Talking Dateline: The Man Who Loved Christmas

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1:07Hi, everyone. I'm Blaine Alexander, and I want to welcome you to what I guess we could call a special edition of Talking Dateline today, because we are joined by not one, but two of our fantastic Dateline producers, Allison Orr and Kim Krowitz. Thank you, ladies, for joining me. Hi, Blaine. Hi, Blaine. All right, guys, we are going to be discussing our latest episode called The Man Who Loved Christmas. Now, if you haven't seen the episode yet, you can, of course, stream it now on Peacock or listen wherever you get your podcasts and then come right back here and listen to our conversation. Later on, we've got an extra clip of some police body camera footage with the man who got this entire investigation started.

1:45And as you will know, if you watch the episode, he is quite the character. And then, of course, we're going to answer some of your questions from social media. All right, ladies, let's talk Dateline. Let's talk. So first, before we get started, Allison and Kim, I'm going to get you ladies to each kind of walk us through just a quick summary of what this story was about. Of course, first starting with the person that we're focused on throughout this entire story, whose name was Harold Allen, or as he was known to his friends and family, Peanut. Tell us about the story. Well, the story is about Harold Allen Peanut.

2:19That was his nickname. He's a man from southern Indiana. He was married about three years to a woman that he had met later on in life, and he died somewhat suddenly from what was determined to be cardiac arrest. He'd been sick for just a few weeks, and his health deteriorated very rapidly. It was determined to be natural causes, and it stayed that way for a long time until something crazy happened. Right, Kim? Nine months later, there is a burglary. There's a burglary at Marsha Allen's house. She is the widow. And she's away with her parents. And she gets a security alert on her phone in the middle of the night.

3:04And it shows her someone is in her house. And in fact, there were two men in her house. She immediately recognizes one of them. she recognizes the man to be a good friend of her daughter's. So she calls the police. The man who broke into the house ultimately tells the police all about a murder plot that ends with the investigators implicating Harold's widow, Marcia, and her adult daughter in poisoning him with ethylene glycol. Yeah. Let's talk about the man who's at the center of all of it, Harold Allen. You know, I really enjoyed getting to know Harold by talking to his brothers and his sisters-in-law because it was so clear just from, I mean, the first moment of our first interview, just how incredibly close this family was.

3:52And I have to say, I mean, all three of them looked, yes, they had their differences as brothers, but they looked so much alike. You could just see in those pictures the bond that they had. And then when they talked about their growing up, there was so much of it that we obviously couldn't fit in our Dateline episode. But I mean, Kim, you were there for those interviews. These were emotional interviews. They just had such beautiful memories of growing up together. I mean, so, so tight. One of them said we never had so much as a harsh word to one another. I mean, the love, you know, it struck me as this is just like, you know, you don't hear it all the time that siblings are this close.

4:32And they loved each other so much. And Peanut was 10 years older than the youngest. He was almost like a father figure in a way to the youngest. Yeah, and there's just no, there's no closing. There's no making up for that loss. I could see how emotional they were talking about the loss and the hole that will be inside that, those three brothers and that family forever. It's tragic. I think one thing that stood out to me in our interviews was when they talked about the fact that Peanut really had a difficult time with love. He was so talented in so many different ways. He loved people. He was giving.

5:10He taught himself to play musical instruments. I mean, he had all of these talents and gifts. But just when it came to that love piece, they knew. And I think that all of us can identify with that in some way that maybe there's a family member or somebody who just, ah, you just keep making the same mistake or you just keep going down this wrong road and you can't pull someone back. You can't tell someone what to do because they're an adult. But it just was heartbreaking that they both saw that and they knew that about their brother. Yeah, yeah. Harold had been twice divorced and he he just was always looking for love.

5:43We all want love. Right. And and, you know, I think it was one of the brothers who said he meets someone and she's the best thing ever. She's the best this. She's the best that. And he I think he had a big heart and he expected to get back what he gave with love and and and wanted a family. They told us he really wanted a family. He wanted to be a father. He didn't have his own children. And Marcia came with family. She came with a daughter and a granddaughter, and they all lived together under one roof. And you have to wonder a little bit, I wondered if, you know, that desire for him to have a partner and to be connected and with a family, if were there red flags that he didn't see?

6:30We don't know. We weren't inside that marriage. Everything is a mystery. But I will say my impression for Marsha as she progresses through the story is she is a very cool cucumber. And maybe she's a fantastic actress. We don't know. Maybe she also loved him and we don't know what turned. But you can see how she, you know, I thought that she was just incredibly composed in what should have been pressure situations. So I'm just, you know. The interrogations. Yeah. The police interrogations. Sure. Well, let's talk about Marsha. Let's talk about the point at which Marsha enters this picture. And it was interesting almost from the beginning because they described how Harold met Marsha at a high school reunion.

7:16And I think all of us who have been to high school reunions or any sort of class reunions, you come back, these are people that you knew, people that you typically grew up with or at least went through school with for a number of years. And so the notion of meeting someone for the first time at a 30th high school reunion is so surprising. They said there were only 70 some people in the class and and he didn't know her, which the family was like, how did you not know her? But I think it's probably more like, you know, you go through high school people, you maybe you don't recognize their name, but you you kind of knew them.

7:50You knew who they were, but you don't know them. And I think that's probably what it was. they, perhaps they remembered each other's first name, but they never knew each other. And of course, they would be different people many years later, too. A lot changes in 30 years. So you may meet somebody back at your high school reunion, and they're not at all the person. They didn't turn out the way you thought. You're a completely different person. Then there are sometimes you go to those reunions, and it's exactly like, that's Dan, still Dan, or, you know, it's always something like that. Exactly. You know, it was interesting when we interviewed James, Harold's brother, he talked about the fact that when he first met, when they first met Marsha, they thought, okay, she actually seems better than some of his previous, you know, love interests, right?

8:37They were encouraged momentarily. And it was just interesting hearing them talk about the kind of evolution, but they had some suspicions. They had some questions about this relationship pretty early on. Can you talk about some of that, Kim? Yeah, they did. Samantha, the sister-in-law, she thought she was quite cold, and she felt there was just something off about her. I can just imagine that given the closeness that we talked about and, like, the warmth that existed between those family members, that it might be kind of hard for somebody to, like, to make, to be anywhere near as warm and loving as they are.

9:17But you can't discount, like, a gut feeling you get. Kim, can you kind of talk about at what point the family started to get suspicious? Because there were several instances in there where they, you know, they had some inklings of something doesn't feel quite right, but didn't really know how to put their finger on it. Yeah, it started with the way they learned Harold had died, right? They learned through this police dispatch that a cousin overhears. But when they called Marsha, and this was the first red flag, she didn't want to talk. But when she texted one of the family members back, they said, what happened?

9:59And she just wrote, he died. And then she said she was too upset to get on the phone. And ultimately, when she did connect with them, she just said, you know, she found him in the bedroom and she didn't give them any other information. She wasn't the one reaching out to tell them he died. So they were, their antennas were up. They were, they were not comfortable with it. They certainly weren't thinking she killed him. Didn't one of the sister-in-laws say that they thought that maybe she failed to get him emergency care soon enough? Like they just didn't know what had happened on that day. Maybe he collapsed.

10:36She didn't call 911 soon enough. She didn't attempt to resuscitate. They thought that was about as far as they could go in their minds that there was some negligence. They just couldn't imagine the scope of it. There was a part in here, and we touched on it briefly in our story, but a lot of viewers may recognize this as kind of something familiar when Marsha wrote this book on grief. And it's kind of self-published a book about how to rebound from losing a loved one. And it certainly had echoes of the Corey Rishens case from Utah. That's the Utah mom who wrote a book about basically grief, a children's book about grief, and then was ultimately convicted of murdering her husband.

11:17I believe by poison. By poison. Mm-hmm. That's right. But let's talk a little bit about Marsha's book. Kim, what can you tell us about what she wrote in her book? Well, it was a self-published book. It's not a long book. I'm going to guess here, about 20 to 30 pages. There's a forward to the book, and she says she's sharing her story with anyone who's been through a traumatic loss. She wants to help people. That's the reason, she says, for writing this book. She wants to help them so they can learn to move forward. She's going to take her situation where she has suffered this loss and she wants to help people, which is so diabolical, right?

11:56Certainly. When we come back, we will play an extra clip from the investigators' first interview with Stephen White.

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13:38Well, let's talk about the break-in because I think that there is one thing that we see over and over in these Dateline cases that we cover and that sometimes things would go completely undiscovered. These crimes would go completely either unsolved or uninvestigated if it weren't for some small thing, something that tips people off or a family member that just wouldn't give up or whatever it is, right? And in this situation, this would have stayed completely under the radar had it not been for that burglary, that break-in. It seemed completely unrelated at the time, like completely unrelated, that why someone would be burglarizing the house.

14:23The estate had been basically settled, though the families were Marcia and Harold's brothers still had some unfinished business about some of the property that belonged to the family, namely the guns that were stolen in the safe. But she had the, you know, they were worth a lot of money. It seemed plausible that someone would go in and want to steal them. But to find out that it had something to do with the murder was just nobody could have imagined that. And what's interesting about that burglary is, you know, people often have cameras outside their homes, right? The ring cameras, you know, but this woman, Marsha, she had several cameras inside her home.

15:01And she actually had them because she has cats. She had cats. And so she put them there so she could, I guess, watch her cats during the day. And her daughter, who ultimately we learn, her daughter set up the burglary, sent her friend Stephen into the house. She didn't know that she'd set up the cameras, which probably explains why Stephen White in the middle of this crime, he's not really, yeah, he's not worried about getting caught because it's kind of an inside job. Right. Right. And he had no idea that there was really a cat cam that was capturing his every move. He was brought down by the cat cam.

15:38This entire thing was, really. The cat burglars brought down by the cat cam. Exactly, exactly. I go back to, Kim, our very first conversation when we first started working on this story together. And as our longtime viewers know, our Dateline stories come to us in any variety of ways. But, Kim, I remember our first conversation. You said, okay, I know you're getting ready to start researching on this, but we have a lot of body camera video. And it's really good body camera video. And we're going to live in that a lot. And this was before I had watched a piece of it, before I knew anything about the story.

16:11But I have to tell you that I don't think that I have seen police body cam footage quite like what we saw with Stephen White talking to police that day. Oh, I know. I have never seen anything like that. He is a character. He's not what you would expect. Maybe in a typical Dateline story, it's comical on many levels. I think he's probably a funny guy. And he was truly a character. And he did cooperate with police and led to the solving of this murder. Yeah. You know, I think that there are a number of interesting things about him. Because, yes, Kim, to your point, I mean, you can listen to him.

16:53And he goes any number of ways when he's talking to police. He talks about his, you know, suspected strep throat. He talks about the fact that his dad is running for mayor. He's got a couple of kids. I mean, all sorts of different things that are going on. But then in the midst of all of these things, he says this woman is actually a murderer and she killed her husband using a root beer float. And so, you know, in talking with investigators, you could understand how they could think, OK, did I just get a whole basket full of craziness or is there something here that I really need to sift through?

17:22It doesn't seem like it's resonating with them at first. Right. I mean, it's he's he's saying these crazy things, what seems like crazy things. And it doesn't seem like they're stopping and thinking this is serious. He continues to talk to them about, you know, if you look in her computer, you'll see it. And they're walking away, you know. So I think they just thought he was someone who was trying to talk his way out of a crime. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. I watch this. I'm like, Kim, you guys are going to fact check that his dad running for his dad was indeed running for mayor.

17:56I'm glad you said that in there because I could imagine a lot of viewers would have questions about that. His dad really was running for mayor, but he did not win. Correct. Right. His dad was running for the mayor of Austin, which is the town in which they lived. He was a Republican candidate, and he did not win. What we learned, he had actually—this wasn't the first time he had run for mayor. He had won—he had run for mayor 2019 also. So Stephen wasn't lying about that. And he wasn't lying ultimately about the story that led to the arrest. I mean, we've talked a lot about Stephen White, what he said.

18:35There was plenty in that body camera video that we just couldn't get into the story. Let's listen to a little bit of what he said to officers. He actually gets a phone call in the middle of his conversation with police that day. And here's a little bit of that. Hello. Sorry. Hey, listen, I'm sitting here talking to some cops about some shit that's going on right now, bro. I really, I was getting to go to the doctor and then come by and grab you if I didn't have strep. But I'm not going to be able to get you to work today, man. I'm sorry. I'm sick as fuck and now there's a lot of shit going on and I'm probably going to get fucking arrested and go to jail.

19:14Swear to God. But listen, I... Listen, bro, I love you, alright? I'll get a hold of you. If I were you, I'd call your mother-in-law and ask if she can take you to work. I gotta say, I love that he offers a solution at the end for this friend to an alternate way to get to work. He seems like he did say he has a lot on his plate. It does seem like maybe he's taken care of a lot of people. And I don't know how Ashley talked him into this, but maybe there's this part of him that is just kind of a nice guy who did this as a favor to Ashley. And there's no doubt he loves his parents. Remember, he loves his parents.

19:54He was so worried that they're going to disown him. And he's saying, you know, Mom, Marsha set me up and my parents are going to disown me. They're going to kick me out. And I mean, I think this is a guy who loves his parents. He doesn't want them to think poorly of him. He did have a record. He even said, I'm a felon. Yeah. And he says in that phone call that's just so funny. It's like there are two equivalent things. I can't help you because I have strep and I'm probably going to jail. One of the two. Either way, if I don't go to jail, I'm going to go back to bed, you know? Right. Separately.

20:30Either way, just count me out. Okay. A lot of things. A lot of things that are happening right here in rapid succession. Yeah. But you're right. I mean, he does seem like someone who helps. He's got friends calling him to give them a ride to work. He's got friends calling to help with burglaries for money. I mean, there are a lot of things that Stephen White has juggling. But at the end of the day, he gives that bit of information that, you know, kind of helps to unravel everything. The root beer float. Exactly. So let's talk about the digital evidence in this case, because it is just the sheer number of text messages that they have to go through to get to the bottom of this plot is stunning.

21:08I mean, we're talking about tens of thousands, what, 24 ,000 text messages or so that they went through between mother and daughter. Yeah, I never did the math, but I am curious. They said it was a year and a half, 24 ,000 text messages. Someone ought to see how many text messages they were going back, you know, how many back and forth every day. I'd be curious. I'm going to do that right now. Yeah. But, you know, it does show you that they were close, too. They were a close mother and daughter. They talked all the time. They did. They were talking about regular things. They were talking about, you know, Ashley's little girl and what they're going to have for dinner and what's going on, you know, with work.

21:50But then, of course, they're talking about poisons and root beer floats. So I just did quick math. I mean, I used my calculator because math is not my forte. But we've got about 43, 44 text messages per day that go back and forth between the two. That's a lot. Which in a busy, I mean, that's a lot of text messages. That's a lot. Everybody, text your mother. I feel like I don't talk to my mother enough. But I'm not plotting a murder with my mother. Also that. There's that. Also that. But no, they talked a lot, which makes it even more stunning that at the end, there was this bitter split that Ashley moved away.

22:26She felt resentful. She planned this burglary. I mean, it was clear that they had a pretty close relationship in some regard. I mean, obviously, there was dysfunction there if you're plotting to murder, you know, the husband. But there was something close that broke apart there. So that's even more notable considering how much they talked. Yeah. And if not for that, if not for that dissolution of that mother-daughter relationship, they would have gotten away with this. Let's talk about the poisons. Because I have to say that in the process of doing this story, I learned about some poisons that I'd never heard of.

23:04So there were foxglove seeds. There were pong pong seeds, which I'd never heard of. And then, of course, ethylene glycol was in there as well. But, I mean, there were several different methods that they at least discussed, whether ordered or discussed, that came up in some way as part of this plot. Ashley was doing the research. And, yeah, they were trying to figure out what would be best to use but not traceable. You know, when they were talking about the foxgloof seeds, there's text messages about, you know, make sure you wear gloves because it's not safe to touch. But nothing. Whatever they were using, of course, wasn't working and not working fast enough.

23:44There was this quote from the story that I think is going to certainly stay with a lot of people. But Ashley, when she's talking to investigators at one point, she says loyalty to the mother is a hell of a thing. How sincere do we think she is in saying that? What were your thoughts when you heard her say that? I know for me, I had questions. The same question you have about her sincerity on that, though what she is saying is so true, and we have seen it in other stories. In fact, it's not a spoiler alert. We should watch the premiere of Dateline on Friday. Josh Mankiewicz has a story that absolutely involves a mother and her children involved in some things that are worthy of a Dateline.

24:28So it's a very deep statement that, you know, has a lot of truth to it. So was in that moment, was she trying to manipulate and minimize her role with the police or was she saying something that is just universally true? But it is interesting, though, that even if she was pointing the finger back, I mean, she there was a piece of her, according to those text messages that she sent to Stephen White that wanted the recognition for it. I mean, she was like, oh, this couldn't have happened without me. My mom couldn't have done this without me. I was the master. I mean, you know, paraphrasing here, but essentially saying that she was the mastermind behind all of this.

25:04And so there is, of course, the issue over, you know, feeling like she didn't get enough of the money. But one could wonder, was there just, you know, like pride? Like, hey, this was my mom, but she couldn't do this without me. Yeah. Yeah. I think she thought she was going to get a lot more of Harold's life insurance. Perhaps she even thought it was going to be split. And the prosecutor told us that she was being paid around$1 ,000 a month by her mom. And clearly that wasn't enough. And so she was angry. And that's why she was saying, this was all my idea. She couldn't have done it without me.