Transcript of Mickie

Rock and roll royalty spends Sunday mornings with Willie Geist. This summer, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, and this weekend, Mick Jagger.

Do you still get that thrill or those nerves on the eve of an album release? Yeah, you do. You want them to take notice, you know.

This Sunday morning on Sunday Today with Willie Geist on NBC.

Hey everyone, I'm Dylan Dreyer, co-host of the third hour of Today and mom to three wild boys. I've learned a lot in my years as a as a parent, mostly that I don't have it all figured out yet. And I'm not the only one. This is my new podcast, The Parent Chat. Each week I sit down with someone new for honest conversation and real-world advice about parenting.

I am over here just like winging it.

Hey, I'm just trying not to screw my own kids up. I'm not giving you advice on how not to screw yours up.

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What was she thinking as she secretly slipped into a car wearing just her pajamas? Her mind at turmoil as she rode down Interstate 80 across northern Nevada. Would she? Could she reveal what she knew? She was just 18, tiny, 98 pounds and barely 5 feet tall. But the story she took with her on that tortured drive was, she knew, going to change everything. She came, and we talked, and we recorded the conversation with her permission. And it was dynamite. The man she had come to talk to was a distinguished attorney. If anyone could advise her, surely it would be he about the story she said she had to tell.

It had been eating at me and eating at me. I couldn't sit there and live with myself. Myself knowing what I knew.

And then out it came, the whole terrifying story, possibly true and possibly a careful and cunning deceit.

I was too in shock and, um, I didn't know what I was feeling. It was like I was in a daze.

Still was, she said. About the thing that happened and about who was there and what happened after and what might happen next in a small town deep in the American desert.

They deserve to be in hell for doing that. And there is nothing they can say or do that will make it better. They cannot fix this.

Some things aren't fixable. Some things are hard to explain.

It doesn't make sense. I still wonder to this day why. What's the real reason? Or what even really happened?

I'm Keith Morrison, and this is "5 Miles from Home," a podcast from Dateline. Episode 1, Mickey. There is a place, a remote, windy place tucked away in a sliver of northeast Nevada next to the Utah border. You'd certainly see it if you cruised along Interstate 80. Casinos, 5 of them, flashing away like some Vegas in miniature, a golf shot or 2 off the highway. The town of 4,000 or so spilling out onto the surrounding desert. And if tempted by a meal or a rest or a roll of the dice, if you pulled off that highway, you'd be welcomed by a great grinning cowboy, or the improbable towering image of one, 63 feet high, garish and weirdly charming as it waves a welcome. A giant concoction of neon and steel they call Wendover Will. For West Wendover, name of the town, and a reminder of more innocent days.

It's pretty much the only thing Wendover was known for.

Her name is Christina. She knows what happened to innocence, knows all too well.

Now, you know, everybody's like, "Oh, Wendover. Oh, do you know that girl?" It's a question, unfortunately, that gets asked because we have a lot of tourists that come into the casino towns from all over. And that's what Windover is known for now.

Yes, even now, all these years later. And how did it begin? That memory is as clear as the morning sun on the high desert and cold like the desert wind that Thursday morning in March 2011. 16-year-old Michaela Costanzo, Mickey, as everybody called her, was up early preparing for school. She was a creature of habit, was Micki. She stuffed her signature polka-dotted black bag full of track gear and then made sure she had her lanyard full of keys with her favorite charm, a little panda bear. While mother Celia, a single mom, quickly dressed so she could drop Micki at school before heading to her hosting job at one of the local casinos. All very routine. Except for one little thing. The thing about coming home after school.

She was supposed to walk home, which is not a normal thing for her.

Usually, Micki would ride home with Christina, 28 years old then and 12 years older than her little sister. But Christina was out of town, vacationing in Las Vegas with her boyfriend. Soon-to-be husband. Here's Christina.

I thought that everything was fine. I mean, everything was normal. I remember because before we had left, me and/or my boyfriend would always pick Michaela up from school. And so we were like, are you sure you're gonna have a way home?

This is something you do every day.

This is something I do every day.

And it was the very first time I had ever left my sister Still, it wasn't far to walk, a mile or so in this relatively safe little town. And Mickey wasn't worried, not at all. She wasn't the worrying type. She was confident, pretty, and popular, with long dark hair, warm brown eyes, an easy smile. People seemed to gravitate to her, said her mother, Celia.

She had a way of looking at life that was just amazing. She was always positive.

Celia's brown eyes were beaming as she told me about the youngest of her 3 daughters.

If someone was not so good or it wasn't such a great day, she'd say, "It's okay, it'll get better." She found the good in everything and everybody.

And Nikki was quite good herself. A super student, a gifted writer, a star athlete. And the leader of the West Wendover Wolverine track team. And so that day, after classes, she hurried to the locker room, suited up in her bright red running outfit, laced up her spikes, and headed down to the big oval track for some speed training. There was no mistaking Micki—fast and graceful as she glided through her laps in the high-altitude air. Long hair flowing, legs pumping, her form near perfect. After 45 minutes of sprints and stretching, Mickey went to the gym for a weight training session, followed by a quick change of clothes in the girls' locker room, and then out the school's back door to walk that mile or so home. It was just after 5 PM. Across town, Celia was schmoozing with customers inside the bustling Nugget Casino. But her mind was on Mickey and the phone call she'd be getting from her any minute now.

Michaela is not your typical teenager. That girl would check in with me all the time. "I'm changing. I'm gonna be heading out." The next call I get from her is, "I'm heading home." Always kept in touch. Always.

To a fault. But Micki did not call. So Celia called Micki.

She'll never not answer me. It does not matter what she does, she'd answer. And she's always been like that. And so, at quarter after 5, I started calling her phone. And it rang and rang and rang the first time.

The sun, orange and anxious, sank behind desert foothills.

And then the next call, it went straight to voicemail like the phone was off.

And I'm like, okay, this is so not her. So Celia, panic rising, called her eldest daughter Christina, 400 miles south in Las Vegas. Here's Christina.

She said, when's the last time you talked to Mickey? And I said, a few hours ago. And she says, I can't find her. And I said, Mom, she's probably at practice. And she says, "No, practice, they ended, and she's not home." And I says, "Well, maybe she went to the gym. Calm down," 'cause my mom's— was easily upset.

"You're probably just missing her." Kristina tended to be the cool head in the family, mature and wise with cold, dark eyes under a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. She wasn't too concerned.

And I'm thinking, Maybe for the first time in her life, she's being a normal teenager. Really? So you still weren't worried? I, I was trying not to worry. And so my husband's telling me the same thing. Don't worry until she doesn't go to school tomorrow. He says, if Mickey's being a normal teenager and hiding out, doing some— something crazy, we both know she'll go to school in the morning.

Even so, Christina dialed Mickey, fully expecting an answer.

And it rang and rang and rang and then went to voicemail. So I left her a voicemail. Mickey, why aren't you answering? Call me back. Mom's going crazy. So I waited. Nothing. Called my mom back, and I was telling her, calm down. You know, it's Wendover and it's Mickey. She never does anything.

It was dark by then. Dark and suddenly cold. 45 excruciating minutes had passed from Mickey's normal call-in time. At the casino, Celia could no longer pretend to be calm.

I was still at work. I had been frantically texting and calling and everything, and— Just getting more and more upset? More and more upset, because I knew the moment she didn't answer her phone the first time, something wasn't right. The second time, I knew something was really wrong.

And with that, Celia dropped everything and raced home, hoping she'd see Mickey on the way or open the door to encounter her smiling face. But the house was silent, nobody home. So Celia, heart pounding, hurried to the high school, checked the track, the gym, The locker room, all empty. Frantic now, she roared out of the school lot looking to find anybody who knew Mickey.

And they started trying to call her cell phone and wasn't getting answers. And I'm going to the next friend, and that friend I had just talked to is calling other friends, and they're all panicked because none of them had seen or heard from Mickey either.

Celia was bargaining with prayed to God by then as she hurried home again. Please let her be there. Please. But Micki wasn't. Only her middle daughter, DJ, was home.

Then my mom came in. She said, "Micki's not here." So I immediately went out and searched for her, called her friends, called my friends. "If you hear from Micki, you need to tell me." And then I called her phone real mad. I said, "This isn't funny." You need to tell me where you are. What's going on?

That Mickey didn't return DJ's call was a bad sign. The two were close, practically inseparable, even looked alike. I consider us twins.

We always promised to stick together no matter what and to be each other's best friend. If we weren't at the same place, we always had to know where the other was at all times.

But now nobody knew where Mickey was. Cecilia, nowhere else to turn, called the West Wendover Police Department. Would they take it seriously? They would. And right away assigned Detective Donald Burnham.

We don't wait to start responding to somebody that's missing. We'll start looking right away. The longer you wait, the harder it is going to be to find them.

Burnham, lean and 30-something, had been a cop virtually half his life. Chiseled face, short-cropped black hair. Around the department, Burnham was known as the quiet one, cool and circumspect. And he offered Celia a ray of hope.

I didn't believe she was dead. I was hoping maybe she was just somewhere and we weren't able to find her at the time.

That she had just gone off to be with a friend and been irresponsible for once.

Well, we didn't know whether that was it or if she'd met with foul play or if she was, you know, being restrained and held somewhere against her will.

That evening, volunteer search teams ventured out into the profound darkness beyond the neon glow of the town's casinos, their flashlights stabbing at vast, empty desert.

There was already over 80 people looking for her, and they're all panicked.

What did you feel like while all this was going on?

That's a hard question.

Scared, upset, panic, worry because it was dark now and it was cold and she had no jacket.

And Celia waited, waited as a mother would wait on the longest night of her life. I didn't sleep.

It was horrible. And in the bottom of my heart, I knew something was really, really wrong.

That first night, they all agreed, all the searchers, Mickey Costanzo didn't just wander off. Someone took her. Holding her in town? Maybe. But somehow it seemed more likely she'd been taken out there somewhere, out in what they call the Great Basin, 200,000 square miles of unforgiving desert that makes up most of Nevada. Here are jagged mountain peaks, deep remote valleys, sand and sagebrush. When somebody says the middle of nowhere, this is the place. Early the next morning, volunteers were back combing the empty desert around West Wendover.

Here's Detective Burnham. There was a large search party that was formulated, and they had constructed different groups to search different areas. There was a huge turnout of volunteers for the search. Just regular folk from around town. In times of need, we all come together, and everybody turned out.

Among them, of course, was Mickey's sister and soulmate, DJ.

And out searching, I remember dropping to the ground and I said, "I really don't think she's alive." They're like, "You need to think positive." And I said, "I really just don't. This isn't her. This isn't right." And I just kept calling her phone, crying, begging her. Please answer. Please be okay.

But it wasn't okay. Downstate at an RV site outside Las Vegas and ostensibly on vacation, Mickey's eldest sister Christina tried to do the impossible— both sleep and persuade herself that Mickey would show up safe and sound.

Woke up at 6 o'clock, called my mom. Still no sign of Mickey. So I call the school and I'm like, "Is she showed up for class yet?" "No, they're still looking for her, Christina." And I'm like, "Oh my God." And at that moment, I knew something had happened. And I woke up my husband and I said, "She is not in school." And he said, "Okay, now we worry. What do you want me to do?" And I said, "I don't know." By now, media had gotten wind and descended on little West Wendover.

Satellite trucks and news vans with giant microwave antennas sprouted like palm trees, beaming the fears of Mickey's friends and neighbors back to Salt Lake City and nearby towns in northern Nevada.

I just hope that we find this little girl safe. Never thought anything like this would ever happen in Wendover.

The news made its way south to Las Vegas, where Christina was chained to her cell phone trying to figure out what to do.

And a couple of our friends actually had shown us that Mickey's picture went in the news, that she was missing. And she said, "Christina, nothing bad happens in Wendover." And I said, "You are absolutely right." And I looked at my husband and I said, "You need to take me home right now." He says, "Well, what changed your mind?" And I said, "'Cause nothing happens in Wendover, and something did, and I have to get home." And he took his truck and drove me straight home. It's about an 8.5-hour drive. He got me home in about 6.5 hours.

Christina and her husband drove all afternoon and into the evening.

The whole way back home, I kept crying. And he would say, it's OK. You don't even know anything. And I kept telling him, even if she's just hurt somewhere, it's cold. And it's 24 hours now. That's all I could think. Even if she was just laying somewhere hurt, she wouldn't have made it because it was cold. I knew that she wasn't OK.

All the way home, she worried away at terrible ideas. What if some stranger, some traveler, saw her walking home from school and snatched her? After all, the casinos depended on the tourists who pulled off the interstate for a few free drinks and a little roulette or blackjack or whatever. It was no Mayberry, as Detective Burnham said.

It's not a small, quiet rural community that most people would like to assume.

Yeah, it's a little place along the road, but it's—

got stuff going on, right? It's got big, big problems at times, and we do have our share of violent crimes.

Thus the fear that some passing motorist had taken her, because around home, Mickey was what cops call a low-risk victim, not an enemy of the world, a straight arrow going places, good places, a totally trouble-free life.

Michaela was the one who was going to do everything, I guess you would say, the right way. She was gonna finish school, and she had such a bright future. She could have done anything that she put her mind to it.

Bright, talented, good-looking— the trifecta.

Yes, she had it all.

And one more thing about Mickey: she was unusually generous. Not with money— she didn't had much of that, but sharing herself, said her mother, Celia.

She helped everybody. She tutored kids at school. If she goes to bed at 10 o'clock at night and you're struggling on homework and it's 1 o'clock in the morning and you text her or call her because you need help, she will get up and help. And she'll tell me, "Mom, I have to help Jackie. I have to help Javier." We have a project. They can't do it. Well, no, no, no. But Mom, they're my friend.

I have to. Javier, by the way, was Javier Trujillo, Miki's boyfriend. Soft-spoken, polite young man. The two had been dating for several months. It seemed serious, said Celia.

Michaela was not allowed to date till she was 16. Her first real boyfriend is Javier. You would have to see Michaela and Javier together. And hear them, and that was her boyfriend.

In fact, the entire Costanzo family liked Javier, and he was crazy about her. And she could have had her pick of boys at school, said Sister Christina, but—

Michaela would have never looked at anybody else. She was very happy, and she was very much in love with Javier.

Now police wanted to have a little chat with Javier. He wasn't a suspect, at least not yet, but he was part of Mickey's inner circle. What did he know about where she was or if she had been taken? So Detective Burnham had him come down to the police station, where he ushered Javier into a small, white-walled interrogation room. Javier seemed a little nervous, upset too, as his eyes twitched ever so slightly as Detective Burnham rolled tape. And started asking questions. How's she been acting lately?

I don't know. She's been acting pretty fine. Like, if she's— if something was wrong, she'd vent. She's not one of those girls that hides her feelings, like, like puts her emotions in her. So it's been good, huh? Yeah. And we haven't had any problems.

Javier said he had no idea where Mickey was, who she was with, or what happened to her. Said he was at work around the time she was setting out from school to walk home. They checked his alibi, of course, and yes, he was indeed at work, just like he said he was.

I got out at 10 yesterday and went looking for her. Didn't finish until like 2. I think she's not safe because if she was, she'd notify other people.

Javier seemed to be just as frantically worried as the rest of her family, so they let him go. There was one way to track down Mickey, or what happened to her, and Detective Burnham was on it. Mickey's cell phone records. Her family told the detective she used that phone a lot. The records couldn't tell him what Mickey said or to whom she said it, but it would reveal the phone numbers she was communicating with and the specific times of those calls and texts. And right away, something stood out. At the very time she left school for that walk home. Here's Detective Burnham.

There was a lot of text and phone calls transpiring just immediately after school and up till just after 5:00. And then they stopped, abruptly stopped right at the time that she had left the school.

But there was more. And this might matter a lot. Those calls and text messages pinging off the local cell phone tower were all from one number.

Definitely having communication back and forth. There was something going on. Something. What did you think about that? Very suspicious.

Time to find whoever owned that other phone. It was a virtual gold mine, a jackpot of numbers, phone numbers that had flowed in and out of Mickey Costanzo's personal cell phone. All her calls and texts from the very day and time she disappeared. It was now Friday, day 2 of Mickey's mysterious disappearance. Inside the West Wendover PD, Detective Donald Burnham was holed up in his sparsely decorated office, carefully perusing those pages and pages of calls and messages. His eyes must have been glazing over, scanning what seemed like an endless list of digits chronicling Mickey's constant phone activity. And though he couldn't see the content of the calls, he attended those messages, something did jump right out. Had to be important.

Her phone either was disabled or the battery was dead, but in any manner, she never made another phone call or text after leaving that school.

And there was something else. Those last calls in and out of Micki's phone, the ones made just before she disappeared, were all from one number. So Detective Burnham traced the number.

And found a name. The last calls were made to a Cody Patton. Cody Patton.

Cody was a classmate of Mickey's, practically a member of the family, Celia told the detective. Or not quite that, but he certainly hung around enough. Cody and Mickey had known each other most of their lives. They grew up together.

He was our apartment manager's son. He was always around.

Not like a boyfriend, said Celia.

Just a pal. A chum. Her, DJ, and Cody, they hung out. They were all best friends.

Did they ever date, Michaela and Cody?

No, they didn't date, but I'm sure it was probably what I call puppy love, you know.

So at 12 or 13, probably 13, 14. Yeah, but they'd long since moved on. Cody was 18 now, a senior at Mickey's High School, and he certainly stood out Big, handsome, strapping kid, 6'6" with ginger-colored hair and hazel eyes. Everybody in town seemed to know him. And he was engaged, well and truly committed. In fact, he'd moved in with his fiancée, Toni Fratto, and her parents. He and Toni planned to marry sometime after high school, and Cody also had his sights set on joining the Marines after graduating. So now Detective Burnham wanted to know a little more about that flurry of phone calls and text messages Cody exchanged with Micki just before she vanished.

I actually went to the school and asked him if he'd come to the police department and speak with me, which he agreed to.

This was actually Cody's second interview with the police. He was one of many students and friends of Micki's the cops spoke to that first night. And now, the next day, he looked tired. Cody seemed sad, a little on edge, what with his lifelong friend missing. Detective Burnham started recording.

It's March 4th, 12 noon exactly.

Detective Sergeant Donald Burnham with Kodiac, Pat.

For the next 30 minutes, Cody reviewed again and again what he did and where he went the day of Mickey's disappearance. Especially during that flurry of calls and texts on Micki's phone just before she disappeared. It was a fairly simple story. Cody had returned to school, he said, in a white SUV he borrowed from a friend. Wanted to use it to pick up some car parts he'd left there. It was a chore, and he thought maybe Micki was still around, extra pair of hands to help.

I had texted Mikayla and asked her if she could help me, no answer. So I called her and no answer. She called me back. I had left my phone in the car when I was getting some of the parts and stuff.

They kept missing each other, said Cody, until around 5:00 PM when Mickey called back and the two finally connected.

I said, can you come help me? And she goes, I can't. I have to go home.

And I said, OK, no worries. But something in her tone on the phone seemed off. Not the usual upbeat Mickey. She seemed a little upset, said Cody.

I asked her if she was okay because she had a weird tone of voice, kind of like an indifferent, like, I don't know, sad, mad type. I was like, you all right? She was, yeah, just like— I was like, okay, no worries. And I hung up.

Soon after, Cody said he packed up the borrowed SUV with those car parts and left the school.

The last time you seen her was—

you seen her leave the school? Yeah. Where was she leaving from? Um, she was going out the front. How sure you were it was— it was for— positive.

Pinning down the last known sighting of Mickey could prove crucial, and Cody was emphatic. He watched her walk out the front door of the school, and that was the last time he saw her. Burnham filed that away and went on listening. After he left campus, said Cody, he picked up his fiancée Toni Fratto, and they went to McDonald's for a bite and to hang out. And then later, the two drove around looking for Mickey, because by then the alert had gone out that she was missing.

Everybody's out looking, so we went to go around for a little bit.

They crisscrossed much of the town, said Cody. They even drove by Mickey's house. Didn't see a trace of her, though. They got home a little before 10 PM. And now, well, Detective Barnum asked the question.

What do you think? What's your opinion? Honestly, I hope she has gotten a fight with her boyfriend-in-law or something. It's just a friend's house or something. Do you have any questions for me? Yeah, find her, please.

At the very time Cody was pleading with the detective, search teams were continuing to check every gully and ditch and hole and hillside, in town and out, deep into the night. By the end of the Costanzos' little apartment, Celia was gripped by a cold certainty.

When she didn't go to school on Friday morning, that morning, I knew I wouldn't see my daughter alive. I didn't know how to make things right for DJ, and I couldn't make things right for Michaela, and I felt like a failure as a parent.

By now, what little hope DJ had left was running on fumes.

And just the more hours that went The more I search for her and then panic. She hasn't called. She hasn't done anything. That's not her, especially not to me. She'd send me a text or something. I'm fine. But nothing.

Later that Friday evening, eldest daughter Christina rolled in after the long drive from Las Vegas.

I went to my mom's house, and I told her that I was going to go find my sister. And she was very upset. And she was like, "Christina, they're all looking for her." And I said, "But I'm gonna go get her and bring her home. Even though she's not okay, I will bring her home." I knew that I was gonna find her, and I wasn't gonna find her the way we wanted to, but that I was gonna bring her home.

And out she drove into the ink-black desert. Crisscrossing miles of remote dirt roads, surveying all the party spots where West Wendover teenagers were known to hang out.

I stopped and looked at any little mound of dirt that looked weird. I'd stop. Maybe that's her. And I went to the gravel pits.

In point of fact, had Micki been able to call out to her sister at one point at that particular moment during that frantic drive, Christina would have heard her, heard her calling out there in the dark of the desert. Next time.

I went straight to my mom's, and she says, "They've called off the search." And I said, "I know where she's at." What did you think when you got that call?

I thought the worst.

I'm woken up shaking. Cops there. My heart sank to the pit of my stomach.

This is not over yet until the person or persons responsible are brought to justice.

"5 Miles from Home" is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Robert Dean is the producer. Brian Drew, Marshall Housefeld, and Meredith Greenstein are audio editors. Molly DeRosa is associate producer. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer, and Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Rich Cutler.

Hey everyone, I'm Dylan Dreyer, co-host of The Third Hour of Today and mom to 3 wild boys. I've learned a lot in my years as a parent, mostly that I don't have it all figured out yet, and I'm not the only one. This is my new podcast, The Parent Chat. Each week I sit down with someone new for honest conversation and real-world advice about parenting.

I am over here just like Hey, I'm just trying not to screw my own kids up. I'm not giving you advice on how not to screw yours up.

Search The Parent Chat on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.