by Marianne O'Donnell, Dateline Producer

The murder of Christa Worthington had been national news for more than four years by the time I stepped inside the Barnstable County Superior Court on Cape Cod.

It was October of 2006 and the state of Massachusetts was about to present its case against Christopher McCowen, a 34-year-old garbage man accused of raping and murdering Worthington inside her Truro home one winter night.

After reading reams of news copy on the case I felt pretty well versed in the broad strokes and adjectives of the victim's life: attractive; cultured; bohemian; sharp-witted; Vassar-educated; accomplished fashion journalist. But like most of my colleagues I had no idea who the real woman was, and that was by design.

Since they'd found her body sprawled inside the hallway of her bungalow, the relatives of Christa Worthington had refused to speak publicly about her life or death. It was a news blackout on all things Worthington, and the father, aunts and cousins of the victim had, with only a few exceptions, managed for years to keep the details of Christa's life all to themselves. I always thought this rather surprising, given that the victim, Christa Worthington, had created a name for herself in the world of fashion journalism, writing, sometimes with stinging wit, about the foibles and quirks of fashion's elite.

That's not to say that I, and more notably, my colleague Marianne Haggerty, didn't try to approach the Worthingtons and encourage them to share their memories of Christa. Like her, we were trying to make the subject we were covering seem very real to the public. In this case, that subject was Christa -- and all that she and her family had lost on one horrible night.

But the family never seemed interested in journalism's agenda, no matter how important 'covering the story' had once been to their fallen relative. Oh sure, at times we managed to glean a few humorous anecdotes about the Christa of the 1980s and 1970s here and there from a cousin or friend. But nothing was for attribution. No one who would agree to sit down for a taped interview. The unspoken message to those of us in the media was clear enough: Christa may have been among you -- once. But our memories of her are just that – ours.

So instead, we settled for body language, as the Worthingtons listened to Christa's old lover describe the moment he found her body and her baby, still alive, cowering beside her; how emergency technicians accidentally tainted the crime scene; or how the lead detective grilled the defendant just after his arrest.

As they sat in the front pew, we could see the profiles of Christa's cousins and friends as they leaned in to whisper animatedly to each other about what a witness had just said. Other times we would notice the backs of their necks reddening in reaction to a claim made by the defense. Once, Christa's father, Christopher "Poppy" Worthington, clearly angered by McCowen's attorney, muttered loudly behind the prosecutor, 'Object. Object. Object.' The judge promptly interrupted the proceedings and ordered the former lawyer to keep quiet or leave the courtroom. I never heard another syllable from Mr. Worthington.

In fact, the family's polite but tense standoff with the media was interrupted only once: the day the verdicts came in. We watched as the Worthingtons lined into their reserved pew. Only Mr. Worthington was absent, for some reason. As the foreman read the verdict, Christa's surviving blood, lowered their heads, laughed, smiled and cried. Afterwards, outside the courthouse, a cousin and friend read victim impact statements and explained they would say nothing more about the woman whose death had been so publicized.

Christa Worthington, who once covered the world of fashion and design for glossy magazines and papers would, for now and the foreseeable future, remains a closed book to the rest of us.

Click here for the full story about Christa Worthington. You can see a slideshow of her life here.

We heard the news of Seth Cook's passing from his parents, who sent the following note Monday evening:

It is our regret to inform you that on June 25, 2007 at 2:10 p.m. left the presence of his family on earth to join his family in Heaven.  He will be missed by so many as there were so many lives he touched.  I believe it was Ruth Graham that said we look at death the wrong way.  We see it as we are loosing someone dear to us, but, there is a homecoming in Heaven as Jesus is welcoming one of his precious children into his arms.  Our angel boy has gone HOME, but, Jesus has given us the hope that we will see him again.

Blessings to All of You!

You all made his life worth so much.

Patti and Kyle Cook

by Fred Rothenberg, Dateline Producer

I learned a lot from Seth Cook. And he was only 11 years old.

When I first met Seth for a Dateline story, he was racing his toy truck down the hill in front of his house in Darrington, Wash. Because he was just 3-feet tall and would never get any bigger, he was actually "on" the truck, riding down the hill. I was scared for him, but he had mastered the move and showed no fear.

It was Seth's lot in life, as teacher, that he taught so many people not to worry about him and enjoy him for who he was.

Who he was, was so much more than just a boy with progeria, the rare disease that ages children prematurely. Except for his wisdom beyond his years, he would never grow up ... just grow older.

He was a joyful pre-teen who loved playing video games and watching his hyperactive dog crash-land trying to reach an elusive bubble. Oh, did that make him laugh as the dog -- who was not hurt -- landed with a thud.

But that wasn't his only type of infectious laugh. Anyone who watched him play a cutthroat game of Monopoly will remember that infamous cackle as he successfully maneuvered past enemy properties and collected 400 bucks. Then we'd all laugh as he fanned himself with his new-found pile of cash.

But we also cried when he announced to correspondent Rob Stafford, "I can't wait to get to heaven." It had gummi bears, chocolate rabbits and no limitations on the fish he would catch, he said. His late grandfather was there, too.

As we all wanted, Rob said he wanted Seth to wait ... to wait long enough for a cure for progeria.

Well, there's a big hole on earth today and a bigger addition to heaven.

Seth Cook died Monday, a month before his 14th birthday. His huge heart finally gave out on him.

As his mother, Patti, said in announcing his passing: "He will be missed by so many as there were so many lives he touched."

Dateline and our viewers were honored to be among the people he touched.

For more information, visit The Progeria Research Foundation

 

Airing Wednesday is a Dateline/Court TV exclusive about the mysterious murder in Cape Cod of Christa Worthington, a high-profile writer for fashion magazines, and the trial that finally took place more than four years after her death. Dennis Murphy reports.

Airs Dateline NBC Wednesday, June 27 at 10 p.m. Click here for a background story.

By Joe Delmonico, Dateline Producer

 

Did we meet the Monster?

 

That's a question all of us who worked on this story have contemplated.  The case of the Monster of Florence is probably the most notorious murder investigation in Italian history.  Equal parts Son of Sam and Silence of the Lambs, with a dash of OJ Simpson and a big dollop of Italian drama, this is not your run-of-the-mill murder case. 

By Joe Delmonico, Dateline Producer

Let me be candid:  I was predisposed not to like these guys. 

You see, I am not a royal watcher.  Quite the contrary.  It's always been hard for me to care about the doings of people who were born into immense wealth, guaranteed admission to the finest schools, and assured of a lifetime of total privilege, comfort and security, without having to earn any of it.  William and Harry don't just automatically go to the head of the line—they never see the line.  How can they possibly have insights that are relevant to those of us leading normal lives?  And aren't they so programmed to always say the right thing that they're incapable of the spontaneity that makes an interview interesting?

Add to that the inherent hassle of interviewing such people.  It's nobody's fault, just the way it is.  For example, you can't interview two princes just anywhere.  Their representatives decided the interview should take place at Clarence House, which is the official London residence of the Prince of Wales.  It's a lovely old building with manicured gardens and a courtyard where there's a footprint reputedly left by Henry VIII.  Clarence house also has security cameras watching your every move, machine guns on the roof, and guards who wear those very photogenic red coats and beaver hats and carry very impressive assault rifles.  We were cautioned – only half in jest-- not to stray too far from the area assigned to us, lest bullets start flying.

Also for reasons of security and the princes' comfort level, the palace representatives required us to severely limit the size of our crew and radically simplify our usual lighting setup.  (The fact that this ancient building has ancient wiring also argued in favor of the fewest lights possible.)  We all of course underwent the usual background checks, and all our camera and lighting gear was gone over by bomb-sniffing dogs.

All the while I am asking myself: for what?  So we can interview a couple spoiled kids with nothing much to say?

Then the interview started.

Matt mentioned that Princess Diana has always wanted the boys to lead as normal a life as possible.  Would she think they were doing a good job?

Harry jumped right in:  "I think she'd be happy in the way that we're going about it, but slightly unhappy about the way other people were going about it, as in saying: 'Look, you're not normal, so stop trying to be normal.'"

William soon interrupted: "You may be abnormal.  I'm pretty normal,"  which made everybody laugh. 

So the tone was set: surprisingly forthright answers, leavened with humor.  Harry in particular impressed everybody who saw him in person or has seen him on tape.  Over the years he's managed to get himself photographed in more than one awkward situation, and has mostly been portrayed in the media as a party boy and a loose cannon, even a bit of a lout—and he knows it. When Matt asked the brothers to describe each other, Harry offered that William is "definitely the more intelligent of the two of us, which I'm sure is the next question!"

Yet the Harry we met seemed thoughtful, straightforward, and genuine.  He provided what was to my mind the most poignant moment in the interview. 

Speaking of about his mother, Princess Diana, Harry said, "You know when people think about it they think about her death.  They think about how wrong it was. They think about whatever happened.  I don't know for-- for me personally whatever happened you know that night.  Whatever happened in that tunnel.  No one will ever know.  And I'm sure people will always think about that the whole time."

"Have you stopped wondering?" asked Matt.

Harry responded, "I'll never stop wondering about that," and the look on his face showed he never would.

Right about then I had the belated realization that despite their vast wealth and immense privilege, these were two guys in their twenties dealing with some enormous and universal challenges: their mom's death, not to mention the messy divorce that preceded it; their dad's remarriage; the normal twentysomething issues of romance and career choices and the occasional boneheaded behavior at the local bar.  The huge difference of course, is that since William and Harry were infants every one of these dramas large and small played out on a world stage, with, as William put it, "all eyes on."

One of the classic setups for storytelling is putting ordinary people in extraordinary situations.  The fact that William and Harry seem so very normal, coupled with the fact that their life situation could not be farther from normal, means that at the end of the day, despite my misgivings, they do have a story to tell. 

Hope you enjoy it.

Watch the full interview on Dateline, Monday at 10 p.m. on June 18. Click here for preview video, which aired on TODAY this morning.  Click here to read a Q&A with Matt Lauer about what it's like to talk with the Princes.

by Stone Phillips, Dateline anchor

I like inspirational stories.  We in the media don't do enough of them.  So when I heard about the Vietnamese-Americans of New Orleans and how their remarkable recovery after Katrina lifted an entire community, I was intrigued. 

Tommy Nguyen, Dateline producer

I was told by my senior producer to bring my small digital video camera for a simple reconnaissance mission. That was the initial idea.

The Vietnamese American community in New Orleans was doing some astonishing things post-Katrina, and my senior producer thought an extra pair of eyes might be helpful as Stone went down to check out a story. Even though it began as a research trip, my senior wanted someone who had some shooting experience to go along. While I am certainly no cameraman, I was looking forward to the assignment. And my understanding of the Vietnamese language, even on a mere first-grade level, would probably come in handy.

The scouting project had a special appeal for me. Unlike my experience as a print reporter -- where I often covered a range of specialized topics -- I've since discovered that working in television news forces one to be a generalist most of the time.

But here was a world I've known since I was five years old. Growing up in Orange County, California, my mother would take me on weekend shopping trips to the sprawling Vietnamese community of Little Saigon, about a 20-minute drive away from my family's first home in east Anaheim. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but at that age I knew my mother was a different person whenever she took me there.

When my mother, who has a limited command of the English language, took me to the banks or the supermarket chains near our home, she would often seem hesitant and confused -- unwilling, for example, to press the issue with the checkout clerk if she felt she had been overcharged. In Little Saigon, however, she was an unstoppable force: arguing with store managers, barging through my doctor's door when I was sick, laughing and gossiping with friends at the businesses they owned. She knew the faces around her, and she knew her way around -- it was the place where she got things done.

It's awful to think that my mother, who grew up in a warring Vietnam ever since she was a teenager, would ever have to endure another full-scale tragedy in her lifetime. But it is comforting to know -- especially since I now live 2,500 miles away -- that she still has a community of friends and family close by to make her the strong, unconfused, undeterred woman whom I know she is. I could easily see my mother, a Catholic as well, doing her weekend shopping in this Vietnamese community of New Orleans East, and also benefiting from their enormous generosity should that unfortunate disaster occur.

When Stone and I came back from New Orleans the first time, I was too exhausted to look over my footage. Imagine my surprise when, a few days later, Stone showed me the first draft of a script. He read it to me in his office. It was a great script, but I was terrified by the thought that this was definitely going to turn into a Dateline report and that the video I had shot would actually appear in a national broadcast.

In the end, the footage worked out better than any of us thought. I suppose when the subject is this inspiring, and the faces in the frame this honest, simple point-and-shoot technique can almost pass for professional work. Of all the images I captured, those that made the greatest impression were the faces of the very young and the very old. Shooting close-ups of the older Vietnamese women was a real challenge. They believe that being old means being unattractive, so they wondered why on earth I would want to photograph them. The situation forced me to speak the language better, to demonstrate my cultural understanding of their fears and apprehensions. I needed to put them at ease. And, in time, most of them came to realize that I was part of their community, despite my terrible Vietnamese. It was at that moment when my camera started to cause less of a disturbance, and when it did its best work.

by Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline correspondent

This will be Paris Hilton's eighth night behind bars, probably the most-discussed jail term ever.

Monday on "The View," Barbara Walters talked about the phone call she received from Hilton, who's in the medical ward of the L.A. County jail.

Harvey Levin, TMZ.com: She's doing better.  She's adjusting to it.  She's still fragile.  But I think, just psychologically, from what I'm hearing, she's not this ping pong ball anymore.  She knows she's going to be at this facility for awhile. 

Last week, Harvey Levin's TMZ.com was reporting Hilton was disintegrating under the pressures of incarceration...saying she'd become sullen, withdrawn...a train wreck....and being visited by her psychiatrist.

That set up last Friday's tug-of-war between a sheriff who sent her to home detention and a judge who wanted this Hilton back in the crossbar hotel.

What's also astonishing about this case is not just the attention it has received, but the venom it's generated. Browse any Internet board—you'll find a legion of posters wishing Ms. Hilton a long, unpleasant stay in the hands of the law.

It's not just the blogosphere—one Web site is selling "Paris Go Away" T-shirts.

And while she's a familiar target in the late-night cross hairs,  the huge audience reaction to any mention of her plight is so enthusiastic, it's become predictable.

Why do people care so much about her fate? Is it because she's seen as an emblem for young Hollywood, living fast, loose, and out of control? Or is it simple class warfare, a rage against the rich? Either way, a simple legal two-step, a release from custody into home detention, Became, in the public's mind, a deal with the devil in a city of angels.

Harvey Levin: It was like throwing stones in, you know, the old Roman town.  Everybody felt part of it.  Yeah, she's getting it.  I mean, there was a lot of anger toward her because they've seen her get away with things.  That's wrong, but that's the way a lot of people felt. 

Over the weekend, the heiress issued a statement saying she would not appeal her sentence, even after she and her family, and her attorney first protested it as being unfair.

Harvey Levin: This judge was a jerk.  There was absolutely no basis for what he did.  Nobody gets this kind of punishment for what she did.  He punished her for who she is, not what she did. 

But keep in mind Hilton's original sentence of 45 days follows this arrest by the LAPD last September for driving under the influence, for which she received probation, a fine, DUI classes, and lost her right to drive.

Then there were two more police stops, each when she was driving under a suspended license. To top it off, she was late to court.

Attorney Lawrence Taylor, who literally wrote the book on DUI legal-defense work says Hilton's attitude is what really worked against her.

Lawrence Taylor, lawyer: She came in and instead of being contrite and suggesting that she might be sorry for what she did and that it will never happen again, instead said essentially that it was not her fault and blamed some other people, her handlers, whoever those were.  That's not the kinda thing you say to a judge after you've just violated probation three times.

Hilton has regularly been depicted as being neither especially virginal nor cerebral. Today Barbara Walters quoted her as saying she's no longer going to play dumb.

That act, if that's what it was, was on full display two years ago when the LAPD interviewed Hilton as a witness in an unrelated criminal case.

So tonight, Paris Hilton is on a prison diet, and says she's learning a bitter, important lesson.  She also says she's shocked that so much public and media attention is being paid to her...instead of to the soldiers serving this country in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's probably the first time she's ever asked for the world's attention to be focused elsewhere.

Click here to watch the video of the Dateline report.

Clover, S.C. was the last place you'd expect a murder. It was the kind of small Southern town where most people didn't even bother to lock their doors.

But a lock probably wouldn't have stopped the murderer in Sunday's story: experts say he seemed to be driven to kill.

Police soon made an arrest, convinced they had their man.

But the killings didn't stop, and, for more than 20 years, neither did the questions - about whether the right man was in prison.

"Anatomy of a Murder" aired Dateline NBC Sunday, 7 p.m., June 10. Click here for a transcript. Share your thoughts on the case, below.

by Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent

Sometimes the people you never get to meet are the ones who somehow stick in your imagination. Wanda Wood Darling has been dead 10 years now, and yet every once in awhile, the picture intrudes: that innocent young face staring out at a future she would never experience, hope and disappointment written in equal measure on her plain, broad features.

Wanda lived in a world that values pretty girls, that worships perfect bodies and cosmetic features;  she was lovely on the inside.  I mean, really lovely.  Wanda took care of people, had done so all her life. She loved her family, her friends, the people in her town. Can you blame her if, in return, she wanted to know how it felt to have a boyfriend, to be married in a fine white wedding dress, to be loved by a man?

So here is the question we set out to answer, as we followed the strange case of Wanda Wood Darling's violent demise up on the rocky cliff face in Alaska: Did she really know the man who claimed to love her?  Did wishful thinking cloud her judgment?

You can never really know what goes on inside a marriage, especially a marriage as unusual as Jay and Wanda Darling's.  We know that she was smitten.  She loved the idea of being his woman, even agreed -- no argument apparently -- to elope without notice and drive clear across the continent with him from Haleyville, Alabama, to Alaska, all the while aware that her part of the bargain for being married was to help her new husband commit a serious insurance fraud.

What did he intend for her? Did she ever have a real chance to be happy?

The question seemed very important somehow when we sat and talked to the detective who devoted so many years to his search for the truth about Wanda Darling.

We had set up our interview cameras in a hotel on a rugged spit of land that juts into an  Alaskan bay at a beautiful little town called Homer.

Eagles perched less than a football field away.  Over the detective's shoulder, outside the window, the cliffs rose straight up from the water.  Absolutely majestic.  And yet the image that remains is that picture of a sad-happy-hopeful young woman, who deserved better.   

Keith Morrison's report airs Monday, June 11, 10 p.m. on 'Dateline NBC.'