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Talking Dateline: Raising the Dead
00:27:50
Andrea Canning talks with Keith Morrison about his episode, “Raising the Dead.” After a couple was found stabbed to death inside a Wisconsin farmhouse, investigators spent decades chasing down possible suspects with no luck. The case went nowhere until a tip came in that led investigators to an unexpected suspect, and a game-changing police interview. Keith and Dateline producer Justin Balding tell Andrea about the creative traffic stop leading up to the arrest of Tony Haase and discuss the defense tactics that led to his acquittal. They also play an extra clip from his conversation with investigators, and Justin answers your questions from social media. Have a question for Talking Dateline? DM us a video to @DatelineNBC or leave a voicemail at (212) 413-5252. Your question may be featured in an upcoming episode. Listen to the full episode “Raising the Dead” on Apple: https://apple.co/3M1Sgyf Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ypTwyAQABz7AMbFowpTwH
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A
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B
Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Canning and we are talking dateline. And today we're here with Keith Morrison. Hey, Keith.
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A
Hello. How are you?
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B
And we're also here with producer Justin Balding for this episode. Hey, Justin.
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C
Hi, Andrea.
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B
And this episode is called Raising the Dead. And if you haven't seen it, you can watch the episode on Peacock or listen to it in the DATELINE podcast feed and then you can come right back here. Let's just recap at first, when a young couple was found brutally stabbed in a Wisconsin farmhouse back in 1992, it took investigators decades to charge anyone with the murder. Their suspect was a man named Tony Hayes, whose DNA and an alleged confession tied him to the crime. But this past summer, a jury acquitted him, leaving the case of the double homicide still open. In this episode, we've got an extra clip from Tony Hayes's interview with the police. And then later, Justin and I will be here to answer your questions from social media. So don't miss that. All right, well, let's get started. Talking dateline. So I just want to say right out of the gate, showing a court ordered exhumation and saying, Keith, saying, you know, did they have the wrong person? Did they have the wrong killer? I mean, that was a very dramatic open, in my opinion.
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A
Well, yeah, we like to think so. It was certainly a dramatic event in the, in the course of events in this story.
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B
Yeah, it's, it's always interesting when you get exhumations because I do feel like they are pretty rare and they're pretty extreme. And in this case, this, this exhumation was really almost like crossing their T's and dotting their I's for the prosecution. Like they wanted to make sure that, that there were no more questions about this Alternate suspect who had died.
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C
And I, I believe the, the prosecution felt this was going to be a game changing move before the trial to kind of corner the defense and not allow the defense to be able to present this alternate suspect, whose name is Jeff Teal at trial.
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B
Yeah. And Jeff Thiel really becomes like that sticking point for a lot of people. They just think that there's way more to that story with him than is, you know, we've seen.
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A
And it brings up the whole question, and it's an ancient question, frankly, about when people hear a story and they hear the people who may possibly have been the murderer in a murder story. And it almost always fits a template that's very, very much like Jeff Thiel. Jeff Thiel just seemed to be the perfect suspect. And he continued to seem like the perfect suspect because he continued to misbehave and to act out and to, you know, be violent. So even all those years later, people were reluctant to let him go.
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B
I think one of the things when we're trying to put these two hour shows together is sometimes there aren't a lot of alternate suspects. This one was just like suspect after suspect after suspect.
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A
Out of the woodwork came all kinds of people, or certainly enough to, to, to present an array of suspects. And one of the surprises for me was that small town America is a tiny place in Wisconsin, the sort of place where you would feel as peaceful and serene at all times. And here they find these dreadful goings on, not only these murders, but then the Glendon Galker character and the other people that he named. And he remains in prison to this day. He was up for the death penalty and very cleverly managed to get off the death penalty in order to be apparently cooperative in this case, when really what he was doing, he was just leading them down a garden path.
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C
And the police and the prosecution, the prosecutors were so kind of angered by Gawandan Galker that they actually wanted to reinstate the death penalty on him. But they were hoping that they could clear up the murders in Wyawega, the Tim and Tanner murders. And they hoped once that was all bundled and sorted, that they would then be able to go back to Oklahoma and say, you know, this guy was selling us a story made of whole cloth and we want those charges to be instituted. Sure.
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A
Normally, as we've run into this all the time, when somebody is offered a deal, if you tell us the real story, we'll get you off death row or whatever the case may be, they have to tell the truth. And if it can Be shown that they didn't tell the truth, then the deal's off.
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B
And whatever happened with him, did they reinstate the death penalty or not?
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C
They did not.
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B
They did not.
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A
No.
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B
Okay, so he's just sitting in an Oklahoma prison for the rest of his life, Correct?
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A
That's right.
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B
So let's go back to how small this area. I'm actually working on a dateline too, in a farming community. And I kept saying over and over again, I can't believe that this stuff is happening here, but they do.
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A
The same issues apply. It's why you get television shows and novels with names like murder in a small town. Because murders do occur in small towns, and they occur for the same reason that they do in big cities, the same sort of human frailties.
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B
But in this one, there was such a. It was like. It felt kind of like western meets midwest. Like you had that. That western feel of the horses and the cowboys and the rodeo, and then you had that Wisconsin iron foundry and the farms. So it was kind of like a blend almost of the two cultures.
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C
Very much so. And speaking to the intensity of what you were saying, Andrea, this small community, now that the trial is over, everyone is back living in the same area. They live just a few miles from each other, and it's just hard to imagine that they're all living so close and there is still a lot of tension in the air.
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A
I, as you can well imagine my head after.
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B
How do they live with that, you know, being in this close knit community and then having. Have. Have this hanging over their head? And, and how does, how does Tony Hayes, you know, go back into society with. I'm sure a lot of people still think he did it, including law enforcement.
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A
Sure, it must be very, very uncomfortable for him living in that little place. But he has so shown no sign of moving away, has he, Justin?
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C
Not at all, Keith.
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A
No.
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C
I mean, most of these families have lived there for decades. They've grown up in these farms.
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B
Okay, so when we come back, investigators wondered what happened to some key pieces of evidence. We've got that extra clip from Tony Hayes telling investigators his story of what might have happened to the knife. It's coming up.
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C
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A Mochi moment from Sadie, who writes, I'm not crying, you're crying. This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP one. He understood and I felt supported, not judged. I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy. Thanks, Sadie. I'm Mayra Amethyst, founder of Mochi Health. To find your mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary. At Maurices, we're all about great jeans. You know, the ones that fit you just right, the ones that go from work days to weekends and everywhere in between. The ones that simply make you feel good because you don't just wear jeans, you live in them. With 25 sizes, five lengths, and six denim brands, you've got options and fit experts in every store. To make jean shopping easier, find great jeans starting at $29.90 in stores and@marisa's.com one of the eureka moments in all of this is, is this woman, Heather, right, the daughter of Jeff. She is just convinced that her father has done this. But in this big moment, it's not her father, but it's the first cousin, which is amazing how she was really on sort of on the right track, but she just had the wrong man.
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A
And the last person in the world you think would commit such a crime, or any crime, for that matter. He had no record whatsoever.
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C
And I think his family was really blindsided as much as anyone else, you know, and Heather, too, you know, she, she gave her DNA and her ancestry account over to cops, thinking that it would confirm her father. She was totally unaware that it would lead to one of her cousins, and I think she was shocked as well.
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B
The thing I find so fascinating about ancestry is you can click that little thing on your if you're doing 23andMe or Ancestry.com, there's that private button or public button. And a lot of people want public because they want to be able to see if they have other relatives out there that will, you know, come into their life. But then if you've committed a crime and your cousin or your third cousin or your dad or your mom or your grandma wants to start, start this page, watch out, because if they have public clicked on their page, then the police can go right in there. And that's not going to turn out well for you if you've done something wrong.
- [11:43]
A
So then imagine going around to very. Imagine clicking around to various relatives saying, oh, please, please don't, don't, don't, don't. Click on Ancestry.com. i can't tell you why that might.
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B
Be a bad sign that you have a black sheep in the family. One of the things that was so fascinating was how they got the DNA. You know, we have Rex Heuerman in Gilgo Beach. It was the pizza that he threw in the trash can. Another story I did in Albuquerque was the McDonald's. Actually, I've done two McDonald's at this point. This one, they got very creative with the pen. Pulling him over for this traffic citation with his license plate and then having him sign something. I thought that was very interesting how they did that.
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C
Yeah. When they had, when they did the traffic stop, they had prepared one of the big pens and they, they. They screwed on the cap extra tight because they were hoping that he was going to have to bite the cap off and leave his. Leave his DNA on. On the, on the cap.
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B
Oh, so wait, did he or.
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C
No, but he had to twist it really hard.
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B
Oh, my. Somebody is creating.
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C
Wow.
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B
Someone's creative. I. I did one Dateline where it was. They were trying everything they could. They were giving him water in the room. They were. They had him at one point put something in an envelope that they wanted him to lick. The. He wouldn't. And then he went outside, and as he was walking away, he spit on the ground. And that's how they got it. So they were just lucky that he did that last little move because nothing they were doing would work. But that's a new one. And that became a real point of contention for this case. That pen, it was such a curious.
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A
And I've never encountered it before. I don't know if Justin has either confluence of things that happen here. First of all, as you've already talked about, all these different suspects, and then they finally, after all these years, you know, familial DNA finally provided a very surprising conclusion to this story. But then on top of that, there is the, you know, the risky moves by the prosecution to try to nail it down, and a very effective defense. I've never, you know, the defense was aggressive. It was, it belittled the prosecution.
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B
Yeah.
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A
How would you describe it, Justin?
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C
My. My impression when. When the trial was underway was that these defense attorneys were street fighters.
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B
Yes.
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A
Yeah, very much so.
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C
They were, they were street fighters in the courtroom. And you could sense at times that the prosecution was extremely frustrated with some of the arguments that they. But they stood up and they made them boldly, and in the end, obviously, they prevailed. I was curious at the beginning, going into this tiny community, wondering, is Wisconsin nice gonna play for the jury or is this more abrasive approach gonna play? I wasn't sure.
- [14:59]
B
Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so can you break it down for me? So the prosecution, they were not allowed to introduce the Jeff Thiel DNA evidence. And if they waited, then they might have been able to. If you could explain that for me, it was an interesting twist to all of this I was trying to wrap.
- [15:24]
A
My head around was a difficult choice. What they said to us in the interviews was that they felt that they had enough. They were, you know, that it was, of course, they wanted to get that evidence in and they felt that it was the wrong decision to keep it out. But the judge made that decision and the prosecutor felt as if they probably had enough without it. And the family had been through a lot and it was, it was that kind of very difficult choice. Right.
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C
I think in a way, I feel like the prosecution didn't think they had a real choice because some of their key witnesses, you know, some of the early detectives, the investigators, the crime scene investigators, they felt were getting on in years and their memories were fading. Some of them were actually quite sick. One was brought in in a wheelchair. Another person had been diagnosed with a serious illness. So they felt like they would lose some of their key witnesses if they were to postpone. And the prosecutor had told me that they, they, they might, might be three to five years before they could get it back onto the docket.
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B
And, and, and they had this alleged confession. So normally when you have a confession.
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A
Yes, so the expert to whom I spoke we've used before, Steve Drizen, he's a kind of a world renowned expert on these things. He didn't see the actual interview, but, but the way it was conducted is one which, you know, he says has happened all too often, which does encourage somebody who may be a little bit gullible or somebody who may believe in the, in the, in the justice system sufficiently that he thinks, you know, if a cop says something, it's bound to be true. Somebody who can be led. If it's, if it's that kind of person, then the technique that they did in fact use in this conversation could well have produced a false confess or a false. It's not, wasn't quite a confession. It was sort of going along with what they had said.
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B
And we actually have more from that interview that we want to play for you. So let's take a listen to that. The interview with Tony Hayes and the investigators. What'd you do with the knife now.
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A
That your memory's coming back? If I had that knife when I left, they probably got whooped out the window. Okay, close. What? Your clothes.
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C
Because they had blood on and you.
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A
Would have had transfer in the truck. That's just, that's just the what? I remember seeing that, dealing with clothes.
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C
If you didn't that night, you would.
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A
Have the next day or that following.
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C
Week.
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A
More than likely. And this I don't remember for sure. I would have burned them in the stove at your mom's. Yeah. Yeah. But you don't remember doing that. I don't. That's just how, that's your instinct. That's just knowing yourself that it's what you would probably do. Well, I didn't wake up the next day to a pile of bloody clothes. Okay.
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B
So I'm not, I'm not saying, you know, he, he was led into that or he wasn't. I, you know, I wasn't there. But I do wonder, though, usually when you hear about these false confessions, it's under great duress. It's been hours and hours. This one was pretty quick. So, you know, I, I guess I, I, I'm a little confused on this one. With the false confession.
- [19:10]
A
They're all different. And, you know, it can happen in as little. There are interviews that have lasted half an hour where it was demonstrably a false confession. There are interviews that have gone on for 18 hours which turn into the same thing. The length of the interview is probably, it's important, but it's also, other factors are what the circumstances are, what the personality of the accused is, what the approach of the, of the police officers is, a combination of all of those things. And it can, it's a danger, it's called an unsafe interrogation for a reason, because it, it, it's the lack of safety is that you're not necessarily going to get an accurate result.
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B
Were there any jurors interviewed at the end of this about why they voted to acquit?
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A
Yes, there were a couple of, couple of jurors. Right, Justin? And they, what they said just reinforced the idea that it was a very effective defense, that those defense attorneys with their aggressive approach made quite an, quite, quite an impression on the jury because they questioned everything in the Same frame as the defense attorneys did. They looked at that interrogation in the frame of the possibility of a false confession. They looked at the DNA evidence that they did see, which was not all of it as, you know, the last dregs of material in the bottom of a test tube. And that really wasn't sufficient to produce a. A sample that could be relied upon. They saw it through that frame. Did you get that impression, Justin, that they saw all the evidence that was presented to them, they just looked at it through a certain kind of frame?
- [21:11]
C
Yeah, very much so. I mean, I think the defense was really effective at using 20, 25 investigative standards, sort of crime scene forensic standards, and applying them to 1992, saying that the investigating officers at the scene didn't. Didn't wear latex gloves, they weren't wearing booties. They were. They had their fingerprints in. In various places and saying that the crime scene was contaminated. I think that was effective with the jury.
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A
Yes, it was.
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B
Didn't the DNA. Didn't the DNA expert though say it was like two contin. Or something? Am I saying that right?
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A
Even more than that. Yeah.
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C
Like, yeah, it was 234 quintillion. Oh, my chance that it was anyone else except Tony Hayes.
- [22:01]
B
So the jury, like quintillion, didn't really sear into their brains.
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C
Well, the defense was very effective because in the, in the interview with, with Tony Hayes, the defense had said the investigators were telling it was 100% match to his DNA and it isn't 100% match. That was their version and that seemed to register with the jury.
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B
Yeah, well, they started off so they lied.
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A
They lied. That was the key. It wasn't 100%. That means the cops lied. That means you can't believe what they were saying to.
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B
I see what you're saying.
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A
He couldn't believe it either.
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B
Right. So where does this civil suit now stand? You said that they started a GoFundMe page. Are they really. Is this continuing this lawsuit against Tony Hayes?
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C
It is, yeah, but it's not. It's been filed, but it's going to cost a lot of money to pursue. And then there's a question really about how much money they'll be able to raise in order to pursue the suit.
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A
You know, they say it's not about money and it probably isn't. They're not looking for a big financial windfall. They're looking for acknowledgment or a jury to say, yes, we believe that he was guilty. But you know, getting to that point costs yeah.
- [23:21]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, this, this story was, you know what, just one of those ones that even though technically it's like resolved, you know, from a criminal standpoint, it really feels like for so many people, it's not resolved.
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A
That's right. That's right. And they will have to go for a long time yet before they are able to get any kind of redress, if they do at all. So it continues all these years later. What is it now, 33 years.
- [23:52]
B
Interesting story. Very interesting. Very well done to both of you. And Keith, this ends your portion of talking Dateline. Thank you. After the break, Justin and I are going to answer your social media questions. And as always, we got some good ones. So we'll see you in a sec.
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- [25:47]
A
Hi, this is Bola Koo, a lifetime fan of Dateline. Every Saturday I watch the new episode as they come across and just been watching Raising the Dead. I never thought I would be calling you guys. But I literally screamed what just happened? I don't understand how he was found not guilty. I understand it logically, but oh, my God. So just have express that feeling. Thanks, guys.
- [26:18]
B
Yeah, Justin. I kind of thought people were going to be feeling that way.
- [26:23]
C
I had a sense of that too as well. Andrea. You know, it's so difficult because you have to put yourself in the jury's shoes. Obviously, what we present is a distilled version of what the jury heard in the court, although we obviously hit all of the major points. But I think the defense attorneys were very effective in the courtroom at raising reasonable doubt in all aspects whether it was the DNA, the handprints, and the so called confession.
- [26:52]
B
Yeah. And we had a viewer, Courtney Hollingsworth, wrote in saying, DNA does not lie. I'm shocked at the juror's decision. When the DNA evidence was presented. Justin, did you see any reaction from the jurors?
- [27:06]
C
I mean, from the prosecution point of view, they were very clear right from the outset, you know, that this case was about DNA, a handprint and a confession as they saw it, or admissions that Tony Hayes made and on the DNA. This happened in a time before there was DNA processing, at least in Waupaca County. And, you know, over the years, they tested and retested, but at the same time, the standards for DNA evolved.
- [27:36]
B
Interesting. Okay, and we got a question about the defense's strategy of pointing the finger at an alternate suspect. This is from Tasha. She said, just watched last night's Dateline, and my question is, if the defense opened the door in the trial by talking about the other potential subject whose DNA was excluded but not allowed, how did that not open the door for the prosecution to speak on?
- [28:02]
C
I think it's a very good question. It's something the prosecution feels very strongly about. They feel like that because they were denied the possibility of presenting Jeff Thiel's DNA evidence, they felt that the defense should not have been able to name Jeff Thiel as a third party culprit in this case. They felt that that was unfair and prejudicial. And I think it's really a question for the judge.
- [28:28]
B
Okay, so Kelly Chick Jensen, she asked if will Dateline interview the jury.
- [28:35]
C
I did speak with one juror, actually. I reached out to all the jurors. One wanted to engage with me and talked me into, talked about the deliberations and the process of the deliberations and had told me that she didn't think that the Jeff Thiel DNA would actually have had a big effect on the jury. That was her point of view.
- [28:59]
B
We got a couple more questions about the investigation. Valerie Koroleva wrote about the early threats Tim received leading up to the murders. Did they ever find the person who blew up his car and who wrote threatening messages in the work bathroom?
- [29:14]
C
They never found who wrote, they never found answers to who, how the car caught fire, blew up. And they also never found who had, who had written that very menacing message on the, on the bathroom stall.
- [29:30]
B
Okay. And this is a question about, from Jennifer White about the Tony Hayes police interview. How did he know that barbell was in the room?
- [29:39]
C
I think this is a really interesting point and it's something the prosecution obviously hit hard at trial. What they point to is the fact that Tony Hayes brought this up himself. He did not. It wasn't like the investigators showed him a picture of the bedroom with a barbell in it. It was something he raised. And then they had the investigators who were questioning had to rifle through pictures of the crime scene until they found a picture of the barbell. And wow, this is significant.
- [30:11]
B
Okay. Well, Justin, thank you so much for answering our viewers questions and thanks for joining us as well as Keith for this week's Talking dateline.
- [30:21]
C
Well, thanks a lot for having me on this episode, Andrea. It's been really interesting speaking with you.
- [30:26]
B
Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can reach us 24, 7 on social media DatelineNBC. If you have a question for talking Dateline, leave it for us in a voicemail at 212-413-5252. Or send us a video on socials for a chance to be featured on a future episode. And be sure to check out Keith's new original podcast, Something About Carrie. Keith Morrison takes us to America's heartland where single mom Carrie Farver disappears just weeks into a new romance. What follows is a series of strange and terrifying events, but nothing could prepare friends, family and investigators for the mind bending twists that would come next. Start listening for free on Tuesday, December 2, or subscribe to DATELINE Premium to listen to the first two episodes now ad free and to get early ad free access to future episodes. We'll see you Fridays on DATELINE NBC. Thank you so much for listening.
- [31:36]
A
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