This (live) blog was meant to coincide with Tuesday's broadcast.

by Chris Hansen, Dateline Correspondent

7:54 p.m.

We've just come off of an eye-opening investigation in Petaluma, Calif. and are now in Long Beach, Ca. Once again we tried to set up the house so that my confrontations with the potential predators would be outside on the back patio. The weather cooperated. The sound of jets taking off and landing at two nearby airports did not.

Plan B, as you're about to see, is to set up a bar and stool inside the house. As a location, Long Beach was perfect: easy to get to and surrounded by several major metropolitan areas, but inside the house we're a bit cramped, so much so that a few guys actually spot some of our crew and try to make a run for it. One guy though, who stays and talks to me for several minutes tries to defend one of the most frightening chats I have read during the first eight "To Catch A Predator" investigations. His real name is Michael Warrecker, but his screen name is "can_I_rape_you_anally." Brace yourself for what you're about to hear, it's rough stuff, but important we think in order to understand the potential threat this man represents had there really been a 13-year-old girl home alone. What amazes me is that as I am talking to him is how casually he reacts to the things he said online, almost as if everyone on the Internet talks this way.

8:10 p.m.
It seems to me that more and more of the guys who come into our hidden camera houses quickly realize what they've walked into, sometimes because they've actually seen some of our previous investigations. Take for example one of the next men you're going to meet. He's a 36-year old musician whose screen name is "sugardavis." He chats online with a decoy who says she's a 13-year-old girl about smoking pot and rubbing oil all over each other's bodies. He shows up without the pot, but has everything else needed for the planned sex party.

 It turns out "sugardavis" says he's in counseling because he's met others online for sex. He chats with our decoy, a young looking actress for a few minutes before I also walk into the room. I'm not sure you'll be able to pick up on this watching on television, but it was clear to me that he recognized me immediately. It was almost as if he's seen a ghost. He says one word: "nooooo" and bolts. He won't get far.

8:21 p.m.

As many times as I have seen it happen, I still don't understand how a grown man with young teenaged kids can justify a sexually explicit online chat with another young teenager and then show up presumably for sex. Most of them seem to know intellectually that it's wrong and against the law, but somehow they must compartmentalize their lives in away that justifies their behavior.

Take for instance 44-year-old Robert Salinas who chats with and then visits a girl who he thinks is 13. In his chat he says "I could get in trouble for  making love to a minor." Salinas tells me he has just finished making a service call for the copy machine repair company where he works. Online, he says he has to pick up one of his own kids at karate practice but finds time to pick up sandwiches for our decoy.

Watch as he, like so many other guys, walks in like he's right at home. Salinas admits that what he's doing is wrong and suggests to me that getting caught is a "wake-up call." That's probably true -- but not as much of a wake up call as he's about to get from the Long Beach Police.

8:45 p.m.
Sometimes in our investigation we have so many men show up that we don't have time to put each and every one in our programs. That's what happened early last year during our investigation in Riverside County, Ca. 

There,  more than 50 men showed up and were arrested. One of the men in Riverside who didn't make it into the show is a man named Michael Siebert. He was one of the guys you sort of feel sorry for because they seem a bit slow, but a clear case of why a guy like him could still be dangerous.

Fast-forward 8 months from our Riverside investigation and here we are in Long Beach. Guess who's chatting about sex online with a decoy posing as a 13-year old?

Unbelievably he tells our decoy he can't come over Friday because he has a court date. Later, we'll learn that it's a court date stemming from his arrest in Riverside.

On Saturday night, however, he's in our living room looking for the girl with whom he thought he was chatting.

I say to him: "you know we've had this talk before." He curses, apologizes and promises he'll never do it again. In a moment, you'll hear about a third criminal case in which Siebert was charged. This one resulted in a year in prison.

8:55 p.m.
Next week you'll met a guy who is no stranger to Perverted Justice decoys -- and as you'll see, he'll stretch the resources of Dateline and the Long Beach Police. 

Hope you'll join us again on-air and online next week. And don't hesitate to send us your feedback, below.

Editor's note: Here's some Web-exclusive video -- a video blog of Chris and Lynn Keller, one of the producers behind the series. They talk about the feedback they've received re the show... and how they first reacted when a man stripped naked in one of the reports.

Also, many of the comments below asked about the absence of female predators in these reports. We've addressed this question in a previous blog entry. Check it out.

by Meade Jorgensen, Dateline producer

When I was asked to work on the "To Catch a Predator" project, I didn't know what to expect.

I flew into Long Beach a couple of days before the shoot was supposed to start.  When I got to the undercover house, I was amazed by the amount of work that still had to be done.
Mitchell Wagenberg and his team of "Street Visions" technicians were scurrying all over the place.  They were wiring up fifteen hidden cameras, and just as many microphones to get ready for the first "visitor."

As they always do, the "Street Visions" guys got it together in time.  The "Perverted Justice" decoys were chatting with men on line and our live decoy actors were ready.  Along with Chris Hansen and more than 20 people crammed into the house… I waited for our first visitor.

As I began to read through some of the chat logs, I saw one of the challenges of this story right away.  It would be difficult to let our audience know just how lewd and terrible some of these online chats actually are.

With good reason, we wouldn't be able to quote a lot of the obscene material in the chat on broadcast television, nor show the graphic pictures some of the men sent.  It was going to be tough to communicate how these men were talking--- to someone who said they were under 14 years old.

But I didn't have much time to think about that, because our first visitor showed up pretty quickly.  A man who used the screen name "can_I_rape_you_…" was coming to the door. 

by Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent

Some of the screen names are as frightening as the conversations the potential predators are having with the young teens they think they're talking to online. A 29-year old unemployed computer technician is using the name "can_I_rape_you_" in a sexually charged conversation with a girl who told him she was 13. In graphic detail, he lists the sex acts he wants to perform with the girl. When she types back that it sounds like some of them could be painful the man responds "ya, but it's a good pain ya know."

Of course the girl is really a decoy with the online watchdog group Perverted Justice which has again teamed up with Dateline for another "To Catch A Predator" investigation-- this time in Long Beach, Ca.

The potential predator, Michael Warrecker later tells the decoy: "I like rape" but, then explains that he doesn't really want to rape the girl "just rough sex…I'd want you to resist and pretend that you don't like it and stuff." He also tells her: "I might want to cut you a little…suck on your blood lol."

Later, when he shows up at our undercover house for his date, I confront him and he tells me he was just coming to "hang out." That excuse, however, does not explain the scary movie, video camera, and lubricant he brought with him. Warrecker has since pleaded no contest to charges of an attempted lewd act on a child. He received credit for 120 days time served in jail, has to take sex offender classes and has to register as a lifetime sex offender. Any violation and he could face four years in prison.

Warrecker is one of 38 men arrested in the Long Beach investigation, our eighth. It ends up being a challenging three days for the Dateline crew and for the Long Beach police which ran a parallel investigation and arrested the suspects once they left the house.

One of the issues in Long Beach is that several of the men have apparently seen some of our previous investigations and once they figure out what they've just walked into and answered my questions, they don't want to leave. They know what's going to happen next.

Such is the case with another man you'll meet in Long Beach. He's actually someone we've met before. When 26-year old Michael Siebert walks into our house, we know all about him. Unbelievably, we'd met him before. Eight months before Long Beach, Siebert shows up in our Riverside, Ca investigation. I confront him and he's arrested and charged. On the day before he shows up in Long Beach, he's in court on the Riverside charge. He even talks about his court date in his chat with the decoy posing as a 13-year-girl. Siebert's lawyer told us he has severe mental issues and has pleaded not guilty to in both cases.

And while he may appear to be a sad case, we find out he's served a year in prison for a dangerous assault and Perverted Justice tells us that he has had at least three other sexual chats with decoys posing as underage girls.

As you'll see on Tuesday's report, Siebert won't be the only man who has been caught chatting online with young teens before. You'll also meet another potential predator in Long Beach who has an elaborate plan for a young girl, a plan that involves a lot of travel.

There's also a "To Catch A Predator" first: While we are working in Long Beach, someone-- we don't know who-- has found out we're in town and posted a warning on the popular website CraigsList.

Inspite of that, we saw the second highest number of men in any of our investigations.

The "To Catch a Predator" report from Long Beach, California-- Dateline Tuesday, Jan. 30, 8 p.m.

Click here for some preview video clips on some of the men that are going to be featured in Tuesday's 'To Catch a Predator' report.

Mike Warrecker sips a drink as he is being interviewed by Chris Hansen; Paul Clemente hides inside his T-shirt -- and mentions "Dateline" as soon as he sees Chris.

Most shocking is Michael Seibert: he had already shown up in a previous Dateline sting. He arrived at the Long Beach home not too long after a court date related to the previous arrest.

Warrecker plead "no contest" on one count of attempted lewd act on a child. Clemente and Seibert have both pled not guilty.

An all-new 'To Catch a Predator' investigation in Long Beach, California, premieres Tuesday, Jan. 30, 8 p.m.

 

Update: Last August, Dateline brought you a report on Dean Schwartzmiller -- a man police believe is the worst sexual predator of our time.

Despite seven arrests, four convictions (two overturned on appeal), and an outright acquittal, Schwartzmiller remained free until last May. This time investigators found something new: spiral bound notebooks with what appear to be coded entries, believed to be a ledger recording thousands of assaults.

During his trial, Schwartzmiller acted as his own attorney, telling jurors he was innocent and maligned by a society that doesn't accept men who love boys.

Today, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison.

The judge in the case says that despite his legal savvy in getting previous charges dropped, he now will spend the rest of his days filing appeals from a prison cell.

This blog entry is excerpted from Edie Magnus' entry on May 2005.

by Edie Magnus

I am always fascinated with people who bravely make an unpopular choice based on principle.  Given the response she's gotten from the world at large even before having her story appear on "Dateline, "I imagine that Liz Seccuro's choice may prove to be an unpopular one.  But she has her reasons, which she puts forth powerfully and persuasively in our forthcoming report. Liz is — by virtue of what has happened to her in her life – a crusader.  And she's one of the most effective and interesting people we've had the pleasure to meet.  I am certain of only one thing with this story:  one way or the other, you will likely have an opinion about her.  She is a woman about whom almost no one can remain neutral.

As our airdate approached Liz was once again on edge.  How would she "appear," she wanted to know.  How were we portraying her?  Were people going to like her – or think she was nuts?  Even if I could have answered her (we don't show our pieces to subjects prior to broadcast) -- I had no answers anyway.  This is one of those interesting moments when whatever you as a viewer bring to it will determine what you think of her.  For an hour on prime time television we let her make her case – and she sure makes it well.  Liz made a choice to seek justice for an act allegedly committed against her long ago.  She could have let it go, but she didn't. Hopefully, as you watch, you'll consider the question we pose at the very beginning of the story:  What Would You Do?

"Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" airs Dateline Saturday, January 27, 8 p.m.

Editor's note: Since the May broadcast, two weeks before his court date,  William Beebe spoke out and made a public admission, saying he "crossed a line in the standards of conduct with Liz Seccuro." He added that he "regretted that conduct immediately afterwards and since." He struck a deal and pled guilty to one count of aggravated sexual battery. Under the agreement, the state recommended Beebe serve two years in prison, perhaps even less if he cooperates in a new investigation that touches on some of Liz's unresolved fears that she addressed with Beebe in an email exchange— that he wasn't the only attacker. 

While Beebe initially told her that he remembers being the only man present, it turns out that Liz's foggy recollection may have been right after all. In court, the prosecutor said that new evidence suggests that Liz may have been sexually assaulted that night — not just by Beebe — but by others at the fraternity party.

Now she once again has to wait for justice to take its course.

by Dennis Murphy, Dateline correspondent

"Would you like fries with that?"

"Window or aisle?"

We all have questions that seem to come with our jobs. Mine often is: "Did you kill, your wife (or husband)?"

It's odd. I know it and the question echoes in my head whenever I ask it, usually in the green-walled tank of a state prison or county jail, the one-time accused, by then the convicted, denying to me, as they had in court, that they would ever think of doing such a thing--murdering their spouse.

The woman sitting across from me in a red jumpsuit on this occasion is Piper Rountree. She's a mother of three in her late 40's, easy smile, smart eyes. Piper looks for all the world like the suburban mom she once was, wondering whether she has time to gas up the SUV before picking up the girls at piano lessons.

But this is a state prison for women in Virginia and so I ask Piper my occupational question.

"Did you kill your ex-husband, Fred?"

"No", she replied. She denied waiting in the driveway for her husband of almost 20 years. Denied firing three shots, hitting him twice as he walked to pick up the paper in his bedclothes.

In court, the prosecutor had described a murder plot elaborately planned and so ineptly carried out that detectives were onto the ex-wife within hours of the killing.

 When people asked me what I was working on I'd tell them a woman accused of killing her ex-husband. They'd think about it for a second and say-- as a juror in this case did-- she must have snapped.

Snapped. Curious. I can't recall anyone ever saying that of a male killer--a husband/boyfriend killing a wife/girlfriend. He must have snapped.

This is the third story I've done about a woman who kills-- it's almost a genre on-line: women who kill-- but in my very limited experience, it strikes me that the facts of a domestic murder are gender neutral. All three women were convicted of killing a partner after--according to prosecutors-- giving considerable thought as to how they were going to both commit the murder and get away with it.

Snapped had nothing to do with it. And now the question, did you kill your husband, is in no way more shocking, more taboo to me, than did you kill your wife.

Dennis Murphy's report on Piper Rountree, "Murder in Hearthglow Lane," airs Dateline Tuesday, 8 p.m.

by Maite Amorebieta, Dateline assistant producer

Welcome to the age of cell phone forensics.

More and more it seems cell phone evidence is being used in criminal trials. And in the Piper Rountree case, it was key.

Often, cell phone records are used in court to establish people's movements. How? Well, what most people forget, with all that these devices do these days, is that cell phones are really just two-way radios, albeit sophisticated ones.

Cell phones are constantly communicating with a network, sending pings to the nearest transmission tower, which allows your calls to be routed correctly.

Multiple antennas are tracking your phone's signal, since each tower only covers a few square miles. But, as you move, your call travels with you and is handed off to the base station receiving the strongest signal from your phone. The carrier keeps records of which towers the phone has contacted or pinged, and when. Which  means a cell phone's position over time can be tracked within a few hundred yards. In urban areas with many towers, a phone can be tracked almost to the block. And as most phones become equipped with GPS chips, they only need to be turned ON to pinpoint your location in real time!

Technology is so good that hand-offs are unnoticed. But, the price we pay is that our phone calls leave a trail.
And the trail left by Piper Rountree's cell phone threatened to convict her.
On the day of Fred Jablin's murder, lead detective Coby Kelley got a warrant for Piper's cell phone records. Within hours, the police were able to place that phone in the Richmond area at the time of Fred's murder and then tracked it heading east on I-64 toward Norfolk airport.

Then, the phone stopped communicating. But, once it was out of the dead zone, the phone records placed Piper's phone in Baltimore. Upon further investigation, police learned that a passenger with the last name of 'Rountree' was ticketed on a flight from Baltimore to Texas that very afternoon. However, the ticket happened to be in the name of Piper's sister-- Tina.

Piper would later say that her phone was used by several people, including Tina.
About 14 hours before the murder, police say Piper called her 12 year old son, and told him that she was in Texas.  This was at a time when her cell phone was pinging towers in Virginia.

Could Tina have actually been on the phone with Piper's son? While Piper says that people often confuse her voice for Tina's, the prosecution argued a son would know his own mother's voice.

The jurors we interviewed believed Piper spoke to her son that Friday night. And to them, that phone call put Piper in Richmond that Friday, leading them to the ultimate conclusion that she was also lying in wait to shoot Fred Jablin in his Hearthglow Lane driveway early that Saturday morning before the sun came up.

by Lee Kamlet, Dateline producer

As a child growing up in Colorado, I could only imagine what it would be like to live in New York. The Empire State Building, Central Park, the Statue of Liberty were all magical places I could only dream about. The hustle and bustle of the city, hailing a cab or riding the subway, seemed like a foreign existence. I never thought it would become part of my everyday life.   But like many people, I was drawn to the city, to its energy and its possibilities. And so it was with another transplant to the city:  Kendra Webdale.

In 1997, Kendra left her hometown in upstate to move to New York City. She worked at a recording studio, and loved to spend time sitting outside, just watching people.  Her warmth comes through in the many pictures and home videos her family shared with us.

Kendra Webdale

Her family said Kendra would never turn away from a stranger. That proved to be true, in the most tragic of ways. On a damp, dreary day in January 1999, Kendra crossed paths with another New Yorker, a stranger named Andrew Goldstein. Kendra had made a last-minute decision to defy the rain, and take the subway to meet some friends. Andrew was going to take the same train home. Witnesses say Andrew stepped up to Kendra and asked the time.  Then, just as the train pulled into the station, he stood behind Kendra, and with what one person called impeccable timing, shoved Kendra in front of the train. She died on the tracks.

The horrific story stunned not only New Yorkers, but the entire nation. What could have prompted someone to push a total stranger in front of the fast-moving train?

To find the answer, Dateline spent 10 months investigating the story.  We learned that Andrew Goldstein had quite a history.  Once a student at one of New York's premier high schools, he developed schizophrenia, an incurable brain disease that can cause hallucinations, paranoia, and, in rare untreated cases, bizarre, and even violent behavior. 

We obtained access to Goldstein's confidential 3,500 page medical record, which is replete with evidence that he had a long history of violence, particularly against women.  It also revealed that the mental health system either could not, or would not give him the help he needed.  His journey through poorly coordinated services and revolving door care would, in the end, lead to that subway platform, and Kendra Webdale.

But this is not only a story about Kendra Webdale and Andrew Goldstein.  It is also about Kendra's remarkable family, particularly her parents,  Pat and Ralph Webdale.  Look up "salt of the earth" in the dictionary.  In my book it says, "See Webdale."  You need only talk to them for a short time to appreciate how much they loved their daughter, and understand why they grieve for her every day. Yet despite some very low points, and moments of extreme pain and doubt, they did not succumb to their misery, but rather followed a path which is quite surprising.

Over the years, the Webdales have not only developed compassion for mentally ill people and their families, but they have worked hard to educate the rest of us about mental illness.

This is not tilting at windmills stuff.  Their efforts have lead directly to changes in the mental health system, not only in New York, but across the nation.  Due in part to the Webdales' work, New York state says it has taken steps to streamline, coordinate, and better monitor mental health services for people with serious mental illness.  It has also made more community services available, giving the highest priority to treating the people who are most in need. And 41 states have passed "Kendra's Law," which would, under certain circumstances, force someone like Goldstein to take medication, compel the state to monitor him, and briefly hospitalize him if he refuses to comply.

Pat Webdale is surely right when she says, "It's not an ego trip to have a law named after your child."  But Kendra's Law stands as the legacy of a young woman's family, and their determination to not let her death be in vain.

Dateline's report on "Deadly Encounter," the life-shattering crime and the seven-year search for justice, airs Jan. 20 Saturday, 8 p.m. on NBC.

by Mary Zdanowicz, executive director of Treatment Advocacy Center, cross-posted from the TAC blog January 3, 2007

Eight years ago, Kendra Webdale, a vibrant, beautiful young woman was pushed to her death from a subway platform in New York City by a man with schizophrenia, who man had a documented history of assaults and failing to follow prescribed medication regimens.

At that time, advocates like DJ Jaffe had been working for at least 10 years in New York toward a statewide assisted oupsytpatient treatment law. The commitment to Kendra's family to prevent the tragedy of untreated mental illness, coupled with then-Attorney General Elliot Spitzer's political will, finally succeeded in achieving the reality of Kendra's Law for assisted outpatient treatment in New York. All those who are being helped by Kendra's Law in New York today are indebted to the Webdales, particularly Kendra's mother Pat, who continues to advocate and chairs the Assisted Outpatient Treatment Quality Improvement Panel sponsored by New York's Office of Mental Health.

In addition to mourning Kendra, today is a day to remember some other random victims of the violence that is sometimes a result of untreated mental illness ... and the families who have, like the Webdales, opened their hearts to try to help others.

Edgar Rivera, who lost his legs after being pushed from a N.Y. subway platform in April 1999, epitomized grace and understanding when he lamented that although he lost his legs, at least he had his mind, unlike his assailant.

Linda Gregory partnered with Alice Petrie, the sister of the man who shot her husband in the line of duty as a sheriff's deputy. Their successful advocacy lead to Florida's adoption of AOT and they continue to advocate for more humane treatment.

Amanda and Nick Wilcox's daughter was killed at a mental health center in California by a man with untreated mental illness. They are fighting to get their county to adopt Laura's Law.

There are so many others-- too many to mention here-- but we particularly want to remember 11-year-old Gregory Katsnelson who was killed while riding his bike, by a young man whose family was told he was not "dangerous" enough to be helped. Before he killed Gregory that day, he also killed his own mother. Gregory would be 15 years old now -- the Katnselsons have spent the last 4 years trying to persuade New Jersey legislators to become the 43rd state to adopt an AOT law. The Senate, under the leadership of Governor Codey, passed the bill last year.

Our hope for the New Year is that the Katsnelsons will succeed as other families have in making a terrible tragedy into a legacy of hope for others ... and that better laws and better usage of and understanding of the laws that exist will mean fewer sad anniversaries like today.

Everyone knows politics can be a dangerous game -- sometimes, even deadly. So when Kathy Augustine, a powerful and controversial Nevada politician died under suspicious circumstances, rumors flew about possible enemies she'd made in the halls of power.

But could it be that her killer was someone a lot closer to home? Politics may make strange, and even treacherous, bedfellows... but so do some marriages. Was that the case here?

Tonight, Dateline Correspondent Hoda Kotb reports on "Til Death Do Us Part: A Shot in the Dark?"

Click on the image to watch her video blog with senior producer Tim Uehlinger.

Airs Tuesday, Jan. 16, 8 p.m. on NBC.

 

A woman who came up with a brilliant and dangerous plan. The victim was her twin sister. And to catch the killer, she pretended to be her sister —dressing like her, talking like her, taking over her very identity. It was a dangerous journey for this woman. Because soon, her life would be at risk, too. Keith Morrison writes about Dateline Saturday. This report previously aired in April 2005 and repeats Saturday, January 13, 8 p.m. Click here for the transcript.

by Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent

There is a thick line of grassy hills that forces Highway 5 to Bob and Weave at 4,000 feet on its way up to Bakersfield from Los Angeles. You are leaving Southern California, the hills tell you, physically and culturally. Then down you glide onto a flat, flat plain and often through a thick grey-brown soup those last 30 miles straight as a ruler across the bottom end of California's central valley.  Bakersfield feels like heartland, solid and hardworking, in so many ways different than LA. 

And so are its stories.

You couldn't dream up a story like the Seabolt twins, Theresa and Lisa, who were as different from each other as L.A. is from Bakersfield.  It was like that line from the movie "Capote," said Theresa:  "I walked out the front door and Lisa walked out the back."

It was when Lisa disappeared that the relationship between the sisters began to develop into something almost other-worldly. Lisa seemed to be calling her sister to places we needed to visit, too: meth labs, gang hideouts, places a reasonable person might quite sensibly avoid. 

And one of those places is stunningly strange: outside the city, cranking away in the heat of dry rolling hills, is a veritable village of oil derricks - some of the oldest in the nation.

Bakersfield was among the first oil producing cities on the West coast (Oildale is a close-in subdivision), and some of those oil wells are long since abandoned.  They're just deep holes now.  Any oil worker would know how to put something down there... a place where something lost might never be found.

Was Lisa in one of them?  Would Theresa follow her?

Sitting in a jail just outside the city, a man accused of one murder crouched on the floor beside the jail's pay phone.  He spoke with chilling precision as he proposed something truly dreadful.

Could the man he was talking to — big, burly, tough — make it happen?  

Bakersfield is where the nasty business comes to a head, and we finally learn the fate of the Seabolt Twins.

 

by Charmaine Lewis, associate producer

I learned of Joy Risker's gruesome death at the hands of Sean Goff, her polygamous "husband" in the course of researching an unrelated murder case in the Superior Court of San Diego in April 2006.  That story involved an Internet "escort", a B- television actor, their May-December romance and his duct-taped body stuffed into a suitcase.

As the prosecutor discussed the horrible details of that suitcase murder, he asked me if I had heard of the "bigamy murder."  I had not, so he suggested that I meet with his fellow prosecutor, Mr. Matthew Greco, whose case it was.

Here I have to say that, in spite of my journalistic zeal, I had to fight the initial urge to beat a hasty retreat from San Diego. It was Friday, and almost noon. If I met with Mr. Greco, the prospect for an easy afternoon commute back to Los Angeles was out the window. As always, zeal trumped traffic, and as it turned out, it was time well spent.

Initially Mr. Greco, seemed wary about discussing the case.  This was his first murder case to go to trial (he'd settled other cases out of court). He didn't want to tell me too much for fear of jeopardizing his case.  But he said enough that I filled up several legal pad pages with furiously scrawled notes.  The details, as you have come to know by now were almost unreal. Who could have imagined: a pair of wives (and for a brief time a third wife), missing teeth and fingertips, and two sets of children.

And then he mentioned the book—technically, it was an essay—  a possible prologue to a self-help book in progress, written by the man who confessed to the crime, entitled "If I Can Keep Two Women Happy, How Come You Can't Please One?" 

The details were intriguing and irresistible.

And the best part? There hadn't been much local newspaper or television news coverage of the case. No other national network show had contacted him about the story.  It was a tale I knew would be very suitable for Dateline, but would my bosses agree?

I spent the weekend fine tuning my "pitches" (story idea summaries submitted for approval to Dateline's executive producers). 

By the following Tuesday I had my answers. The "suitcase murder" was not approved, but the story of the life and death of Joy Risker was.

by Charmaine Lewis, associate producer

 

The San Diego Superior Court and the San Diego District Attorney are not strangers to television.  The reality franchise of the long-running Law and Order Series on NBC, "Law & Order: Crime and Punishment" was filmed there. 

Here are the most-clicked Dateline stories of 2006, according to Web page views:

1. Money due you: Check for unclaimed property
2. Unseen danger in bagged salads
3. How safe is your grocery store?
4. 'To Catch a Predator' section
5. Michael Schiavo's side of the story
6. A defiant Britney Spears takes on the tabloids (Matt Lauer interview)
7. TMI! How teens post too much info on MySpace, social networking sites
8. Photos: Ann Curry interviews Angelina Jolie in Namibia 
9. For the love of Laci: Sharon Rocha on love, loss and justice
10. MySpace invader

And if you missed it last Saturday, here's a look back at some of the most interesting and controversial people you met on Dateline in 2006. It includes the "credit roll" -- the names of the hardworking men and women who make Dateline happen.

 

by Chris Hansen, Dateline Correspondent

LOWER HERRING LAKE, MICHIGAN-- I'd been to this scenic part of northern Michigan many times over the years. Not as a reporter, but for vacations when my dad and I would catch salmon and trout from Lake Michigan. As a young man, I sailed with friends every summer on the same lake. For the last 10 years or so I've returned with my family from the east coast every other summer so that my kids can spend time with their cousins on the beautiful beaches here. The small water front towns that make up Benzie County stay busy in the summer but are not overrun with tourists. Saloons serve fried perch and planked whitefish, two local specialties. I very much like recharging my batteries here. It's about the last place you'd expect to be following leads in a story about addiction, betrayal and ultimately it was alleged, murder.

And just like the small resort area seemed an unlikely crime scene, the accused killer and the victim seemed unlikely to ever be center stage in such a drama.  Mark and Florence Unger had crossed paths in college, years later dated and ultimately got married and had two sons. It seemed for a time they had it all, living in the very hip Detroit suburb of Huntington Woods. Mark was a sports reporter for a radio station before going into the mortgage business. Florence worked in retail, became a stay-at-home mom and ultimately went into the mortgage business as well.

Along the way though there were problems. Mark admits he got hooked on painkillers after a back injury. He battled alcohol and gambling habits as well. Mark eventually went into rehab, but it was all too much for Florence who finally filed for divorce. While there seemed to be no chance for reconciliation, Mark, Florence and their two young sons decided to take a fall weekend trip to their favorite spot in northern Michigan, a resort they'd visited for years called Watervale on the shores of Lower Herring Lake. The couple seemed to be getting along or at least tolerating each other as the family had dinner at one of their favorite restaurants.

Later that night they returned to their cottage. Mark says the boys started watching a DVD. Florence and Mark ended up on a boathouse deck overlooking the lake. What happened next is still in dispute, but ultimately it lead to Florence being face down in the lake and Mark charged with her murder.

Florence Unger was found in these waters.

A top prosecutor would face off against one of Michigan's most respected criminal defense lawyers. Two families, once joined by a marriage were now deeply divided and two young boys were caught in the middle.

Tonight you'll hear from virtually everyone involved in the case, from Mark Unger himself and from those who speak for Florence. As you'll see, this was by no means an open and shut case. Consider this: when I was watching some of the closing arguments in the Benzie County court house, I ran into some reporters I'd known for years, who were also covering the case. Some of these folks I'd known for 20 years from back when I was a reporter in Detroit. I asked a couple of them who'd been in court everyday and had covered the case from the get-go to predict the out come. They were wrong.

Dateline Correspondent Chris Hansen reports on "The Lady In The Lake."  "Til Death Do Us Part" -- first aired January 2, and re-airs April 22, Sunday, 7 p.m.

Editor's note: We invite you to check out the crime files on this case -- Web-extra video and pictures, and to weigh in on our poll. After the broadcast, you can also read the transcript and watch video of the report.