Talking Dateline: Out of the Darkness

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1:01Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Canning, and we are talking Dateline. Our correspondent on this one is Josh Mankiewicz, and this is for his episode called Out of the Darkness. Hello. Let's talk Dateline, Josh. Hey, how are you?

1:15Andrea Canning:I'm good. I'm ready. One housekeeping item, if you haven't seen it, you can watch the episode on Peacock or listen to it in the Dateline podcast feed. and then come right back here. Also, we will have an extra clip from Josh's interview with the victim, Bob Pointer's mother. And then, Josh, you have a special Talking Dateline challenge for me. I'm excited about this. Yes, I do. It's something we've discussed previously, although you've certainly forgotten about it. I actually forgot about it too, but it's going to be fun. Okay, I'm ready. Before we dive into this episode, and I have a lot of thoughts, Josh, give us a very quick overview of what happened.

1:57Andrea Canning:Well, this was in 2016 in Royce City, Texas, sort of classic Texas small town. A young woman named Chasey Pointer married to a fire captain who was considerably older. She was 29. I think he was like 46, 47, something like that. She calls her husband because her Jeep has gotten stuck on this muddy road. So he comes out there and he gets shot. And from the beginning, you know, we see, we on Dateline, the viewers see this story unfold almost entirely via first responder and police body cams. And she's unspooling this story of what happened. And sort of from the beginning, she can't get her own story straight.

2:49Andrea Canning:I mean, first she says he doesn't know what happened. Then she saw a shadow. She saw a shadowy figure. Then it was a man. She didn't know who it was. Then later she does know who it is. It's this guy that she was having an affair with. I mean, it is a classic case of not just spousal murder, but of a murderer kind of not thinking about the story that they were going to tell until the absolute minute they were telling it. And so you are left watching this and just kind of shaking your head. She was convicted. And, you know, it's a terrible tragedy. And again, there's a thing called divorce. Yes.

3:35Yes, that we mention often on this program. So, Josh, I have to say she had me at first, Chasey, because the way this show opens is very terrifying. You know, the out of breath, the 9-1 call, the running. I mean, it's like how every Lifetime movie starts out. There's a woman, you know, running through the woods. And then when the call dropped out, I thought Chasey was done. I thought somebody was after her. Then I was so surprised to see that Chasey was alive and she was then talking to investigators eventually. And that's where her behavior really comes in and the breathing. Yeah, the breathing.

4:15And then it would like stop. And then it would start again. And at first she kind of had me. But the more it went on, the more I started to say, this girl needs a Razzie.

4:24Andrea Canning:Yeah. That wonderful top is courtesy of Jessica DeVera, who's a sensational producer. Yeah, she's amazing. And, you know, Jessica and I did this story. And, like, we didn't have a couple of the things that people usually have. Like, we certainly didn't have an interview with her. You almost didn't need it, though, Josh, because we had such a sense of her. We had her telling this crazy story. And burying herself. Right. We had her telling her own story, which, you know, at the beginning sounds crazy. And like the worst thing has happened to her. And then the more she tells it, the crazier it sounds.

5:00Andrea Canning:The crazier she sounds, the more dishonest she sounds. And then you just think, OK, well, I mean, this person's a liar. And that's exactly where prosecutors came down. You know, what I love about investigators are the little things that they pick up on that, you know, me at least, I don't know about you, but I'm not a, you know, a trained investigator. So when they say to her, you know, they say to her that the blood should have dripped down. Right. And then also that they could tell that, you know, she was standing too close. Like she was standing close to Bob when the shot was fired, but she said that she wasn't.

5:37And so they said they told her, quote, you're full of crap.

5:41Andrea Canning:Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, by then she'd already told these multiple stories. Right. And the whole thing was, you know, why didn't this woman ask for a lawyer at some point? Why didn't she keep her mouth shut, at least minimize what she was saying? because then she starts going into that they're having all, they have a bad marriage. And that, you know. Well, she says when I married him, I was young and stupid. And I think an argument could be made that nothing had changed. That was, I think, still true on the day of her husband's death. And custody issues. I mean, all the things that lead to these date lines, you know.

6:22Andrea Canning:She and her husband, her husband seems like a great guy. From everything we were able to determine. Not long after they were married, she starts stepping out on him, not with just the guy who ended up killing him, but a bunch of other guys, too. To the point where her husband installed, I think, a surveillance camera outside their front door, not to catch bad guys and not to keep the house safe, but to get a picture of one of J.C.'s lovers, which I think he did. There were a bunch. Yeah. And she said to one of the lovers, OMG. No, I wrote OMG. She didn't say OMG. I wrote OMG on my notes. I wish he'd run out of air in a fire.

7:07Andrea Canning:Yeah. Yeah. She was hoping that her husband would die, you know, in the line of duty, which prosecutors believe that this was all about the insurance money and that if he had died in the line of duty, I think maybe she would have gotten some additional payment, too. But, you know, I mean, they also told different stories about like he wasn't supposed to be killed. That was originally – this was just about scaring him. This was about giving the husband a good talking to, telling him, you know, to stay away from her. Because there was this sort of mythology that she created that he was violent and controlling and abusive physically and verbally.

7:50Andrea Canning:And there just wasn't any evidence of that. We see that a lot. Nobody seemed to believe that that was true about Mr. Pointer. Like, don't you agree, though? We see that all the time where women will get the lover on board, you know, to do harm to their husband because they're saying he's doing this to me and that to me and he's abusive. I mean, the reason that works is that it's true so much of the time. That's the thing, right? Oh, yes. Oh, 100%. Women very rarely commit homicide, right? They almost always find somebody else to do it for them. That's sort of how this usually goes, right? And one of the things that moves men to be the agent of somebody else, you know, in a murder is, well, this person is hurting me.

8:43Andrea Canning:This person is abusive. This person is beating me. And then guys want to sort of feel like the white knight here. Yeah. And I actually it took me down memory lane a little bit with a story that I did. This was about an Army soldier. His name was Army Sergeant Vincent Gosling Jr. And he was shot to death on a remote Kentucky road after stopping to help what appeared to be a stranded motorist. motorist. At first, it looked like a random act of violence, but investigators, you know, after he was shot and covered a calculated murder for hire plot orchestrated by his wife and her lover. Prosecutors said that she lured her husband to the isolated location where the lover then killed him and they both pleaded guilty.

9:24So, I mean, it's a very similar story.

9:27Andrea Canning:I mean, you change the names. That's the Chasey and Bob Pointer story. Yeah. That was the one where I had the sweat bee video. I don't know if you ever saw that. I remember that. That went after me and I was like doing the dance. I remember that. Yeah, because I was trying to do interviews and there were like a million sweat bees. The thing about you that's different from, well, just for example, me, is that you looked cool and elegant swatting away the bees. Like that's a, you know, whereas I would have looked like a, you know, like a character, you know, in a cartoon leaving an outline of their body as they go through a wall.

10:05I mean, Josh, to be fair, I think I probably look like Elaine from Seinfeld. You know, her like, you know, that really weird dance that she does that's like on all the memes. I think I looked more like that, to be honest with you. No, you looked better.

10:18Andrea Canning:You looked better. Speaking of TV shows, I definitely was thinking a lot about Orange is the New Black, the TV show, because of the sheer number of times, Josh, that you mentioned orange and how people would look in orange. I mean, can I go through them first? Sure. Just before you respond? So you had, okay, so first you had, I rock an orange jumpsuit. Orange is the new black, the male version. That was from Michael Garza, the lover. The killer. Then you had Chasey saying, I don't look good in orange. And then you had one more. You had Michael Garza actually in the orange, in the mug. And you said that he looked about as good as you'd think in orange.

11:02Andrea Canning:It's not every day that you hear a killer say, I'll do it, and I rock an orange jumpsuit, right? In other words, I'm going to get caught, right? And then they do get caught, and then you do see them in an orange jumpsuit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Josh, when we come back, we will have more from your interview with Bob Pointer's mom, and her name is Candy. The critics have spoken. World War II with Tom Hanks is a must-watch. It is on a scale no one's ever seen before. An enormous accomplishment. The world turned upside down. It's global history on the grandest scale. All wars changed the world, but none of them like the Second World War did.

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13:09The other thing that was like really crazy about this was Michael Garza's alibi. I mean, we've heard a lot of alibis over the years, but he was milking a cow.

13:20Andrea Canning:Yeah. Yeah. In the middle of the night. Yeah. What? Yeah. Yeah, that was, you know, again, this is a, you know, I mean, you hear cops sometimes say, we don't catch the smart ones, right? Sometimes they do catch the smart ones. But, like, a lot of times who they catch are literally people who, like Chasey, tell, like, three different stories in the first three hours, or actually probably less than that. And Michael Garza, who, you know, says things like, I rock an orange jumpsuit. And his alibi is, I was milking a cow. Like, you want to have, you know, your cell phone at some different location at that moment.

14:04Andrea Canning:You know, you want to have somebody testify, oh, no, you know, Mike and I were having a beer at the saloon, right? But, you know, I mean, you know, when you are dumb enough to commit murder and dumb enough to immediately lie about it in a way that's going to get caught and dumb enough to hire a guy like that, you kind of deserve what you get. Yeah. I mean, the whole plan was just so filled with holes. Yeah, and sadly, though, the result is like, you know, there's kids without a dad and – Yeah. A mother, the mother without her son. You know, Bob Pointer was one of those guys who did not lose touch with his mom over the years.

14:41Andrea Canning:Like, they spoke all the time. I mean, I think it's safe to say she was, like, maybe his best friend, which is why interviewing her was sort of, I thought, paramount in this. Josh, we have an extra clip from your interview with Bob Pointer's mother. We are going to take a listen. Just tell me a little bit more about what he was like as a dad. I guess to Addison. To Addison? Oh, my God. He adored her, I mean, from the get-go. I mean, she looked just like him. She loved, he just doted on her. He would cook, teach her how to cook. They were cooking, and Bobby loved to cook. Bob loved to cook. So he even said, oh, Mom, I think a couple weeks even before he passed away, he said, I want to get Addison even a chef's coat.

15:28She likes Washington Food Network and all that. And I want to, oh, my God. So we started researching her right away to buy her one. He let Addison put red nail polish on her? Oh, totally. There's pictures of him with his glasses on, painting his nails or her nails, and he's painting her nails. I thought, oh, Lord. He was just like a gentle soul. He was like a gentle giant, I would call him sometimes, because he was so big.

15:51Andrea Canning:One of the things that comes out of that, I think, is that, you know, he was a very involved dad, not just to the daughter he had with Chasey, who was, I think, six and a half when he was killed, but also to his two older daughters that he had with his first wife. He was a big part of all of their lives. And, you know, again, that's a sort of a extra tragedy out of all this. And we talk about all the time, kind of the ripple effect of murder. Here's like maybe a lesson. Why do spouses allow, you know, increases in life insurance policies or more life insurance policies when they maybe aren't in the best marriage?

16:33or maybe they know someone's cheating in the relationship. And then you always hear these stories about just months before the murder or like sometimes it's like days, they upped their policy or added more policies.

16:47Andrea Canning:Look, you know, another case that always sort of springs to mind happened a long time ago here in California. The murderer had been a Jeopardy champion. and he poisoned his wife with nicotine. And she was sick for a long time and the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. And her friends were saying to her, I can tell you what this is. This is your husband. He's trying to kill you. He's making you sick somehow. And she said to them, oh, he wouldn't do that. He loves me. That wouldn't happen. but she took him off her life insurance. She made her sister the beneficiary of her life insurance.

17:35Andrea Canning:Did he know? He did not know. No, you got to tell. You got to tell the husband. A couple of days after she died, he's on the phone with the life insurance company and he's like, I'm sorry, what? Right? No, no, no, no, no. If you're going to do that, you need to say something. My point is thinking to yourself, I need to protect myself is one thing, or I'm uncomfortable with this, or I'm going to take my husband off the insurance. That's sort of easier to do than to confront someone and say, I want you to know something. I've taken you off my insurance. And the reason is, I don't think you have my best interests at heart.

18:18Andrea Canning:That is so much harder than calling the insurance company and saying, switch the beneficiary to my family member. Very, very true. Very true. You know, it was interesting, Josh, that the jury said in the end that they didn't think Chasey killed Bob for money. Which I didn't really get because she stood, you know, to gain this money. And then the jury, I didn't. Did you get that? I mean, that is correct that the jury did not believe that. Prosecutors did believe that this was for financial gain. I mean, he had a, you know, insurance policy of between$500 ,000 and a million dollars. But, you know, I would say that it's reasonable to believe that they didn't really know why they were killing him.

19:06Andrea Canning:I mean, to suggest that this was just for money. Like, I never believed that this was about her and Michael Garza being together. I mean, she had a bunch of other guys that she was seeing, too. Yeah, true. Like, this is not like we're going to get this money and run off together. Like, she wanted to be free. I think she thought maybe the money might make life easier. But, like, the idea that the money was the motive for this, I don't know. But, yes, she was not convicted of murder for financial gain. All right, Josh. Up next, you are going to take over for a special Talking Dateline challenge.

19:42You do not want to miss this.

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20:58Andrea Canning:Okay, welcome back to Talking Dateline. Now, instead of taking your social media questions, Andrea and I are going to play a game, and it is one that you and I talked about a year ago back on this podcast. So let's go back in time here. Andrea was talking to me about a lawyer, an attorney that she had interviewed for her episode called Poison Twist, which is about a chiropractor's poisoning death in New York. So let's listen to what Andrea and I were talking about after that on Talking Dateline. She's a fellow Canadian. And I picked up on her accent immediately during our interview. She was saying a boat.

21:40And, you know, I said, you're Canadian, aren't you? And she's from Niagara Falls.