Transcript of Down the Rabbit Hole

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Amazing. Discover the all electrified range at Lexus. Ieinhouse tonight on date live. I just kept hearing her scream over and over again, and I didn't know what to do. I get a call from my sister.

She said, someone broke into the house, and I think mom's hurt. This was a brutal, cold blooded killing. It's no secret that my dad and my mom had been arguing. How did he come off? It seemed like he should have been more upset.

She was having an affair with a co worker, so we had to check him out. I said, carrie, who killed my mom? She said, I think it was zaneous. Who was saying, he's my stalker. I'm scared he's gonna hurt me.

Someone's framing me. Framing you? Yes. I saw there was a confession. A lot of the things didn't make sense.

They created this bubble around the two of them that was void of reality. You telling me the truth? Yes. Do I look like a bad kid? No, I'm a good kid.

They were playing out a lifetime movie. How do you get your head around a thing like that? You don't. I wonder, how is it that I didn't see it? It was a murder that seemed simple to solve.

There was a witness, even a confession. So why was the mystery growing by the minute? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Here's Keith Morrison with down the rabbit hole.

They were young and foolish and drawn to their phones like moths to a flame. God, I swear, I love you. I love you, too. So much to talk about, so much to plan. I just want to live my life the way I want to live it.

They together created this dramatic world. I worry about you constantly. You're on my mind all day, wanting to feel that love so badly. You'd do anything to keep it. You know how it happens.

So did Shakespeare. Young lovers caught up in their overheated dramas so fierce, so intense, so dangerous. Stop blaming yourself for it. Things happen for a reason. But all anyone knew when this drama began was contained in a different kind of phone call.

Okay, ma'am, what's your name? Carrie Murphy. It was the middle of the night, middle of July in humble, Texas, just outside of Houston. The tearful 16 year old girl was pleading with 911 to send help. Somebody was in her house and was attacking her mother.

All I did was hear my mom scream, stop, stop. Okay, but did they break in, or did they just come in? They broke in. So right away, they sent Deputy Constable Fred Hooper over there. And about all he knew was that a panicky teenager had told 911 her mother was being attacked.

My heart's pumping. Not knowing what to expect and still thinking that the suspects could possibly be on scene. By then, the second deputy had arrived, and he and Hooper prepared to confront what was possibly an ongoing crime. You must have, you know, gone in with your guns drawn and the whole thing, huh? Correct.

We started at the side gate. Small house, fenced backyard. They passed a trampoline, a swing set, and a pile of bricks. And on the way, going to the back door, we noticed that there were two windows that were broken. We got to the back door.

It was open, so we made entry into the house. Straight in front was the kitchen. And as you walked into the back door, to the right, there was the living room and then a door to the main bedroom. And there she was, lying on a waterbed. She was covered in blood.

Was she still alive? Did she have some vital sign? She did not appear to be alive. Could you see any obvious wounds besides all this blood? Um, she had lacerations that we could see.

Her name was Marianne Murphy. She was the mother of the girl who called 911. Deputy Hooper cautiously moved through the house looking for the intruder. Only person in the home was the mother. So if there was anybody there, they were long gone.

Yes. By then, the victim's daughter, her name was Carrie, had called her older brother. Scott Murphy was 21 years old, working overnights at the airport doing electrical repairs. And all she said was, someone broke into the house, and I think mom's hurt. I dropped everything in my hand, every tool.

I dropped it, and I made my way home. On the way there, Scott called their dad, dawn, who was also working nights. When I got to my parents street and there was 15 to 20 cop cars outside, that's when I knew something was bad. So you arrived, got out of the car. What happened?

I was very loud, very boisterous. Where's my mom? Where's my sister? Robert Scott couldn't see that Kerry was huddled up in deputy Hooper's cardinal, and an officer advised me to step away from the house. They wouldn't let me in.

So I began to get aggressive and get very hands on with the officer. He was hysterical, which I understood because if it was me, I probably would have felt the same way at that point. I was then cuffed and put in the back of a car. And at the time, I was very angry. I remember being in the back of the cop car, kicking the door, trying to kick windows, trying to get out of my handcuffs.

What was going through your mind with all this going on? All I'm thinking is, why won't they let me see her? Why won't they let me go to her? Did it dawn on you at some point? There was probably a reason for that.

When my dad showed up and my dad looked at me and he just put his finger up and he mouthed the words, stop. Wait. And so, I mean, I may have been in my twenties, but my dad says, stop. Stop. Scott's father had a talk with the officer, and in a matter of minutes, Scott was let go.

So I went up to my dad and my dad. My dad was a very hard man. He was loving and he was a committed father, but his love was. Was tough. And my dad looked at me and he said, do you have your big boy pants on?

And I said, yes, sir. And he looked at me and he shook his head and he said, she didn't make it. That means your mom didn't make it. And I looked at my dad and I just kind of glared at him, and I looked at him and I said, dad, I'll kill him. And he said, son, there are some things you don't say out loud.

Scott had no idea who killed his mother, and his lust for revenge wouldn't do much good. Scott had some things to learn about pain and loyalty and betrayal before the killer was revealed. Quite a bomb that went off in that family. Yep. Or a virus that infected everyone.

You can't change the way that God does his life. Do they give you nightmares? You could call it a nightmare. Or love, if you wish. The kind that curdles into something else altogether.

The street was a jumble of lights and cars and curious neighbors. When Detective Juan Veramontis of the Harris county sheriff arrived, who was the first person you talked to and what'd you hear? The first officer that I spoke with was the first responding officer. Let him know what had taken place. Did they see or talk to Kerry at all?

No. At that point, Carrie was still in my patrol vehicle. Carrie? The victim's daughter. Deputy Hooper had talked to her about what happened in the house, and he briefed detective viramontes.

She heard a male's voice that was telling her mother to shut up. And then she ran out of the house and tried to get some help from anybody that would be outside. Inside. At the scene of the killing. An interesting bit of evidence.

We discovered a gun laying by the mother's head underneath the pillow. It was Marianne's own handgun, a semi automatic. She didn't get a chance to use it, obviously. No, sir. Not from what we can tell, no.

Must have been asleep when she was attacked. Couldn't get to the gun in time. Your mom was pretty handy with a gun, wasn't sheddenhe she was. It normally sat on a leather case on the headboard. And when the police found it, it was on the bed, on the actual mattress.

Which means at some point, it had been touched. Yeah. And knowing my mom, she would have went for it. And if she hadn't been asleep, if she hadn't also been deaf in one ear and thus caught by surprise, she'd have taken any attacker down. Figured Scott, because it was hard to get the best of Mary Ann Murphy.

She was strong, a strong woman, strong values. And she stuck to him. And she made us stick to them as well. Heather Tucker grew up with Marianne's daughter, Carrie. She had known Marianne her whole life.

You spent a lot of time at her house. Yes. Tell me about that. Marianne was funny. She was sarcastic.

She was comfortable around Carrie's friends. When Heather came to the house, it wasn't miss Murphy. It wasn't anything like that. It was, hey, mom. She treated us well, but she would also kind of, like, talk back to us.

I remember we introduced one of our new friends to her for the first time, and we warned him that Marianne was deaf. In one year, he's like, okay. And so he walks up, and he very loudly is like, hi, ma'am. Nice to meet you. She said, damn it, boy, I'm deaf, not stupid.

Oh, Miss Marianne. Okay, where do I start? Katie was another childhood friend of Carrie's. She liked Marianne the minute she met her. I remember walking in through their garage, and she just had such joy.

Like, I just remember thinking, oh, my God, she looks nice. She was always doing things for Carrie and buying her things and taking her to and from wherever Carrie needed to go. She had what I would call sometimes the doctor Jekyll mister Hyde effect. She could, you know, be getting on to you about, you know, you did something wrong, you didn't do the dishes right. The phone would ring and she'd just, you know, hello, and just be the sweetest person on the phone.

And then she'd hang up and be right back to getting on YouTube. But when it came to her kids, when it came to her family, period, all she wanted was for us to thrive. Was she the boss in that household? I considered her the boss. I think anybody would consider her the boss, except for maybe Don, her husband.

They were so different, mom and dad. Very different careers, too. Marianne worked for the department of Public Safety. Don was a machinist. My mom grew up very country, very strict.

Her dad was a cop, ex military, so he had a very strict regiment. My dad, on the other hand, was the proverbial. From the wrong side of the tracks, fast cars, loud cars, street racing, fighting. They didn't make a lot of money, but the Murphys did okay. Scott got a kick out of his mom, respected his father, and doted on his little sister.

I changed her diapers as a baby. You know, I painted her fingernails red, white and blue for 4 July. I was the first one to teach her how to braid her hair. And now he could see that his baby sister, still only 16 years old, had been through a terrible ordeal. Terrified, hiding in her room, running to the neighbors.

Police needed to get what information they could from their fragile witness. One of the things I wanted to do, of course, is transport her to the homicide office and conduct an interview in a more appropriate setting. Detectives strapped in for a long night. I kept screaming my mom's name. I was like, mom, mom, mom, please answer me.

Answer me. As their young witness told her terrible story.

If youve been the victim of a crime, it can sometimes feel like youve been left in the dark with nowhere to turn for answers or support. But help is always available, no matter who you are or what your background. VictimsCharter, ie provides information on translation services, explains your rights, and offers the support you need when you need it most. You have rights, you have support, you have a voice. Find yours in the victims charter, brought to you by the government of Ireland.

I'm Keith Morrison. This story is about the end of the world, a frostbitten pet cemetery and zombies. This is a story about a woman linked forever to the awful things that happened to her children. It has to be to be heard, to be believed. Think you know every Dateline story?

Think again. Listen to mommy. Doomsday and a dozen other riveting series. When you follow the Dateline originals podcast out of nowhere, there it was, sudden, shocking, terrifying. I have never in my life felt fear like that.

Was this someone's idea of a sick prank? Or was it a horror movie come horribly alive? I'm thinking he killed him and he had filmed the murder. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Dateline's newest podcast, the man in the Black Mask. Listen for free each week or unlock new episodes early and enjoy ad free listening by subscribing to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or datelinepremium.com dot.

Carrie Murphy was a 16 year old mess by the time the detective sat her down at the station around sunrise, the night she'd been through. Tough for anybody, and this young somebody had just lost her mother. Want some water? They did what they could to make her comfortable. They would need her to figure out what happened to her mother.

Well, you need to use the restroom before we. We start the interview. You're okay as far as that goes. She wouldn't be able to tell them a lot. She didn't see much, she said, but she heard a lot, and she'd help if she could, tired as she was.

We brought you here just to talk to you, you know, try to get some information about what happened at home, right? It was the sound of her mother screaming, she said, that woke her to an intruder in the house. My mom screaming, stop, stop. Help me, help me, help me. Stop.

And I got scared. She says she got up and got a knife that she had in her. In her room and waited a few minutes. You were in your room, and your mom was in her bedroom, right? Okay.

And I just heard, like, a man's voice, go, shut up. Shut up. And I got scared. I didn't know if I should run out. I didn't have a phone on me.

I couldn't call 911 right then. I just didn't know what to do. And I froze. And I heard, like, footsteps, like, running and, like, hard footsteps running. And.

I'm sorry. I walked out of my room, and I kept screaming my mom's name. I was like, mom, mom, mom, please answer me. Answer me. And she didn't say anything.

She waits a few more minutes, and then she runs out the house. And she's running out the house. She mentions the paper that she saw outside as she was running. And I slipped on this piece of paper in the yard, so I picked it up, and then I ran to a neighbor's house on that piece of paper was Marianne's address and a list of hours when she would be at home. Weirdly, there was another note, too, right on the dining table.

Deputy Hooper saw it first. The note stated, good luck in court without your mom. The killer added the b word. Carrie said she didn't see that note. She was in such a rush to get out.

But she told detectives something that seemed to explain its meaning. And he was speeding. She told them she was supposed to be in traffic court in just a few hours. She'd been in a car accident with a man a few weeks before. He hit me in the back, and then I did a 180, and then he hit me in the front.

He got mad because when he opened the door, he was like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but it's your fault. But they gave you a ticket for onsite lane change? Yes, sir. But Carrie said that wasn't the end of it.

Something strange happened with that same man only a few hours before the murder. She was at a restaurant with her mother and some family friends, and I had noticed this man, like, staring at my table. I looked back 20 minutes later, and he was still staring. Later, she said she realized that was the man from the accident. And this person that was there that he said, look like the guy that you had an accident with?

Yes. She was at home later that night when another odd thing happened. And this gave her the creeps. And I was doing scrapbooking, like. Yeah.

And I noticed, like, I kept seeing the same headlights. The same headlights had passed, like, three times in the past five minutes. I got kind of suspicious, so I started watching out of the kitchen window, she said. She told me, told her mother about it, but Marianne didn't do anything. She said she called her brother, too.

She said a blue truck that was driving around the block over and over and over again. So I left my house a little early to go to work, and I went by my parents house. So I just kind of sat out in the driveway, and I waited for, I want to say, 15 to 20 minutes. He didn't see anything wrong, so he headed to work, sure as he could be that things were okay, though they were anything but. And now this case seemed to be pointing in a specific direction.

And the question was Carrie the real target? Do you have any enemies? No. No. I'm a very nice person.

You've had any problems with anybody other than this person in the accident? No. And you have a picture of him, or you have that paperwork there at your house? Yes. It's in a blue folder on the table.

A stranger with a grudge. It wouldn't be the first time someone killed out of misguided rage. But this investigation was just getting started. So detectives would also be looking at someone who was not a stranger. It's no secret that my dad and my mom had been arguing.

Katie remembers how she heard the awful news. She was at work when a former teacher called to say misses Murphy had died. And so then hung up the phone. I called my mom and we go directly to Kerry's house. And I knock on the door and I'm like, saying her name.

I'm like, Carrie. I wait, no answer. And then I was walking back to the car and a reporter stopped me. And they were like, do you know Carrie? Are you friends with Carrie?

A reporter. Katie's first clue that something was seriously wrong, that misses Murphy didn't just die. Katie also didn't realize that Carrie was still talking to detective Irramontes and other detectives had been since the wee hours. She had told them about the man from the car accident, the sheer terror she felt that night and the awful things she witnessed. I just kept hearing her scream over and over again.

Detective Vera Montes analyzed the crime scene in the hours after the murder. He explained to us what he saw that night as he walked from room to room there in the dark. He began at the back door where Kerry said the intruders had broken in. The first thing I was looking for was to see if there was any forced entry into the house. There was no signs of damage, no signs of forced entry.

It looks kind of like the way it looks now. Another thing I noticed was the window broken. Both panes on the window were broken. There was some glass inside the residence and there was also glass outside. There was a brick here on the kitchen floor, which it didn't make sense because most of the glass would have been contained to the inside of the house, not outside.

It looked like someone threw a brick through the windows twice. And then he noticed that note on the dining table was handwritten. And it said something to the effect that, good luck in court without your mom, bitch. Strange. A killer taking time to leave a note and one so incriminating.

There was items on the floor. It appeared that somebody had just swept everything off the kitchen counter and it was just laying here in this area here. He got to the bedroom where Marianne was killed. It appeared that she had been stabbed multiple times, over 50 times at least. Even though she was covered in blood.

The blood was contained to the body and a little bit on the bed. No bloody footprints or handprints anywhere else in the house. So somebody had done something to contain the blood. The veteran detective just knew the house was telling him something. So the fact that there was no signs of forced entry, there was more glass outside the residence than inside.

So that led me to believe that this was a stage scene, that someone was trying to make it seem like either it was a home invasion or a burglary gone wrong. But who would do that? Maybe an outsider. Sure, somebody with a dead begrudge, but anytime that there's a female, a mother or a wife got killed at the residence, we start looking at people that live with her, like the husband, Carrie's friends at. Her dad was kind of scary.

He was, like, rough around the edges, pretty strict. Like, I remember the perception. The way Carrie talked about her dad was like, should I be afraid of him? Don wasn't necessarily friendly. He wouldn't go out of his way to start a conversation with me.

We definitely minded him. Everybody minded him. How did he get on with Marianne? I never really saw them interact much, just because at that point, when I was hanging around, he was working nights, so he'd be sleeping, or he would just be sitting in his chair trying to relax. Robert.

It didn't take long for investigators to learn that Marianne and Don were sleeping separately. There was more than a little tension in that relationship. He had been having some trouble with alcohol, right? He had. My dad had been.

He had been struggling with some alcohol addiction for a long time, been an issue growing up, but over the past probably year and a half, it had been a pretty regular thing for him to, you know, put down a few and then sometimes more than a few. Well, how'd your mom feel about that? Oh, my mother was less than happy about that. She wasn't a drinker, so to her, if you have more than two drinks, you're drunk, of course. And once, you know, two became four and four became eight, eight became 16.

That's when the. This is. This is not going to happen. And she was very, very vocal about that. Deputy Hooper talked to Don the night of the killing.

When you first saw him. What did he look like? How did he come off? What were you thinking? I guess you could say he was more calm.

Under the circumstances of a situation. It seemed like he should have been more upset, but he wasn't. Don Murphy would speak with detectives, submit to fingerprinting, and answer questions concerning his whereabouts around the time of the murder. But as far as detectives knew, their best and only witness was a tearful 16 year old girl whose story was about to change. I do know you need to put it out there, Karen.

I'm scared he's gonna hurt me.

In the long, difficult hours after his mother's murder, Scott Murphy understood. The detectives were just doing their jobs. I mean, they fingerprinted me. They fingerprinted my dad. It's no secret that my dad and my mom had been arguing, so it made sense.

Scott remembers well after they left the sheriff's office how his tough as nails father seemed lost. My dad just by himself. He picked up a piece of sidewalk chalk, and he just started to write on the ground by himself. And in just big, big letters, it said, I'm sorry. What was Dawn Murphy sorry for?

Did it seem to you that it was in the realm of possibility that he had something to do with it? Never. My dad doted on my mother. He loved her from the day that he met her. And I don't care how mad she got at him or how mad she made him, he was never gonna hurt her.

And now that she was gone, Scott saw his father falling apart. I mean, he started to tear up, and he looked me in my eyes, and he said, I can fix a lot of things, but I can't fix this. Nobody could fix it. But detectives hoped Carrie could make sense of it. They were still talking to her the morning after the murder, still wanting to know, how did the killer get in the house?

They came in through the front door or the back door? Back door. Okay, but did they break in or did they just come in? They broke in. Did you notice that they kicked the door in or they cried the door open?

No, I didn't pay that much attention. By then, the detectives knew the back door was intact. How do you think they got in, whoever got in the house? I don't. Well, you said there was glass breaking, right?

There was glass, yeah. But the killer, they explained, didn't get in through that broken window either. There's no way for somebody to reach in and unlock their back door. There's not? No, there's not.

That. Does it make any sense? No, it doesn't. Before you heard your mom scream for help, did you hear any glass breakage? Any glass break?

No. My radio was turned up, but the neighbors heard the glass break, and it was right before they saw Carrie. One of the neighbors said that they heard glass breakage, and within 15 seconds, they see Carrie walking out from the backyard. Now, that did not compute. The investigators questions were getting more pointed.

They heard the glass break. Okay, and he heard the second glass break. There was two windows broke. Yes. And within seconds, they see you come out of the backyard.

No. The neighbors were high on weed. She said. They must be mistaken. The girl was kind of a puzzle.

Even right after the killing, as she was waiting in the backseat of Fred Hooper's patrol, she just seemed a little too calm for someone whose mother had just been attacked. Any more detail? Well, she asked, am I going to have to go to court? While she was in the backseat? And I thought that was strange.

Strange that she was still concerned about traffic court for that car accident when her mother had just been murdered. But then deputy Hooper already knew there was something fundamentally wrong with Carrie's story. Had known from the moment he found Marianne's body. The mom was laying there covered in blood, and the blood had started to dry. And went in the house and saw your mom, Robert.

And now in the interview room with the sun rising, detectives listened with growing skepticism as Carrie tried to explain why. Why it took so long to call 911. He was in the kitchen for a long time. Like, I heard him wrestling with, like, papers and stuff in the kitchen. The stranger isn't going to spend all the time if he killed your mom and then just lollygag around in the kitchen.

They pushed her on. The question about the blood. There's too much of her blood that's already dried. And if you really don't want to hear this. Well, I'm sorry.

Well, that's where we're having the problem in. Is that time frame that if you heard her screaming and you ran out and within minutes the police are there.

It's obvious that she had been there for some time, not just minutes. I'm really not understanding. I'm sorry. I'm really not understanding. What are you not understanding?

Like, what y'all are trying to say. Are y'all trying to say I killed my mom? I'm trying to say that you have some more information that you're not telling me. No, sir, I do not. I do not.

I told the cops and y'all everything I know. I'm. But, Carrie, your story does not fit, then. Well, maybe she was tired. Maybe she'd run out of answers.

But suddenly, Kerry Murphy had something important to tell homicide detectives. It wasn't some stranger or some guy from a car wreck who killed her mother. It was someone she knew. I do know.

You need to put it out there, Kir. I'm scared he's gonna hurt me. Well, who is he? Kirdhouse. His name is Zane.

What's his name? Zane. Zane? Who is Zane? He's my stalker.

Zane was a kid from the neighborhood that she didn't care for him, and she believed that he had broken into the house and killed her mom. 20 year old Zane Ahmed used to go to Kerry's high school, but he dropped out in the 11th grade. Carrie said she'd known him a little over three years and that he had become obsessed with her. He got mad when I told him I wouldn't go out with him. And he's been told to stay away from my house, and he just keeps coming back.

So there it was, a news story about Zane and another guy who was masked. They were the killers, and they threatened to kill her, too. And he held a knife to my throat, and he's like, you tell anybody, I kill you. And he backed me up against the house, and he had his hands starting from here, going across like this. And the knife was in his hand over here.

And I was standing like this. And the guy when he was like, oh, do something else. Start doing something else. He ran the knife down my chest and to my stomach and down my leg, and he was like, you better make this look like a robbery. And put the note in my hand.

And he closed my hand, and he was like, don't you say. And then he grabbed the bricks and he threw them through the window. Maybe that explained why the neighbors heard the glass shatter just moments before they spotted Carrie leaving the house. If this guy Zane had was truly dangerous, Gary's fear and lies made sense. Still, detectives had to know, was he a killer or an accomplice?

You didn't let the man. You didn't give him a key. No.

Morinok karada quinna is federlatovrakawil tu fogahe sidharakdas toshai tovikta ke hiskent goil kaur er foldic, er victims charter ponkai kurtar olus. Er foldic, er hershtukorn erna kiarta etohgut agasseran taqiakt etoa eg tasd tokyarte agut tokiakta gut tug gut fide quitsche egarchne niespradug ernakur, er foldic, eg realtes naheren. For true crime fans, nothing is more chilling than watching Dateline. Have you ever seen such a thing before? Fans, nothing is more chilling than listening what goes through your mind when you make a discovery like that.

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Hey, guys. Willie Geist here, reminding you to check out the Sunday sit down podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with Stephen Colbert, of course, the host of the Late show on CB's and now a cookbook author. We talk about his rise through comedy. And yes, some family recipes from Charleston, South Carolina.

You can get our conversation now for free wherever you download your podcasts.

What happened inside the little house in Humble, Texas, on that dark summer night? Detectives were learning this much. Carrie had lied about an unknown intruder, and then she blamed a kid named Zane. So is this news story true? One thing they were learning, Carrie and her mom were not getting along.

You have your cell phone with you right now? No, I do not. Okay, forward. Is it back at home or. Where is it at?

I don't know. I'm grounded. My mom had it. Carrie would tell me stories about them fighting all the time. I had already known, like, Carrie was grounded for something.

Or like that her mom yelled at her for something. Maybe a polygraph would lead to the real story. Her father signed off on it. So Carrie took the test. But in the end, it wasn't helpful.

Not to Carrie, anyway. The results suggested she was nothing, being truthful, so they started again. You're giving us already two versions. Okay, I don't. I'm just so scared.

Well, tell me what happened. Did she do any more than one version of the Zane story, or was it pretty consistent? No, no, she. She changed that story as well. My mom's screaming my name.

Her new story contains some added elements. She remembered. She actually saw the attack and tried to help her mother. I grabbed my knife and I ran in her room.

This guy grabbed me. Which guy? The guy that I didn't recognize. And Zane and my mom. He was struggling and fighting her and kept pushing her down.

Well, that's a big change from the earlier story. Exactly. She was like, that's a no. That's a no. As they let her talk, her story shifted, grew to tails, like beanstalks.

Carrie, look at me. How did they open the door? They were. They picked the lock. You didn't let them in?

You didn't give them a no? In fact, the more she talked, the more sure they were. That Carrie Murphy was guilty of something. If she didn't kill her mother, seemed like she must have helped somehow. You can't even come up with a lie that quick.

No. A different detective took the chair and played bad cop. Listen to me. You need to stop your lies. Stop your lies.

You were there when your mom was screaming for her life as she was stabbed multiple times. I saw what y'all or you did to your mother. I didn't do that. Don't tell me that. And then the detectives asked a question that opened the door just a crack.

How do you think your mom is reacting right now to you? Mad. Mad? Why would she be mad at you? Cause it didn't help as much as I could have.

Cause you didn't want to. Part of me didn't. You didn't want to. Part of me did. Part of me didn't.

Were you generally mad at your mom about something? Yes. What were you mad about? Your mom. The fact that she tried to control my life and everything I did.

She called me stupid or dumb or told me I wasn't good enough. And then one more story came out of. She was guilty of something. Of making a terrible mistake. I let them in because they said they were gonna bang on the wall and scare her and then run out.

They didn't tell me their full plan. She did let Zane and another guy in the house. But he was supposed to frighten her mother, not kill her. She had only asked him to go in there and. And scare her.

I see. And that he got carried away. He got carried away. You tell me. Is that the truth?

Yes. That's what I've been holding back. That's. I killed my mom. I let him in.

I didn't know he was gonna do that, though. After something like, after 9 hours of talking to Carrie, the detectives called her father and brother and told them, come and get her. Wow. Why'd you let her go home? At that stage with the juveniles, they are dealt differently.

I was only gonna get a statement from her that we were treating her as a witness. When Scott and his dad arrived at the sheriff's office, Scott sensed that something was up. There was a reason detectives had kept Carrie as long as they did. We picked her up, and we got in the car, and we all just kind of sat there. And I looked in the rearview mirror, and I said, carrie, who killed my mom?

And she looked at me with tears in her eyes, and she said, I think it was Zane. That made sense to you? It made sense. Carrie left out the part where she let Zane in the house. Even so, Zane seemed like a viable suspect to Scott.

I had heard my sister talk about him. I had heard a couple of her friends talk about him, and, like, a. It was all in passing. He was creepy, he was strange, he was weird. And at one point, I was told that he was stalking my sister.

Okay, who told you that? My sister, actually. That night, us marshals armed with an arrest warrant. I went looking for Zane. They found him, and when they did, they came across a whole new mystery.

Zane himself. Someone's framing me. Framing you? Yes. A lot of the things he said didn't make sense.

It wouldn't be long before investigators found themselves heading down a kind of rabbit hole. Phone. The bunny phone.

The car was silent as Scott and Kerry and their dad drove away from the sheriff's office. They took Carey to a friend's house. Soon after that, Heather pulled up and found Carrie outside. I got out, and I ran to her, and I hugged her, and we just cried there in the middle of the street. Did she tell you what happened?

She told me that she had been taken down to the station and that the police had asked her questions, and she said that she felt as if the police were trying to make it seem like she did it. What was that like for you to hear? I was angered. I was upset. I thought, that's so unfair.

Why would they. Why would they do that to Kerry? Did she say anything about Zane at that point? She did tell me that it was Zane. They were able to get a warrant for his arrest just based on what Kerry provided.

A violent defenders task force led by US marshals found 20 year old Zayn Ahmed, put him in cuffs, and brought him to the sheriff's office. Now, you know who Carrie is. Yes, sir. Well, I mean, what's y'all's relationship? I thought we was friends, you know?

And I'm just gonna be curious. What did I do? I have not done nothing to her. When's the last time you seen her? Seen her since?

Like what? Like, I ran into her. I them all, like, way back. She said, you came by our house last night. I was at home all night last night.

I didn't go anywhere. I was at home. I've never been to Carrie's house. I'm telling you the truth, sir. I haven't been to her house.

He denied everything. Said he didn't know where she lived, so he certainly wasn't stalking her. Although he did admit he had a short term memory problem. So is it possible with your short term memory thing. That you had gone to Carrie's house at some point in time and just don't remember?

No. That's not impossible, because I don't know where Carrie was in the first place. The detectives got to the point. Do you know Carrie's mom? No.

You know what happened to her? No. You don't know that she got killed? No, sir. What do you know about that?

Nothing. He said he didn't know what we were talking about, that he was at home playing a video game. Guitar hero. He said he was playing with his nieces and nephews. Someone's framing me.

Framing you? Yes. So care is just making this all up? Yes. And you don't know why?

No. After hours of denials, detectives had a thought. He was asked if he would submit to a polygraph. He agreed to that. Odd how some investigations can just turn on a dime.

This one certainly did. He was told that he had done poorly on the exam, so he was eventually taken back to the interview room. He had the right to remain silent. Could they have seen this coming? Who knows?

But right then, Zane confessed to the murder of Marianne Murphy. He basically just said that, yes, he did it. He went in there, and then he stabbed Miss Murphy. His story began just like the one Carrie told. She contacted me and said, hey, can you do me a favor?

I'm like, yeah, what's up? She's like, can you scare my mom? I'm like, yeah, sure. Did she say she why she wanted her mom scared? No, sir.

And so I got ready. I had. I wore black every. All black. I had a hoodie over my face so no one could see me.

I had a. I had a weapon on me, but I wasn't gonna use it. I was just gonna scare her mom. His friend drove him to Carrie's house before 09:00 p.m. he said, I knocked out her window.

Okay. And she come outside. She saw me from the window, and then she opened the door. He said, he went to Marianne's bedroom. She jumped out of bed, and she really yelled, like, screamed, jumped down.

I just got a. My heart was beating real fast, and I accidentally stabbed her. I don't remember how many times I stabbed her. What about where at? I know one in the stomach, but the rest is, like, one on the stomach.

Gonna take one in the arm and one in the back. So what did they charge him with? They charged him with murder. Now they had to decide what to do with the girl, the teenager who was angry with her mother. 24 hours later, they were calling back they said, we need y'all to bring her in.

So very angry.

If you've been the victim of a crime, it can sometimes feel like you've been left in the dark with nowhere to turn for answers or support. But help is always available, no matter who you are or what your background. Victimscharter, ie provides information on translation services, explains your rights, and offers the support you need when you need it most. You have rights, you have support, you have a voice. Find yours in the victims charter, brought to you by the government of Ireland.

Out of nowhere, there it was, sudden, shocking, terrifying. I have never in my life felt fear like that. Was this someone's idea of a sick prank? Or was it a horror movie come horribly alive? I'm thinking he killed him and he had filmed the murder.

I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Dateline's newest podcast, the man in the Black Mask. Listen for free each week or unlock new episodes early and enjoy ad free listening by subscribing to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Dateline premium.

Teenagers. Not so unusual for a 16 year old to act out against a parent, but this teenager seemed to have turned on her mother in the worst possible way. What happened exactly? Carrey told detectives so many tall tales, it was hard to keep them straight. First she said a stranger did it.

Then she said Zane did it because he was obsessed with her. And then she said she asked Zane to come to the house to scare her mother. But for reasons even Zane couldn't explain, he went on a killing frenzy. So they weren't done with Carrie? Not yet.

Who was this girl? I've known Carrie as long as I've been aware of. What was she like in your recollection, as a little kid, she had a strong personality. She was possessive, even at a very young age. But she was my friend, and I loved her like a sister.

I met Carrie in 6th grade. I was new to the school, and I met her in choir. By the time they got to high school, Carrie was struggling to fit in. Our school demographic was majority black and hispanic, and because she was so tall and rosy red cheeks, she stood out naturally. So did she feel, like, comfortable in her skin?

Once Carrie started really growing and getting taller and just changing in general, she definitely started to get a little more self conscious about her appearance. She started wearing a little more makeup, dressing differently, just trying things out to see what stuck, trying to fit in, probably as much as anything, right? Was she accepted? For the most part, yes. At home and for a long time, Carrie and her mom seemed to be close.

She was a mama's girl. If my mom went to the store, my sister was going with her. But in the teenage years, things changed. She started doing what she wanted when she wanted. Once it became to the point where my sister was acting out and, you know, sneaking out of the house, that's when it became a hard stop.

And she pulled the classic, you live in my house, you live by my rules. Now, Marianne was dead, and investigators asked Carrie to come back down to the station for another round of questions. But Carrie, she had other ideas. And she says she wanted to retract everything that she said, that everything that she said was a lie, that she had nothing to do with it. Never asked Zane to scare her mother, never let him into the house.

All Zane? Every single bit of it. Yes. And that's when she lawyered up. When she asked for a lawyer, they officially charged her with the murder of her mother.

How do you get your head around this thing like that? You don't. You watched this little girl grow up. She had a purple room with pink and green pinstripes. Her and my mom were supposed to go clothes shopping the next day for, you know, school.

Scott wanted to believe his sister. We realized she's telling multiple stories, but I was trying to find the truth. In the multiple stories, Anna Emmons was also searching for the truth. She was the chief prosecutor assigned to juvenile, and in this case, she had a confession from the apparent killer. That changing story from Carrie and some serious doubts.

I saw there was a confession from an adult male, and I was worried about it. What was wrong with it? A lot of the things he said didn't make sense. Like, for example, how he got into the house. Front door to backdoor.

So you came in the front? Yes, sir. But Kerry said the killers came in through the back door and the location of the murder. Zane got that wrong, too. We went upstairs.

We went to go see where her mom was. She said she was sleeping. He said he went up a flight of stairs and that this is a one story house. If you had just simply been inside the house at the time of the murder, you would know, and you would know what you did to your victim. I stabbed her four times.

She was stabbed over 70 times. Quite a difference. Yeah, quite a difference. As she reviewed the seven hour interrogation, she could hear Zane zigging and zagging. I want to start over.

Everything right now. Okay? After confessing to the murder, he suggested he wasn't there at all. This is what really happened. And this is coming from my heart and everything.

Sunday morning I was at home until 03:00 in the morning. Okay, you're losing me. What time did you go over Kerry's house then? I didn't go to Kerry's house. My brother, my dad, everybody in my family can tell you I was at home all day that Sunday.

I didn't go anywhere. And this is the truth. I'm just scared right now. Really scared. I'm trying to do my best here.

You can't say I didn't do it. And I did do it. I just want to go home. But no one was letting him go home. Especially when minutes later he was back to saying he did kill Carrie's mom.

Do you really remember how many times and where you stabbed her? You just don't want to tell me. I don't remember how many times I stabbed her. I had great concerns with it being an actual confession. The prosecutor had another important question, and it had to do with.

With motive. Zane didn't really have one. But as investigators started poking around in their victim's life. Well, what do you know? A secret emerged.

Something about an affair. Had she ever told you if her husband knew about her seeing you?

What a mess. One kid, this guy Zane, actually confessed to killing Mary Ann Murphy, but he couldn't get his facts right. The other, the daughter, Carrie, cast about like a kid fishing for a good story. And neither one made any sense. What a puzzle that one was.

Yes, it was. And, you know, we have to just keep working at it. Detective Sidney Miller joined the widening investigation. I actually joined in searching for witnesses and, you know, talk to people so we can figure out what happened here. With Kerry and Zane locked up, investigators took a closer look at the victim's life at Marianne's phone contacts, for example.

And what a surprise, she was having an affair with a co worker. An affair? Was that something you felt you needed to look into? Of course. They found the boyfriend at work.

Has she ever been to your house? Yes, she's come up here and seen me, but I work here, so sometimes on Saturday, she dropped by from premium soda, smoke cigarette, and she go do ran whatever she had to do. They also spent time together on the phone. Was y'all text being sexual in nature? More than likely.

You mean more like. Wouldn't you know? Majority of our texts were sexual in nature. And now quite unexpected. There was a potential love triangle in the middle of their murder investigation.

Had she ever told you if her husband knew about her seeing you? No. As far as the boyfriend knew. Husband? Dawn didn't have a clue about Marianne's secret life?

She was spending a lot of time away from the house because she didn't want to be home. And he was there because she didn't want to see him grow. They checked out the boyfriend's alibi. It was solid. The husband's, too.

Detectives crossed both men off their list. Apparently, this marital drama had nothing to do with Marianne's murder. I couldn't be mad. My dad was not giving her the attention and the affection that she deserved sometimes. And so it made sense to look elsewhere.

By then, the new investigators were looking for more witnesses. One was a girl they heard about from Carrie's father. Talk to rebecca, he said, carrie's very good friend. When Carrie started to become friends with Rebecca, I remember I got warning from someone, and they were like, oh, your friend's talking to Rebecca. And I'm like, yeah, like, they're friends.

And they were like, oh, okay, well, be careful. Why careful? Well, for starters, Rebecca Keller was four years older than Carrie. They got to know each other in choir. Carrie was a 15 year old freshman.

Rebecca was a 19 year old senior. And no other way to put it, they fell in love, caught fire, really. Rebecca was her first love. The intensity of that first love at that age is, well, intense. I mean, you hit the nail on the head there.

Carrie and Rebecca were so enmeshed and so desperate, if you will, for, like, love. And when they found that within each other, they clung to it, they wanted to protect it. But Marianne did not approve. I don't think Marianne cared that, like, they were, like, lesbians or whatnot. Like, I think the age gap was the problem.

She did not trust someone who was 1819 years old and actively dating a 1516 year old. They argued a lot over Rebecca. And Carrie was changing. She was a bubbly person. And then out of nowhere, it got dark.

The eye makeup got darker, her personality got dark. Marianne tried to stop it, banned Rebecca from the house, took away Carrie's phone, didn't work. They had been caught in the shower together when Rebecca was not even supposed to be in the house. And that was a problem. Then there was the day when Rebecca came over and refused to leave.

And Marianne called the police. And the officer who responded was none other than deputy Constable Fred Hooper. The mother explained that she didn't want the girlfriend there, and I took her to jail. What was the charge? Just trespassing.

Just trespassing? Yes. So detectives knew about Rebecca from the start, but they didn't chase her down because they had that confession from Zane I'm gonna be talking to Rebecca now. About a week into the investigation, Rebecca got a visit from law enforcement. They found her at home, talked to her in their car.

Okay, now, Rebecca, you are friends with, you know Kerri Murphy? Yes. She was forthcoming. Y'all been friends since school? Yes.

She talked about how they were in a dating relationship. It kind of skipped over into a relationship? Yeah. And how she had gotten in trouble and that she was not supposed to be around her anymore. She admitted that, yes, she had dated Carrie.

But all that talk about desperate. Nah, just another teen fling in the rearview mirror. Didn't work out. It didn't work out. We stay friends.

That's usually how it happens. She said she barely even spoke to Kerry anymore and hadn't since a month before the murder. So you hadn't talked to her since June? Since then, though, Rebecca did remember seeing the awful news about the murder I was in. So I used to talk to that lady every.

Every concert that we had at school. But with her trying to stop you from going over there, I mean, was she just. She was trying to protect me, keep me out of trouble and to keep carrying out of trouble. So you don't have any idea why this happened? No, sir, I don't.

And you're telling me the truth in what you're telling me? Yes. Do I look like a bad kid? No. I'm a good kid.

Good kid. Too bad. Marianne had taken Carey's phone away weeks before the murder. It might have backed up Rebecca's story or knocked it down. Too late for that now and then.

Well. Well, guess what turned up. Carrie had a second phone. A burner phone. A burner phone.

Now, why would Carrie need a burner phone?

If you've been the victim of a crime, it can sometimes feel like you've been left in the dark with nowhere to turn for answers or support. But help is always available, no matter who you are or what your background. Victimscharter, ie, provides information on translation services, explains your rights, and offers the support you need when you need it most. You have rights. You have support.

You have a voice. Find yours in the victims charter, brought to you by the government of Ireland.

If you had to pick one key to unlock the whole miserable business, well, then maybe it was the phone. The bunny phone. Remember when her mother was murdered? Carrie ran to a neighbor's house to call 911. They saw her with a phone in her hand, and they asked her why.

You know, why you're not using your phone? You have a phone. And she told one of them that it was a phone that her mom didn't know about. A burner phone. A burner phone.

The kids called it the bunny phone because Bunny was everyone's nickname for the person who provided it, Rebecca Keller. Detectives started tracking it down a few weeks into the investigation, and, you know, they were like, you know, where is it? I have it. Can we have it? Absolutely, you can have it.

And, yeah, I just handed it over. And the records for that bunny phone were a revelation. For one thing, the carrie Rebecca love affair wasn't over. It was as intense as ever. The bunny phone revealed they talked constantly.

So now Rebecca Bunny had some explaining to do. You're not in custody. You haven't been charged with anything, okay? I just want to get a statement from you. And this time, they brought her in.

Well, the only reason why I got that phone is because remote workers and just like her girlfriend had done over and over, once she was caught in a lie, Rebecca started changing her story. In the second interview, we confronted her about having this communication, and she openly admitted. Yeah, I lied about it. She admitted that she and Carrie still talked a lot. And there was one call of particular interest to the investigators, a nearly three minute call around 01:00 a.m.

the night of the murder. She's like, something bad has happened, and I really need you right now. I was like, okay, what happened? Tell me what happened. She's like, my mom has been killed.

I was like, by who? She's like, I don't know. I'm really scared. Okay. I was like, okay, well, you need to call the cops.

She's like, okay, okay, okay. But that was it. All she knew. Rebecca said she had no idea what happened at Carrie's house that night because she was working at Joe's crab Shack. So, naturally, we go to the crab shack, we talk to the manager.

He tells us that, no, Rebecca doesn't work there. She'd been fired two months earlier. Did she not think they would check? The lie landed Rebecca back at the sheriff's office for round three. Although we've gone over this story, there's been some majority of it that you told lies about.

With her alibi up in smoke, Rebecca told yet another new story. It all started, she said, because Carrie hated, really hated her mother. She started saying, I hate my mom. I wish my mom was dead. And I kept telling her, why.

Why? That's your mom, mom. Carrie complained about her mother for weeks, said Rebecca, until she started telling me, I'm on plan. I've been planning this plan for three months. And I was like, what plan?

She's like, I'm not going to get you involved. I'm not going to get you involved. Her plan was to wait till her mom fell asleep. She was going to go in there with some night. And she told me.

She was like, yeah, I want my mom 28 times. I was like, no, I don't want to hear this. I'm hanging up. And I hung up on her. And then came the evening of the murder, Carrie texted Rebecca on the bunny phone.

It was happening. She started saying, I'm gonna tell my brother that this guy, there's this random car going by again. Rebecca said she begged Carrie to keep her out of it. I want to go to college. I want to know.

Get a good paying job. I was like, I'm not talking to you about this anymore. I'm done with it. Around 01:00 a.m. rebecca said carrie called one more time.

And she's like, I just did it. And I was like, did what? She's like, I just killed my mom. I mean, this was a turning point in the case. She started telling me, like, how she did it.

She's like, I stabbed my mom 17 times. I slit her throat. According to Rebecca, this is all Carrie. I told her, I was like, you need to, like, call the cops and tell them that you did do it. And she's like, no, no, no.

I want to cover it up. I'm gonna cover it up. She's pointing a finger and pinning it all on Carrie. Kind of a big deal, ratting out her girlfriend Carrie like that. So the detectives asked, just to be sure, would Rebecca sit for a polygraph?

And she said yes. And she passed. I mean, she passed with flying colors. She showed no deception. The truth, finally, maybe.

But then a young man named Martin Juarez, the kid with a car and a nagging memory, offered a fascinating story of his own about a certain event that very night in humble, Texas. He said that when she got to the car, she had been running and she's just telling him to go, go, go, go. Run, Bunny, run.

There he was, waiting in his car in the dark, waiting and waiting. On the night of the murder, Martin Juarez later told detectives he thought he was doing his friend Rebecca a simple dropping her off near. And Rebecca told him, hey, I'll just be here about 20 minutes and then I'll be right back. He said an hour had passed and he hadn't heard from her. And when she finally did return, she looked at Shaw still, when she was running, I couldn't really tell if she had anything on her.

And he said that when she got to the car, she looked like she was out of breath and she's just telling him to go, go, go. Of all the young friends detectives tracked down after the murder, Martin Juarez was maybe the most informative. Yes, he took Rebecca to Cary's neighborhood that night. But there was more. A few weeks after the murder, he found Rebecca here in this park and he confronted her about that night.

And it was right here he told detectives that Rebecca broke down and confessed to the murder. She came up and told me the truth. That she had did it, that she had two blades, that she went into her mom's room and she had took one knife and stabbed her. Rebecca was there and she was the killer. He had a right to remain silent.

Now she was under arrest and backed into a corner. Yes, she said she was there that night. She loved Carrie so much, she allowed herself to be drawn into Carrie's plan to kill Marianne and cover up the crime. But love only takes you so far. Rebecca insisted it was Carrie who did the stabbing.

I heard her mom saying, stop, stop. And she was screaming. She's like, okay, you can stop stabbing me now. And then that's it. And then five minutes later, Gary comes out with a bloody knife and bloody gloves.

And I got the trash bag ready. I told her to strip down and she stripped and she put all of her clothes in there. That bit made sense to the detectives. They had been wondering how the killer contained the blood so effectively. Rebecca also explained the note.

That lame effort to point the finger at the guy in a car accident. I was supposed to write the note with my different handwriting than hers anyway, said Rebecca. When they cleaned themselves up, she asked me to get rid of the bag. So I took it to the school and dropped it in the luggage can.

That would explain the dried blood on Marianne's body. Rebecca left, but Carrie stayed behind and continued to clean up for hours before she called 911. And Zane. His name is Zane. What's his name?

Zane. Well, that was Carrie's backup lie improvising right on the spot when she realized the story about the accident wasn't landing the way she'd hoped it would. Did Carrie ever tell you that she was going to try to blame this on Zane? No, I didn't have any knowledge about that. Yep, she said all of it was Carrie's doing and she, Rebecca was simply the supportive girlfriend.

But that wasn't going to keep her out of jail in the state of Texas. You know, if you aid, assist someone in a crime like that, then you would be charged with the same murder. So Rebecca was charged with murder, locked up at the Harris county jail.

Zane's family said all along he was no killer. They gave the prosecutor video of Zane playing guitar hero with his family the night Marianne was murdered. So what did you do about Zane in the end? Well, after we looked into it and got the evidence, we were comfortable with moving forward with dismissing his case. We asked Zane why he confessed that night.

He told us he was terrified. He didn't know what else to do. He also said he didn't stalk Carrie. He wasn't obsessed with her. He didn't even like her, not in that way.

This was a brutal, cold blooded killing. Prosecutor Anna Emmons had seen enough. She knew this case belonged in adult court. And if someone's going to go to that length to harm their mother and be part of that, that's a danger to the community. Ergo, they become an adult.

Yes, and she was certified to go to the adult system. The judge in the case agreed to say Scott cobbled together the money and picked her up. He also made room for her in his home. She was, after all, his little sister, and in a way, the only family he had left. By the time she was certified as an adult, my dad had experienced some extreme mental decline.

Oh, boy. And at this point, I was. I was on my own. My mom died in July of 2012, and by December of 2012, my dad was talking to Christmas trees. He was, you know, having conversations with shadows, and his.

His short term memory was just declining. And I was 21. I didn't. I didn't know what to do. Of course he asked Kerry what happened to.

And she repeated the old story about Zane. And Scott knew that wasn't true. It had to be Rebecca. They arrested Rebecca for a reason. So it was Rebecca, not your sister, but Rebecca the girlfriend, right?

It had to be her. It couldn't be my sister. She's my sister. She. She wouldn't kill her mom.

And if he had any nagging doubts about that, Scott packed them away. All he could do now was take care of his little sister and keep her safe and prepare for the trial. If I went Christmas shopping, she went with me. If I had little money to burn, it was probably going to her. All the while, Carrie's friends watched her behavior with something like disgust.

She seemed to be enjoying herself, maybe too much. It seemed as if she was fine and like nothing had, like, never happened. Like, that she didn't lose her mom or that she wasn't just in jail. She was moving on with her life. Nobody seemed worried.

Nobody was crying in that sense, at least not that I saw. There's just shenanigans. Lots of shenanigans. Oh, but something else was going on, too. Secret, but not secret.

Scott paid Carrie's bail, but no one paid Rebecca's. So while Carrie was partying on the outside, Rebecca was confined to a harsh, gray world. Behind bars. Separated for good. Why?

No, not at all. This is a call from an inmate at Harris county jail. When I get out, we'll talk about everything. About the case, about what really happened at night. Everything you want to talk about.

So much to talk about, so much to plantain.

The question at the heart of it was, of course, why? Why would Carrie turn on her mother in such a horrific way? To be with her girlfriend, yes, but had to be more than that. And sure enough, did you believe that when Carrie got her phone taken away from her, that her mom was going to find something on that phone and try to file on you? Yes.

There it was, the twisted rationale that triggered the murder. I mean, there would have been proof of, you know, sending nudes to a minor. At that point, she would have had proof of statutory rape. Marianne could have had Rebecca charged with a serious crime, with a minor. So according to Rebecca, Carrie did it.

Committed matricide for her. Together, they created this dramatic world, this backstory, this against the world. Greg Holton was the prosecutor. The first impression you get as a prosecutor is you see their mugshot. There is Carrie, steely eyed, almost smirking.

But Rebecca, while older, looked lost, red eyed, scared. Even though she was 20 years old, she looks about 15. And it takes a minute to figure out the dynamic between the two of them. Did you say you saw her as a follower? Saw Rebecca as a follower?

I think that's right. In many ways, Kerry called the shots in their dynamic. But easy case, maybe not. There were issues. Like what?

Like the false confession. That's a big one. It's kind of incomprehensible. And juries have trouble believing that. Exactly.

A good defense attorney would run with that, and legally, it didn't matter. But wouldn't jurors want to know which girl wielded the knife? Weren't they actually pointing fingers at each other along the way? A lot. They would pledge their allegiance to each other and then talk to the police and say, listen, I didn't do it, but I know who did.

So who finally told the real story? Why they did on the phone. They couldn't help themselves. There was a no contact order issued, and the first thing they did is break that no contact order. And they spoke on the phone for almost 14 months.

They were playing out a lifetime movie. Baby, that's Bay. I love you. I love you, too. No, you didn't.

Like you mean it.

I love you too. There was Carrie, tucked away in her warm, cozy life on the outside. And Rebecca. You may start the conversation now. Making the best of her hard, gray reality behind bars.

God, I swear, I love you. I love you too. Good. My penguin. My penguin.

Even all my. No, you're my penguin. They talked about their longing for the past as they planned for the future. I started picturing, like, the day I moved out and, like, moving with you. And I already picture that, huh, Beth?

Carrie had lots of stories about life on the outside. We're talking about homecoming. Oh, well, why can't I be included in the conversation sometimes? Rebecca sounded needy. Carrie annoyed.

Seriously what? What? Seriously what, man? I'm just trying to call you all damn days. Why did we talk about earlier?

Don't blow my phone up. And I'm sorry that I'm so busy that I can't talk to you all the time. Law enforcement was listening? Yeah. So there was no urgency.

Yeah, sure. To stop them from talking if they wanted to incriminate themselves. Sometimes they seemed to disconnected from what they had done. You have no idea what it's like not having your mom and having nobody but your brother to depend on you. It's not your fault.

Stop blaming yourself for it. Things happen for a reason. That you can't change the way that God does his way. They created this bubble around the two of them that was void of reality. It was void of empathy.

And ultimately, it was void of morality. Between April 2013 and April 2014, they talked more than 800 times. And all that time, law enforcement was listening for anything that could erase that pesky thing called reasonable doubt. For months, they seemed to play the game, avoided incriminating themselves. I just don't know how I'm gonna react when we go in the house.

I love you, but you're gonna need to stop talking. Why? Because this isn't exactly, you know, enough. And then it happened. They were talking again about going back to the scene of the crime.

Rebecca and Carrie are talking about when they get out and they're going back to the house. And there's this question of, it will be. It will be hard for Rebecca to go back there and to cope with it. And Carrie tells her in some form or fashion, get over it. We gotta deal with it.

And Rebecca says you didn't see what I saw. Actually, I did. In person? Actually, I did. What do you mean, you did?

Was it in my room the whole time? What do you mean, was it in my room the whole time? Then where were you? The doorway. The doorway of what?

Mom's room. No, you weren't, because you weren't there. I didn't. We won't talk about that. Oh, my God.

I thought I told you to stay here. But I'm hard headed. This sounded like the real story. At last, Rebecca held the knife. Carrie stood by in silent approval.

It was a suggestion. Significant jail call to put the knife in one of their hands. Greg Holton played the tapes for Scott, and Scott abandoned all hope that his sister might not be the monster he feared. I could see everything for what it was. And at this point, I'm ready to accept that this was my sister.

Scott urged Carrie to take a plea. And, I mean, she fought me on it. She fought me. So I just. I gave her the facts, and in the end, she took the deal.

Rebecca pleaded, too. And when she did, she still said it was Carrie who wielded the knife. Not that it mattered. She got 60 years. She also told Dateline she was manipulated by drugs.

And by Carrie. Carrie is serving 30 years. How often do you talk to her now? How often do you see her? I only see my sister when I feel it necessary.

When there's been an important moment in the family. Their father remains in a residential care facility. His brain's broken. He thinks my mom's still alive. What about you, Scott?

How was your life? I won't lie to you. For a very long time. I didn't think I was going to bounce back. I got pretty low.

But now. Now I am lucky enough to have a wonderful life. I'm married to a beautiful woman. I have two amazing kids.

My family is my world. I don't take it for granted. I know how quickly it can be taken away. Hang on to that for sure. If no one minds, there is one thing that I want to bring up.

Yeah. Since my mom was killed, there's been a lot of focus on what happened that night. And, I mean, it's terrible, it's tragic. But that's not the whole story. 21 years before that, there was nothing but a lifetime of good memories.

You know, pancake breakfast on Sunday, building playhouse with dad. There was a happy life in that house. Yeah. She was a mom, she was a wife, she was a daughter. And she was loved her entire life.

That's what defines my mom, not the night that she was killed.

And that's all for this edition of Dateline. Check out our talking Dateline podcast. Keith Morrison and Josh Mankiewicz will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed. Wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at nine, eight central.

I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.

If you've been the victim of a crime, it can sometimes feel like you've been left in the dark with nowhere to turn for answers or support. But help is always available, no matter who you are or what your background. VictimsCharter, ie, provides information on translation services, explains your rights and offers the support you need when you need it most. You have rights, you have support, you have a voice. Find yours in the victim's charter brought to you by the government of Ireland.