tv Dateline MSNBC November 30, 2019 11:00pm-12:00am PST
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it was one of those moments where you just want to go back two minutes. just two minutes ago, he was laying beside me and he was alive. and now he's gone forever. >> inside a sleeping house, an armed intruder hunts for prey. >> i heard angie scream, "oh, my god, oh, my god." i could see blood running down his neck. >> i nudged justin, and he didn't respond. >> her fiance had just been
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killed. but she's calm somehow. >> to me, very calm. i thought maybe there was a boyfriend on the side. some kind of a love triangle. >> but on a dark highway, the case would take a dramatic turn. >> all the hair on my body was standing on edge. >> he made you nervous? >> extremely nervous. >> a mysterious driver carrying ominous cargo. >> how did he explain that? >> at that time, you don't. >> it's evidence to suggest that there's some sort of conspiracy involved here. unraveling a mind-bending plot to reveal a shattering truth. >> evil is the only word i can think of. inhuman to do something like that. >> reporter: it was a moonless night in iowa, 4:00 in the morning. the quietest of quiet hours. a small-town cop glided down the empty highway out of des moines,
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bound for the early shift at his rural police department. that's when he saw it, corner of his eye. what was that in the ditch? maybe 30 yards off the highway. a car? in trouble? he swung around. somebody clearly missed a curve on the gravel access road. >> the driver's door hanging open on it, look like airbags deployed, dome light was on. >> reporter: and then suddenly, who was that, knocking on his car window? >> gentleman didn't have a shirt on. >> reporter: seemed agitated, weird. eventually, a second cop appeared. >> he was excited, seemed like a -- you know, if you were to talk to somebody right after they got done running a marathon -- just out of breath, sweating profusely. the entire time i'm out here, it's just a very, very -- it's an uneasy feeling. my stomach was turning. >> but no law broken. he called the guy a cab, sent him home. no idea what was coming. how could they know?
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>> it makes you question the goodness of humanity, it makes you question your faith, it makes you question your beliefs. >> it is a point where evil outdid good. >> reporter: even here in the heart of the heartland, its lovely capital, its famous state fair, all manner of deep-fried delicacies and presidential casting calls here. des moines. a place known for its sweet and gentle nature, for people who are simply nice. like him. >> he was -- he was just very good. >> reporter: his name was justin michael. these are his parents, weldon and marie. >> he cared about people. he was kind and considerate. >> reporter: just a nice guy. >> just a very nice guy, a very good person. >> the sort of person who
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volunteered for things, like helping to build houses for habitat for humanity. >> he really enjoyed it. >> reporter: justin was almost 31, the eldest of three. his brother nathan idolized him. >> all three of us stayed close, just always grew up, like, playing sports and hanging out with justin. >> he was just a great older brother. very supportive and caring and would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. >> reporter: in fact, said sister sydney, justin saved her life when, as a teenager, she was caught in a rip tide at the beach. >> it was absolutely terrifying. i felt like i was literally drowning. and then all of a sudden there was justin, and he was pulling me up on our boogie board and telling me that everything was going to be okay, everything is going to be fine. >> so you get the idea. just a good person, a nice guy who was about to get as lucky as
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a person can in life. that is, lucky in love. with her. >> i found him very attractive and interesting and he -- he was fun to talk to. >> reporter: her name is angie ver huel, and what happened to angie and justin was that thing that some people don't even think exists. they fell in love at first sight. bingo. just like that. >> and after our third date, i texted my friend and i said, "i am pretty sure i am going to marry this guy." >> wow. he seemed to feel the same way about you? >> yep. it was very easy from day one. we both knew. >> so they did what people do. they tried out each other's interests. and angie discovered that the man she was in love with also loved things like skydiving.
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which of course, he wanted her to do too. lured you out for a time or two? >> yeah. >> reporter: he had you jumping out of an airplane or -- >> yes. >> reporter: -- or whatnot? >> yes. >> reporter: what the heck were you thinking? >> yeah, i am terrified of heights, so -- >> reporter: so he took you up there? >> yeah. it was so exhilarating, though. i was terrified until the moment i got up in the plane, and then i was just calm. yeah, and it was so much fun. >> reporter: which was a little like their courtship, really. a jump that some people would find terrifying, but not them. you got engaged very quickly? >> uh-huh. when you know, you know. >> reporter: ever any doubt? i mean -- no day you woke up and thought, "oh, god, what have i >> reporter: which was a little like their courtship, really. a jump that some people would find terrifying, but not them. you got engaged very quickly? >> uh-huh. when you know, you know. >> reporter: ever any doubt? i mean -- no day you woke up and thought, "oh, god, what have i done?" >> nope. >> so in august 2013, two months after they met, angie and justin were an engaged couple. in december, she moved in with him at his house in a tiny place called grimes, about 20 minutes outside of des moines. and they planned their wedding.
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which would be, they decided, a family event on the beach in north carolina where his parents lived. they set the date -- july 20th, 2014. it was may. excitement building when justin's parents came to visit, in grimes. >> mother's day weekend. >> reporter: and on the wednesday evening before that mother's day -- >> we were laughing and talking about halloween costumes for the next year and as it grew dusk we ended up cooking s'mores over their fire pit, which was one of justin's favorite things to do. >> reporter: justin's dad weldon was on business in minneapolis that night, so marie stayed alone in justin and angie's guest room. as far as she knew, all was well. across the hall, a couple in love. all good things on their way. dark now. moonless dark. she closed her eyes and slept. and then --
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>> so i heard the door opening and my first thought was angie was coming in to grab a scarf or a piece of jewelry from the dresser. i knew she kept some things -- spare things in the bedroom. the person just stood in the doorway. >> reporter: what did you see? just a silhouette? >> i saw a dark silhouette. a person dressed in dark clothing. and i could see a red laser light shining in my eyes, and as i was laying there, i noticed the red light shine across the pillow. and i remember thinking, you you know, that's a strange flashlight. and that's when i saw a much bigger person than either justin or angie, so i knew this was an intruder. and my heart sank. i'm sure i froze. and a second or two later, the
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door was shutting and i remember praying, just please take what you want and -- and just leave us alone. >> reporter: but, of course, leaving them alone was not what the strange intrusive presence had in mind. not even close. coming up -- >> it was something in a hundred million years you could not imagine. it just was unfathomable. >> it was so bizarre. >> a night of terror only just beginning. no one was prepared for what would happen only seconds later. >> and i rolled over and saw somebody running out of the bedroom. and i knew that was bad. >> i heard angie scream, "oh, my god. oh, my god." >> marie tells detectives a horrifying story. but they're not sure they believe it. >> to me that was very odd. >> when "dateline" continues. at walgreens,
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hard to think about it now, that night in may, 2014. when marie michael drifted off to sleep, things were so good, so full of possibilities for her eldest child and his fiancee. >> the "save the date" cards had gone out for the wedding. >> they were just perfect together. >> and then that terrifying pinprick of red light hit her eye in the dark, woke her up. and she saw him, it, whatever,
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shrinking away. and the fear that took over her body. she froze. maybe she prayed for those horrifying seconds. how many seconds? three? five seconds? across the hall angie. >> i heard the bedroom door open, and i had been in such a hard sleep, i just assumed it was justin leaving to go to the bathroom. then i heard a pop, pop, pop. >> and it sounded very muffled, so i'm thinking, that could not be a gunshot. >> and unaware that her world was quite different now, angie opened her eyes. >> and i rolled over and saw somebody running out of the bedroom and i knew that was bad. and i nudged justin and i said, "justin, justin." >> i heard angie scream, "oh, my god. oh, my god." i knew something terrible had happened.
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>> i turned on the light. and i just ran out of the bedroom, down the hall. >> did you see him? >> i didn't. >> you just knew? >> yeah. >> i looked in the bedroom doorway and i saw justin -- laying on his back on the right side of the bed with his head tilted. and i could see a bullet hole in his head and i could see blood running down his neck. >> my instinct was to figure out how they got in the house. we had a really big window. i checked to see if that was closed. and it was. checked the front door, that was still locked. saw that the back door was unlocked, and i went and i opened it a little bit. and then i was like, that's not a good idea, so i closed it. >> did you understand right away that everything was different, that the man you loved was dead?
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>> it was one of those moments where you just want to go back two minutes. just two minutes ago, he was laying beside me and he was alive and now he's gone forever. >> but in that moment her brain, her fingers, wouldn't cooperate. >> what they say about not being able to dial 911 in an emergency is very true. i had to try like three different times. >> somebody just came in and shot my fiance in the head. >> ma'am, what's your name? >> angie. >> can you go over and check the status of -- >> he's dead. >> okay. >> i know he is. >> marie called 911, too. >> somebody came in and shot somebody. >> do you know who was shot? >> my son, justin michael.
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>> a few minutes later, deputies from the polk county sheriff's office arrived and looked around the house as the two women sat in the living room in complete silence. >> as we were sitting there across from the tv, we noticed that the dvd player had been pulled out and there was a fluorescent yellow sweatshirt laying there, which -- >> didn't belong? >> didn't belong. we pointed it out to the officer and it was neither one of ours. >> was that what happened? some awful mistake? a robber hitting the wrong place, wrong person? deputies told them, get your things, we're taking you out of the house. >> i couldn't go back into the bedroom. i didn't have my glasses on. >> they were in there. >> so i said, "i need my glasses." >> she asked me if i would grab her glasses from the nightstand in their bedroom. so i did go back into their bedroom one more time.
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i looked at justin and i told him good-bye and how much i loved him, and how i couldn't imagine why that had happened to him. >> is it even possible to understand what it does to you to look through the door and see your eldest son lying there with a bullet hole in his head? >> it was something in a 100 million years you could not imagine. who could have done that to my son, who wouldn't hurt a fly? had never spoken ill of anybody, or to my knowledge had any enemies or -- it just was unfathomable. >> the sheriff's deputies took angie and marie outside and put them in separate patrol cars where they sat and watched the activity around them, quite stunned. before they took her cell phone,
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marie called her husband, weldon. she begged him to hurry. >> i wondered when i heard the news, whether they had gotten into the wrong house. i mean, it was so bizarre. >> reality failed to gel in weldon's head. >> on that drive from minneapolis down, i mean, i couldn't believe it. i expected to see him there when i got there. i thought it was a mistake. i asked if justin was all right and then she said, "no, that he was gone." >> it was a feeling of isolation and -- i could see, you know, people in and out of the house. i could see detectives with flashlights combing the neighborhood and all around his house. >> crime scene. >> crime scene. it was a very long three hours of my life, just sitting there not knowing what was going on. >> news reporters were setting up everywhere. and there's so many police cars
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and they weren't saying, "we got the guy." and, like, i just felt, "they don't have him. they need to catch him." i know i'm safe, but is everybody else i love safe? >> eventually, they drove both women, separately, to the sheriff's headquarters, where they installed them in separate rooms for separate interviews. because something about this didn't smell right. >> there was just a lack of emotion, and to me that was very odd. >> coming up -- detectives become concerned about something else too. >> we had to find out why did someone isolate justin and want him dead? and we didn't see a lot of emotion from the mother or angie. and so that was concerning. >> did it say anything to you, that these two women in the house, one of them lying right beside the victim, were unharmed? >> yeah. it was suspicious. >> when "dateline" continues.
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on the morning of may the 8th, 2014, local tv trucks roared off to a most unexpected place. peaceful little grimes, iowa, population 9,000, was crawling with cops. very unusual, said reporter stephanie moore of des moines nbc affiliate who-tv. >> it's the kind of place where they have the convenience store
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and everyone's there drinking coffee in the morning. >> what about crime? much of it? >> no, no crime in grimes. neighbors live there, probably don't lock their doors. it's just a quiet neighborhood. >> but sure enough, something big was going down. though just what, the deputies wouldn't say. >> when we talked to neighbors, they were surprised just to see even more than one police vehicle in the neighborhood. and then the dci, the division of criminal investigation, van came and that's hard to miss. it's huge. people are coming out with little booties on and full suits, going in an out of the house. there's crime tape up. >> and nobody's saying what happened? >> and neighbors are starting to ask, "what's going on here?" >> anxiety is like a virus. it spread fast in grimes. >> yeah, they were nervous. people don't just get shot in grimes. and they knew justin michael and angie and couldn't imagine anything happening there. >> and if reporters and neighbors were mystified about
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what happened, so was detective robyn bartholomew. >> i was the on-call detective, i got called out at 3:30 in the morning. >> who confronted a messy, bloody crime scene, a victim shot point blank in the head. and here was his fiancee without a mark on her. blood tends to spatter. but there wasn't a drop on angie. >> i mean, how far apart were they? >> right next to each other. >> has that ever happened in your experience that you've encountered that before? >> not that i've encountered. >> and did it say anything to you? that these two women in the house, one of them lying right beside the victim, were unharmed? >> yeah, it was suspicious. >> yes, and also if the killer was intent on robbery, he certainly didn't succeed. that dvd player pulled out of its place in the living room? that was it, said detective tim
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hopper. nothing else was taken or disturbed. >> well, it didn't make sense. >> did it make sense as a burglary? i mean -- >> no. >> -- as an attempted burglary? >> no. and -- >> so if it wasn't an attempted burglary, why would somebody be messing around with -- >> to stage it. to try to throw people off track. >> mind you there was that sweatshirt that didn't belong in the house. had the killer, in his rush to escape, left it behind? while officers tried to track that down, angie and marie were at the sheriff's office in separate interview rooms answering a lot of pointed questions. >> why not kill you too? >> i don't know if he looked in on angie and justin and justin woke up and he sensed trouble. i don't know. >> i mean, why not kill angie? >> and this was weird. somehow, said detective bartholomew, their tone just didn't seem right. especially angie's.
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>> i thought that i guess due to what had just happened, that she would be very emotionally upset. and to me, it was just like a regular interview. it didn't make sense. >> like when she told detective hopper about the intruder who had just fired several bullets right through her fiance lying right beside her. an intruder she saw just a few feet away. >> describe this person the best you can. >> all black. i'd say pretty tall. >> you say black. you're talking black as in -- >> everything was black. >> shadow or a black person? >> i don't know. i didn't see any color. >> did that arouse any suspicion, that maybe she was involved in this somehow? >> i thought so. >> so detective bartholomew pulled angie and marie's 911 calls. >> he's dead.
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>> okay. >> i know he is. >> somebody came in and shot somebody. >> and? >> same thing. i just really -- >> curiously devoid of emotion? >> very much so. i think there was panic. but listening to it, i just think that there was some distance there from the -- the -- you know, the caller to the victim. >> everybody's still suspect in this because we have to find out why did someone isolate justin and want him dead. and we didn't see a lot of emotion from the mother or angie. and so that was concerning. but ultimately you have to go where the leads take you to. >> so you do. but just then, the leads were going in circles, nowhere. coming up -- >> somebody came in there for one sole purpose and that was to execute him. so someone was very personal.
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>> investigators start digging into justin's past, and their line of questioning triggers concerns for angie. >> i was thinking, was i about to marry somebody that i had no idea who he was? >> when "dateline" continues. man: sneezes skip to the good part with alka-seltzer plus. now with 25% more concentrated power. nothing works faster for powerful cold relief. oh, what a relief it is! so fast!
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i'm dara brown with the hour's top stories. british prime minister boris johnson announced that a conservative government will end the early release of convicted terrorists in response to the london bridge terror attack. johnson told reporters, "terrorists serve every day of their sentence, no exceptions." and a winter storm brought blizzard conditions to parts of the great plains and the upper midwest on saturday. as the storm continues to move east, new york and boston are expected to see their first major snowfall of the season. now back to "dateline." when justin michael was shot to death while lying asleep in
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his very own bed, right beside his apparently loving fiancee, the cops adopted a handy rule. when in doubt, suspect all about. including even her. >> it didn't dawn on me that i could have been a suspect or angie. it didn't dawn on me a bit. >> you know, their minds do have to go to strange places when they're detectives, that's what they do. but -- >> i understand that. >> but it was the calm demeanor, the apparent lack of emotion in justin's fiancee, angie ver huel, that attracted the particular interest of the detectives bartholomew and hopper. and so they pushed her a little. wondered aloud, not so idly, if angie might have known the killer or, perish the thought, even colluded with that shadowy person, whoever it might be. like maybe a love interest. someone in his or her past. more likely hers.
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>> talked with angie about justin's relationships. he had no serious relationships prior to her. he did -- had dated, but no one that seemed to cause a concern. so i went into angie's relationships. >> angie had been married before. divorced in 2010. and the ex-husband wasn't a concern as far as -- >> no. >> and there was no particular bad blood? >> no. nothing. there was no children involved. there was nothing other than the relationship that ended. >> but then, angie revealed, she got involved with a guy named andy. andy wegener. moved in with him, lived with him for three years. and then, this was unusual, continued living with him even after their romance ended. andy, or so she said, was well in her past when she met justin. hard to know what, if anything, to make of that. but then angie told the detective about some strange incidents. especially peculiar for grimes, sort of thing that just doesn't
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happen here. it was one night back in november, she said. she'd parked her car on the street overnight in front of justin's place. and when she emerged in the morning? >> i saw the back window had been hit in. and i was like, oh, my gosh. and then i went around and i saw that two of the other windows had been hit in. >> she was shocked, she said. went back in the house to tell justin. they called the police. >> a police officer came and looked at it and noticed that it had been keyed, that it looked like somebody had thrown something at the windshield because there was a big dent on the hood. >> but that wasn't the only incident, said angie. somebody got into the backyard, and vandalized justin's prized fruit trees. >> there were branches that were snipped off and eventually killed the trees. why would somebody come into his yard and ruin things that he had tried to grow? >> so was the vandalism a
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warning? did justin actually understand that he was a target? maybe angie didn't know her fiance quite as well as she thought she did. after all, execution-style murders, as the detectives knew very well, often turn out to have something to do with illegal drugs. >> did you guys get high? did you party a little bit? >> no. >> no drugs involvement whatsoever? did justin ever sell drugs? >> not that i know of. >> but detective hopper felt it in his veins. something about this didn't add up. >> this morning, justin was singled out and murdered. you wasn't. >> i know. >> marie wasn't. justin was. >> i know. >> okay? look at me a second, angie, and listen. there wasn't a burglary in your
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home. that takes away the randomness. >> nothing was taken? i mean -- >> as far as we're aware of right now. >> okay. >> and somebody came in there for one sole purpose and that was to execute him. so someone was very personal. if for any reason you would be protecting somebody that you care about, i need to know. >> right. >> because this is not acceptable. >> mm-hmm. >> when they were doing their police thing and coming up with different scenarios, drugs and money, gambling, the question just kept being asked, is it possible that these things could've happened? and of course, everything's a possibility. for a moment, i was thinking, was i about to marry somebody that i had no idea who he was? >> oh, but there were so many
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questions. one in particular that angie just couldn't seem to answer. coming up -- >> where did you meet him at? >> just at a bar. >> okay. but it was intimate? >> it eventually did get intimate. but not right away. >> angie tells detectives about someone else from her past who once did something disturbing. >> just said some kind of nasty things about me as a person. that to me was kind of like, that's a little creepy. >> but does it have anything to do with the case? when "dateline" continues. telin. olay's new retinol24 faced the competition and rose above. you've never tried a retinol like this. olay's retinol24 complex
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(kristen bell) does the sloth come standard? (kristen bell vo) looking to buy? enterprise makes it easy. detective robyn bartholomew was convinced of one thing in particular. justin michael's fiancee, angie, had to be the key to solving their murder case here in grimes, iowa. >> i maybe thought even though she was engaged, maybe there was a boyfriend on the side. >> right. and if there's a boyfriend on the side, either the boyfriend wanted to get rid of the competition or she wanted to get rid of this one so she could be with the other one. >> yeah, some kind of a love triangle. >> it sounds devious to say such a thing, but these things actually do happen, right? >> oh, very much so. >> detective bartholomew held her suspicions in check while her partner, detective hopper, continued to press angie about
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the other men in her life. very few of those, according to angie. her ex-husband and her ex-boyfriend andy. and then, three hours into the interview -- >> all of a sudden a name came up of someone that actually she had dated. an acquaintance that she had met in between the break-up with andy and her meeting justin. >> it was not a full-on relationship. >> did you just not remember him when we talked about it before? >> well, i hadn't -- i mean i thought about him but it was kind of like -- it was like a couple of months of hanging out and it was like a here or there. and he, i feel like -- i felt like he wasn't being very serious, so i wasn't being very serious with it. >> and who was this other guy? >> his name is dave. >> okay, what is -- dave what? >> what is his last name now?
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i just forgot. it'll come to me, i'm sure. dave. dave. dave. dave. i don't know why i can't think of it right now. >> wait, she couldn't remember his last name? >> which was very odd. >> when did you first start seeing dave? >> the weekend after andy and i broke up. it was kind of just like a silly thing and -- >> where did you meet him at? >> just at a bar. >> okay. >> so i was like all right. whatever. this guy's a funny guy. >> angie told detective hopper she didn't spend much time with dave. they mainly texted each other and met up at bars a few times. >> we had kind of had i guess it was this day-and-age relationship, where we only saw each other about once a week and then the rest of our conversations were strictly through text messaging. i don't think we ever spoke on the phone. and it was always just -- it was very, like, playful in nature
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almost. not like a serious type of relationship. >> but it was intimate? >> it eventually did get intimate, but not right away. >> okay. >> and then it was kind of like once a week thing. we'd hang out on like friday nights, generally. >> and then, of course, everything changed. >> and then i met justin. >> and she got the feeling justin just might be the real thing. so she started avoiding dave. did he sense something? maybe. that's when dave sent angie a text that referred to a reality television show. >> he had made the comment, "i'm going to get your final red rose." and that, to me, was kind of like -- that's a little creepy, knowing i didn't feel that same way. >> right. you hadn't given him any sign that you felt that way? >> right.
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we had never talked about being exclusive. i mean, when you're seeing somebody maybe once a week and talking through text messaging the other times -- caught me off guard a little bit. >> then, just after her second date with justin -- >> that's when i told dave like, i met this other guy, so i had told dave that i was going to have to cancel our plans friday because of this. >> and, as angie said, when you know you know, remember? so she asked her girlfriends how should i break up with dave? >> like, is it appropriate to do this through text messaging? should i meet up with him? and they were like, "no, go ahead and do it through text messaging. you don't owe this guy anything." >> so she did. diplomatically. she tried to be kind, she said. >> i just texted him and i said, "hey, i want to be completely upfront and honest with you and i've met somebody else that i want to spend my time with and we're done." his response was, "i knew you been running around behind my
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back." and we hadn't seen each other for at least two weeks at this point. >> it's hardly a relationship. >> right. >> he didn't take it so well. >> unpleasant? >> yes. i was trying to be kind. he was not. >> what did he say? >> he said some kind of nasty things about me as a person. and then at one point he told me to eat [ bleep ] and die. and then that was then followed by niceties and wanting to work things out. >> oh? >> so it was really back and forth all day. and at one point, it became obvious that he wasn't going to let it go. so i just finally quit responding. >> you never heard from him again? >> yeah, he had texted me the next day saying, "i don't feel like this is over. can you give me another chance?" i didn't respond to that, so
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then after that, yes, i had not heard from him at all. >> that was in june 2013, 11 months before justin was shot to death. angie told the detective all that. so odd, to say the least, that angie swore she could not remember the guy's last name. >> did you think about what his last name is yet? >> i keep trying to think of it. dave. dave. dave. dave. dave. dave. dave. i do not know why i'm drawing such a blank. >> really? detective hopper turned up the heat. >> about one of the first things that i had asked you at the very beginning was who, before justin, who was your relationship, and you said andy. >> uh-huh. >> and you left dave out. >> right. >> for whatever reason. and it doesn't matter at this point either. is there any possibility that with dave or anyone else that
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while you've been with justin that you've maintained any relationship with anyone? >> no. >> and then, finally, after more than 30 minutes of questions about this dave guy, it suddenly came to her, she said. >> i remember dave's last name, by the way. >> and that is? >> moffitt. >> moffitt. >> moffitt. david moffitt. a name that meant nothing at all. another dead end, most likely. but remember that business about luck? most useful investigative tool there is. coming up -- new suspicions are raised as detectives realize two of the people in the case are connected by one remarkable coincidence. >> a company of 10,000 people here in des moines, what are the odds that they would be in the same -- >> in the same cubicle they were. >> coincidences. sometimes they come in clusters,
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don't they? >> another office person heard the name and recognized dave moffitt and she immediately said, he had a car impounded this morning. approximately within 30 minutes of the homicide. >> when "dateline" continues. with advil, you have power over pain, so the whole world looks different. the unbeatable strength of advil. what pain?
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the name of the man she dated just before she met justin michael. david moffitt. and who was he? a sometimes local accountant for one thing but also the scion of a wealthy iowa farm family. and not very memorable, said angie. just a guy who liked having fun. though there was, she said, this one remarkable coincidence. a couple months after she stopped seeing david and just before she got engaged to justin, david got a job in the same small unit of the same department of the same wells fargo office building as justin. david left under some kind of cloud, said angie, months before the murder. but, really, what were the chances? their desks were just feet apart. >> and did he know that justin was dating you? >> he figured out that justin was dating me. >> justin told his parents about it. >> he just said it was an awkward situation but there was no problem. the alignment of that is --
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>> in a company of -- >> -- astronomical. >> -- 10,000 people here in des moines, what are the odds that they would be in the same -- >> in the same cubical, they were. >> but they got on fine. never any bad blood. and david moffitt had no criminal record. so should detectives add him to their list of suspects or what? >> at this point, i don't know if i have the complete story regarding dave or not. >> coincidences. sometimes they come in clusters, don't they? not long after angie's memory coughed up the name dave moffitt, there was another coincidence. >> we figured we needed to continue and focus on dave and see where that leads us. the first thing that was done was a background make-up of dave to include to see if he had a weapons permit. and so while that check for the weapons permit was being conducted, another office person heard the name and recognized dave moffitt. and she immediately said, "he
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had a car impounded this morning." not only was it impounded, it was impounded approximately within 30 minutes of the homicide. approximately 4:00 in the morning. and it was six miles approximate north of where the homicide occurred. and dave moffitt resided approximately 28 miles southeast of where the homicide occurred. >> wow. well, that would be a red flag that's for sure. >> that was. through a further investigation, we learned that he had actually had an accident. >> so they pulled the accident report and read about those two cops and their strange encounters just off highway 141 starting at 4:00 that morning. a place which, by all rights, cory rose, cop number one, should never have been that particular morning. but life happens to everybody, and early on the 8th of may 2014, officer rose was adjusting. >> i was traveling back from the hospital in des moines. my fiancée's grandma was ill in the hospital. >> still in his own clothes, not in uniform yet, he was on his
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way to a 5:00 a.m. patrol shift in the town of boone, 25 miles or so up the road, where officer rose is an investigator with the local police department. and it was very dark on the highway, no moon at all at that hour. so he almost missed it. there in the ditch maybe 30 yards off the pavement. >> and what did you see? >> as i was traveling up the road i saw a car, it would be off here to our -- to my right, sitting on top of the ditch just on the other side of this pole. >> by just over here where the grass is? >> yep. sitting there with the driver's door hanging open on it, look like airbags deployed, dome light was on. >> it appeared the car was headed for the highway but missed a sharp curve on the gravel access road. so cory pulled up, near as he could, to the crashed car. >> just as soon as i'd stopped and noticed that there was nobody in the car, nobody around
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the car, i was sitting in my vehicle, someone, a male approached my vehicle, knocked on the door and he had come from kind of off behind me to my left, knocked on my window and kind of startled me a little bit, you know. he was asking if he could get some assistance, get a ride. offered to pay me to give him a ride. and i told him that quite frankly i didn't feel comfortable with doing so. >> reporter: between that and having to get to work and this not being his jurisdiction, cory called his dispatch. >> i said, "hey, i'm out with a vehicle in a ditch, could you contact the authorities in polk county, see if we can get somebody to come out here?" and they said they'd have somebody out there as soon as possible, they were tied up on a shooting in grimes. >> reporter: so cory left for his shift and when polk county sheriff's deputy jason tart responded to the call from dispatch a little while later, all he knew was there had been an accident. >> so it hit that ditch at some speed then, huh? >> yeah, it was -- he was going pretty fast. >> just missed the corner.
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>> just unfamiliar with the area and driving too fast for gravel. >> reporter: but it was odd because once again, the driver of that car, david moffitt, was nowhere to be seen. coming up -- a roadside encounter goes from odd to downright unnerving. >> all the hair on my body was standing on edge. >> when "dateline" continues. at walgreens, we love smart savers. like yard-sale savers. tee-time savers. and especially med d savers. select a medicare part d plan with walgreens as your preferred pharmacy and get co-pays for as low as zero dollars and 100 rewards points on prescriptions.
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