Talking Dateline: Secrets Unmasked

And this month I'm grabbing a Hugo Spritz with former reality star, Lauren Conrad.

“Here at The Drink, we love learning about someone's journey to the top, and Lauren and I”

we go back to the very beginning of her extraordinary story.

We talk about why she always saw reality TV as temporary for her.

The scrutiny she faced in the public eye, and why she says she'll never watch Laguna Beach again. Hope you'll join us for The Drink, listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Craig Melve. Cheers, cheers.

Cheers. I've always been a glass half-volt kind of guy, and now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that we too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, their challenges, their stories, their funny, and my candy.

So I hope you'll join me each week, and who knows, you might just come away with your own. Last half-volt. Search Glass Half-volt with Craig Melve from today. On YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone.

“This is Andrea Canning, and we are talking date line, and today we are joined by the legendary”

Keith Morrison, and his legendary producer, Tim Eulinger. They are here to discuss their date line episode secrets unmasked. This episode is about the murder of Regina Hicks, a 25-year-old Ohio woman who disappeared on the way to pick up her son, from her estranged husband, Paul. Days later, Regina's car was found submerged in a pond with her body in the passenger

seat. What followed was an investigation spanning two decades, a bizarre arson scheme and a reluctant witness. If you haven't seen the episode yet, you can stream it now on peacock or listen in the date line podcast feed, then come right back here.

Later, we will have an extra clip from Steve Gates, the witness who kept his silence for nearly 25 years, reflecting on how he feels about Paul now. And we will answer some of your amazing questions from social media. Okay, let's talk date line. Hey, Keith and Tim.

Hi. How are you, Andrea? Nice to see you. Nice to see you. It's always nice to see you guys since you're out there in California, Southern California,

so I don't get to see you very often. It's great to see you. So let's dive right into this episode.

The first thing that I thought of as I was watching was I'm always struck by, you know,

just the opening lines, right, and in the in the body of the episode. And in this one, you know, we're talking about Ohio. What is it? Willard. Ohio.

Yeah. And, you know, I was an anchor in Ohio, so I know those little towns. It's not super little, but it's not, it's not huge either. And it always strikes me, how these most of our date lines happen in these small towns. You know, they don't happen in the big city.

“In fact, I've done, I think, one date line in New York City, and I've done a lot of”

date lines. So, I mean, how what's your take on that? That these crazy things happen in small town, America, like in this episode. It's because it is a small town. I mean, there's even a genre called murder in a small town, right up to, I think, TV

show called that. But, and if you, if you look at all the famous crime novels, most of them occur in small towns. Either the Christie loved those country mansions, didn't you? And there's a reason, because it's a little place where this sort of crime doesn't

normally occur. You expect it to happen in a big scary city, and not in a sweet, but you call it a little place that everybody, where everybody knows everybody else. As it does, we're really interested in it. One of the things about the small towns is that because they are small towns, relationships

are tighter. Yeah. More people, like everybody knows everybody, and emotions, and things like that. I have found, and stories like, like this, people are tighter. There's more emotion.

It's a big part of it. Yeah, I agree. And Keith, you know where I am from, Blue Mountain in Canada, which is on Georgian Bates, part of Lake Huron, the Great Lakes. So this was, you know, as I'm watching the opening of this episode, I'm thinking to myself,

you know, I finally know sort of what it feels like, you know, to have a murder happen in

a small town like that. And for it to affect you, because I am from a very small town, and we did have a murder that was a diabolical murder that we featured on Dateline in November. And it was the fire captain who had murdered his wife Ashley. And it, it happened three miles from my house, where I grew up, so it's a new perspective

for me. Yeah, would be. Yeah. And, you know, along the lines of what we've been talking about, the Regina's uncle, the

there's no way to explain it until you experience it yourself. And you don't have any idea of really what these people are feeling when someone they love has been murdered. Right? Even though this case occurred 24, 25 years ago now, the scars are, they're not healed.

The people are still hurting, still emotion. You could see it. Yeah.

And those, those things never healed, and the, you know, as they say, the ripples go out

a long way. And they, but, but they also last for generations. So people, anybody, even somebody who is a small child who you think would grow up and forget all of them, but they don't forget about it, it informs everything in their lives. Regina's cousin said, you know, when the verdict came in, guilty, she could feel it in her toes.

When she told me that, I was like, oh my God, you know, you could, she still, I saw her that day. I was there for the word. And I saw her that day, and she, the tears just kept coming and she just couldn't believe that finally, finally, but the emotion, it's still right on the surface.

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

I will not deny that for frequently, when I'm just speaking for myself, lunch and do

a story, one of the kind of stories we do, I'll get a sense of, oh,

no, not again.

“We have to evade somebody's grief, and we're going to do this story about the worst thing”

it ever happened to somebody. And in the end, the thing that makes me glad we tell the stories are because you get to know the person of the heart of it, which is generally the biggest. And in a way, in a strange way, it's like you are celebrating a person who died a long time ago.

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

Regina's brother, for instance, Chuck Roe. I hit it off with Regina's brother Chuck, because he was wearing a Marine cap. Nice stage Marines. With the snowy day. We love Marines.

We love Marines. We love the Marines. We love the Marines. Yes, I know you do. So I met Chuck, he's wearing this hat, and I introduced myself, and I said, "You're

a Marine?" It's like, you know, "Where'd you serve?" and he goes, "Well, one of my foreign deployments was in Somalia. It was like Somalia. 1992.

Somalia."

And I said, "Would you there on the first day?"

First wave? Oh, yeah. Yeah. All the TV cameras were in my face. I said, "Oh, my God.

That was me. I was there on the beef." You guys see literally. We'd literally. You guys see literally.

The funny how paths cross, isn't it? Plus. So we hit it off. Yeah. But it was very funny.

Anyway, that family is really, very, very nice people. Nice. The crime. It starts out with, you know, she goes missing, of course, Regina. She, they find her car in the water, and the cause of death is ruled as a drowning.

Manor of death, however, is pending. And I'm thinking to myself, this poor woman is in the passenger seat. So how do you figure that, and she's got marks on her, how do you figure that she, this is anything other than a homicide? I didn't really get that.

“It was just personal puzzlement to a lot of people, I think.”

Yeah. Yeah. The corner may well have felt that he would be sticking his neck out a little too far, if he went to declaring that it was a homicide. How else did she get in there, though?

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

It's interesting, though, because we were talking about the case in Blue Mountain with Ashley with her husband, who was the fire captain and her body. So he was, he had pushed the car into the ditch during a snowstorm to make it look like she had had a car accident, but there she is in the passenger side. Again, it's another story where the victim is in the passenger side.

So how did she, you know, drive herself into the ditch, right? It didn't add up. Exactly. Right. Yeah.

And then later on, of course, much, much later on, years and years and years later on,

“that manner of desk has changed to one that I think everybody, you know, was able to sign”

on to and that meant all the difference. I don't want to say this in the wrong way when they changed that to homicide.

That was like acknowledging, we believe Virginia was murdered and now it's official. Sadly, it came after Regina's mother was dead and she had campaigned for that for years and years. Yeah. But it didn't survive to see it because it's a real shame.

And her mom, Regina's mom, had put up billboards to keep the case alive and I covered the crystal Rogers case last year where that became a real focal point of this, where these billboards of, you know, where is crystal and they believed also that they knew who had

killed or even though she'd never been found.

“I think the billboards, I think they're so effective because it not only does it show”

how much the family cares, right, that they're not giving up, but it's in your face. Face, right? Every day, if you live in these areas where these billboards are, like you cannot ignore it and in the crystal Rogers case, they put up a billboard right next to the sheriff's department.

It cannot be overstated how important it is for families in a cold case to keep at it, to keep pushing. And it helps the police too because they may seem annoyed, but the fact is they need to have cover sometimes to continue an investigation that otherwise it wouldn't be a little forward, but if somebody's really rampant up for it all the time, then their

bosses are going to say yes, spend the money, and so things get done.

When we come back, we will have an extra clip from Steve Gates, the witness who kept his

silence for nearly 25 years. Such an ordinary thing, to walk home from high school, her name was Mithika Stanzo, just

“16, she didn't have far to go, seemed perfectly safe until it wasn't what happened to”

Micky. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Five Miles from Home, and all new podcasts from Dayline. Let's talk about the other half of this story that just really went off the rails in a lot of bizarre ways. From the beginning of the show where I see somebody with this long hair, and they've got

glasses on, and then there's a fire. I'm like, where is this going? It's about anybody looking at this story with me. You guys had me hooked. It was the weirdest, darn thing, you know?

I wrote down the name of the, actually, I don't even want to maybe I shouldn't even give it any publicity, but like where you can, you can get these wearable masks. I'm not sure they even sell them anymore. That company that was involved in our story, and who is no longer a business. They were based on the UK, and they, I don't know, and I'm kind of actually glad about

that. It's called that my face, but that's my face. Yeah. It's one thing to have like a Halloween costume or something, but like, you have a plan where you're going to use your current girlfriend to wear your ex-girlfriend's face to burn

down your house, but yeah, it was a stretch. The other thing that was in this, which is the spoof card to be able to go to people. And it appeared to be coming from a different number altogether, and until they did a real deep dive on that, it looked as if people who were innocent, were guilty and vice versa. The Claremont County Ohio Sheriff's Department started investigating this case, and they

did a pretty good job. And then using some of their information, this insurance investigator, named Zach McEwn. He was like the super investigator, and he got to the bottom of this. Every time like he learned something, he couldn't believe the next thing he'd learn. He was literally, he was like, and all the things he's done in his career, ever.

He's never seen anything like this.

Could've been like that guy all day long, he was, yeah. He definitely had me at hello. I was like, okay, I'm interested in this person in this story, and I always like it when people have specialties. So he's saying right out of the gate, my specialty is fire.

That's our sense. Yeah. He's a certified fire investigator, as if you know, like a fire marshal would be. The second person in the house lighting the fire.

“Do we think that was Paul then, or do we not know, or do we not know, or do we know?”

Here's something we don't know. We don't know. But we don't know. Okay. No.

Well, Paul's tall. So you would know, right? Well, if it was Paul. Right. Paul had an alibi, a perfect alibi, he was at a hotel three hours away.

The thing about Paul was this, and it's central to the story, he was one of those guys who

If he'd gone to the big city, he would have been shot down pretty quickly if he went to work for IBM or something. But, you know, he was a real way when he knew other people around town, they'd drive around it as cars.

He would always pick up a kind of a satellite, somebody who was enthralled with him, who

would do whatever he wanted them to do, who would be afraid of them, but wanting to attach to them at the same time. Right. Kind of like Steve. There you go.

Yes, sure.

“Terry Sweet is another person, you know, who went along with Paul, right?”

Why should he say allegedly Terry Sweet, but she died, right? So she died the very day, the insurance inspector was going to talk to her. Talk to her again. Yeah. And Andy, this is funny.

This is something we can bring up. I mean, obviously, we attempted to get the justified and to see if there was any investigation that happened, but it's not. Apparently, according to the little information out there, is that it was probably alcohol-related and it was quote-unquote natural causes.

Does that do people think otherwise? Well, they're maybe, there could be, nobody's going to talk about it. Yeah, on the way. Right. There are some people who believe that coincidences happen and other people who believe

coincidences unlikely. It's a wrong enforcement generally doesn't believe in coincidences.

As I always say on this podcast, it seems like an awfully big coincidence that she was

the timing of her death.

“However, Paul was never, we should say, was never charged with drugs, that was never”

arrested. Absolutely not. No. I mean, Paul was a really a charmer, but when it came to choosing girlfriends and I mean, no disrespect to any of the girlfriends he may have had over the years, he would

choose people who would be very pleased to be with such a handsome Viral guy. He would pull him in and they would do anything for him. You said to Kelly, you said, you were in love and she said lust, like dead men. Yeah, yeah. Like she was not happy.

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

Why was Kelly's face obscured in the police video? Because at the time, she wasn't ended up not being charged. So they didn't want to--

“Well, they released that they didn't want to have--”

Right. Yeah. And then also the detective, I mean, poor Kelly is there for a child handoff at Croger and tasers are being pointed out or I mean, I can't even imagine. Then she's in the interview room and the detective's talking about the woman in the fire.

She's rather large and then Kelly's like, you hear Kelly say, oh my God, and I'm not sure. I can't tell if she's talking about her saying she's rather large or the whole situation. I was like, what? That interview occurred probably seven to ten days after the arrest and the female detective there starting to realize, and I don't know, I'm not sure this is the same person.

You know? Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. But at first, it was very-- there was a lot of feeling that that was Kelly.

Yeah. I mean, there's a mask and the hair and also, you know, nighttime security camera from a house.

It's never going to be that crisp and clear.

You could have gotten away with something like that potentially if you had just, you know, not maybe not a strong investigator on it. And by the way, you know, he wasn't convicted of any serious crime. It was-- he got misdemeanors and so no jail time. So that made me really actually angry that he got this slap on the wrist.

But what happened is, first of all, the main witness that would have been is deceased. They're missing that element. And then we had the pandemic. They were like two or three changes of judges and they just wanted to wrap this cape case up and get him on something.

And they did. They got him on a misdemeanor. And the civil case he ended up supposedly having to pay $400,000. But I don't think he ever paid it. All right.

Can we talk about Steve? So Steve? As we mentioned, Steve is, I guess, the old friend who admitted finally that he was there that night, he says he didn't see the murder happen. But he went along with Paul to cover it up.

And it took him a really long time to do the right thing. Yes, it did. And he would say that even years and years later, when Paul was living in a different part of the state altogether, hundreds of miles away. He couldn't go to the police and his opinion or his view at the time without Paul finding

town would make life very difficult indeed for Steve.

“He lived in fear that whole time he claimed, you know, given a sort of personality that”

he presented to us and the role that he played in that relationship, I can kind of see it. We have an extra clip from your interview with Steve. What do you think about him now? I don't think he has anymore. Minions that are worked with that will pull any weight for him.

I don't think that he has anyone left in his corner. I think he's powerless at this point. I don't think he has the reach that he used to have.

I'm sure he still has connections, but I don't think that they would...

I don't think that there are danger to me as connections. You don't get that little itch in your back anymore that somebody might do something to you someday. I'm not afraid of him anymore. Interesting, isn't it?

Once you decide not to be afraid of somebody, does it make you look back and say, "Jesus, why would I have this attitude 20 years earlier, 24 years earlier?" You just look at the fruit and the face and say, "FU, I'm going to go tell look off." I was young, I was stupid, I was a young, stupid kid.

The whole idea of him coming forward and him giving this, according to the jury, very believable testimony, that solved the case that found justice for Virginia's family, but Virginia's family are still not very happy with Steve Gates. They feel that he waited way too long. They feel that their mother could have had justice in her lifetime.

They're still some hard feelings there. The one thing I'll give Steve is we are dealing with a killer. All is a convicted killer. And a skilled manipulator who can make a killer. And a skilled manipulator and also this arson business, then his girlfriend shows up dead,

“we don't know how, but all these things, I think I'd be afraid of Paul too.”

I get it. I'm just, frankly, I'm still surprised that Steve came forward to us. And he wasn't court testifying at the day new law on the trial. He didn't want any audio recorded, he didn't want any video and under Ohio law. If the witness requests that, the judge can grant that request and he did.

So the fact that he ended up talking to Keith was I was kind of surprised. And the reason, Andrew, I think he has essentially decided to come forward, I made a special trip out to Ohio to talk to him in person with his attorney, Bernie Davis. And I think he wanted the community to know that he suffered with this, but ate away at him for 24 years and that he saw that he waited so long.

He's family, and that region has gotten a lot of pushback from that community. He still lives on the same farm that he did back in 2001.

You can imagine going on with the rest of your life, having now gone public finally with

that story. And the feeling of great many people must have it, but as you've still got to go to the grocery store every day, you're still going to see other people around this small town every day. And you know that they're probably whispering behind your back. And it's a picture for sure.

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

“No, I think that probably it's a good thing that he has done.”

And I think it might be recognized. I hope it is because, you know, even now, if you're not afraid of anybody, but you're afraid of how the public might feel about you and sure. Yeah.

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

And I think the fact that he, you know, pushing him, apologize to the family, keep that

a drag it out of him a bit, but he said, "I'm sorry. I didn't come forward earlier." And you could tell he meant it. Yeah.

“Apologies go a long way, I think, they're big, if they're sincere.”

And I have to say, given the ride that we went on in this story and all the things that, Paul, was accused of doing, it was a very satisfying arrest and verdict to see that, you know, to see that car on the video, you know, get pulled over and jury three hours. That's, I don't know. Three hours is like the, I swear it is the magic number for jury's with quick verdicts

for guilty. So it seems to be a lot just there too, right? Two hours plus much. Yeah. Exactly.

They were like, "Yeah, you're done.

You're done, Paul." And up next, we have questions from our loyal viewers and listeners on social media that we are going to answer. Okay. Okay, now Keith and Tim are going to answer some of your questions and they also have

comments from social media. So these are coming from people who caught your excellent program Friday night or over the weekend. Great. Yep.

Linda Bellaglow Abrams says how did he kill her, meaning Paul, before he drove her into the water? I think I missed that. Do you know exactly how Regina died? Well, I guess we don't really know exactly how she died because nobody saw it except

the killer. The friend who eventually told the story of what he saw that evening didn't see that part of the activity. What he saw was when he walked back to the car, he saw her crumpled in the passenger seat and Paul told him she's dead, although at that point, she actually wasn't dead, but clearly

he had done something to her and it wasn't clear exactly what. Didn't they say that she had marks on her body? I mean, I don't know if that's related to her. You know, death or not, but it marks on her body which could have meant, you know, any number

“of possibilities, I think, and strangulation was a possibility I think, was not Tim and”

blunt force. It seems the more likely things at some type of blow to the head was the possible thing that made her unconscious. But the cause of death was actually drowning. It was drowning from water being ingested, yeah, so they believe that some things happened

before the drowning. Yes, she knocked her out and then he put it in the passenger seat of the car and then he drove the car into the pond that's out of work. So the observer, the witness saw the car going over a hill and into the pond, but didn't see what happened to her before.

Okay, so this one is at Jill Hughes from Facebook and she's talking about Steve, the man who made the deal and testified, she says, what a jackass. He should do jail time as well because if you don't tell about a crime, you are complicit. Well, there's, I mean, it's an argument that could have been made all right. But in the end, they really needed to solve that crime and Steve was the way they could

solve it. So he was able to, you know, make that arrangement with them that he didn't go to jail. And he was a lucky man in that sense. And I do think Andrea and Keith, one of the things that everybody involved with the prosecution of this case feels, is that if Steve Gates did not come forward, this family would not have

had justice. No. We would have been on here 25 or 26. So yeah. If he had not come forward, this case wouldn't have been officially solved.

They didn't really have anything more than him. Yes, exactly. And the other case isn't in, I mean, remember, he was, you got misdemeanor charges.

He never did any jail time.

So this would have been a guy watering around Scott free for any number of bad acts. We see this a lot. It's a double edged sword, right? I mean, you need them, but, yep. At the same time, you know, maybe they could have done things differently, you know, from

the beginning. It's hard.

“Do you think Steve would have come forward without the immunity deal?”

And during the, I think any defense attorney would not have let their client speak to police without a, some type of deal for immunity before they talk, because his client, Steve was, you know, at some risk for some type of charge, including, you know, obstruction of justice

So I don't think there was any way he was going to be talking without a deal.

That's very normal. Robin Steven's West says, once you know it's a mask, you can tell. Hindsight is 20, 20. You look at this security, this surveillance video, and it kind of looks bizarre. But then, you know, when, when you actually have the luxury of knowing who maybe this was,

“does it change it for you when you watch that video?”

It never looked real to me.

And I was a little surprised, frankly, that investigators could have looked at it in the first place, and I thought, yeah, that's, that's Kelly. That's the ex-girlfriend, not the current girlfriend. It didn't make sense to me, but apparently worked for a while.

“Thank you both for joining us and giving us all your insights.”

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

Well, that is it for Talking Date Line this week, and thank you all for listening.

“Remember, if you have any questions about our stories, you can DM us your audio or video”

on our socials at Date Line NBC, or leave us a voicemail at 212-413-5252 for a chance to be featured right here. And you can watch the video version of Talking Date Line on peacock or YouTube or subscribe to the NBC News app. And before we go, be sure to check out Keith's new, original podcast series, Five Miles

From Home, the story of the murder of a high school track star in a small desert town. All six episodes are available now, or you can subscribe to Date Line Premium to binge the entire series ad-free. We'll see you Friday for an all-new Date Line on NBC. Friday night on an all-new Date Line, 51 parents lost orders a day.

Almost one year after the cap-mistic floods, our girls should be here.

For the first time, some of the parents speak out together, and all-new Date Line Friday

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