the future for the children will be decided by the people who love the most -- paul and katherine's families. >> we will work to give those kids what katherine wanted for them. >> up in narrowsburg, where katherine novak's beloved red house once stood, the trees glow orange and gold. autumns have come and gone. her mother still mourns the daughter she lost, but remembers the life she lived. >> what you miss most about her? >> her smile, and her hugs. she was a lot of fun, katherine. she enjoyed life a lot. >> that's all for this edition of dateline. i am craig melvin. thank you for watching. hello, i am craig melvin, and this is dateline.

>> in the pit of my stomach, i knew something wasn't right here. >> he must have been so, so scared. >> they were so happy at first. >> kevin just fell in love with her. >> but when the marriage went bad, he went missing. >> he just disappeared. >> was this a husband who didn't want to be found? or was this a wife who had something to hide? what had happened behind closed doors? >> she laughed and said, no, there is no affair. >> someone was keeping secrets, and even police couldn't wrap their heads around this one until they found a trail of text. >> we were like, holy smokes, it's right there. >> it sure was. every stunning detail. >> it seemed like the perfect tool to put the poison inside of him.

>> was as a loving spouse, or a lethal one? >> i feel like the gates of are opening. >> i don't know what they were thinking. ng. kevin and morgan mengel had their share of ups and downs, but through it all, they seemed to make it work. >> hello, and welcome to dateline. kevin and morgan had their share of ups and downs. but through it all, they seem to make it work. then, one of them disappeared. it would take a family's relentless pursuit of the truth jumpstart the investigation, but soon, a stunning confrontation in a parking lot would put police on the trail of a killer and reveal a diabolical recipe for murder. here is hoda kotb with toxic. >> how much do we reveal to the ones we love? do we keep our betrayals hidden behind closed doors? or do we hide in plain sight,

masking our deeds with words? >> the text message says i'm fine, just clearing my head. >> i was kevin mangle for a time, clearing his head, he told his family and friends. facebook status -- wants to be left alone. >> maybe he had enough. >> but there is a trail of electronic messages that seemed to tell another story -- a far more sinister one. >> we were floored. it was all there for us to read. >> which was fact, and which was fiction? >> these text messages don't even seem real. they just don't seem real. >> long before kevin mangle had a cell phone or a facebook page, he was a high school guy in suburban philadelphia with a cute little sister to worry about. >> kevin was the stereo typical older brother. he would follow me around and

tell all his friends weren't allowed to talk to me and things like that. very protective. >> for as long as michelle can remember, kevin mengel was a family man. a big brother who felt he needed to look after his younger siblings after their parents divorced. >> kevin had a terrible time with it, and just always told us that he would never get a divorce, he would never get a divorce. >> instead, kevin grew up in search of perfect romance. but he was always sort of a monogamous guy. >> when he was with a girlfriend, he was with a girl. >> kevin was very committed to making sure he stayed in a relationship, and he gave it his all. >> kevin was 20 when he met hit the one -- is forever girl. morgan from a a few towns away were she'd graduated from an exclusive catholic girl school. >> she was very sweet and charming and very attentive.

she come over to the house just to hang out with me. >> morgan made an effort to win over karen's friends, too, like mike and noel. >> very nice, very upbeat, very friendly. always smiling. >> and kevin, he fell hard for morgan's charm. >> he just -- he loved her. >> he was head over heels for her. >> so kevin was about to get what he always wanted -- a wife and kids, but just not in that order. morgan gave birth to their first child a few months before they got married. still, there's was no shotgun wedding. the young couple celebrated in traditional style. >> kevin was on top of the world. it was a perfect picture. >> kevin loved being a dad, and he and morgan had two more children. but his relationship with his own father was rocky. had been since his parents divorced. >> we were both stubborn and pigheaded.

he didn't call me, i didn't call him, and we got into a little bit of a battle, then years went by. >> by june 2010, kevin and his dad had patched things up, and grown closer than ever. they made plans for the whole family to celebrate father's day together. >> he said to me, i can't wait to come out for father's day, and i said, i can't wait to have you. >> he just seemed to be at peace that i had not ever seen him act. >> that it was the morning of the father's day party when it happened. sister michelle called her mom to check in. >> she didn't sound right. and she said kevin left, and she started crying hysterically. kevin left, kevin left. and i said, mom, something is not right here. he left the three kids, he left morgan, he won't pick up his phone. he just sent me a text message. >> kevin, the romantic, leave his wife and kids?

perhaps morgan put it best when she typed out there father's day regrets to kevin senior prame. >> we received a text message from morgan saying, do to unforeseen circumstances, we will not be able to be there today. happy father's day. >> unforeseen circumstances? what exactly did that mean? >> we all know how excited he was for father's day. it would be the one day kevin would not miss, no matter what happened. >> were had kevin mengel gone? >> coming up, maybe there was a reason for kevin to hit the road. >> i thought morgan was having an affair. >> went dateline continues. of the official uniform. no tunes today? no. my apartment was robbed last night. took my cable ready tv, vcr, portable cassette player. yup. all the latest tech. if only progressive had renter's insurance like their home insurance. then we could bundle our cars and get the same 24/7 protection. -i think we just invented that. -huh.

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hoda kotb: when kevin mengel was a no-show for the family barbecue on father's day, his sister, michelle, was disappointed and more than a little confused. >> when kevin mengel was a no- show for the family barbecue on fathers day, his sister, michelle, was disappointed and more than a little confused. >> he had called my husband to say how excited he was to spend father's day that with all of us. a big father's day, and he couldn't have been more excited. >> kevin's younger brother, chris, also knew how much he was looking forward to being with his family. after all, kevin had just reconciled with their dad after many rocky years. >> i thought, this is odd. why would he do this now? it doesn't make any sense. >> the story morgan told was

that kevin had taken off, told her that the marriage was over. in fact, by father's day, he had already been gone for 2 days. >> kevin is fine, he's clearing his head. he's fine, he just had to leave, get away, and clear his head. >> she's trying to tell you he needed space? >> i could see them going off and taking off and saying, i'm just going to get away. that part of me said, okay, he just did that he's going to come back in here today or tomorrow. >> you just have to be patient and wait. >> patient, because those close to kevin and morgan had seen the couple's ups and downs before. their breakups, in fact, were almost an annual event. >> it was like clockwork. every august around their anniversary, we would expect the phone call that morgan picked up and left, and kevin would call us, crying his eric lee. he would just be completely distraught. >> he said i love her. i can't help her. i love her. >> soon, kevin would return,

and they would be as good as newlyweds. for a while. >> she could act like nothing ever happened, and acting all lovey-dovey, sitting down on his lap. >> but now what is weird about the separation was that kevin had taken off, not the other way around. >> she always took the kids and she always left. kevin never once took off on her. >> they worried this must've been the fight to end all fight , and it wasn't like kevin not to call his family for some work. the only person he reached out to was his mom. a few days after he disappeared, he sent her a cryptic text message that seemed to alarm her more than put her at ease. and so kevin's mom did something that seemed a little drastic -- she called the west goshen police to report him missing. >> we thought maybe she was overreacting to kevin leaving. >> david mauer was a detective on the case. >> there was no reason to believe that anything had

happened to kevin. she was receiving text messages from kevin's phone. >> their feelings were that if somebody is communicating with him, that he is not missing. >> i was a little concerned that she may end up with a little bit of egg on her face because he was going to show up. >> and she had called the cops. okay. >> not long after that initial missing persons report was filed with the police department, an officer called the family back to say kevin had been spotted not far from his home. >> one of the officers stopped at a check cashing place right up the street for more morgan and kevin live, and the owner of the check cashing place was very familiar with kevin, and he saw them across the street. that lended some credibility also that kevin was in the area. >> he was close to home sending text to his wife and mother, just refusing to see or speak to his family. and he did finally respond via

text to his father. >> doing okay, just need time away. >> and kevin sister received this message. hey sis, i'm fine. worried about morgan. she's the one you should be worried about. >> morgan, it appeared, was doing just fine. the couple only landscaping business, and monday morning, morgan showed up to meet the cruise, and told him she was now in charge. an employee recalls she had the garage looking spotless. >> there's always oil drips on the ground. on this day, you could eight office floor. >> this was new, too, as he went about his monday landscaping jobs. he noticed morgan, the bosses wife, flirting with and 21-year- old employee named steve chapelle. >> steve knows what kind of underwear i have on. and steve is like, pink with black stripes. right off the bat. >> when al had a question about an assignment -- i would call morgan, and steve is there. steve is answering her phone.

>> why was this kid who was barely old enough to buy a beer suddenly acting like the new man in charge? kevin sister, michelle, remembered him as a quiet, unassuming young guy who had done some work on her yard just weeks earlier. >> this kid could not have been more polite to us. >> what would kevin think now of his employees spending the work day at the pool with his wife and kids as michelle observed when she took a drive by? >> i drove by her development. she was sitting out of the pool with steve and the kids. >> you are thinking what? >> i thought morgan was having another affair. >> it was no secret to those who knew the couple that morgan had strayed before. could kevin have suspected that morgan was added again, and was at the final straw that drove him out? no way to know. he still is not taking calls. and then five days after he disappeared, kevin finally had something to say to everyone who knew him in the most public

way possible. he posted an update on facebook. status, he wants to be left alone. >> he wants to be left alone. some of his friends backed off then. his friends were also looking for kevin. after the facebook thing came up, he said this must be another morgan and kevin fight. >> maybe he had a nervous breakdown, or he had enough of vacation from . >> this facebook update was far from reassuring. to them, it was an ominous red flag. >> every other update that kevin had put on there had come from his cell phone, because it shows the little cell phone. this one came from a computer. >> which seems so odd. the family knew the kevin did everything on his cell. what's more, the wording in the text messages he had been sending just didn't sound like kevin. for example, michelle wondered, when did he start calling her sis? >> in the pit of my stomach, i

just felt something bad had happened to kevin. >> and if the cops would not investigate, the family decided it was time to do some detective work themselves. >> i'm afraid the wife and the new boyfriend are making a move right now. they are leaving. >> coming up, what would it take to alert the police? >> would you mind coming back to the police station? i have a couple more questions for you. >> when dateline continues. lin

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and a violent summer rainstorm had barreled through the town's wringing the outskirts of philadelphia, bringing down trees and power lines. >> it was a thursday afternoon, summer 2010, and a violent summer rainstorm had barreled through the town in the outskirts of philadelphia, burning down trees and power lines. almost a week gone by since kevin mangel left his wife and kids. >> people gathered at my moms house. everyone sat there waiting. >> kevin's parents and siblings had not woken him, heard his voice. the only communication he was making was on facebook and through text messages. >> i think i may have said in there, call me or one of the family members, and he said i am speaking to a family member. i'm speaking to my wife, and that should be enough for everybody. >> but it was not enough. now a bizarre and horrifying thought had begun to take root and grow. the family suspected that all those messages were not coming from kevin at all. >> i left another message for him saying can you just tell me

the name of the street we grew up on. just tell me that and i will leave you alone. >> the police initially didn't even consider kevin a missing person, now the family begged them to take another look. >> we went back to the police again and pleaded. we tried to think of anything. the kids are home alone, she's not there, anything we could do to get them to go over there. >> detective mauer agreed to stop by the apartment and talk to morgan. >> she seemed genuine, like she wanted to help me. >> morgan invited the detective in and told him the same story. kevin had walked out on her and the kids, and she had proof. text messages in her own phone from kevin, breaking it off. >> she had received a message from kevin that he was leaving and she showed me these exchanges, something to the effect of, are you kidding me? and he said, no, i'm done. i can't do this anymore. >> the detective also spoke with steve chapelle, heavens

young employee who had been hanging around the employment complex with morgan and the kids. >> he just seemed like a young kid. he was 21 years old. >> morgan scoffed at the idea that they were anything more than friends. >> she said, no, 34 and he is 21. that is absurd. there's no affair. >> absurd is precisely what friends mike and noel would have said, had they heard that. they knew firsthand that morgan had a long history of cheating, sometimes even with kevin's closest friends. >> she would tell me how they would have sex in her and kevin's bed when he would go out, how they would have sex in the business cards. >> i said to myself, she's not right. there something wrong with her. >> and kevin's family, by now, they were sure morgan and the young landscaper were up to something. michelle confronted morgan directly.

>> i said i'm not okay with this. he just disappeared. i don't believe you. >> adding to their worry, they said morgan had not let them see the three kids since kevin disappeared, and they worried that she might leave town. they asked the detective if he would do surveillance on the apartment, but he said no. >> i said based on the fact that we had a witness, the fact that i now know that morgan and kevin have a troubled relationship, i thought that maybe kevin really was just fed up, and had enough of morgan and left. >> so the mangel family took the investigation into their own hands. brother chris decided to stake out the apartment overnight. he brought a video camera with him. early friday morning, he filmed steve chapelle coming and going, as if he now lived there, taking kevin's place. and what was strange, it looked as though steve was packing up morgan's truck.

>> yeah, they are getting in the truck now. >> to chris, it should look like morgan and steve were getting ready for something. >> he has a bunch of crap with him. morgan has a bunch of stuff, too. he frantically called the police, looking for detective mauer. >> they are leaving. they are leaving. >> only, they didn't go far. chris followed them as they drove over to the landscaping business. it turns out the detective was already there. he decided to go poke around, half expecting to run into kevin back at work. >> she gets out of the passenger side, and then i walk over to chapelle, who is still sitting in the passenger seat, and he's got a dead stare straight ahead. >> there was a something inside the truck the detective thought was peculiar. >> the back seat was full of clothes. i could see a laundry basket and bags and backpacks. he said, morgan is going to do laundry across the street.

i said, morgan's got a washer and dryer in her apartment. i saw it yesterday. would you mind coming back to the police station? i have a couple more questions for you. >> in that moment as the detective turned his back on steve, something unexpected happened. something chris mangel, still filming, caught on video. steve jumped in the driver seat, pulled out of the lot, and sped away. >> morgan walks over and it's down on a step, puts her hands in her head and says, oh, my, maybe he did do something to kevin. >> morgan breaks her silence. what had she been hiding? coming up -- >> steve had said to me that he loved me, and he would do whatever it took to have me. >> when dateline continues. co but this is a not flash. for moderate to severe vasomotor symptoms due to menopause...

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hurricane center is set to approach the south texas coast by sunday. hurricane surge warnings were issued for a portion of the state. robert woodland was convicted of drug-related charges by moscow courts in russia. he was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison. his lawyers say they will appeal that ruling, because his guilt is not been proven. for now, back to dateline. reported him missing to police. >> welcome back atto dateline. kevin mangel's family had not seen him for days, and fearing the worst, they reported him missing to police. at first, investigators believed he had simply left his wife, but then there was a very strange incident, and their suspicions were raised. now, this case was about to heat up. once again, here's hoda kotb with toxic.

>> it sounds so hokey, but three once before, i had a terrible nightmare that something had happened to kevin, and that kevin was hurt, and i woke up crying hysterically in my bed. >> michelle hopkins was now in a waking nightmare. her brother, kevin, had been missing for a week, and the young man, who appeared to be having a young affair with her sister-in-law had just fled from police. >> why did he just steal her pickup truck and flee when i asked him to come back to the police station. >> the situation suddenly looked much worse than detective mauer had thought. he brought morgan to the station and called his partner and longtime friend, diren sedlak. >> he said, can you get in here? something is going on. i'm not sure what, but chapelle just fled and we can't find him. >> we had no idea it was going to turn out the way it did. >> their first priority was to find steve chapelle, who is now on the lamb. try tracking his cell, which was in the truck, it was turned off.

but morgan's phone is in there, and it was turned on. she gave detective's permission to track it. >> we focused all of our efforts on morgan's telephone. >> meanwhile, morgan was downstairs in the interview room as detectives tried to find out what steve was running from. >> do you think maybe steve hurt him? >> i don't know, but by his reaction today -- >> i have your permission, and in my terms, he flees the scene. >> although morgan had previously denied the affair with steve, the much younger landscaper, she was now telling the detectives they were having a relationship. a result, she said, of an unfulfilling marriage. >> it was just a bad marriage. it was a bad marriage. the yelling, the screaming, the fighting, the i can't ever do anything right. >> tell us about your affair. how did steve treat you? >> he talked to me like i was

not a human being with feelings. >> she repeated yet again how kevin had walked out on her and the kids one week earlier. >> he was leaving. he wanted a fresh start. >> and did you respond to him? >> i said, are you kidding me? he told me he was not kidding, to tell the children that he was leaving. >> in the truck, i saw a bunch of close in the back of the truck. who do they belong to? >> steve. he said he was taking his clothes that he had to my house. >> is been staying there? >> a few nights, yes. >> to rethink that kevin would come home and steve would be there and there would be an issue? >> no, i haven't thought about that. >> i said if i get in a fight with my wife, nobody is moving into my house. >> as a husband, as just a sensible person, to me, that --

>> it was poor judgment. >> poor judgment, and a bad marriage was all kevin's wife would admit to. the family knew that morgan had a history of deception. a strange one that went back many years. >> for something that is innocent, looking at her face, that you just believed her. whatever you said, you just believed her. >> one of her biggest lies, they say, was back when morgan got pregnant before the couple was married and refused to tell the truth about it. >> we were looking at her saying, you are pregnant. and she said, i am not pregnant. >> she would wear two girdles at a time and heavy sweaters, and i said to her, morgan, did you tell kevin? and she said, no, i just told him i'm on birth control and it's causing my stomach to swell. >> and when the baby was born, kevin was in shock. >> we got a phone call the next day from kevin hysterically crying, telling me that i'm an aunt.

>> was he crying tears of joy? >> i don't think so at that time. i think he was so scared, and it caused the first real fight between my brother and i, because i was so very disgusted by morgan. >> so when kevin went missing, the family had been convinced from day one that morgan was hiding something, and now, the detective was, too. after hours in the interrogation room, she gave the first hint that she knew more than she was saying about her young boyfriend, steve. >> steve had said to me that he loved me, and would do whatever it took to have me, and then last night, he said he had an uneasy feeling. he apologized to me and said it was his fault. i asked him, what was his fault? and the only response i got was, the entire situation. >> user saying steve hurt kevin? >> at this point, yeah. >> morgan asked for a cigarette break. detective mauer went outside with her. she'd been talking all this

time without a lawyer, and the detective wanted to keep the conversation going, hoping she would reveal something, and did she ever. >> were standing in the shade because it's still extremely hot and there's no air conditioning in the building because of that thunderstorm, and she says that steve had told her that he had hit kevin in the back of the head with a shovel. i went back in and i turned the recording back on at that point. >> morgan, you just told me something. >> steve hit kevin in the back of the head with a shovel. >> it was morgan laying the blame on steve, telling police he had attacked and killed kevin at the landscaping garage on the day he had supposedly left her and the kids. the detective was stunned. that earlier sighting of kevin alive and well in town -- had it been a mistake? how long had she been lying to police? >> i am floored. why didn't you tell me this? when your boyfriend tells you that he hit your husband in the back of the head with a shovel,

you call the police. >> are you trying to protect steve? >> not at this point. >> morgan said that steve had only just revealed to her what he had done, but the detective suspected he wasn't getting the full story. hoping to trip her up, he asked her to write down a timeline of events for the week kevin disappeared. >> and you write it down? >> most of what she wrote stuck to the story, but this was a strange detail. >> she writes snapple on one of her statements. i said, what does snapple mean? >> coming up, a new revelation. that single word morgan had written involved a deadly surprise. >> you had to the snapple to your husband? >> when dateline continues. with wegovy®, i lost 35 pounds. and some lost over 46 pounds. ♪ ♪

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♪ sweet child of mine ♪ pop! [ screams ] hoda kotb: the first break in the case of missing husband, kevin mengel, had come out of the blue. morgan, the wife, under questioning by police >> the first break in the case of missing husband kevin mangel had come out of the blue. morgan, the wife, under questioning by police, revealed that her lover, steve, had killed her husband in a landscaping garage. she was saying steve had done the deed a week earlier, and only admitted it to her later. she had his secret out of fear. >> i didn't know if he was going to whack me upside the back of the head with a shovel if i did. and you guys showed up and he flipped out. >> the man you are having a relationship with tells you that he hit your husband, the father of your children in the back of head with a shovel and you don't tell me that

information? i personally feel it is because you had some motive in this. >> i had no role in this. >> but detective mauer did not believe her. he looked over the timeline she had written out, puzzling over that one word -- snapple. why did she write that down? the detective took a break, one upstairs to speak with his partner. >> it was sort of like a mental slip. and then i asked him if he minded if i had a shot. i wanted a chance to talk to her myself. >> and so the detectives decided to play good cop, bad cop with morgan. >> i want to hear everything, and you better start at the beginning, because the game is over. >> and now morgan was about to offer a new piece of the puzzle -- a truly shocking one. it had started as a joke, she said, the two lovers imagining kevin out of the picture.

what would happen, they wondered, if they put something in his favorite drink? >> he put nicotine -- straight nicotine -- in a snapple that he bought. >> following a recipe found online, steve cooked up some chewing tobacco into a toxic substance called liquid nicotine. he then slipped the poison into kevin snapple. >> and then who headed the snapple to your husband? >> it was on the truck. i did. >> did you say anything to your husband, like that is for you? >> no, the rest of us don't drink snapple. i left and got my kids off to school. >> what morgan insisted she never expected any real harm to come to kevin. never expected steve would take it as far as he did. and besides, it was of the poison that killed kevin, but the blows to the head, which steve had done alone inside the landscaping garage.

>> i wasn't being serious. apparently it did turn into a serious conversation on his end . and yes, i did hand kevin the snapple bottle with nicotine in it. after that, i was not involved. >> you guys killed someone, and you expect me to believe that you didn't talk about it? >> no. i didn't want to talk about it. i looked at my kids and felt terrible. >> so terrible that you made up text messages to his family members about him calling you and texting you? >> i did not do that. steve did that. >> it was steve who used kevin's phone to send messages to his family pretending kevin was still alive. and steve, and steve alone, who had buried kevin in some woods a few times over. >> and where did he tell you that he took him? >> behind a high school. there was a development being built. >> the interrogation had turned deadly serious, but the

detectives thought that morgan's demeanor was odd. when detective mauer asked if he could take pictures for evidence, he says she didn't look like someone facing a potential charge of murder. >> while i am taking these pictures, she's actually smiling for the camera, which is weird. >> in the middle of his bad cop interrogation, the detective said it was almost as if she was flirting with him. >> my questioning was not nice by any means, and i just couldn't believe she was smiling and looking up at me. >> is this funny? >> no. am i laughing? >> you just smiled. >> no, i didn't. >> they issued a warrant for steve, who is still on the lam. >> we handcuffed her inside of the interview room and told her that she was under arrest for the murder of kevin mangel jr.. >> they sent a police officer to talk to kevin's father. >> he said we believe that your

husband has been murdered. it was not easy to say and listen to. >> kevin's three children were spending the day at his sister's house when she learned that kevin was not coming back. >> kevin's kids came in and they just came up and -- they just started hugging me and said, what is wrong? i think they knew. >> michelle had known all along, she says, in her gut, that kevin was dead. but how it happened, michelle could not believe what police were telling them. she remembered steve chapelle as that scrawny, unassuming guy who worked for kevin mowing lawns. in fact, he had done some work on michelle's yard just weeks earlier. michelle felt badly when he told her he had just had his wisdom teeth out. >> i was so worried about him for the two days that he was

there, and to think what he did to my brother -- >> and her sister-in-law -- it felt impossible to take that in. >> when i saw her, i didn't even recognize her. she just had a different look about her. i didn't even know who she was. >> the next morning, detectives recovered kevin's body buried in a shallow grave behind that high school right where morgan said it would be. and the following day, steve chapelle was picked up nearly 2000 miles away in colorado. >> i still can't imagine him doing it. i can imagine morgan doing it. i don't know what they were thinking. >> figuring out what they were thinking was now the job of the county prosecutor, and it would prove to be more complicated than expected. >> did she say you need to go dig a hole? >> morgan had pointed the finger at steve, now he was back in about to tell a very different version of events. >> on the day of the murder,

she's texted him back, has a poison work yet? when it's not working fast enough, she says, could you just pick up a shovel? >> the truth, that takes us right back to where our story began. the tale of the text has another chapter to go. >> coming up. who was the mastermind? morgan, or steve? when dateline continues. it's e and tough to keep wondering if this is as good as it gets. but trelegy has shown me that there's still beauty and breath to be had. because with three medicines in one inhaler, trelegy keeps my airways open and prevents future flare-ups. and with one dose a day, trelegy improves lung function so i can breathe more freely all day and night. trelegy won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition

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were both sitting in jail for the murder of morgan's husband, kevin. morgan had confessed to playing a small part in the crime, >> morgan mangel and her young lover, steve chapelle, were both sitting in jail for the murder of morden's husband, kevin. morgan had confessed to playing a small part in the climb, helping steve chapelle come up with the plan to spike her husband's snapple iced tea with poison, only it was a joke, she said, that was taken too far. >> what were your first impressions of her? be back very good. the allegation compared to the person i was speaking to did not seem to fit. >> morgan's attorney said the case for murder against morgan was weak. she wasn't at the crime scene when kevin was killed, and had no convincing motive for wanting her husband dead. >> financially, she was way worse off with her husband's death and she would've been with him alive, because he was the lifeblood of the company and there was no life insurance. >> she had some musings about,

my wish my husband wasn't around? >> i think morgan was a person walking around with dynamite, so to speak, saying this to various people. and steve shappell was the match that lit the dynamite and exploded. someone took action, and the person who took action was shappell. he is a cold-blooded killer. >> a cold-blooded killer? he hardly looked like one when police picked him up in denver and got him into the interrogation room. he was meek and his voice was quiet and shaking with fear. >> he admitted the whole crime. he said that he was in love with this woman and he thought this was the way to get her forever. >> steve said morgan she was not kidding when she came up with a plan to kill kevin. >> she said that she wanted to be with me forever. >> steve said that after the murder, morgan was grateful. >> asked me if i was all right, she kissed me. she came back with water and began, like, rinsing off the area where it had happened.

>> which is why the garage looked so clean when employees arrived for work that monday morning after kevin's so-called departure. >> she walks in the garage, steps over her dead husband, kisses shappell, nelson to get a card, and gets to work cleaning. >> steve and morgan were pointing fingers at each other over who really planned the murder, and the d.a. -- he believed steve. he offered him a lesser charge of murder to testify against morgan and charged morgan with premeditated murder. a mandatory life sentence. >> i think she found the most vulnerable person she could. she used him as a pawn to take action. >> you think morgan was in charge of this operation? >> morgan had a way with men. she just did. she had a way with men. and i think the same way that she had my brother under her

spell, she had this kid as well. >> the d.a. said it was morgan herself who had been sending those fake text messages to kevin's family after the murder -- not steve. cell phone tracking records proved it. >> she is texting kevin's family, assuring him that he is okay and just wants to be left alone. she is the most evil woman i have dealt with. >> morgan mangel went on trial in late january 2012, a year and a half after kevin mangel had been worried. in addition to steve shappell waiting in the wings to testify, the d.a. had something else . something extremely rare in a murder trial. a play-by-play of the crime, courtesy of text messages between morgan and steve as it happened. >> we were like, holy smokes, there it is. it is right there. >> the detective said discover the messages during their interrogation when they pulled morgan's phone records looking for leave. >> we knew the exact time of death, we knew how it happened.

and so we were floored. >> the text are chilling. four hours before the murder, morgan text steve. are we ready? steve response, yeah, at the shop now. and a half hour before the murder, morgan asks steve about the poison snapple. he drinking it? steve writes back, yeah, kind of. really just waiting for him to bend over. i have a shovel in my hand. morgan's response, nice babe. steve doesn't reply. organ rights, you backing out? >> she then gives him the final talk, you backing out? the text back, it's done. get here now. >> these don't even seem real. they just don't seem real. >> as incriminating as those messages sounded, morgan's defense was ready to press her case in court, claiming she was no murderous mastermind.

>> i'm not so sure even to this day that she had a fully formed belief that stephen shappell was actually going to do this. >> but the defense never got a chance. if you days into the trial, a police officer said something on this and -- hearsay that the prejudice the jury, and the judge sent everyone home. >> a chester county drudge declares a mistrial in a love triangle murder case. >> for kevin's family, the delay was torture. more waiting for answers to questions they never wanted to ask. >> i wanted to know if he knew it was happening. i wanted to know if he begged. >> why did you want to know? >> kevin was so sweet and kind. and i know he must have been so, so scared. >> the story of those final moments could only be told by steve shappell , but even from jail, as they awaited their fates, morgan was trying to keep him quiet. she wrote him a letter saying she had given birth to his

twins. >> her game plan was, we have kids together, he's not going to rat me out. >> she would always ask him, do you think you has a better chance to get out of here? i need you to do this for me so i can raise your children. >> except, of course, it was another lie. another manipulation. the prosecution and defense were back at the chester county courthouse for morgan mangels retrial. steve was set to testify, but then another surprise -- the day the testimony was set to begin, morgan stopped the trial from happening and changed her plea. she admitted to first-degree premeditated murder. even her own attorney was stunned. >> i believe morgan saw the handwriting on the wall. she realizes that whatever actions she took resulted in this death, and resulted in shappell killing him.

>> steve was sentenced to 40 to 80 years, and morgan, life without parole. for the mengel family , who were raising kevin and morgan's children, there was finally some justice, they said, and knowing morgan will remain behind bars forever. >> i want her to be in jail for the rest of her life. i want her to know that i'm going to be there when her daughter walks down the aisle. i'm going to be there when her daughter has a baby. i'm going to be there with her sons when they meet their wives and graduate from high school. i'm going to get to see all of that, and she is not. she is going to live this way for the rest of her life. >> that's all for this edition of dateline. i am craig melvin. thank you for good morning and welcome to