By Jack Cloherty, Dateline NBC National Producer

In 30 years of covering crime, cops and courts, I've never heard a story so evil: a 22-year-old woman is abducted and taken to a "party" where she is humiliated, abused, gang raped and strangled. At least two dozen of her so-called friends are at this "party," but no one intervenes on her behalf. Her naked and battered body is dumped in a snowdrift off the interstate, and for 25 long years, no one goes to the police. That's the thumbnail sketch of Janet Chandler's murder, and it is so gruesome it makes you want to stop believing in the decency of human beings.

But on the flip side of this horror is one of the most affirming stories about the human spirit that I've ever covered: a college professor and a group of students at Janet Chandler's old college make a documentary about her case, and spark a new police investigation. A tenacious cold case team works more than two years to track down the killers, and cracks the decades-old conspiracy of silence. Then Assistant Michigan Attorney General Donna Pendergast and the prosecution stepped up to put on a bullet-proof court case, and by late 2007, six people had been convicted of Janet Chandler's 1979 murder. There is a measure of justice for Janet today, but only because dozens of people worked in harmony for years to to win that justice.

For the students and the cold case team, the Janet Chandler investigation was a life-changing experience. And correspondent Victoria Corderi and I agree that covering their work has deeply affected us as well. We both stand in awe of the dignity of Jim and Glenna Chandler, who bore their overwhelming grief with the help of their deep faith, and their own personal courage. We were impressed by the determination and creativity of former Hope College professor David Schock, who helped turn a class project into a major prosecution.

The inspiration to do the documentary came to him when a former Holland police detective gave a guest lecture to his class. Schock asked him if there was "one that got away," a case the cop wished they had solved. He answered, "Janet Chandler."

That sent Schock and his students off on a journey that ended with six people being convicted of Chandler's murder. Now Schock has devoted himself full-time to telling cold case stories, in the hopes of tracking down more killers. We have posted a link to his site: delayedjustice.com.

There were others besides Schock and his students who were critical to making a new investigation a reality. Holland Chief of Police John Kruithoff and retired Detective Jim Fairbanks both pushed hard to get the Chandler case back on the front burner. And we would be remiss if we did not heap some well-deserved praise on the cold case team itself, made up of detectives from the Michigan State Police and the Holland City Police. They traveled to 19 states and worked for more than two years to break the Janet Chandler case.

When progress was slow, the team resisted the easy way out. They could have pulled the plug on this case and moved on to something a little easier, but they didn't. They kept "turning over rocks," as Lt. John Slenk said. The smart and skillful interrogations conducted by Det. Geoff Flohr played a big role in bringing the killers to justice, and you can see more of Flohr in action on this site.

We in the press cover many, many stories where we are compelled to report that "the system" didn't work. Here is a case where it worked in a spectacular, if belated, fashion. Victoria Corderi and I would like to thank all of the people who helped us bring this story to Dateline, especially our colleagues at WOOD-TV-8 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

This story is a story we won't forget. It showed us the face of evil, and the power of faith.

Click here to read the full story, see the video, and get Web-exclusive content.

By Dan Slepian, Dateline Producer

The email arrived on a Sunday morning, at 4:50 a.m.

I'm writing to you about a 25-year-old cold case from 1981 in which a woman named Barbara L. Winn was shot in the chest with a .38 Special after a violent fight.

A woman named Patty Bruce was writing about her sister-in-law, Barbara Winn, whose death in 1981 had been ruled a suicide.

The e-mail claimed Barbara had not killed herself, but that Barbara was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, Aaron "Bubbie" Foster. The e-mail revealed that Foster was currently a free man, working for the St. Paul Police Department.

We receive many e-mails alleging miscarriages of justice, but there was something about this one.

There was a sense of desperation and frustration, the sense that over the years there were cries for justice, but they had fallen on deaf ears. More than anything, it seemed this family simply wanted someone to listen.

The e-mail plea ended with this:

We want justice! We are convinced that both personal politics and a web of corruption have played a role in the miscarriage of justice concerning Barbara.
We wanted to hear their whole story, from the beginning.

So we set up a camera in a quiet place in Patty's house and left it there for a couple of months. We invited anyone in Barbara's family to speak privately to the camera whenever they wanted, about anything they wished. I spent dozens of hours screening those tapes, hearing those private words. To be sure, the raw emotion is heart wrenching: anger, frustration, bitterness.

Watch Barbara Winn's son, Tyronne, sing a song for his mother.

My own research began with the day of Barbara's death. Her kids recalled that nightmarish May night back in 1981 as though it was yesterday. They all remember hearing their mother and her boyfriend, "Bubbie" Foster, arguing. There was the sound of glass breaking, and then a gunshot. The three of them ran to her room, they said, and saw Foster running out.

Tyronne, who was just 12 years old then, remembers his mother's last words were "Oh Bubbie, that hurt."

I would learn that Foster told police that Barbara had shot herself, and that her dying declaration had been for him to "get rid of the gun." That's why, he says, he took the gun from the house, drove away in Barbara's car, and tossed it out the window. Authorities believed Foster, and ruled Barbara had taken her own life.

Barbara's kids say he was lying, that he murdered their mother and covered it up. They also claim it's Foster's connection to his longtime friend, St. Paul's former police chief Bill Finney, that somehow sheltered Foster from punishment. Serious allegations, to be sure, and ones that Bill Finney adamantly denies.

Getting at the heart of this story was a tall order. It's an old crime, Foster has repeatedly denied he killed Barbara, and he's already been looked at as a suspect.

As we looked into the story, it turned out the authorities in Minnesota had decided to take a second look at the case, too. The current sheriff had asked one of his veteran investigators, Bill Snyder, to reinvestigate it. Not knowing where his investigation would lead, I asked if we could follow Snyder as he looked for new clues and new witnesses. They agreed.

Over many weeks, using a small, handheld camera, I shadowed Snyder as he dug for answers.

But this story became more than an investigation into a nearly 30-year-old cold case.

Watching those private tapes recorded in Patty's house, what struck me the most was the incredible love and respect Barbara Winn's family and friends still have her, all these years later. They are the ones who really tell this story.

A story that began with an email to a stranger.

Click here to read the full transcript, with Web-exclusive video. You can e-mail Dan Slepian at daniel.slepian@nbcuni.com. Click below to go behind the scenes of this Dateline story.

By Vince Sturla, Dateline Producer

I was browsing through a bookstore a few years back when I glimpsed the head-stopping title "On Killing," by Lt. Col David Grossman. I thought, "What the … ?"

I picked it up and read the subtitle: "The Psychological Cost Of Killing In War And Society." The general point was that while killing is often presented as an almost casual act in action movies, more often than not, it's a traumatic, life-transforming experience for a combat troop or police officer -- no matter how just the cause. It makes a great deal of sense, but it was something I hadn't seriously considered before.

Several years later, I came across an academic paper by Lt. Col. Peter Kilner that came to the same conclusion as Grossman's book. In his paper, Kilner cited a study done of Vietnam veterans that indicated the most severely traumatized were the ones who had killed. Few of us can read that and say, "Oh yeah. I know what they're talking about." The vast majority of us – fortunately – have no idea what it's like to take another life. We have no idea of the conflicts that take place in the hearts and minds of combat veterans who killed in war. Most of us are incapable of offering any meaningful advice or words of comfort.

On the flip side, you have returning combat troops who are loathe to broach the subject of killing because they don't want their families to know they've taken a life. That's how we end up with, as Lt. Col Peter Kilner puts it, "The Elephant In The Room, no one is talking about."

Photo: Marine Sgt. Jesse Odom

Because of that code of silence, it took a couple of months of digging before I was able to find the three Iraq combat veterans, profiled in the second half of our report, who were willing to share the intimate details of their wartime killing. What was so interesting is that all three share common characteristics. They are intelligent, even though they struggled in high school; they loved the military for giving their lives structure and a sense of purpose; and they are extremely insightful and articulate. All of them are good writers.

One of them, former Marine Sgt. Jesse Odom, has even written a book about his wartime experiences, "Through Our Eyes." They all conveyed a certain wisdom that few of us, no matter how old we get, could ever obtain.

"Coming Home," a special Dateline on the effect combat killing has on soldiers, airs Dateline NBC on Sunday, May 25 at 7 p.m. ET.

During an interview with Australian police, American Gabe Watson told investigators how his wife, Tina, died while they were scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef. Watch the video below to see video from his police interview.

Australian police divers spent three days diving over the wreck of the Yongala, attempting to reenact the circumstances of Tina's Watson drowning and test her husband's story. Watch the video below to see what happened.

What do you think could have happened?

By Cathy Singer, Dateline Producer

I'm thinking a lot about Myanmar these days.  The cyclone that struck that country, also known as Burma, has been devastating.  The images from the aftermath make me heartsick – and while I, like many people around the world, would have paid attention to this disaster because the death and destruction are so vast and shocking and sad, I am especially fixated and upset by the news because I was in Myanmar just a few months ago.  

I went to Southeast Asia on a four-week journey with my sons in December and January and the last country we visited was Myanmar. I loved being in that country, a country that is largely closed to the world. The last time Myanmar was in the news was in August and September, when dissidents and monks led peaceful protests in the country, initially against the increase in the price of fuel, but escalated to protest the military rulers' oppressive control over the country, which has impoverished its people and crushed human rights (but not the human spirit). The government killed protesters, including monks.  It is unclear how many people actually died - the United Nations calculated the death toll at 31. The junta also jailed hundreds - some say thousands - more to slap down and silence the rebellion.

But I'm not here to talk about politics in Myanmar.  I want to share a bit of what we experienced there so that people will know a little more about the country than the headlines about a repressive government and now a natural disaster with suffering beyond comprehension. While most tourists cancelled their trips to this exotic Buddhist country in the months since the protests last fall, we decided to stick to our initial plans – and I am so glad we did. For a week we were allowed a peek into a country filled with gentle people, half who live as they have for generations in villages without electricity or indoor plumbing.

Our first stop was in the more or less modern city of Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon. It's the country's largest city and former capital with a population of six million. I'm not sure what I expected of Yangon, but what we found was a lovely city with tall leafy trees, wide boulevards, lakes, colonial buildings and the gloriously gilded Shwedagon Pagoda, the most spectacular Buddhist temple we saw in the four countries we toured.

In the center of town, we walked through crowded open-air markets and past men enjoying late-afternoon socializing at outdoor cafes, most of whom wear what we would call skirts. The women also wear long skirts, although they are wrapped and tied slightly differently. Many women (and children) also spread "thanaka" on their faces, a yellowish-white paste made from wood which functions as both make-up and sunscreen, a practice that dates back more than 2,000 years.

We also went to the port of Yangon, which bustled with men carrying heavy loads over their shoulders to and from ships. It was a scene we could have seen a hundred years ago.  Now that city is littered with battered buildings, uprooted trees, a port in shambles and a population shocked by a disaster that will turn the clock back even further in a country already behind its Southeast Asian neighbors.

We traveled down the Irrawaddy River, far north of the Irrawaddy Delta, which bore the brunt of the cyclone and where most of the people died, possibly as many as 100,000. Our boat ride took us from Mandalay, in the heart of the country, where we saw people working in rice fields just outside of town and blankets drying in rows along the river bank, to Bagan, where we explored some of the 2200 ancient pagodas and temples by day and then viewed them from a hot-air balloon ride at sunrise. What we thought was early morning haze was actually smoke rising up from fires that families used for cooking.

What captivated us most about Myanmar was the village life we saw. Many people there live in simple fragile wooden structures – each family has its own home but men in the village get together to help each other build the houses. We saw people picking peanuts off branches, which were then ground in a small animal-powered mill to create peanut oil.  We watched clay water jugs formed on a pottery wheel by one woman while another pumped the machine with her leg.  We saw young women carrying buckets as they collected water from a local watering hole for their families and other women walking down the road hauling large bundles of straw hanging from poles over their shoulders. We saw people washing their clothes and bodies along the banks of the Irrawaddy River. We observed men who stand on their dugout canoes paddling with one leg as they look for fish to catch. We watched elderly women roll big fat cheroots, large cigars they love to smoke. We went to five-day markets, open-air affairs that meet every five days, in which people, many of them from hill tribes, can buy and sell produce and fish, eat noodle soup and get haircuts.

Our guide, a man in his 40s and fluent in English, grew up in a primitive village but now lives in Yangon so his sons can get a better education than they could in the countryside. As he took us to the various villages, where the people were friendly and gracious to us, I asked him which life he preferred. I expected him to say he favored city life, but instead he said that he actually would move back to his village, where his parents and siblings still live, if his children's education were not a top priority. What he loves about village life, he said, is that the people there happily help each other, they have plenty of time to spend with their family and friends, and while they have little materially, they don't yearn for more.  They may be poor, he said, but they are not hungry or wanting and, as a result, do not beg.  I found our guide's preference for village life interesting, especially because this wasn't the naïve view of a pampered, idealistic American on vacation, but of a man who has lived in both worlds.

I don't want to overly romanticize the life we saw in Myanmar for I know that what we found so exotic and charming is also the result of an impoverished country lacking in many important basic needs. And now those key deficits -- as well as the government's perplexing response -- are turning a horrendous natural disaster into an even worse calamity for so many gentle people of this fascinating country who are now suffering so very much.

Click here for a photo gallery from Cathy Singer's trip through Myanmar.

Dateline producer Cathy Singer with her sons, Josh and Ben Petuchowski

 

 

 

 

 

By Fred Rothenberg, Dateline Producer

The next decision in the Michael George murder case -- the so-called "Comic Book Murder" -- could be a game-changer and and hugely controversial.

On Thursday, May 15, Judge James M. Biernat will hear oral arguments as the defense asks the judge to overturn the jury's unanimous guilty verdict. In legalese, the defense has asked for a directed verdict. Lawyers for both sides, who already have submitted written briefs, say the judge could make a decision immediately after the oral arguments, or days later.

It appears he has three choices, two of which would be remarkable.

First, the judge could reverse the March 17 verdict, when jurors found George guilty of first-degree murder for the shooting death of his wife, Barbara, in their suburban Detroit comic book store on Friday the 13th, July, 1990.

Second, he could order a new trial, also highly unusual for a trial judge to do.

Third, he could deny the motion for directed verdict and leave any decisions on the case in the hands of an appeals court.

On the issue of the directed verdict, it's deja vu all over again.

After the prosecution rested its case, the defense asked the judge to throw out the case for lack of evidence. Generally, this motion for a directed verdict is pro-forma, and so is the response by the judge.

"You're almost always ... rebuffed within about 10 to 15 seconds," said lead defense attorney Carl Marlinga.

But Judge Biernat's response was anything but ordinary. He took nearly five hours to mull it over. Had the prosecution not met its burden? Had prosecutor Steve Kaplan not offered enough evidence for the jury to believe that the defendant was in the comic book store with a gun at the time of the murder? (The prosecution acknowledged this was a largely circumstantial case with no gun, no eyewitness, and no DNA, but believed it had dug up enough evidence to get a conviction in this cold case 18 years later.)

As a producer for "Dateline NBC" covering the trial, when the judge took one hour, then three, then five, I was thinking this trial might end at halftime.

Other reporters agreed. Something special might be happening here.

"This was taken to lengths that I've never seen before," said Edward Cardenas, veteran courts reporter for the Detroit News. "I thought the longer that it went, there was the possibility that the judge was going to throw the case out."

And if the reporters were thinking that, what about the lawyers?

For the defense, Carl Marlinga was growing more confident by the hour.

"I remember walking outside with my client and saying, 'This is obviously good news. I cannot lie to you. Judges don't take this long to decide these motions.' "

For the prosecution, Steve Kaplan wouldn't even dignify an overturned verdict as a legal possibility. When he's not running the Macomb County cold case unit and prosecuting cases, Kaplan is a part-time law professor. His keen knowledge of the law is well-known and he seemed to see this delay as the judge's ruminations and not a valid legal option.

After Dateline correspondent Dennis Murphy noted the judge's considerable time pondering, Kaplan replied in an interview that "Some judges spend more time reviewing motions than others."

Murphy asked, "But, did you have to worry, when you guys were on break, the judge is going over this thing? Did we not meet the test here, we're going to lose this thing?"

"In our county, we have not had a murder dismissed during a jury trial," said Kaplan.

But Kaplan's boss, county prosecutor Eric Smith, let us in on what, he said, was really going on in the prosecutor's office.

"We were fit to be tied," Smith said. "After five hours, you start to worry."

After those five hours, when the judge returned to the bench, he made points for both sides. Tension was high. Would he dismiss the case?

In the end, he didn't.

"This is in many ways a classic murder case," the judge said out of the presence of the jury. "If the evidence is believed by the jury, then the jury could reach a finding of guilt." And then he added, " So the court, at this point, cannot substitute its judgment for that of the jury."

One source who spoke to Judge Biernat said the judge actually had prepared a written order granting the directed verdict. Then he re-read the case law and changed his mind.

But now, the stakes are even higher. A jury has weighed in, confident in its decision to convict Michael George for first-degree murder, insurance fraud, and a felony firearms charge. It would be a controversial step for any trial judge to overturn a murder conviction in his own county, especially after he's said in open court that there was ample evidence to go forward.

But this is a thoughtful judge who had second and third thoughts on the original motion for directed verdict. Sources around the courthouse say that Judge Biernat has been talking to his fellow judges about his options and it appears he may want to do something, if possible.

But could he be hemmed in by his previous ruling? Or, could he say that he was mistaken then and wants to set things right now? Or, could he do nothing and let an appeals court decide?

Predictably, the lawyers are divided.

"The odds of a murder conviction being overturned by the trial judge, less than one percent," said Kaplan for the prosecution.

"I believe that we have a strong shot with this judge to be able to get a reversal -- either an outright reversal or a new trial," said Marlinga for the defense. "And if it doesn't happen in this court, I believe that we have a decent shot at the court of appeals."

Whatever the judge does next week or later, expect to see "The Comic Book Murder," that aired on Dateline Friday night (May 9), on the docket next TV season as fodder for one of the prime-time courtroom dramas. As often happens, life will imitate art -- and vice-versa.

For more information on this case, click here. Watch an Express version of the Dateline episode below.

 

by Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent

If the images of Nona Dirksmeyer's fresh open face convey a certain vulnerability, it shouldn't be too surprising; at 19 years old, though she sang beautifully, looked wonderful, and had been winning some local and entering state beauty pageants, she was still struggling with an awful secret.

Secrets, of course, do not survive murder investigations, and the details of Nona's troubles spilled out for all the world to pick over. 

Certainly her mother was shocked and dismayed when Nona told her that her own father sexually abused her when she was a little girl, and that later on she began to cut herself.  Imagine then, how horrifying for Nona's grieving mother when the whole town learned about not just that, but eventually, in open court, the extremely personal details of Nona's love life.

Repeatedly in recent years I have found myself in the company of parents who must struggle to make sense of the senseless death of a child, to go on after a murder. How Nona's mother Carol managed it, especially when her daughter's own secrets became such a significant part of the case, I do not know.

I left her understanding very well how important it was for her to find some form of justice... some answer.

So it was hard to fault her deep suspicion of Nona's boyfriend, Kevin.  After all, the local police and prosecutors -- the only authorities she could trust -- were convinced that he must have killed her.   And this was a boy she had long since begun to treat as a future son-in-law!

That, however, is where the whole terrible business -- including media coverage of the crime -- began to bog down in what amounted to family loyalties.  Or, as a supportive out of town relative called it, "local politics."

And highly polarized politics, at that.  Debates over the boyfriend's guilt or innocence actually stirred up regional resentments and rivalries that date right back to the civil war.  As a result,  covering the murder of Nona Dirksmeyer was a  sometimes tricky business; local media outlets began to take a lot of flak for allegedly slanting the story in favor of one family or the other, and no matter how thorough our efforts to tell the story even-handedly, somebody was always assuming we had to be on one 'side' or the other.  Obviously, we were not -- our mission is to follow each story as fairly and clearly as possible.  And of course, in this case, as in all others, its the jury that decides.

Were truth and justice served in Nona's case?  If you were to ask around in Russellville, Arkansas, the answer you'd likely hear as often as not is... no.   Perhaps, after a review of the facts, you'll come to your own conclusion. 

And just possibly, before too very long, Nona's  mother Carol will finally have her answer.  Along with some final justice for Nona Dirksmeyer.

'Death and the Beauty Queen' airs Dateline Friday, 10 p.m. For more videos, including more from Kevin Jones, and the Dirksmeyer and Jones families, click here. Click here to read a transcript of this report. We'll try to keep commenters to this blog post updated about the developments in this case.

Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent

Every once in a while a story finds you. Such is the case with the hour-long investigation we'll bring you on Friday night, May 2.  

I think it's one of the most unique and interesting stories we've done this year and it came to us in an equally unique and interesting way. It was a tip from a Texas-based cameraman that got the ball rolling. In the past, Izzy Cardoza had done some work for NBC News and so he felt comfortable calling NBC after he says a so-called producer/reality show host didn't pay him for a project Izzy and his crew shot.

Izzy, as it turned out had kept all the tapes as collateral and when the producer/host never came up with a promised certified check, Izzy and his crew walked off the job with the tapes.

Guess who has the tapes now?

That's right, Dateline. And they not only make for compelling television, they allowed us to track down a group of contestants who say they were duped into believing they were going to appear worldwide on a reality show. The group was told that the winner would get $50,000 and the possibility of a big time modeling contract.

The host/producer was a fellow named Gemase Simmons.  He claimed to be a former supermodel, but as our investigation would reveal, that and so many other things he claimed couldn't be confirmed or just weren't true.

As you'll see, Simmons puts the contestants through the kind of grueling physical contests that have become reality show fare, but it's what was going on off-camera that was really bizarre.

We'll show you that, and also what happens when we go looking for Gemase Simmons to ask him what he was really up to.

'Reality Bites' aired on Friday, May 2. Click here to read Gemase Simmons' response after the broadcast.