On Friday, February 1st at 10pm/9c, Dateline NBC will give viewers an uncensored look into the lives of two narcotics detectives -- both trained to take down drug dealers – given the formidable task of rehabilitating low level criminals through a controversial drug intervention program.  For one year, Dateline went inside the program, capturing the dramatic personal journeys of the heroic detectives struggling to work with criminals instead of against them; of the criminals who are trying to reform; and of a working class neighborhood that is trying desperately to save itself.

The city of North Charleston, standing just ten miles from beautiful historic Charleston, is a gritty, blue collar city that battles the demons of drugs, prostitution, and crime.  In 2011, in effort to transform North Charleston, U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles created a year-long experimental program, called STAND (Stop and Take A New Direction) in effort to combat drug crime in the area.  The program took a two-pronged approach.  First, the neighborhood’s most stubborn and violent dealers were arrested and given bail too high for them to make.  Then, rather than sending the low level drug dealers to jail, STAND used intense intervention with education, employment and counseling to transform them — from law-breakers to law-abiding citizens — for good. The purpose of the program is to stop the revolving door created by the justice system and to use the police officers who know the neighborhood best to save it.

At the center of if all are two narcotics detectives: Charity Prosser, a 39-year-old mother and wife, and her partner, Jamel Foster, a Navy veteran and father of four.  Both reluctantly join the program they derisively call “Hug a Thug,” but during a remarkable year they come to help, and even love, the eight would-be criminals who they put under their wing.

Dateline cameras roll as a SWAT team storms through the community on the hunt for drug dealers; as neighbors show up in court to confront the drug dealers; and as eight low-level dealers are guided towards a life without drugs and prison.  It is a year of surprising successes, disappointing failures, real heartbreaks, and ultimate victories. Viewers witness the shocking transformations of both dealers, and of the detectives trying to save them, as both sides learn to trust and help each other, and themselves.  

When college student Mickey Shunick vanished last summer, her sister became the tip of the spear in a multinational search effort. She opens up to “Dateline” about the case and the night her sister went missing. Josh Mankiewicz reports Missing Mickey on Tuesday, January 29th, at 10pm/9c.

Dateline NBC

It’s been more than two months since Greg Faull, a 52-year-old American expatriate living in the tropical paradise of Belize, was found murdered in his beachfront home.

It was an execution, plain and simple—Faull was shot once, in the head, and there was no sign of struggle or robbery.  Local police are no closer to solving this crime today than they were two months ago.  The person they would most like to talk to is Faull’s neighbor: the wealthy American Internet entrepreneur John McAfee.  But McAfee hid from police, then fled the country in early December.  He is now safely back in the United States, and about to cash-in on book and movie deals about his life on the run.

You probably think you know the story already. A tattooed tycoon with a bevy of teenaged lovers and a fondness for guns taunts the police from secret hideouts. Armed with a laptop and smart phone, he simultaneously maintains his innocence while hammering the Belizean government with scattershot claims of rampant corruption.

But you probably don’t know the half of it.

Soon after the news broke that McAfee was wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of Faull, Dateline scrambled producers and camera crews and correspondent Keith Morrison to get the story behind the story.  The results of Dateline’s investigation, which took its team from coast to coast and across Central America, is “Trouble in Paradise,” and airs Friday night on NBC at 9pm ET/8pm CT.

The first thing Dateline set out to do was to investigate the murder, which had been lost in the media frenzy surrounding John McAfee.  Aside from Faull’s killer, Shane and Brittany McCann were probably the last people to see him alive. On the evening of November 10, 2012, Faull had dinner with the McCann’s at their home on Belize’s Ambergris Caye. 

“Saturday night we had a few people over.  We invited Greg,” says Shane McCann. “Everyone in the neighborhood likes to do things.”                       

Among the topics of conversation that night was the news that John McAfee, the eccentric millionaire who lived down the beach, had just reported that very morning that four of his dogs had been poisoned.

The neighbors thought that McAfee’s dogs, a collection of a nearly a dozen mangy mutts who barked all night, were a snapping and snarling scourge for anyone who tried to walk along the beach to nearby bars and restaurants.

Like some other tourists, Faull had been bitten by McAfee’s dogs. He had confronted McAfee about the dogs, and in fact, he had complained to local authorities about the problem a month earlier, but nothing had been done.

Neighbors say Faull made no secret of his dislike of those dogs and had often threatened to poison them if nothing were done to bring them under control.  At dinner that night, McCann says Faull seemed to claim responsibility for poisoning the dogs

 “He told me right there on the beach,” says McCann, “‘Did you hear?  The dogs were poisoned.’  And he gave me a little wink.” 

After dinner, McCann says he watched Faull walk off into the night, headed for home. Early the next morning, McCann says he was awakened by a call from one of Faull’s caretakers, who told him Greg Faull was dead.

Assuming that Faull had had a heart attack, McCann says he rushed over to his friend’s house, arriving well before the police. Inside, on the main floor, McCann says he saw his friend lying face up in a pool of dried blood, his legs straight out, his hands at his side, as if posed.                  

“It didn't look natural” , McCann says. “It looked like someone had laid him there.”

According to McCann, Faull’s keys were still in the door and he was still dressed in the clothes he’d been wearing the night before, though his T-shirt had been pulled up over his head.

“Yeah, it was pulled over, like in a hockey move or something… [it] was all the way behind his neck, but his shirt was still on.” 

The eeriest detail, says McCann, was the movie soundtrack that kept playing over and over again from the TV across the room.

“It was playing Pirates of the Caribbean, Volume Two.  And it's doing the credits over and over.  It was freakin' scary, man,” McCann says.  “Every 30 seconds the menu of that movie would just come on and off, on and off, on and off, on and off.  There was no sign of struggle and nothing was stolen. We finally had to turn off the TV.  It was bad.”

Greg Faull’s early retirement from his contracting business into tropical bliss in Belize lasted just five months and 10 days. His father, Art Faull, says his son, an avid sailor and fisherman, had never been happier. So it was like a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky when the US Embassy in Belize called him that Sunday afternoon with news that his son had been murdered.

“I yelled, I said, ‘No, it can't possibly happen.  Not Greg,’” Art Faull said, in his only interview since his son’s death. “Cause I don't think anyone could have overpowered Greg if he'd have had a chance, you know?  I suspect that he just never had a chance.”

Immediately after securing the crime scene at Faull’s house, police investigators headed over to McAfee’s compound to question him, since he and Faull had feuded about the dogs.  But when the police got there, McAfee was nowhere to be found.

Within hours the news was all over the internet that Marco Vidal, head of Belize’s paramiltary Gang Suppression Unit, a team that focuses on combating organized crime, had named McAfee a primary suspect in the case.

Vidal and the Gang Suppression Unit had a history with John McAfee. In April, 2012, the GSU had raided another of McAfee’s compounds, located on the mainland, on the suspicion that he was operating a meth lab there.  Though that raid turned up no illegal drugs, and McAfee denied producing or even using drugs, he had been arrested on a weapons charge and briefly jailed.

The charge was later dropped and McAfee took to the press to launch blistering attacks on the Belizean government and the GSU, accusing them everything from petty corruption to murder.

And now, though McAfee was missing, he was not silent. The day after he disappeared, he launched a media blitz, blogging, emailing and calling journalists from undisclosed locations to insist that he had nothing to do with the murder of Faull, and to claim that he would likely die in custody if he turned himself in for questioning.

For the next three weeks, the 67-year-old McAfee courted the press and used every opportunity to rail against the Belizean government before escaping to Guatemala with his 20-year-old girlfriend.

Shortly before Christmas, McAfee was deported to the United States where he says he is prepared to meet with Belizean officials and answer any questions they might have about the Faull murder.  Belizean authorities say they do not intend to take him up on that offer.  The police say McAfee is not a suspect in the case, but that he remains a person of interest, and someone they still want to question.

“Trouble in Paradise” also examines John McAfee’s life from his early successes in the Silicon Valley to his days on the run in Belize.  There are exclusive interviews with two of McAfee’s young girlfriends in Belize and Guatemala, as well as people who knew him in Belize.

Keith Morrison and the Dateline team finally tracked McAfee down while he was being detained in Guatemala, and conducted the only extensive network interview the provocative entrepreneur has given since fleeing his home in Belize.  McAfee denies having anything to do with Faull’s murder, and discusses his relationship with Faull at length.  He also responds to accusations about drugs and answers questions about his controversial lifestyle.

But the forgotten man in the media maelstrom surrounding McAfee is Greg Faull.  In moving interviews, Faull’s friends in Belize and his family in Florida describe an industrious, fun loving man who never met a stranger.  Fearing that the investigation into his death has stalled, the Faull family tells Dateline that they have enlisted the help of Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, who is pressing Belizean for information.

 “It feels hopeless, because, you know, it's a foreign country and I don't know how to handle it,” says Greg’s father, Art. “So we're waiting to see if we can put any pressure anywhere on the Belizean government just to continue their investigation.  And find out who is responsible.  But I just don't know when it'll happen.  It's desperately important to know. This whole family is just terribly broken up. We all are.”

On Saturday, January 19th, Faull’s family will hold a memorial service in Florida. Afterward, they say, Faull’s ashes will be scattered in the Gulf of Mexico where he spent his happiest hours sailing and fishing.

...

Vince Sturla
Producer, Dateline NBC

Searching for the missing is a personal and passionate cause for Marc Klaas. The first time he took to the field,  in October 1993, was during a frantic, two-month hunt for his own daughter—twelve year-old, Polly.  Searches were,  at times,  chaotic and disorganized as volunteers, with little skill or training, took to the hills. Search efforts that were ultimately fruitless.  Polly’s body wasn’t found until her killer confessed to detectives, eventually taking them to Polly’s burial site. Realizing there was a need for trained search teams, Klaas formed the KlaasKids Foundation--led by a professional search director--to aid families looking for missing loved ones.  One of the most notable cases involving Klaas’ group was the hunt for Amber Dubois, a 14 year- old who disappeared north of San Diego in 2009. Sadly, Dubois was found murdered 13 months after her disappearance.  A year later, in June 2011, the KlaasKids Foundation was asked to help in the search for Michelle Le.

The Hayward Police Department was deep into the criminal investigation, at that time, but simply didn’t have the staff to do an extended, wide-ranging search for Michelle.  To get an idea of the area that needed to be canvassed, take a look at this map that investigators put together.  

This is an aerial view of the southeast corner of the San Francisco Bay Area.  On the left side you’ll see a cluster of numbers in a circle around a building. Those are the times Giselle Esteban and Michelle Le’s phones pinged off the cell tower at the top of the parking garage. 

Now follow the lines and arrows to the right. Michelle’s phone is depicted in yellow, Giselle’s in red.  This is the route the two phones went on the night of May 27, 2011. The red and yellow lines are not the exact path the phones took, they merely connect the various cell towers in a chronological order as they detected either Michelle or Giselle’s phone. The towers are depicted as either a yellow or red dot.  If you look closely you’ll also see the hills and canyons that run north and south. Looking for body here--especially if it was buried--would be labor intensive work.  So you can see how helpful it was for Marc Klaas to a):  get this cell tower information from police to narrow the search area and b): help raise and organize search teams. 

Michelle Le’s body was discovered on the right side of this map, west of Interstate 680, a few miles south of the northern most cell tower--pretty much where the number 4 is--found by Carrie McGonigle’s  dog, “Amber.” Less than a year old at the time, “Amber” was being trained to be a search and rescue dog, not a cadaver dog. So, it’s odd she found Michelle’s body at all. Carrie, still devastated by the loss of her daughter, was very much hoping she would not be the one to find Michelle.

Since then, Michelle’s cousin, Krystine, and brother, Michael, have been active volunteers with the KlaasKids Foundation.  Like Klaas and McGonigle  before them, they’re willing to relive their grief--their pain—to help other families lost and in need—new members  in a group that Klaas sardonically refers to as, “The Club That Nobody Wants To Be a Part Of.”

...

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When a young nursing student vanishes during her shift at a California hospital, her family is determined to find her, with or without the help of authorities. Keith Morrison reports Vanished on Friday, January 11th, at 9pm/8c.

Read the prologue to Inconceivable by Carolyn and Sean Savage, who underwent an in-vitro fertilization procedure that transferred the wrong embryos to Carolyn, leaving her pregnant with someone else's baby.  This web exclusive is part of the Dateline report from Sunday, January 6th.

PROLOGUE

We have three children. Or do we have four? A strange ques­ tion, but the kind that parents who have lost a child ask themselves from time to time. That absent child is always with you, a loss you feel some days as yearning and other days in a gasp of pain. My husband Sean and I still grieve the son we lost, despite the unusual way he left us. Or rather, we still grieve him and the circumstances that forced us to give away a baby we thought of as our own. This was a child whom I nurtured and we both protected from the forces conspiring against his survival. Yet I understand that I may never hold him in my arms again and that the next time I see him, he will think of me as a stranger. Perhaps I will never be able to heal the ache that is the place he occupies in my heart. At the same time, I know that if Sean and I had this decision to make again, we’d do exactly the same for Logan.

For us, having children has been the biggest challenge in our sixteen years of marriage: twenty ovarian stimulation cycles, three in vitro fertilizations (IVFs), two frozen embryo transfers, and four miscarriages in the twelve years that we tried everything we could to expand our family. We knew that our struggle was coming to a close on the morning of February 6, 2009, when we entered the fer­tility clinic for one last try. I was nearly forty years old, and if this at­ tempt at transferring our last embryos did not work, we were done. We would thank God for our three beautiful, healthy children and move forward. Two of my three pregnancies had been difficult, and one nearly lethal, but we were determined to fulfill our pledge to give every embryo a chance at life. Our beloved fertility doctor, who had helped us conceive our third child, Mary Kate, when other doctors had failed, would perform the transfer that morning. Little did we know that, because of a terrible mistake, I would receive another couple’s embryos and eventually give birth to a baby we would not be allowed to raise.

All through the Christmas holidays of 2008 and into the New Year, I had been anxiously preparing for this day: taking estrogen pills, injecting lupron and progesterone, and enduring the bloat­ ing and grumpiness brought on by those drugs. Although I had started out thinking that I didn’t want to go through all of it again, that I was tired of all the anxiety surrounding our infertility treat­ ments and pregnancies, when Sean and I arrived at the clinic we were hoping for a second miracle. I had just slipped on my hospital gown when the fertility doctor entered the examining room. He was brusque and efficient, a man who clearly had many things on his mind as he described the condition of our thawed embryos.

“The five that survived all have developed to between nine and twelve cells. How many will you be transferring today? Remember, I don’t do selective reductions.”

He meant that if he transferred all five and they survived, he would not eliminate any in utero to give me and the others a better chance. His policy on this was one of the reasons we chose him as our doctor. Besides, I wasn’t sure any of these embryos were going to make it. Nine cells after four days in a Petri dish was not robust growth.

“Can you give us a moment?” I asked.
“I’ll see you in the operating room. Let me know then.” 

“Sean, they should be eighty to a hundred cells by now. They are very, very behind. I think we should transfer three. I actually don’t think any of them will take.”

Sean knew how well I had educated myself about pregnancy, miscarriage, and the science behind IVF these last ten years.

“What happens to the other two embryos?”

“They’ll watch them until tomorrow, and if they are still alive, they’ll refreeze them. The ones we aren’t transferring probably won’t survive.”

“Okay. Three it is,” Sean said.

Before the nurse led me into the operating room, she had me check my wristband to confirm the information there. “Carolyn Savage.” “Yes.” “Social security number . . .” “Correct.” “Birth date . . .” “Wait . . . actually, the day and month of my birthday are correct, but my birth year is wrong. It’s 1969, not 1967.”

This didn’t seem like a serious error, so I didn’t think anything of it. The nurse wrote a nine over the seven, fastened the bracelet to my wrist, and escorted us down the hall.

In the operating room, I lay down on the table and placed my feet in the stirrups. Sean came in a few minutes later, gowned in surgical attire.

“How many are we transferring?” the doctor asked me. “Three,” I said.
“We’re doing three,” he called back into the lab. A few minutes

later, the embryologist entered the room holding a catheter.
“You are Carolyn Savage?”
“Yes.”
He flipped my wrist over and confirmed my answer with a

glance at my hospital wristband, then handed the catheter to my doctor. Sean held my hand tightly.

The nurse squirted ultrasound gel on my stomach and rubbed the wand over my abdomen. Up popped a vivid image of my uterus on the screen. 

“There’s the catheter entering the uterus through your cervix,” the doctor narrated. “Now watch. Do you see that?”

I could see the catheter moving into my uterus, and although I couldn’t see the embryos as he released them, I thought of them as light and graceful orbs. I pictured them nesting gently.

“Congratulations. You are now officially pregnant.”

I looked at Sean and smiled. Now that our embryos were back where they were supposed to be, they might grow happily.

“That’s it, guys. All finished. Good luck. I’ll talk to you in ten days, after your pregnancy test,” he said as he exited.

I lay still, standard procedure immediately following a transfer of embryos.

“How does it feel to be pregnant with triplets?” Sean said.

I laughed. “Don’t look so worried! I know that however this turns out, we’ll be able to handle it. Triplets? That would be scary, but we’d survive. Twins? No sweat. A singleton? Perfect! No preg­ nancy? We’ll be okay with that too!”

“Mr. and Mrs. Savage?” A gowned man asked as he entered the room.

“Yes?”

“For your baby album!” he said as he handed me a picture. Sean and I marveled at this snapshot of our three embryos, labeled with my name, Sean’s name, and our personal identifying information.

“Their first picture, you know? Congratulations,” the man said to us.

Sean and I looked at the picture and beamed at each other. 

As part of the Dateline report Under the Desert Sky from Friday, January 4th, learn more about Mickie Costanzo as her family shares memories and pays tribute to her life and legacy.

To share your own thoughts about Mickie or to express support, please visit her family-created Facebook tribute page.

Carolyn and Sean Savage hoped to have another child using embryos left over from the in vitro fertilization procedure that brought them their daughter. Ten days after the embryos were transferred into Carolyn, their doctor called with stunning news. Dateline visits the Savages once again after their lives took yet another unexpected turn.

Also on Sunday, a fresh start for the New Year: Al Roker and his family open up about their plans to stay healthy in 2013. Natalie Morales follows two women who embark on a ten day digital detox. An interview with music icon Usher, plus more.

This two-hour Dateline report airs Sunday, January 6th, at 7pm/6c.

The murder of a popular and attractive teenager in Nevada shakes the community to its core, especially when the two most unlikely people make a shocking confession. Keith Morrison reports Under the Desert Sky on Friday, January 4th, at 9pm/8c.