Transcript of Talking Dateline: Out of the Darkness

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Hi everyone, I'm Andrea Canning, and we are talking Dateline. Our correspondent on this one is Josh Mankiewicz, and this is for his episode called Out of the Darkness.

Hello!

Let's talk Dateline, Josh. Hey, how are ya?

I'm good. I'm ready.

One housekeeping item. If you haven't seen it, you can watch the episode on Peacock or listen to it in the Dateline podcast feed and then come right back here. Also, we will have an extra clip from Josh's interview with the victim, Bob Pointer's mother. And then, Josh, you have a special Talking Dateline challenge for me. I'm excited about this.

Yes, I do. It's something we've discussed previously, although you've certainly forgotten about it. I actually forgot about it too, but— But it's gonna be fun.

Okay, I'm ready. Before we dive into this episode, and I have a lot of thoughts, Josh, give us a very quick overview of what happened.

Well, this was in 2016 in Royse City, Texas, sort of classic Texas small town. A young woman named Chacey Pointer, married to a fire captain who was considerably older. She was 29. I think he was like 46, 47, something like that. Like that. She calls her husband because her Jeep has gotten stuck on this muddy road. So he comes out there, and he gets shot. And from the beginning, you know, we see— we on Dateline, the viewers see this story unfold almost entirely via first responder and police body cams. And she's unspooling this story of what happened. And sort of from the beginning, She can't get her own story straight. I mean, first she says she doesn't know what happened. Then she saw a shadow. She saw a shadowy figure. Then it was a man. She didn't know who it was. Then later she does know who it is. It's this guy that she was having an affair with. I mean, it is a— it is a classic case of not just spousal murder, but of a murderer kind of not thinking about the story that they were going to tell until the absolute minute they were telling it.

And so you are left watching this and just kind of shaking your head. She was convicted. And, you know, it's a— it's a terrible tragedy. And again, there's a thing called divorce.

Yes. Yes. That we mention often on this program. So, Josh, I have to say, she had me at first, Chacey, because The way this show opens is very terrifying. You know, the out of breath, the 911 call, the running. I mean, it's like how every Lifetime movie starts out. There's a woman, you know, running through the woods. And then when the call dropped out, I thought Chacey was done. I thought somebody was after her. Then I was so surprised to see that Chacey was alive, and she was then talking to investigators eventually. And that's where this—

her—

behavior really comes in and the breathing and I'm like, "Huh." Yeah, the breathing. And then it would like, and then it would like stop and then it would start again. And at first she kind of had me, but the more it went on, the more I started to say, "This girl needs a Razzie." Yeah, that wonderful top is courtesy of Jessica De Vera, who's a sensational producer here at TV Land. Yeah, she's amazing.

And you know, Jessica and I did this story and like, we, you know, we didn't have a couple of the things that people usually have. Like, we certainly didn't have an interview with her.

And you already— you almost didn't need it though, Josh, because we had such a sense of her telling—

we had her telling this crazy story and burying herself, right? We had her telling her own story, which, you know, at the beginning sounds crazy and like the worst thing has happened to her. And then the more she tells it, the crazier it sounds, the crazier she sounds, the more dishonest she sounds. And then you just think, okay, well, I mean, this person's a liar. And that's exactly exactly where prosecutors came down.

You know what I love about investigators are the little things that they pick up on that, you know, me at least, I don't know about you, but I'm not a, you know, a trained investigator. So when they, when they say to her, you know, they, they say to her that the blood should have dripped down, right? And then also that they could tell that, you know, she was standing too close, like she was standing close to Bob when the shot was fired, but She said that she wasn't. And so they said— they told her, quote, "You're full of crap." Yeah.

Well, I mean, you know, by then she'd already told these multiple stories.

Right.

And the whole thing was, you know, why didn't this woman ask for a lawyer at some point? Why didn't she keep her mouth shut, at least minimize what she was saying? Because then she starts going into that they're having all—

they have a bad marriage and that Well, she says, "When I married him, I was young and stupid." And I think an argument could be made that nothing had changed. That was, I think, still true on the day of Rosemann's death.

And custody issues too. I mean, all the things that lead to these datelines, you know.

She and her husband, her husband seems like a great guy from everything we were able to determine. Not long after they were married, she starts stepping out on him, not with just the guy who ended up killing him, but a bunch of other guys too, to the point where her husband installed, I think, a surveillance camera outside their front door, not to catch bad guys and not to keep the house safe, but to get a picture of one of Jaycee's lovers, which I think he did.

Oh, there were a bunch. Yeah. Yeah. And she said to one of the lovers, "OMG." No, I wrote OMG. She didn't say OMG. I wrote OMG on my notes. "I wish he'd run out of air in a fire." Yeah.

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

I mean, we see that a lot.

Nobody seemed to believe that that was true about Mr. Pointer.

Like, don't you agree, though? We see that all the time where women will get the lover on board, you know, to, to do harm to their husband because they're saying he's doing this to me and that to me and he's abusive.

And I mean, the reason that works is that it's true so much of the time. That's the thing, right?

Oh, yes. Oh, 100%.

Women very rarely commit homicide, right? They almost always find somebody else to do it for them. That's sort of how this usually goes, right? And one of the things that moves men to be the agent of somebody else, you know, in a murder is, well, this person is hurting me. This person is abusive. This person is beating me. And then guys want to sort of feel like the white knight here.

Yeah, and I, I actually, uh, it took me down memory lane a little bit with a story that I did. Uh, this was about an Army soldier. His name was Army Sergeant Vincent Goslin Jr., and he was shot to death on a remote Kentucky road after stopping to help what appeared to be a stranded motorist. At first, it looked like a random act of violence, but investigators, you know, after he was shot, uncovered a calculated murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by his wife and her lover. Prosecutors said that she lured her husband to the isolated location where the, the lover then uh, killed him, and they both, um, pleaded guilty. So I mean, it's a very similar story.

I mean, you change the names, that's the Chasey and Bob Pointer story.

Yeah, you know, that was the one. Yeah, where I had the sweat bee video. I don't know if you ever saw that. I remember that, that went after me, and I was like doing—

I remember that. I remember.

Yeah, because I was trying to do interviews and there were like a million sweat bees.

The thing about you that's different from well, just for example, me, is that you looked cool and elegant swatting away the bees. Like, that's a, you know, whereas I would've looked like a, you know, like a character, you know, in a cartoon leaving an outline of their body as they go through a wall.

I mean, Josh, to be fair, I think I probably look like Elaine from Seinfeld. You know, her like, you know, that really weird dance? That she does that's like on all the memes. I think I looked more like that, to be honest with you. But thank you.

You looked better. You looked better.

Speaking of TV shows, I definitely was thinking a lot about Orange is the New Black, the TV show, because of the sheer number of times, Josh, that you mentioned orange and how people would look in orange. I mean, can I go— wait, can I go through them first? Sure. Just before you respond.

Sure.

So you had— okay, so first you had "I rock an orange jumpsuit. Orange is the New Black, the male version." That was from Michael Garza, the lover.

The killer.

Then the killer. Then you had Chacey saying, "I don't look good in orange." And then you had one more. You had Michael Garza actually in the orange, in the mug. And you said that he looked about as good as you'd think in orange.

It's not every day that you hear a killer say, "I'll do it, and I'll— I rock an orange jumpsuit." Right? In other words, "I'm gonna get caught." Right? And then they do get caught. And then you do see them in an orange jumpsuit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, Josh, when we come back, we will have more from your interview with Bob Poynter's mom. And her name is Candy. Honey, did you invite the Minions over? Well, you know how we talked about getting Wi-Fi from Xfinity?

Yeah.

I ordered it this morning.

Was online in minutes.

Then they showed up. So they just came over to use the Wi-Fi?

For what?

Better not to know.

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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 Tony and Grammy winner and Academy Award nominee Leslie Odom Jr. as he returns to the role that made him famous as Aaron Burr in Hamilton, 10 years after the original run. You can get our conversation now for free wherever you download your podcasts. Such an ordinary thing to walk home from high school.

Her name was Mickey Costanzo, just 16.

She didn't have far to go, seemed perfectly safe until it wasn't.

What happened to Mickey? I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Five Miles from Home, an all-new podcast from Dateline.

Listen to all episodes of 5 Miles from Home now wherever you get your podcasts.

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

Yeah, yeah, in the middle of the night. Yeah.

What?

Yeah, that was, you know, again, this is a You know, I mean, you hear cops sometimes say, "We don't catch the smart ones," right? Sometimes they do catch the smart ones, but like a lot of times who they catch are literally people who, like Chasey, tell like 3 different stories in the first 3 hours, or actually probably less than that. And Michael Garza, who, you know, says things like, "I rock an orange jumpsuit," and, and his alibi is, I was milking a cow. Like, like you want to have, you know, your cell phone at some different location at that moment. You know, you know, you want to have somebody testify, oh, no, you know, Mike and I were having a beer at the saloon. Right. But, you know, I mean, you know, when you are dumb enough to commit murder and dumb enough to immediately lie about it in a way that's going to get caught and dumb enough to hire a guy like that, you kind of deserve what you get.

Yeah. I mean, the whole plan was just so full of holes.

Yeah.

And sadly though, the result is like, you know, there's kids without a dad and— Yeah.

A mother, the mother without her son.

You know, Bob Poynter was one of those guys who did not lose touch with his mom over the years. Like, they spoke all the time. I mean, I think it's safe to say she was like maybe his best friend, which is why interviewing her was sort of, I thought, paramount in this.

Josh, we have an extra clip from your interview with Bob Poynter's mother. We are going to take a listen.

Just tell me a little bit more about what he was like as a dad. I guess to Addison.

To Addison? Oh my God. He adored her. I mean, from the get-go. I mean, she looked just like him. She loved— I mean, he just doted on her. He would cook, teach her how to cook. They were cooking. And Bobby loved to cook. Bob loved to cook. So he even said, "Oh, Mom." I think it was a couple weeks before he passed away, he said, "I wanna get Addison a chef's coat. She likes watching Food Network and all that." And I'm gonna, we started researching right away to buy her one.

He'd let Addison put red nail polish on.

Oh, totally. There's pictures of him with his glasses on, painting his nails or her nails, and he's painting her nails. I thought, "Oh Lord." He was just like a gentle soul. He was like a gentle giant, I would call him sometimes. Because he was so big.

One of the things that comes out of that, I think, is that, you know, he was a very involved dad, not just to the daughter he had with Chacey, who was, I think, 6 and a half when he was killed, but also to his two older daughters that he had with his first wife. He was a big part of all of their lives. And, you know, again, that's a sort of an extra tragedy out of all this. And it's something we talk about all the time, kind of the the ripple effect of murder.

Here's like maybe, maybe a lesson. Why do spouses allow, uh, you know, increases in life insurance policies or more life insurance policies when they maybe aren't in the best marriage, or maybe they know someone's cheating in the relationship? And then you always hear these stories about just months before the murder, or like sometimes it's like days they upped their policy or added more policies.

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

Did he know?

He did not know.

No, you got to tell. You got to tell the husband.

A couple of days after she died, he's on the phone with the life insurance company. He's like, I'm sorry, what? Right? So, like, I mean—

No, no, no, no, no.

If you're going to do that, you need to say something.

My point is thinking to yourself, I need to protect myself is one thing, or I'm uncomfortable with this, or I'm going to take my husband off the— off the insurance. That's sort of easier to do than to confront someone and say, I want you to know something. I've taken you off my insurance. And the reason is I don't think you have my best interests at heart. That is so much harder than calling the insurance company and saying, switch the beneficiary to my family member.

Very, very true. Very true. You know what's interesting, Josh, that the jury said in the end that they didn't think Chacey killed Bob for money.

Right.

Which I didn't really get because she stood, you know, to gain this money and then the jury— I didn't— did you get that?

I mean, that is correct that the jury did not believe that. Prosecutors did believe that this was for financial gain. He had a, you know, insurance policy of between $500,000 and $1 million. But, uh, you know, I, I would say that it's reasonable to believe that they didn't really know why they were killing him. I mean, I, I'm not— to suggest that this was just for money, like, I, like, I never believed that this was about her and Michael Garza being together. I mean, she had a bunch of other guys that she was seeing too. Like, like, this is not like we're gonna get this money and run off together. Like, she wanted to be free. I think she thought maybe the money might make life easier, but I— like, the idea that the money was the motive for this, I don't know. But yes, they were— she was not convicted of murder for financial gain.

All right, Josh, up next, you are going to take over for a special Talking Dateline challenge. You do not want to miss this.

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Okay, uh, welcome back to Talking Dateline. Now, instead of taking your social media questions, um, Andrea and I are going to play a game, and it is one that you and I talked about a year ago, um, um, back on this podcast. Um, so let's, uh, let's go back in time here. Andrea was talking to me about a lawyer, an attorney that she had interviewed for her episode called Poison Twist, which is about a chiropractor's poisoning death in New York. So let's listen to what Andrea and I were talking about after that on Talking Dateline.

She's a fellow Canadian, um, and I picked up on her accent immediately during our interview. She was saying about, and you know, I said, you're, you're Canadian, aren't you? And she's from Niagara Falls.

Can you automatically, instantly tell when somebody's Canadian?

I feel like I have that radar, you know, that special— is— would you call it radar? I don't know if that's the right term, but absolutely. I mean, I can pick out actors, I can pick out lawyers, I can pick out anybody pretty much instantaneously. As soon as, like, you know, I just need a few words, choice words, and then we're good.

I know this feels, by the way, like a social media contest that is upcoming. I can— I can see this coming. I'm going to be the moderator. So, yes, this is— this kind of thing is sort of why Talking Dateline exists, in my view. So we have outsourced a task to some of our fabulous Dateline ambassadors, the people who tell you on social media this episode or that episode is upcoming and who's going to be on. Okay. And we have had some American Canadian Dateline viewers and listeners—

Oh no, what if I get this wrong?

Send us voice recordings—

Oh my gosh.

—of the same sentence. And the sentence is, "For the record, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Sorry." Now I'm feeling the pressure though, because of that statement that I made.

So Andrea, we are going to play some clips of people saying that line and you Little Miss Canadian and can identify other Canadians. Uh, you're gonna guess whether the person speaking is American or Canadian. Here is clip number 1.

For the record, I have no idea what you're talking about. Sorry. American or Canadian? I mean, she sounds like— that's not how they would say it in my town, so she sounds American to me. American is correct. Yay!

Okay, okay, okay, that's good. All right, um, okay, clip number 2.

For the record, I have no idea what you're talking about. Sorry. She's definitely Canadian. The sorry gave it away. I think both the sorry and the about.

Yeah, okay, so, um, that person is Canadian. Okay, yes, uh, so far you're batting a thousand. Yeah. Would you like to risk it all, Andrea, and go for clip number 3? I would.

Here we go. For the record, I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm sorry. She definitely— she sounds American, but if she's Canadian, then she's, she's not saying it how Canadians say it.

That's not an answer, judges.

Okay, sorry, fine. American. She's American. American is correct.

Yeah. Okay. Andrea, 3 for 3.

You know what's funny, Josh, is that I was— when I was in Taiwan recently on my other story, I was at the national park and this man came up to me and started talking to me and I said, "You're Canadian." And he said, "Yes, I am. How did you know that?" And I said, "Because I'm Canadian and I can pick a Canadian even out of a Taiwanese national park." So, so you are 3 for 3 now.

Um, in baseball, um, you know, 3 for 3 gets you in the Hall of Fame if you can do that, you know, your entire career. So, all right, here's clip number 4.

For the record, I have no idea what you're talking about. Sorry. She's definitely Canadian. That person is American.

What?

That— how is that possible? She said she didn't— is she like from Minnesota?

Oh yeah.

A C, Josh. That, that was a, that was a red herring ringer because she's too close to Canada and they talk so much like Canadians. That's the one fly in the ointment.

Judges, they don't care. Um, also there's no one over here that I'm looking at.

Um, see, I, I can't, I don't know enough people from Minnesota, I guess, to be able to separate the Canadian Minnesota accent.

I'll give you a little grace. Here's clip number 5.

For the record, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Sorry. Definitely sounds Canadian unless they're from a northern state, but I'm going to go with Canadian. Canadian is correct. Okay. Okay. All right. At least I got, I got 4 out of 5. So. Right.

And now finally, for all the money in the world, plus an RV and A chaperoned trip to Puerto Vallarta.

How about to Minnesota?

Okay, sure. And, um, uh, a gift certificate from the Spiegel catalog. Spiegel featuring value selection and economy. Spiegel, Chicago, Illinois 60609. Can you tell that I watched a lot of game shows growing up? You probably can. Yes, yes.

Roulette number 6. For the record, I have no idea what you're talking about. Sorry. That one's kind of in between. I'm going to go with American, but it could be— could go either way.

I hate to see you go out on a losing note, Andrea. Oh no. That person was Canadian. But where's she from?

I wish I knew where these people were from.

But I have to say, you backed up your claim. I think you do. For the most part. I think you're able to say that you've got a failsafe or pretty close to it sense of who's from Canada and who isn't.

So yeah, I got to study the dialect a little more. You know, the northern states.

We want to thank you for playing. We have a home version of our game.

Could you imagine? Josh, well, thank you so much for this. It was very fun, as always. Fun and also interesting and fascinating because we are dealing, of course, with very heavy subject matter. So it's nice to have a little moment where we can smile, right?

Yes, it is also right. Keith, you would have crushed Keith in that competition, by the way.

That, you know, that would have been interesting to have Keith and I go head to head. I wonder what he would have— how he would have done. Actually, this— well, this is not airing while we're taping this right now, but it is Keith's birthday.

It is Keith's birthday. Yes.

Everybody wish Keith a happy birthday. It'll be a little belated when this comes out, but happy birthday to Keith. Happy birthday. Well, that is it, Josh, for talking Dateline. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you all for listening. And thank you to the Dateline ambassadors who shared their voices for this challenge. Thanks, Jessica McCourt Hughes, The Slickest Rick, JoJo Montana, Caitlin Clark, Anna Falkowski, and Erica Grimaldi. And remember, if you have any questions about our stories, you can DM us your audio or video on our socials @DatelineNBC, or leave us a voicemail at 212-413-5252 for a chance to featured right here. And you can watch the video version of Talking Dateline on Peacock or YouTube, or subscribe to the NBC News app. We will see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.

Friday night on an all-new Dateline.

She had a secret recorder app on her phone.

You're a monster.

I'm done with you. When a loving mom and wife disappears, investigators question the 3 men closest to her. Everybody was on our radar. An all-new Dateline, Friday night at 10/9c, only on NBC.