food. Within hours of hearing her son Nathan was dead, Carmelita and her husband were on the way to the airport. We needed to be there.

to help Michelle with the kids, because we figured she'd be really totally out of it. And then they sat on that airplane from Guam to Vegas, hours and hours and hours, helpless in their grief. I cried the whole time. How could you not? Yeah, I know that a lot of parents lose their kids. You know, a lot of people have gone through the same pain, but it's something you don't want to even wish, even upon your worst enemy.

Nathan was Carmelita's youngest son, her baby boy, who everyone adored. He loved to have fun. He loved to joke. When Nathan's older brother, Eric, got married, he chose Nathan as his best man. Well, it really wasn't a hard choice. He and I were really close growing up. You made a little speech or something, didn't you? Uh, yeah.

I'm really happy for you guys. I'm going to say, make each other laugh. You guys will be all right. He definitely wasn't somebody with a lot of words. So it was a pretty short speech. Those are often the best. Yeah, exactly. And it was really just about celebrating us and...

Really, what I really loved about it too was, you know, he truly welcomed Veronica, you know, to the family. So here's to Veronica and Veronica. I'm happy for you guys. I love you guys. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Something that was ingrained in Nathan as a native Guamanian, or Chamorro. Cheers.

who was born and raised in Guam, where family is everything. They just always want to be together. It's amazing and it's beautiful, and I'm super fortunate to have had that as a part of my life. Eric's wife, Veronica, felt a connection with Nathan and his wife, Michelle, almost right away. I'm a baby. I'm a baby.

By then, Nathan had joined the military and moved to the mainland, where he and Michelle seemed to be thriving as a couple. They actually had a really good balance of taking care of each other and picking up where the other one just couldn't or trying even harder, providing more, whatever it was. Like, they were good about that relationship.

In 2007, Nathan was assigned to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. There, Nathan and Michelle and their children were finally able to lay down some roots. He did make a lot of new friends. He also was very instrumental in gathering a lot of the Chamorros. On Sundays, they would go to this park, and that ended up being a regular thing where they would get together there, barbecue, and the kids would play, like, softball, basketball.

And just before he was deployed to Iraq in 2009, Nathan and Michelle bought a brand new home in Mountain's Edge. Nice house? Oh yeah, it was really nice. It was a nice upgrade for them, for sure. It had a nice large kitchen, just enough room for the family to get together. So when Nathan returned from deployment, so many gatherings were in order.

But that first Thanksgiving back was going to be at Eric and Veronica's place in San Diego, California, a drive of more than 300 miles from Las Vegas. You know, Nathan called me up and he said, you know, I'm sorry, we're not going to be able to come down this time. We just can't afford it. And so...

We didn't like that idea. So we went up there instead. And when we did, it was pretty evident that they were struggling financially. We looked in the pantry, we looked in the refrigerator. It was pretty empty. There was almost no food. And things were tense between Nathan and Michelle.

You almost felt like they were just tolerating each other. And every now and then he and I would step outside and try to have a conversation, just the two of us, and she would come out and kind of try to be in that conversation. Didn't want you talking to him alone. It absolutely felt like she did not want us to be, you know, able to speak alone. When it was time to leave Las Vegas, Nathan made it a point to walk Veronica and Eric to their car to say goodbye.

He watched us drive all the way down the road. I could see him in the rearview mirror just standing there. And just knowing he had more to say and wanted to say something, but he couldn't. A few days later, Nathan Pyatt was dead.

We went through every possible scenario. So many different scenarios. I think the biggest one that we were kind of thinking was they maybe had, like a loan shark situation, had gotten out of control. Like they had borrowed money from someone and it went sideways. So, was it a loan shark or something entirely different? Could you describe your relationship with Michelle Payette? It was the end of 2010, December, the coldest month of the year in Las Vegas.

Zero resemblance to the island where Nathan Payette grew up riding the waves. He loved swimming and as he got older he started into surfing. So, you know, a lot of times on weekends or even during the weekdays he would just go with his friends and they'll, you know, do their surfing. Good at it? He was pretty good, yeah.

Guam was home, and Carmelita, who'd just landed in Vegas to help Michelle with the kids, was planning to make arrangements to bring Nathan's body back with her. To me, he had to come back to Guam. Michelle, still barely holding it together, met her in-laws at the Vegas airport. When I got to her, you know, I just, I had to be the one to really hug her to keep her from falling. That very same day, as Michelle was falling into the arms of her mother-in-law,

Detectives were working a lead Michelle herself had given them just hours after the murder. Do you know anybody that owns a black car? I asked her if she knew anybody that had a black car simply because some of the witnesses had seen a black car leaving. Yeah, one of my coworkers. Which one would that be? Michael. Michael Rodriguez. They worked together at a telemarketing company.

What's your relationship with Michael? Just co-workers. He was one of the people I flirted with, but that was it. We went to the business address that Michelle Payette said that she worked with Michael Rodriguez. And when we got there, in the parking lot was a black Cadillac. So they waited, watching, for four and a half hours. And finally, a man matching Michelle's description of Michael Rodriguez got into the Cadillac and drove away.

So they pulled the car over. And the man, who confirmed he worked with Michelle, agreed to come into the station. He admitted straight out he was a convicted felon. He'd served time for attempted forgery and theft, but he was working now and was engaged to be married. And seeing other women, too. Lots of women. And that included his co-worker,

Michelle Payette. We have had, per se, I don't know how you word it, a little bit more than friends because, you know, she's cried to me, I've cried to her at times. Michael said Michelle would complain to him about not feeling loved in her marriage. There was also money trouble. Michelle and Michael bonded. Has it ever been sexual?

Detective Williams had heard enough to know he had to find out where Michael Rodriguez was the night Nathan was killed. And Michael said he was at a Walmart looking for love, or something like it, which is how he found Shannon. You eyeball her, she eyeballs you, you eyeball her, you start talking to her.

And one thing led to another, and they ended up at the Sunset Station Hotel and Casino before midnight. We got to the door and closed him off. Michael told the detectives he'd been drinking that night, couldn't be exact on his times, but that Shannon would verify his story. So he gave them her cell number and detectives listening from another room called Shannon. She didn't have to think about it. She knew exactly where she was and what she was doing when she was with him.

She backed him up. So then they called the hotel and discovered Michael did check in that night. But the check-in time he'd given them was off. The detectives didn't confront him about that, not yet. First, they needed to look at the hotel's security video. But there was something else, maybe important. Michael said he and Michelle had been in touch that day. We had talked before.

By then, Detective Anderson had Michelle saved text messages from that same night. Michelle had given her permission to search her cell phone. But they didn't make a lot of sense. So maybe Michael could explain the text that he sent Michelle at 11, 12 p.m.?

At 11.24 p.m., Michelle texted Michael.

As a female detective, you get men that look at you like, well, you're just some stupid lady. Why are you talking to me? And that was what he started to do to me, which really did not sit well with me.

You may talk your way out of here tonight, but I'm coming after you. I know you killed Nathan, and you can f*** me all you want, but you know I'm right. You will see me again. Guarantee that. My friend, she's just as right as rain, Mike. Bottom line is I didn't kill that man. Who did? I don't know.

Detectives didn't believe Michael Rodriguez, but they didn't have enough evidence to arrest him. It was time to talk to Michelle again. It was going on a week after Nathan Payette was shot to death in his own garage. The U.S. Air Force held a memorial for Nathan. His brother Eric spoke. He believed in his family. He believed in what he could do. The gathering there was...

was beautiful. And to get to meet the people that not only he worked under, but that worked for him and for them all to kind of feel the same way that we did about him, that he was very caring, he was always looking out for you and wanted you to succeed and do a really good job. It made us feel even more proud, you know, that what he was doing in the world was making a difference.

Family and friends filled the pews. But one person, one very significant person, was missing. Michelle Payette. Early in the investigation, detectives had asked Michelle to take a lie detector test, but she'd refused and told Carmelita about it. I said, Michelle, if you have nothing to hide, then you should just go do it now. Get it over with. The morning of Nathan's memorial, detectives called Michelle and asked her to come into the station.

And this time, Carmelita, who was there when the call came, made sure Michelle had someone to take her to the station. And when she got there... A story came pouring out. That is how, she said, her relationship with Michael Rodriguez began, and...

No, it wasn't as innocent as she'd made it out to be. And it wasn't long before they began having sex.

Then one night, said Michelle, she and Michael were hanging out in his car, drinking, and she vented about Nathan. I was telling him, like, man, I'm so tired of, you know, my husband's paychecks are not cutting in. Then, she said, Michael seemed to get an idea. He pointed out to Michelle that Nathan must have a military life insurance policy. And he goes, well, you know, you can get rid of your husband.

With her husband gone, Michelle stood to benefit $650,000. He said, don't say that. Don't think like that. But her story? Michael ignored her objections. And on December 1st, he put his plan into action. What was Michael's plan? He just said, my friend is going to, you know, take care of everything. We're going to handle everything and...

The plan, she said, was to make it look like a robbery gone bad. Michelle had only one job to do, unlock Nathan's truck, so that Michael and a second person could enter, wait inside, and kill Nathan inside the truck. She said she went along with it, but secretly tried to sabotage the plot. She didn't unlock Nathan's truck as directed.

Instead, said Michelle, she turned off her husband's alarm to intentionally make him late for work and that way he wouldn't be outside when someone came to shoot him. And remember those work-related texts on Michelle's phone that Michael couldn't quite explain? Just about done with Van Dyke's contract? Michelle spelled it out. Now, would the contract be code for contract on your husband? Yes. To kill your husband? Yes.

But Michelle swore she was doing everything she could to make sure the contract wouldn't be carried out. I waited till like 11.15 to wake up my husband, you know. I was like, okay, they're going to leave. Like, if he doesn't come out. In fact, she said she thought maybe Michael had left. And so she sent him another text. My husband just woke me up and he's trying to rush out the door. I guess he's late, LOL. Sorry, that contract is a pain. That meant, you know...

Detectives weren't buying it. To them, those text messages seemed like proof Michelle was very much a part of the plan. So that's a sign. Okay, he's leaving now. Get ready. Exactly. Minutes later, Nathan Payette was dead. But did they arrest Michelle? No, they did not. They let her go, just like Michael Rodriguez did.

We have to be able to have all of our ducks in a row before we make any arrests. They may destroy evidence. They may, you know. That's the chance that we take. But about half an hour later, Michelle was escorted back in after telling a police officer right outside she wanted to hurt herself. I think in a moment of desperation, she wanted to throw herself in front of traffic. Michelle was transported to a nearby hospital and put on a 72-hour psychiatric hold.

Meanwhile, someone else was walking into the police station. And what a story she would tell. Remember Shannon, the young woman Michael Rodriguez hooked up with night of the murder?

She was his willing alibi, first time detectives talked to her on the phone. It wasn't long before Shannon realized she'd been duped and she could not stay quiet. So she went to the police station to tell her story. What I was asked to do did not involve anything to do with murder. On Wednesday, December 1st, Shannon said she went over to her friend Jessica's apartment. She says...

Meeting Michael and a man named Corey Hawkins, Jessica's boyfriend. Shannon was doing drugs that night, so her memory, she said, was fuzzy.

But at some point in the night, she remembered Jessica starting a fire and Michael and Corey rushing into the apartment. They take off their clothes. He's like, bitch, bitch, bitch. Who says this? Who says this? This is Michael. So I look at Jessica and I'm like scared. I'm scared. She's like, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. So I get in his car.

Shannon left with Michael, leaving Jessica and Corey behind in the apartment with the clothes they'd taken off burning in the fireplace. And he starts spitting out all these crazy things. He's like, if anyone asks you, my girlfriend and we were together this night, tonight. Shannon said Michael made it clear to her that she was his alibi for whatever he was up to. Then, she said, they drove to the Sunset Station Hotel and checked in.

We're holding hands and he was like cuddling with me and I thought that was weird. Like he was doing it to be seen on camera. And they were. The detectives finally had the security video and it showed that Shannon and Michael arrived after midnight. As we found out, he had enough time to commit the murder and to be at Sunset Station where he ended up with Shannon. The next day, Shannon got that call from the detective and said exactly what Michael told her to say.

But then the detective said something that made her panic. After that call, said Shannon, she had to know. So she saw Michael again. Michael told Shannon his co-worker was a battered wife.

By Michelle's own admission, Nathan never laid a hand on her. It sounded like to me that he had a relationship with this woman and that he was in on it too because he kept talking about all the money she was going to get and he thinks he pulled one over on me and everyone else, but he didn't. Like he needs to pay for what he did.

Later that night, detectives arrested Michael Rodriguez, along with Shannon's friend, Jessica Austin, and Jessica's boyfriend, Corey Hawkins. They arrested Michelle a couple of days later, when she was released from the hospital. The detectives spoke to Michelle one more time. I don't know what to tell you. It's a pain.

Five years later, Michael Rodriguez went to trial and Shannon was the star witness.

He admitted to me that he shot a man. Michael did not have a specific intent... But Rodriguez's defense attorney told the jury it was Corey Hawkins who killed Nathan Pyatt. There's no other evidence that the state has presented that Michael was the actual shooter. When the jury got the case, it didn't take long to reach a verdict. Guilty of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon. Guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy.

He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Next was Michelle Payette. At the very last minute, she pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and conspiracy. The Payette family asked the death penalty be taken off the table. The Chamorro culture, we don't get to play God. I for an eye wasn't necessarily what we wanted. I mean, I think for...

For her to know that her family was going to move on without her, that her kids were going to grow up knowing what had happened, that was, I guess, more satisfying than the death penalty. The day she was sentenced, Michelle addressed the court. I made a huge mistake and a really bad choice. Michelle was sentenced to life without parole.

Corey Hawkins received the same sentence, after he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and conspiracy. And in exchange for her cooperation, Jessica Austin was offered a deal. She pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of conspiracy. She was given probation. It's the case, Detectives Anderson and Williams told us, they still can't quite get over.

To find out that his own wife had caused that was just almost more than you could bear as a human being. It's the reason Detective Williams decided to speak with us. To tell Nathan's story exactly how it happened, so that everyone knows the truth, especially his children. Daddy, say bye!

I would like them to know, as sad as it is, what their mother did. It would bother me a great deal if she pretended to her children or to her family that she was just an innocent bystander in all of this, and she was not. You became parents all over again. Yep. Yep. Nathan's parents took custody of the children

Why did you decide to do that? I think Nate would have wanted it. You know, he always said he wanted the kids to be close to us and he wanted to raise them in Guam. I just felt like it was the right thing to do. And every so often, Carmelita and the kids stop by Nathan's gravesite on the island. They take turns going up and, you know, to say their prayers and to tell him what's going on with them. And for Carmelita, too, a moment to visit with her son

who was back home on the island he loved so much. That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Friday at 9, 8 Central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night. ♪