Haywire

Today we have more incentives for market solutions than ever, and emissions are rising.

“On this season of drilled carbon caboys, the story of three market solutions”

colliding in one multinational boom-double. Listen anywhere you get podcasts. Some crimes are so shocking they don't just make headlines, they forever change our society. I'm Katie Rang, 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,

release every Tuesday through Thursday, from the first sign that something was wrong.

To the moment the truth came out, we didn't. Listen to and follow America's most infamous crimes on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, Music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. It all seemed... was, in fact, incomplete somehow, something was still hidden, something we didn't know. The question was, would be ever.

This, for example, and after a simple, why did they do it? This was perhaps the biggest question. Which one of those young people bore the greater responsibility for the attack on

“Mickey Castanzo? Was punishment for that crime, fairly applied?”

Cody Patton, by refusing to blame his girlfriend, ensured for himself a lifetime in prison.

Yes, he avoided the death penalty, but he'll never be free again, he'll die in prison.

Tony Frato, on the other hand, pile the blame on Cody, and more, she claimed she was in a abused woman, and, though in a complex of frightened and reluctant one. Tony was imprisoned on the lesser charge of second-degree murder with a built-in possibility of parole. But, was hers a true story? Or just a strategy? Was the fatal decision hers or Cody's? Well, Tony was just along for a ride that went bad. We asked Detective Donald Burnham.

He didn't claim to have the answers either. I don't think the Cody or Tony would tell the truth to anybody but each other. It just doesn't appear that anybody has gotten the true answers

“to this reasons or the wise. And I think the only people to have the answer to those questions”

as Tony and Cody. We wondered if their history would talk for them, or at least offer clues. And so we went digging into the past. Tony told me, "I just hate her. I just hate her." She's such a bad person and how much she just watched my camera would just go away. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is five miles from home, a podcast, some deadline. Episode six, "Hey, wire."

There was, you'll recall, some significant history between Cody and the Kayla. They'd grown up in the same apartment complex where childhood friends and at 12 or 13 or thereabouts, they played at being boyfriend and girlfriend, though it was all quite

innocent and very brief, said Mickey's sister Christina. They never had the feelings that you'd have

for a boyfriend girlfriend. More like brother, sister. More like brother, sister. They were just best friends for a long time. Then, in high school, Cody met Tony Fredo and that was the real deal. Cody fell hard in love for life hard. But we know from Tony's diary that she feared their love wouldn't last. Her entries revealed

deep insecurity and repeatedly intense jealousy directed towards the prettier and more popular Mickey. And though she and Cody were planning a wedding, Tony wrote that she was certain he'd soon want to leave her for Mickey. From the diary, he will be happier and can see her a lot. A lot more than he will ever see me, they hang out every single day like all day long, too. I know anything I do is wrong. And then there was this. To be honest, I don't know why I'm

even still living life. It's not worth my time. It's pointless. The source of all that angst seemed to be one incident in the high school. A minor thing really a misunderstanding of the sort of thing that happens at that age. Mickey and Cody remember where

of years before Mickey was killed. I guess they exchanged a kiss between each other, from what Tony told

“me, then the Kayla found out that they were together. And she felt horrible.”

So what my sister did was she wowed up the Tony face to face and told her what happened.

Instead, I'm really sorry. I didn't know. And boy, me will never happen again.

According to Tony's mother Cassie, Mickey's apology appeared to ease the tension between the two. At least during the summer of 2010, several months before Mickey was murdered. Tony and Michaela had coincidentally met up at our local swimming pool. And Tony had said, I thought that we had made peace because they talked about how silly they were as young girls and talked about Cody and Michaela had said, don't worry about it. If you want Cody, you go for

it, girl. They patched things up, came to an agreement. And Tony felt really comfortable about that. She did not have a beef with Michaela at that point. Things were fine. But according to Mickey's sister DJ, things were not so fine. Tony's jealousy only intensified. She said things, nasty things, to Mickey. And this was not just a few times. This was a lot. Oh yeah. Tony really hated her. She'd walk a bite, say something so rude on her

breath, making her feel bad and Michaela would just pretend to didn't bother one in reality. I heard her. We're talking about a couple years though. Yeah. The hatred of Tony grew more and more and it went on until pretty much she died. But it was even worse than that said DJ.

“When Tony was mean, she said, Cody got nasty too. I remember getting off work one day.”

And I was sitting there and she ran in. She's bleeding on her arm. She said, Cody had a little box player bleed. And he wiped it across to her arm. And at first she said, I didn't even know. And then I looked down and I'm bleeding. And I looked at him. And he's laughing. Was that kind of the straw that broke the camel's back with her? That was. She said, this is what's made me see that he's not worth it. And then I really don't want

person like that in my life at all. And at that point, he was just a nobody to her anymore. So from then on, Mickey avoided Cody. Cutter-old childhood pal right out of her life. Especially during the months before she was murdered. Mickey's mother, Celia. They weren't talking. They weren't being friends. She already minimized any contact. But Mickey's cold shoulder only seemed to fuel Cody's fire. Here's DJ. He grew really angry

at her after that. Would do things to try to make her mad. Just so she talked to them. When they didn't talk for a very long time, he said, he loved Mickey. He just didn't want her to ever go. And he didn't understand why she went. It was a real shock to him to all the sun have for there. They're thick and thin and then no forever.

“And I angry at abandoned Cody at jealous Tony. Maybe that's why Mickey had been so”

worried, said DJ about what those two might be up to. Weeks and even months before they killed her. She says he keeps trying not to get me to go with them. Why is he talking to me now?

Because he's never tried to reach out and say anything. And now all the sudden here he is.

And she just felt really insecure. They get her to go out with him and Tony. Go with the two of them. Yeah. And she just said, I don't get it. It's not right. Something's just wrong. So why would Mickey get into a car with Cody that day after school? Or maybe she didn't. Not voluntarily anyway. Remember the police found a zip tie around Mickey's arm. We still don't know exactly how or why Mickey ended up in that car with Cody and Tony.

The shifting stories made it hard to know what was true. But Celia was empathic. The idea that Mickey would willingly get into a car with either one or both of them. Not a chance. She was smart. She was careful. And she was afraid. She had already for two years been staying away from him. And then to hear that she got into a

vehicle with Cody and Tony never in a million years.

Something else. Mickey's family is convinced that Cody and Tony knew that a few days

The timing was too perfect. It was the one time that DJ was a college. Christina was out of town. I was at work. He's the one time that Mickey would have actually had to walk home.

Do you believe that they set out to kill her in the first place? Yes. This is a girl who was always

with someone. She had friends. She was around people all the time. You could not get my daughter alone. If you're going to do something, you would have to plan it out. There is one more story that just might reveal the trigger for what those two kids did to Mickey Castanzo. We found a recording buried deep in the case file, never presented in public,

“never reported. Remember that plea deal Cody first accepted before suddenly changing his mind?”

It was January 2012, a little over 10 months after the murder. Cody had just started making a sworn statement to the DA. All I'm asking you to do today is to tell me the truth. You understand that? You said it. It was to be a full and frank account of what really happened and why. Here was the part of Cody's whole new story. He managed to get out before he climbed up. That morning, between classes and several hours before he did what he did to Mickey,

Cody told the DA, Tony confronted Mickey in a school hallway. Tony called her a slut. She said a little bit there. There's a slut and I told her that she needed to stop that bullsh*t. This was within the Kayla's hearing. She was fine, but I was walking by.

“So what happened there? Tony called her a few more hands. I noticed the slut was”

in what everything he sparked it. Sparked a big argument that is, Cody said he intervened. Told Tony. Knock it off. Cody told the DA. He didn't like it when people have a feud between them, especially with friends and family. So after school, he suggested to Mickey. Why don't you guys just talk it out? And Tony told me that he just wanted to do it

out with Makala. Do you get out? Fight, basically. And I said, okay, well, I have to

Mickey. So I relayed the message to Mickey. It said, well, she just wants to find it out. And Mickey came to the resolution. She's like, okay. So said Cody. Mickey did get into his borrowed SUV after school, that awful day. Got into the car with just him voluntarily, expecting to go and have it out with Tony. It drove around for a while, so Cody. And then they picked up Tony and Cody drove out of

town to the gravel bits. And what did Cody tell the DA about what happened there? Well, as it turned out, nothing. Because just then, Cody's attorney John Olson arrived. And the two conferred privately about what would happen in his case went to trial, that he would likely be convicted. And yet, something in that moment shifted in Cody's mind. Shifted in spite of his attorney's warning. Cody returned to his meeting with the DA and announced that he had changed his mind.

I decided to deploy him. So you're willing to accept the plea of my career.

“Which Cody's attorney John Olson further clarified by asking the DA?”

And the author is not for table. Yes. Mr. Patton does not have an option of taking it any more. Did you get all that? Cody, much to almost everyone surprised, rejected the plea deal, that could have kept him off death row. Instead, he declared he would go to trial, but a jury decide. Because he believed he would be found not guilty. And why would a jury

acquit? Well, his attorney John Olson believes Cody was convinced Tony would never,

ever testify against him, never betray him. After all, he had never betrayed her. So right then, and their Cody refused to say another word ever again about what happened in the desert on that terrible day. But attorney Olson, who has never disputed that Cody was involved, does have his own theory about what really happened when those three arrived at the gravel pits.

And they went out to the desert to have the confrontation away from crying. And something happened.

“I think something bad happened. A bad idea that became a screw up. A bad idea that became a horrible”

idea. A bad idea that went very, very bad. Why do you think it happened? I'd have to just guess. But I think it's something that got out of hand that went very, very wrong. I think there were more reactionary than they were premeditative. I think that nobody intended for there to be a death in this in the beginning. That maybe there was an intention to do something else. I think it just went haywire. So what was it? A planned premeditated attack to confront Michaela, simply scare her,

or actually kill her. Everybody we talked to seemed to have a different theory. But on this,

they agree, said Detective Donald Burnham. It appears to me that Cody and Tony carried this act out together. I don't think that Cody or Tony would tell the truth to anybody but each other.

“And they aren't talking. Oh, they're not. Except, we did talk to Tony. In jail, after she”

confessed and was sentenced, she had a lot to say. Maybe just a little more than she intended. [Music] Most violent crimes that capture the public's imagination seem larger than life, but sometimes

the most terrifying criminals are right next door. And he's just yelling,

"Muck that on a me, huh?" Which translates to, "They killed my son." On the fear that neighbor podcast from ID will explore these true stories and hear what happens when neighborly disputes reach the point of no return. What do you want? Just this. Listen to fear that neighbor wherever you get your podcasts.

“I really love the start today app. They care about how I feel. It's the staff on the app.”

It's the connections you make. Without good mental and physical help, you have nothing. It tells me how to cook to keep myself healthy. I look at my happen and like, "Wow, I'm on this 7,000-thousand today." Start today, meets you where you are. Download the start today, wellness app now on your app, or Android device. Terms apply. See you after it details.

Hey guys, Willie guys to here, reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit Down podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with the one and only Keith Richards to talk about the Rolling Stones, New Album, Foreign Tongues, and his memories of more than 60 years with Mick Jagger and the Stones. You can get our conversation now for free wherever you download your podcasts.

There's a dismal logic that works and jails around America. It's an architecture of purgatory. These are the places that house inmates in that gray zone of waving, waiting for trial, waiting to be sentenced, waiting to be transferred to a more permanent prison dwelling. In most of these places, inmates are stored in pods, as they call them. Huge rooms of painted concrete, in which metal bumps offer nothing like privacy, as inmates milled out under the gaze

of fall-seeing cameras, and keepers watching in some central control room day and night, all the time, and the minutes and hours crawl, aimlessly, endlessly. Tony Frater waited for her transfer to prison while encased in just such a place, the Elco County Jail, where she languished in the constant company of 100 or so other waiting women. Day after day, night after night in that concrete pod, for 16 months, and she thought about things,

like the value of telling her story to us. And on the last possible day, the day before her transfer to the state prison, a Jailer led her in to see me. I'm Keith. Hi. Nice to meet you. So here she was. Tony Frater, the former little Miss Windover, still the picture of a child, tiny in her big-girl prison outfit, her hair, tightly braided in a bun. We'd arranged to have our meeting in a small courtroom, not far from her pod, and this was a new one

plate glass window, which meant she and Tony could make eye contact. Tony's mother could also hear us,

“though we could not hear her. So two lines of communication, hours with Tony,”

hers, silently, with her mother, as our cameras rolled.

We'd hoped, naturally, that she would finally tell the truth about that nightmare in the desert,

tell us what really happened and tell why. Instead she began with what sounded like a bit of historical revision about the young woman she helped kill. I knew up her, but I did not know Michaela. I knew her from school and from the apartment complex that Cody had lived it. We'd been hoping for an honest conversation too much to ask perhaps, but it came to the question, did Cody decide to attack Mickey? Or did she? There are people who say that you were

“very jealous and that you manipulated him into committing murder. I was not jealous of Michaela.”

Yes, that one thing that I had wrote in my diary, but that was way early on our relationship.

Did you ever say to him? Get rid of her. No, I didn't get rid of her or you lose me. No. Didn't give him that choice. Absolutely not. Tony insisted to us that on the day of the murder she had no idea what was brewing. Only that earlier that we, Cody seemed angry and edgy about something and that things were building up. Otherwise, said Tony, it was just a normal Thursday she went to school then attended the

town meeting with her mom. Things suddenly changed just before 7pm, said Tony. When she got that text message and Cody, I have her, it said. So I told him, "Come get me." We'll talk this all out. Yeah, well, I want to find out for myself what's going on. People may find it hard to believe, but I still did not believe that he had her in that car. Until I had gotten in that car and just something on his face was not right. I guess that would have been another opportunity for you to

decide not to go. Right. What was the reason you walked out of that safe meeting, sitting beside a parent, didn't understand that. To see proof for myself.

“That he had her. Which when he heard that made us wonder, did Tony slip and reveal a hidden truth?”

When she made her a deal to plead the second-degree murder, giving her a shot at freedom someday,

Tony claimed that she was just doing what Cody demanded she do and had no idea of what would transpire that awful night in the desert. But here she was admitted that she actually wanted to join Cody, demanded he pick her up, in fact, with a kidnapped Mickey in the back of the car. Then another slip, does this sound like some planning had been involved? Listen to this. Well, when we finally got out to the designated area and everything,

what do you mean the designated area? Where everything went down. That area was designated? Well, just the area where we ended up. No plan to go there and sister Tony. So designated area, maybe, maybe not. Okay, tell me what I folded. To me, I'd rather not get into a lot of detail. It's still a blur to me, just when everything started getting out of hand.

Which began, said Tony, when Cody got out of the car, leaving Mickey and her inside and started digging what would be a grave. Why didn't you just leave? You and Michaela, there were two of you. Could have just driven away when he got out of the car. I was too much in fear. I was scared, terrified. Even if I tried to get away, drove off, he would still come and find them. And there'd be ten times worse. Tony insisted she had no choice but to stay there,

where she witnessed the last moments of Mickey customs of life. He had told me to go and get in the car in the car around face to headlights to where they were at. He had told me to stay in the car. Look away, don't look. I stayed in the car when all that went down.

Which as you may remember was not what she said when she confessed to Cody's attorney that she

was very much involved. Back then she said they'd both murdered Mickey together, using Cody's knife. But later she told the DA a now sitting with me, a much different story. "You didn't hold the knife, but you didn't cut her." Correct. So it reduced your culpability. I'm not trying to diminish my actions or anything of what I did, but I won't take responsibility for something I did not do.

Frequently as Tony kept distancing herself from the crime she looked through the glass to her mother.

Especially when the question turned to why. I did what I was told because I was scared I didn't know what to do. So scared of Cody that she stayed there in the SUV and watched as he killed Mickey because she feared that if she didn't do what she was told, she'd be as next victim.

“Why would it kill you? The only thing that I can even think that I would be next was because I was a”

witness and I was there with Mickeyle. Even when it was all over and they got home, said Tony. Cody kept her paralyzed in fear. You told me he don't say a word. If he get caught, then he would take the complete blame and I was to keep my mouth shut. So why is Mickeyle stands out dead? You'd have to ask Cody, said Tony Frauto. I don't know his motive. If I knew, I'd be more than willing to say why, so it would make sense. Let's just a little take a what.

I mean, I don't know. I don't have an answer for that. And when he says he doesn't know, why do you believe him? No, he's got an awye. There's a reason why he did this and it wasn't to read of Michaela so to please you. No. So did she avoid Cody? Once he was often jailed before her own arrest, this man she was so afraid of? No, she didn't. Jail calls are recorded, of course. You are, and a good mood who it will be. I'm excited and I'm glad you all died. Who will be,

Phil? They were lovers once engaged to be married in the Mormon Church, planning for a family.

“But now Tony told us she was trying to cleanse herself of Cody Patton. You think about a month?”

You know, I am just doing my best to move forward. No, I don't want him a part of me and my family's life anymore. Is that your mind? He's out of my mind. There are times that yes, things pop up. I'm just working on filling myself.

Of course, Michaela stands as family. We'll never heal. Nor like the ever-be-satisfied with

justifications or regrets that Tony Friday tries to offer. Not a day that goes by that I don't think about what happened. I know Star is not enough. If I could go back, I would

“and protect her and she would still be here today. Did they see her face now? In your mind, did I?”

It's in place. It's yeah. Probably seen her for a long time. You're asking, I love you. And with that, our interview ended. Tony Frotto never wavering from her latest story, the one that could set her free, even sooner than she thought. Ten years after Mickey was kidnapped, beaten and stabbed to death in the Nevada desert. Tony Frotto set for another interview. This time at the meeting of the parole board.

These members had the power to release her. So, would they? Some of the parents speak out together. On a quiet Saturday morning, five women walked into

described by the lone survivor. But despite nearly being caught, he vanished into thin air.

In the years since new technology, new investigators and new questions have changed what's possible. But the families are still waiting for answers. The evidence is still there, in this case isn't cold. It's unfinished. Listen to counter-clockwise season A wherever you get your podcasts. Honey, did you invite the minions over? Well, you know how we talked about getting Wi-Fi from

“Exfinity? Yeah. I ordered it this morning was online in minutes, then they showed up. So they just came over to use the Wi-Fi? For what?”

Better not to know. Get online in minutes with same-day Wi-Fi from Exfinity, plus lock in your price for five years and see minions and monsters only in theaters. Exfinity, imagine that. Restrictions apply not available in all areas. Learn more at xfinity.com/sameday Wi-Fi. [Music] They were sent to separate prisons. Cody Patton to one end of Nevada, Tony Fretto, the other.

Two different stories about the murder too. And two quite different penalties. Cody Patton is a hardcore lifer. For years he was locked up at the E.E.E. State Prison, the place so notorious, so dangerous, some call it the graveyard. Then in January 2026 he qualified to be transferred to a medium security facility as safer, less violent prison. Meanwhile, Tony Fretto from what we could tell has kept the low profile that the women's

prison outside Las Vegas. Unlike Cody, Tony has possibilities, parole possibilities.

And in 2021, she took her first step towards Fretto. Good day, man.

Statue name in your end, you'll see number for the record, please.

“Tony Fretto, 1926. Remember, Tony was given consecutive sentences for both murder and the”

use of a deadly weapon, which meant she would have to serve time separately for each conviction, a minimum total of 18 years. So this parole hearing was just for the murder charge. If parole was granted, she began serving time for the weapons conviction. We're all here on a discretionary parole hearing to receive a sentence of what appears to be 120 months to life in prison. Tony was 28. Prison at age terror. Still petite, but pale,

dark, clearly here, touched short. With her parents looking on, she went through her testimony, went without visible tears. My actions were wrong. And I just hope that one day, I give back and that I can show the people in society who I am today and not who I once was. All right, obviously, this was a crime that was, it's kind of beyond the pale here. What was your frame of mind when this was occurring here? I was not in a healthy state of mind at the time.

I was not thinking of the consequences. I was not thinking of the pain and the hurt that I was going to cause this family. Was still causing 10 years on? This was the area to the parole board, just as she had pledged to do when Tony was sentenced years earlier. Tony was in a position multiple times to stop what happened before Michaela was ever killed. She was not pressured and she just going along. She got in that vehicle. She knew what was going on. She made the choice

to take my daughter out in the middle of the desert, slit her throat. She should paint the same price. My daughter did a life for life. Didn't take long. Pro was denied. And then three years later,

“they did it all again. Good morning. Can you please state your name and in the O.C. number for the record?”

Tony Frodo 1092636. In February 2024, she was back in front of the board to the second time.

Tony looked a little different by then. Her hair was long and stringy, her face, thinner, expressionless. I would just like to say that I apologize to the family that I am sorry for their loss and I want to let them know that I am doing time for the family. Can you even begin to empathize

And then again, the commissioner has asked the question, why? Why kill that innocent young woman?

One of the things that strikes me is there were so many chances for you to take the off-rim. And you didn't. Why is that? I regret that every single day of my life.

“And the only thing I can say is I was scared and I wish I would have been strong enough”

to take that stand and save her life. We ask you this, if it was someone in your family, if the world were reversed, would you want that person to get out of prison? No. Once again, for all was denied. Tony's next hearing will be in 2028, she'll be 36 then, half her life behind bars. Well, Cody Patton is going to die in prison someday.

Do you want to say that even one of those two? First off, I want them to look at me

in the face and tell me why and it better not be some BS that they pull like they did on their

“confessions. I want the truth. Will I ever get it? No. They'll never tell me.”

I want them to know that if it were possible for me every day to make their lives hell, I would. Because they deserve to be in hell for doing that. And there is nothing they can say or do that will make it better. They cannot fix this. Three families broken in West Bend over. I feel for Michaela's family. I feel for Cody's family. I feel for Tony's family. This is lead detective Kevin McKinney. They're all devastated.

You know, the fratos and the patterns are just devastated as the castan's those in this case.

Three families have been torn apart by this. Cody Patton will never come on.

Tony fratos might someday, but probably too late for her parents. I don't think I will still be alive when she gets out. I don't think that it'll be a time that will be together like that again.

“At West Bend over high school, they still remember McKi. Her basketball and track uniforms have”

both been retired in her honor. Outside is a huge rock, painted green, a memorial in her favorite color, signed by dozens of her classmates. A college scholarship fund has also been established in McKi's memory. It's called the spirit of friendship honoring the life of Michaela Costanzio. And up in the high desert mountains, overlooking West Bend over is a ranch with a small family cemetery, a peaceful sacred place. The ranch is home. It's home from Michaela. It's home for DJ.

It's home for me. And now it's where Michaela is. Yes. She's exactly where she would want to have been. She's laying right next to my father and she is in the most beautiful spot in the world to me. And she's like sitting on top of the world. And on the little strip along Interstate 80, that giant neon cowboy windover wheel still waves his grinning welcome. But he points to a place a little older now and sad it. As if the neon light

strung up among desert casinos had picked up a layer of grief after that night in the desert. Five miles from home. Five miles from home has been a production of decline and NBC news. Robert Dean is the producer. Brian Drew Marshall Housefeld and Meredith Greenstein are audio editors. Molly DeRosa is a associate producer. Adam Gourphane is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer

and Liz Cole is senior executive producer. Well, I'm NBC News Audio sound mixing by Rich Cutler. Some crimes are so shocking, they don't just make headlines, they forever change our society.

most notorious criminal cases. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes,

“release every Tuesday through Thursday. From the first time 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.