Murder & Magnolias - Ep. 4: "Bluegrass Needs Another Benjamin"

0:02Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. It starts with our approach. Every Mazda comes standard with proactive safety features. So you're more aware of what's around you, more focused on the road ahead, and ready before problems ever start. Mazda. More of what matters most to you. Go to MazdaUSA.com to learn more. Consumer Reports does not endorse or promote any product. When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, You keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high-quality motors, sensors, belts, and hard-to-find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place, so nothing gets in the way of getting the job done.

0:51Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

1:02Sometimes, in moments of crisis, it's instructive to look back in time, to think anew about the old family stories we once found so amusing. Like the night of the shrine dance in Conway, South Carolina, way back in 1988. Family stories have a way of fusing fact and fiction together after a few dozen tellings, and this is one of those. It was getting late, the story goes, and Chris was getting antsy. He'd wanted to speak with Nancy's father, but he knew the timing needed to be right. When he finally saw his chance, Chris asked O 'Neill Cannon to step outside. And he said, Mr. Cannon, I would like to propose to your daughter and I want to ask for her hand in marriage.

1:52And my dad said, well, son, I got something to tell you first. What followed was a long story about Nancy and a squabble she'd once had with her brother Neil when they were kids. Something about a backyard baseball game. Anyway, this is how Nancy tells it. He said when Nancy was a little girl, she and her brother were playing ball in the backyard. So whoever was catching was calling the strikes or balls. And Nancy happened to be catching. and when she called her brother out on a strike, he got so mad, he took the aluminum baseball bat in his hand and slammed it down on her hand that was on the ground as she was catching.

2:33And he said, oh, Nancy screamed. What Chris was thinking as he listened to Nancy's father way back then, we cannot know. But listen, he did, polite as any supplicant would be, as the story went on and on, until O 'Neill Cannon said this. In the middle of the night, I hear Neil screaming at the top of his lungs. And I run to his bedroom, and I see Nancy was standing on top of the bed straddling Neil. And she had an aluminum baseball bat, and she was swinging it like Paul Bunyan chopping wood. He said, I grabbed her and pulled her off of him, and she still threw the bat at his head. According to family lore, Chris stood there slack-jawed as Nancy's father got to the point.

3:24And he said, well, son, I'm going to let you marry her, but I am going to tell you, if you ever hit her, don't go to sleep. And that was the prequel to our marriage. Rather appropriate, don't you think? I definitely think. In this episode, you'll hear from the man now on the receiving end of Nancy's metaphorical bat, Chris Latham. Nancy tried to break into my home. You'll hear two lovebirds, alleged conspirators, cooing on a recorded line. I think of you every second, honey. I think of you every second. I dream of you every time I close the eyes. And you'll hear how one of the plotters suddenly died behind bars, taking crucial secrets to the grave.

4:11He's so volatile in knowing that he was probably going to spend a good portion of the rest of his life in prison. I think it just pushed him over the edge. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is episode four of Murder and Magnolias, a podcast from Dateline.

4:38Every day they queued up beside the telephones, Women all dressed in the same baggy prison scrubs, unflattering gray and white horizontal stripes. An observer in the women's section of the Al Cannon Detention Center in Charleston would have noticed a tall blonde standing by the phones. She was almost always there, either on the phone or waiting for one. Hello, who's calling from? Where's your call? An inmate at? Though her collect calls to the outside were limited to 15 minutes, Wendy made dozens of them. Anyone standing with an earshot would have known she was speaking to a lover who was on the outside.

5:26Can't wait to ravish you when I get here. I can't really do that. Oh, yes, the intensity of young love. But, truth be told, Wendy and her banker boyfriend were decidedly middle-aged. You and me together? Yes, just you, me, and Jesus. Yes, honey. Absolutely. Yes. Well, it wasn't just you and me and Jesus. As the agents heard again and again, it may have sounded like a summer of frustrated love, said Joe Boykin. But it wasn't just that. Oh, no. Plans were afoot. Many of them were their affection for one another and graphic detail. But also... Phone sings. Kind of. In essence, yes. Yes. But the other part was, I would use the word there, conniving and scheming with one another.

6:26Translation? A lawyer in Kentucky needed another$50 ,000 to defend Sammy Yenawine. That's right. It seemed Chris Latham was somehow covering the legal costs of the man who plotted to kill his wife. Hello. What up? Ah. I'm going to get started. We'll figure that out. Wendy and Chris basically collaborated to get Wendy's two parents to foot the bill for Sammy Yenawine's lawyer. And why would they do that? So Sammy wouldn't roll. As far as the agents could tell, Chris Latham was doing all he could in those phone calls to keep Wendy close. After all, she was the one in jail for allegedly plotting to have Chris's wife killed.

7:16And, the agents were sure, she knew things Chris would not want revealed.

7:31Are you sorry? I am. Of course, Nancy knew nothing about those calls. But what she did know was in the weeks after the foiled murder plot became front page news, her husband had not lifted a finger to contact his own daughters. Not a word of shock or dismay or a pledge of innocence. Nothing. Not a peep. Not a text. Not an email. Nothing. Not a friend reaching out to the girls, not a friend of his, not a relative of his. Nobody to say, are you okay? Are you safe? I can't believe this is happening. I want to make sure you're safe. Not one single person reached out to my children from Team Chris.

8:21During those long months, Nancy had plenty of time to think about the arc of their love affair. What had happened to the young man she fell in love with at first sight? I just really felt like, gosh, this guy's going to be a great daddy. And what had happened to her? Their divorce, it seemed, had brought out the worst in both of them. Even Nancy's divorce attorney could see that. He said, you are letting this divorce change you. You are letting Chris and his attorney turn you into a mean-spirited person. He said, you need to get back to who you are because you can't let somebody else change you.

9:01Nancy knew it was true, but in those bitter months before the hit packet surfaced, Nancy just hadn't been able to stop. She couldn't stop collecting evidence of her husband's affair, couldn't stop throwing zingers his way at depositions, couldn't pass up an opportunity to shame him. I was becoming maniacal, like an evil villain who's so excited that, you know, I put the laser beams on the shark's head. I mean, I was Dr. Evil. I was so excited that I was hurting him, and it was just making me so happy. Things got so bad at one point, Chris sent a memo with her photo to the bank security officers, instructing them to evict her if she entered bank property for a non-banking purpose.

9:49Or if she started making a scene, which she did frequently. So I went to my local Bank of America to cash a check or do something at the teller window, which was always when I would try to find that opportunity to get a dig in. Like, oh, my husband Chris Latham works here. Have you slept with him? And during one of those days at the bank, she bumped into a woman she knew sitting in the lobby. The woman's name was Coco. And she said, your husband works here, right? And I said, yes, he does. And he slept with so many people here. That's why we're getting a divorce. And she said, like, wait, why are you getting a divorce?

10:36Because you're so nice. And I said, because my husband has been having sex with so many people who work at the bank. And she said, at this bank? I said, all the banks, all the Bank of Americas. He's just throwing it out like mints at a Christmas parade. And Coco was like, oh my God, tell me more. So of course my voice is now escalating and I'm talking very loudly. And I said, oh, by the way, one of the women he's sleeping with just happens to be married to one of the guys who works right here in this branch. That was the kind of nonsense that I was doing just to make his life difficult for fun.

11:21All that was before she learned about the plan to have her killed. Before she and her girls went into hiding. Before anybody was arrested. Just Nancy making Chris's life difficult. There was another night when she drove by Chris's beach house and noticed Wendy's Durango parked in the drive. Nancy decided to take a quick picture as further documentation for her divorce case. So I'm at the edge of the road at Sullivan's Island, and I'm taking a picture of her car in the driveway. And when I hit the button, I guess the flash on this disposable camera had gone off, because all of a sudden it was, you know, that loud kind of pew, that pop of flash.

12:07And I thought, oh, crap. So as I'm walking around the car to get back in the driver's side, I see Chris come out the house with his boxers on, no shirt. And he's carrying a flashlight, of all things. And he's following me like he's making a beeline for the car. And I thought, I'm not going to drive away. I'm going to seize this opportunity to just get one more dig in. So I rolled down the window, the tiniest crack, and I said, don't mind me just taking pictures. Because I thought that is going to irritate him more than anything else, right? That kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah, taking pictures. And I drive off and I'm just kind of giggling to myself at my awesomeness.

12:54That's the way it is sometimes with ugly divorces. Competent, mature adults regress. Let loose their inner 10-year-old. The giggling didn't last long. The very next day, Nancy learned that Chris had filed a trespassing complaint against her with the Sullivan's Island police. The summons said he was seeking a protection order from Nancy. So next thing you know, there's a police officer at my door and he's like, I have a warrant for you. You have to be in court for X day. Not so funny now. Nancy didn't like the direction her little photo escapade had taken. A possible trespassing rap? Wouldn't look so good for her in divorce court.

13:38So I called my sister-in-law, Kelly, who's an attorney, and I just said, girl, you got to help me. And she said, okay, I'll have a conversation. She calls the courthouse. She talks to the clerk of court. They're like, yeah, we get it. Divorce, people are crazy. Sure, let's wait until they're divorced, and then we'll hash this out. Chris Latham, of course, was not at all ready to let it slide. He had juice in the Charleston area. In time, the clerk of the court on Sullivan's Island was feeling the heat to get Nancy's trespassing case on the docket. Months had passed, and every day Chris Latham was calling saying, I don't understand why haven't we had our day in court.

14:21I don't understand why she isn't arrested. He was calling in favors. He was calling everybody who knew the judge. He knew all the movers and shakers and was one himself. So if anybody could pull strings to make this happen, it was him. In the end, an initial hearing of Nancy's case was put on the court calendar just six days before their divorce case was scheduled to begin. Nancy hired a lawyer and showed up on time for the late afternoon hearing. So Sullivan's Island was renovating their courthouse. So they had a little trailer off at the side is where they were holding court. And when you walk into the trailer, you are in the courthouse.

15:01Like, you see the judge sitting at a table up front. There are a ton of chairs. My soon-to-be ex-husband sitting on a row. So we go and sit right behind him just for fun. Because that's, you know, any time I can get, like, a little bit of irritation in there. As Nancy and her lawyer, a man named Rutledge, waited, they made small talk weekend plans. Nancy remembers telling him she might go to her dad's place. As they talked, Nancy noticed her husband sitting right in front of her, furiously tap, tap, tapping on his phone. But she didn't notice, as court was called to order, Chris used his phone to snap photos of her.

15:48Well, the judge said, you know, who would like a jury trial? Rutledge grabs my arm, stands me up. We do, sir. And the judge said, okay, you're going to have a jury trial. come back X day. Rutledge is like, yes, sir. Thank you so much. So once we say we want a jury trial, Chris Latham jumps up. You can see he's so irritated. And he starts walking to the door as fast as he can. And I was like, well, there you go. I guess I won. I've irritated the bejesus out of him. As she and her lawyer headed out, said Nancy, they noticed that Chris was standing by the door, still tap tapping on his phone. And as we walk up, he said, here, let me get that?

16:26And he pushes the door open for us. We walk out. And as we're walking down, Rutledge said, well, that was miney considerate. And I kind of looked back and there's Chris watching us walk away. What was Chris Latham looking at? Who had he been texting or emailing? Nancy had no idea at the time. Only later, when she saw the hit packet splayed across Kathy Harrell's kitchen table, did she notice that the date and time of that court hearing was scribbled on the pages? So was her father's home address. Had Chris Latham somehow been communicating with the hit team that day? Hard to say, but if he was, he was out of luck.

17:14The hit man, Sammy had returned to Louisville. Is that why Nancy survived?

17:30Insurance is not one size fits all. That's why drivers have trusted Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years. Just tell Progressive what you want to pay, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Visit Progressive.com to find a car insurance rate that works for you. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. He wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs.

18:12What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N-A, member FDIC. This episode is brought to you by Penn Foster. Sometimes things don't go as planned, especially with high school. When you start to feel like you're falling behind, having another option can make a real difference. Penn Foster High School is an accredited online diploma program built for flexibility. So whether you're hoping to go back and finish what you started, or you're the parent of a teen who needs a different approach to education, there is a way forward. With self-paced courses, you have the freedom to learn on your own schedule.

18:57That way you can fit school around everything else going on in your life and stop falling behind. Don't just get back on track. start moving forward with Penn Foster. Visit pennfoster.edu slash dateline to learn more.

19:19It was another restless night for Nancy Latham. She'd had so many since the plot on her life was uncovered, tossing and turning. The clock radio's red numerals seemed to mock her as she counted down the hours till daylight. She flipped the pillow to the cool side and tried to drift off. But no, her mind kept churning, recycling the same old thoughts. She still couldn't fathom it. Her husband had actually wanted her dead. Did he still? Had he hired someone else? Someone who might be out there beyond the window, watching, waiting for a clean shot? Chris had so much money that that was our thought during that time frame.

20:04Wendy's already arrested. Sammy's arrested. Aaron's arrested. What kind of evidence are they going to turn over? And so does he feel like, I don't have anything else to lose if they arrest me? Should I go ahead and line something up now? And I think that was the fear. Oh, there was plenty of fear. Remember Sammy Yenawine, the original assassin contracted to kill Nancy? Well, two months after being brought to South Carolina to stand trial, he was found hanging in his jail cell. Had Sammy lived, he might have named names, might have cinched the case for prosecutors, but no, he'd taken those secrets to the grave.

20:45Though some did wonder if Sammy's death had really been a suicide. Sammy's wingman, Aaron Wilkinson, said he never doubted it. I knew that he killed himself. He's just, he's so volatile, I think, with the knowledge. He was probably going to spend a good portion of the rest of his life in prison. I think it just pushed him over the edge. Through all of this, Chris Latham remained a free man. The agents had collected plenty of circumstantial evidence implicating him, but prosecutors were reluctant to greenlight an arrest. I felt like we really needed to make sure that we had all the evidence before we went in.

21:28That's the voice of Bill Nettles, the U.S. attorney for South Carolina at the time. It was his office that would have to prosecute the case. I was a criminal defense lawyer before I took this job, and I knew that if we were to charge him and the forensic evidence wasn't back, that that would make a cross-examination about us rushing to judgment. Nope. The U.S. attorney wanted to take his time, cross the T's. Dothed the eyes and so on. It was a gamble, of course. Chris Latham could flee. But Bill Nettles didn't think he would. I wasn't that worried about that because, you know, he really thought he was smarter than everybody else.

22:07When you've got a murder for hire, a part of the killing is how you're going to get away with it. That's part of the plan. And believing you can get away with it. And believing, because if you didn't believe you could get away with it, you wouldn't do it. Waiting, however, did carry a cost. ATF agents Boykin and Callahan wanted to compare the computer printouts from the hit package with the printers that Chris Latham and Wendy Moore had in their offices. But by the time they got a search warrant, those printers were gone. We interviewed numerous co-workers of Chris Latham and Wendy Moore who said without a doubt that they did in fact have printers located in their respective offices.

22:47ATF agent Bobby Callahan said they searched everywhere for those missing printers. Even that rented house on Sullivan's Island. And we conducted a search warrant on their offices, at the residence that they shared in common, and we did not recover those printers. Hmm. In the whole Bank of America building, two printers? Chris and Wendy's printers had gone missing, and only those? Well, let's just say also in our investigation, we didn't undercover a rash of printer theft at U.S. Trust. That's Agent Joe Boykin. Just a couple of missing ones. Just two particular ones. And Wendy Moore's laptop? Never recovered.

23:29They did find the printer logs, though, and in there was gold. Buried deep in the computer data gibberish on the bank's central server as something akin to a smoking gun. I don't know that Chris Latham was the most computer-savvy person in the world, and I don't know if he realized what was on those items. Printer logs showing him from his computer and printer printing out maps of Nancy Latham's residents that were in the hit package, as well as the photograph that we recovered from Chris Latham's phone of Nancy Latham's residents and her vehicle, which was also located in the hit package. Well, it was early August, four months after the murder plot was revealed, that a grand jury returned a criminal indictment against Chris Latham.

24:18And that afternoon, Agent Boykin called Nancy. He was on the road, he told her, and he needed a favor. If Chris wasn't in town, he asked, where might he be? And she told me that they had regularly vacationed up on Lake Jocassi and stayed in lake houses up there. I said, I tell you what, give me a few minutes, let me see what I can find out. Nancy patted downstairs to the den, where Madison was noodling away on her computer. Pull up your Facebook page, she said. Look at the children of your father's best friends. She did. And she said, what am I looking for? And I said, anything about a vacation.

25:00Well, one of the girls, one of the daughters happened to post on Facebook, we are at Lake Jocassi in a house built for 14 people. There are 21 of us. How are we going to make this work? Okay, good information. Thank you very much. And in that post, she had tagged Wendy Moore's children and his other friend's children. Nancy had a hunch. If all those kids were together in the same lake house, the odds were good that Chris Latham was there, too. A quick Google search turned up a list of rental properties on Lake Jocassi, a sprawling 7 ,000-acre lake near the North Carolina line. And only one rental claimed it could sleep 14 people.

25:46I called the owners of the house. And I said, I see that you have a house for rent on the lake. Is there any way that I can go look at it right now? And they said, no, I'm so sorry, it's occupied. I said, okay. Was there any way you could give me the address for the house so I can Google map it and see where it lays out on the lake? They said, absolutely. Happy to give it to you. With address in hand, Nancy called the agents back. And I said, here's the address. And they said, how sure are you? I said, I will not bet my children's life on it, but I'll happily bet mine. I said, I'm like 99.9%. They said, okay, we'll talk to you later.

26:22The agents were 150 miles from that big house on Lake Jocassi. That was a very long day. By the time the agents got to the lake, teams of local law enforcement had been assembled at a nearby staging area. Hoping to preserve the element of surprise, the agents Boykin and Callahan crept up on the house, sometimes crawling through the woods and underbrush to get a closer look. We didn't want to just walk up and he'd not be there and tip our hand. Hanging out on the porch, the agents could see a half dozen teens standing around drinking beer. Out on the drive, they spotted Chris's big Ford excursion.

27:03Yes, he was there. So once we were able to verify he was inside the house, We went down and encountered a young man outside in the yard and told him who we were and why we were there and followed him into the residence. The house was built on the side of a hill that sloped down to the lake. Upscale rustic, you could call it. When the agents entered, they found themselves on the second floor of a large indoor space. As Agent Boykin looked over the railing down to the lodge-like living room below, He saw Chris Latham in shorts and a t-shirt standing before a stone fireplace. Chris Latham looked right up at me, and all he could say was, you gotta be kidding.