Transcript of Talking Dateline: Secrets Unmasked

Who gets to be a citizen of the United States at birth? When it comes to sports in school, who gets to compete with the girls? And how much power does the president actually have to hire and fire at independent agencies? These are some of the key questions before the U.S. Supreme Court this term. And as any good lawyer knows, whether you win or lose in the highest court depends on the facts, the evidence, and how you frame your arguments. But that's not the only thing that matters. I'm Laura Jarrett, senior legal correspondent at NBC News. NBC News, and this month in a new series for our Here's the Scoop podcast, I'm talking to legal experts and lawyers whose past legal victories are now the building blocks for the biggest cases still left to be decided. I wanna know how they convinced the court they were right when the stakes were high. What special sauce locked it in? And what could be different this time around? Join us for Here's the Scoop Supreme Court Edition. New episodes every Saturday. You can find Here's the Scoop from NBC News on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, it's Kate Snow, NBC News anchor and host of the NBC News podcast, The Drink. And this month I'm grabbing a Hugo spritz with former reality star Lauren Conrad. Here at The Drink, we love learning about someone's journey to the top. And Lauren and I, we go back to the very beginning of her extraordinary story. We talk about why she always saw reality TV as temporary for her, the scrutiny she faced in the public eye, and why she says she'll never watch Laguna Beach again. Hope you'll join us for The Drink. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, this is Andrea Canning, and we are talking Dateline. And today we are joined by the legendary Keith Morrison and his legendary producer Tim Uehlinger. They are here to discuss their Dateline episode Secrets Unmasked. This episode is about the murder of Regina Hicks, a 25-year-old Ohio woman who disappeared on the way to pick up her son from her estranged husband, Paul. Days later, Regina's car was found submerged in a pond with her body in the passenger seat. What followed was an investigation spanning two decades, a bizarre arson scheme, and a reluctant witness.

If you haven't seen the episode yet, you can stream it now on Peacock or listen in the Dateline podcast feed, then come right back here. Later, we will have an extra clip from Steve Gates, the witness who kept his silence for nearly 25 years, reflecting on how he feels about call now, and we will answer some of your amazing questions from social media. Okay, let's talk Dateline. Hey, Keith and Tim.

Hi, hi, how are you, Andrea? Nice to see you.

It's always nice to see you guys since you're out there in California, Southern California, so I don't get to see you very often.

It's great to see you.

So let's, let's dive right into this episode. The first thing that I thought of as I was watching was I'm always struck by, you know, just the opening lines, right? And in the, in the body of the episode. And in this one, you know, we're talking about Ohio. What is it, Willard, Ohio?

Yeah.

And, you know, I was an anchor in Ohio, so I know those little towns. It's not super little, but it's, it's not, it's not huge either. And it always strikes me how these— most of our Datelines happen in these small towns. You know, they don't happen in the big city. In fact, yeah. I've done, I think, one Dateline in New York City, and I've done a lot of Datelines. So, I mean, how— what's your take on that, that these crazy things happen in small-town America, like in this episode?

It's because it is a small town. I mean, there's even a genre called murder in a small town, right? I think, yeah, TV show called that. But, uh, and, and if you, if you, if you look at all the famous crime novels, most of them occur in small towns. Agatha Christie loved those country mansions, didn't she? And there's a reason, because it's a little place where this sort of crime doesn't normally occur. You expect it to happen in a big, scary city, uh, and not in a sweet, bucolic little place that everybody— where everybody knows everybody else. Because it does, we're really interested in it.

One of the things about the small towns is that because they are small towns, relationships are tighter. Yeah. More people— like, everybody knows everybody. And emotions and things like that, I have found in stories like, like this, people are tighter. There's more emotion.

That's a big part of it. Yeah, I agree with you.

Yeah.

And Keith, you know where I am from, Blue Mountain.

Yes.

In Canada, which is on Georgian Bay. It's part of Lake Huron, the Great Lakes. And so this was, you know, as I'm watching the opening of this episode, I'm thinking to myself, You know, I finally know sort of what it feels like, you know, to have a murder happen in a small town like that and for it to affect you, because I am from a very small town, and we did have a murder that was a diabolical murder that we featured on Dateline in November. And it was the fire captain who had murdered his wife, Ashley. And it happened 3 miles from my house where I grew up. So it's a new perspective for me.

It would be. Yeah.

And, you know, along the lines of what we've been talking about, Regina's uncle— Regina, the victim in this story, her uncle said something that struck me. And he said, "There's no way to explain it until you experience it yourself." And you don't have any idea really what these people are feeling when someone they love has been murdered.

Right. Even though this case occurred 24, 25 years ago now, The scars are— they're not healed. The people are still hurting. There's still emotion.

You could see it.

Yeah. And those things never heal. And the, you know, as they say, the ripples go out a long way, but they also last for generations. So people, anybody, even somebody who was a small child who you'd think would grow up and forget all about it, they don't forget about it. It informs everything in their lives.

Regina's cousin, said, you know, when the verdict came in guilty, she could feel it in her toes.

When she told me that, I was like, "Oh my God." You know, you could— She still— I saw her that day. I was there for the verdict. And I saw her that day, and she— The tears just kept coming, and she just couldn't believe that finally. Finally. But the emotion, it's still right on the surface.

You really brought to life Regina in this episode, especially with the challenges that we have sometimes telling these stories when they're so old because we don't have video and all the crystal clear pictures that we have now, it's more of a challenge. So it's the people. It was the people that you interviewed who were the ones who did such a good job of bringing into focus Regina, bringing her to life.

I will not deny that frequently when I'm just speaking for myself, launch into a story, one of the kinds of stories we do, I'll get a sense of, "Oh no, not again. We have to invade somebody's grief and we're going to do this story about the worst thing that ever happened to somebody. And in the end, the thing that makes me glad we tell the stories are because you get to know the person at the heart of it, which is generally the victim.

So true.

And in a way, in a strange way, it's like you are celebrating a person who died a long time ago.

I agree.

I agree. And also, Keith, they look like they wanted to be there. Talking about Regina. You could feel it.

Yeah, they did. Regina's brother, for instance, Chuck Rowe. I hit it off with Regina's brother Chuck because he was wearing a Marine cap, United States Marines, with a snowy beard.

We love the Marines in this household.

Yes, I know you do. So I, I met Chuck. He's wearing this hat, and I introduced myself, and I said, you're a Marine, really? And then I asked, like, you know, where'd you serve? And he goes, well, one of my foreign deployments was in Somalia. I was like, Somalia? 1992, Somalia? And I said, were you there on the first day, first wave? He's like, oh yeah, yeah, all the TV cameras were in my face. I said, oh my God, that was me. I was there on the beach.

It's funny how paths cross, isn't it?

Cross. So we hit it off, and it was like— but it was very funny. Anyway, his— that family is really very, very nice people.

Nice.

The crime, it starts out with, you know, she goes missing, of course, Regina.

She—

they find her car in the water, and the cause of death is ruled as a drowning. Manner of death, however, is pending. And I'm thinking to myself, this poor woman is in the passenger seat.

How—

so how do you figure that? And she's got marks on her. How do you figure that she— that this is anything other than a homicide? I don't— I didn't really get that.

It was a source of puzzlement to a lot of people, I think. Yeah. Yeah, the coroner may well have felt that he would be sticking his neck out a little too far if he went to declaring that it was a homicide.

Right.

How else does she get in there, though?

Well, you know, there are ways and ways. It's possible that she could. She could slide into the passenger seat. When things are at least remotely possible that, you know, a good many in the law enforcement community quite probably quite rightly are saying, well, we can't quite go with that yet.

It's interesting though, because we were talking about the case in Blue Mountain with Ashley, with the— her husband who was the fire captain, and her body. So he was— he had pushed the car into the ditch during a snowstorm to make it look like she had had a car accident, but there she is in the passenger side. Again, it's another story where the victim is in the passenger side. So how did she you know, drive herself into the ditch. Right? It didn't add up.

Exactly.

Right.

Yeah. And then later on, of course, much, much later on, years and years and years later on, that manner of death has changed to one that I think everybody, you know, was able to sign on to. And that made all the difference.

I don't want to say this in the wrong way. When they changed that to homicide, I was so glad for her family To me, that was movement. That was like acknowledging, "We believe Regina was murdered." And now it's official.

Sadly, it came after Regina's mother was already— was dead. And she had campaigned for that for years and years.

Yep.

But didn't survive to see it, which was a real shame.

And her mom, Regina's mom, had put up billboards to keep the case alive. And I covered the Crystal Rogers Crystal Rogers case last year, where that became a real focal point of this, were these billboards of, you know, "Where is Crystal?" And they believed also that they knew who had killed her, even though she'd never been found. I think the billboards, I think they're so effective because it— not only does it show how much the family cares, right, that they're not giving up, but it's in your face.

Face, right?

Every day, if you live in these areas where these billboards are, like, you cannot ignore it. And in the Crystal Rogers case, they put up a billboard right Next to the Sheriff's Department.

It cannot be overstated how important it is for families in a cold case to keep at it, to keep pushing. And it helps the police too because it, you know, they may seem annoyed, but the fact is they need to have cover sometimes to continue an investigation that otherwise they wouldn't be able to afford. But if somebody's really ramping up for it all the time, then their bosses are gonna say, "Yeah, spend the money." And so things get done.

Um, when we come back, we will have an extra clip from Steve Gates, the witness who kept his silence for nearly 25 years.

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 Five Miles from Home now wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's talk about the other half of this story. That just really went off the rails in a lot of bizarre ways. You know, from the beginning of the show where I see somebody with this long hair and they've got glasses on and then there's a fire. I'm like, where is this going?

Yeah, well, exactly. It's what anybody looking at the story would think.

You guys had me hooked.

It was the weirdest darn thing, you know?

I wrote down the name of the— actually, I don't even want to get— maybe I shouldn't even give it any publicity, but like where you can— you can get these wearable masks.

And I'm not sure they even sell them anymore.

That company that was involved in our story, Andrea, is no longer in business. They were based in the UK and they, they are no longer—

I'm kind of actually glad about that. So yeah, it was called That's My Face. That's My Face. Yeah. You know, it's one thing to have like a Halloween costume or something, but like you have a plan where you're going to use your current girlfriend to wear your ex-girlfriend's face to burn down your house? What?

Yeah, it was a stretch. The other thing that was in this, which was the spoof card to be able to call people.

Yes, the spoof card.

And it appeared to be coming from a different number altogether. And until they did a real deep dive on that, it looked as if people who were innocent were guilty and vice versa.

The Clermont County, Ohio Sheriff's Department, you know, started investigating this case and they did a pretty good job. And then, um, using some of their information, this insurance investigator named Zach McCune, he was like the super investigator and he got to the bottom of this. And every time, like, he learned something, he couldn't believe the next thing he'd learned. You know, he was literally— he's like, in all the things he's done in his career ever, he's never seen anything like this.

I could have listened to that guy all day long.

He was, uh, yeah, he definitely had me at hello. I was like, okay, I'm interested in this person, in this story. And I always like it when people have specialties, you know. So he, he's saying right out of the gate, my specialty is, is fire, it's arson.

Yeah, yeah, he, he's a certified fire investigator, as if, you know, like a fire marshal would be.

The second person in the house lighting the fire. Do we think that was Paul then, or do we not? Do we not know? Or do you know?

Don't know.

We don't know who we don't know.

Okay.

No.

Oh, well, Paul's tall, so you would know, right, if it was Paul, right?

Right. And Paul had an alibi, a perfect alibi. He was at a hotel 3 hours away.

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

Right. Kind of like Steve.

There you go. Yeah, sure.

Terry Sweet is another person You know, who went along with Paul, right? I should say allegedly Terry Sweet, but she died, right?

So she, she died the very day the, the insurance inspector was going to talk to her, talk to her again.

Yeah. And Andrea, this is funny, this is something we can bring up. I mean, obviously we attempted to get the death certificate and to see if there was any investigation, but how did she die? Apparently, according to the little information out there, is that it was probably alcohol-related and it was quote-unquote natural causes.

Hmm. Does that— do people think otherwise?

Well, there may be, you know, there could be, but nobody is gonna talk about it.

Yeah, there are some people who believe that coincidences happen and other people who believe coincidence is unlikely.

Law enforcement generally doesn't believe in coincidences. As I always say on this podcast, um, it seems like an awfully big coincidence that she would— the timing of her death. However, Paul was never, we should say, was never charged with Terry Sweet's death. Was never arrested.

Absolutely not. No.

I mean, Paul was really a charmer. But when it came to choosing girlfriends, and I mean, no disrespect to any of the girlfriends he may have had over the years, he would choose people who would be very pleased to be with such a handsome, virile guy. He would pull them in and they would do anything for him.

You said to Kelly, you said you were in love, and she said lust. Yeah, like deadpan.

Sure.

Yeah, like she was not— she was not happy.

She said in our— in our interview that she really liked him at first, like he was really nice. He was— yeah, that he was super charming. He was fun. He gave the appearance that he was going to be taking care of her. Yeah, you know, uh, Kelly is very upfront about that in the main interview that we did with her.

Why was Kelly's face obscured in the police video?

Because at the time she wasn't— ended up not being charged, so they didn't want to— when they released that, they didn't want to have—

right, right.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, and then also the detective— I mean, poor Kelly is there for a child handoff at Kroger and tasers are being pointed at her. I mean, I can't even imagine. Then she's in the interview room, and the detective's talking about the woman in the fire. She's rather large. And then Kelly's like— you hear Kelly say, oh my God. And I'm not sure, I can't tell if she's talking about her saying she's rather large or the whole situation. I was like, what?

That interview occurred probably 7 to 10 days after the arrest. And the female detective there was starting to realize, I don't know, I'm not sure this is the same person either, you know?

Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah, but at first, there was— it was very— there was a lot of, you know, feeling that that was Kelly, you know.

Well, yeah, I mean, there's a mask and the hair, and also, you know, nighttime, uh, security camera from a house, it's never going to be that crisp and clear. You could have gotten away with something like that potentially if you had just an, you know, not— maybe not a strong investigator on it.

And by the way, you know, he wasn't convicted of any serious crime. It was— you got misdemeanors, and, and so no jail time.

So that made me really actually angry that he got this slap on the wrist.

But what happened is, first of all, the main witness that would have been is deceased. They're missing that element. And then we had the pandemic. There were like 2 or 3 changes of, of, of judges, and they just wanted to wrap this case case up and get him on something. And they did. They got him on misdemeanor. And, and the civil case, he ended up supposedly having to pay $400,000, but I don't think he ever paid it.

All right, can we talk about Steve? So Steve, as we mentioned, Steve is, I guess, the old friend who admitted finally that he was there that night. He says he didn't see the murder happened, but he went along with Paul to cover it up. And it took him a really long time to do the right thing.

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

We have an extra clip from your interview with Steve.

What do you think about him now?

I don't think he has any more minions that are work— that will pull any weight for him. I don't think that he has anyone left in his corner. I think he's powerless at this point. I don't think he has the reach that he used to have. I'm sure he still has connections, but I don't— I don't think that they would— I don't think that they're a danger to me, his connections.

Uh-huh. You don't get that little itch in your back anymore that somebody might do something to you someday?

No.

No, I'm not afraid of him anymore.

Interesting, isn't it? Once you decide not to be afraid of somebody, does it make you look back and say, Jesus, why didn't I have this attitude, you know, 20 years earlier, 24 years earlier? You just look at the brute in the face and say, "Fuck you, I'm gonna go tell the cops." Right.

I was young and just— I was stupid. I was a young stupid kid. The whole idea of him coming forward and him giving this, you know, according to the jury, very believable testimony, um, that solved the case. That found justice for Regina's family. But Regina's family Um, are still not very happy with Steve Gates. They feel that he waited way too long. They feel that their mother could have had justice while in her lifetime. There's still some hard feelings there.

Yeah, well, I mean, the one thing I'll give Steve is we are dealing with a killer.

Paul is a convicted killer and a skilled manipulator who can make a person feel manipulator.

And also, you know, this arson business, uh, you know, then his girlfriend shows up dead. We don't know how, but all these things— I think I'd be afraid of Paul too.

I, I get it. I get it. And I'm just, frankly, I'm still surprised that Steve came forward to us when he was in court testifying at the, you know, They knew, man, of the trial. Um, he didn't want any audio recorded, he didn't want any video, and under Ohio law, if the witness requests that, the judge can grant that request, and he did. So the fact that he ended up talking to Keith was— I was kind of surprised. And the reason, Andrea, I think he has essentially, um, you know, decided to come forward. I made a special trip out to Ohio to talk to him in person with his attorney, Bernie Davis. And I think he wanted the community to know that he suffered with this, but ate away at him for 24 years.

Mm-hmm.

And that he's sorry that he waited so long. And, you know, his family in that region has gotten a lot of, uh, no pushback from that community. He still lives on the same farm that he did back in 2001.

Yeah, can you imagine going on with the rest of your life having now gone public finally with that story and the feelings a great many people must have about it is you've still gotta go to the grocery store every day. You're still gonna go and see other people around this small town every day. And you know that they're probably whispering behind your back and it's a tough thing to deal with.

For sure. We often hear from people from our stories right after they air through a text or a call. Did you hear, have you heard anything from Steve about the reaction to him doing this interview?

Not yet. No, I've not. No. I think that probably it's a good thing that he has done. And I think it might be recognized. I hope it is. Because You know, even now, if you're not afraid of anybody, but you're afraid of how the public might feel about you, I'm sure.

Yeah.

No, I, I personally, the way it came out, I think it was a good thing that I think he needed to get some of that out. And I'm sure a lot of people in that community were watching your Dateline.

And I think the fact that he keeps pushing him, apologized to the family. Keith had to drag it out of him a bit, but he said, 'I'm sorry I didn't come forward earlier,' right? And you could tell he meant it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Apologies go a long way. I think they're big if they're sincere. Um, you know, and I have to say, given the ride that we went on in this story and all the things that, you know, Paul was accused of doing, It was a very satisfying arrest and verdict to see that, you know, to see that car on the video, you know, get pulled over and the jury.

Yeah.

3 hours. That's 3 hours is like the— I swear it is the magic number for juries with quick verdicts for guilty.

It has to be. Seems to be 3 hours in there too, right? 2 hours plus lunch.

Yeah, exactly. They were like, yeah, you're done. You're done, Paul. And up next, we have questions from our loyal viewers and listeners on social media that we are going to answer.

Okay.

Okay. Now Keith and Tim are going to answer some of your questions, and they also have comments from social media. So these are coming from people who caught your excellent program Friday night or over the weekend. Great.

Ready? Yep.

Linda Beliglow Abrams says, "How did he kill her?" Meaning Paul. "Before he drove her into the water? I think I missed that." Do you know exactly how Regina died?

Well, I guess we don't really know exactly how she died. Because nobody saw it except the killer. The, you know, the friend who eventually told the story of what he saw that evening didn't see that part of the activity. What he saw was when he walked back to the car, he saw her crumpled in the passenger seat. And Paul told him, "She's dead." Although at that point, she actually wasn't dead. But clearly, he had done something to her. And it wasn't clear exactly what.

Didn't they say that she had marks on her body? I mean, I don't know if that's related to her, you know, death or not, but—

Which could— marks on her body, which could have meant, you know, any number of possibilities, I think. And strangulation was a possibility, I think, wasn't it, Tim? And blunt force.

It seems a more likely thing is that some type of blow to the head was the possible thing that made her unconscious, but the cause of death was actually drowning. They know that from water being ingested.

Yeah.

Yeah. So they, they believe though that some things happen before the drowning.

Yes. He knocked her out and then he put her in the passenger seat of the car and then he drove the car into the pond. That's how it worked. So the observer, you know, the witness saw the car going over a hill and into the pond. But didn't see what happened to her beforehand.

Okay, so this one is @Jill Hughes from Facebook, and she's talking about Steve, the man who made the deal and testified. She says, "What a jackass. He should do jail time as well, because if you don't tell about a crime, you are complicit." Well, there's—

I mean, it's an argument that could have been made, all right. But in the end, they really needed to solve that crime, and Steve was the way they could solve it. So So he was able to, you know, make that arrangement with them that he didn't go to jail. And he was a lucky man in that sense.

And I do think, Andrea and Keith, one of the things that everybody involved with the prosecution of this case feels is that if Steve Gates did not come forward, this family would not have had justice.

No.

We would have been on year 25 or 26 or Yeah. If he had not come forward, this case wouldn't have been officially solved. They didn't really have anything more than him.

Yes, exactly. And the other cases in— I mean, remember, he was good. He got misdemeanor charges. He never did any jail time. So this would have been a guy wandering around scot-free for any number of bad acts.

We see this a lot. It's a double-edged sword, right? I mean, you need them, but Yep. At the same time, you know, maybe they could have done things differently, you know, from the beginning. It's, it's hard. Um, do you think Steve would have come forward without the immunity deal?

Andrew and Keith, I think any defense attorney would not have let their client speak to police without some type of deal for immunity before they talk, because his client Steve was, you know, at some risk for some type of charge, including, you know, obstruction of justice perhaps. So I don't think there was any way he was going to be talking without a deal.

And that's very normal. Robin Stevens West says once you know it's a mask, you can tell. Hindsight is 20/20. You look at this security, this surveillance video, and it kind of looks bizarre. But then, you know, when, when you actually have the luxury of knowing who maybe this was, does it change it for you when you watch that video?

It never looked real to me. And I was a little surprised, frankly, that investigators could have looked at it in the first place and thought, "Yeah, that's— that's Kelly. That's the ex-girlfriend, not the current girlfriend." It didn't make sense to me, but apparently it worked for a while.

Thank you both. For joining us and giving us all your insights.

Thank you.

Thank you, Andrea. It's been a delight.

It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure. Well, that is it for Talking Dateline this week, and thank you all for listening. 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 be featured right here. And you can watch the video version of Talking Dateline on Peacock or YouTube or subscribe to the NBC News app. And before we go, be sure to check out Keith's new original podcast series, Five Miles from Home, the story of the murder of a high school track star in a small desert town. All 6 episodes are available now, or you can subscribe to Dateline Premium to binge the entire series ad-free. We'll see you Friday for an all-new Dateline on NBC.

Friday night on an all-new Dateline.

51 parents lost daughters that day.

Almost 1 year after the Camp Mystic floods. Our girls should be here. For the first time, some of the parents speak out together. Could this tragedy have been averted? Don't forget an all-new Dateline, Friday night at 10/9c, only on NBC.