Secrets Unmasked

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0:47What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC. Tonight on Dateline. This was a very well-thought-out plan. The video of the fire is just insane. Betrayal, lies, manipulation, death. The female, she's got a hood on. She lets her long, curly blonde hair hang out of the hood. Later on, we will learn a wig is purchased and that a mask is purchased. He is dressing somebody up in a disguise to look like you. It's devastating. I had nobody to protect me. I do a little more digging. I started reading about the death of Regina Hex. A young mom, a young wife.

1:34They found her. She was in her car. She was crumpled up on the passenger side of that car. Someone drove her into that pond. There was a man, a secret witness. Did you tell your wife or anybody about this? No. Never? No. I'm sorry I didn't come forward. It's like your heart's jumping out of your chest. All that darkness comes to light. A mother murdered. A mysterious fire. A mass disguise. Just how devious could one killer be? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

2:18Here's Keith Morrison with Secrets Unmasked.

2:30There is a town, little place, planted firmly in the wide, flat farmlands of north-central Ohio, called Willard. Railway town, among other things. Sort of place where rumors travel fast and truth doesn't always catch up. This is where it started a quarter century ago. The trouble. And the gossip. that if somebody had said a true thing about it way back then, might all of it have been prevented? All 24 years of it? Well, who knows? It is just mind-boggling how one person can be responsible for all of this drama, this heartache, this death. It's hard to wrap your mind around it. And get away with it for so long.

3:24silence for so long.

3:33That day, when it started, the year was 2001. It was an October evening past sunset. 25-year-old Regina Hicks was due around 8 to pick up her 4-year-old son, Montana. The boy was with his dad, Regina's estranged husband, Paul. they'd arranged to meet at a friend's house. Paul said he started calling her when she didn't show up, left her a message.

4:10And when Regina didn't arrive at her mom's, as expected later that evening, her mother got on the phone and called Regina's brother, Chuck Rowe. She said, have you seen Regina? She was supposed to be here like two hours ago. And I was like, no, I haven't seen Regina. Then the whole family began to panic. Regina's uncle, Carl Patrick. What happened? We just couldn't find her. We was losing our mind. I mean, where was she? I've got seven brothers and sisters. Why didn't somebody in the family know where she was at or contacted her? This is Regina's cousin and best friend, Jennifer Donnenworth. I knew she didn't run away.

4:51She would never leave her son. She loved him more than anything. Family and friends left messages on her cell phone and on her answering machine. When they said that they couldn't locate her, all of my cousins and all of her brothers, her stepdad, everybody went out looking for her. Next day, the family called the Willard Police Department, filed a missing person report. So the police and the family, all of them, went looking for Regina. But they couldn't find her. Not that day, or the next day, or the frantic day after that. And then... My ex-wife calls me and tells me, hey, they found a car in the pond, and I went there as fast as I could get there.

5:44and I watched them fish her car out of the pond and they said, yes, there's a body in the car. My mom said they found her. She was in her car. She's not with us anymore.

6:05An incalculable loss, certainly, to the family, to that little boy of hers. That had to be an awful day. There's no way to explain it until you experience it yourself. Probably not a moment you'll forget. No, you'll never forget it. I ain't forgot it in 24 years. Dane Howard remembers, too. Dane was the sheriff's investigator back then. You can see it still. That woman in the car in the pond. How she got there? Well, who knew? Early in the investigation, we had no idea. We didn't have any facts. We didn't know what happened to her at all. The autopsy didn't help much, so the cause of death was drowning.

6:48The method, undetermined. So they could have chalked it up to an unfortunate accident. But Ohio Assistant Attorney General Dan Caceres explained. She had marks on the top of her head. She had marks underneath her shoulders as if she was dragged. And she had marks on her wrists. But there was no doubt about it. she was alive when she went into the pond. Possibly unconscious, but alive. She's unconscious, right. And this was strange. She was found on the passenger side of the car. So maybe someone made sure she went into that pond. She didn't drive the car into the pond by herself. Someone drove her into that pond.

7:34But who could have done it? She had suspicions. But she couldn't prove it either? She couldn't prove it either. And then, years later and nearly 200 miles away, like the Twilight Zone. I don't even know what you're talking about. I don't even know what the hell is going on. And she's like, his house burnt to the ground. And I'm like, what? He came in and he saw the video and said, that's her hair, that's her face, that's her body shape.

8:15Regina Hicks had been dead a long time before investigative reporter Karen Johnson of WLWT-TV heard a thing about her. But pretty soon, she was hooked. What did you learn about Regina? So Regina was a 25-year-old woman. She wanted this happy life with someone she loved, with her child, with her family. All very close, that family. Tell me about her. She was a very fun-loving girl. She never really met no enemies. She was seven years younger than me. I brought her up a little rough, like a tomboy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At the local watering hole, there could be 50 people in there. And when she laughed, you could hear her over the music.

9:06And I'd be like, there's my sister right there. She was so warm and loving and kind and just such a beautiful, beautiful soul. She was my best friend. She was my hero. Regina and her husband Paul had been a couple since high school. It was a love affair at first sight. They were together constantly. She was head over heels in love with him. She just knew that this was going to be her future. How did he treat Regina? At first, they got along great while they was in school. But marriage is quite another matter, and theirs unraveled. So, when investigators found out that Regina and Paul had recently separated, well, of course, they talked to him, along with a bunch of other people.

9:57I think we worked all through that night and the next day interviewing folks connected to Regina. So, we interviewed the husband, Paul Hicks. You're up there, you're cooperating. Man, that's really good. Thing was, though, they had not yet revealed the fact that they'd found Regina's body.

10:37And, last he knew, she was supposed to pick up their son at his friend's house. But... She never comes to pick up my ass. She never showed up. That friend was Steve Gates. They came to you, the police did, didn't they? Multiple times. Yeah. They came to a lot of people. Steve told investigators he was at his farmhouse with Paul, playing around with a bulldozer. We were kids, you know, with a dozer. Let's go push some dirt around. And Steve said what Paul said. They waited at his house, waiting for Regina. But she didn't show up. In there somewhere is when the investigators found out that Regina was dating another man now, after her split with Paul.

11:22So they brought that guy in too. Any sexual partner, any tip that they would have had, anybody who had access to her that night, like her boyfriend, boyfriend's buddies. But that was pretty much a dead end. And the boyfriend said he last saw Regina when she left to pick up her son, and there was no way to disprove it. It all became, well, a little like social media is now, these years later. Lots of conspiracy theories, truth and lies, indistinguishable. When Regina went missing, I think there was a lot of speculation. There was a lot of whispers around town. There were stories about drug runners and Mexican cartels and friends and family.

12:08One of the big problems early in this case was the rumor mongering. And it would just be a dead lead. And worse, said Investigator Howard, Regina's death was not officially ruled a murder. Our county coroner refused to list it as a murder. He said it was an undetermined manner of death. That's a major hiccup in this case. Meaning Howard was hamstrung, couldn't intensify the investigation the way he wanted to. And as the months went by and the investigation seemed stalled, Regina's mother contacted local TV stations to drum up interest in the case. I stay in touch with the detectives that are working on it.

12:47I just try to keep it alive as much as possible. On the first anniversary of Regina's death, She told how she paid for billboards and offered a reward for solid information. My mother put up a lot of money that she was going to pay out of her pocket. No one ever come through. Nothing ever happened. And it went on like that for years. Did you give up hope that this would be sold? No. Every time I went somewhere, I carried her picture of my billfold, still got it there. I thought about it every time I got up. Every night I went to bed. So did you and your family push for answers over that whole course of years, or did you give up on it?

13:30What happened? No, we never gave up on it. I mean, we had our lives to go on with, and it seemed like nobody gave a crap. But no, said Detective Howard, wasn't like that. Everybody cared. He said they never gave up. I mean, the case file has hundreds of pages in it from different interviews and different things. We turned over every leaf and we did everything we could do. Then, 14 years after Regina's death, her mom died. Her mother passed away in 2015. She died with a broken heart. I think in Regina's mom's heart, she knew who was responsible. She had suspicions. But she couldn't prove it either?

14:14She couldn't prove it either. But they could practically feel it. feel they were sure him. It's like slime oozing through a screen. Like he just gets through things.

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16:03They lived in a strange sort of limbo. Regina's family, that is. For years, they wanted to bring her killer to justice. They thought they knew who did it. And investigator Howard agreed. I went with the late Regina's mother to the prosecutor. We met with him, and she pleaded with him to take the case. And he refused. He said it just wasn't enough there. And that's his prerogative. It's like slime oozing through a screen. Like, he just gets through things. She is talking about Regina's estranged husband, Paul. In fact, one of Regina's uncles told investigators he had seen her car at the house where she was supposed to meet Paul on the night she went missing.

16:47Which, if true, would put the lie to Paul's alibi. It was obvious to me. It was obvious to everybody in the community. Everybody knew that he did it. But through the years, Paul resolutely maintained his innocence. Maintained custody of their son Montana, too. At first, he allowed Regina's family to visit, but that didn't last. And then eventually, Paul left the boy with his own mother. His job took him back and forth to southern Ohio, far from Regina's family and the rumor mill. And there he met a new woman, this woman, Kelly. Did he tell you what happened to his wife? Yeah, I believe it was our second time hanging out, I believe.

17:29And he actually told me that she died in a car wreck and he cried. For privacy reasons, Kelly asked us not to use her last name. I just turned 23, and he was 33. Mm-hmm. And he had his life together. He seemed like a great guy. He knew what he was doing. He acted like he wanted to take care of me and be good to me. But you were in love. Lust. They moved in together and had a son. Paul worked on the railroad, and Kelly was a practical nurse. But as time went by, Paul became more and more controlling, said Kelly. and manipulative. I've heard some people describe those kind of relationships as when it's good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad, it's awful.

18:12That's more when I get more to know him, to when the true Paul Hicks comes out. She and their son put up with it for years, she said, until finally she asked him to get out, leave. I was just done at that point. And he kept saying, and I'm going to do something that's going to hurt you the most. They were in a bitter custody battle at that point. Paul had moved into a new place, and one day in June 2015, Kelly was dropping off her son at this supermarket for visitation with Paul. Before we knew it, both doors were open, and we had taser guns pointed at our head from Claremont County Sheriff's Department.

18:54What's it like to have taser guns pointed at you by cops as you were pulling out of a parking lot? Shock. I don't know, when you're really in a moment like that where you're just so surprised, you just don't think, you just go with the moment. Yeah. You know, you can't really describe it. It just, it's like your heart's jumping out of your chest. A deputy arrested her. Mom, he had tough like a criminal. I have no record at all. She's like, do you know what happened to Paul's house last night? I'm like, no. I don't even know what you're talking about. I don't even know what the hell was going on.

19:23And she's like, his house burnt to the ground. And I'm like, what? What? Did you hear anything about what happened? No. No? No, I was at home. You know who he's pointing the finger at? Well, he could prove it at me, pointing at me only once. I got pointed. Where were you at last night? I was at home with my mom and my son watching TV. It was as if Kelly had been forced into an alternate universe, in which she was the criminal, chief suspect in an arson investigation, arrested because she had an outstanding warrant for damaging a hot tub at Paul's house. This is video of that incident, and it looked like her, but she swore to those cops she was never there.

20:02It didn't help. And were you actually charged with crime? Criminal damaging. And they used that to take me in to question me about the fire. In this interview, her face is obscured. Investigators showed her security camera photos of a woman who set fire to Paul's house. Well, I want to show you some pictures of actually the woman who came in for the arson. Paul claimed it was Kelly. She's rather large. Paul also accused Kelly of harassing him the night before the fire. There's numerous, numerous phone calls from your phone to his phone. Oh, no, that's what I was just showing you right here. I never called him at all.

20:47What in heaven's name was going on? How did you find out what happened? What really happened? The insurance. They dug really deep into it. And they couldn't believe what they found. Have you ever seen a case like this one before? No, this was the wildest case that I have ever seen.

21:21Paul Hicks' house burned to the ground in an arson fire. But something was very off. I am an attorney, but I have a specialty, cases that involve fire investigation. Zach McCune was brought in when Paul filed a claim with the insurance company. What made them suspicious about the claim and what made you suspicious about it? Paul Hicks reported that he was three hours away from the residence where the fire occurred when it happened. He drove down the morning of the fire and reported to law enforcement that he had surveillance footage of the fire because it was stored inside of two fireproof gun safes.

22:03That seemed odd, said McCune. Hard drives of video recordings in fireproof gun safes? But then, the content of the video itself was odd, too. Not just odd, brazen. The arson by a man and a woman was as blatant as can be. And the female, she's got a hood on. She also lets her long curly blonde hair hang out of the hood and be displayed for the cameras. And she also looks at some of the cameras kind of directly with her face right to the camera. They bring in multiple cans of gas and pour them and ultimately light them. Somehow the cameras were placed right in the perfect spot to capture everything.

22:54Paul told police he had no idea who the man in the video was, but he certainly recognized the woman. And he's saying, wow, that's my ex-girlfriend. Had to be Kelly. Exactly. He came in and he saw the video and said, that's her hair, that's her face, that's her body shape. Those were the images the police had shown Kelly. At the time, her hair was curly. But to McCune, it all seemed a bit too convenient. As did this. Paul Hicks had been posting to his Facebook account, to all of his Facebook friends, he'd been using screenshots from his iPhone that made it appear Kelly was stalking him and harassing him and calling him, like, initially 60 times and then 90 times and then more than 100 times.

23:39Lo and behold, a few hours later, there's this arson fire that she's blamed for. So McCune started digging. He actually handed over his cell phone to us, which was analyzed. And one of the contacts in his cell phone was a company called Spoof Card. What is that? Spoof Card. Spoof Card is a company that allows you to buy minutes with them. And when you use them, I could call you and make it look like it's someone completely different calling you. So all those messages from Kelly were fake? Then more digital evidence led to a phone Paul shared with another woman. Her name was Terry Sweet. When McHugh looked at those phone records, he found receipts from a company with a strange name.

24:26That's My Face. We find out that That's My Face is a company that makes custom wearable masks of anyone's face. To create the mask, you have to have pictures of the person's face from front angles and side angles. The mask looked like this. So the person in the video wasn't Kelly. It was someone wearing a mask to look just like her. Kelly was being framed. Is she a victim in all of this? She's the main victim in all of this, yes. And that wasn't all. Paul made false accusations about her using drugs and harming her son that resulted in her losing custody. He set me up for the arson and took my son.

25:13That's the only thing that could hurt me. It's like cutting off your leg, taking your heart out. All I wanted to do is be a mom, and he knew that he took him. Once they learned about the scheme, prosecutors dropped the hot tub charge against Kelly, and she was never charged for the arson. But who was the female arsonist wearing the face mask if it wasn't Kelly? Well, McCune was pretty sure it was Paul's friend, Terry Sweet. She denied having anything to do with the fire, but she shared that phone with Paul, the one used to order the mask. So, of course, McCune wanted to ask her all about it, but when he tried to set up a deposition?

25:57So we call over to her family and we find out that she died the previous day. Unbelievable. Was there any investigation of that death? Not that I'm aware of. We were told that she was an alcoholic and that she was told if you don't stop drinking, there's a chance that you could die. McCune was never able to identify the man in the video. After a two-year investigation, he turned over his findings to the police. In 2019, four years after the fire, though he did not torch the house himself, Paul was charged. They arrived at ultimately charging him for arson and insurance fraud and counts of perjury.

26:37Paul denied it, denied it all, denied committing arson, denied framing Kelly, and pleaded not guilty. However, by then, investigators trying to solve Regina's case got wind of the bizarre arson claim. We were hoping he would get convicted of some felonies and receive some incarceration, go to prison, because if that happens, then we can go to these witnesses now and talk to these witnesses, and he's in prison. So since he's in prison, maybe you'll be more likely to talk to us. But that didn't happen. Instead, after three more years of legal starts and stops, Paul got a plea deal. He pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor, never went to jail.