Transcript of Talking Dateline: Under a Full Moon

Hi, everyone. I'm Blaine Alexander, and today we are talking Dateline. I am here with the one and only Keith Morison to talk about his episode Under a Full Moon. Hi, Keith.

Hi, one and only Blaine. How are you?

I say that every time, don't I? It always bears repeating.

It's good. You know what? It doesn't make me feel bad when you say that.

Well, then we'll keep doing it. I love it. Well, if you haven't seen this episode yet, you can find it in the Dateland podcast feed, so go there and listen to it and then come right back here. Just a quick recap. In September of 2012, George Tiafé found his wife, Shanna, beaten to death at home. Investigators wondered if someone had followed her there from her job as a cocktail waitress on the Las Vegas Strip. But later they realized that the killer was someone much closer to home, and someone even closer still had put him up to it. For this talking Dateland, we have an extra clip from Keith's interview with George TFA's sister. Then, Keith and I will answer some of your questions from social media. Keith, let's do it.

Let's talk Dateland. Let's do it.

Let's talk about the strip. I found it interesting that this entire thing took place with the Las Vegas strip there as the background character, if you will. I mean, Vegas is always a spicy place, an interesting place. What was it like doing this story in such a place as Las Vegas versus some of the other places that we go to?

I'm glad you asked that question. This is one of the things I enjoyed about doing it. Because in the many stories that I have done and we have done in and around Las Vegas, which is a giving place for Dateland over the years, from the outside, looking in. Tourists going to Las Vegas, people going to Gambleaire, it's a certain place. Maybe it's exciting, maybe it seems something you do and leave there and don't tell your friends about. But there is a work a day world of Las Vegas, where good, hard working, honest people go in to work every day to work as cocktail waitresses, to work as firemen, to work as... To make the city run. Vegas is in many ways a working class city. And Dennis just got this very colorful strip down the middle of it with some colorful jobs associated with that.

Well, I mean, the thing about Vegas, for many of us who go there, there's a lot of money to be spent. But for people who work there, there's a lot of money to be made. I mean, I think this episode really showed a lot of people how lucrative being a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas can be.

Right. Yeah. Maybe you have some one an idea of what a cocktail waitress would be like, the work that he or she would do or the money he or she would make. But then you just throw that out the window when you go to Las Vegas. Yeah, you're making money.

I mean, based on that, it certainly is reasonable to assume that in this episode that this could have very easily been what people would call a robbery gone wrong. That people know, okay, she's a cocktail waitress. She's really good at it. She's got a lot of tips. It makes sense to follow her and try and take her money.

Well, your first thought, if you're investigating it, I would think, would be, here is a very attractive woman in the middle of the night heading home from work. So there's There's the possibility that somebody was chasing her for that, for some sexual encounter with her. There's a possibility somebody was chasing her for her tips, which she would carry with her on the way home, or might be carrying with her on the way home. Sure. So, yes, that's your first go-to place.

Let's talk about this investigation. I mean, the first big surprise for me was that her house had been burglarized weeks earlier, and it was very creepy to hear what was taken from her house, too.

Well, yes, but as we've covered these kinds of stories, that is not that unusual. That material is... It is a creepy thing, and it also indicates that there's some danger in the vicinity. So it certainly is understandable. They'd want to follow that up for sure and chase it down as much as they could. But it really just didn't go anywhere useful anyway.

I mean, you talked about the fact that they thought maybe it was some kids in the area. They questioning. They were looking at them. How long did they go down that road before they said, Okay, this isn't going anywhere. Let's look somewhere else?

Well, not that long, really. There were a lot of things that they looked into that just didn't go anywhere. It was just maybe in this case, as the police are investigating and chasing down leads and looking at this possibility and that possibility, the fact that they didn't look at George was a bit of a failure of the imagination because like you, they recognized that this was a twofold. This was an upstanding person who had lived an upstanding life. There were no indications that he would do any such thing. And besides which, he was on a long shift at the fire department all night long and simply could not have committed that crime. So he had an absolute ironclad alibi.

I think that alibi, as I was watching this, just going in blind, that was what sealed it for me. Sure. He was working overnight at the fire station. Firefighter is not going to lie on his behalf, right? You would think. He goes out on calls. That's something that you lock that down. Okay, he was there. He couldn't have done this. Let's look somewhere else. I was fooled. George had me fooled.

But understandably so, because George was the person who... Every guy probably grows up thinking I ought to be. If I were a better person, I'd be like George. George was the all-American. George was handsome. George was Fun to talk to. George was good to be with. George was kind to all kinds of people. He had an opportunity to be a wealthy finance guy, and instead, he chose to become a fireman and an EMT because he wanted to help people. That was just George. He was like that to the whole community.

He was like an adult Boy Scout. I mean, he really was. That's well put.

Yeah.

Let's talk a little bit about the two sides of George and George's relationship with Shana You know, there are a great many people around the country who are married to a partner who at first their strengths as a character, their maybe dominating strength as a character, somebody you're prepared to follow, seems like exactly what you need.

And you follow that person, and you're happy to go along with what they want to do. And they will set the agenda in your marriage and in your life. But eventually, the grip tightens and the control tightens, and you cease to become an independent person. That's when violence follows. And it often follows when the woman in the relationship, usually the woman, decides she has had enough of this, she cannot take it anymore, maybe with the help of somebody else in the family. Something creates a situation where she thinks, I got to leave this relationship or I'll just have no life at all because this person is just simply too controlling. That's a very dangerous situation.

Once you started revealing the troubles in their marriage Which the signs were troubling. I think that video clip that showed them trying to take the family picture and him snapping about like, Okay, hold the camera this way, or Here's how you should do this. Some people could look at that and say, Okay, maybe he's just annoying. I wouldn't want to hang out with him, but that's not the sign of violence. But laid against the backdrop of everything else. It's such a disturbing video to see, even in a small thing, wanting to have that control.

Yes, in the context of the rest of it. And by itself, that's maybe trying to be helpful, but in a way that you can tell that there's an element of control there that is a little uncomfortable.

And of course, while we're on this difficult subject, we want to share some very important information. If you or somebody that you know is experiencing domestic violence or relationship abuse, a good place to go for advice and for resources is the National Domestic Violence Hotline. That number is 800-799 Again, 800-799-7233, or you can text the word BEGIN, that's B-E-G-I-N, to the number 88788. Finally, you can go to thehotline. Org, and there's always someone there who can give you some resources. When we come back, we've got an extra clip from Keith's interview with George TFA's sister. I'm curious When you spoke with Maria, Keith, did you feel a sense of that struggle that she had? On one hand, defending everything her brother did, really. I mean, she had a response to everything that you laid out in this story. She did.

I got the sense that she had gone through a struggle, yes, but that she didn't hesitate to be absolutely in his corner in every respect and use the explanation that he was using, that George's sister simply wouldn't let go of the idea that he couldn't possibly have done this. She knew him as well as anybody could know him. That's one of the tragic things about a story like this, is that you recognize that nobody really knows even those closest to them. We all have secrets, and we keep them buried deep sometimes. Someone you have lived with all your life and You think you know that person well enough that you could never, ever possibly get it wrong. So you put yourself out there for that person, and then it turns out you are wrong, and it's hard to accept that. So it's especially hard to accept that when you love the person who has committed a terrible act. And what do you do? Stop loving them immediately? No, you can't. You want somehow for this not to be true. So she was able to take situations without sure. Others would say, Okay, yeah, that means he did this terrible thing.

She could say, No, there's another explanation. There has to be this.

This isn't him. I wonder, Keith, when you go into an interview like that, how do you approach such an interview?

Well, you listen. I mean, it's not up to us as observers of the story to try to change somebody's mind. I'm very interested in what that person thinks. There are occasions in an interview where somebody is just a perpetrator, for example, is just being insistent about something which is obviously not true and is trying to pull the wool over your eyes, and you have to call them on it, of course. But a person like George's sister, who is going to support him at every term, who you or I might think, you got George wrong, even though you lived with him your whole life. You don't know him entirely because he did this awful thing. I don't want to go there. She's allowed to have her point of view, and her point of view is a legitimate part of any story we're going to tell.

Absolutely. To that point, we I do have some extra sound of your interview with Maria. This is from when she described her impressions of George and Shana's relationship. She said that she still had hope. Let's listen to a little bit of that.

Did you talk to him during the course of this breakup?

Yes, he was at my sister's house the summer before Shana died. It was pretty evident at that point that they were headed towards divorce. My brother just had a very sad energy about him. He was glad to bring their daughter to the Bay Area so she could meet with the cousins and have good family time and take a break from Las Vegas. But he was sad. He was at a point where he didn't think it was going to be salvageable.

What did he tell you about it and why it wasn't worth he- He just said he was just so sad.

His tone of voice was just sad. But again, in his gentle tone, he says, Yeah, I guess it just isn't going to work out. I think Shana and I are getting a divorce. He was just devastated. You could tell he was just devastated.

Did he tell you what the specifics of the problem?

No, it just isn't happening. It's not working.

He must have complained about Shana in some way or other, even implicitly.

No. Actually, his characterization of Shana or his descriptions of anything that interactions he and Shana had really didn't change at all from when their marriage was doing well. I mean, Oh, Shana is going to do this. Oh, we're going to go. Shana and I are going to go to this for their daughter's birthday. Or he never called her name, never said, Oh, well, in an aside manner, Oh, I can't do this because Shana wants this or that. None of that thing. In fact, as I'm thinking about it, his characterization of her just never changed. From when they were having a stable relationship to when it was ending.

That's such a striking account.

It is. He was very good at not revealing to the rest of the world what was really going on in his life. Right up until the very end, he was already convicted of a crime.

Before we go to the trial, I want to talk about Greyhound. In all of this. It was so disturbing to me that here is this clearly mentally ill man, clearly had a hard life, was having a hard life, and that this was the person that essentially Actually, evidence showed he used as the scapegoat and the criminal to take out his wife. I was just so disturbed by the way that Greyhound was used in all of this. I don't know, befriended and then turned into a killer on his behalf.

Right. The chances that Greyhound would have been a killer under any other circumstances, I got to think, would be practically nil. He was a troubled guy, sure, and he had a lot of issues, but he just wanted to be alone. He wanted to be out there and then have enough money to be able to buy food. So he thought these people were helping him by giving him odd jobs to do.

I think what to me stood out was that it speaks to the way society sometimes discards people like a Greyhound? Someone who's homeless, someone who has a dependency on drugs, on alcohol. The theme was repeated, well, why would you believe him over George, who is this great guy and this fantastic person? I think it was just It's such an important lesson of, yeah, you can't base everything on appearances. You can't automatically decide, okay, you're not to be believed, you are to be believed, just because of the types of roles you fit in society. Sure.

What I found interesting is that even though Greyhound was said by his own friends to be a known liar on a scale of 1 to 10, he was a one and a half. One point five. He lied all the time. Yeah. He was a drug addict, and he was an alcoholic, and he was a homeless guy, and he was clearly mentally ill, and seriously so. What I found fascinating, though, is that the jury believed him, and they did not believe George. Because Greyhound told the story that made sense. Even though he was a known liar, they could believe this from him.

I was fascinated that prosecutors took... I mean, what you described accurately as a risk of putting him on the sand, of having him testify. Because that could have gone any number of ways.

You put it out there that you recognize you have to let the jury know, I know this person is a known liar. I know this person is mental illness. I know this person is an addict in a number of different ways. But listen to his story anyway, and you'll recognize that this story is the one that's true. That took a lot of faith.

There was something really striking about this after the verdict, after everything, there was this rather unexpected, I think people would say, confession of sorts from George.

Well, George, yes. George, at that point, was facing life without parole. He had no hope, and he chose that moment to say, Okay, well, all right, I did it, but I did it because I had this mental problem, and it wasn't really my fault. It was the fault of this difficulty I had, and my brain made me do it. And it was like he was looking for some way, if not to get sympathy, at least perhaps to have somebody say, Well, maybe you should have a shorter sentence, or maybe we should do a new trial based on your mental illness. That was enough to make Maria, his sister, decide that maybe she'd had to abandon him because he was clearly not telling the truth. He did not get a hearing on the question. It was rejected for reasons I think anybody could understand.

Okay, and after the break, Keith and I are going to answer some of your questions, and they're great questions from social media. Well, we have some questions, Keith, from social media, as we always do for your stories. Let's dive in. These are actually a few questions about some recent episodes of Talking Dateland as well. This goes back to the conversation you and I had last week about your episode In a Lonely Place.

Oh, yes. That's the one just- Chris Smith.

A quick reminder about Chris Smith. Yes, a California entrepreneur who went missing back in 2010, and his business partner, Ed Shin, was convicted of his murder. Here's an audio question from Elizabeth about that episode. Let's listen.

Hi, this is Elizabeth. In the case, in the episode of In a Loving Place About the Disappearance of Chris Smith, has anyone investigated the idea that maybe Ed Shin's wife was also involved, and that's who he's trying to protect. Just curious.

Thanks. Well, and the answer to that one is no, she didn't have any idea, and they did took into it to some degree, but satisfied themselves pretty quickly that she was one of those people who had been kept in the dark. You know, Ed Shin had become very, very good at hiding his true personality from everybody, and that included his wife. I think it's not something that is that uncommon, unfortunately.

It is.

It's also so striking to me that marriage is such an act of trust, isn't it? Oh, yes. I mean, you got to trust that your partner is not crazy, that they're not a killer, right? On top of other things. Yeah, sure. But, goodness. Okay, so a couple of comments. This is hilarious. A bunch of you sent in messages with some words of encouragement about something that I actually revealed on a Talking Dateland episode with Josh a few weeks ago about the fact that I am unable to swim. This was about his episode, Open Water. Here's a comment from Sarah. Let's listen.

Hi. This message is for Blaine. Blaine I heard your comment a few weeks ago on talking to your mind that you don't know how to swim and you're scared of the water. I have taught adults how to swim in the ocean and not teach here. So it's possible. You got to rely on them. You let them water do its job.

Sarah, that is so kind. I appreciate it. It's funny. I really do have a stronger resolve, though, to learn how to swim. I've got two daughters. They're very young. My oldest daughter, she's four, is actually in swimming classes right now. I'm starting to take lessons with her instructor on my own. Good. Because, yeah, my whole family can swim or will be able to swim, and I don't want to be the odd person out here.

That's my motivation here. No. Very wise. I hope you float. Some of us don't. Do you? Yeah. The collar would say to me, Just relax. You'll float. I just relax. I still sink like a stone to the bottom of the pool.

It doesn't work for everyone is what you're saying.

No, it doesn't. I enjoy underwater swimming, but there's no way I'm going to do laps on the surface.

Well, we also had some more general... We had some more general questions that people sent This one is at Akmaui, an ambassador who asks, This is to all of you. Is there a case where you believe that they got the wrong person?

Oh, yeah. I think I've done about a dozen of them where they did get the wrong person. It can take years and years and years to undo that mistake. The legal system is not set up for, Oops, made a mistake. Let's change it. It takes a long time. It's the resistance to that is extremely difficult to overcome. But yes, that happens.

It takes a long time. Also in those stories, it really takes someone almost acting on their behalf. It's not something that people are going back and reviewing, but it takes someone who's dogged in their pursuit of the truth or someone who says, No, you got to keep looking at this and repeatedly ringing that alarm bell.

Some of the most selfless people I've ever met are investigators and also defense attorneys who do nothing but cases where they believe somebody has been wrongly convicted. There are people like that in the system who are trying to make it better.

There are. And thankfully so. This is a question. This one is a fun one. It's from, well, her name is fun, too. Sweet tea with candy. Candy.

That's cute.

Okay. What is your favorite part of Dateland?

Let me ask that What have you, Blaine? Because you're the one who's getting going here. What attracted you to come to Dateland? What did you like about the idea?

If I were to say I love the process of reporting these stories, I love doing the interviews. I love the fact that we are able to sit down, take our time, talk to somebody for two, three, sometimes hours, and that there's no rush. I really, really enjoy that. I enjoy that with all the prep in the world, the interviews can just meander off in different directions or that I can get surprised in them or learn things, and then it's a real conversation. That's just a fun satisfying part. Secondary to that or tangential, I love the connections that come from doing interviews like that. Once you've sat down across from somebody for a good two, three hours and all of the prep and everything, you have some relationship with them, especially the victim's families. I enjoy that as well. Then the next part, of course, is getting to talk with you, Keith.

Oh, yeah. It's amazing, isn't it? An incredible gift, I would say, when you're sitting across from someone who has gone through maybe the worst thing that could happen to a person in life. They've thought about whether or not to participate in a story that we do. Some people don't want to, and that's fine. Some people do want to, and they want to represent a loved one, but have to tell the whole story of what happened and their reactions to it. They have to have faith in you as well. They have faith in you to tell the story well, which is a responsibility you have to take seriously. But they're giving of so much of themselves, knowing that the whole world is going to see, and they do. They do it anyway because something is motivating them to get out there and reveal. It's them. It's an extraordinary thing, as you say.

Last question. I'm going to ask this one. This is from @flintucky, who says, Are you all looking forward to coming to Nashville? See you there. Keith, are you looking forward to it?

I can't imagine anything more wonderful than going to Nashville and being in front of a whole crowd of people. I just love being in front of a whole crowd of people for an evening. I'm terrified. Are you kidding?

I know it'll be a lot of fun. I know the world, the people are excited to see you, Keith. That's the biggest thing. The people are so ready to see you, my friend. Well, to that point, if there's anybody out there who's listening, who has not, if you have not purchased your tickets yet. You can still do it. Dateland Live on September 28th. It's a first of its kind event featuring on stage panels, audience Q&A's, and a VIP reception. You can get your tickets right now at datelignnbc. Com. Com/event.

Great. Come to Nashville.

Come to Nashville. It has been a joy, as always, talking Dateland with you, my friend. Thank you so much.

The pleasure was entirely mine. Thank you for being so good to me with this one.

Always. That's it for Talking Dateland this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or just about Dateland, you can always reach us 24/7 on social media at datelandnbc. Do you have a question for Talking Dateland? We hope so. You can leave it for us in a voicemail. That number is 212-413-5252, or you can always send us a video on social media for a chance to be featured on one of our upcoming episodes. Thanks so much for listening. We will, of course, see you Fridays on Dateland on NBC.