>> hard to have to talk about my parents and the loss. they're no longer with me at all. it does tear me up. >> do you feel justice was served? >> i don't know. it's hard. it's hard to admit that anybody could do something like that. >> reporter: and adrienne solomon, the one-time teacher of the flying trapeze, the woman who thought she had learned a thing or two about reading people, still wonders why she just didn't see it. >> i don't trust my judgment and i don't trust other people are i'm craig melvin. >> i'm natalie morales. >> and this is "dateline." i called my mom and she didn't answer. i pretty much knew in my heart that something was wrong. >> a mother vanish. >> i desibed cried myself to sleep. it's awful realizing your worst nightmare had come true. >> a family's anguish. >> she was gone. >> do you have any idea how hard

that was? >> now, the questions begin in a southern gothic mystery. >> the case is puzzling. we didn't really know what had happened. >> who would ever imagine you'd have a murder in your family? >> soon there would be secrets. >> we were dealing with a person that was leading a double life. >> and one of them would prove deadly. >> i know that you did this. >> it hurts too much for me to say it out loud. hello. welcome to "dateline." it's a case that centers on a mother who had gone missing and the small town secret that led to a very big surprise. here's keith morrison. suppose for a minute you were sitting in your car

smack-dab in the middle of tuscaloosa, alabama and you pointed southwest down highway 69 and kept a sharp eye out after half an hour or so. you roll into a sweet little place called moundville. one stoplight, one main street, one general store. been around for a long time has moundville. but it's a sad truth, as the sheriff says, even here where everybody used to know everybody -- >> it's not that way anymore. so many different people are moving in from around the world. >> trying to escape the crowds. >> well, escape the crowd or running from something. >> yes. and where have you gone, andy griffith? >> mayberry has up and left us. sheriff kennel is fights real crime nowadays. >> the crime here is the same crime you see in any large city, just a smaller version. >> still, moundville is moundville and neighbors tend to know more of each other's business than they might in

tuscaloosa, for example, which can be a bit of a nuisance if you need to keep a secret, especially, for example, if your secret is about murder. to begin with, this thoughtful young woman was just a girl of 17 back in '07 when things started coming apart in the way things do when parents don't talk about it. kelsey mayfield saw that troubled look in her mom's eyes, her mom teresa. >> i could tell she was very stressed. >> was it clear she was stressed about? >> moin would be the main thing. we wanted to be sure she had enough money to take care of her family. >> a lot of that going around. like so many americans, kelsey's dad had to work two jobs just to keep his head above water >> hard working man. it took two jobs to take care of

our family. >> but moin trouble aside, teresa seemed to have a happy life as anybody could see including teresa's mother, reba. >> all teresa ever wanted was to have a husband that cared for her, somebody she cared for and to have a family. >> a sweet and kind of corny and even after her two little brothers arrived, she could see the signs of her parents affection for each other. >> he would give her a kiss on the cheek and say good night, i love you. >> the softball mom, the trunk of her car, a muddle of bats and balls. she shuttling kids back and forth. >> i had a softball game and we all had a game at the same time. she would stay 30 minutes at their games and each of our games. she was an amazing mother.

there's nothing she would not do for myself or my two brothers. >> then there was that sweltering morning, june 2007, teresa drove off to run errands and didn't come back. kelsey was baby-sitting the boys, 8 and 11. hours ticked by. she called her mom. where are you? >> she didn't answer. then i called her back around lunch and she didn't answer. i called her pretty much all day long. >> her dad was at work, her mom was, who knew where? wasn't like her to do this. is she the sort of person who would take her cell phone with her? >> it was attached to her hip. >> you could easily get ahold of her in. >> yes. >> and you couldn't? >> no. >> she was in a panic. she called her dad who had gone from his day job to his night shift. >> i'm sure you told your dad you were worried. >> we kept in touch during the day. >> did he seem to be worried?

>> he did. we could never get in touch with her. >> at midnight, it was clear, something was terribly wrong. scott left work to file a missing person's report with the moundville police. then they all waited. >> what was it like for you that night? >> it was awful. i was very scared when she didn't come home. and i pretty much knew in my heart that something was wrong. >> the next morning, said kelsey, she woke up in a house that no longer felt like home. she called her grandmother reba at her home in prattville, a town two hours away. >> she said is mama down there at your house? >> i said no, hon., she's not here. and she said, mama didn't come home last night. >> what was going on in here? >> i'm just turning upside down. you know, i'm just tied in a knot. >> reba called teresa's younger sister ashley at her office at the local circuit court.

>> mama called me up. she said teresa is missing. i said let me make some phone calls. >> right away ashley called the sl sheriff of her town and he called the sheriff of ellis. his response to me was it's bad. it's bad. >> it certainly was. they had found teresa's truck on a dirt road less than a mile from home. she was slumped behind the wheel and she was dead. and this much was perfectly clear. it wasn't an accident. coming up -- the investigation begins. >> we had to ask ourselves, who would get her to this location and why was she murdered? >> when "dateline" continues. how can you make your hair even stronger? use pantene shampoo together with 3 minute miracle daily conditioner. their pro-v formula is like a multi-vitamin.

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it was a lover's lane. a quiet dusty, dead-end road miles from main street moundville. a spot so uncommonly traverse a car with engine running taillights blazing could go unnoticed. it was here they found teresa mayfield's truck, body inside, gunshot wound to the head. teresa's younger sister broke

the terrible news to their mother. >> when i went to the house, mama was sitting in the recliner. i knelt down on my knees and i grabbed her and i said, mama, she's gone. she's gone. do you have any idea how hard that was? >> teresa's daughter kelsey has spent a sleepless night waiting in vain for her mother to come home. >> how did you find out? >> my dad came and told my brothers and i. it was awful realizing that your worst nightmare had come true. for a brief second, i thought she committed suicide just because i knew how stressed out she was. but then i also knew how much she loved her family. >> everybody who nutrisse a knew that. even sheriff ellis who drove out to the crime scene if that's what it was.

he was met there. >> this case was personal to you, sheriff. >> yes. my daughter and mr. reese and scott's daughter played softball together. >> you would see teresa at the ballpark. >> it felt like part of my family was gone too. >> they had a look around the truck. no sign of a struggle. dusting revealed no viable fingerprints. there were no footprints. not even a loose hair. puzzling. was there any thought once you saw the scene that this was a suicide? >> there was things missing that prevented the suicide theory. >> like what? >> if you're going to commit suicide with a gun, it's usually at the scene. >> it was clear teresa had been murdered. shot with a gun which was now missing. and what was more, her cell phone, the one always attached to her hip, was nowhere to be

found. >> did it look like it could have been a robbery? >> the wallet wasn't taken. the purse was on the console. butt contents of the purse had been dumped out in her lap. >> a clumsy attempt at staging, you might say? >> yes. >> but there was one important clue left behind. >> we noticed that the only window down was the driver's window. so we figured that she had to have known the person because she had let down her window. we had to ask ourselves, who could get her to this location and why was she murdered? >> someone in moundville had to know something. >> from there the investigation went where? >> investigating her inner circle, trying to find a motive. >> usually, so i'm told, in cases like this, the husband has got to be a person of interest. >> yes. >> so as the family gathered to mourn the loss of their beloved

teresa, scott couldn't be with them. he was down at the sheriff's office answering questions. >> came willingly, no issue. >> yes. >> did he ask for an attorney? >> no, he did not. >> corporal boyd chatted with scott for three long hours. during the whole time, he was cooperative and helpful. >> you know, the standard questions that we would ask is, is anyone having an affair? are you having an affair? no. >> was she having an affair? no. >> good marriage, happy marriage, christian marriage? >> right. i asked them did they argue? no. >> scott answered all their questions about what teresa was supposed to be doing that morning. he phoned teresa from his morning job on the farm, and then two hours later she called him. but the call faded out. he couldn't hear a thing. >> scott said that it sounded like she was on the road. >> he thought nothing of it then, he said. but now was it a distress call? no way to know. but there was one thing that

call certainly cleared up for investigators. scott could not have killed teresa. he was something like 30 miles away up near tuscaloosa, had a breakfast receipt to prove it. >> he stopped at hardee's and had a receipt showing he was there. >> so he rejoined his family. caught up in the terrible business of grieving. >> i kept wondering, why was it happening to our family. >> it was awful. who would ever imagine you'd have a murder in your family? >> investigators tried with the help of friends to fill in the gaps of teresa's last hours. they talked to their friend dawn lavender. she had plans to go shopping with teresa the morning of the murder. >> i'm sure dawn was upset and shocked by what happened. >> she did cry during the interview. she was at her house waiting on teresa to come pick her up because she was going to ride with her. she finally got the chance to talk to teresa around 7:00. >> after that call, nothing.

dawn told the investigators she phoned teresa over and over and each time the phone went to a recording. just to be sure of all this, they pulled teresa's cell phone records and plotted out a timeline of her whereabouts. but the picture the records painted wasn't quite what they expected. that morning call to scott, the one he couldn't hear, teresa did not call from moundville. >> cell tower shows it's pinging from up in tuscaloosa. >> wait a minute. how could it be pinging from tuscaloosa? that's miles and miles away. >> right. there's no way she could have made the call and been back to the location where she was murdered at. >> courtesy of the cell towers, you were able to show that teresa could not have made that call. it had to be somebody else using her phone and what do you know? her phone is missing from the crime scene. >> correct. >> so the person who very likely killed teresa mayfield must have used teresa's cell phone to call

her husband scott. what could that mean? did the killer know scott? and did scott know something he wasn't sharing? coming up -- >> we were dealing with a person that was leading a double life. >> secrets and lies. >> this was the trail -- >> very good word. >> when "dateline" continues.

welcome back to "dateline." even though teresa mayfield's husband scott had been very cooperative with investigators, they wondered if there was

something he wasn't telling them. here again with secrets in a small town is keith morrison. it's a funny thing about secrets. they can only stay hidden for so long. especially in a little place like moundville. and it didn't take very long for sheriff ellis and boyd to stumble across more. >> scott had a young lady to come pick up the boys. >> it was only later when the fog of grief lifted that one of teresa's relatives wondered to police who was that woman hanging around the day teresa died? ellis and boyd tracked her down and what they discovered, well, that changed everything. or seemed to. the person they were talking to was scott's mistress. >> she was under the impression

that scott was not married at that time. >> what did you make of that? >> we knew that wasn't correct. >> a love triangle, jealous home wrecker kills wife, claims husband? no, not even close. scott's girlfriend thought his marriage was over. his divorce finalized. >> what was her reaction to getting the real story? she must have been upset. >> more hurt than upset because i think she had fallen in love. >> he had been lying like a sidewalk. >> that's right. >> you had no idea that woman was associated with him that way either, did you? >> no. i had met her once or twice. but i just thought they were friends. i didn't think it was anything el. >> this was betrayal in all capital letters. >> that's a very good word. >> you were betrayed. >> lied to. yeah. taken advantage of if in a way. >> kelsey may have been

surprised but her mom and sister knew better. this wasn't scott's first dance with infidelity. oh, no, there had been others. in fact, scott and teresa divorced during one affair, that was just after kelsey was born. three years later, teresa took him back. remarried him. >> she wanted to have her family back together. that was her whole thing, family. >> what was it like for you when scott came into your house? what's happening here as he walked in the door? >> i tried to be sociable, mu ml with scott. he hurt my sister and i would not forget it. >> for a while, things were as things as hoped. soon scott was back to his old ways with that girl cops were talking to in tuscaloosa. you know how gossip can be. scott when from sympathetic --

maybe worse. he must have been aware of the fact that people were suspicious of him. >> it bothered me hearing the bad things people had to say about him. i knew my dad was never capable of doing something like that. i was going to have his back regardless. >> but to investigators, scott's affair and the fact he lied about it to police certainly was suspicious. ellis and boyd asked the girlfriend to help them out by recording her conversations with scott. maybe he'd let something slip. >> hey. >> hey. >> are you okay? >> yes. i'm okay. they just left. look, all i want to know, did you do it? >> of course not. they told me on the get-go, i would be number one prime suspect. >> i know. >> because i'm the husband.

>> do you still love me? >> yes, i do. >> if you do have anything do with her dying, was it because you love me? >> i didn't have nothing to do with it, no, no, no. i had nothing. my hands are clean as they can be. >> so infidelity? yes. murder? didn't sound like it. >> we could prove that he was an adulterer. but we was trying to prove the murder. >> guess there's no crime against being a lying sack of you know what. >> it's not against the law to have a mistress. >> so now the corporal and the sheriff reverted to standard procedure and followed up every tip and tracked down every tenuous lead and knocked down rumors. somebody called scott from teresa's cell phone that morning, whether he heard it or not. the investigation dragged on. >> weeks and months went by and there was nothing. >> we had no idea how that anger

will get the best of you, not knowing who done this and you want the person that done this to be punished for it. >> kelsey took on the most difficult job of her life. at 17 she stepped into her mother's shoes defended her father, tried to maintain something of a normal life for her little brothers. >> me trying to fill my mother's shoes. those are some big shoes to fill. i felt like it was my responsibility to help my dad take care of my family. >> so you were able to continue to have a relationship of trust with your father. >> right. >> he was there for you guys? >> yeah. he tried to be strong for us so we wouldn't have a breakdown. >> by the first anniversary of teresa's death, there was still no arrest and the story was old news. so teresa's mother plastered this poster on doors and windows

and telephone poles hoping it would dislodge some clue. and then the weirdest thing happened. >> we found out that just about as quick as we were putting posters up, they were being taken down. >> taken down by someone who didn't want teresa's killer found, she presumed. and a dark thought crystallized in reba's mind. was it scott? >> he never acted like a grieving husband. if he had, i wouldn't have had these thoughts. >> so your thoughts actually increased over the course of the time that you were with him? >> yes. >> but you know what they say about assumptions. it wasn't scott. >> me and my brothers took them down. at first, i was okay with it. but once they put the posters up and everywhere i went, i saw my mother's face, it drove me crazy, it broke my heart seeing her face splattered all over the pictures. >> so expectations faded again. a couple more months went by and

then a girl who knew kelsey heard a strange little story. overheard it actually. a guy saying he saw someone a gurn on a dirt road around the time teresa was killed. >> did she associate it with this crime. >> she knew miss teresa was killed down that way so she reported it. >> was this the break they were looking for? >> the tip led to real flesh and blood. in fact, to a quite literal snake in the grass. a curious incident from teresa's past. could it shed light on the crime? coming up -- >> i looked at her and i said you need to stay away from that woman. she is no friend of yours. >> when "dateline" continues. see visible results day 1.

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hour's top stories. president trump and the first lady are in japan to begin a trip to the far east, including south korea, china, vietnam and the philippines. the trip is scheduled for 12 days. the statement from the hillary clinton campaign says that staffers were shocked to learn that former dnc chair donna brazile considered swapping clinton for joe biden in 2016. she thought about making the change after clinton fainted after a 9/11 memorial event. now back to "dateline." welcome back to "dateline." i am craig melvin. years after teresa mayfield's murder, a casual conversation overheard in a bar gave authorities their first break. a break which would lead them to the chilling tale of teresa's murder. once again, keith morrison. >> under a setting sun on a sweltering summer night, two years after her death, teresa

mayfield's friends and family gathered to remember. >> i talk to her almost every day and i miss those talks. >> they took turns talking about the loving daughter, the softball mom, the sweet woman gunned down on that lonely country road. a murder that was still a mystery. >> my family will not stop searching or doing whatever it takes to find out who took teresa's life. >> when scott got up to speak, you can bet people were paying special close attention. >> yes, she was a loving wife, loving mother and a loving friend to the community, yes, she would do anything for anybody at any time. >> having discovered he was not exactly husband of the year, some people nursed a lingering suspicion and yet here he was devoted to the care of his children and full of praise for his dead wife. >> she did a wonderful job

raising these kids. she was the one who got them to practice on time, got them to ball games on time. >> when sheriff ellis walked up to the podium, he looked at teresa's mother reba and vowed he'd get justice yet. >> miss reba, i won't quit until we find out what happened to miss teresa. >> in fact, even as he spoke, the sheriff, along with the corporal, were facing down their first honest to god lead in, what, over a year? didn't seem like much at first, just an overheard story from a guy in a bar something about they ran into someone with a gun. not terribly uncommon around here. except it happened around the same time and not far from where the murder occurred. so ellis and boyd tracked the kid down and he repeated the story to them. >> they were on a dirt road and they came up on a snake, a rattlesnake and they was trying to kill it, find something to kill it with. >> trouble was, they were plum

out of rattlesnake killing tools and that's when an suv just happened to pull up on the dirt road behind them. the driver was a woman in her 40s or thereabouts who said the young man offered them a sure fire way to smash that rattlesnake. >> lady in the car had a sghun. >> right. >> it was a handgun inside a ziploc plastic bag. >> i think she handed him the plastic bag for him to take it out. >> that was a little weird. why would it be in the bag? >> right. >> a peculiar story for sure. certain details were a little fuzzy. kid couldn't remember the exact day, for example. but he did recall with clarity who the driver was because he knew her. knew her name. and here was the most curious thing of all. it was a name you've heard before. dawn lavender. small town moundville suddenly got even smaller.

dawn lavender, you'll recall was teresa's friend who she said she waited in vain for teresa to pick her up. great buddies according to dawn. but maybe not so much said kelsey. >> they would speak but they weren't best friends or anything. >> they did go out together a couple of times. >> i think my mother did it because she was bored and wanted to get out of house. >> but when they did get together, it was certainly memorable and not in a good way. they went out to a local casino one night, she said and her mother came home stumbling. >> i thought she was drunk. i knew that that couldn't be right because she didn't drink. she didn't know where she was at. you couldn't understand a word she was saying. she came in and my dad and i put her in the bed. >> how long did she sleep? >> she slept for two days. two straight days. >> what did you think about that? >> it was very strange. she didn't really remember what

happened. she just knew that she had taken some pills, i believe. >> how did she get them? >> i believe dawn gave them to her. >> remember how teresa was stressed out the last week weeks of her life? the casino trip, dawn gave her xanax, the anti-anxiety medication to calm her down, dawn told her. it certainly did that. out like a light, calm, for two whole days. >> i looked at her, i said teresa, you need to stay away from that woman, she is no friend of yours. >> how did teresa respond to that? >> she said i've learned my lesson. >> or maybe she didn't. because the morning of the murder teresa arranged to run errands with dawn, or at least that's what dawn said. and then it all clicked together. dawn on the dirt road, a gun in a plastic bag, teresa's car window down as though she knew her killer.

sheriff ellis and corporal boyd picked apart the early interview with a suspicious eye. they pulled her phone records and there it was plain as day. dawn's lies caught by cell phone technology. >> it painted a clearer picture that dawn was in the location of teresa the morning that she was murdered. >> why in heaven's name would a woman who claimed to be teresa's friend want to kill her? good question, which perhaps they'd get answered once they accused dawn lavender of murder, which they did. she, however, had but one thing to say to police. >> she just kept saying that it was wrong that we made a mistake. >> coming up. >> as far as physical evidence. we really didn't have any. >> but they did have a plan. an undercover sting could get the evidence they need.

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welcome back. after years of investigation, police had a suspect in the murder of teresa mayfield. it was her friend, dawn lavender. but what was dawn's motive for murder? once again, here's keith

morrison. on june 11, 2010, almost three years to the day teresa mayfield was killed, sheriff ellis and corporal boyd drove to the wire factory where dawn lavender worked. she was halfway through her day shift and they told her she was under arrest for the murder of her friend, teresa mayfield. >> she first wanted to know why we was arresting her and then we went to the jail she said this was wrong, we made a mistake. >> the corporal and the sheriff were only too happy to explain how one clue led to another and eventually an inescapable conclusion. but prosecutor evans had questions, pointed ones. >> you could tell it was going to be difficult. >> where was the smoking gun? where was the murder weapon? where was one single fingerprint tying dawn to the crime? >> as far as physical evidence, we really didn't have any. it was truly circumstantial because we didn't really know

anything about what had happened. >> as far as evidence could see, the case was a maybe at best. she had no reason to kill teresa. >> so to bring a case against her would be pretty tough, i would think. >> the case with dawn is puzzling. when you're working with a circumstantial case, every piece of evidence is definitely important. >> how could corporal boyd and sheriff ellis thought they were wrong. they believed dawn was the killer. they told the prosecutor not only that dawn murdered teresa but they were convinced she tried and failed to kill her with a xanax overdose at the casino. >> the sheriff's department thought that was an attempt on her life, but we had nothing to really support that. >> if tim evans was to get a conviction, he needed more evidence, some concrete proof that dawn had pulled that trigger. you can bet dawn wasn't about to tell them anything. but that doesn't mean she wasn't

talking. >> we had another young lady that was getting out of jail and she came to us and said that dawn had been talking about the murder. >> but that could have been just gossip, mind you. from a jailhouse snitch who couldn't back it up. but dawn did have a cell mate. >> she was kind of in a jam herself. she wanted us to try to help her. we can put a word into the d.a. or into the jail. >> that was enough to get cooperation from her. >> right. >> the objective was simple. get dawn talking, wrangle from her something that at least sounded like a confession. ellis and boyd outfitted dawn's cell mate with a digital recorder no bigger than a matchbox. on a friday afternoon as an unsuspecting dawn reviewed her case file, her cell mate walked in and waited for some incriminating tidbit. what she got instead was the

whole sickening story. >> here's what dawn said about the morning teresa was killed. around 7:00 a.m. dawn called teresa with a lie to set the plan in motion. >> [ bleep ]. >> no more vacation days. i told her my car was dead. >> she claimed her car had broken down. could teresa pick her up. of course she said yes. finished drying her hair, got into her car. made a short drive to the dirt road and there standing alongside the road was dawn. >> how big was the gun? >> i shot her. i touched her neck and -- >> no? >> anyway i crawled the side of the truck. >> with calculated, cold

precision, dawn lavender lured teresa mayfield to that dirt road. she then shot her in the back of the head and steered her car into the brush hoping it would stay hidden for a while. >> you will have to lie on the stand. >> like poor little innocent dawnie. >> cold blooded killer. >> if you think about it, that's exactly right. >> yeah. >> terrible look at it that way, though. >> it was all there. a prosecutor's dream confession. she even referred to herself as a cold-blooded killer. but there was one question anyone with a beating heart wanted to ask. why? there just had to be an answer. of that they were sure. would they ever get it out of her? >> why in the hell did you do it? coming up -- >> at some point she was call up

a hit man. >> a hit man for whom? another painful revelation was in store for teresa's family. >> it hurts too much for me to say it out loud. >> when "dateline" continues. how can you make your hair even stronger?

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welcome back. dawn lavender told her cell mate she killed theresa mayfield in a

murder for hire scheme. but who did the hiring? here's keith morrison with the conclusion to secrets in a small town. . >> dawn lavender sounded for all the world like she was boasting as she confessed to her cell mate that she murdered theresa mayfield in cold blood. in fact, in recorded conversations with her cell mate dawn not only admitted to shooting teresa, but said that she had tried once before. that strange night at the casino when teresa came home stumbling that was her first attempt at murder. >> i had everything you could think of. >> she wouldn't die. >> she woke up. >> but why? why would she want to kill her

friend? because listen to this. the answer to the whole puzzle really comes down to one little word. dawn uses it when telling her cell mate what she did. >> we tried. >> we? >> dawn was not acting alone. she had a co-conspirator. >> i don't know if she was trying to be a showoff because she was calling herself a hit man. >> dawn was a hired gun for, you guessed it, scott mfield. >> she was ray loving wife, loving mother. >> the man, his grieving children by his side was according to dawn the architect who designed her death. a revelation that finally made sense of a trail of disturbing stories the investigators had been running down for months. >> one guy that walked around

had offered him $500 to kill his wife. and a little while later, we got a call from another guy's son saying his dad wanted to talk to me. scott had approached him about killing his wife. >> his response to scott was get a divorce. that's what divorces are for. >> and then a third man told them a story. >> he had told us that scott mayfield had hired him, had given him $15,000 to kill his wife. he did not have any intentions on killing her. he just wanted the man's money. >> what's the old saying, two is a coincidence, three is a pattern? which is why even before she told her tale on tape, on the same day she was arrested a warrant was also issued for scott. kelsey was mowing the line when she saw a cop car whiz by. she called her dad.

>> i asked him where he was at. he said the cops have me pulled over. >> your dad was being arrested. it had to be a shock. >> you was very confused. so i thought the arresting officer asked him, why are you arrest might go dad? he said it was solicitation and conspiracy to commit murder. >> yes. >> in other words, he said your father was responsible for the death of your mother? >> uh-huh. >> still, as he sat behind bars awaiting his day in court, he assured his children that it was all a mistake. he was innocent. >> what did you expect would happen? >> i thought he would be found not guilty and be able to come home. >> at that point the case against scott was almost entirely circumstantial till dawn got to talk to that cell mate, the one with the little recording device, and sure enough, as the whole story spilled out, there was scott's name on tape. proof at last.

>> and once the job was done, the car half hidden by the brush, dawn said, she drove to tuscaloosa and dialed a familiar number from teresa's cell phone to let her boss know his wife was dead. >> did you call scott and let him know that it was dawn? >> hung up. >> the only thing left was to collect the $20,000 scott promised her and go except -- >> no money . >> but of course, dawn didn't keep her mouth shut about what she and scott had done. >> from what i could tell, he

was just a coward. he wanted a divorce but he didn't want to live with the responsibilities that accompany a divorce. >> in other words, he didn't want to pay her alimony. >> or child support. evil was the only thing that you can use to describe that man. evil. >> and on may 19th, 2011, almost four years after theresa mayfield was gunned down on that lonely dirt road, her mother, sister and daughter sat in a courtroom and listened as dawn and scott having pleaded guilty to both murder and attempted murder were each sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. >> he looked straight at me. like he was looking at a tree or something. there was no emotion. and neither was there anything from dawn. it was like they were empty inside. >> but for kelsey, it was simply overwhelming. at the moment of sentencing for the very first time, she saw her

dad not as the loving father who took her shopping for her senior prom dress but as a man who orchestrated the death of her mother. >> have you ever brought up the issue with him? and said i know that you did this. >> one day i will. i don't have it in my right now to the confront him and tell him what i know. it hurts too much for me to say it out loud, for me to tell my daddy know what he did and that i -- i hate what he did. but he's still my father and i'll always love him. >> her mother loved him, too. loved him through infidelity and trouble, loved him always. even as she loved her children, her family. as she tried her best to make life good while he plotted to kill her. >> a couple years earlier, you had a great, full, lovely family life.

>> there's not a word that you can use to describe what our family has been through. >> you've got such a nice disposition. how do you do that? >> i get my strength from my mother. >> that's all for there edition of "dateline." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. good morning. i'm dara brown in new york at msnbc world headquarters. it's 3:00 a.m. out west. on the road, president trump in japan and focused on north korea. the latest on his new threat and the message he delivered to american troops. in the works, the president saying he expects to meet with russia's vladimir putin on his trip. will the investigation into hacking somehow work in trump's favor? in a letter to lawmakers the pentagon spells out just what it would require of u.s. troops in north korea. plus the gop tax cut plan explaine