Talking Dateline: The Girl in the Blue Mustang

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1:04Hey, everyone. I'm Andrea Canning, and we are talking Dateline. And today we are here with Keith Morrison to talk about his original podcast series called The Girl in the Blue Mustang. Before we get into the discussion, we're dropping the full series in the Dateline feed as a bonus while Dateline is taking a break for the Winter Olympics. So go take a listen and then come back here. And later, we'll have two extra clips for this episode. The first is from Keith's interview with the man once convicted of the murder. The second is from Keith's interview with the Dateline viewer who believed he was innocent.

1:37Okay, let's talk Dateline. Hey, Keith. Thank you, Andrea. It's nice to be here. Let me give you a quick recap of what happened in this story, what it's all about. It's a young woman who had gone to a music video taping, and when she arrived back to the parking lot where she left her car, she was attacked and killed in a very violent way. And it was a story of really the next couple of decades of back and forth and who was responsible. And they found somebody, tried him three times, finally convicted him of murder. And then several years later, an autodidact, a very smart guy, happened to see Dateland on his computer and turned the whole thing upside down.

2:20And events have transpired ever since then that sometimes confound the senses. as of, I think, next week, it'll be 26 years since this happened. Oh, wow. And those 26 years, you know, there are still people holding a candle for one side or another in this crazy, crazy story. Yeah. I'm not surprised. I texted you, well, because I've been listening to this all week. I started listening to it and I could not stop. Well, good. Thank you. I was listening to it in my bedroom, in the car, in the kitchen. It was just so incredibly powerful. And wow, what a roller coaster, Keith. Indeed a roller coaster.

3:01Yes, yes. Let's start with Michelle, the victim here. I was so taken aback by this premonition that she had. We'll just remind everyone, Michelle, they were watching TV and there was a guy in a coffin. He couldn't get out. And she said to her dad, I just have this feeling I'm going to die. And then two more things happened. She told her brother that you're probably going to live longer than me. And then also, this one really got me. I don't even know how she knew this, but the digits on her tags for her Mustang were 187. And she knew that that meant homicide for a police code. And I'm thinking, how did she know that?

3:45I would never have known something like that as a teenager. You know, I heard that story a number of times, and it's now kind of been carved into the family lore as something that she understood. And maybe she did. Maybe she did have a premonition. A lot of teenagers get that premonition. And I think if something does happen to that person, then, you know, they understood that they were not going to live very long. Other people, you forget all about it because they go on and live their lives. Mm-hmm. Hmm. Something that struck me personally. So I left LA a few years before this happened, you know, as a young woman and, you know, just starting my career.

4:26And I remember all my friends and me included, you know, there's so many opportunities in LA for being an extra or a music video or whatever it may be. And that's what Michelle was doing that day was this kid rock video. And it really took me back to my friends looking for all these fun opportunities, you know, not only to make some extra cash, but to kind of insert yourself into Hollywood. It just put me in Michelle's shoes of how excited she must have been that day. Very exciting for a young woman. Yeah. You know, that's fun. She seemed to look at life that way. She was absolutely a radiant and delightful young woman who was enjoying her life in her brand new blue Mustang.

5:11One of the key points in this whole story was how much she loved life and loved that car of hers and wanted to have a manual transmission, wanted to have a stick shift and learned how to drive it when she was a kid. Her father made sure she could drive it. The fact that it had a stick shift was so instrumental in this story, as you will hear. It's a big moment as to who the possible killer is. Right. I had a stick shift. My parents felt it was important. Back then, my first car, they thought it was important for me to know how to drive both kinds of cars. I'm sure you had a stick shift at some point.

5:51Still do. Yeah. Still do. I love it. Still do. And I take it some places and you can't take it to valet half the time because sometimes they're not so sure how to do Yeah, not surprised. And they're tricky on those hills when you're at a light or something and you got to like when the light turns green. It can be a little nerve wracking. Yes. However, that was her life and that was why we called it that. The story of the girl with the blue Mustang. You know, initially we had a different name for this. When it was a Dateline television show, we were going to call it The Man Who Knew Too Much. It's really true because that was, Keith, that was like kind of the heart of it was with Raymond, the security guard.

6:33He either was the smartest security guard who should have maybe had a life as a detective because he was so on the ball and so accurate with all of his observations, but then that was his demise too because he was too accurate. Well, at least according to the police, he was too accurate. And according to that lawyer who deposed him, Rex Paris, the lawyer who worked over Raymond Jennings, the security guard, for hours and hours and hours and really got them all riled up and just solidified the belief on the part of prosecutors and the family that Raymond Jennings was the person who killed their daughter.

7:16And again, it was because he came off as the man who knew too much and didn't bring a lawyer to the interview, didn't bring a lawyer to the interview with the police. He was just somebody who felt, well, I didn't do it, and I can tell them what happened, so I'll be helpful. It was a perfect example of why, even if you want to be helpful and you're not guilty, it's a wise thing to have an attorney there with you so that you don't get yourself into trouble like he did. I think you are absolutely right in this case. Yes, definitely. Because you just don't know what other people are thinking or how they're going to spin it or any number of things can go wrong.

7:57And, you know, you really should have someone protecting you if you're being looked at for such a serious crime. Even if you're a highly experienced detective, he talked to everybody who was there and nothing made any sense except that this security guard was talking too much. And that's usually a sign, often a sign that somebody, you know, is trying to hide his guilt by being too helpful. But it's only one of many signs, except if that's all you have, you tend to latch on to it. And I think that's what happened here. Yeah, and I mean, of course, there's the big accusation of tunnel vision that the other potential suspects just fell away.

8:36Well, sure. The more you believe that you're on the right track, the less you're going to look at any other alternatives. So the trials in this case, it was really unbelievable that hung jury, hung jury, and then you hear first-degree murder, not guilty. And I was like, oh, my gosh, wow. And then it's like, you know, head snapper. Then it's second-degree murder guilty. And I have never heard of a jury personally being out for 24 days. Not very many, that's for sure. And I thought back, like, how you talked about the jury going out to the park and ride because they were close enough this time, you know, to be able to take a film trip.

9:18I thought back to different cases that I've had over the years, and one of them was a cliff, one of those, you know, out in a national park or whatever. And I thought to myself, in that case, I realize I'm going off on a tangent here, but the drop was only 10 to 12 feet, which doesn't sound like a lot for someone to go over the side of a hill or a cliff or something, right? I mean, obviously, you don't want to do that, but it doesn't sound crazy. It's not like a 60-foot drop. Sure. But when you went there and you looked down at the side of the cliff, you realized, oh, my gosh, that would be very traumatic to go down those 10 to 12 feet.

10:05But the jurors, all they saw were a bunch of photos. And to me, it just didn't do it justice. I was like, you're not getting the full picture when you look at those photos. So sometimes I really think it can help for juries to put themselves at the scene of the crime and to look around. And I'm not saying it had the desired impact here or it did or it didn't, but I think it's really helpful when they can place themselves there. It is, and I'm sure it did make a difference. What made a big, big difference additionally was, and it was a smart move on the part of the prosecutor, I guess, when you look at it from his point of view, is culturally, Palmdale is a whole other kettle of fish than Los Angeles.

10:46So two trials in Los Angeles, an LA jury, LA juries do not have the same attitude toward the police, toward evidence, toward anything than they do in Law and Order Palmdale, at least to some degree. Yeah. And you really broke that down with that retrospective LA juries and how it was tough for prosecutors back then. I mean, I don't know if it's changed now, but back then it was prosecutors were having a difficult time. Yeah, it has changed a lot. The period from the OJ trial through until just after the turn of the century was a very tough time to be a prosecutor in L.A. and get the kind of guilty verdicts you were hoping for.

11:29Maybe it still is more challenging. I can't tell you, but I think attitudes have changed. In my experience, attitudes have changed. You know, it reminded me of that story you did on Cal Harris in upstate New York, the car dealer. You know, that one. How many? Did that have four trials? I think it was four, yeah. That was another one that was just like, when is, when is this going to end? I think that was the record for me, four trials. Three is, a few three, but four is it. I can't believe that a person would be tried that many times. But, you know, in the end, he was acquitted. And it all, you know, it depends on the DA, too.

12:06You know, who's in power and does he want to keep going? Does he want to keep spending the public's money? Does, you know, the time and effort that goes into these things. Yeah. And so often these cases rest on somebody's belief that they're really, I'm convinced that person is guilty or I'm convinced that person is not guilty. And, you know, belief is a scary thing. You can believe all kinds of stuff that doesn't make it true. And evidence is mostly pretty dry. And it often leads in a slightly different direction than belief does. After the break, we'll have a Talking Dateline exclusive clip with Keith's interview with Clint Ehrlich.

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15:26Raymond, at his sentencing, said, I have no remorse. I'm at peace. I can hold my head up. He was not budging on this. He, you know, I did not do this. It was very dramatic, yeah. Years after Ray Jennings is sent to prison for 40 to life, Clint Ehrlich is up at night and he can't sleep. And so he pulls out his computer and decides he's going to watch an episode of Dateline because he saw a little ad for it that said there was an Iraq veteran who had been convicted of murder and he couldn't understand why an Iraq veteran would be convicted of murder. Clint is a man who was solidly in support of the American military.

16:06So he watched the program. And he is a very smart guy. And he saw something other people didn't see. I loved talking to him. He called himself an autodidact. Yeah, say that again. I never heard that before. Autodidact? Self-taught is what it means. Okay. So he dropped out of high school because he found it too boring. And he studied up past the logs when he was, I don't know how old he was, but he was very young. His dad is an attorney and kind of shepherded him along a little bit. But at the point where we talked, I think you may have seen in that show, he was heading off to the Moscow Institute of something or other to study some esoteric subject.

16:58and when I asked him why he'd be interested in doing that because it because I can and it's interesting um that kind of guy Keith we have some extra sound with Clint and he talks a little more about how that intrigued him and why he needed to know more about this case was it simply your kind of natural state of being curious about things that made you come to that conclusion that Ray Jennings was an innocent man? Yeah. I mean, I just, forgive me. No, no, I'm thinking about that episode, and this was an episode where, yes, you're right. It was like, gosh, there wasn't a whole lot that would say, it was him, except he talked too much, and who else could have done it, as it were?

17:46You know, initially I didn't think that Ray Jennings was innocent, and then when I saw him speak at his sentencing about Christ and about how he would stand before God and be judged. And he turned to the members of the O 'Keeffe family, and he said that I'll stand with you and with you and with you, and we'll answer this question. And it touched me. And I realized that either this was an innocent man or this was a sociopath who deserved an Academy Award. And I just had to know which one was it. You were a religious person? Not at all. At least, I wasn't before this whole experience, but it's been hard for me to explain how this all unfolded.

18:32There have been a lot of coincidences. Coincidences? I like that force that drew me to watch this Dayline episode. That I am not a person who is working at the Innocence Project. I wasn't trying to find cases about someone being innocent. I was just inexplicably that night. Well, but it's not just that I was curious after I saw the episode. Why did I watch the episode? What compelled me? It's the only Dateline I've ever watched. And it drew me in. And if not for that, we wouldn't have Ray Jennings out of prison right now. Clem is a fascinating guy. As he pointed out, he's not a person of faith, if you put it that way.

19:15You know, there was a certain intellectual arrogance about the way he came off, but he earned it. He is a very, very bright man who's learned a lot of stuff all on his own. And faith is not one of the things he brought with him. But in spite of that, what impressed me was his willingness to sit and watch somebody's story because he thought there might be a possibility this person didn't do what was alleged to be done because Iraq war veteran. How would he do a thing like that? and then having watched it would take the trouble of taking steps to do something about it. A lot of us have seen a television show and said, you know, that didn't turn out the way it should have.

19:59I mean, I have. I've watched Datelines before and said, that's the wrong verdict, man. That shouldn't have happened that way. But who among us would decide to, you know, upend his whole life and spend several years trying to show that the verdict in that case was wrong, just because they had a strong belief that somebody had been unjustly convicted. So whatever else you say about Clint, that is one of the most impressive things I've heard of in a long time. Yeah. To think that Dateline sparked all of this. It's amazing when, Keith, even though we've been doing this for a long time, you longer than me.

20:37Does it always amaze you when the show reaches certain people and makes a difference? And something happens? Yes, it does. Yeah, it's incredible, right? And then so you cannot let it go. You have to keep following the string then. And we certainly did with this one. Boy, some of the twists and turns this has taken, and it isn't over yet. This is a case which reached a conclusion, the conclusion was wrong. continued to try to reach a conclusion and went in separate directions. So the DA's office in L.A. is split over who's responsible and what to do about it. The sheriff's department, sheriff's office, is split over who's responsible and what to do about it.

21:21But the tale of the girl in the blue Mustang is not satisfactorily ended, in my opinion. No. I hope that we do get the satisfying ending. When we come back, we'll share an extra clip from Keith's interview with Raymond.

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23:37My heart for this family just breaks. I mean, it was one thing after the next. I cannot imagine. Like, murder is enough, right? It's horrible. And then all the things that they... So their daughter is murdered. And then, you know, we're talking about the couple getting divorced. We are talking about their son ends up taking his own life after getting hooked on pills from an injury. And then, of course, the three trials they had to sit through, the exoneration. I mean, how much can one family endure? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just truly, truly horrible what they've gone through. and you know Michael Keefe is a very strong guy to have been able to get through all of that and still you know want to keep pushing so give him a lot of credit for that good for the parents though too it's very difficult during that time but they really pushed to keep the case alive they did and to get the word out like any way they could and you know all these years later they're still doing it her father is out there and he loves talking about the case because he still believes that raymond jennings is the person who is responsible for the death of his daughter and he would like to see him put back in prison i'm sure um but you know raymond jennings has been shown to be not guilty we have some extra sound from raymond that we're going to play extra sound from your interview with him.

25:16Great. There are lots of guys with faith, probably just as strong as yours, who are still kind of rotting away after many, many years. Yeah. Well, you know, I can't speak about how the Lord moves or why he moves and why this happened to me and why I'm sitting here talking to you and other people who are innocent or sitting in prison still. You know, that's far beyond my intellect. So you don't go to the why me question then. You must. I did it. I did. You know, throughout the 11 years, absolutely. It came up many a times, especially when you're hurting. Why me? Why me? You'd look in that mirror and I'd be like, why me?

25:57I'd be in the cell by myself. Why me? What am I supposed to be learning? What are you trying to show me? What are you trying to teach me? What's going on on the outside? Sometimes you have to take yourself out of that box that we put ourselves in and look at the ripple effects of this incident, this one incident, as vicious as it is, it's had a huge ripple effect. People's lives have been changed forever. These are things that we can never get back, you know, and, you know, a family was, both families were destroyed. You know, one family is still suffering, and now one family has found elation and joy in a, you know, a newfound freedom.

26:44So, you know, I don't know why these things happen to particular people or why it happened to me, but I know it turned out for my good. That's the thing about Raymond Jennings. And it's been a number of other people I know who have been released from prison after a long time inside. Ray Jennings was in prison for 11 years, jail or prison. Part of that time awaiting trial in years afterwards. And yet he came out, and as he said in that interview, he doesn't hold grudges. He is not an angry man. He is not a bitter man. And it's always such an inspiration to see that, that a person can, you know, suffer that much in the course of a life.

27:25And then, you know, upon winning his freedom, he's able to put it all aside and move on with a regular life. Was he completely exonerated in this? Or was it, you know, because sometimes there's degrees of how people are free. Absolutely. Completely exonerated. So how are you left feeling for the future of this case? There was a time, and I guess this goes back probably, I mean, this has been going on for a long time, three, four years, when I really did believe that we were going to finally get the true answer to this case. That there was going to be movement in that direction. It would happen.