Open Murder

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've been hearing for decades that the markets can solve climate change. 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. You'll remember I'm sure the old adage taken from Shakespeare, either a borrower or a lender bee.

The phrase itself borrowed, all the time and everywhere, like so much of the great playwright's

work.

“Do you realize advice, perhaps if widely ignored in modern life?”

But the question of borrowing was about to matter in the West-Wendover murder investigation. It had to do with a car, an SUV actually a Chevy Trailblazer, a borrowed trailblazer. And why would a borrowed car matter to the investigation into the murder of that much loved teenager, Mickey Costanzo? There is still a story, that.

The SUV belonged to a local woman, and older woman, you could say, at least compared with young Cody, there had been talk, rumors that Cody may have been spending time with

the woman, but talk is cheap, isn't it?

And no evidence of a relationship ever surfaced, and after all, Cody was at that very same-time planning his marriage to Tony Frato, so perhaps that woman was simply offering the SUV as a favor to a friend, to be used by Cody to pick up those car parts he left to this cool shock. But now, Cody Patton was a murder suspect.

And so, naturally, detective Brennan thought it prudent to talk to that woman, the owner of the car, and sure enough she confirmed Cody's story, confirmed also the reason he asked to use it, because it was big enough to accommodate all that car stuff parts and things. That is, she assumed it was car parts. And then the woman added, "What curious little detail?"

Her SUV was spotless when she had the keys to Cody, but was very dirty when he returned it. Not just teenager messy, but especially dirty and dusty on the outside, as if he'd driven it off road. But did she rush out to wash it that very day?

No, she did not. Instead, investigators had their way with that car. They swapped it from bumper to bumper for samples of dust and dirt, and compared those samples with soil samples from the crime scene, and they sure looked the same. Which by itself could simply have been a coincidence, of course, didn't prove Cody did

some terrible thing to his old friend Mickey. But that wasn't all those cops took from the car. They took impressions of the tread on the tires, and then they lined them up with the tire tracks at that place in the desert, where they found Mickey's body. They were consistent with the tire brand and model that was on that vehicle.

Which, again, could've been a coincidence, though it was seemingly less likely now.

“And then the investigators conducted a search where Cody lived, which was, remember, at”

the home of Claude and Cassie Frateau. See if there was any type of evidence of knives or items that could have been used to restrain her or coincided with what we'd found at the scene at the time. Did you find anything? We didn't find anything initially, however, during our search of the house, some Cassie Frateau

stated that she had observed a shovel in Cody's room, and that the shovel was no longer there. And she had identified the shovel as a small military and trenching type tool.

Of course it wasn't around anymore, so as evidence that story was perhaps iffy, but just

“as the detectives were contemplating that it happened.”

The moment, dramatic, strange, the kind of thing that just never happens until it does.

I heard some wailing from the father, I could hear him yell, "It sounded to be like he was crying." I'm Keith Morrison, and this is five miles from home, a podcast and data line. Episode three, Open Murder. On the night in West Wendover, a busy evening along the little strip. It's five Cassinos bustling with gamblers, drinks flowing, slots spinning.

A blivier, of course, to the real-life action just across town at the West Wendover Police Department, where Detective Kevin McKinney was still grilling Cody Patton. "You're not telling us the whole truth? You tell us bits of pieces, but you're not telling us the whole truth." By this time it was almost 1 a.m., all but the most dedicated gamblers had drifted into

the night, and Sunday had given him to Monday. Detecting McKinney had been up 24 hours straight.

First, driving to West Wendover, then supervising the crime scene when Mickey Costanzo's

body was exhumed. Followed by a trip to the school, where he studied the surveillance video, and now here he was face-to-face with 18-year-old Cody Patton. In a cramped and stuffy interrogation room, four hours, they had gone back and forth about what happened to Mickey with Cody denying "I did not kill the killing steps up."

And the cop offering him, "Wait a confess?" "I don't think he planned on it.

“I don't think you intended to, I did it, I think he panicked."”

At which point Cody, perhaps feeling cornered, asked for a break.

He asked to speak with his father, so we allowed them to meet in the interview room.

"Did you overhear what they?" "No, I didn't hear what was said, but at one point I heard a some wailing from the father." Was it the world was going on in there? Detecting McKinney waited quite again. And a few minutes later, we went back into the interview room, and his father told him he needs to tell us

what happened. And that's when he told me the story. Would a lawyer have prevented Cody from telling you a story? But Cody didn't ask for a lawyer. His father's advice is what he saw.

“And his father, in some kind of shock from what he had heard, insisted that the truth was”

what was needed now, ugly though the truth certainly was. This is Kit Patton, in the presence of the detectives, speaking to his son Cody. "What you did is pain is going to be, I don't want to abandon you at all. It'll be okay. You've got to do what they need you to do and lignate their answers.

If the family needs their answers, you know, this is it, man. We have to fix this." And then detect a McKinney made sure his tape recorder was still rolling, and he leaned forward in his chair that listened intently as Cody Patton began. He picked up McKinney at school, he said, "And they started driving and talking.

That," said Cody, "is when Mickey started all the trouble. And how did she do that?" Mickey insisted Cody break up with his fiance Tony Frotto and date her, Mickey instead, he said. "Well that wasn't going to happen," said Cody, so then they started arguing, and Cody kept driving deep into the desert.

"But then Mickey got really mad," said Cody, insisted, he stopped the car, so he got out. She was fighting y'all and at me, and I said, "It's because I'm not in the Tony house. She started like pounding on my chest and stuff." By this time, said Cody, he was upset too. "More mad," as he put it, and that is when it happened.

He shoved her. Pretty hard, he said. And she felt down and hit her head and I said, "She just laid there and when I started to turn black, and she started to shake its feet and that point and do something was wrong. I looked at where she was at.

Cody had been trained as an EMT, said when he checked for a pulse, he couldn't get anything,

and she was just flopping. He was very cheerful.

“We had to stop several times to allow him to gain his composure back a couple times.”

He told us he was getting physically ill while he was describing details to us. We were spare you of the rest of Cody's description of what he said. He did the Mickey out there and the desert. So, if I used to say, it was more than just a push in a fall, and whatever it actually was, Cody did not use his EMT training to save her life.

Instead, he said, "He panicked. Didn't know what to do." And then, what he did do, he said. He was going to the car and grabbed that shovel and used it to make sure she was dead. I swear, the little crazy guy told him to come at her own, but it took the close part of burned him. He said, "At another location a few miles away.

After which, he went and picked up Tony," he said, and told her nothing about what he had done. The two went and got food, and after a while went home. And that he said is when he stashed the shovel under the Fredo's house. There it was, he claimed. The whole awful story. After which Cody offered this.

“That's why I say, they said, "I'm sorry, he being being in the wrong place at the wrong time."”

They said, "It had to have some one that did deserve it."

Never before, a detective Donald Burnham heard a confession as detailed as awful as that one.

And from Cody Patton of all people, just a regular local kid. He was on the high school football team, had lots of friends, also a regular kid, but then out of the blue he brutally murdered a lifelong friend. And just because she wanted him to dump Tony and be her boyfriend, but that didn't make any sense at all. And there was one other thing, said Cody, and he was adamant about this, insisted on it.

He stated he was alone and with McCailer, he never implicated anybody else even being present or aware of it. He did it alone. Did he tell anybody why? No, he didn't know.

“Detective Burnham still really a bit after Cody's story.”

Did one more bit of investigating that night. He went to the Fredo's house to look again for the trenching shovel, Cody said he used, and then hid under the house and, sure enough, there it was. It looked like it had been wiped clean. Burnham begged it, had it sent to the crime lab to check for clues. Well, the detective Kevin McKinney tried to make sense of what he had heard from Cody. Did you think you got the whole story at that

point? Not completely. I was never convinced that he told us the complete truth about what happened.

By now, it was a few hours before dawn on what was Monday morning when the police actually arrested Cody and told him he'd be charged by the DA later that very day. His fiancee Tony Frotto and her family were still sitting restless the outside the interview room, fully expecting to take Cody home. They would not do so, of course. This is Tony's mother, Cassie. The police came out and told us that Cody had just confessed.

Devastating did not believe it. We had been working so hard with him. Working hard to help Cody keep his life on track so he could graduate from high school and join the Marines. We thought we were bringing him around. We thought things were going well until the last week or so and we knew he was angry about something. All Cody would say the week before the murder was things are coming to a head. I need to take care of this and Tony would say what is wrong.

Why are you so angry with McKayla? What did she do? And he would say it's none of your business. Here is Cody's fiancee Tony. He would tell me what things were building up and things that happened in the past. He would not go into further detail and he would not say anything else towards me. And he wouldn't be telling her now because Cody was taken a hundred miles away to the

quite possibly facing the death penalty. Go that had yet to be decided. But was it over now?

“I don't know. Not at all. Have the rest of the story?”

Well, it didn't make sense. It's not the person that I knew. And I said, "And somebody made him do it." Somebody made him do it. 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. NBC. Hey guys, Willie guys, Tear, reminding you to check out the Sunday sit-down podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with the biggest rock star of the mall, Mick Jagger, to talk about the stones, latest album, and his favorite of the band's iconic

records over all these years. You can get our conversation now for free, wherever you get down loads of podcasts. In just a few months, he planned to be on his way to the Marine Corps, to be stationed by the beach near San Diego. But now, Cody Patton's uniform was a red jumpsuit. At his station was a tiny jail cell and knuckle Nevada. Well, back home and westwind over the police, made the shocking announcement at a press conference. Patton has been enrolled as a student in the

westwind over junior senior high school, and has been attending until the time of his arrest. To that, his classmates expressed a kind of universal disbelief. Cody did this to Mickey. It just means he ain't good. And we don't have other enemies. He's gone. He's just really

hitting everybody hard. There's always that could explain what we're feeling. I just want to know what

happened and why I happen. Yes, students and teachers alike, all acknowledged Cody had problems with the school. He could be a bully, sometimes intimidating. But the murder his childhood

“friend, the very popular Mickey attack her so viciously and dump her in the desert?”

Well, that was, it was unimaginable. Even the school principal was stunned. Cody was a kid. That we knew and then we were trying to give extra support as well so that he would hopefully graduate and he had dreams of going into the military and doing some of those things. So that was obviously our push to be able to help him have some type of future. But it was all for not. Cody's some type of future was defined a few hours after his cheerful

confession. When the DA charged him with open murder, open murder in Nevada as a kind of legal one-stop shopping. When it comes to homicide cases, they would give the jury a choice. They could

convict him a first-degree murder or second-degree murder or manslaughter.

Probably good as like it because it can often ensure some kind of conviction. But the trial would be months and months away. The rumors to go before any jury would lay eyes on Cody. And meanwhile, more investigating was still needed. There were lots of loose ends. So the day after Cody's confession, Detective McKinney decided to stop by the jail and pay him a visit. Cody looked exhausted, depressed, hurtly surprising. Reality was setting into a cell with him.

There's a couple things for wanting to clear up. First, Detective McKinney wanted to know exactly where did Cody stash McKinney's clothes and her other personal things? Those that weren't with the body that is, he'd buried her half naked.

“Remember, in his confession, Cody said he burned them somewhere away from the murder scene.”

But where? Now, Cody said he'd taken them over the state border to Utah to a big

cell phones survived the fire that or the book without backpacks she always carried.

That cell phone could tell them a lot. So the detective asked Cody about it, but he seemed to have only a vague recollection of that part of the awful night. Last time I saw a cell phone, it was on the internet pocket, but we didn't find it at the scene you'd be where it could have

“you've got thrown out away from the scene somewhere, trying to think. Okay. What about the backpack?”

Did she have a witter when she came? Yeah, I brought her back back to those in a safe spot. McKinney made a note of that, knowing that it searched the burn site soon. Once again, Cody himself had voluntarily provided more key evidence against himself. All right. Thanks, Cody. Appreciate it. I hope you do it okay. That would be the last time Cody ever spoke to Detective McKinney. Because a few days later,

a state appointed attorney came to see him, but this wasn't just any public defender. This one specialized in keeping accused killers off death row. His name? John Olson. Tough case. Real tough case. Olson was a highly regarded attorney with an impressive pedigree, stand for grad, Vanderbilt Law. He handled some three dozen death penalty cases during his 40-year career. But this case, this case was unlike any other.

By the time I got in the case, the authorities knew who'd done it. They had the proof of who done it. And the only issue was what they were going to do with them. Cody was not going home. After that interview with the police, he was not going home. Olson was in his 60s, was silver

hair, a commanding presence at a keen, analytical mind. When I first thought about it, I started

thinking about how I was going to prevent a death verdict from being entered in the case.

“And a death verdict seemed impossible. I thought, I think it was from the prosecution point of”

view, from a rational point of view, which I'll let you out of my death penalty case. And probably any jury would agree. If they heard the evidence presented in what had happened to this young woman, be killed and buried in the desert, that's tough stuff. Yeah, that is tough stuff. It was the identity of the victim. It was a brutality of the killing. It was the pogency of some of the photographs in the case. It would just break your heart.

And there were a lot of tough facts in the case. A lot of tough facts. And tough fact, number one was Cody's confession. Nothing he could do about that. Keeping him off death row could be difficult. The wonder ols him cold of a dangerous case. I approach every case with a thought that I'm going to try it to a jury. And I start preparing the case for trial without thought to a play in the case.

Did you believe the confession that he had given? You know, I like to reserve judgment on those things because he generally will get more information from a client later on than you will at the beginning.

“So I think I helped my water on that. What Cody had in mind when he told him that he did the killing?”

God knows. But John Olson wasn't the only one puzzled by Cody Patton's confession. A lot of people in West Bend over just weren't buying it. Especially of all people. Mickey Castanzo's family. There's parts of Cody's confession that I can see it being Cody. This is Mickey's mother, Sylia.

Like I am sure that he snapped and I'm sure that he hurt her. There would have to be something somewhere that forced the whole scenario. In fact, during the weeks after Mickey's murder, her older sister Christina became convinced Cody's confession was totally concocted. More tall tail than the truth. She had known Cody for years, liked him, trusted him.

It's not the person that I knew. He would never hurt Mickey La.

On a quiet Saturday morning, 5 women walked into a lane riot store and never came home.

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 counterclockwise season 8 wherever you get your podcasts.

Today meets you where you are. Download the start today. Will this app now on your Apple

Android device? Terms apply. See app for details.

“It was like the whole town turned out. A measure of Mickey's stance of sunny personality,”

her sweet goodness, that West went over his 1000-seat concert hall was needed to accommodate everyone at her memorial service. Her mother, Celia, felt like Mickey wasn't just her daughter, but like she was everybody's daughter. This town suffered as a group. It's not just me that suffered. It's not just DJ or Christina or my mom or my brother. This entire town suffered. As if this town was her parent, every child that was in that school, every teacher, in that school,

lost a part of themselves.

“And one by one, they wet, as they said, goodbye. And remember, Michaela is so cruelly murdered, as the ideal”

young woman, the pride of West went over high. Mickey's sister DJ gave an emotional view of it. It really used a lot of you came here because we can all see how many people loved her. Like we did. Many Mickey's classmates also spoke. She was many things to many people. A friend, a fellow student, a teammate, and an inspiration. This was Mickey's father, Teddy. He left him dearly. Someone took someone had no right to do that.

That someone, of course, was Cody Patton. He was the town villain now. In fact, much of West went over seem to have turned against the whole Patton family too. But Cody wasn't entirely alone in his five by seven foot jail cell. His loyalty on say, Tony Fredo went to see him, wrote to him, called him regularly. The cause were recorded, of course.

And I know you still are it. Tony, I'm always going to be here for you. No matter what

happens, the matter which things go, I'm always going to be here for you. Tony showered Cody with long love letters, meticulously handwritten, forever faithful, holding nothing back. This, the day Cody was taking the jail. Dear Cody, my baby, I miss you so much. I can't wait to see your face. I love you so much. Stay strong. This letter, a week later, dear Cody Bear. Yes, baby, I'm going to stay faithful. You're the only one

for me. My S-O, my cheese to my macaroni, my everything. And I'm not going to jeopardize that for the world. And three days later, dear Cody, googly Bear. Just been sitting at home thinking

day just terraced me down. I can't be happy until you're back in my arms, and that I know you are safe.

Tony's parents also kept in touch and even visited Cody sometimes. To provide support,

“sure, but also to ask a particular question. I said, I don't understand this. Why did you do this?”

Why did this happen? This is Tony's father, Quattro. He just said, "I don't know. I can't tell you anything. I don't know." And Tony has said the same thing. She doesn't know why it happened. Neither did the police. They were still actively investigating the case, but they were able to locate that burn pick. Cody admitted he used to destroy Mickey's belonging. He used to take a burn him. We decided to dig in that area and see if maybe this was what

the area that Cody had burned the items in. And we're luckily defined remnants of that poke it up bagged it. Makila had with her, her time of disappearance. Was there anything else in there

“that told you anything about what happened to her or why? There was a key that matched her mother's key”

for her apartment. There was a small charm. It was a panda bear.

That precious little panda bear charm, which she always carried with her, even on the last day

of her life. More devastating evidence piling up against Cody. Evidence that defense attorney John Olson had to somehow explain in a way that would keep his client off death row. But the more Olson studied Cody's confession, the more he came to believe just like Mickey's family did. That's something about it just didn't add up. So Olson hired a seasoned investigator named Bill Savage, asked him to poke around, see what he could find out.

Some former secret service agent, I was an agent in the early 70s. One of the people

guarded Lyndon Johnson. Johnson, yes, President Nixon, President Ford, and several other

foreign dignitaries throughout the country. Savage was 60 something. Ficked brown here, Owlish face with narrow eyes shining through a set of wire rim glasses. He certainly came with a pedigree. Besides the secret service he'd served the Nevada gaming control board at his own PI firm. Now he said about learning all he could about the murder and that boy's confession. Some of the details that Mr. Patton reported didn't quite pass the sniff test to me,

and I wanted to certainly investigate the case under a microscope so to speak. Savage began by taking a long hard look at Mickey's autopsy report. It wasn't an easy read, all sorts of grim specifics. She'd been cut, stabbed repeatedly, terribly beaten, the signs of that everywhere under body in her head. The injuries were so as severe, in fact, so brutal. They certainly didn't look like they could have been caused by some sort of

accident, as Cody had claimed, or a shovel of all things. But rather, a knife, given all the stab wounds, according to the medical examiner's report. I don't know if I'll ever know exactly what happened, but we know that from the autopsy photos, the horrible slicing disfigurement to Mickey's face. What did that say to you? It indicates to me a great deal of rage by someone to cause those type of wounds to a young lady, disfiguring wounds. Yes, that's pretty bad.

These types of wounds were disturbing. So disturbing, that Mickey's murder looked like the expression of sheer hate, except by all accounts Cody did not hate Mickey at all. There had to be more to the story. Some big secret, the Cody was refusing to reveal. Savage and Attorney John Olson, wondered if Cody's fiance Tony Fredo, might be able to provide some insight. Tony had already talked to the police during their early routine interviews with

“some of Mickey's classmates, that's what she first went missing. And Tony was as puzzled as”

everybody else in town was. I guess just kind of curious like, where's Mickey, what's going on,

and Cody was in jail, having told his alarming story. His incomplete alarming story, maybe.

“So, no surprise, Attorney Olson wanted to follow up to see if Tony had learned anything at all,”

about why her fiance did what he did to Mickey. She'd been talking to him after all, oh, and just maybe she herself might have had some sort of connection to the crime? Cody said no, but had to ask. And I talked to her in the presence of her parents,

in which she said she had nothing to do with it. Did she have any idea why he was. Absolutely not.

No idea. As Olson wrapped up his interview with Tony, he went off script slightly and offered the Fratto family, a friendly little piece of advice. I told her parents, I said to

“if you want to do a favor for this child, get her out of town. Well, why would you say”

that? Because I didn't see any possibility of anything good coming out of a relationship

between this young girl and a guy who was in jail and was likely to spend the rest of his life

in jail. I thought to myself that this is a young person with a life ahead of her and she needs to disassociate herself with this whole thing given that she was not involved. How did they react to that advice? Not in their heads, I left it. And with that John Olson wave goodbye,

“I thought that outside of Cody's trial, he would probably never see your here from that”

young woman again. And back in the quieted his office, he thought about Tony Fratto about what she said to it. And the way she said it was she, as devastated as other people seemed to have been. I would describe her aspect as deadpan. I would describe her as emotionless. 100 of that would strengthen you, odd, very odd. Now what was a person to make of that?

Next time. It had been eating at me and eating at me. I couldn't live with myself knowing what I knew. We recorded the conversation and it was dynamite. No one that knows Tony would have ever seen this come in. Just isn't possible. Five miles from home is a production of date line 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. For NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Rich Cutler. 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.