A Killing In Paradise

0:00Music

0:10Edgar Allan Poe said, there's nothing more romantic than the death of a beautiful young woman. I ain't going to quarrel with him. Music Music Music Music My name is Phil Weiss, and I've visited Tonga ten times because I've investigated a murder that happened here.

0:36Tonga is a tiny country. It's Polynesian.

0:45I first heard this story as a legend, a beautiful girl who dies because she's been in some kind of love triangle in the South Pacific.

0:58It would have been around 9.45 that night. Deb had put on her white nightdress. She was preparing to go to sleep. And he pulled out his knife and just went preserved, stabbing her many times. It's just out of a horror movie. Deb was fighting for her life in that little house and screaming her heart out.

1:21What happens when a guy gets away with it and no one knows about it? What are the consequences of that? Well, you know, the consequences are it eats at people. And it just tears away. And it doesn't matter if it's two years or eight years, or as it is in this case, 28 years.

1:42This is a story that needs to be told. Lost in Paradise.

2:07The isolated South Pacific Island nation of Tonga is a kingdom unto itself, roughly 6 ,000 miles from the California coast, 2 ,000 miles from Australia. A sleepy, generally peaceful place with a unique culture. I'm Susan Spencer here in Tonga, which prides itself on being the only South Pacific Island group never colonized by a Western power. There are a lot of Western influences here though, chief among them the Peace Corps, which has operated in Tonga for decades. In late 1975, a young Peace Corps volunteer named Deb Gardner came to work here, and so begins a story of adventure and love and ultimately of murder.

2:59I guess I don't, at some level, I don't believe she's gone. To me, it's like this person is still, it just happened. Writer Phil Weiss first heard rumors of the murder in the late 70s while backpacking in Samoa. It haunted him until finally in 2001, he began researching a book about it, American Taboo. It became everything to me. And I decided that I was going to drop everything and that I had to find out what happened to Debbie Gardner. At some point, I went through the looking glass on this thing. He quickly discovered that he wasn't the first man to have had that reaction to Deb Gardner. Were you in love with her?

3:42I suppose I was beginning to be. Fellow Peace Corps worker Emil Hans remembers the very moment in December of 1975 when he first laid eyes on her at a welcoming ceremony for her group of new volunteers. Just beautiful. I mean, when she smiled, you had to smile. You didn't necessarily know why she smiled, but you were forced to smile. You were hoping it was something you had done. You always hope. What was your first impression of her? Wow. Frank Bavacqua, another Peace Corps worker, dated Deb for a time as well. Oh yeah, these are girlfriend-boyfriend pictures. I shot a whole roll that day. She just loved it.

4:23There's just something about her that wanted you to be around her. She could just make you feel like the world was a better place to be in because of her. Just about every guy in the Peace Corps wanted to go out with her. And a lot did, right? A few did, but I think that she had to turn a lot more away. And it was the 1970s, too, and there was a lot of sexual pressure on the young women. Earthy, outgoing, friendly, yes. But Weiss says that Deb, a science major at Washington State University, had a serious side as well. This road wasn't here, it was just a dirt track. To get closer to the culture, she chose to live in a Tongan neighborhood, outside of town.

5:06in a simple one-room house. That's her house right there. It's been added on to. But you can see the original contour of the roof line there back under the tree. It's not exactly the Washington State University sorority house, is it? No, it's not. She enjoyed the village life. She had a good relationship with the Tongan families across the way. She liked decorating her house with top of cloth and woven mats from the market. And she loved her Peace Corps job, teaching science at Tonga High School. Good teacher? Very good teacher. Tela Hivafine taught with Deb. You know, your fellow teachers sometimes are very close to you, like sisters, sort of.

5:50You know, and I think seeing that she accepted us, we accepted her, she was just one of us. A sister? Yes, yes. But after roughly six months on Tonga, Deb Gardner was beginning to have problems. Chief among them, another Peace Corps volunteer, a 24-year-old Brooklynite named Dennis Privin. Dennis was very shy, very intelligent, but a lot of people found Dennis to be weird, introverted, bizarre. Well, he was really intense. Barbara Wilson went through Peace Corps training with Dennis. He was a combination of kind of New York aggressive and quite shy. And he had one trademark quirk, a six-inch diving knife, usually strapped to his belt.

6:38I don't know if that was training from New York or what, but almost all the time he had that on him. You know, it was just Dennis' knife. He sometimes offended people, not from any desire to offend people, but because he really didn't care what they thought. But it soon was clear he cared a great deal what Deb Gardner thought. We all knew he had a crush on her. He so wanted to impress her that at one point he surprised her with an intimate and unwanted candlelight dinner. Eventually, Dennis made a clean breast of all his deep feelings for her. Feelings which she did not reciprocate. She ended up leaving there in a hurry.

7:24She was upset. She was very upset. She was sad. I wish he wouldn't do that. He just doesn't seem to understand that nothing's gonna happen. But Dennis Priven just wouldn't take a hint. He started hanging around the Peace Corps office at about the time that Dev Gardner picked up her mail. He would follow her occasionally and even show up uninvited at Tonga High School where she worked. She actually asked me if Dennis would come around asking for her to tell her that she's gone somewhere else. She's not at school. Do you think she was afraid of him? Yeah, I think I can say that she was. Back in 1976, people weren't really talking about stalking.

8:10Is that too strong a word to use when you think back? at this situation? Not now, no. It was definitely stalking. Friends had begun to notice changes in Dennis. Early the second year, he had a pretty serious time of depression. And some, including Emil Hans, were concerned enough to alert the Peace Corps director of Tonga. I went and talked to her about it, but I thought he might be losing it a little bit. But the director of the office, a 46-year-old ex-model and political appointee named Mary George, did nothing. No surprise to those who knew her. I mean, she was a perfectly well-intentioned woman who was perfectly ill-suited to be the director of the Peace Corps program in Tonga.

8:53Former volunteer Rick Nathanson says Mary George had no feel at all for her job. She walked around Tonga in high heels, frilly dresses, matching outfits, scarves around her head. She always looked like she was going to high T. How did she get along with Deb Gardner? No, they didn't get along at all. You almost felt there was a sense of jealousy. She felt that Deb was too sexual, made a spectacle of herself. Their friends say Deb Gardner wanted a transfer off the main island, partly to get away from Dennis. And Dennis wanted another year in Tonga, partly to be near Deb. Whatever her understanding of the situation, Mary George said no to both.

9:36There was tension between Mary George and Deb Gardner. Mary George and Dennis did not get on at all. It was in this tense and angry environment that the Peace Corps threw what became a wild party for new volunteers. Deb Gardner, among others, got very drunk. One volunteer shot film at the dance. Deb Gardner, in a new white dress, flits by. The beers were very strong there, so we were having a good time. We started dancing and she slipped and fell. I picked her up, we kind of laughed about it. Maybe the second dance she slipped again. I understand Mary George was not too happy with what she saw.

10:17At that point I suggest that we go outside, get a little air. About 10 o 'clock, Deb left the party with Emil. We walked the bikes home and I don't know for a fact, but I think Dennis followed us home. I don't know if that was a turning point, but he was pretty angry about it. Angry because? I was with her, I guess. And he wasn't.

10:51When life gets busy, even something as routine as grocery shopping can start to feel like a big lift. That's where Instacart comes in. With delivery via Instacart, it's easy to shop from thousands of stores and get exactly what's needed, whether it's fresh ingredients for the week, household essentials, or specific brands that matter. The app makes it simple to search, filter, and build a cart with intention, so nothing gets overlooked. And when quality matters, there's confidence in knowing items are selected with care. It's easy to communicate preferences, make substitutions, and stay in control of every order.

11:26On top of that, the convenience is hard to beat. Groceries can arrive in as fast as 30 minutes, making it easier to stay on schedule and keep everything running smoothly. And if you're like me, someone who's often traveling for work and juggling family schedules at home, this level of efficiency could be music to your ears. Instacart brings convenience, quality, and ease right to your door so you can focus on what matters most. Download the Instacart app now and get groceries just how you like it.

12:14Dennis wanted a relationship with Debbie Gardner that he couldn't have, and he was angry and he was jealous. The days following the Peace Corps party saw Dennis Priven slowly unravel. Even Peace Corps director Mary George noticed. People in the outer office certainly heard them screaming at each other, and even heard a thud as of a desk being pushed, or maybe Mary being pushed, by Dennis. And Dennis came running out of the office, red in the face, bolted out of here, and jumped on his bicycle and got out of here. Dennis had been turned down for a third year by Mary George. He felt that Emil, his good friend, had taken advantage of Deb, and Deb had continued to turn him down.

13:05He snapped. October 14th, fellow teacher Barbara Wilson remembers seeing Dennis at school. And he came out of class, and he just looked pale and looking away and just gone. That evening, Frank Bavacqua remembers being outside the town movie theater when Dennis rode up on his bicycle. And I remember walking back into the theater saying, well, I just had one of the weirdest conversations with Priven I ever had. And it was something spiritual. It just gave me the creeps. And off he went. By 9 o 'clock that night, the devil's on his bicycle and finds his way to Ngeleia, which which is Deb's little village at the outside of town.

13:54Dennis was armed with a metal pipe, a syringe, two bottles of cyanide, and his six-inch diving knife, this knife.

14:09It would have been around 9.45 that night. Deb had put on her white night dress. She was preparing to go to sleep. And Dennis appeared.

14:22He went berserk. He hit her with a metal pipe and then just started stabbing her. The first wound is to her side and it cuts through a rib, it cuts the aorta and nicks the kidney. Deb Gardner fought for her life. Her white nightgown was drenched with blood. He stabbed her 22 times and began to drag her to the door, at which point her screams had called the neighbors from the bush. I heard a scream. I know there's something happening there. Toa Pasa, just 16 at the time, came running from his house across the road. I was very scared. I was thinking, you know, myself, there's someone there inside trying to rape.

15:16Suddenly the door opened. and Dennis appeared in Deb's front door, dragging her into the doorway. Toa recognized Dennis as a friend of Emil Hans, Deb's next-door neighbor. You could see him very well. Yeah, it was full moon. When Dennis realized that he was being seen, he dropped Deb face down in her doorway and bicycled off through the rugby field and into the night. Left behind was this knife as well as a flip-flop, a pipe, syringe, and cyanide. What he had planned was to kill Deb and then to kill himself with the cyanide. Weiss thinks Dennis' plan was derailed when he saw Toa, who cried out for help.

16:05Among those who came running was a Peace Corps driver. He said, Debbie, who did this to you, Emilie, Emil? And she said, no, Dennis. She was lying on the doorway. Toa's brother Alecki was there as well. She said to me, please take me to the hospital. Their father cleared the yams out of his truck and lifted Deb into the back. The brothers, their father, and several neighbors took off for the hospital as fast as their rickety pickup truck would go. Alecki says he tried to cradle Deb Gardner's head in his arms as they bumped along.

17:09trying to get her life back.

17:14At the emergency room, doctors did their best. She was perforated all through her body. She was a mess. But they couldn't save her. An emergency room doctor told me, studying the autopsies, if this had happened outside the Mayo Clinic, they couldn't have saved her. She had a half-inch cut to the renal aorta. So she was going to die wherever she was. Emil Hans raced to Deb's house the minute he heard Dennis had hurt her. I came to the door. It was open about two inches. The light was on. I pushed the door open and there was blood everywhere.

17:52It just shocked my soul. Then I saw Dennis's backpack, his knife, his flip-flop, his glasses, all in the blood. There was a handprint down the wall. It was blood. And I just stared. The initial reaction of Peace Corps when they heard that Deb Gardner's body had turned up at the hospital was basically, we've got to find Dennis. Peace Corps volunteers, neighbors, strangers, the police, everyone was out searching that night, scouring the island. The fear was that having killed Deb Gardner, Dennis Pryvon next would kill himself. Dennis went home. He grabbed a jar of Darvon. The cyanide was a little too scary for him at this point.

18:41So he tried to overdose on the painkiller, but... By midnight, three hours later, he bicycles to a friend's house and says we have to go to the police. In the early morning hours of October 15th, Dennis Priven turned himself in and was promptly charged with murder. We're approaching a moment where there is going to be the biggest crisis in the history of Peace Corps.

19:22Tonga's mysterious network of whispers and rumors, the Coconut Wireless, was on fire with the news the night Deb Gardner died. Police had Dennis Priven in custody. Emil Hans confronted him at the jail.

19:45I only had one question. I said, Dennis, why? He said, this just proves I'm insane.

19:57Did that make sense to you? What he did, he had to be insane.

20:05Apart from the obvious tragedy of Deb Gardner's death, for the Peace Corps, this situation was a nightmare. In Tonga, murderers hang. And what possibly could be more scandalous than for one volunteer to be hanged for the murder of another? Mary was hoping against hope that Dennis hadn't done it. In fact, in her first telex to Washington that very night, after Dennis was in custody, she implies that Deb's Tonga neighbors might be involved. Never was that a valid assumption on anyone's part. Mike Basil was Mary's second in command. There was never any doubt that that was the person. Circumstances are being investigated as if this were a mystery.

20:58It wasn't a mystery.

21:02Even after everyone knew it was Dennis, already that effort by the Peace Corps to put the blame somewhere else and to make the thing go away, that impulse has seized Peace Corps within, you know, moments of Deb's death.

21:20Later that day, a Peace Corps official from Washington contacted Deb Gardner's mother, Alice. Call me at work. She remembers standing at the cash register when a friend handed her the phone.

21:40I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Alice. It was a lousy way because there you were. They just said that there had been a confrontation. They said there had been a confrontation? Yeah. Deb Gardner's parents were divorced. Her father, Wayne, got the news while hunting in Alaska. He said he had bad news for me. He told me my daughter was dead. They didn't know how she died or what. And what did you think might have happened? I wasn't thinking much of anything. I was in shock. The parents learned some of the specifics over the next few days. They learned that Deb was stabbed many times. They learned that a chemistry teacher did it.