Talking Dateline: Secrets Unmasked

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1:02Hey, everyone. This is Andrea Canning, and we are talking Dateline, and today we are joined by the legendary Keith Morrison and his legendary producer, Tim Ulinger. They are here to discuss their Dateline episode, Secrets Unmasked. This episode is about the murder of Regina Hicks, a 25-year-old Ohio woman who disappeared on the way to pick up her son from her estranged husband, Paul. Days later, Regina's car was found submerged in a pond with her body in the passenger seat. What followed was an investigation spanning two decades, a bizarre arson scheme, and a reluctant witness. If you haven't seen the episode yet, you can stream it now on Peacock or listen in the Dateline podcast feed.

1:45Then come right back here. Later, we will have an extra clip from Steve Gates, the witness who kept his silence for nearly 25 years, reflecting on how he feels about Paul now. And we will answer some of your amazing questions from social media. Okay, let's talk Dateline. Hey, Keith and Tim. Hi, how are you, Andrea? Nice to see you. It's always nice to see you guys since you're out there in California, Southern California, so I don't get to see you very often. It's great to see you. So let's dive right into this episode. the first thing that I thought of as I was watching was I'm always struck by you know just the opening lines right and in the in the body of the episode and in this one you know we're talking about Ohio what is it Willard Ohio yeah and you know I was an anchor in Ohio so I know those little towns it's not super little but it's it's not it's not huge either and it always strikes me how most of our datelines happen in these small towns.

2:49You know, they don't happen in the big city. In fact, I've done, I think, one dateline in New York City. And I've done a lot of datelines. So, I mean, what's your take on that, that these crazy things happen in small-town America, like in this episode? You know, it's because it is a small town. I mean, there's even a genre called murder in a small town, right? I think a TV show called that. And if you look at all the famous crime novels, most of them occur in small towns. Agatha Christie loved those country mansions, didn't she? And there's a reason, because it's a little place where this sort of crime doesn't normally occur.

3:33You expect it to happen in a big, scary city and not in a sweet, bucolic little place that everybody, where everybody knows everybody else. Because it does, we're really interested in it. One of the things about the small towns is that because they are small towns, relationships are tighter. More people, like everybody knows everybody. And emotions and things like that, I have found in stories like this, people are tighter, there's more emotion. That's a big part of it. Yeah, I agree with you. And Keith, you know where I am from, Blue Mountain. in Canada, which is on Georgian Bay. It's part of Lake Huron, the Great Lakes.

4:11And so this was, you know, as I'm watching the opening of this episode, I'm thinking to myself, you know, I finally know sort of what it feels like, you know, to have a murder happen in a small town like that and for it to affect you because I am from a very small town and we did have a murder that was a diabolical murder that we featured on Dateline in November. And it was the the fire captain who had murdered his wife, Ashley. And it happened three miles from my house where I grew up. So it's a new perspective for me. It would be. Yeah. And along the lines of what we've been talking about, Regina's uncle, Regina, the victim in this story, her uncle said something that struck me.

4:58And he said, there's no way to explain it until you experience it yourself. And you don't have any idea really what these people are feeling when someone they love has been murdered. Right. Even though this case occurred 24, 25 years ago now, the scars are, they're not healed. The people are still hurting. There's still emotion. You could see it. Yeah. And those things never heal. And as they say, the ripples go out a long way, but they also last for generations. So people, anybody, even somebody who was a small child who you'd think would grow up and forget all about it, they don't forget about it.

5:35It informs everything in their lives. Regina's cousin said, you know, when the verdict came in guilty, she could feel it in her toes. When she told me that, I was like, oh, my God. You could, she still, I saw her that day. I was there for the verdict. And I saw her that day. And she, the tears just kept coming. And she just couldn't believe that finally, finally. But the emotion, it's still right on the surface. You really brought to life Regina in this episode, especially with the challenges that we have sometimes telling these stories when they're so old because we don't have video and all the crystal clear pictures that we have now.

6:15It's more of a challenge. So it's the people. It was the people that you interviewed who were the ones who did such a good job of bringing into focus Regina and bringing her to life. I will not deny that frequently when I'm just speaking for myself, launch into a story, one of the kind of stories we do, I'll get a sense of, oh, no, not again. We have to invade somebody's grief and we're going to do this story about the worst thing that ever happened to somebody. And in the end, the thing that makes me glad we tell the stories are because you get to know the person at the heart of it, which is generally the victim.

6:54So true. And in a way, in a strange way, it's like you are celebrating a person who died a long time ago. I agree. I agree. And also, Keith, they looked like they wanted to be there talking about Regina. You could feel it. Yeah, they did. Regina's brother, for instance, Chuck Rowe. I hit it off with Regina's brother, Chuck, because he was wearing a Marine cap. United States Marines. It was a snowy day. We love Marines. We love the Marines in this household. We love the Marines. I said, yes, I know you do. So I met Chuck. He's wearing this hat. And I introduced myself. And I said, are you a Marine, really?

7:30And then I asked, like, you know, where'd you serve? And he goes, well, one of my foreign deployments was in Somalia. I was like, Somalia? 1992, Somalia. And I said, were you there on the first day? First wave? He's like, oh, yeah, yeah. All the TV cameras were in my face. I said, oh, my God, that was me. I was there on the beach. You guys were there. It's funny how paths cross, isn't it? Cross. So we hit it off. And it was like, but it was very funny. Anyway, that family is really very, very nice people. Nice. The crime, it starts out with, you know, she goes missing. Of course, Regina, they find her car in the water.

8:10And the cause of death is ruled as a drowning. Manner of death, however, is pending. And I'm thinking to myself, this poor woman is in the passenger seat. So how do you figure that – and she's got marks on her. How do you figure that she – that this is anything other than a homicide? I don't – I didn't really get that. It was a source of puzzlement to a lot of people, I think. Yeah. Yeah, the coroner may well have felt that he would be sticking his neck out a little too far if he went to declaring that it was a homicide. Right. How else does she get in there, though? Well, you know, there are ways and ways.

8:52It's possible that she could. She could slide into the passenger seat. When things are least remotely possible that, you know, a good many in the law enforcement community, probably quite rightly, are saying, well, we can't quite go with that yet. It's interesting, though, because we were talking about the case in Blue Mountain with Ashley, with her husband, who was the fire captain, and her body. So he had pushed the car into the ditch during a snowstorm to make it look like she had had a car accident. But there she is in the passenger side. Again, it's another story where the victim is in the passenger side.

9:29So how did she drive herself into the ditch? Right? It didn't add up. Exactly. Yeah. And then later on, of course, much, much later on, years and years and years later on, that manner of desk has changed. to one that I think everybody, you know, was able to sign on to. And that made all the difference. I don't want to say this in the wrong way. When they changed that to homicide, I was so glad for her family. To me, that was movement. That was like acknowledging, we believe Regina was murdered. And now it's official. Sadly, it came after Regina's mother was dead. And she had campaigned for that for years and years.

10:10But didn't survive to see it. Which is a real shame. And her mom, Regina's mom, had put up billboards to keep the case alive. And I covered the Crystal Rogers case last year where that became a real focal point of this were these billboards of, you know, where is Crystal? And they believed also that they knew who had killed her, even though she'd never been found. I think the billboards, I think they're so effective because not only does it show how much the family cares, right? that they're not giving up, but it's in your face. Face, right. Every day, if you live in these areas where these billboards are, like you cannot ignore it.

10:50And in the Crystal Rogers case, they put up a billboard right next to the sheriff's department. It cannot be overstated how important it is for families in a cold case to keep at it, to keep pushing. And it helps the police too, because they may seem annoyed, But the fact is they need to have cover sometimes to continue an investigation that otherwise they wouldn't be able to afford. But if somebody is really ramping up for it all the time, then their bosses are going to say, yes, spend the money. And so things get done. When we come back, we will have an extra clip from Steve Gates, the witness who kept his silence for nearly 25 years.

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14:33Let's talk about the other half of this story that just really went off the rails in a lot of bizarre ways. You know, from the beginning of the show where I see somebody with this long hair and they've got glasses on and then there's a fire. I'm like, where is this going? Yeah, well, exactly. It's what anybody looking at the story would think. You guys had me hooked. It was the weirdest darn thing, you know? I wrote down the name of the, actually, I don't even want to get, maybe I shouldn't even give it any publicity, but like where you can, you can get these wearable masks. I'm not sure they even sell them anymore.

15:10That company that was involved in our story, Andrea, is no longer in business. They were based in the UK and they are no longer. I'm kind of actually glad about that. So it was called That's My Face. That's My Face. Yeah. You know, it's one thing to have like a Halloween costume or something, but like you have a plan where you're going to use your current girlfriend to wear your ex-girlfriend's face to burn down your house? What? Yeah, it was a stretch. The other thing that was in this, which was the spoof card, to be able to call people. Yes, the spoof card. And it appeared to be coming from a different number altogether.

15:50And until they did a real deep dive on that, it looked as if people who were innocent were guilty and vice versa. The Claremont County, Ohio Sheriff's Department, you know, started investigating this case and they did a pretty good job. And then using some of their information, this insurance investigator named Zach McCune, he was like the super investigator. And he got to the bottom of this. And every time, like he learned something, he couldn't believe the next thing he'd learn. You know, he was literally he was like in all the things he's done in his career ever. He's never seen anything like this.

16:28Could have listened to that guy all day long. He definitely had me at hello. I was like, okay, I'm interested in this person, in this story. And I always like it when people have specialties. So he's saying right out of the gate, my specialty is fire. It's arson. He's a certified fire investigator, as if like a fire marshal would be. The second person in the house lighting the fire. Do we think that was Paul then? or do we not know? Or do you know? No, here's the thing. Don't know. We don't know who it was. Oh, we don't know. Okay. No. Oh, well, Paul's tall. So you would know, right, if it was Paul?

17:07Right, right. And Paul had an alibi, a perfect alibi. He was at a hotel three hours away. The thing about Paul was this, and it's central to the story. He was one of those guys who was always the leader of the pack in a small town. If he'd gone to the big city, he would have been shot down pretty quickly if he went to work for IBM or something. But, you know, he was a railway man. He knew other people around town. They'd drive around in his cars. He would always pick up a kind of a satellite, somebody who was enthralled with him, who would do whatever he wanted them to do, who would be afraid of them, but wanting to attach to them at the same time.

17:44Kind of like Steve. There you go. Yeah, sure. Terry Sweet is another person, you know, who went along with Paul. Right. I should say allegedly Terry Sweet. But she died, right? She died the very day the insurance inspector was going to talk to her. Talk to her again. And Andrea, this is funny. This is something we can bring up. I mean, obviously, we attempted to get the death certificate and to see if there was any investigation. How did she die? Apparently, according to the little information out there, is that it was probably alcohol-related and it was, quote-unquote, natural causes. Do people think otherwise?

18:23Otherwise, there could be. But nobody is going to talk about it. Yeah. There are some people who believe that coincidences happen and other people who believe coincidence is unlikely to ever happen. Law enforcement generally doesn't believe in coincidences. As I always say on this podcast, it seems like an awfully big coincidence that she would— It does, doesn't it? The timing of her death. Right. Right. However, Paul was never, we should say, was never charged with Terry Sweetestead, was never arrested. No, absolutely not. No. I mean, Paul was really a charmer. But when it came to choosing girlfriends, and I mean no disrespect to any of the girlfriends he may have had over the years, he would choose people who would be very pleased to be with such a handsome, virile guy.

19:13He would pull them in and they would do anything for him. You said to Kelly, you said you were in love. And she said, lust. Like dead pen. Yeah. Like she was not happy. She said in our interview that she really liked him at first. Like he was really nice. That he was super charming. He was fun. He gave the appearance that he was going to be taking care of her. You know, Kelly is very upfront about that in the main interview that we did with her. Why was Kelly's face obscured in the police video? Because at the time she ended up not being charged. So they didn't want to. When they released that, they didn't want to have that.

19:56Yeah. And then also the detective. I mean, poor Kelly is there for a child handoff at Kroger and tasers are being pointed at her. I mean, I can't even imagine. Then she's in the interview room and the detective's talking about the woman in the fire. She's rather large. And then Kelly's like, you hear Kelly say, oh, my God. And I'm not sure. I can't tell if she's talking about her saying she's rather large or the whole situation. I was like, what? That interview occurred probably seven to 10 days after the arrest. And the female detective there was starting to realize, I don't know, I'm not sure this is the same person either.

20:35Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. But at first, it was very, there was a lot of, you know, feeling that that was Kelly, you know. Well, yeah. I mean, there's a mask and the hair and also, you know, nighttime security camera from a house. It's never going to be that crisp and clear. You could have gotten away with something like that, potentially, if you had just, you know, not maybe not a strong investigator on it. And by the way, you know, he wasn't convicted of any serious crime. He got misdemeanors and so no jail time. That made me really actually angry that he got this slap on the wrist. But what happened is, first of all, the main witness that would have been is deceased.

21:20They're missing that element. And then we had the pandemic. There were like two or three changes of judges, and they just wanted to wrap this case up and get him on something. And they did. They got him on misdemeanor. And in the civil case, he ended up supposedly having to pay$400 ,000. But I don't think he ever paid it. All right. Can we talk about Steve? Yes, of course. So Steve, as we mentioned, Steve is, I guess, the old friend who admitted finally that he was there that night. He says he didn't see the murder happen, but he went along with Paul to cover it up. And it took him a really long time to do the right thing.

22:08Yes, it did. And he would say that even years and years later, when Paul was living in a different part of the state altogether, hundreds of miles away, he couldn't go to the police, in his opinion or his view at the time, without Paul finding out immediately. And somebody in Paul's circle of friends and acquaintances in that little town would, you know, make life very difficult indeed for Steve. He lived in fear that whole time, he claimed. You know, given the sort of personality that he presented to us and the role that he played in that relationship, I can kind of see it. We have an extra clip from your interview with Steve.

22:49What do you think about him now? I don't think he has any more minions that will pull any weight for him. I don't think that he has anyone left in his corner. I think he's powerless at this point. I don't think he has the reach that he used to have. I'm sure he still has connections, but I don't think that they would—

23:24I don't think that they're a danger to me, his connections. You don't get that little itch in your back anymore that somebody might do something to you someday?

23:38No.

23:41No, I'm not afraid of him anymore.

23:48Interesting, isn't it? Once you decide not to be afraid of somebody, does it make you look back and say, Jesus, why didn't I have this attitude 20 years earlier, 24 years earlier? You just look at the brute in the face and say, F you, I'm going to go tell the cops. Right. I was young and just, I was stupid. I was a young, stupid kid. The whole idea of him coming forward and him giving this, you know, according to the jury, very believable testimony. That solved the case. That found justice for Regina's family. But Regina's family are still not very happy with Steve Gates. They feel that he waited way too long.

24:37They feel that their mother could have had justice in her lifetime. There's still some hard feelings there. I mean, the one thing I'll give Steve is we are dealing with a killer. Paul is a convicted killer. And a skilled manipulator who can make a person feel afraid. and also, you know, this arson business, you know, then his girlfriend shows up dead. We don't know how, but all these things, I think I'd be afraid of Paul too. I get it. I get it. And I'm just, frankly, I'm still surprised that Steve came forward to us when he was in court testifying out that you know that they knew well know the trial um he didn't want any audio recorded he didn't want any video and under ohio law if the witness requests that the judge can grant that request and he did so the fact that he ended up talking to keith was i was kind of surprised and the reason andrew i think he has essentially um you know decided to come forward i made a special trip out to Ohio to talk to him in person with his attorney, Bernie Davis.