(From Eric Jackson, TODAY Associate Producer)

First, before I get into my anchor Q&A with Ann Curry, I would like to thank her for taking the time to sit down with me not once, but twice, due to technical difficulties.  You see, in preparation for this interview, I went out and bought this new tape recorder.  I even did the cheesy "test, test, test, test" audio check before going to talk to Ann.  Seriously--ask my cubicle neighbors.  Well, little did I know that this tape recorder has this feature where, if the audio in the room is too low, it stops recording.  And wouldn't you know it--the audio, at times, was too low.  So I finish the interview, come back to write it up, and as I'm listening to it, panic sets in.  I had practically nothing.  I felt like I had just been Punk'd.  I e-mail Ann and her assistant, Claire, right away, mortified beyond belief.  Ann e-mails me right back and says that it's no problem, we'll do it again tomorrow, later explaining that early in her career, she had a similar problem.  So, thank you again to Ann.  What follows is our conversation....take two.

Q: First off, this is the third week of TODAY's  fourth hour.  How's it going so far?

Ann: It seems to be going OK.  It's feeling more and more comfortable every day. I hope so at least.  I hope that process will continue, that it will continue to get better and better.  I hope it's useful more than anything else.

Q: What sort of topics do you want to bring to that hour?

Ann: I want to show our viewers the world.  That's my wish -- to let our viewers know what's going on in the world.  We're talking a lot about how to improve their lives, friendships.  These are important topics.  We'll see how this progresses, but we're really trying to understand what women at this hour need.  We're going to do our best to fulfill their needs.

Q: The fourth hour is just another thing on your already-full plate.  Aside from TODAY, you do Dateline and sometimes fill in on Nightly News, to name just a few of your other responsibilities.  How do you handle it?  Is it overwhelming sometimes?

Ann: Sure it is.  I was joking that sometimes I feel I need an intervention (laughs).  You know, I'm not complaining, though.  This is a great opportunity to be useful, and that's my wish.  I want very much to not look back and think that I had not done enough.  So for right now, I keep my priorities straight.  I don't go out at night, except on Friday nights.  I'm a school night girl, home for homework and dinner.  And we have a rule at our table.  No matter how late it is, we sit down together and eat.  Sometimes dinner is cold.  Sometimes it's not exactly as I would've wished in terms of the food.  But that's not what matters.  It's the conversation.

Continue reading the interview at AllDay blog

By Marianne O'Donnell, Dateline Producer

My car wipers were fighting back a steady rain as I peered through the windshield, trying to get my bearings in a place called Cheshire, Connecticut. I was beginning to wonder why I picked this day to slog up I-84 from New York City to knock on doors in a distant town. Would I find anyone out on a day like this? And even if I did, would they talk about what had happened here?

Eventually, I found the street I was looking for: Sorghum Mill Drive. As I turned onto it I stopped the car almost instantly. There was a sign up ahead that warned would-be speeders to slow down. "We love our children," it read. I was getting a serious case of the creeps.

Evil comes to all types of people all over the world. But it's not supposed to trespass here, in leafy enclaves that proudly demand their children's safety. Yet somehow in the early, dark hours of July 23, the devil slipped through the back door at 300 Sorghum Mill Drive and into the heart of the Petit house. It's believed that two intruders, parolees, broke into the home and terrorized a doctor, his wife and two daughters over the course of seven hours before ending their rampage with gasoline and a match.

Now, weeks later, I was walking this traumatized neighborhood, looking for people willing to recall the horror they woke to that morning. I must have knocked on 15 doors. The people who opened them promptly closed them again once they heard why I was there. Drenched and discouraged, I was heading for my car when I spotted a woman on her driveway. I walked up and began my introduction.

"I'm Marianne from..." The woman flashed an open hand. "I am sick of you media coming around here knocking on our doors," she said. Yes, she explained, she had been talking to reporters. But now she was done with us. "We're trying to heal," she said, the anger in her voice rising. "But how can we when you guys keep coming asking these questions?"

I apologized to the woman and thanked her for her time. I had driven more than two hours to Cheshire in the rain to find someone willing to talk about what had happened here, and all I had to show for it were soaked pants and squishy shoes. The reporter in me recoiled at going home empty-handed. But I also knew that the residents of Sorghum Mill Drive wanted -- maybe needed -- nothing more than to see my taillights fading in the mist. I clicked my car open. For today, at least, I was done knocking on doors.

Dateline will air a special piece on the killings in Connecticut tonight, Sept. 10, at 10 p.m. Eastern/9 Central.

UPDATE: Read the full story here. A foundation has been set up to honor the family:
The Petit Family Foundation
c/o Farmington Savings Bank
32 Main St.
Farmington, CT
06032

By John Larson, NBC News

The first day I met Susan Adams I thought she was sweet.  I was pretty much wrong.  The second day, I thought Susan was unforgiving. Very wrong. By the third day, we were good friends and our friendship grew with time.

In 1996 I arrived in Hawaii for a story and discovered, much to my embarrassment, that I had left my credit card and identification in Los Angeles.  So my first introduction with Susan Adams went like this, "Hi, I'm John.  Can you loan me $600?"  She looked at me with her, "I think this guy is probably a hopeless loser" look, but gave me the money.  We began working, and by the first evening she was upset with our four hired crewmembers.  She thought they were taking poor pictures for our story. The next evening, she fired all of them.

In 11 years I never once saw Susan Adams bored or resigned.

Susan loved her daughters and friends most of all, but when it came to work she loved great photographers, editors and stories that cut deep.   Over time, I saw her work and life flow together. Like many true things, it was a bit complicated.   While she sometimes seemed shy or defended, she was drawn to people.  Time after time, I saw people she met in stories become members of her private, extended family, whether they knew it or not.  She was absorbed by their details, families, struggles, and victories.  She earned their trust.  In short, she cared about them all.  A lot.

She brought this to every story she did.

When Susan met someone, she would soon be discussing things that mattered -- children, marriages, real problems.  Long after our stories were over, Susan was still talking with those who called about their work, insurance and medical issues and kids.  She helped one we'd covered move.  She helped more than one change doctors.  She helped with family disputes.  We did a story about a woman in Indonesia. Susan was still having dinners with her five years later. We did a story about evangelists in Afghanistan. Susan shared her faith with someone in that story for the next six years.  When a criminal we had covered died, Susan secretly bought his burial plot.  When she learned no one was coming to his burial, she bought a plane ticket and was the only one there.  So, it made perfect sense that when Susan herself was dying, a woman she had "covered" was helping at Susan's side.

In Susan's way, her stories were never really over.  And as time grew short, I realized, they were all part of one great story.

Susan was a wonderful journalist.  We didn't know it at the time, but I suppose we were all part of her story.  So, while those of us who knew her well will miss her terribly, knowing the way Susan Adams did things, if it things could have been the other way around, she'd probably be missing us even more.

Read Susan Adams' piece on a survivor's chance to confront an offender here.

One of the safest towns in America reignites a cold case that haunted police for decades after the mysterious killing of a middle class professor's wife and mother of four. Keith Morrison travels to Buffalo, N.Y. to report on the death of Joan Diver and the possible return of the town's "bike path rapist," Dateline NBC on Sept. 5 at 10 p.m.

By Rayner Ramirez, Dateline Producer

Buffalo, NY – The City of Good Neighbors is "not a small town, but a big room with a large couch."  Local historian Bill Zimmerman says that it's the type of town where everyone knows everyone -- or soon will.  From my experience working on this story Buffalo truly is a city of good neighbors. 

Perhaps one of the strangest coincidences in this story that reflects Buffalo's small town feel is that Anthony Capozzi's sister Pam Guenther attended the same high school only a couple of years behind Altemio Sanchez. 

The multi-agency task force was made up of more than a dozen investigators; each brought with them their own personal history of the legendary bike path rapist.

Bike Path Rapist Take Force at Niagara Square, Buffalo, NY

Chief Scott Patronik from the Erie County Sheriff's Department grew up with Detective Lissa Redmond who happened to attend the same high school as one of Altemio Sanchez' rape victims. 

 

State Police Captain Captain Steven Nigrelli's father was a Sergeant in the Buffalo Police Department and his uncle was an investigator on the bike path rapist's second murder victim.

Amherst Police Detective Joseph LaCorte was on patrol when Linda Yalem was killed in 1990 and has continued to work on the case since. 

The tragic killing of Joan Diver, mother of four, brought the four agencies together four agencies -- the Amherst Police Department, the Buffalo Police Department, Erie County Sherriff's Department and the New York State Police. With the advent of modern-day DNA technology identifying the assailant's genetic make up as possibly Hispanic and the unprecedented cooperation and information-sharing between the agencies, the 20-year-old cold case was solved quickly.

Within two months of the formation of the task force, the suspect and admitted bike path rapist and killer was apprehended. 

Many of the investigators consider this the best case of their career, not simply for solving a case but also for the silver lining of the investigation: the exoneration of Anthony Capozzi, wrongly imprisoned for more than 22 years.

Detective Dennis Delano (left) with Anthony Capozzi at a party to celebrate his release

As Detective Alan Rozansky said "I told my kids, I've been here 36 years. You'll hardly remember who I arrested. But you remember the one person that was innocent that got out because of our police work."

A party to celebrate Anthony Capozzi's release was thrown by the very same restaurant where Sanchez had dinner with his wife and where investigators collected the glass and napkin that yielded DNA evidence that linked Sanchez to nine rapes and three murders.