Dateline NBC

00:00 Hi, I'm Kate Snow, NBC News anchor and host of the NBC News podcast, The Drink. This month, I'm sipping green tea with the incomparable Harry Connick Jr., musician, actor, composer, author. We talk about how he got started playing for audiences in New Orleans at just five years old and how a call from Rob Reiner to write music for When Harry Met Sally changed the course of his life. He also opens up about family, reflecting on losing his mom when he was only 13, how that loss has shaped him and inspired an orchestral piece and a book in her honor. 00:33 It's all in this month's episode of The Drink. I hope you'll listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts. 00:44 If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body. 00:50 But no one will find it. 00:52 He acted friendly. He talked friendly. 00:55 He sounded friendly. 00:57 They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff. And I said, maybe she'll find out where this girl is. 01:04 I saw him violent. Backhand her, pow! 01:10 Listen to The Devil's Quarry Season 2 in the Bone Valley Feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 01:25 Tonight on Dateline. 01:26 It was too odd. Why can't we just find this woman? 01:30 We formed this little army. We called ourselves Talena's Army. 01:34 Somebody had to know something, right? 01:37 I saw her Facebook post saying that she was going to the woods. Don't contact me. 01:43 Somebody who had just lost their spouse. She was very grief-stroken. 01:47 We got to find her. 01:48 She was your best friend. 01:49 The closest person to me. 01:51 Talima left a lot of her stuff behind. Correct. Car, purse, wallet. People were suspicious right off the bat. 01:58 Talena had this secret life that you never knew about. 02:01 No, I don't think any of us really did. You see some of this stuff that they're into, it's Fifty Shades of Grey. 02:07 It's about dominance, about control. Control, yeah. 02:11 This is crazy. These people know something. 02:15 I said to look for poisoning. 02:17 We have evidence that somebody's making rice. And it's an incredibly powerful poison. 02:22 I wanted her to be okay. I really, really wanted her to be okay. 02:25 A widow vanishes in a web of secrets. What had happened to Talena? 02:32 It's horrific. Who would do something like that? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Josh Mankiewicz with Heartless. 02:55 Most of us keep secrets. 02:58 And many of us tell lies. 03:03 So when you think you know a person through and through, it's possible you don't. 03:08 Maybe you never can. 03:12 Because of secrets and lies. 03:16 They're at the heart of this story. 03:18 There was no stopping. You had to keep going. It was one of those, but wait, there's more. Like, it just... 03:24 It's a never-ending, what the heck? 03:33 It was March, 2020. COVID was beginning to spread across America. 03:39 For the citizens of Wagner in rural Oklahoma, the threat seemed far away. 03:45 That month, Rachel Parker Hall, a nurse back then, bumped into her friend, Talena Galloway. The two women talked about COVID. 03:55 That turned out to be their last conversation. Tell me about the last time you saw her, spoke with her. 04:01 I told her, I said, you know, I personally don't think it's that much to worry about. If you get, you know, cold symptoms or whatnot, you just follow the normal things that you're going to do for that. 04:13 The next thing Rachel knew, Talena was sick. She posted about her symptoms on Facebook using her online name, Talena Czar. 04:22 My weekend migraine developed into a fever last night. All I want to do is sleep. Send your well wishes and energy, but please don't expect a response. 04:34 Corey Bommely was Talena's roommate. The two women had lived together at Talena's home for the last 18 months. 04:41 We just kind of looked at each other and we said, you know, you were shopping in Tulsa last week. Did you go catch the bug? 04:48 Corey says she took Talena to the local hospital. but she was sent home to recover without ever being admitted. 04:56 Instead, Talena got worse. She and Corey were convinced it was COVID. Corey posted status reports about her friend on Facebook. If she isn't posting right now, it's because she's using all of her energy to fight this illness. 05:12 Three days later, Corey says she went out for a few hours and came home to an empty house. 05:19 The dogs were lounging around in the living room. The TV was on. I just assumed she was, you know, in her room sleeping. And I made myself a little something to eat in the kitchen and then went back to see if she was ready to go back to the hospital. 05:33 And she's not there. 05:34 She wasn't there. 05:36 Corrie says she looked around the house and saw some cash was missing, along with a bottle of brandy and Talena's guns. 05:45 Corrie called friends, and one told her to check out a new Facebook post from Talena. I'm not going to let anyone intubate me, so I've made arrangements to spend some quality alone time at one of my favorite hideaways at one of my favorite lakes, and I've booked it for the remainder of this week. 06:05 Didn't feel up to driving, so I hired a ride. 06:09 Then this. I'm going to either beat this virus or be with Tom. I see it as a win-win situation. 06:18 Tom was Talena's late, beloved husband. 06:21 A stroke had killed him two years earlier, and that sent Talena spinning into a dark place. 06:28 Near the end of the post, Talena said, I love each of you. 06:35 So you saw those Facebook posts? 06:37 I did, actually, pretty much the moment they went up. And so me being me, I immediately started texting her and messaging her. And I'm like, hey, what's up? Stop. You know, don't freak out. 06:50 And you didn't really know where she had gone. No. So it's not like anybody could check that place. 06:54 Yeah, exactly. 06:58 Kim Littlefield also saw Talena's last post. 07:02 Kim was Talena's hairdresser, or as she calls herself, hair-apist. 07:08 Kim had her own take about Talena's whereabouts. 07:12 Before she came up missing, she came in for a hairdo, and she was going to go see her mom, and then she was going to stop at her favorite place in Arkansas on the way back. 07:23 Something Talena told her that day stayed with Kim. 07:27 She had gone into Tulsa to a store and she said that the clerk had slipped her her phone number and she didn't know what to do. And I said, well, if you want to go out with her, you know, go out with her. And I said, maybe she could meet you at that place in Arkansas is exactly what I told her. 07:51 You never heard a name or anything else. 07:52 Didn't hear a name. I believe she said she was a redhead, a beautiful redheaded young lady. 07:58 And so there's, I'm thinking there's some period of time in which you're thinking. Did she mean her? And maybe everything's fine. 08:05 Yes. 08:05 And just because we're not hearing from her doesn't really mean bad news. 08:09 Never. No. 08:12 Either Talena was fine or she was very sick. Either way, going to the local sheriff did not seem like an option, at least not at first. 08:23 Anybody report Talena sounding, I don't know, fatalistic, desperate, like the world was coming to an end? 08:31 I don't think so. 08:33 Because, you know, I'm not a family member, and if I go to the police, they're going to say, you know, she's a grown woman. She's going to either come back or she won't. 08:42 That is what they say. 08:43 I know. I know. 08:44 10 days after Talena vanished, Corey says she thought enough time had passed. 08:54 She called the Wagner County Sheriff's Office to file a missing persons report. 08:59 She was still in her pajamas when I left home that Tuesday. When I got home, she was gone. 09:05 Corey told investigators Talena had taken off with some things, but left behind key belongings. 09:13 Sheriff's investigator Joel Weber and Lieutenant Danny Elliott. Talena left, but left a lot of her stuff behind. 09:20 Yeah, basically everything in her cars. Well, yeah, everything. Everything other than her phone. 09:25 Car, purse, wallet. 09:26 Exactly. 09:28 A lot of questions and not too many clues. 09:32 Where was Talena Galloway? 09:35 I said to look for poisoning. 09:37 He broke into Talena's house one night when he was on the phone with me, and I kept asking him, like, what are you doing? 09:42 That was interesting because you're clearly lying to me about something that seemed unimportant. 09:46 Why lie about that? 09:47 Why lie about it? 09:48 I've got to figure out what's going on with Talena. We've got to find her. 10:05 Talena went missing in the spring of 2020. 10:09 She posted those bleak Facebook messages and then went silent. Greg Thompson, a friend of Talena's. 10:17 Where did you think Talena was? 10:20 I'm not sure where I thought she was, to be really honest, because she didn't have her keys, didn't have her car, didn't have anything. And she wasn't calling us, you know, like she normally would. 10:33 Investigators from the Wagner County Sheriff's Office dug into the case, starting with the missing woman herself. Who was Talena Galloway? Investigator Joel Weber. 10:45 I didn't find anybody that had anything negative to say about her at all. 10:48 They learned she was 53 years old, an IT specialist, well-regarded by her employer. 10:55 I think she was happy and that was going good. She enjoyed her job. 10:59 Kim the Hairapist enjoyed having a client who was always up for a new do. 11:05 Never once did she ever get mad at a hairdo that didn't turn out quite the way we wanted. 11:11 Sounds like the perfect client. 11:12 She was the perfect client, and yes. 11:15 Typically, you know, at Christmas, she would help families in the area that maybe the kids needed gifts and stuff. 11:25 She looked out for people. 11:26 Very much, yeah. 11:28 Her husband Tom was an Army veteran. Their friends thought of Tom and Talena as soulmates, together for 15 years. 11:37 She adored him, worshipped the ground he walked on. 11:40 They were the cutest couple together. You could see their love for each other, giddy, funny, kind of nerdy, but they were proud of it. 11:52 In late 2017, Tom had a stroke while Talena was out of town on a work trip. She came home in time to be with him before he died. How was Talena after Tom passed? 12:04 To me, she was hurt. She was upset. I mean, it got to her big time. 12:11 You could tell. 12:12 I could tell, yes. 12:13 As time went on, Talena's friends say she was increasingly lonely. 12:18 In late 2018, she asked Corey to move in with her. 12:22 Corey was on her own too, going through a divorce, making money as an internet reseller. 12:29 Talena didn't need the extra rent. She needed the company. It didn't hurt that Corey was super handy around the house. 12:38 Every time she would come in and get a haircut, that was the first thing that I would ask her is, how's your roommate? And her answer, every time, the best I've ever had. 12:49 For her part, Corey called Talena her heart sister. In terms of loving to garden, loving animals, loving to go out on the lake, enjoy nature, sit on the deck, enjoy a glass of wine, these are all things we enjoyed doing together. She enjoyed traveling. We were in the process, actually right before COVID hit, of planning a big three-week vacation to Russia. 13:14 Both women loved animals. Talena and Corey lived surrounded by their rescues. Eight dogs, at least 16 cats. 13:24 One of my recent rescues was a little Snorky, and Talena ended up adopting her. 13:28 What kind of dog is that? 13:30 That is a Schnauzer and a Yorkie mixture. Just a little bundle of happy energy. 13:36 A week after Corey reported Talena missing, Sheriff's investigator Joel Weber asked her to come in. 13:43 He wanted to know more about Talena's final hours. 13:47 Corey arrived masked, gloved, and happy to help. 13:52 She told him her roommate was in rough shape the day she left. 13:55 Sometimes she'd start coughing and couldn't stop coughing. I said, let's take you back to the emergency room. I think you're bad enough now that they will admit you. And she said, no, she just wanted to spend the night in her bed with one of the pups. 14:10 And I said, if we do not go tonight, you have to promise me we can go tomorrow. 14:15 The next day, though, Corey told investigators Talena asked her to go out to give Talena alone time with her dogs. 14:24 Did she ask you to do something specific or just leave for a while? 14:26 Yes, she just wanted me to leave her alone for a while. 14:29 Corey says when she returned, Talena was gone. Among the things she left behind were her credit cards. Corey says she immediately knew why. I knew it was deliberate. You think she left that behind so that you could use them and pay the bills? 14:45 I know she did, because every time in the past year and a half that she left for a business trip, that was her M.O. 14:52 In her final post, Talena mentioned hiring a driver to take her to the hideaway. That explained why her vehicles were still in the driveway. So then, who did she hire? Corey suggested investigators check with kids in a local trailer park, whom Talena had befriended. 15:21 Investigators wanted to know exactly where that was. 15:26 To my knowledge, she didn't have a single secret place. I knew there were a couple of lakes that she enjoyed visiting, but there wasn't one specific place that jumped out in my mind when she said she was going to her favorite place. 15:40 Corey says Talena's final post was troubling, but also touching. 15:45 The last thing she said in that post was, I'm sorry, Corey. What I read in that message to me was that we had a lot of plans. And I think she was apologizing to me to leave me with such a mess. 15:58 About that final post, Corey said she wasn't the least bit surprised by its tone. Talena had dreamed of joining Tom ever since he died. 16:08 For the entire year and a half we lived together, we had weekly conversations, sometimes daily conversations, about her very matter-of-factly telling me that she intended one day to take her own life. That was just the way it was going to be. 16:25 Other friends also say Talena spoke of suicide after Tom died. 16:30 So when she vanished, their concern grew, and the outside world woke up to a mysterious disappearance. 16:39 We called ourselves Talena's Army. 16:45 The case that shocked Massachusetts. A pregnant young woman, dead. A former Stoughton police officer accused of her murder. Now he's on trial. NBC10 Boston is inside the courtroom every day, following every twist, every revelation, and every critical moment. With expert legal insight and analysis night after night, this is coverage you won't find anywhere else. Commonwealth Confidential, the Sandra Birchmore case. Download the podcast today. Watch full episodes on the NBC10 Boston YouTube channel. 17:17 Some crimes are so shocking, they don't just make headlines. They forever change our society. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's Most Infamous Crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes, released every Tuesday through Thursday, from the first sign that something was wrong to the moment the truth came out or didn't. Listen to and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. 17:46 The midterms are just around the corner, and it's safe to say there's been a lot of noise about the election. Well, now it's time to lock in. What's really on the ballot this November? And what's really at stake? We'll get you up to speed on all of it. I'm NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Garrett Haig, and every Saturday from now to Election Day, I'm hosting Here's the Scoop, Election Edition. We'll talk to some of the smartest voices about the top issues that are going to define this election. From President Trump's influence to the war with Iran, to affordability and AI in politics, we're diving into all of it and what it could all mean for the direction of the country. 18:22 Join me every Saturday. Just search Here's the Scoop wherever you listen and follow now. 18:38 In those early days of the pandemic, Jess Trevino, like most of us, was stuck at home. 18:45 And that meant she had plenty of extra time on her hands for her favorite hobby. You're a true crime junkie. 18:52 Absolutely. Oh, yeah. 18:54 I love true crime. 18:55 Give me some sense of how much of that you consume during a week. 18:59 Most of the books on my shelf are true crime related. I watch Dateline on Peacock, like reruns until you guys put new ones out on Friday. 19:07 I listen to true crime podcasts almost daily. 19:10 You're hooked. Yeah. One day, while scouring a true crime discussion group from her home in Minnesota, Jess saw a post from Oklahoma. 19:21 A woman named Talena was missing. 19:23 The woman who posted it thought something was wrong. Absolutely. 19:26 The concerned friend had reposted some of Talena's Facebook posts, and Jess was intrigued. 19:34 You'd never heard her name before? No. This was not some friend of yours or a friend of a friend? Absolutely not. 19:41 Although she had no connection to this Talena some 600 miles away, something about the posts made Jess want to know more. 19:50 So... Patterns, right? There was a pattern of these messages from like March 27th to April 7th. And every day it was progressively getting worse with COVID, worse. It was almost like she was chronicling what was wrong with her. And I was like, that's kind of... 20:05 weird too. It was like day one of, or it's day nine of this pounding headache, day 12 of a sore throat, and it was online on Facebook. Maybe to somebody who doesn't think everything's suspicious, it sounded good. 20:19 You're a suspicious person. Absolutely. 20:22 Jess was so suspicious, she reached out to Talena's friend. 20:27 She sent me to A couple other people who were also friends of Talena's who kind of walked me through what had happened. Like, yep, she's been missing. This is what we've been doing. We just reported. And I'd ask the question, well, why doesn't she have a missing persons poster yet? Why haven't you done something? You know, whereas you just reported it, there's nothing else. 20:43 So Jess, a catering manager, decided to get involved. She helped start a Facebook page called Help Find Talena Czar. I mean, you were not working because, like, the whole country was kind of locked down because of COVID. Right. So a lot of people were at home then. Most people were, you know, making sourdough starter. They weren't investigating the cases of people that they'd never heard of before. 21:07 I felt like I had to say something. I had to speak up. It was too odd. 21:13 It's just nothing felt right. 21:15 Nothing. 21:16 That Facebook page attracted hundreds of people. A few who loved Talena, and a much larger number who loved true crime stories. 21:26 So you're marshalling the power of the Internet to help you? 21:30 A little bit. 21:30 A little. You're crowdsourcing this. 21:33 Yeah. We needed it. 21:35 Somebody had to know something, right? 21:37 Jess and four other women, all from different parts of the country, formed their own posse of amateur detectives. Like Jess, none of them had heard of Talena before. We called ourselves Talena's Army. Talena's army with, what, five full-time soldiers and a couple of hundred part-time. 22:00 We had certain people checking certain tips that we'd receive. It was just amazing to watch this group of women that didn't know each other coming together during the most lonely time I think any of us have ever experienced being quarantined. 22:13 It was not long before a lot of people who... 22:17 Didn't know you, didn't know Talena. At all. Had never been to Oklahoma. Got very involved in this case. 22:23 The crime junkies and everybody else. Yes, it amazed me. It really opened my eyes to the power of the Internet and the power of social media. 22:34 As Internet sleuths far and wide hunted for clues, Corey gave local law enforcement permission to search Talena's house. 22:43 When anyone goes missing, you want to go look in the house, take pictures, things like that. 22:48 Among the items they found, Talena's passport, newly renewed, sitting in a bedroom safe. 22:56 Perhaps that trip to Russia Corey had mentioned was more than an idle dream. 23:01 Investigators also reached out to rideshare companies, campgrounds, and Airbnbs, anywhere Talena may have been. 23:09 As for where her favorite lake might be, one friend suggested Arkansas. 23:15 And so obviously we put a blast out to the law enforcement in Arkansas. 23:20 They saw from Talena's cell phone records that her phone pinged near a town by the Oklahoma-Arkansas border. 23:28 Obviously, we searched that area too, but didn't find the phone. 23:31 Which there is a very large lake there. That's true. So that wasn't it. I know we searched some of the businesses around there looking for any kind of video of her car or a car or her or anything. 23:44 They came up empty, but the tips kept coming in to both the Wagner Sheriff's Office and to the leader of Talena's army. So maybe she'd been missing a lot longer. 23:55 That's exactly what I thought. 24:10 Once the story of the missing Talena got traction on the Internet, the Wagner County Sheriff's Office received a flood of tips. Each one had to be checked out. Sheriff's investigator Joel Weber. 24:23 We did get a random tip from a psychic who told us that she's buried in the yard someplace. And so doing my due diligence, we went to the yard, all over the yard, and just looked for freshly overturned dirt. We didn't find anything, but we definitely followed up. 24:39 I originally heard about this case from a friend of mine, and I called you and said, can you look into this? 24:45 Veronica Mazzica is a supervising producer on Dateline's digital team. She works on our Missing in America online series. 24:54 So when Josh Mankiewicz calls, you pay attention. This will not get on Dateline. Yeah. 25:01 Also demonstrably not true. 25:03 Oh, well, in my world it is. 25:06 A friend of Talena's had told me she was missing. The team looked into it and in May 2020 posted the first Missing in America story about Talena. 25:17 We were really happy that a bigger news division was going to put out there that Talena was missing and get some attention so maybe could help us solve it. 25:29 It was a very big day for the group. 25:31 The comments were immediate and wide-ranging. Some posters fixated on Talena's illness. 25:38 We had people who said, you know, that's odd. If I were sick, I wouldn't go off and... 25:44 be on my own, not in my own home. You know, when I'm sick, all I want is my own bed. 25:50 So people were theorizing that maybe she wasn't sick at all. People were theorizing that maybe she was so sick that she had lost her mind and she was just wandering the streets and that we would find her that way. People were saying that she could have been in the hospital as a Jane Doe and no one realized it was her. 26:10 And then there were the sightings. A tipster told Missing in America, Talena had been spotted at a grocery store in the Los Angeles suburbs. And you checked, that wasn't Talena? 26:22 That wasn't Talena. 26:24 Closer to home, the week slipped by with no word from Talena. Talena's friends organized a search. 26:31 Yes. 26:32 Yeah, they had put flyers out and things around all the stores. And one Saturday afternoon, they had a vigil at our local fire department. I didn't get to go to that event, but my wife did. And, you know, everybody there was pretty distraught, you know, just wondering what happened to her. You were worried about her? 26:55 Yes, I was. Very much so. 26:58 Jess and her army spoke with more of Talena's friends and learned from them that it was not like the woman at the center of their quest to be so public on social media. 27:09 The I love you's, the I'm sorry's, she wasn't that kind of person. 27:13 So that felt like oversharing or overdoing it. 27:16 It felt forced. It felt manufactured. 27:20 You read that Facebook post and you thought that was from Talena because it sounded like her and it was in character. 27:26 It sounded like it to me on first read, on second read, on third read. People who were saying it wasn't her, I didn't understand what they were reading that didn't sound like her. 27:36 And Jess had learned something else. 27:39 Talena's last digital appearance was on April 7th. In real life, she went dark at the end of March. 27:47 So when I talked to more people in Talena's life, neighbors, co-workers, her massage therapist... 27:54 Nobody had actually spoken on the phone and heard Talena's voice. It had just been text or email communication since March. 28:01 So maybe she'd been missing a lot longer. 28:02 That's exactly what I thought, is that if nobody had physically talked to her, that's really weird. 28:09 Jess called the sheriff's office to tell them. Investigators say it was nothing they didn't already know. 28:16 She was trying to solve it from behind the scenes. 28:20 Generally, what's your attitude towards Internet sleuths? 28:26 Well, I'm all for anyone that wants to help solve a case. There's no issue there. The only downside, I would say to me, is that I got probably hundreds of phone calls from people that had theories. And theories don't help solve a case. Evidence does. 28:40 They were never out-and-out rude, but dismissive. At one point, I was told I was like a dog with a bone. I thought, wow, OK. I thought I was helping. 28:50 Any voice inside your head saying, I should stop? 28:54 No. 28:55 I needed to know what happened. 28:57 Jess Trevino kept right on digging, and she soon made a significant discovery. It's more than just people getting together and having sex. There's a whole other world there. 29:10 Yes. 29:11 Yes. 29:12 At first, it was one of those, oh, they had, you know, oh, this group killed her. They had to have done something with her. 29:31 Let's just say Jess Trevino was not prepared for what she would find when she searched online for the name Talena Czar. 29:40 Okay, so tell me about the door that that sort of opened when you Google Talena's name. 29:48 It was, I'm trying to think of the right words, interesting. 29:54 That's one word. Interesting. 29:56 I don't want to be the one that icks somebody else's yum, right? It's not up to me what other people are into. 30:03 When she wasn't working as an IT consultant or taking care of her rescue animals, what Talena was into was a subculture known as Gorian. 30:14 It's based on a series of science fiction books from the 1960s that inspired a 1987 movie. 30:22 The novels depict a little-known and rarely discussed lifestyle that's about 35 to 40 shades of gray. In the books, men are dominant. They're the masters. Women are subservient. They wear collars and self-identify as slaves. 30:43 So it's about dominance, about bondage, about control. 30:49 Control, yeah, dominance, definitely. Your husband or partner is the one in control. You wear a collar, you eat when he says you can, you wear what he wants, he has complete control of everything that you do. And a lot of people find that freeing, right? From my readings, they love that. 31:07 Because they don't have to make any choices. 31:09 Right. Because all the choices are made for them. Right. Right. These people are consenting to this. 31:16 Yes. 31:17 By all accounts, Talena and her husband love the lifestyle. In fact, she legally changed her birth name, Jana, to Talena. Talena is a character in the Gore series. 31:31 At the same time, many of her friends knew nothing about it. 31:36 Talena ever talked to you about the Gore-ians? 31:40 No. 31:40 Never? 31:41 No. No. Honestly, we had absolutely no idea. 31:45 It wasn't something she was marching down the street screaming at the top of her lungs, but she was proud of who she was and what she was doing. She felt that that showed how much she loved her husband. 31:53 But at the same time, like, maybe her co-workers didn't know about it. 31:57 They didn't. 31:57 When you apply for a new job, it's not a thing you put on the resume. Special skills? No. 32:03 Talena's roommate, Corey, knew about her lifestyle, but says while it wasn't her cup of tea, she respected Talena's choices in her marriage to Tom. 32:14 It was their life. 32:14 That's what they lived. 32:16 And they both approved of it. It's what they wanted. And they were deeply, deeply in love. So who's to knock what two people enjoy doing together, right? 32:25 Right. 32:26 But that was her life. 32:27 Talena and Tom had a close relationship with another Gorian couple, the Anguses, Marty, who also went by Wolfie, and Lorianne. 32:38 When Tom died, Marty wanted to assume Tom's role as Talena's master. Talena was not necessarily interested. 32:47 According to Corey, Talena helped Marty financially, and Marty had been named as executor of her will. That was until shortly before Talena disappeared, when she put Corey in charge. 33:02 Marty Wolfie had been in the will, and then he wasn't in the will, right? That's the kind of thing that makes people angry. 33:08 Yes, it certainly made Marty angry. Marty knew that we were in the process of transferring all of these documents and life insurance policies and financial stuff. 33:19 From him to you. 33:20 From him to me. 33:22 Talena had listed Marty as the beneficiary of a $300,000 life insurance policy. 33:28 Marty was very afraid and concerned of losing his cash cow and his financial control. 33:35 As a master, he wasn't able to say to Talena, this is what I'm telling you to do. Put it back in my name. 33:42 Talena was a very strong person. 33:44 Marty was not in charge. Marty very much wanted to be in charge. 33:49 Corey said after Tom died, Marty wanted more than just friendship with Talena. 33:56 Talena absolutely said, that's not happening. Talena called the shots, as far as that was concerned. 34:04 Could all that be a reason to make someone disappear? 34:09 Maybe. 34:10 Jess had also been talking with Marty by phone. 34:13 Marty openly told me that he thought I was attractive, so he assumed that I would not be smart. 34:19 So correct to say it's a not just male-dominated society, but male-dominating society. 34:26 Absolutely. They are the supreme beings, and us women are down here. 34:31 As Jess learned more about the Gorian way of life, one question was unavoidable. 34:38 At first, it was one of those, oh, they had, you know, oh, This group killed her. They had to have done something with her. 34:45 Still, Marty proved helpful to Jess, breaking the ice with other Gorians. 34:50 And it was funny because some of the people he connected me to said, if you think he's not involved up to his eyeballs in this, you're dumber than I thought you were. 35:01 It wasn't long before Jess's concerns about Marty grew. 35:05 He started to do some things where I was like, okay, okay. 35:10 It's a little more shady than I think you need to be, like, what's actually going on. 35:15 What made you suspicious of him? 35:17 He broke into Talena's house one night when he was on the phone with me. And I kept asking him, like, what are you doing? You know, what's happening? He said, well, I need to get in and check and see what, you know, I want to see what her will says. And he ended up telling me he had taken a chainsaw from the house. 35:37 Seemed really weird. 35:38 He say why? 35:39 He said that he needed money and he was gonna pawn it. And it was just like alarm bells, red flag everywhere. And I called the sheriff's department like, hey, he's pawning chainsaws he stole from the house. Anybody think that's weird? 35:54 And they said, we'll be right over. 35:56 No, they blew me off. 35:59 It turns out investigators were well aware of Marty. 36:03 And they were already talking to him about Talena. 36:13 If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body. 36:20 But no one will find it. 36:22 He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly. 36:27 They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff. And I said, maybe she'll find out where this girl is. 36:34 I saw him violent. Backhand her, pow! Pow! 36:39 Listen to The Devil's Quarry season two in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 36:55 I'm Sarah Kalin. This season of ID's Who Killed Angel Harris investigates the 2011 unsolved murder of a 31-year-old woman in Gainesville, Florida. It was definitely shocking. 37:09 Either it's a bullet hitting a bullet or there's a lot of really strong coincidences here. 37:14 More likely than not, this is a serial killer. 37:18 Listen to Who Killed Angel Harris wherever you get your podcasts. 37:24 I'm Martin Brunt, Sky News crime commentator. 37:27 I'm Katie Spencer. I cover entertainment for Sky News. 37:30 We have more than 60 years of experience between us covering the biggest crime cases. 37:37 Russell Brand faces seven charges. Rape, sexual assault and indecent assault against six women. 37:44 He denies all the allegations. 37:46 Now a jury of 12 people will decide. Russell Brand on trial. 37:50 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. 38:02 Marty Angus, also known as Wolfie, is a name that came up early on in the investigation into the disappearance of Talena Galloway. We just have a lot of questions and no answers. 38:14 When Talena went missing, he spoke with a local reporter about her. If you take all the goodness in the world and put it in one person, that's Talena. 38:22 I believe the first time we talked to Marty, he called us. 38:26 Through Marty, investigators learned more about the Gorian lifestyle he and Talena shared. That world was entirely new to law enforcement in Wagoner, Oklahoma. I'm guessing that when you heard that she's a member of this sort of secret, might not be the right word, but certainly a private society that involves bondage and women being murdered, collared and given his property, that might rise to the top of the list of reasons why Talena might have disappeared or been killed. 39:02 Well, unfortunately, we did have to look into it and what that even meant, because that's not something I've ever heard of. You'd never heard of the Gorians before. Right, and I had to explain my internet history to the IT department, but, you know, it may have been relevant to the case or it may not have. We didn't know, so we had to look into that to figure out what it is. 39:18 That's a rabbit hole you've got to go pretty far down. 39:20 Well, it's part of her victimology. You have to look into it. And, you know, what we call strange was Tuesday to them. 39:27 Marty told investigators he was very close to Talena's late husband, Tom, and had a special ring made for his friend. When Tom had a stroke, both he and Talena were with him at the hospital. 39:40 She was laying in the bed with him, and this is when she took the black ring off of his hand and asked me if I wanted to wear it or if she could have it. 39:56 And I told her that I wanted her to keep it. I specifically told her that she was to never take it off. 40:03 Marty described himself as Talena's new master, but they knew she had recently cut him out of her will. That feels like somebody who, whether they're a suspect or not, is somebody you're going to look at pretty closely. 40:17 Well, nobody was off the table at that time. 40:20 Marty was still being looked at, but in his many conversations with law enforcement, Marty came across to investigators as a caring and concerned friend. 40:32 Like others they'd spoken with, Marty said it just wasn't like Talena to up and leave without saying where she was going. 40:40 This is why I'm saying there's no way she left on her own accord. When she went somewhere... 40:46 She immediately told me where she was going, when she was going to be there, almost to the time. And this whole vague thing about, I'm going to one of my favorite lakes, or one of my favorite places, or one of my favorite hideaways, or one of my favorite lakes. No, no, no. 41:04 She was pinpoint. She would have told me, I'm going to such and such B&B at Lake Winona, or I'm going back to that B&B that I was at, at Maumelle, you know. 41:18 Everything Marty told them seemed to check out. 41:22 I mean, nothing he told me was a lie. 41:23 There was no vagueness. He wasn't trying to evade anything. 41:27 That story about him breaking into Talena's house to steal a chainsaw? 41:32 he admitted it to the sheriff's investigators. 41:35 Well, I called Marty and asked him, yeah, I did it, and I'll take it back. I mean, he didn't lie to me even about that. 41:43 To him, it wasn't a crime because he had permission from Talena in his mind that he could go take stuff as he needed it from the house. But he admitted to that, he pawned it, he got it, he purchased it back and returned it. So, like, there was no reason to... 41:57 He didn't have to volunteer that, but he did. 41:59 But he did, right. 42:01 Marty slash Wolfie had a relationship with Talena that was definitely unorthodox. 42:07 And maybe he did want too much from Talena. 42:11 So, did that mean he was involved in her disappearance? 42:16 it was hard to say. 42:17 It seemed like they had a genuine, you know, relationship. Not just something that was being set up or, you know, because that guy was my friend, I'll help out with his wife. It was, you know, they had a brother and sister relationship. 42:36 Wolfie seemed genuinely concerned that she was missing. Yes. 42:40 Yeah. And he was not the only person in Talena's world whose relationship with Talena might have been out of balance. 42:49 You will not be looking for a body. You will be looking for body parts. 42:54 You know, money, jealousy, control. 42:58 Yes. 42:58 That'll get you to the finish line of a lot of murders. 43:00 You bet you. 43:02 Mm-hmm. 43:15 Investigators were coming up empty as they looked for leads in the Gorian community. Marty, for one, seemed to be playing it straight. 43:24 They weren't as sure about Talena's roommate, Cory. 43:27 It started with a little fib she told, about a white trailer. 43:32 deputies that took the initial report they they drive by the house and see there's a trailer there i drove by the house and didn't see a trailer there and so i just asked her about it i just was curious like so where did that trailer go that you had at your house and uh she said oh the last trailer i had i sold months ago and like we know that it was there just the other day so that was interesting because you're clearly lying to me about something that seemed unimportant why lie about that why lie about yeah 43:57 As time went on, Corey's behavior raised suspicions among many people. 44:03 Talena was still only missing. But friends and strangers online were talking about Corey as if she had done something to Talena. 44:13 We had a couple comments of people who said that maybe her roommate had something to do with it. 44:19 These were people who presumably knew Talena and knew that she had a roommate. 44:23 Yes. I had this little team of people within the neighborhood that would text, I see her down by the lake. She was at the gas station this morning. I seen her leave the house. 44:30 They're tracking Corey's movements. 44:32 Nonstop. 44:33 Did that make it feel as if sort of the, you know, the noose was closing on you? 44:38 I had a couple of Talena's friends call me during that first month that she was missing and ask me if I was okay. I said, is there a specific reason you're asking? And they said, it's all the conspiracy theories, it's all the haters online and everything that's being said. And I told them, I don't have any time to be reading books All this garbage that everybody's conjecturing and talking about. 45:05 It came up in Corey's second interview with the sheriff's office. 45:09 You probably already know people on the internet are talking and saying lots of things. 45:14 It makes people mark up the wrong tree and it's just unfortunate. 45:18 During that same interview, they brought up something that was more than gossip. 45:22 Somebody brought up that at some point you were charged with something and I don't remember what state. Okay. 45:30 Cory admitted she had run into some trouble in Wisconsin a few years earlier. 45:36 Which brings us to a deeply strange story told by Sherry and Mike Ziegler of Verona, Wisconsin. 45:44 It was the spring of 2014, and they had just finished a long drive home from Florida. 45:51 What happens when you get back? 45:53 It was late at night. 45:55 We had drove quite a ways, and she was cleaning up some stuff, and I said, I'm going to go to bed. 46:02 Sherry did too. 46:03 That's when she noticed a gritty substance that looked like kitty litter in her sheets. 46:09 Yeah, this is where this stuff was. It was in our bed. And then I pulled mine back, and I was like, what the heck? And I just went... 46:20 I'm tired, all cleaned up in the morning. And it's like kitty litter? It's that consistency? So this is what, like some kind of prank? 46:28 Well, that's what we kind of thought. Next morning, got up and vacuumed it all up and cleaned it up. 46:33 And then she found more of it in her dresser drawers. 46:37 They did not call police. 46:40 Not then, anyway. A couple of days later, you discover your safe is missing. What'd you have in the safe? 46:46 Well, we had our passports in there. We had titles. 46:50 So important legal papers. 46:52 Exactly. 46:52 Money? Yeah. 46:54 Yes. How much money? Well, there was $1,700 in there. So you call the sheriffs and say we've been robbed. Yes. Yes. And they say what? He says, who do you think did it? Your grandkids, you know, they're five and seven years old. So I don't think it was them. How about your son? No, it wouldn't have been him. A couple weeks later, the mail comes. 47:15 And there is a visa bill in there. We had no idea what this was because at that time, we really didn't use credit cards too much. We used cash. 47:24 What kind of charges are on the bill? 47:26 It was gas charges from Quick Trip and PDQ. 47:30 Those are local stores? 47:32 Gas stations, yeah. 47:34 And then there was FedEx and the post office. And it was a total of, I believe, $299. 47:40 Something made you want to go be a detective. 47:44 Mm-hmm. 47:46 We knew the manager at Quick Trip quite well. I went there, and his name was Nick. And I said, Nick, I got a problem. 47:55 And he says, okay. And I showed him the credit card bill. And I says, can you check and see if somebody was using it? 48:03 He took me in his back room with the camera. He scrolled back. He showed me exact picture. And there she was with her muddy boots. 48:13 Corey. 48:14 Corey, yes. 48:15 Your next door neighbor. 48:16 Yes. Yes. 48:18 That's right, Corey Bommely, her then-husband, and a whole lot of animals were living next door to the Zieglers. 48:26 Now they knew that Corey, at the very least, had stolen their credit card. 48:31 They figured she saw them hide an extra door key in the backyard and just let herself in. So she's arrested. 48:40 Corey ends up pleading guilty to fraud. 48:42 Yeah. 48:43 She's convicted of stealing and using your credit card. 48:46 Yep. 48:47 Right. Right. They ever find the contents of the safe or the safe itself? 48:51 No. 48:53 Corey pleaded guilty to felony fraud and was sentenced to probation. 48:58 Six years later, when Oklahoma investigators asked her about all this, she spun it a little differently. 49:05 It started off with me being booked for a misdemeanor sheet, um... 49:15 I guess that's what they called it. 49:16 Is that what they called it? So I don't think she's ever run into a situation where somebody didn't believe her and started questioning her. 49:24 Where her story's going to get checked. Corey told us it was all a misunderstanding. She thought Mike had loaned her the card. 49:32 I spent $299.99. 49:36 On groceries and gas, postage, other things that we needed to do around the house. 49:42 You didn't break into their house? 49:44 I never broke into their house. 49:46 Either way, Oklahoma investigators realized Talena's animal-loving, handy-around-the-house roommate actually had a record. 49:56 Another woman with a secret or two. Or maybe more than that. 50:05 Corrupt people will always run for office, but we have to stand up to them. When a local journalist... 50:10 If officers do something that's against the law, we're going to write about it. ...takes on a sheriff. 50:16 We began getting allegations of violence. 50:18 Nothing's more dangerous than the truth. These stories really got them angry. It was a complete bad house. 50:24 It cost us everything. 50:26 I knew they didn't like us. I had no idea they would talk about killing us. 50:30 From producer Rachel Maddow, Kill Berry Print. New documentary, now streaming on Peacock. 50:36 Over the years, I've met people whose lives were changed forever in a single moment. In my new podcast, Before and After, I explore what happens after that decisive moment. Personal, powerful conversations with Colin Kaepernick, Jeremy Renner, Gabby Giffords, and others. Join me wherever you get your podcasts. 50:57 Search Before and After with Lester Holt to listen on Amazon Music. 51:06 Monday on NBC, the new season of The Voice has arrived. 51:10 I'm so excited. 51:12 Fan favorites Adam Levine and Kelly Clarkson are back to take on two new powerhouses, the legendary Queen Latifah. 51:19 The queen is in the house. 51:21 And country superstar Riley Green. Riley is super charming. He is a whole vibe. 51:26 Can we put that on my chair? 51:28 It's going to be a wild ride. The blind auditions continue on The Voice this Monday on NBC. 51:44 She had a felony record for fraud in Wisconsin. But that's not why Oklahoma investigators were drilling down on Corey Bommely. 51:54 It was what Corey did after Talena vanished that got their attention. 51:59 She was selling Talena's belongings online. 52:03 Nice things, too. You know, things that meant something to Talena. Talena's friends were buzzing about it on social media. 52:09 Corey was still living at her house, was still driving her vehicles. And then one of her friends popped up and said, Corey is selling Talena's stuff on eBay. 52:20 She had sold Tom's Gorian family ring. She had sold his war medals. She had sold a bunch of things that there's no way Talena would have had her sell those things or allowed her to sell. 52:32 That's not something you do if you're wondering whether that person is coming back. 52:37 Yeah, I think I would be fearful that my roommate would be mad at me if they came back and found all their stuff was sold. 52:44 Investigators also got a call from Corey's ex-husband, Alec Adams. He'd heard Talena was missing. 52:51 During his 13-year marriage to Corey, she helped manage his career. You're a musician. 52:58 Yes, I am. What do you play? 53:00 Ah, well, I play guitar and fiddle and mandolin and drum. You play at renaissance fairs? Yes, when I can. He also performs in coffee shops, bars, and at conventions. 53:16 A few years ago, Alec played at a Gorian gathering. That's where he and Corey met Talena. 53:23 They gave Talena the title of head slave at the event. 53:26 Head slave would mean she'd be the person that would interact with you. The event coordinator, yeah. 53:31 She was very nice and extremely business-oriented. 53:36 As for Corey, he says their life together was okay early on, until it became all about Corey and her needs. 53:46 Alex says she had a lot of needs. 53:49 I started out with maybe less than seven animals of my own. And over the time that I spent with Corey, we ended up with 50 plus animals to be taken care of. 54:03 He says she became controlling, angry, verbally abusive. I would come off the stage and I'd be like, yes, I'm Alexander James Adams. And she would say, yeah, well, you're off the stage. Don't forget, you're just a stable boy. And tomorrow you've got five horses and eight goats and donkeys to take care of. She wasn't a Gorian and you weren't a Gorian. No. But she liked being in control. She liked being the one in charge. 54:29 By the time he spoke with an investigator in Oklahoma, Alec was divorced from Cory. I called him up. I said, I'm Cory Bomley's ex-husband. He mentioned how Cory once worked at the coroner's office in Las Vegas and bragged about how quickly she could dismember a human body. 54:48 I said, I don't think this is a missing persons case, but you will not be looking for a body. You will be looking for body parts. 54:58 And then he told investigators to look for a rare and incredibly deadly homemade poison. 55:05 I said look for poisoning. And I told them the ricin story. 55:10 Ricin is a deadly biological agent with no antidote, used in targeted assassinations and acts of terrorism. 55:19 It's made from castor beans, which are easy to obtain. You saw Corey making ricin? Yes, I did. 55:28 Why would she do that? 55:30 I asked her. And she said, well, I'm just making sure we've got something that we might need in case we need to poison our enemies. 55:40 You guys know what ricin is? 55:42 No. 55:43 Well, not before this. I mean, but I know now. 55:47 They weren't sure Alec was 100% credible. He was, after all, Cory's ex. 55:54 You also have to consider that they are going through a divorce, and so this may have, you know, this person may have an agenda behind why, you know, why he's giving information. 56:05 That said, Corey was very much on their radar. Investigators had started tracking her movements. 56:12 We trailed her using Gmail, GPS, anything that we could use in association with her devices. 56:21 At one point, we even put trackers on her vehicles. 56:24 So we didn't leave any stone unturned to find out if she was going to lead us to Talena. 56:31 She did not lead them to Talena. Corey did answer the front door when, about two months after Talena disappeared, Investigators conducted another search of Delena's home, where they found a safe. 56:47 He opens the safe and sure enough, finds castor beans inside this safe. By then, they knew what that could mean. And it was just a surreal moment because now that gives confirmation that Alec is telling the truth and there may be some validity in what he was saying. 57:08 Caster beans are not illegal to buy or own. Well, on another search, investigators found something that, in Corey's case, absolutely was illegal. A gun. Remember, she was a convicted felon. 57:24 In her purse, we find a 9mm. 57:28 And so she's not allowed to have a gun. 57:29 Right. 57:30 Corey was arrested. 57:33 And when Talena's friends Rachel and Greg heard about that... 57:37 They worried about the animals Corey left behind. 57:40 So we went into the house and I'm checking on the animals and everybody was doing okay. 57:48 And they noticed something was missing. 57:51 And I remember looking at Greg and I'm like, where's the freezer? 57:56 And Greg's like, you're right, where is the freezer? And he goes back out into the garage and he's like, it's not out there. 58:04 Corrie made bond, then moved to her mother's home in Wisconsin. Most of the animals were adopted out. 58:12 And the mystery of the missing freezer might have gone unsolved had this woman not been walking in the woods in Arkansas and spotted something out of place. 58:24 When I looked down through there, with all the foliage gone, I could see the white tip of something sticking up. 58:32 That discovery would help answer the question, where was Talena Galloway? 58:51 Just a day before Corey got locked up on that gun charge, something happened 150 miles away that would change this investigation. 59:02 It was a hot June day here in Meena, Arkansas, population somewhere south of 6,000. 59:09 Janeline Philpott-Aulds was watching something. She's a retired private investigator. So when Janeline watches, she pays attention. 59:19 There was a truck hauling a U-Haul coming very, very slowly up my road. And it kept going and going and going so slowly that I left my post at the foot of the driveway and I walked out into the yard to see if I could see how far it had gone. And I could see them, although I don't think they could see me. 59:40 She says there were two people in the truck, one of them dressed in an old-fashioned leisure jacket. the pair started backing the truck down a rough trail in the woods, about 50 feet from where she was standing. 59:55 My thought at the time was, they've never backed this truck up with a U-Haul on it before because they were terrible at it. 60:02 At that point, I kind of moved closer where I would be hidden a little bit more to try to see them through the woods, and all I heard was a thunk. 60:12 So I thought, I'm going to go down and confront them and find out what they're up to. 60:17 The two people were out of sight, deeper in the woods, when Janeline approached the truck and trailer. 60:23 This strange odor just hit me. 60:27 And there was like a putrid, sweet, kind of leave a nasty taste in your mouth kind of smell. 60:36 And so at that point, I decided that confrontation wouldn't be a good idea. 60:42 She wrote down the truck's license plate and called her local sheriff. 60:47 Janeline says she didn't hear back from law enforcement, so she let it go. 60:54 Life got in the way for a few months. 60:57 But then, just after the new year, Janeline was taking her bubba for a walk. 61:03 I looked down through there, with all the foliage gone, I could see the white tip of something sticking up. 61:11 It looked like a freezer or a washer machine, a clothes dryer, some large white appliance. 61:17 She called the sheriff again, and this time a deputy showed up. They found the appliance. It was a freezer. 61:25 The deputy pried it open. 61:27 And I thought I saw a gray quilt spill out of it. 61:31 And he explained to me that it was maggots. 61:37 They were coming out of it, and there was a body in it. And it was decapitated, and it appeared to be a female. 61:45 Sheriff's investigator Joel Weber was at home having dinner that night when the phone rang. Talena had been missing for nine months. 61:54 We get a call from investigators in Arkansas saying they have a body in a freezer. 61:58 I mean, it wasn't five minutes they were in the truck on their way to Arkansas. 62:02 And the whole way you're thinking, this is not a fool's errand, this is it. Right. 62:08 It was dark by the time they arrived. 62:11 It was a steep decline from the roadway, pretty wooded, pitch black. It's hard to really see what we're doing. My understanding is the freezer was like kind of face down and sealed, but when we get there, they have it unsealed and open, so I can clearly see a hand sticking out of the freezer. It's not necessarily gory because there really isn't any blood, but we're looking at body parts in hefty bags and trash bags inside of a freezer. It's something I've never witnessed before. 62:38 Tattoos and fingerprints confirmed it was Talena. The medical examiner ruled it a homicide. Blunt force trauma. Her skull was crushed. Her body cut into pieces. 62:52 Rachel worries about Talena's final moments. 62:55 I just pray she was asleep, that she didn't feel this coming. And it just bothers me, the fear. If she knew, that bothers me. It bothers me a lot. 63:07 I just pray she didn't. 63:10 More than ever now, investigators were looking at Corey because the evidence seemed to be lining up, starting with that freezer. 63:19 It had a blue sticker with a telltale rip in the corner, just like the one investigators could see in a photo taken at Talena's house. And I'm like, that's definitely the freezer we've been looking for. 63:32 Janeline Philpott-Alds told investigators she believed the people in the truck were both women. 63:38 The woman in the leisure jacket was relatively short. I would say at the most, probably 5'4". 63:48 Corey is about 5'3". Police could not confirm there was a second person. But that plate number Janeline wrote down that day, it came back to Talena's truck. And Corey had those keys. 64:03 And one other thing. Did Corey actually try to buy property in Arkansas? 64:09 Yes. 64:09 She did. 64:10 The piece of property she was trying to purchase was the property that the body was found on. 64:15 The red flags were all waving in the direction of Corey Bommely. 64:20 On January 21st, 2021, Corey was arrested in Wisconsin and charged with Talena's murder. 64:28 I think all of us were virtually high-fiving and very happy. We thought, OK, we got it. 64:34 They had it. Or did they? 64:37 As one side prepared for trial, the other insisted all of this pointed to someone else. 64:45 I akin Corey to a lobster in a pot. Corey did not realize that she was their chief suspect until it was too late. 64:57 Some crimes are so shocking, they don't just make headlines. They forever change our society. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's Most Infamous Crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes, released every Tuesday through Thursday, from the first sign that something was wrong to the moment the truth came out or didn't. Listen to and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. 65:27 The midterms are just around the corner, and it's safe to say there's been a lot of noise about the election. Well, now it's time to lock in. What's really on the ballot this November? And what's really at stake? We'll get you up to speed on all of it. I'm NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Garrett Haig, and every Saturday from now to Election Day, I'm hosting Here's the Scoop, Election Edition. We'll talk to some of the smartest voices about the top issues that are going to define this election. From President Trump's influence to the war with Iran, to affordability and AI in politics, we're diving into all of it and what it could all mean for the direction of the country. 66:03 Join me every Saturday. Just search Here's the Scoop wherever you listen and follow now. 66:18 District Attorney Jack Thorpe knew he faced a few challenges as he prepared for trial. No murder weapon, no DNA, no video of anybody committing any crime. It's a circumstantial case, but it's a pretty good circumstantial case. 66:35 You know what they say about circumstantial evidence? It's the only evidence that cannot lie. And circumstantial evidence, at least the circumstantial evidence we developed in this case, all pointed toward Corey Bomely. 66:47 The prosecutor believes Corey attacked Talena suddenly and forcefully, wielding something like a bat or crowbar, while Talena was asleep in her bed. 66:58 Talena had her night guard in, and that night guard was still there with her body when it was discovered. 67:05 And what became of Talena's bed? 67:08 Her friend Greg explained that soon after Talena went missing, Corey asked him to run an errand. 67:16 She told me to come by and pick up the scrap metal, and I'd come by the next day. 67:24 Greg recognized the scrap. 67:27 It was Talena's mattress and bed frame, and it had been scorched black by fire. 67:33 I asked her, you know, isn't that the mattress I just put in the bedroom not too long ago? 67:42 And she replied, yeah, the CDC told me to burn it because of the COVID. 67:50 DA Thorpe teased out the lies he believed Corey told from the beginning, like what she said about Talena's trip to the hospital. It turns out there's no record of Talena going to the hospital and getting checked out in the parking lot. 68:02 Yeah, there's no record of that. There's no record of her ever being there. 68:06 And Talena's Facebook posts? Remember, those were the first things that bothered Jess Trevino. 68:13 I had to speak up. It was too odd of the writings of her Facebook posts about why she was leaving. It just nothing felt right. 68:21 Nothing. 68:23 Thorpe agrees. He believes Corey wrote those after she killed Talena to throw off the investigation and buy some time. Is there any evidence that Corey actually tried to report Talena missing? 68:37 Not until after people started noticing that Talena was missing. And we put that at around 13 days from when we suspect the homicide occurred. 68:47 What happened during those 13 days, do you think? 68:48 I think that she destroyed evidence, cleaned up the crime scenes, disarticulated the body of Talena, put the body in a freezer, turned the freezer on, froze the body... 69:01 And, at least for a while, kept that freezer in the white trailer she lied to investigators about. And made sure she'd covered all the bases that she knew to cover. 69:13 Corey did make one odd misstep early on, when investigators asked her if they could spray a chemical called Blue Star around the house to check for blood. 69:24 And her response was, even the garage, well... 69:28 Now we are. 69:29 Things not to say during a search warrant. Yeah. 69:32 The blue star showed some kind of biological residue on the floor, but nothing definitive. 69:39 Still, investigators believe Corey dismembered Talena there, in part because it had been so thoroughly cleaned. 69:48 Scoured, bleach, lime. And then painted over. Freshly painted with a type of paint that has a tendency to cover up blood. 69:57 And Cory may have forgotten to cover up, her cover up. Cory did Google searches on how to get rid of DNA, the type of paint that would cover cellular evidence of blood, how to get blood out of concrete and wood. All of that comes in. 70:13 All of that we anticipate we are going to admit into evidence. 70:17 One question a jury might have, why would Cory kill the woman she called her heart sister and who'd put a roof over her head? 70:27 I think that something happened that night, and I think Talena was kicking Corey out of the house. 70:33 And I think that Corey had it very, very good. 70:36 It is true that Corey had something to gain from Talena's death. 70:41 She was the executor of her estate and the beneficiary of an insurance policy. 70:47 But you don't think that by itself's the motive? We think that at some point, Corey was going to have to leave the house. And honestly, she didn't have anywhere else to go. So not greed, anger? No. By the injuries that we observed on the body, it was some type of anger or some type of force, for sure. We're confident that a Wagner jury is going to find her guilty of murder. 71:11 The defense was equally confident. Corey's attorneys, Rachel Dallas and Ryan Canone, 71:17 I've never caught Corey in a lie. 71:19 I don't believe Corey did this. I really don't. 71:22 I akin Corey to a lobster in a pot. 71:26 Corey did not realize that she was their chief suspect until it was too late. 71:32 And at that point, there was no fixing that tunnel vision that I believe the sheriff's office had. By their lack of investigation, they never considered anyone but Corey Bommely to be a part of this. Not once. Not when they had Marty Angus sitting across from them, admitting to breaking into Talena and Corey's home. 71:53 Not when he sat across from them and said that he was Talena's master and that he owned her. 72:00 Everyone seems to paint Corey with this motive. She has this motive for money. She's going to get all this money from Talena. She wasn't. She was on one life insurance policy of $150,000. Marty was on a $300,000 policy. That had not been transferred to Corey yet. 72:16 They argue Corey was better off with Talena alive. 72:20 She was living rent-free and had the use of Talena's vehicles and credit cards. 72:26 Friends say Talena was cutting Marty out of her life and replacing him with Corey. 72:32 The value that Talena had alive financially to Marty was undisputedly dwindling. 72:39 And they said even though Marty might not have actually killed Talena, he could still be behind her murder. 72:46 Do I feel like he physically did it himself? Probably not. Do I feel like he orchestrated what happened to Talena? Absolutely. I don't know who helped him. I do believe it was not Corey. 72:59 The defense hoped to bring up another motive, Talena's private lifestyle and Marty's attempt to become Talena's Gorian master. The judge would not allow it. 73:11 You have a belief system that puts women as slaves and men as masters, and you have a woman who is pretty financially independent who goes missing, who's part of that. It seems like that's something we would want to talk about. 73:24 The defense's argument would be supported by a star witness. 73:28 who was ready to spill. Do you think Marty Wolfie had something to do with Delena's murder? 73:35 I do. This guy was setting me up from a much earlier time to take the fall for something that I think he was involved in. 73:56 Corey Bommely's defense team believed they had a convincing case against Marty and an ace in the hole with Corey herself. 74:05 The only way for us to be able to defend Corey in this case was to let Corey take the stand. 74:11 Corey had gone from Talena's devoted roommate to her accused killer. 74:16 Now she wanted to explain, and I had some questions. You look harmless. 74:22 Well, thank you. That's the most wonderful comment anyone's given me for a while. 74:28 Should people fear you? Well, I'm sure that people like my ex-spouse have told you to fear me. 74:35 I'm only dangerous to people's heads because if you're into your ego, if you're into fear, if you're into anger, if you're into vindictiveness, I oppose those kinds of things. 74:46 Corey seemed ready to take the stand. She had an answer for everything, starting with whether Talena even had COVID. 74:55 We drove down to Wagner County Hospital to the emergency room, and we were going to get her tested. 75:02 So I dropped her off and went to park the vehicle, and even before I had turned off the car, she was stomping across the parking lot back at me, not a happy camper. 75:13 And I asked her what was wrong, and she said they wouldn't even take my temperature. They won't test me. 75:17 There is apparently no record of that. 75:19 No, and that was typical back then. 75:22 I'm quoting law enforcement here. Please do. They say there would be a record of even that. 75:29 One of the things that looked suspicious to law enforcement and to me is that very soon after Talena is gone, you don't know where she is. You don't know what her condition is. Did she recover? Did she die? Did she take her own life? You don't know. 75:46 Nobody knew. 75:47 But you're selling off her things. Right. 75:50 I had been selling her things for a year and a half, the entire time that I was with her. 75:54 All, she says, with Talena's permission. Even some items that had belonged to Tom, like his Gorian ring. 76:03 There were so many things of Tom's that she had me selling. 76:06 She was downsizing. They were sitting on the counter in the right place that told me, Corey, sell these. 76:14 Corey denied knowing how to cut up a human body. but admitted knowing her way around a large animal. 76:23 When an animal that's sizable, a cow, a horse, a llama, dies, you're obviously not going to let that creature lie there and rot in place. It's a messy, bloody, day-long process that is not a job I'd wish on anybody. 76:42 When Talena's found, she's in pieces. 76:47 Mm-hmm. 76:48 And that sounds to me like something you would have known how to do. 76:51 Well, and you are damning every medical professional, every hunter, every farmer, just to name a few groups out there? 76:59 You're saying many people would have that kind of knowledge? 77:02 I believe so. But would they use it? No, of course not. It's horrific. 77:08 Who would do something like that? Who would do something like that to their best friend? 77:12 We were as close as two people could be. I would die for her if I could still to this day. If it would bring her back, I would happily change places with her. 77:24 She means that much to me. 77:28 So then how did Talena's body find its way to Arkansas on property Corey had been to and tried to buy? 77:36 Her answer? Marty. Marty. 77:40 I remember calling Marty, and I told him I put a bid on it. I think he actually thought I purchased that property. 77:47 Okay, so instead of this being one more coincidence of Delina's body turning up at a place you had visited and knew where it was, this is Marty framing you. This is Marty thinking that you owned that property, and then if I dump the body there, it'll point the finger at Corey. 78:04 You know, you look at all these things, and you start adding them together, and it sure as hell looks that way. 78:12 Corey says it's possible Marty didn't kill Talena, that she might have killed herself, and says Marty had reason to make it look like murder. 78:23 I think it's very possible that if she did commit suicide, I think that he freaked out and possibly did damage to her post-mortem because he was afraid his $300,000 policy wouldn't pay if she committed suicide. 78:42 Remember, the medical examiner said the blows to Talena's head killed her, not suicide. 78:48 And keep this in mind, it's always easy to blame a dead man. Marty, known in the Gorian world as Master Shakara, died of a drug overdose while Talena was still missing. 79:03 There's a couple of theories. Mm-hmm. 79:22 after you had killed her to cover your tracks, and then began selling every single thing you could get your hands on to make as much money off this as possible, and that you delayed reporting her missing for as long as possible to give yourself some lead time. 79:39 The evidence doesn't support any of that. It's speculation. It's all sensational. None of it's supported. 79:48 I will maintain till the day I die that I had nothing to do with the disappearance and death of Talena. 79:55 Corey was ready to tell her story to a jury. 79:59 At the same time, a skeleton in her closet was just rattling back to life. 80:07 Something about... 80:08 Kitty litter? So I took a shot in the dark and I talked to Mrs. Ziegler, sweet lady. 80:14 And I said, is there any chance that you kept any of that white powdery stuff? Was there any chance? 80:36 The prosecution was ready. So was the defense. 80:39 And so was the defendant. 80:41 When the American public gets their hands on the actual evidence that my defense counsel is going to make available now to the American public, they're going to be astounded at the amount of evidence against Marty Angus. 80:56 As her trial approached, sheriff's deputies continued to investigate Corey. 81:02 They took particular interest in that felony fraud case in Wisconsin. 81:08 We get a copy of the report. And in the report, it talks about somebody spread this white powdery substance all over the bed, the pillow, the underwear drawers, all over the house. They thought it was kitty litter. Well, they said it had a consistency of, like, kitty litter. 81:23 By now, they knew that A, Corey's ex-husband Alec told them Corey had been making ricin. 81:30 And B, ricin can have the consistency of kitty litter. 81:36 So I took a shot in the dark and I talked to Mrs. Eagler, sweet lady, and I said, is there any chance that you kept any of that material, the white powdery stuff, is there any chance? 81:48 And I said, no. I threw it out. After we hung up, I thought, hmm, I wonder, in my sock drawer. So I went in my bedroom, and I took each pair of socks out, and I shook it in the drawer. There were some very, very tiny white particles in there. So I took my finger like this and literally... put it in a little Ziploc bag. 82:14 In about an hour, she calls me back, and she says, I found something, and, you know, I'm excited. 82:22 It wasn't much. He said, oh, good, mail it to me. 82:26 The FBI confirmed it was ricin, and also basically harmless. Whoever prepared it didn't know what they were doing. 82:36 As she awaited her murder trial in Oklahoma, Corrie was charged with two counts of attempted murder in Wisconsin. 82:45 Corrie denies trying to poison her neighbors. 82:48 You didn't put ricin in the Ziegler's house? 82:50 I was never in the Ziegler's house without an invitation. 82:55 No, I did not. 82:56 Wasn't there a recipe for how to make ricin found on your laptop in one of the search boards? There was. Yeah. Why'd you have that on your laptop? 83:04 I had been researching ricin for a book I was writing. 83:07 So just a total coincidence that you have on your laptop instructions on how to make ricin and turn it into a poison, and then the Zieglers later have poorly made ricin poison in their home. 83:22 The coincidence, I believe, in my having some experience with castor beans and that substance finding itself into the Ziegler's home most likely is Alexander himself. 83:37 That's right. She says her ex-husband Alex spread the ricin because he was angry at Sherry Ziegler. Corey said it was you who put the ricin in the Ziegler's house. 83:50 She tried to say that, yes. 83:53 Yes, she did. 83:54 Alex says, not true. It was Corey, by her own admission. Corey told you she had put ricin in the Ziegler's home? She did. Alex says she didn't tell him until years later. I did not know the day she did it. 84:11 Corey went on trial in Wisconsin in June of 2025. It took a jury less than two hours to convict her of attempting to kill the Ziegler's. 84:23 She was sentenced to 25 years in prison. 84:27 This could have been the bed you died in. I know. So we are very, very lucky. And we did not realize until after the trial how lucky we really were. So this was her house. 84:39 So why would Corey want to kill the Ziegler's? 84:42 Mike has a theory. 84:45 Remember, Corey and Alec kept a lot of animals. Horses, llamas, goats, dogs. 84:52 The neighbor in the house down there did report them to the county for having all those animals, and she maybe thought we did it. That's the only thing I can come up with. 85:04 On the plains of Oklahoma, prosecutor Jack Thorpe thought the ricin attack said everything about Corey. 85:11 That she's a killer. And over the top. And willing to do anything, and on pretty short notice, which helps us when we look at the death of Talena. 85:22 Just in case they tested Talena's remains for ricin. Negative. Negative. 85:29 And then in early September, 2026, with her murder trial looming, Corey made a surprising decision. Why did you take a plea? 85:40 Here in Oklahoma? Right. 85:42 This plea was of no contest. It allows me to carry my innocence forward while still working to get the information out. 85:53 Well, sort of. 85:55 She pleaded no contest, but the judge found her guilty of first-degree manslaughter, desecration of a corpse, and felony possession of a firearm. 86:05 Jack Thorpe had the sentences in Oklahoma added to Corey's time in Wisconsin, making this effectively a life sentence. 86:16 Hi, everybody. Hi, this is Jessica. Hi, Rachel. Rachel, hi. How are you? Hi. 86:21 After more than five years, Talena's friends finally met Jess and were able to reminisce about Talena. 86:37 But she absolutely worshipped him. 86:40 It had been a long road for everyone. This has changed you. 86:47 It has, yeah. Makes me see the world in a different way, for sure. 86:51 Yeah, and not a better way. 86:53 No. 86:53 Yeah, welcome to my world. 86:55 Yeah. 86:56 When you think about Delina, what do you think about? 86:59 Just kind heart. 87:02 Just the smile. You know, I have a picture on my phone that, you know, I look at from time to time. And, you know, just to remind me of that face that I haven't seen in a long time. 87:17 And there are still some lingering questions. What do you still want to know? 87:23 I want to know why. 87:25 Why? 87:26 How? You know, how do you live with that? I want to know, is Talena and Tom together again? 87:34 You know? 87:36 You think they are? 87:37 I know they are. Yeah, I know they are. 87:40 That's what, that brings me peace. Yeah. 87:47 This happened because Talena wanted to help other people. 87:52 Exactly. 87:53 If her heart had been a little harder, if she hadn't taken in Corey, she'd be alive today. 87:59 She would. She would. Yeah. She trusted the wrong people. 88:04 Talena had a big heart. 88:06 If only we could always trust our hearts. 88:13 That's all for this edition of Dateline. Don't forget to check out our Talking Dateline podcast, which will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night. 88:41 Monday on NBC. 88:42 U.S. Marshall! 88:43 All new Line of Fire, the thrilling new crime drama. 88:47 The world sees us as heroes, but they don't know what the job really costs. 88:51 One family of federal agents. It's one thing to put yourself in danger. It's different when it's your family. Balances duty to their country. An assassin is still out there. Stop! And each other. 89:01 How do you protect the world and the people you love at the same time? 89:05 Every case hits home on Line of Fire, Monday on NBC.