keith morrison: there were a couple of ideas. one was, you were to go and meet him in costa rica or something. right. keith morrison: start a business there, make lots of money. right. yeah, and it was at a location that only him and i had talked about. so yeah, wanting to-- me to bring my family down to costa rica. so i-- you know, i had this image that he's just out, you know, living-- living life. did you contemplate doing that? i did, for a little bit, definitely not bring my family there. but myself, yeah, i definitely was-- i missed him. i would travel anywhere to see him. keith morrison (voiceover): of course, there was a catch. chris was still in africa. and he told them that before he left, he needed to travel deep into the continent for what sounded like a very shady business deal and a dangerous trip. now his family was really worried. coming up-- debi smith: my gut instinct told me something was really, really wrong. i contacted the us department of state. keith morrison (voiceover): a father sets out on a journey of

keith morrison: yes. keith morrison (voiceover): and scott? modesto. and amber finally told him to stop calling her. [train horns] keith morrison (voiceover): and everyone just waited. until the sea finally revealed what everybody had been waiting for. coming up. i felt something that day. i just knew. keith morrison (voiceover): a devastating discovery, and a ride into danger. jon buehler: this was completely off the charts. nobody's ever reacted this way. keith morrison (voiceover): when "dateline" continues. alright, we got your home and auto bundled and you saved hundreds. oh, that's nice, with the economy and all. what's the economy? [chuckling] where do we start? what isn't the economy? yes. [ laughter ] uh, it's -- it's so many thing. right. look, all you really need to know is that progressive can save you money without sacrificing quality coverage. you follow? i'll just look it up. hmm. that went well. wanna know a secret? more than just my armpits stink. that's why i use secret whole body deodorant. everywhere. 4 out of 5 gynecologis

keith morrison: oh, no, it wasn't. was there a coming out period during which she sort of-- monica: i believe it was 2004. she come over to the house. and she goes, mama, i got something to tell you and chuck. i just want you to know that i was gay. and i said, well, ashlea, i already knew it, but you need to give me some space. i need some time. keith morrison: so monica took some time, prayed about it, came to this conclusion. i can't imagine god giving me this child, and living with her and raising her, that he would want me to stop loving her. it wouldn't make any sense at all. yet, for a long while, monica wasn't comfortable with ashlea's new relationship. though, laura said she and ashlea were good together. laura love: she was just always very giving and very-- what else can i do for you to make you happy? keith morrison: the romance lasted more than three years. and then it was over. but they remained friends. and laura remembers how happy ashlea was when she started working at american eagle outfitters at the

keith morrison: good morning.iceover): we made an arrangement to talk to ed shin in jail, now a convicted killer. what you did, you confess, is terribly cruel, allowing them to think that he was alive all that time when he was dead, when you had already killed him. i mean, that's terrible. i know. i definitely know that those things that i did were terrible and beyond wrong. and, you know-- and i know that ultimately that there's a price to be paid for all that. keith morrison (voiceover): he will pay the price, life in prison. he was sentenced a few weeks before we met. [no audible dialogue] keith morrison (voiceover): whether ed shin panicked, like he claims, or is, in fact a cold-blooded killer, the fact that chris's body has never been found is-- well, it's troubling. investigators, of course, believe that ed, ed himself, buried chris's body out in that vast california desert. that day, you had to get rid of the body. you had to get it somewhere. so if you didn't do it, then who did? that's something i can't t

keith morrison: lost.t all started in the early '80s, even before she met gavin, when he was a stuntman on the tv series "remington steele." he played a shooting victim falling from a second-story window. the stunt went wrong and he broke his back. he would get pain pills for his back so usually percocet, something like that for pain. when that didn't work anymore, he was prescribed oxycontin. and he was addicted to it. keith morrison: he went to a drug rehabilitation center called the matrix institute here in the san fernando valley. he had clearly stopped using. he was feeling healthier than he'd felt in years. keith morrison: but when detective john o'brien and ty labbe learned about gavin's addiction, they had to consider a raft of new possibilities. john o'brien: he disappeared. maybe he overdosed? though, we didn't exactly have any of those answers. driving all over the valley, we would have moments in the car where we looked at each other and said, i think this is a suicide. and then an hour later,

keith morrison: because? well, she went to work that day and the county laid off 20 people that very day. keith morrison: including stephanie. in fact, stephanie's troubles and her secrets seemed to pile up like the snow. bill nielsen: she was behaving a little bit strangely. a little unpredictable. a little bit, yeah. keith morrison: it was thanksgiving week. that cold, dark night. not far away from peaceful silverthorne, someone robbed a bank-- a very rare thing around here. dale was in bed, he said, when stephanie announced she was going out to clear her head, and then didn't come back. come morning, dale called the silverthorne police. veronica nicholas: i got a phone call from dale bruner and just said, i wanted to make a report that my wife is missing. keith morrison: it was a records clerk named veronica nicholas who took the call. he said, i got the kids up, i got them ready for school, and i got them on the bus. and then i thought i should probably call you guys. keith morrison: stephanie's car was i

keith morrison: confusing?had nothing whatever to do with what happened out on the lake. they didn't charge her with that, not with dangerous boating or anything like that, not at all. as the jailer who booked her made perfectly clear. jailer: i'm being told to write your booking sheet out for 1 count of grand theft and 40 counts of forgery. keith morrison: grand theft? forgery? sometimes bad news comes in batches. and this, just as she was trying to deal with the loss of larry, was another story altogether. why do things happen this way? anyway, here's the story. a few weeks before that fatal boating trip, just after larry and lori had returned, glowing from their florida family vacation, larry got busy preparing for their next trip, which they intended to start pretty much right away. and as they did every year, they organized meticulously. they'd load up the camper trailer with their canned vegetables and what they raised and grew and caught and hunted. and then they'd spend like two months in, like, utah's

here's keith morrison with "buried " keith morrison: it's a strange thing that happens among the bogs and marshes, the soft soil here in coastal florida. things have a way of coming up, things buried in the ground in the past-- or both. it was july 2003, beaches quiet, snowbirds back up north. so no one noticed at first what was starting inland a little in a town called pembroke pines, where donna velasquez, just three months a detective, a rookie really, had just been assigned to a brand new cold case unit. the sergeant came into the office and dropped a box of papers right on my desk and said, here, see what you can do with this. and i began to wonder, is this a test to see can she really do this? keith morrison: that the case was a challenge was understatement. a now all but forgotten mystery, the disappearance 15 years earlier of a young man named david jackson. and the file offered no hints, no pointers, nothing really beyond the basic bio. to unearth the truth, even the rookie cop knew she'd have to learn about the victim. so she began with something easy. she found david jackso

here's keith morrison with "poison." [music playing] keith morrison: it was september 11, 2001. just about everybody knows where they were that awful day, like the glamorous trio that was traveling north through california's yosemite national park. even as the rest of the world's attention was focused on new york city, they were intent on their own urgent needs, their desires, their fears, their deadly love triangle. so they probably didn't appreciate the passing wonders, the astonishing cliffs, the waterfalls, the giant sequoias, any more than the one in the back seat, through fading eyes, saw anything at all. here is one of them. his name was larry mcnabney, and he was a tall, handsome man. a well-known and respected attorney from nevada. a personal injury specialist. made buckets of money. loved the big life. loved being in control. there was never a hair out of place. there wasn't dust on his desk. his pen was always in the same spot. keith morrison: larry's daughter tavia was crazy about him. in awe of his type a personality, his joy of life, his courtroom presence. not an

here's keith morrison with "deadly conspiracy." [music playing] keith morrison (voiceover): the game is called mousetrap. the little ball on its track, the tiny taunting mice, which unless every lever works in unison, will not be caught. and how often things go wrong to allow the mice to get away. so odd that what really happened could so eerily mimic a children's game. oh, how nice! keith morrison (voiceover): these are the people it happened to, the jessee clan of orange county, california. they vacationed together-- i'm tired. i'm ready to go home. keith morrison (voiceover): --shared birthdays-- this one's for bev. happy new year! keith morrison (voiceover): --even got together for a monthly game of 10 pins. but what these grainy home videos don't show is what is yet to come, which is murder, conspiracy, one branch of the family against the other, a game so twisted-- mice so clever-- that crafting a trap to catch the plotters just might be impossible. to begin with, it was 1998. "shakespeare in love" won the oscar. monica lewin

keith morrison: was this true? at the time, told police she remembered seeing someone in her doorway. keith morrison: and then, said james, he walked into the master bedroom, saw ben and melissa sleeping in the moonlight. and i raised the gun, and that's where everything in my mind that should have happened three or four hours ago happened. i started thinking why am-- why am i here? something i heard to my left-- a sudden noise. yeah. and as i turned and jerked to see what it was, i pulled the trigger. keith morrison: he ran then, he said, left the front door wide open, caught up to dawn at the truck. keith morrison: who drove? james matlean: she did. i started yelling at her when we got in the truck. keith morrison: the truth, said james matlean, all of it. dawn knows the truth. and i know the truth. and that's all that matters. i'm taking full responsibility for what i did. dawn needs to take full responsibility for what she did. craig melvin: coming up, was ben the only one who was in danger that night? what was

keith morrison: how do you know that? spivey: the gentleman that was working as the clerk that night found a rock that had been placed in the door to keep the door from closing. well, then, they plugged the camera back in, so it's not working again. and at about 6:35 that morning, suddenly, that camera's pointing straight at the ceiling. same camera? same camera. and it's tampered with yet again. keith morrison (voiceover): yet that was jason young's word. is it possible he did make the 340-mile round trip? could he have killed his wife and cleaned up his daughter all in 7 and 1/2 hours without ever being seen? to find out, investigators played a hunch. they visited every gas station along the route, showed jason's photo, talked of the night clerk-- and came across a woman named gracie dahms in a tiny place called king, north carolina. she took one look at that photograph and recognized it instantly. he was the foul-mouthed customer, she said, who came storming into the store to complain that the pumps were locked. and wh

here's keith morrison with "suspicion." keith morrison (voiceover): 7:00 am, november 15th, 2007. dawn in salt lake city, utah. he pulled into the restaurant parking lot, turned off his engine, sky beginning to brighten, sun not quite up. and then, there they were-- the voices, the terror, the nightmare beginning. lee carlson: i immediately ducked down in my car after the first shot was fired. i laid there thinking, ok, well, this is how it's going to end for me. - you're going to be dead? yeah. operator: 911, what is your emergency? caller: somebody just shot a man. he's lying dead inside of the village inn. [music playing] keith morrison (voiceover): it stands in stark contrast to much of the rest of salt lake city, this old chocolate factory, this grand stage for our story. it was converted to loft apartments in those boom years before the bust. and the style of living and location drew a distinct crowd, outliers of a sort, iconoclasts in this famously mormon city. i loved this building. it was fabulous. keith morrison (voiceover): bianca pearman-brooks, for example, born into

keith morrison: but she didn't. family gatherings, as the years went by, thanksgiving, christmases, that awful question, why would she leave them? remained the unmentionable elephant in the room. when it came to my family, i think they didn't talk about it because they figured it would upset me or my sister. my family's pretty closed to talking about heavy things. so something like that rarely talked about. it was an ultimate heavy thing. yeah. keith morrison: in 1987, almost six years after carol vanished, the torrance police department revisited the case. and time seemed to have altered mike's memory a little. a few more details had come back to him. remember, soon after carol vanished, mike said they argued. he went to sleep alone. woke up in the morning early, and she was gone. but in 1987, he remembered they argued, went to bed together. she got up at 5:30 in the morning to go to the bathroom. he woke up, then drifted back to sleep, and woke up to the sound of a car engine starting and driving away. odd. but me

here again is keith morrison with "who killed the radio star?" ng stranger walked into pete's auto dealership in great falls, montana, and got himself a job as a used car salesman. mr. parsetich: (voiceover) he was quite the character. mr. parsetich: wasn't your typical car salesman persona. morrison: (voiceover) joe parsetich was the finance manager at pete's auto. he was at the dealership the day the new guy started. mr. parsetich: (voiceover) he was very sure of himself... mr. parsetich: ...to the point of a little bit smug. (voiceover) in montana, where you have a lot of down to earth, meat and potatoes people, where they're very friendly towards one another... mr. parsetich: ...having somebody with a smug, cocky attitude isn't going to go over very well at times. morrison: (voiceover) still, joe was friendly in the way montanans are known for. he gave the guy the benefit of the doubt. one sunday evening they got to talking. joe says the new salesman told him how he used to be a successful stockbroker, had a beautiful lake-front home in texas.

keith morrison: prosecutors speak out

keith morrison (voiceover): it's a place where they can celebrate a life, someone they loved. she's in heaven, and she's in our hearts. keith morrison (voiceover): their laci. woman: beautiful. oh, how pretty. [camera clicking] . i'm craig melvin. and i'm natalie morales. and this is "dateline." spring sendele: i don't go undercover every day. that's what made me nervous. craig melvin (voiceover): they had a secret plan-- were you armed? yes. and you were wearing a wire. yes. craig melvin (voiceover): --to solve a baffling case, a college student on a friday night out who vanished. she was a very shy girl, but she was something special. craig melvin (voiceover): the possible suspects? just about everyone. the friend, the boyfriend, the mysterious older man, even her mom. i was shocked that they even suspected me. craig melvin (voiceover): so why were police at a dead end? enter this guy. josh mankiewicz: he sees things other cops don't see? phenomenal. craig melvin (voiceover): they call him the evidence whisperer. he's about to crack this case open before your eyes. josh mank

here's keith morrison with recipe for murder. >> it was the cake that should've told them something, the killer cake, the cake to die for. it was supposed to be the jewel in the crown of the gourmet deli, a deli which more than a few regular customers -ranked right up there at the top, and just a two-minute drive across the bridge from palm beach, florida with its five-star hotels, balmy perfect beaches, pricey houses and billionaires who wanted only the best. >> we were doing about $3 million a year in business for 150-seat deli, that's an incredible amount. we would have waiting lines 2 hours long for people coming in. >> it used to be the 3g's deli. that is one its reputation was born but the brothers who owned the place had developed some other restaurants, too, and in the mid-80s they were feeling a little overextended and then one day they met a 32-year-old entrepreneur named glenn sandler. >> out on the golf course he just said he was looking to get into business and i said why don't you buy my restaurant. >> what was he doing before? >> playing golf every day. he was retired.

for "dateline" msnbc, i'm keith morrison. >> thanks to keith morrison for that report. >>> and stille to shop for them. we'll be right back. prices and r them we'll be right back. and i'm feeling free. ♪ ♪ control of my crohn's means everything to me. ♪ ♪ control is everything to me.♪ and now i'm back in the picture. feel significant symptom relief at 4 weeks with skyrizi, including less abdominal pain and fewer bowel movements. skyrizi helped visibly improve damage of the intestinal lining. and with skyrizi, many were in remission at 12 weeks, at 1 year, and even at 2 years. don't use if allergic. serious allergic reactions, increased infections, or lower ability to fight them may occur. before treatment, get checked for infections and tb. tell your doctor about any flu-like symptoms or vaccines. liver problems leading to hospitalization may occur when treated for crohn's. now's the time to take control of your crohn's. ♪ control is everything to me. ♪ ask your doctor about skyrizi, the #1 prescribed biologic in crohn's disease. bent finger appointment in 30 minutes. you got this. o

keith morrison has more. >> reporter: one of the biggest crime stories of the year is 35 years old.iktok. >> they should be walking free on the sidewalks. >> reporter: the brothers' supporters go beyond social media to hollywood. here's kim kardashian speaking to "variety." >> i feel like they just never had that fair chance and imagine if no one believed you. >> reporter: interest in the case ballooned with the release of the dramatized netflix series "monsters: the lyle and erik menendez story." which hit more than four billion minutes viewed in the first ten days. the real story began august 20th, 1989. >> our dad -- >> reporter: initially lyle and erik menendez pointed the finger at the mob. but by march of 1990, beverly hills police had enough evidence to arrest the brothers. could you believe it? >> no, no. >> reporter: but then kitty's niece, diane hernandez, said lyle confessed to her when she visited him in jail. did he offer you any explanation? >> no. not at the time. >> spell your last name -- >> joseph lyle menendez -- >> reporter: at trial the explanation would come ou

keith morrison: and when they're all together, ashlea is there too. that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm andrea canning. thank you for watching. . ♪ ♪ ♪ >> this sunday, "meet the moment." conversations with people who are having a >>> impathis sunday, meet the moment. conversations with people who are having an impact in washington and beyond. >> there are times where i feel like i'm all alone. >> still. >> a limb picks swimmer, michael phelps opens up about anxiety and depression. >> personally, i struggle with almost every single day, and depression and anxiety aren't just going to disappear. >> civil rights icon, ruby bridges reflects on how she made history. >> i was thrust into the middle of a situation that no six-year- old should be put in. >>> and, game changers. >> i feel like we just came to the end of all the excuses of why nobody likes women sports and it turns out, everybody watches women sports. >> sports icons, sue byrd on how women sports are breaking records. >> don't you want to look like a genius? invest now. help this gro

keith morrison (voiceover): but children know little of the arcane world of motions and appeals. cassidy has grown-- her father, her mother, snatches of memory, ever father away. that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. [music playing] >>> welcome to this saturday edition of morning joe heard let's get right to some of the conversations you may have missed this week. >>> i would shut down the fbi hoover building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state. >> he also said he would arrest journalists who did not go along with the 2020 stop the steal conspiracy. >> kash patel is at the spear of donald trump's petition. he has to this point largely flown under the radar in the confirmation hearings process because matt gaetz took a lot of the oxygen and now a lot of the focus is on pete hegseth. they are thrilled that trump did not have to push him out, rather, stepping aside. but moving on, it does most likely put more spotlight on patel. he is someone that not only does not have the qualifications for this job but

keith morrison. >> man, somebody stole my kid. >> oh, yes.h. tune in tonight to find out what happens and, remember, one finalist will be crowned the winner. >> or will they? >> season 26, 9:00/8:00 central right here on nbc. ymts speaking of "voice" coaches, last night, snoop, and his long-time collaborator dr. dre. the two hip-hop icons joins legends with, listen to ththis, frank sinatra and sammy davis jr. through ai. in a ground breaking new campaign. want a peek? >> yes. >> here we go. >> who the hell are these guys? >> i heard those are the new gangsters in town. >> tell those guys we'd like to meet them. >> i have a couple gentlemen over at the bar that would like to meet you all. >> frank. >> snoop. >> sammy. >> dre. >> what are you guys drinking? >> gin. >> still gin. >> still gin for everybody. >> to the good life. >> i mean -- >> wow! >> wow. here's's the dea this was all fair game. the team worked in close partnership with the sinatra and davis estates for the campaign. they loved it. there you go. >>> just ahead, newly minted gol

"dateline's" keith morrison has this look-back. >> reporter: one of the biggest crime stories of theer: the supporters go beyond social media to hollywood. here is kim kardashian speaking to "variety." >> i feel like they never had that fair chance and imagine if no one believed you. >> reporter: interest in the case ballooned with the release of the dramatized netflix series "monsters, the lysle and eric menendez story" which hit more than 4 billion minutes viewed in the first ten days. the real story began august 20th, 1989. >> i killed my parents. >> reporter: initially lysle and eric menendez pointed the finger at the mob but by march of 1990 beverly hills police had enough to arrest the boys. but then the niece said loyal confessed to her. >> did he offer you any explanation? >> no, not at the time. >> joseph lyle menendez. >> reporter: at trial the explanation would come out for the first time, in graphic, emotional terms. about what the brothers said were the darkest secrets of their family. >> between the ages of 6 and 8 did your father have sexual contact with you? >> yes. >