Talking Dateline: The Man Who Loved Christmas

Hi everyone, I'm Blaine Alexander and I want to welcome you to what I guess we could call a special edition of Talking Dateline today because we are joined by not one, but two of our fantastic Dateline producers, Alison Orr and Kim Krowitz. Thank you ladies for joining me. Hi Blaine. Hi Blaine. Alright guys, we are going to be discussing our latest episode called The Man Who Loved Christmas. Now, if you haven't seen the episode yet, you can of course stream it now on Peacock or listen wherever you get your podcasts and then come right back here and listen to our conversation. Later on, we've got an extra clip of some police body camera footage with The Man Who Got This Entire Investigation started. And as you will know, if you watch the episode, he is quite the character. And then of course, we're going to answer some of your questions from social media. Alright ladies, let's talk Dateline. Let's talk. So first before we get started, Alison and Kim, I'm going to get you ladies to each kind of walk us through just a quick summary of what this story was about. Of course, first starting with the person that were focused on throughout this entire story, whose name was Harold Allen or as he was known to his friends and family, peanut. Tell us about the story. Well, the story is about Harold Allen, peanut, that was his nickname. His man from Southern Indiana, he was married about three years to a woman that he had met later on in life. And he died somewhat suddenly from what was determined to be cardiac arrest. He'd been sick for just a few weeks and his health deteriorated very rapidly. It was determined to be natural causes and it stayed that way for a long time until something crazy happened. Right, Kim? Nine months later, there is a burglary. There's a burglary at Marsha Allen's house. She is the widow and she, her house, she's away with her parents and she gets a security alert on her phone in the middle of the night and it shows her someone is in her house. And in fact, there were two men in her house. She immediately recognizes one of them. She recognizes the man to be a good friend of her daughters. So she calls the police, the man who broke into the house ultimately tells the police all about a murder plot that ends with the investigators implicating Harold's widow Marsha and her adult daughter in poisoning him with ethylene glycol. Yeah. Let's talk about the man who's at the center of all of it, Harold Allen. You know, I really enjoyed getting to know Harold by talking to his brothers and his sisters in law because it was so clear just from, I mean, the first moment of our first interview just how incredibly close this family was. And I have to say, I mean, all three of them looked, yes, they had their differences as brothers, but they looked so much alike. You could just see in those pictures the bond that they had. And then when they talked about their growing up, there was so much of it that we obviously couldn't fit in our date line episode. But I mean, Kim, you were there for those interviews. These were emotional interviews. They just had such beautiful memories of growing up together. I mean, so, so tight, one of them said we never had so much as a first word to one another. I mean, the love, you know, it struck me as this is just like, you know, you don't hear it all the time. That siblings are this close and they loved each other so much and, and, and peanut was 10 years older than the youngest. He was almost like a, a father figure in a way to the youngest. Yeah. And there's just no, there's no closing, there's no making up for that loss. I could see how emotional they were talking about the loss and the whole that will be inside that those three brothers and that family forever. It's tragic. I think one thing that stood out to me in our interviews was when they, they talked about the fact that peanut really had a difficult time with love. He was so talented in so many different ways. He loved people. He was giving. He taught himself to play musical instruments, I mean, he had all of these talents and gifts, but just when it came to that love piece, they knew. And I think that all of us can identify with that in some way that maybe there's a family member or somebody who just, oh, you just keep making the same mistake or you just keep going down this wrong road and you can't pull someone back. You can't tell someone what to do because they're an adult, but it just was heartbreaking that they both saw that and they knew that about their brother. Yeah. That herald had been twice divorced and he, he just was always looking for love. We all want love, right? And they, you know, I think it was one of the brothers who said he meets someone and she's the best thing ever. She's the best this. She's the best that. And I think he had a big heart and he expected to get back what he gave with love and, he wanted a family, they told us he really wanted a family, he wanted to be a father. He didn't have his own children. And Marsha came with family, she came with a daughter and a granddaughter and they all lived together under one roof. And you have to wonder a little bit. I would wonder if, you know, that desire for him to have a partner and to be connected and with a family if we're the red flags that he didn't see, we don't know. We weren't inside that marriage, everything is a mystery, but I will say my impression for Marsha as she progresses through the story is she is a very cool cucumber. And maybe she's a fantastic actress. We don't know. Maybe she also loved him and we don't know what turned. But you can see how she, you know, I, I, I thought that she was just incredibly composed in what should have been pressure situations. So I'm just. You know. Yeah. Police interrogations. Sure. Well, let's talk about Marsha. Let's talk about the point at which Marsha enters this picture and it was interesting almost from the beginning because they described how Harold met Marsha at a high school reunion. And I think all of us who have been to high school reunions or any sort of class reunions, you come back. These are people that you knew, people that you typically grew up with or at least went through school with for a number of years. And so the notion of meeting someone for the first time at a 30th high school reunion is so surprising. They said there were only 70s some people in the class and, and he didn't know her, which the family was like, how did you not know her? But I think it's probably more like, you know, you, you go through high school people, you, you, maybe you don't recognize their name, but you, you kind of knew them. You knew who they were, but you don't know them. And I, I think that's probably what it was, they, they perhaps they remembered each other's first name, but they never knew each other. And of course, they would be different people many years later too. A lot of changes in 30 years. So you may meet somebody back as your high school reunion and they're not at all the person. They didn't turn out the way you thought you're a completely different person. And then there are some times you go to those reunions and it's exactly like, that's all right, and still Dan or just right or right, it's always something like that. Exactly. You know, it was interesting when we interviewed James, Harold's brother, he talked about the fact that when he first met, when they first met Marsha, they thought, okay, she actually seems better than some of his previous, you know, love interests, right? They were, they were encouraged momentarily. And it was just interesting hearing them talk about the kind of evolution, but they had some suspicions. They had some questions about this relationship pretty early on. Can you talk about some of that, Kim? Yeah, they did Samantha, the sister-in-law. She thought she was quite cold and she felt there was just something off about her. I can just imagine that given the closeness that we talked about and like the warmth that existed between those family members, that it might be kind of hard for somebody to like to make, to be anywhere near as warm and loving as they are, but you can't discount like a gut feeling you get. Kim, can you kind of talk about at what point the family started to get suspicious? Because there were several instances in there where they, you know, they had some inclines of, ah, something doesn't feel quite right, but didn't really know how to put their finger on it. Yeah, it started with the way they learned Harold had died, right? They learned through this police dispatch that a cousin overhears. But when they called Marsha and this was the first red flag, she didn't want to talk, but when she texted one of the family members back, they said what happened and she just wrote he died. And then she said she was too upset to get on the phone and ultimately she, when she did connect with them, she just said, you know, she found him in the bedroom and she didn't give them any other information. She wasn't the one reaching out to tell them he died. So they were, their antennas were up, they were, they were not comfortable with it. They certainly weren't thinking she killed him. Didn't one of the sister-in-laws say that they thought that maybe she failed to get him emergency care soon enough? They just didn't know what had happened on that day. Maybe he collapsed. She didn't call 911 soon enough. She didn't attempt to resuscitate. They thought that was about as far as they could go in their minds that there was some negligence. They just couldn't imagine the scope of it. There was a part in here and we, especially on a briefly in our story, but a lot of viewers may recognize this as if kind of something familiar when Marsha wrote this book on grief. It's kind of self published a book about how to rebound from losing a loved one, and it certainly had echoes of the Corey Rishens case from Utah. That's the Utah mom who wrote a book about basically grief, a children's book about grief, and then was ultimately convicted of murdering her husband. I believe by poison. By poison. Mm-hmm. By poison, right? But let's talk a little bit about Marsha's book. Kim, what can you tell us about what she wrote in her book? Well, it was a self-published book. It's not a long book. I'm going to guess here about 20 to 30 pages. There's a there's a forward to the book, and she says she's sharing her story with anyone who's been through a traumatic loss. She wants to help people. That's the reason she says for writing this book. She wants to help them so they can learn to move forward. She's going to take her situation where she has suffered this loss, and she wants to help people, which is so diabolical, right? Certainly. When we come back, we will play an extra clip from the investigators first interview with Stephen White. Well, let's talk about the break-in, because I think that there's one thing that we see over and over in these date line cases that we cover, and that sometimes things would go completely undiscovered. These crimes would go completely either unsolved or uninvestigated. If it weren't for some small thing, something that tips people off or a family member that just wouldn't give up or whatever it is, right? And in this situation, this would have stayed completely under the radar, had it not been for that burglary, that break-in. It seemed completely unrelated at the time, completely unrelated, that why someone would be burglarizing the house. The estate had been basically settled, though the families were Marsha and Harold's brothers still had some unfinished business about some of the property that belonged to the family, namely the guns that were stolen and the safe. But they were worth a lot of money. It seemed plausible that someone would go in and want to steal them, but to find out that it had something to do with the murder, was just nobody could have imagined that. And what's interesting about that burglary is, you know, people often have cameras outside their homes, right? The ring cameras. But this woman, Marsha, she had several cameras inside her home, and she actually had them because she has cats. She had cats. And so she put them there, so she could, I guess, watch her cats during the day. And her daughter, who ultimately we learn, her daughter set up the burglary, sent her friend Steven into the house. She didn't know that she'd set up the cameras, which probably explains why Steven white in the middle of this crime. He's not really, yeah, he's not worried about getting caught because it's kind of an inside job. Right. And he had no idea that there was really a cat cam that was capturing every move. He was brought down by the cat cam. This entire thing was really the cat burglars brought down by the cat cam. Exactly. Exactly. I go back to Kim our very first conversation when we first started working on this story together. And as our longtime viewers know, our date line stories come to us in any variety of ways. But Kim, I remember our first conversation, you said, okay, I know you're getting ready to start researching on this. But we have a lot of body camera video. And it's really good body camera video. And we're going to live in that a lot. And this was before I had watched a piece of it before I knew anything about the story. But I have to tell you that I don't think that I have seen police body cam footage quite like what we saw with Steven white talking to police that day. Oh, I know. I have never seen anything like that. He is a character. He's not what you would expect. Maybe in a typical date line story. It's the comical and many levels. I think he's probably a funny guy. And he was truly a character. And he did cooperate with police and and led to the solving of this murder. Yeah. You know, I think that there are a number of interesting things about him because yes, Kim, to your point, I mean, you could listen to him. And he goes any number of ways when he's talking to police. He talks about his, you know, suspected strep throat. He talks about the fact that his dad is running for mayor. He's got a couple of kids. I mean, all sorts of different things that are going on. But then in the midst of all of these things, he says this woman's actually a murderer and she killed her husband using a root beer float. And so, you know, in talking with investigators, you could understand how they could think, okay, did I just get a whole basket full of craziness? Or is there something here that I really need to sift through? It doesn't seem like it's resonating with them at first, right? I mean, it's he's saying these crazy things, what seems like crazy things. And it doesn't seem like they're stopping and thinking this is serious. He continues to talk to them about, you know, if you look in her computer, you'll see it in their walking away, you know. So I think they just thought he was someone who was trying to talk his way out of a crime. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. I watch this. I'm like, Kim, you guys are going to fact check that is dad running for his dad was indeed running for mayor. I'm glad you said that because I could imagine a lot of viewers had up questions about that. His dad really was running for me, but he did not win, correct? Right. His dad was running for the mayor of Austin, which is the town in which they lived. He was a Republican candidate and he did not win. But we learned he had actually, this wasn't the first time he had run for mayor. He had one run for mayor 2019 also. So, so Stephen wasn't lying about that. And he wasn't lying ultimately about the story that led to the arrest. I mean, we've talked a lot about Stephen White, what he said. There was plenty in that body camera video that we just couldn't get into the story. Let's listen to a little bit of what he said to officers. He actually gets a phone call in the middle of his conversation with police that day. And here's a little bit of that. Hello. Sorry. Hey, listen, I'm sitting here talking to some cops about some shit that's going on right now. Bro, I really, I was getting into the doctor and then combined grab you if I didn't have a strap. But I'm not going to be able to get you to work today, man. I'm sorry. I'm sick of stuck and now there's a lot of shit going on. I'm probably going to get fucking arrested and go to jail. So, where did I go? Go listen up. Listen, bro, I love you. I'll get over you. If I were you, I'd call your mother and I'll ask if she can take you to work. I got to say I love that he offers a solution at the end for this friend to an alternate way to get to work. He seems like he did say he has a lot on his plate. It does seem like maybe he's taken care of a lot of people. And I don't know how Ashley talked him into this, but maybe there's this part of him that is just kind of a nice guy who did this as a favor to Ashley. And there's no doubt he loves his parents. He, remember, he loves his parents. He was so worried that they're going to just own him. And, and he's saying, you know, mom, Marcia set me up and my parents are going to disown me. They're going to kick me out. And I mean, I think this is a guy who loves his parents. He doesn't want them to think poorly of him. He did he did have a record. He even said I'm a felon. Yeah. And he says it in his in that phone call that's just so funny. It's like the they're too equivalent things. I can't help you because I have strep and I'm probably going to jail. One of the two either way. If I don't go to jail, I'm going to go back to bed, you know, right? So either way, it just count me out. Okay. A lot of things, a lot of things that are happening. A lot of things. Yeah. But you're right. I mean, he does seem like someone who helps. He's got friends calling him to give them a ride to work. He's got friends calling to help with burglaries for money. I mean, there are a lot of things that Stephen White has juggling. But at the end of the day, he gives that that bit of information that, you know, kind of helps to unravel everything. The root fair float. Exactly. So let's talk about the digital evidence in this case because it is just the sheer number of text messages that they have to go through to get to the bottom of this plot is stunning. I mean, we're talking about tens of thousands, what 24,000 text messages or so that they went through between mother and daughter. Yeah. Yeah. I never did the math, but I am curious. They said it was a year and a half, 24,000 text messages. Someone ought to see how many text messages they were going back, you know, how many back and forth every day. I'd be curious. I'm going to do that right now. Yeah. But you know, it does show you that they were close too. They were a close mother and daughter. They talked all the time. They did. They were talking about regular things. They were talking about, you know, Ashley's little girl and what they're going to have for dinner and what's going on, you know, with work. But then, of course, they're talking about reasons and and and root fair floats. So I just did a quick math. I mean, I use my calculator because math is on my forte. But we've got about 43, 44 text messages per day that go back and forth between the two. That's a lot. Which in a busy, I mean, that's a lot of text messages. That's a lot. Everybody talking about that. I don't talk to my mother enough, but I'm not plotting a murder with my mother. Also, there's that. Also that. But no, they they they talked a lot, which makes it even more stunning that at the end, there was this bitter split that Ashley moved away. She felt resentful. She planned this burglary. I I mean, it was good. clear that they had a pretty close relationship in some regard. I mean, obviously there was dysfunction there. If you're plotting to murder, you know, the husband, but there was something close that that broke apart there. So that's even more notable considering how much they talked. Yeah. And if they've, and if not for that, if not for that dissolution of that mother-daughter relationship, they would have gotten away with us. Let's talk about the poisons because I have to say that in the process of doing this story, I learned about some poisons that I've never heard of. So there were fox glove seeds, there were pong pong seeds, which I've never heard of. And then, of course, ethylene glycol was in there as well. But I mean, there were several different methods that they at least discussed whether, whether order to discuss that came up in some way as part of this plot. Yeah, Ashley was doing the research. And yeah, they were, they were trying to figure out what would be best to use, but not traceable. You know, when they were talking about the fox glove seeds, there's text messages about, you know, make sure you wear gloves because it's, it's not safe to touch, but, but nothing, whatever they were using, of course, wasn't working and not working fast enough. There was this quote from the story that I think is going to certainly stay with a lot of people. But Ashley, when she's talking to investigators at one point, she says, loyalty to the mother is a hell of a thing. Yeah. How sincere do we think she is in saying that? What were your thoughts when you heard her say that? I know for me, I had questions, the same question you have about her sincerity on that, though what she is saying is so true. And we have seen it in other stories. In fact, the status spoiler alert, we should watch the premiere of date line on Friday, Josh Mankowitz has a story that absolutely involves a mother and her children involved in some things that are worthy of a date line. So it's a, it's a very deep statement that, you know, has a lot of truth to it. So was in that moment, was she trying to manipulate and minimize her role with the police? Or was she saying something that is just universally true? But it is interesting, though, that even if she was pointing the finger back, I mean, she, there was a piece of her, according to those text messages that she sent to Stephen White, that wanted the recognition for it. I mean, she was like, this couldn't have happened without me. My mom couldn't have done this without me. I was the master, I mean, you know, paraphrasing here, but essentially saying that she was the mastermind behind all of this. And so there is of course the issue over, you know, feeling like she didn't get enough of the money. But one could wonder, was there just, you know, like, probably like, hey, this was my mom, but she couldn't do this without me, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think she thought she was going to get a lot more of Harold's life insurance. Perhaps she even thought it was going to be split. And the prosecutor told us that she was being paid around $1,000 a month by her mom. And clearly, that wasn't enough. And so she was angry. And that's why she was saying, this was all my idea. She couldn't have done it without me. She wanted to use insulin like they did years ago. You know, she was really putting her down and like, she was not smart enough to do this without me. And she wanted recognition to what she really wanted was money, actually wanted more money. What's really sad in all of this is we started out by talking about the Allen brothers and how they were so close, never had a harsh word between them. They were the bonds of all bonds. And they were, you could imagine that they would be loyal to the end. And in fact, mother and daughter both turned on each other. They pointed fingers at each other. They were almost the exact opposite family in the end when it came to loyalty. Absolutely. I want to, I want to end this discussion before we go to social media. I want to end this though by going back to peanut, by going back to Harold Allen and his family. Because I, you know, I've got to say, when we talk with families, when we talk with families who have suffered a loss like this, there's always the question of how they feel about the outcome. And there are several things here. One, Marsha died by suicide. And so some people would look at this and say, okay, did she face accountability for her actions? How does that sit with the family, right? Like kind of where when something like that ends that way, how do you sit with that? Ken, what was your thought? What were your thoughts on how they received that news? They said it happened. They got the call from the detective telling them that their brothers you know, brother's death was being investigated as a murder. And it was the very next day that they then learned from a cousin yet again, that Marsha had taken her own life. They said it was just like, you know, so much at once. Yeah, I think they all believed she'd wanted to take her self out of the equation. But there's clearly even if, you know, we do stories all the time where people face like the maximum justice, the case goes through a whole trial, which can be very, you know, emotional and draining. And then at the end, there is the guilty verdict. And you think that there's some kind of relief that came from that. Now Harold's family was in a way robbed of that process. But there's still not, there's still the whole that's there at the end of that. However, however it ends, it must just be for them even more sudden like there was just no processing. And they're clearly still healing. And if they're ever well. Well, Alison and Kim, I mean, we could talk about this story for another hour plus. There was so much that went into this episode. But thank you both for joining me. And what an honor to tell this story with the both of you. I appreciate you. Thank you, right back at your blame. Thank you. And coming up, I will be back with our associate producer on this episode, Jess Kornig, to answer some of your questions from social media. Well, hi, everyone. We are back. And I'm actually coming to you now from New York. It's a few days later. And I'm joined here with our date line associate producer, Jess Kornig, to answer some of your questions from social media. But just this is fun because this very rarely happens, but you and I are actually in the same building. We're both at 30 rock today doing this. We are. Welcome to New York. Blaine, we're so happy to have you here. Thank you. It's lovely to be here, even though we're still doing this virtually. We're in separate rooms, but I feel your presence. I know that we have a lot of interesting comments and thoughts from social media. We do, Blaine, we have plenty of responses. And we can jump into the first one where our date line team asked social media, have you made a love connection at a high school reunion? And we got plenty of responses. One in particular, Rachel, Akpo to O'Neill on Facebook said, no way. I don't want to end up on date line. You know, it's funny. You know, as our loyal viewers know, we always have those kind of messages at the bottom asking people to sound off on social media. And this one was interesting because the notion of meeting someone at a high school reunion, some people could say, well, that sounds interesting because typically you know the people in your high school class or at least a good deal. So to meet someone for the first time, 30 plus years after high school is an interesting concept. Blaine, did you attend your high school reunion? I did not, but I was just a few months removed from having my second daughter. So that's my excuse. But when 25 rolls around, 30, I'm sure I'll be there. Cute. Nice. Moving on to the next one. So Elaine on Facebook says, small towns, no one really knows everyone except the nosy ones. Interesting thought. Truly. You know, we always travel, Blaine. And some of these small towns, it's kind of funny to go and you think like, oh, no one would really notice, like maybe I'm just like another local here. Like you're going to the local coffee shop. Like who would think that I'm an outsider, but they know they've pointed me out and then like, oh no, we know that you're not from around here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the thing. People, there is something to be said about. You grow up in a town with people. You all went to the same school all the way through your parents and then each other. Maybe you go to the same church. I mean, there are a lot of touch points when you're in a small community like that where people can truly get to know each other and feel like they know everybody around them. Yeah. It's community. Absolutely. This last comment is special. This comes from Samantha Allen on Facebook. You saw her. You heard from her in our story. She's Harold's sister in law who we spoke with and she wrote, these memories are why we continue to share this story while you will see it in different outlets. Our brother was a person, not just a victim. We won't let him be forgotten. And I have to say just, you know, in doing this story, that is something that immediately stood out to me. Just how close this family was, how beloved Harold was, not only by his biological brothers, but by his two sisters in law, the feeling of just this tight knit family was evident from the first moment of the interview that we did. And so I'm really glad that Samantha trusted us to share the story. I'm glad that, you know, the whole family actually trusted us to share the story of Harold because we hope that we really kind of gave a picture of who he was, the loving person that he was, and how much he meant to all of them. Absolutely. It was an honor to get to know him through their eyes and through their interview. Well, Jess, it was great to work on the story with you and it was great to talk Dateline with you today too. Thanks so much. Thank you, Blaine, until the next one. And that is it for our talking Dateline this week. Thank you all so much for listening. If you have questions about any of our stories, you can of course send us a voice memo or video on social media at DatelineNBC or you can call a phone number. And leave us a message, the number is 212-413-5252 for a chance to be featured right here on the podcast. And of course, you can watch the video version of Talking Dateline on Peacock or on YouTube and make sure that you subscribe to the NBC News app so that you never miss an episode. And we will see you this Friday on Dateline on NBC for our premiere of our 35th season. It's our season premiere this Friday, it's a Josh Micah with episode and trust me, you do not want to miss it.