A special Dateline on adoption in Guatemala airs on NBC Sunday, Jan. 20 at 7pm ET.

By Victoria Corderi, Dateline NBC Correspondent

I witnessed the joy of a successful foreign adoption when my sister came home with a baby boy from Guatemala more than  five years ago.  Today, my nephew is thriving and my sister is as thrilled as she was when she first held her son in her arms.  There are many people who've had  similar life-changing experiences.  But there is also a dark side to Guatemalan adoption: corruption, lies, forgery, kidnapping, broken hearts. The market is driven by the demand for adoptions from prospective parents in the U.S.  And, as so often happens when there is high demand and the potential for a profit, swindlers appear to exploit the system.

Guatemala has been an adoption magnet because the wait for a child is months rather than years. When we traveled to Guatemala City, we saw hotel lobbies brimming with Americans meeting with lawyers and foster mothers and cradling the babies they were in the process of adopting.  The sheer numbers of babies and strollers and anxious adoptive parents milling about the hotels and streets made for a surreal sight. At first blush,  it seems like a win-win situation: unwanted children escape the dire poverty that plagues much of this country while Americans longing for children are able to fulfill their dreams. 

But what if the children up for adoption were taken under false pretenses?  Or, if  poor, pregnant women are pressured by brokers offering money? And what if the children have been kidnapped outright?  These are not rhetorical questions.  We learned what happens during our investigation.  While we were in Guatemala, we found out about three young girls who'd been kidnapped by a ring that gave them new identities and tried to sell them for adoption.  We also tried to go inside the system by posing as a new adoption agency from the United States looking for contacts.  We set  up meetings with a controversial adoption facilitator  whose name kept coming up when we were looking into complaints about unethical operators in Guatemala.  What happened in both situations was eye-opening and dramatic. 

You can see photos users' adopted children here, and read their adoption stories here.

Read producer Benita Noel's blog on two kidnapped Guatemalan kids who were reunited with their family.

For more on the positive side of international adoption, see Dateline's story about a Philadelphia family that adopted three sets of twins from Russia.

 

By Marianne O'Donnell, Dateline Producer

I saw a young man holding a sign with my name on it as I left the baggage claim area of Florence's main airport.

"Hello" I said, forgetting that English was not the lingua franca here.

"Buongiorno!" he smiled hesitatingly. "Ms. O'Donnell?"

"Oh, right, buongiorno," I corrected myself.

The driver said his name was Mauritzio, and for a moment I wondered whether the dispatcher of a car service or the editors of Vogue had sent him here. He had a perfect right angle for a nose -- what they call a classic Roman nose, I guess -- a defined jaw and dark hair gelled back. A lock of it had managed to escape the rest of the black slick; it curled seductively above his brow like an upside-down question mark. He wore a tailored blue pinstripe with a black leather coat and caramel colored loafers. He wasn't a driver. He was Adonis. As I seated myself in the back of his spacious Mercedes, he climbed behind the wheel, slipped on his black sunglasses and grinned into his rearview mirror.

"We go?" he asked.

"Uh, sure." I stammered. "I mean, good ... uh," since the breadth of my Italian started with 'bongiorno' and ended with 'arrivederci', with nothing in between, it was obvious I was going to need more than his driving skills.

"Bene?" he helped me.

"Right. Right. BEHH-nay," I parrotted. Saying it was a little like taking a rollercoaster ride. Up on the 'beh', down suddenly on the 'nay'. Italian was fun. "The Brufani Hotel in Perugia, please."

Ten hours earlier I had been sitting inside my senior producer's office in New York when I realized I was going to have to hotfoot it to the nearest airport and get myself to Italy. My assignment was to work the ground in a small city in the central part of the country. Perugia. I knew famous chocolates came from there, succulent Perugina Bacci's, but Dateline doesn't cover candy festivals. It does cover murders, though, and a particularly ghoulish one days earlier had left the town still shaken.

A young British woman, studying at the University of Perugia, had been stabbed in the neck and left to bleed -- slowly -- to death in the bedroom of a little cottage she had shared with three others. One of those was an American student named Amanda Knox. And if Italian police were right, she had something to do with her friend's murder. My job, among others, was to try to get an interview with Knox's mom, who had just arrived from Seattle to comfort her daughter, now in an Italian jail cell.

Days later, I waited in the bone-chilling wind that swept through the medieval piazza of stone and statues, along with my colleagues from Italian, British and American media. Word was the mother was due to walk through the piazza at any moment on her way to the office of her daughter's Italian lawyer. In one moment we were a rag-tag bunch milling around, in another we were a condensed cloud of bees, swarming toward a small, coated woman rushing along with her head down: the suspect's mother. The cameramen flicked on their lights. I took an elbow from one reporter in the ribs; a soundman behind me used my shoulder to steady his boom. Cameras, microphones, wires: we became one unholy body pressing in, cornering a terrified woman who looked back aghast at our communal brazenness.

"My daughter is innocent," she quickly said, in a trembling voice. "She's sure that as the investigation continues the truth will come out and she'll be proven innocent, ummm it's gone with one tragedy with the death of Meredith to know the tragedy that my daughter's living in. It's a terrible situation."

With that her lawyer led her forward by the elbow, into and through our shield. Of course we followed, wanting more, always more. She stilled looked terrified, but she offered nothing else.

In the weeks that followed we would all keep following the investigation for every new morsel of evidence: a bloody footprint found; a knife recovered; surveillance footage of suspects. As I stood with my press brethren in front of the courthouse off the piazza one afternoon, a stooped, white-haired woman caught my eye and shuffled over.

She wore a dazzling red coat and matching hat; her lipstick and makeup applied to perfection. She must have been in her 80s, but she was the epitome of Italian sophistication. She leaned on her polished wooden cane and began questioning me in her native tongue. I used my broken Spanish to try to understand. I got that she was distressed and a little embarrassed by the murder and worried what the rest of the world would think of her sleepy, medieval city on a hilltop, where such a crime, it seems, never happens.

But I clearly couldn't sustain a conversation with her.

In frustration she looked over at the cameras and reporters conversing around the door, waiting for the latest word from the prosescutor in the case. She sighed. I felt bad. "Non bene? Scusi."

I wasn't sure that my apology was properly worded or needed. At least she seemed to forgive my lousy Italian. "Grazie" she said softly, smiling. And she was off.

That night, after hours in the cold yielded nothing new in the case, I joined my cameramen, soundmen and fellow producer in a restaurant on the piazza.

Along with its chocolates, Perugia is known for its homemade pasta and wines. I was having a simple red from a local vintner. I took a sip, immediately relaxing as the wine swirled inside my mouth. In a long day, in what had been an exhausting week, it was a moment of bliss -- a little bit of 'bene' -- in a job that sometimes seemed to be anything but.

Click here for 'Deadly Exchange,' the full Dateline story about the case, including photos, video and a 'Who's who' gallery.
 

By Dan Slepian, Dateline Producer
daniel.slepian@nbc.com

Imagine your loved one -- your brother, your son, your father -- is arrested, convicted and locked up for life for a murder he didn't commit. Now imagine he serves 15 years for this crime, and after all this time in prison, nearly everyone within the system agrees that he is, in fact, innocent. Then, when a Supreme Court Judge overturns his conviction and he finally gets out, the worst possible scenario happens: he is prosecuted on the same charges all over again. It couldn't happen, right? Wrong. It is happening right now, in

On Thursday's Today show, fourth-hour co-anchor Hoda Kotb is going to discuss the battle with breast cancer that she has endured over the past several months. (THURSDAY UPDATE: WATCH VIDEO HERE.) I sat down with her to talk further about this revelation, and, among other things, her Egyptian heritage, her early career rejections, and her obsession with her iPod. Read on.

Q: A lot of people want to know about the pink ring that you wear on your index finger.

Hoda: I wear this, just to kind of... it's not like I need a physical reminder of my breast cancer, aside from what has happened to me. But it just reminds me. I feel safe with it on. I don't know... I think when you make it through cancer, anyone who's survived it and so many people have, everyone gets a take-away. My take-away, what I got from this whole ordeal, was the headline that "You can't scare me." That's what I took away. It's such an exciting, liberating headline. If you survive it, that's what you get. And it also reminds you that your life has limits. It's to be valued and not wasted. I decided I'm not wasting one more minute. Suddenly your life gets clearer, and it weeds everything out. It just gives you clarity. And I also wear the ring just because I know that I'm in a big club with lots of people.

Q: Why did you decide to come forward now and talk about breast cancer?

Hoda: This is one of those decisions that you struggle with, in terms of what to share and how much to share. So I really spoke for two reasons. Number one, it's breast cancer awareness month and I thought it would be a good time to talk about this. And number two, I recently met a guy on a plane, and he said words that I'll never forget. He told me: "Don't hog your journey." And when he said that, my eyes just opened wide. He told me that I could keep everything for myself, or I could use it to help people. So right then and there I told myself that when it's time, I'm going to do it. And I did.

Q: Let's go to some other topics... Lots of viewers want to know about your name. What kind of name is it, and what does it mean?

Hoda: My parents were both born in Egypt. So my name Hoda is so weird here, but in Egypt it's like Jane. I've walked down the streets in Cairo and someone yelled out "Hoda!" and like 10 girls turned around. I'm literally the Jane Smith of the Nile, but here everyone's like "What's your name? How do you spell it? Rhoda?" I did a whole interview once, no lie, where the guy was calling me Yoda. And he was a name injector and said it over and over again. And you know when it's already gone too far, and then you can't correct him? I just started laughing. Luckily it was a taped interview for Dateline so we could edit it out.

Q: So both your parents were born in Egypt, were you born in Egypt?

Hoda: No I was born in Oklahoma. Grew up some in Morgantown, West Virginia, and mainly in Alexandria Virginia. And we went overseas back and forth. We lived in Egypt for a year, and Nigeria.

Q: Do you still have family in Egypt? Have you been back recently?

Hoda: Yes. I haven't been back in a while. Most of the times I've gone back lately were for work-related stories, and on the side I'd get to see my uncles and aunts and stuff like that. But I haven't been back for a few years. We're trying to plan a family trip back soon.

Q: Egyptian is certainly a more unusual ethnicity here in the U.S. Do you have any specific traditions you celebrate, or unique Egyptian practices?

Hoda: My parents raised us red, white and blue. You know a lot of immigrants from that generation wanted their kids to be only red, white and blue. You're going to play baseball, and here's some apple pie. We were raised in that whole tradition of everyone acclimating. My parents felt that they picked this country, and we were going to be like the people in this country. I don't think we lost our uniqueness though. We still have different stuff that Egyptian people eat or drink or do, and we celebrate those things. And we have a bond... I'll get voicemails sometimes from people I don't know saying "We're so proud of you! We're Egyptian!" And I'm like "OK!"

Q: Tell us about how your got your first job on television.

Hoda: I had just graduated from college and I had my resume tape. I borrowed my mom's car and drove to Richmond to meet with a News Director. He met me, put my tape in the machine, and after 30 seconds said "I'm sorry. You're just not really ready for Richmond." But he said he had a buddy in Roanoke who might hire me. So I drove 4 more hours to meet with him, and I was all excited and planning my life in Roanoke. That guy put my tape in and told me that I was not ready for Roanoke, but he has a friend in Memphis who might hire me. And Tennessee is a long skinny state, and he was at the other end, so I was driving forever to get there. Driving driving driving all night long. I'm a bleary-eyed mess when I meet with the guy there, and he tells me that I'm just not ready for Memphis. After that, I was in the car for 10 days driving all over. Everyone kept referring me to someone else and I kept getting rejected. All of Alabama rejected me. Everyone was "so sorry" and I "just wasn't ready." On the way home, I got lost in Mississippi and stumbled upon a sign for Greenville. I met a News Director there and he was watching my tape, and he kept watching it! He watched past the point where everyone else had stopped. It was unbelievable! My heart was pounding. And I'll never forget it. He said: "I like what I see" and hired me on the spot. And honestly, if I had gone to that job first I might not have taken it, because it was such a small market, you had to shoot your own stuff, and you got paid government cheese money. But after everyone else telling me no no no, it was great.

Q: Before being named host of the 4th hour of the Today Show, what was a previous career highlight for you?

Hoda: Anchoring in New Orleans was a big deal for me because I fell in love with that city. In terms of other job milestones, when you get the knock from NBC News... you've been working in local TV your whole life and then someone calls you and says "Hey, what about the network?" I mean, your whole life you dream of the network! Who doesn't dream of the network? I remember when I first got hired at NBC for Dateline, I was freaking. I kept thinking that someone was going to come into my office and say "OK Hoda, it's time to go back to Greenville. Come on. Giddyup!" I still have pinch me moments.

Q: Some viewers have written in asking what you miss the most about New Orleans.

Hoda: You know what I miss? I miss getting hugged by strangers on the street. They walk right up and hug you. Sometimes they don't even ask. Even better that way. It's like a warm blanket wrapped around your shoulders, that city is to me. I feel a real connection. I can say I miss the food and the music, and I do miss all that. But what I really miss is looking at people who look at you the way a relative would look at you. There's nothing better than a pair of New Orleans arms wrapped around you.

Q: Has there ever been a story where it was really hard for you to separate yourself as a human being from yourself as a professional journalist?

Hoda: Probably in New Orleans [after Hurricane Katrina] because it was personal for me. There's one scene that I won't forget. We saw in the distance a group of people hobbling towards us. They were nurses, their feet were bloody, and they had walked all the way from their hospital. They were sobbing, exhausted, and bleeding. After I interviewed them, I saw an ambulance coming and flagged it down. I told them that they needed to drive the nurses. But they told me they couldn't take them because of regulations. I knew I was stepping out of what I was supposed to be doing, but I couldn't help it. The guy said they can't take anyone to a place other than their final destination. So I said: "You know where their final destination is? Where you're going! They just need to get off that highway." So they threw them in the back and took them. I couldn't just leave someone sitting there. It's a weird feeling when you're in some of these tragic situations and you see suffering, and you're holding a notepad. It's weird. I don't miss my deadlines, I always get my interviews done, and I'm not going to not do my work. But I'm also not a robot.

Q: So how's the 4th hour going?

Hoda: Oh God I love it. I love it.

Q: What do you like most about it?

Hoda: I like walking in in the morning, and seeing the crew. That's the first thing I love. Because no matter what hour it is, you hear "Morning Hoda! How you doing?" You walk into this upbeat, pumped up, fun environment. Imagine if you walked in and everyone was all grumpy and grumbling? It just feels good. And I love the camaraderie of the show. I like that there's an authenticity to it, and it feels real. I love working with Ann, and Natalie, and Tiki and everyone else. When we're all together, it just turns into this zany, fun, smart show. I feel really really lucky.

Q: So where's the dance trophy? [In case you missed it, Hoda won Today's "Shall We Dance" competition. Watch her winning moment HERE.]

Hoda: Ha ha! It was too big! Look, my apartment is only so big. I'd have to take out my coffee table to get that thing in. So I'm letting the people at the Today Show guard it for me and take care of it, as I look for space to rent another apartment.

Q: A viewer wrote in the following, and I quote: "In the looks and age driven industry you compete in, how do you find the courage to be open about your actual weight numbers? This morning you said you weighed 140, and I was thrilled that a celebrity of your status would openly talk actual numbers. So many women lie and put an unfair pressure on others to lie as well. Not all women weigh 110 pounds! Thank you for your support of normal, healthy, shapely women!" What do you think about that?

Hoda: You know, I do weigh 140. And that's on the good days! Somedays the scale goes a little higher than that. But I feel like that's me. Look, I'm 5'9". I've always been a big girl. I've always been the big girl in the back of the picture or on the bottom of the pyramid. I have a lot of hangups I'm sure, but one of them is not my weight. That's just not my issue.

Q: Lots of viewers have written in and asked about your personal life. Are you married?

Hoda: I am separated.

Q: Let's do some getting-to-know-you favorites. Favorite movie?

Hoda: I'm so bad with movies. People ask me this all the time and I never know... You know what movie I love and have watched a thousand times? "Love Actually." I love that movie!

Q: Favorite book?

Hoda: I'm going to go with "The Kite Runner."

Q: Favorite music, or band, or singer, or kind of music?

Hoda: I love all kinds of music. I'm so addicted to my I-Pod it's sick. I have to have it on all the time. I listen to everything from Red Bone which is old but fun... I listen to all kinds of country. Lately I've been listening to Jo Dee Messina -- she's just fun, upbeat. Let me look at my I-Pod hang on... [reaches for I-Pod] I love this new I-Pod! It's so cute. Really, I love everything. I hate to say I like it all because that sounds so boring, but I do. I really love country music, I really love old school, and I like Top 40. I like bubblegum pop. I could listen to that all day.

Q: Favorite color?

Hoda: Blue.

Q: Food?

Hoda: Probably grapeleaves.

Q: Ice cream flavor?

Hoda: Oreo cookie but with big chunks of oreo. Don't give me this skimping on the, oh there's an oreo crumb. I'm talking like chunks of the cookie.

Q: TV show?

Hoda: I watch "Law & Order." And then I watch more "Law & Order." I'm a huge fan. I love that you can turn on any channel and you know what's on? "Law & Order." Like it doesn't even matter -- it could be 3 in the morning, or 6, or when you wake up... I'm addicted. I mean it's the best.

Q: Sports team?

Hoda: I love sports. I love the Saints, and they're killing me this season. And the other team I gotta say... I fell in love with the Yankees living in New York. And I'm so depressed about the whole thing with Joe Torre and everything. That really gives me a pit in my stomach.

This post originally posted at allDay blog. Read more about Kotb's battle with cancer here.

By Andy Cashman, Associate Producer

After 9/11, I had the privilege of working on a story I'll not soon forget.  As part of an hour-long documentary we were shooting for Dateline, I slept with, ate with and went on runs with the firefighters of Engine 24/Ladder 5.  I'd say I lived with them for the better part of 2 months and, as you can imagine, this was an emotional time in the lives of these firefighters. They had lost 11 of their members and I witnessed them cry, laugh and eventually heal a little bit.

On Saturday, Aug. 18, two firefighters from Ladder 5, Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino, were killed while battling a blaze at the Deutsche Bank building beside Ground Zero in downtown Manhattan. Though I got to know other firefighters better than Beddia and Graffagnino, I knew them a bit.  As soon as I heard about their deaths, a story came to mind...

 

In her first interview since the final chapter of the Harry Potter series went public, J.K. Rowling revealed the secrets she could never previously discuss to TODAY's Meredith Vieira in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Rowling covered all topics including the rationale behind her plot choices;  the character she saved and the ones she decided to kill later in the writing process; what Harry, Hermione and Ron are up to these days; her plans for the future; and the way Harry Potter has saved her own life.

Meredith's interview with Rowling airs both this morning and Friday on TODAY and in a one-hour Dateline special this Sunday.

But to give you a little taste, allDAY talked to Meredith about the most poignant moments in the hours she spent with Rowling.

allDAY: So, after all you read about Jo going into this interview, what surprised you the most?

Meredith: I had read that she was not an easy interview; I think "aloof" was the word I read.

But I found her very much the opposite.  I found her warm, I found her charming.  I found her protective of her material, but not proprietary.

In so many other interviews she had to be guarded.  There was still this whole series and she didn't want to reveal secrets before now.

allDAY: There were a few really delightful off-camera moments with Jo and the children during the interview.  Did any of those in particular stand out for you?

Meredith: She asked how many of us had gone to the last page first and a few of us raised our hands and she said, "How could you!," (as an author would).  She was teasing the kids.

I love that she was so protective of them during the interview.  She didn't want to spoil this book for anybody.  That spoke a lot to Jo, the person, not just the author.

allDAY: While she was quite concerned about not spoiling the book for anyone during the portion of the interview when the children were present, you also got a chance to speak with her one-on-one when went into more detail about the book and also spoke openly about her own life.  What struck you about that portion of the interview?

Meredith: She talked about Harry saving her, financially, and him being her touchstone for 17 years, that's important.

She also said her biggest regret is not telling her mother about Harry.  At the end of the day her biggest regret is that her mom never knew about the books, and if she had she would have been at every book opening, every signing.  That was such a lovely moment.

allDAY: It was a story about her mother that actually brought you to tears at one point when the cameras were off….

Meredith: Yes, she had been talking about her mom having MS and a case where she declined very rapidly.  I starting talking to her about my husband having MS and I just connected with her on a special level.

We were just talking about the strength of character of people dealing with illness – not the caretaker, the person with the illness – and I felt a bond with her.  Then I was embarrassed because I started crying a little.  I said I didn't mean to cry, and she said, "Don't worry, I'm usually the one crying!"

allDay: Of all the things she talked about – and she talked about a lot! -- what are you most excited to share with the TODAY audience?

Meredith: I think they're going to be most excited to know why she killed off who she didn't, and the choices she made throughout the series. 

For more coverage of Meredith's interview with J.K. Rowling, click here.

When J.K. Rowling sat down with NBC's Meredith Vieira, the two discussed Rowling's life pre-Potter, how the Harry Potter franchise changed her life, and the decision process in killing off a character. Ever wonder what Rowling would re-write and what "almost" happened in prior Harry Potter books? Read excerpts from the interview below and tune in to NBC Sunday for a one-hour special.

In her only television interview after the highly anticipated release of the seventh and final installment in the Harry Potter series, author J.K. Rowling sat down with NBC's Meredith Vieira in Edinburgh, Scotland.

During the interview, Vieira asked the author about what she's left out of past books and what the future holds for Harry Potter.

VIEIRA: Were there other things that you left out that-- you wish you could have put in?

ROWLING: There have been all through the books, not just in this book. I've said before that-- Dean Thomas had a much more interesting history than ever appeared in the books for me. And you-- you just see glimpses of it. But to write it really would take us into prequel territory. And that does take us into Star Wars territory. And that's not really a place I'm-- I'm planning to go. But-- yeah, so there's always been bits that I knew about characters that didn't make final cuts because they weren't that relevant. And I've said-- on my website I think I said that in a way I had to sacrifice Dean's back story for Neville's back story because, ultimately, Neville's back story was more central to the-- to the climax of the books as I knew it would be.

VIEIRA: We've also had a lot of e-mails-- from people that-- who have read the book now and have questions so I wanna go through some of them, set the record straight. Okay. Number one, 19 years later, who's the headmaster of Hogwarts?

ROWLING: Well, it would be someone new. McGonagall was really getting on a bit. So someone completely new. But if I ever do the encyclopedia, I'm promising I will give details.

VIEIRA: You're gonna do that, aren't you?

ROWLING: I think I probably will. But I'm not going to do it tomorrow. (LAUGHTER) 'Cause I'd really like a break. So you may be waiting--

VIEIRA: You mean you haven't started that yet? (LAUGHTER)

ROWLING: Well, in a way I suppose I have because the-- the raw material is all in-- in-- in my notes. But-- I wanna take a break from publishing for a little while. It would be a-- you know, I've still got a young family.

VIEIRA: Do you-- do Ron and Hermione or Harry ever return to Hogwarts in any capacity?

ROWLING: Well, I can well imagine Harry returning to give the odd talk on-- on defense against the dark arts. And-- I-- and, of course, the jinx is broken now because Voldemort's gone. Now they can keep a good Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher from here on in. So that aspect of the-- of the wizarding education is now provided for.

Get the full story of the interview here, and tune in to NBC to see the full interview, which airs on  "Today," Wednesday, July 25, Thursday, July 26 and Friday, July 27 and during a one-hour special of "Dateline," Sunday, July 29.

Wild about Harry? For more Harry Potter mania:

7 signs you're infected with Harry Potter fever
Photos: Fans flock to Harry's 'hometown'
For true Potter fans, no other place to be
First Person: Potter-mania at the book release

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.

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.