Talking Dateline: After the Halloween Party
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Hello everyone, i'm blame Alexander and we are talking date line today. I'm joined here by v keep more than .

I keep and my v one or A M A keep. Morrison.

that's why you are probably my friend. All this episode is called after the halloween party and if you haven't seen IT, it's the episode that's right below this one on your date line pod test feet. So make sure you go there, listen to IT or streamed on p cock, and then come right back here.

And for this talking date line, keh has an extra clip that didn't make IT into the show. Then i'll be talking with date line associate producer sam springer, who will join me to answer some of your social media questions about the episode. But just a quick recap. The diver's burg, tennessee community was at a loss when Karen swift, a local mother of four, went missing after a halloween party on october twenty two thousand and eleven. It's a investigator six weeks to find cranes body, and he took prosecutors eleven years to charge her husband, David swift, with her murder at his twenty twenty four trial, the jury was not able to agree that David killed Karen, meaning that this case is still very much open. All right, keep, let's stop.

Date one is a very, very unusual story. But IT shows what happens when a thing like this occurs in a small town where people talk in whispers a lot.

You know what? I want to start right there, actually, because I was just fascinated by the town itself, by dies burg. I mean, this was a small town. We're talking about a lot of people who knew each other, and a lot of people who seem to have opinions about how other folks were kind of living their lives right?

Yes, very gossipy place. And um I got that impression from everybody I talk to. And one of the ways you can tell, of course, is that people in the positions of official dim and dieser g ort to try to tamp that talk down you know things are really pretty Normal here um but clearly from from the discussions with other people, IT wasn't necessarily so so quiet behind the scenes as one of the characters had the coin discovered when he came to town and got nearly from .

everybody was fascinating to me. There is a laundry st. characters. But I think fathers, probably at the top of my list SHE.

was the little disruption that got thrown into this .

like a anger ade disruptor with a capital d you don't i'm curious though, because when we do episodes every now and then, you'll come across kind of like a heather, somebody who really doesn't have anything to do with the story IT comes in and starts investigating or gets interested or really kind of attaches themselves to IT. I'm curious, as you spoke to her, what was that that really .

drove her and and motivated her throughout this SHE portrays herself as a private yeah who doesn't library of the cases. He claims that he did this case for free. SHE wasn't hire by anybody he just was very interested in, and he wanted to solve IT enough that he devoted years to this effort. But I found that when I was talking to have her felt like, though she's a very bright woman, perhaps he was giving too much credence to some of the gossip when around town, gossip which might even true, might not even true. But in the town, like there is both.

There's a lot of IT. I'm curious, what was IT like, kid, for you and the team to try and get to the bottom of these swingers rumors, right? Like it's not easy reporting on secrets, especially when you're talking about a small town like this.

That's right. You know efficient line is there were no such things. Pink poodle, I think, was one of the one of the phrase that supposed to describe bed them.

And the mayor may not a bit, I don't know, but I will say this um you know telled but my wrinkles was even around for a while and i've encountered lots and lots of small towns where the things they go on with cruel your hair and swinging is got a tame compared to some other stuff that would happen in a small town. Yeah, I think they happen everywhere they have in cities too. Is just that a little hard to to identify? And in a small town, everybody knows everybody else business. And so the world goes around.

IT was like an unspoken secret, but an unspoken like the worst kept a great kinder for .

or IT didn't happen at all. Depends on who you doesn't do.

Let's talk about the investigation because there were so many pieces here to this, of course, as well. One thing that that stood out with that kind of first call came in and they said, we seem to have misplaced her about a missing person. I've also certainly never heard anybody described as that way. Talk to me a little bit more about that. What do you think was behind that freeze?

You can specular right, according to the family, IT was not uncommon for crn to vanish in the middle. You get up at three or four years clock in the morning and go out somewhere, sometimes to meet someone, sometimes not. But you know, it's a way of saying, maybe she's not lost. Maybe he just went out of her own accord, or maybe SHE is lost.

We don't know that. Lets talk about that horse search. The fact that a dozen, more than a dozen of carer's friends went out on horse back to search for her. IT was so interesting to me because I really, in many ways, told me a lot about that, about that town and about that community, one that there is the problems of courses jump on. But the fact that all of them came together, they all went out on searches. Of course, we've done stories where people kind of go out and searched by flat, but IT took a little bit more about that scene and that kind of community coming .

together to find her. Yes, they really were worried about IT and united about IT. Then I was little surprised by the horses too. What hit me was I grew up in a different part of the world where cujo ines are just not part of the topography. So ah the idea that you know vine growing seasonally enough to had a body for that long yeah was kind of a surprise to me that they didn't find her for that long when he was actually not that far away from civilization was also a surprise. I guess, you know, horses are not trained.

could ever be much right? exactly. Search animals. You know, the cause the cubans almost kind of had sort of they have became .

yeah I always I didn't even know how to pronounce er bi cuz U I can do cazo but they almost became their .

own character. The fact that they were in a strange sort of sense kind of concealing this body and IT wasn't until the season change that they could find her. That was striking to me.

That was, you know, would we even have a story with all these twisted turns at the cut? Duval not hidden her body for so long. Her body may have given the police all kinds of evidence, but I didn't, because that is .

very true. We talk about this investigation, of course. We talk about the fact that this kind of just hanging there, right, that nobody has been convicted of this yet yet um when you do a story like this and know somebody is a quitted, but there's another charge pending, what is that like talking to the people afterwards? I mean, the attorneys puts some light into this case.

There is a certain kind of deflation, but they have lost. So they try to give themselves that sort of compensating feeling. The D A.

And the prosecutor are determined that they're gone to make the best of bit and try to get a conviction on manslaughter. But um you know David and his supporters are absolutely insisted he wasn't manslaughter either. He had not to do with that. So as I was watching .

this and I watched this episode a couple of times, just to, you know, make sure that I got all the new ones, I did, I did. I was a fascinating episode in the final act, as we call them. Each episode is swell parts.

Final act is your introducing the prosecution team for the final time, and you do these establishing shots, right? We do say, oh, you know, here are the people and show them plan of sitting IT starts with a shot of an athlete ili book and then goes to the prosecution. And this is before you talk about the fact that David acquitted on these murder charges, but I wondered if that was intentional. Is that kind of an easter, eg, for our very sharp by date live viewers to have athletes ily there before this? This man is acquitted of of a murder charge.

I will never say .

that gives me the answer I need.

You've got your bias and say by Alexander.

I said flee bai, that can't be a coincidence.

Well, you know that those this but it's just for our viewers.

I want to say in case they're driving, I don't want them to have to start googling who this is that we're talking about. He was, some of people would say that he was the greatest, one of the greatest attorneys of the .

twenty sincerely. But he was, at least for me, anyway.

he was well known because he was part of the dream team for the oj simpsons trial, got him acquitted on on murder back in the .

early twenty one of the most famous defense n century. Good way to put IT. yes. And you know, often successful, but but sometimes just more famous than successful.

Thank you. go. When we get back, Keith is going to share a podcast exclusive clip from an interview with jena and jerold Scott. Those were currents neighbors when he was growing up.

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Msnbc films presents the singing chronicles, a new four part series from nbc news studio, featured decades of investigative reporting from deadline producer dan slavia that exposes the injustices of wrongful convictions.

I Better have my life in prison.

and this time we can .

get back first. Two episodes previous saturday at nine P, M, ter on M S N B. C.

Let's talk about Ashley. Of all the many people that you talk to that we heard from in the story actually absolutely stayed with me. I'm sure that was the case for so many of our viewers because you can't help but just feel so terrible for her.

You do. And he was very brave. I thought he was brave to testify in support of her father. SHE was brave to come and talk to us at great length. And you know, SHE wouldn't shy away from anything. But SHE absolutely believes in her bones that her dad is innocent, that he did not do this when I .

heard her say that and you asty said, is they're even an inkling, even a little bit and SHE said, absolutely. I almost wondered if that was a sort of method of self protection for her that he couldn't bring herself to believe that her dad had anything to do with that.

I think that is sometimes the case in a situation like this with actually I didn't get that impression. I thought I was stronger than that. Her her opinion.

But one of the moments in that interview with her that I still think about in terms of her certainty was when her mother, brother, home in the middle night and put her in the bed, SHE was moved from one bed to another, which would make IT possible for something to happen to her mother, either care and left of her own accord, or SHE was removed, forceful ly from bed. But before that could happen, Ashley had to be taken out of the bed that he was sharing with her mother. Somebody picked up, he was, at the time, nine years old, nine, so not kind of before memories get formed.

Memories are pretty good at night, not perfect, but pretty good. So somebody picked up, and the authorities alleged that had to be David. And assumption, Frankly, SHE is completely convinced and repeated this several times.

I know who he was. IT picked me up. A daughter knows when her mother is Carrying her out of the bed and putting her somewhere else. I knew, and I know IT was her who Carried me to a different bed, which really takes the heat off David.

There was something about that that that gave me chills because SHE was so convinced. I, you know, as you know, i've got two of these date line episodes under my belt at this point. And the second one that i've done had an interview that was a very similar. There's something about interviewing an adult who was a child when they lost their parent because the memory is formed as a child. So even though they're speaking to as an adult, we've live their lives when they talk about that moment as almost like you're talking to that man, year old, right?

Yes, yes, in a way that was true. I will never forget doing a story some years ago involving a cold case that was apparently solved when a person who was, I think, around the same age had been at a slumber party with her girlfriends and who came down, sneak down to the kitchen in the middle and remembers seeing a person who warned that being convicted of the crime, sitting at at a dining room table, lighting candles and apologizing to the person who had been murdered, as if that woman committed the murder that he said was an absolutely clear memory that he had when he was whatever nine ten years old um and he revealed this to the police when he was in her thirties and established professional woman. Very bright, very interesting, very nice person but the question of whether that memory was accurate as bothered the heck omy because you look back on something that happened in your life back then, a thing you thank you remember, compare IT to somebody else's memory of that thing that you think you remember, and find you both have very, very strong views about that memory, and they are diametrically opposed. Those memories are very funny thing that's not to say uh that actually was wrong is just that you know you always keep in the back your mind that people's memories are fallible.

That's very true. That's very true, especially when it's input IT at such a Young age .

of the one thing about which there was no question was that Karen had changed, that he want a lot of the merge. And her friends, not just her family, but her friends, described choices that just were not what they were used to saying.

He was always in a brilliant, friendly one of those Sparky people who could you know be the third of attention and a delighted person but then he started making decisions you know um certainly did namic her husband happy? And so that's, you know, the crux of the question. Did that anger, if I was anger, contribute to what happened concern color what you will um but you know, that was I guess that was her searching for a way to be. And unfortunately for her, he never founded. Certainly.

we've talked a lot about Karen, and I was fascinated to hear so much about her that we have an extra clip a from an interview with gita and jerold Scott. They were current's neighbors when SHE was growing up and and kind of gave us moral look into who care and was, let's listen.

SHE was just a, you know, a good help her in the church.

He was a good key. SHE was a little bit rebellion. And I was expected in a lot of times my wife say, well, care.

Baby said, my, I mean, little signs like, know, I tell, can you get teach her her and boring across room. Well, why don't you just get up, get at your sale? I mean, little signs like that. And if we just laugh at IT was really, really funny, but he was really downside, a very, very good person.

Her mother SHE takes us on fiske and get hold of us and tell us that he was missing when SHE went miss. And you know and I couldn't founder and did I just seem like, you know, if that they on are contacted a few different places that long as grays, but I emailed they i'm just told him about the story and what was going .

on term neighbors who saw her grow up to and there and just stood the little girl. And I I am so curious to know he is, she's gone. She's been gone with this from us for a dozen years.

But current swift sounded, if you speak to your friends and her husband for that matter, smart, fun, loving, interesting, always there for the children, always up for you know some fun with her friends, but fun with her friends and the kids if he was very engaged mother um a person with a happy personality and then something changed, was IT marriage related? But of us, something to do that was IT related, something else I don't know. But when you know, when a person in its first stage of life simply takes drinking.

some is caused IT. Especially a mother, right? A mother for I remember at some point in the episode, Ashley says we would beg her not to go out at night, stay with us, stay with us.

yeah. And he would go anyway, right? There's something driving that.

Something was happening and it's still unclear exactly what I was.

Now I should say this about the the clip that we just play date line actually first heard about cranes case through genre, the person you just hurt from who submitted IT submitted a years ago as part of our cold case spotlight series. Of course, that's our online article series where we highlight unsolved cold cases around the country. But I think that I just really speaks to how, you know, when our viewer send of things, we listen to them, we look into these types of things we do.

And I think that's one of the most useful parts of our program actually missing in america. And these kinds of cases that finally gets a new attention because potentially, at least partly because of from media from us. sure.

That's a very, very happy feeling when you can be somewhat helpful in the resolution of a case or or to give a family a chance to tell the world what's been going on and described their their hopes and their frustrations and their, you know, a grief for that matter of somebody has been killed or missing. So these, you know, I think, important contribution. So we're happy to make.

And to that point, I want to give this plug. If you have a cold case, if you're listening, you have a cold case that you'd like to be featured. Please submit to, as you can submit IT to us on social media at date line in B, C, or key. This when a true joy talking date line with you, I appreciated all.

Thank you. Delighted to talk you. You know not only you're very um engaging interactive, but you're not judge MC. Yes.

two wins in my column. I will I will take IT as a new by. I will absolutely take IT aq k and welcome.

Well.

thank you. Thank you, my friend. I'm so glad to be here. And after the break, i'm going to be joined by date line associate producer sam springer, who will help answer some viewer and listener questions about the show from social media.

Why get all your holiday decorations delivered the instant card? Because maybe you only bought two retha but have twelve windows? Or maybe your top ler got very eager with the advent calendar? Or maybe the infallible snowman didn't make IT through the snowstorm, or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason this season, instincts here for hosts in their whole holiday hall get decorations from the home depot, cbs and more through installed and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees in terms apply.

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M S N B C films presents a new four part series from N B C new studios that exposes the injustices of ronda conventions, the things in critical first two episodes, premiere scarcity at nine P M. Turn on M S B C.

Well, guys, i'm here now joined by dateline associate producer same springer, who worked very hard on this episode. And we are here to answer some of your social media questions. I, sam.

hi. How are you?

I'm good. So glad to be here with you. And also just for our eagle eard listeners who may hear a difference in sound, i'm recording this portion from my car because i'm getting ready to jump into election coverage for the next few days.

So if IT sounds a little different, that's why. Okay, sam, we have a lot of people who have a lot of thoughts about the episodes. So let's just jump right in.

This one is from susie mac on facebook. Who writes, why wasn't that anonymous phone call investigated more and suc, I have to say I had no the same question. That's the phone call that came in for a possible location for caren remains. Um and that was something that was certainly talk about a lot. But what do we know about that one?

The the investigators told us that they looked into they got a lot of tips, a lot of Collins, but the exact distance that they gave in that phone call, whoever called in wasn't exactly accurate. IT was a few miles off. And so they felt like IT wasn't correct, didn't seem like a relevant lead.

So I didn't even seem like something that was worth necessarily chasing down because they got so many just kind of the war right calls, right? exactly. interesting.

Okay, here's one from twitter or x this is from at art. One began. Why is David switch in prison?

That's a good question. Um he's in prison awaiting trial. His man slighter charge, his bond was revoked because of the stocking charge that he's facing in alabama. So he pleaded not guilty to both the manslaughter charge and the stocking charge. But he's not out on button.

okay. So he has to say, incarcerated until they get this man slighter trial under way. And that could be some time.

Yes, there's no date been set for that yet. So he's waiting in a tiny sy prison right now OK OK.

Let's go to Chris ham on facebook, who writes, who is the man in the multicolor suit sitting behind whoever is speaking at the elector tury the trial. We got a lot of condoms about this man, and my eyes went to him as well. F, when I washed, I said, okay, he's there. You noticed him?

Yes, twitter was a flurry with comments about tj. That's tj Jones. He's the circuit clerk and dies burg, and he wore a colorful suit almost every day of the trial. We started court the day after a memorial day, and his entire suit was american flag.

ah. What question was the same colorful suit every day? Or did he have like a new colorful suit for each day of the trial?

He had a new colorful, too. I'm sure that mahan's closer is very bright.

That's tell that's dedication to your craft right there. Well, there we go. Question answered. Okay, there was plenty of key love in these comments.

This question from Rachel wellington, Rachel rights would love he Morrison to read stories about mysteries. He is the best storyteller ever. Or Rachel, you are in luck.

Yes, of course, we've got three seasons of our more than mysteries podcast out. Whereever you get your podcast, you can hear Keith read a different story every season. The most recent one was the classic mystery, the dead alive. He's also read a Christmas Carol and the story of sleeves. Hello.

I love you did that very well. The dead alive, you almost changed a little key. There are yourself is the title.

as I was just thinking, thinking of reading IT.

I love IT. Well, this is a lot of definitely an episode. They got a lot of people talking, so a deadline associate producer a month. The springer, so good to have you here with us today.

Thank you. Thank you.

And that's IT for talking date line for this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about date line, you can reach just twenty four seven on social media at date line N, B, C, and be sure to check out kid's newest date line original podcast, the man in the black mask. All six episodes are available.

now. Wherever you get your podcast date line, premium subsidies can binge the entire series ad free. And of course, we'll see you friday is on the line on N, B. C. Thanks for listening.

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