Murder & Magnolias - Ep. 5: Deal or No Deal?

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0:43Visit 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. It was midnight when the bells of St. Michael's Church began pealing long and loud. ringing in 2014. And all across the city of Charleston, glasses clinked and revelers smooched, everybody wishing one another a grand and glorious new year, full of hope and promise. Of course, seasonal cheer was in short supply over at the Elcannon Detention Center. It was lights out at the county jail. Where Aaron Wilkinson stared into the darkness above him and listened to the guttural sounds of the sleeping men around him and thought about the trial to come that might keep him behind bars for a long, long time.

1:41I guess I was kind of angry at God for me just feeling sorry for myself. In the weeks after his arrest, Aaron had clammed up. Instead of being rewarded for exposing a murder plot, federal prosecutors made it clear They wanted Aaron to get serious prison time for his role in the plot. He was going to go to trial with everybody else. If he wasn't looking at a gun found in his car, he wouldn't have said anything. Comments like that upset Aaron no end. So now the way Aaron saw it, no immunity, no testimony. He'd recant, he told them. He'd say his earlier statements to detectives had been made while he was under the influence of heroin.

2:28If he revealed everything and still got a long sentence on the gun charge, just no, thought Aaron. He'd take his chances in front of a jury, thank you very much. What must Chris Latham and Wendy Moore have been thinking? Lying in their separate wings of the big county jail. Sloughing around on thin strips of foam over cold concrete benches. If not for Aaron Wilkinson, they'd be snug in their big beach house. comfy on a fine, thick mattress beneath 500-count linen sheets, drifting off to the rhythmic pounding of the distant surf. But no, here they were, a banker and his executive assistant, jailed by common criminals.

3:17Their reputations ruined their future in doubt. In six weeks, they'd go on trial for plotting murder. Happy New Year? Oh no, hardly. In this episode, you'll hear from the former executive assistant, accused of being the plot's mastermind. It hurts my feelings sometimes, but if you know me, then you usually love me. You'll hear from prosecutors convinced the banker was behind it. I think he felt like the laws that apply to people like Sam Yenowine and Aaron Wilkinson don't apply to, you know, rich bankers. You'll hear some argue that blame belonged to a dead man. If there was some sort of criminal plot against Nancy Latham, it had to start and stop with Sam Yenowine.

4:12And you'll hear about the heart-stopping moment. Because what happens in court isn't always what you might expect. I remember Chris kind of got this look on his face like, yeah, we're getting off. What was going on here in your head? In my head, I thought, oh my gosh, this is not good. This is not good. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Episode 5 of Murder and Magnolias, a podcast from Dateline.

4:50The Elk Cannon Detention Center is not much to look at. It's a big, boxy, modern-looking thing with concrete slab walls and all the utilitarian grace of a Soviet-era apartment block. But then, people don't go there for the architecture. I went there to see Wendy Moore. The woman investigators claimed was at the center of a plot to kill the wife of her former lover, Chris Latham. While waiting for the guards to check us in and inspect our equipment, I reviewed what I knew about Wendy Moore, which in a nutshell was this. Wendy, former wife of a killer, had gone on to capture the heart of a banker.

5:36She was a mother, just like the woman she was accused of plotting to kill. So many contradictions. And yet there was one thing about the woman guards brought to meet us that was consistent with everything I'd heard. At 38, Wendy Moore looked like a cover girl. Long, blonde hair, big blue eyes A toothpaste commercial smile Wearing a worn denim shirt and a sweater over her jail scrubs She looked just like a soccer mom who'd popped into a Starbucks But no, there was more to Wendy Moore than that She was only happy to tell me I've had a long, hard life I say I lived 80 years in my 38 So it's been a long, long road The road for Wendy Moore began in the Midwest, its tortured backstory familiar to all too many in this country.

6:31Teenage pregnancy, early marriage, early divorce, sexual abuse. As a kid, said Wendy, she was constantly being shuffled from one relative to the next, back and forth across state lines, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky. You're hopping around from town to town, school to school. different people all the time. There's no stability whatsoever. Well, the only constant is God. He's the only one that never leaves. You tend to hear a lot of that sort of talk during jailhouse interviews. But Wendy was, said she was, rather a special case. Her relationship with the Almighty, she told me, was longstanding. I always joke and say a lot of kids had imaginary friends and I had Jesus.

7:18You know, like they'd play with their imaginary friends and I would talk to Jesus or play, you know. Because a lot of people get born again once they get inside a place like this. Yeah, no, I was in church my whole life. I was baptized when I was little, but then I redid it when I was 16 because I felt like I really knew what it meant then. Unlike her parents, said Wendy, she finished high school. Was on her way to college too, but then she got sidetracked. Oops, I got pregnant. And your own beliefs would prevent you from ending that pregnancy. Yeah, I would not do that. That's not something I was willing to do, but I also wasn't willing to fight with someone for 18 years.

7:54So when my boyfriend said he didn't want to be strapped with that, I said I'd do it on my own. She said she was living in a rented trailer when she met Sammy Yenawine. He was one of the local toughs in the trailer park, and he seemed to want to protect her. It's funny because in our first couple dates, like, one of the things he said to me was, well, you're such a good girl. And I was like, well, yeah. And he says, I know I do something you don't like. And I was like, what? And he said, I smoke. And I said, yeah, I don't like that. I had no idea he was talking about marijuana. And he didn't tell me after that either.

8:31Wendy said she didn't do drugs, didn't approve of Sammy doing drugs either. But soon she was pregnant with her second child. They got married. They moved to a slightly bigger trailer, this one mouse infested. And then Wendy got pregnant again. Number three. I said, Sam, we got to move. We got to get out of here. He said, you got to get a job. I said, we have three little kids. I have a high school education and nothing else. What am I supposed to do? I said, I will barely make enough to pay for daycare. I'll probably owe the daycare money before I get my paycheck. A lot of young couples face that problem.

9:10But Sammy? Sammy had a solution that most husbands wouldn't consider. He said, well, you could be a stripper. You could be an exotic dancer, and you'd make a lot of money. And I was like, I was crushed. I was like, how could you love me and want me to do something like that? And he was like, well, I mean, it'll get us out of here. And I said, Sam, that's a sin. You know, that's a sin. And he said, so is pride. so is pride well he's got you there he said it's your selfish pride that's keeping us here and so after weeks you know dealing with this and hearing over and over that I was sitting on a gold mine and I refused to use it and it was my selfish pride that was keeping my family there you look at your kids and you say okay I'll swallow my pride how'd it feel to do that stuff Horrible.

10:11You come from an abused background anyway. All you're doing every single time is re-abusing yourself. That's awful. Mind you, seemed to work for them. The Ettawines set up their new enterprise in an old two-story house in Louisville. The family lived upstairs. The downstairs was all business. There was me and a couple other girls, and we just had high-end clientele that would pay to come in for a private showing, you know, a private strip show. And whatever else? No, there was no sex. There was never any sex. Well, that's not what Erin Wilkinson heard from Sammy himself. And it's not what Wendy's second husband, the one after Sammy, told Nancy Latham.

11:07A story about filming unsuspecting clients in the act. So I asked Wendy. And she said, never happened. No, no, no. There's no videos. I wasn't a porn star. I didn't do videos. It's all made up stuff. Yeah, because you know what? The internet was brand new. I mean, there was no online anything. It was like the only Internet part was it was like an advertisement page. And that's it. Here's where to call. Here's a couple pictures. What isn't disputed is the fact that by the time Sammy and Wendy started their little business, he was using and dealing drugs, hard drugs. According to Aaron Wilkinson, Sammy was high one night and killed the man in his house.

11:57then set the man's body on fire, burned the house down with Wendy and the kids inside. The dead man? He'd been a live-in bodyguard that Sammy had hired to keep Wendy's high-end clientele in line. Here's Wendy's version of what happened. While we were sleeping, Sam heard a noise coming from the kids' room. And so he got up to investigate. And when he did, he saw the man from the downstairs apartment we had shared a kitchen with coming out of the room. And the guy pulled a knife out of the block and was fighting with the knife with Sam. And Sam grabbed the knife by the blade and wrestled the knife from the man and ended up killing the man.

12:48And then he took off all of his clothes, put them in a pile, and burned them, and got back in bed with me and went to sleep. Short-sighted. The doctor said it was post-traumatic stress. So he wasn't convicted of murder or manslaughter, but he was convicted of arson. Right. It was found to be, you know, self-defense. So Sammy went to jail, where he met Erin Wilkinson. Left to three kids to raise on her own, Wendy divorced Sammy. I sold the car I had, sold that trailer, used it as a down payment to buy my house by myself, bought the house, continued to work from home so that I could be there with my kids.

13:36And I went to Liberty University with their, they have an incredible online program, got a bachelor's of science and psychology and started in the master's program for management and leadership and actually got that degree too. So all of that from home. Wow. While I was getting my kids raised. Along the way, Wendy married again and moved to Charleston. That was when she landed the job at U.S. Trust, a branch of Bank of America that caters to the bank's high rollers. Executive assistant to one of the wealthiest bankers in town. Was what you had studied the background for that or other work experience or what?

14:16Yeah, well, no, I had worked as an assistant for a long time when I worked from home. So I had the experience, plus I had, you know, and gosh, when you work in an office, psychology sure does tie in. Oh, yes, it's easy to see how psychology might come in handy when dealing with her new boss, particularly one who happened to be going through a nasty divorce. In 2012, Wendy divorced her second husband and started keeping steady company with Chris Latham. Well, you know, we started hanging out, and I really got to know him as a person. And how, I don't know, how sweet he was. So it was just a natural progression of, you know, two people who, you know, I was divorced.

15:07We thought he would be divorced any minute. And, you know. It got pretty ugly, though, right? His divorce. His divorce did get very ugly. So it ramped up. It did. Oh, yes. Ramped up to the point where somebody hired a team of hitmen. But in Wendy's telling, Nancy was the dangerous one. Cars belonging to her, to Wendy, and Chris were sabotaged. Tires were slashed. Lug bolts loosened. brake lines tampered with. We were worried. We were scared. We wanted the divorce to hurry up and get over with. And then this other thing pops up. Suddenly Aaron is talking to the police. Out of the blue. But not only is he talking to the police, he showed them that hit pack.

15:52Where would that material come from? I'm not going to discuss any of that. I'm not willing to discuss the case. What can you say about any of that stuff that would help us understand it? I can say that I would never do anyone harm. I would not want any harm to come to her at all. Nancy, of course, denies all those allegations of sabotage. So, she said, she said. Well, none of that really mattered now. The Latham divorce was history. Far more serious for Wendy Moore and her lover Chris Latham was the murder-for-hire case that would be going to trial soon.

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18:46Nancy had been waiting all morning for the phone to ring. As she glanced out her kitchen window at the bare trees swaying in the January breeze, her thoughts were on Aaron Wilkinson, the man she credited with saving her life. I was at home and I was expecting him to take a plea deal. That's what I'd been told by the U.S. attorneys. And they said, so you'll probably want to come down for that. It had been almost nine months to the day since Nancy first laid eyes on Aaron. That was at his bond hearing. shortly after Aaron had exposed the plot to have her killed. When she closed her eyes, she could still picture him standing before the judge.

19:29Shaved head and shackled, so tall he seemed to tower over his court-appointed lawyer. And as he was turning to leave, I could see him searching the faces of everyone in the audience and landed on mine, and he mouthed the words, I'm sorry. And when he mailed the words, I'm sorry, it was so palpable coming from him. I mean, I felt it. I felt that he was genuinely remorseful. Now Nancy got dressed for court again. This time, she hoped to watch a legal formality, Aaron taking a plea deal. He'd spend time in prison, though somewhat less than he might have, and in exchange, he would agree to testify against Chris and Wendy.

20:10Their trial was less than a month away. But as Nancy prepared for the trip to the downtown courthouse, her phone rang. It was the prosecutor with bad news. And they said, don't come down. He's not going to take a deal. They said, we're sorry. We tried everything we could. He's just not going to take a plea deal. And OK, I got off the phone and I was a little bit disheartened. but I kind of continued, you know, getting ready for my day and I felt a push. Something was telling me to go downtown, to just go downtown anyway, go downtown. It doesn't matter what they said, get in the car and go downtown.

20:58And I did. She was crossing the bridge into Charleston, she said, when a strange feeling came over her, a feeling so overwhelming, she started to cry. I was just sobbing. I just started sobbing. And I thought, oh my God, why am I sobbing? And it wasn't a sad cry. It was just water pouring out of my eyes. And it hit me like a ton of bricks that the presence of God was in the car with me. And I know to some people that's gonna sound like lunacy, But I felt the presence of God with me. Nancy Cannon had spent a lot of time at the federal courthouse over the past few months. So when she opened the front door, the guards at the metal detectors instantly knew who she was.

21:52They urged her to go home. But Nancy insisted on going to the courtroom anyway. It's where Aaron would have entered his plea. Would have, but wasn't going to now. The judge's clerk told Nancy she wouldn't be allowed in the courtroom. So she was led to a small ante room across the hall. And there she waited. I had been there well over an hour, perhaps two, when there was a knock at the door. And the two U.S. attorneys on my case opened the door and they said, Ann, Aaron's attorney, would like to meet with you. And I said, yeah, okay, yes, I'll do it. And they brought her in and she said, Ms. Cannon, I would like to tell you what Aaron and I said, no, no, before you say anything to me, anything, I need you to know this.

22:40The very first time I saw Aaron in the courtroom, I saw him turn around and search the courtroom until he found me. And when he did, he mouthed the words, I'm sorry. And I said, in that moment, I felt that he truly was asking for my forgiveness and I gave it to him. And I said, I don't care what the U.S. attorneys say. At the end of the day, Aaron saved my life. So if I can speak on behalf of him to the judge when it's time for his hearing or sentencing, even if he doesn't take the plea deal, I said, I'll do it. With that, the public defender left the room. And five minutes later, she returned with a message from Aaron.

23:23She said, Aaron's going to take the plea deal. He just wanted to know that you would forgive him. Isn't that something? It was awesome. And so Anne, myself, and the two U.S. attorneys, we're walking out into the hallway, and Anne looked at me and said, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I've never felt the presence of God in anything like I have in this moment. And I said, I know. I picked him up on the bridge, and I brought him here. He's been with us the whole time.

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26:46It was about 9.30 on a chilly morning in February that U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel took his seat and gaveled the full courtroom to order. As he surveyed the ornate courtroom, he would have seen the jury to his left, beyond that the prosecutor's table. In the first row, he would have seen Nancy, surrounded by her family and friends, and behind them, the assembled faces of reporters and spectators. To the judge's right sat the defendants, Chris Latham and Wendy Moore, and their attorneys. After both sides made their opening arguments, the prosecutors called a procession of witnesses, beginning with the cops and investigators who'd first heard Aaron Wilkinson's astounding revelation that a plot to kill Nancy was in the works.

27:36For corroboration, they offered up the hit packet, chock full of photos of Nancy in her car and her house, and maps and lists of places where she might be picked up and followed, or even ambushed. When you look at those papers, they're clearly designed for finding someone. That's the voice of Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Williams. The maps aren't just maps. They're maps of wooded areas. where you can park, pictures of back porches, descriptions of people's path of travels. Then they played that recorded phone call. You won't make it work, right? Sammy asks if Aaron is going to be able to finish the job as planned.

28:18Aaron says he will. I won't make it work. I mean, they're talking about getting rid of guns, how to kill someone, where it should happen. We had this hit packet, so if you look at those documents and listen to that phone call, It's clear there was a murder for hire going on. Not only was there a murder for hire going on, but investigators testified they had clear evidence of who had paid the would-be assassins and who handed them the hit packet. And that was none other than Wendy Moore, the religiously devout mother of three. She'd rented a hotel room for Sam Yenawine. What was the best supporting evidence to show that Wendy was actually deeply involved in the pub?

29:02So she rents a hotel room. She purchases a drop phone, meaning a phone that has no subscriber information to it. And then she uses that phone exclusively to talk with Sam Yenowine. So there's constant communication with Sam Yenowine. She clearly had met with him several times. The phone tower information we had showed them meeting up in Sullivan's Island. Most damning of all, perhaps, was that printer logs at Bank of America showed much of the information in the hit packet had been searched for and printed from Wendy's computer. That hit packet is clearly, on its face, designed for this murder for hire.

29:44There's no way she prints that up for some other reasons. The case against Chris Slatham rested in large part on his close relationship to Wendy. But in truth, the information on Nancy's movements and shopping habits, all that insider knowledge in the hit packet could only have come from Chris. The photos have been taken with his phone. We found on Latham's iPhone five pictures that he took secretly of his estranged wife Nancy at a trespass hearing. That is federal prosecutor Rhett DeHart. She was sitting a couple of rows behind him, and he had pulled out his iPhone and over his shoulder, unbeknownst to her, he was taking secret pictures of her.