Talking Dateline: Secrets of the Sliding Door

Summary

Dateline NBC: Episode Summary
Episode Title: Talking Dateline: Secrets of the Sliding Door
Release Date: July 23, 2025
Host: Josh Mankiewicz
Guest: Keith Morrison
Producer: Keith Greenberg

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Introduction

In the special episode of Talking Dateline, host Josh Mankiewicz sits down with veteran correspondent Keith Morrison to delve deep into the Dateline episode titled "Secrets of the Sliding Door." This episode revisits the harrowing true-crime case of Simonette Mapes Croupy, a high school teacher whose brutal murder shocked Staten Island, New York. Throughout their conversation, Josh and Keith explore the intricate details of the investigation, the pivotal role of unexpected evidence, and the profound impact of the victim's community.

Case Overview

Josh Mankiewicz opens the discussion by providing a succinct recap of the case:

"After a high school teacher named Simonette Mapes Croupy was found stabbed to death inside her Staten Island, New York, home, one of the five boroughs her place had been ransacked, detectives started with a couple of theories. Was this a home invasion? Was it a gang shooting? But it was only when they found the mysterious phone number of a woman who identified herself only as Miss Pumpkin on Simonette's phone, the detectives uncovered a killer that was much closer to home. And of course, because this is Dateline, it was her husband, Jonathan Croupy."
[00:12] Josh Mankiewicz

Keith Morrison adds a layer of intrigue to the discussion:

"Ms. Pumpkin was a kind of a modern person in the sense that she was not in any way diminished by what she did. It was a business. She ran it as a business. But she also was doing other things with her life."
[03:48] Keith Morrison

Initial Theories and Breakthrough

The initial investigation led detectives to suspect a home invasion or gang-related activity, largely due to the extensive ransacking of the house. However, the breakthrough came when detectives discovered a cryptic contact in Simonette's phone: a woman named Miss Pumpkin. This unexpected clue pointed the investigation inward, ultimately revealing that Simonette's husband, Jonathan Croupy, was the perpetrator.

Josh Mankiewicz reflects on the investigative process:

"The house was so completely ransacked from top to bottom, and yet nothing significant appeared to have been taken... So somebody wanted to make it look like a robbery without actually robbing."
[04:57] Josh Mankiewicz

Understanding Miss Pumpkin

A significant portion of the discussion centers around the character of Miss Pumpkin, portrayed as a complex individual balancing her professional life with personal endeavors.

Keith Morrison elaborates:

"Ms. Pumpkin was... she did not feel diminished by what she did. It was a business. She ran it as a business. But she also was doing other things with her life."
[03:48] Keith Morrison

Josh Mankiewicz connects Miss Pumpkin's role to familiar tropes in storytelling, highlighting her contributions to the investigation:

"Sort of the 'hooker with the heart of gold'... once she realized Ms. Pumpkin, that the guy she knew by a different name was in fact the suspect in this case, she... did everything she could to help out law enforcement."
[02:32] Josh Mankiewicz

Impact on the Community and Victim's Character

The episode underscores Simonette's dedication to her community and the lasting impact of her loss.

Keith Greenberg, the episode's producer, shares personal anecdotes:

"She would take her underprivileged kids out for dinner together to celebrate various things, places that they would never otherwise have been able to go... She was a very popular teacher."
[09:37] Keith Greenberg

Additional clips from Simonette's family and friends highlight her compassionate nature:

• Victoria—Cissy's cousin—says:

  "Cissy laid down the blueprint for how I wanted to be as a woman."
  [09:51] Victoria

• Eric—a childhood friend—remembers:

  "Simonette had a heart of gold, to be honest with you. She was extremely nice, extremely kind, and just a very loving heart."
  [10:13] Eric

Jonathan Croupy's Alibi and Investigation

The conversation shifts to Jonathan Croupy's alibi and the investigative scrutiny that followed.

Josh Mankiewicz points out a critical flaw:

"The one problem with the alibi was there was no video at the Home Depot."
[07:28] Josh Mankiewicz

Keith Morrison discusses the implications:

"It's hard to know whether it would have been better or not, but that was the choice he made."
[07:59] Keith Morrison

Further insights reveal Jonathan's background and attempts to present himself differently post-conviction:

"He created an online dating profile. He wrote, 'I'm not married and I don't have any kids. No baby mama drama here.'"
[12:40] Josh Mankiewicz

Keith Greenberg adds:

"He's teaching in prison. And so, you know, he's doing time, but it might be considered easy time by the standards of her family."
[12:59] Keith Greenberg

Community Response and Emotional Aftermath

The episode deeply explores the emotional toll on Simonette's family, especially her mother, who continues to grapple with the loss.

Josh Mankiewicz shares:

"Cissy's mom... is still going through because this doesn't go away... They had that conversation the night before she was murdered."
[10:13] Josh Mankiewicz

Keith Greenberg emphasizes the community's perception of Jonathan:

"One of his former students called him, 'a big little kid.' He would talk to the class in cartoon voices and came to school once dressed as Wolverine."
[11:40] Keith Greenberg

Listener Engagement and Theories

The hosts engage with listener theories and questions, enhancing the episode's interactive dimension.

Roxanne Demeza proposes:

"Maybe rather than accidentally putting Ms. Pumpkin's DNA on the doorknob, Jonathan did it on purpose to throw off investigators so that they would look for a female killer."
[16:47] Josh Mankiewicz

Both Josh Mankiewicz and Keith Greenberg express skepticism about this theory, suggesting it indicates more planning than expected from Jonathan.

Exploring 911 Calls and Their Significance

A discussion on the role of 911 calls in criminal investigations underscores their complexity and potential for misinterpretation.

Josh Mankiewicz recounts:

"I did a story... a woman called 911 and she said, 'I've just found my mom and she's been stabbed...' And she stabbed herself... the cops were like, 'okay, please continue because we're eating this up and it's not her.'"
[15:09] Josh Mankiewicz

Keith Morrison adds caution:

"The thing about 911 calls though is that they can be very tricky... judgments are made and it often will lead the police in the wrong direction sometimes tragically."
[15:09] Keith Morrison

Closing Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, Josh and Keith reflect on the nature of interviews in journalism, especially when dealing with perpetrators of crimes.

Piper's Question:

"Do you ever finish an interview with someone, specifically the person who perpetrated a crime and just wonder how they can deadpan lie to you? Or do you ever just get so angry that people are so clearly lying?"
[17:52] Piper

Keith Morrison responds:

"When you're talking to somebody who's accused of committing murder... their excuse was so egregious and so took advantage of people so horribly that I did get somewhat cross with them. I have to confess."
[18:50] Keith Morrison

Josh Mankiewicz offers his perspective:

"If you're a reporter, you got to get used to people lying to you... your obligation as a journalist... is to expose those lies, not yell at them."
[19:15] Josh Mankiewicz

Conclusion

Talking Dateline: Secrets of the Sliding Door offers an in-depth exploration of a chilling true-crime case, enriched by insightful discussions between Josh Mankiewicz and Keith Morrison. Through interviews, personal anecdotes, and listener engagement, the episode not only recounts the investigation but also honors the memory of Simonette Croupy and examines the profound effects of her loss on her community.

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Transcript

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Hi, everybody, it's Josh Mankiewicz, and we're talking Dateline today with Keith Morrison. Hi, Keith.

[Keith Morrison]

Hello, Josh.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

I'll take MM as Great to see you, Josh. We're gonna be talking about Keith's episode, which is called Secrets of the Sliding Door. Now, if you haven't seen this yet, you can stream it on Peacock, and then you can head back here for the chat. So here's a quick recap. After a high school teacher named Simonette Mapes Croupy was found stabbed to death inside her Staten Island, New York, home, one of the five boroughs her place had been ransacked, detectives started with a couple of theories. Was this a home invasion? Was it a gang shooting? But it was only when they found the mysterious phone number of a woman who identified herself only as Miss Pumpkin on Simonette's phone, the detectives uncovered a killer that was much closer to home. And of course, because this is dateline, it was her husband, Jonathan Croupy.

[Keith Morrison]

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Now what?

[Keith Morrison]

Well, you know, you put the spoiler alert right out there just for fun.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Have you ever listened to Talking Dateline before? They already have seen the episode.

[Keith Morrison]

No, only if they follow your inane directions, Josh. I never do.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

I mean, seriously.

[Keith Morrison]

Yeah.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Come on. Are we having technical difficulties here? No. You never knew. Okay, well, spoiler alert. I knew. And all the people watching and listening knew.

[Keith Morrison]

Sure.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Later, we're going to be joined by another Keith. That's Keith Greenberg was one of the producers in this episode. And we will also have a couple of extra clips from interviews with Simonette's friends and family that did not make it into the show. Simonette, known as.

[Keith Morrison]

Right, yep. Yes, Sissy. The lovely Sissy. She was a just a delightful person and somebody who cared a great deal about other people. So, you know, she is. She is deeply missed even now, and.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

I think that really emerged from your episode. We're also going to be listening to and answering some of the questions that you sent into us on social media and other ways, like that phone line that rings on Keith's desk.

[Keith Morrison]

Yeah.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

So stick around for that.

[Keith Morrison]

Yeah.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

All right, Keith, let's talk Dateline. So the question that I had again and again and again while I was watching this episode is about Ms. Pumpkin.

[Keith Morrison]

Ah, yes, of course. Yeah. The intriguing character in the story.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

I'm pretty sure Ms. Pumpkin is not the name she was born with.

[Keith Morrison]

I think you're probably accurately correct about that.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

You know, this is a pretty familiar trope in both journalism and in, you know, movie making and tv, which is, you Know, the, quote, hooker with the heart of gold, unquote. The person who is engaged in the commercial sex trade, but is a solid citizen like everybody else and wants to help out. And sort of once she realized Ms. Pumpkin, that. That the guy that she knew by a different name was in fact the suspect in this case, she. It sounds like she pretty much did everything she could to help out law enforcement.

[Keith Morrison]

Well, yeah, she. You know, I'm not sure she was falling head over heels to do so, but at the same time. Well, let me say this about Ms. Pumpkin. As far as I can tell, she was a kind of a modern person in the sense that she. She was not in any way. She did not feel diminished by what she did. It was a business. She ran it as a business. But she also was doing other things with her life.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

I. I was struck by what the Prosecutor said about Ms. Pumpkin afterwards, which was, you know, sort of, you know, what a nice person she was. You know, she said, this is. That's gonna sound. This is gonna sound strange coming from me, but when you step up when you are needed, when it is time to do the right thing, and then you do the right thing, it doesn't make any difference how you're making your money.

[Keith Morrison]

No, it doesn't. It doesn't at all. And. And that particular prosecutor was an astute judge of character.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Right away, there were theories of what happened to Sissy. And, you know, sort of home invasion, slash burglary is sort of one of the first things that the people's minds go to. Except, you know, the biggest danger when you surprise a burglar in your home is that you're between them and the door. I mean, burglars do not come into your home to kill you burglars come into your home to steal your stuff. And what they really want is for you to not be there at any part. So, yes, the fact that she was, in fact, killed by whoever this was and that. That she was stabbed so many times, that does not feel like a burglary.

[Keith Morrison]

And in addition to that, the house was so completely ransacked from top to bottom, and yet nothing significant appeared to have been taken. So somebody wanted to make it look like a total mess. Somebody wanted to make it look like a robbery without actually robbing. Upstairs in one of the bedrooms was purportedly valuable collection of sneakers which Krupy collected over the years and traded and paid. You know, it was a kind of a secondary income for him.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

And those could have brought somebody some money.

[Keith Morrison]

And those were not stolen, and they Were not taken.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Yeah, this. This kind of begs another question, because I'm sure talking to someone right now who is famous for wearing sneakers. So I think our listeners would like to know, how many pairs of sneakers do you have, Keith?

[Keith Morrison]

You know what? I don't know, but I'll tell you what I have is a closet with a bunch of. I don't know, probably a dozen pairs of those kind of sneakers. Those particular sneakers with.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Are you afraid to say the brand because you don't have a marketing agreement?

[Keith Morrison]

You mean Converse or these. These guys right here.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Come on. Here we go. Here we go. I'm talking gay. We got a shot of Keith's feet.

[Keith Morrison]

Trying to make it. Trying to make it over there.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Come on. There we go.

[Keith Morrison]

All right, never mind. I never made it there.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Gentle listener Keith has just knocked over the microphone by attempting to show us his sneakers. All right, back to. Back to our story. So nobody stole Jonathan's sneaker collection, which was clearly pretty marketable.

[Keith Morrison]

Sure.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

It was the kind of thing a Steve would steal.

[Keith Morrison]

Yes. So then they look at the alibi because, you know, the husband's always the first one you look at.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Well, he lives there. Yeah.

[Keith Morrison]

On. You know, he had a great alibi. In fact, he had an alibi that was proven all day long by digital evidence that he'd gone to the school, he'd talked to an administrator there, he had picked up some supplies, he had gone here, he'd gone there, he'd gone the other place, and he'd gone to get the car. I don't know. And then he said he went to the Home Depot in the afternoon before he came home, and that's when he discovered her body. The one problem with the alibi was there was no video at the Home Depot.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

So, you know, if Jonathan had not mentioned the trip to Home Depot on which he could not be found, would that have been. Well, he had to be somewhere. Yeah, I was gonna say that might have been. Made his alibi a little bit stronger. But on the other hand, then it would have left a gap. Exactly.

[Keith Morrison]

Yeah.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

But the gap would have been at a time when they knew she was already dead.

[Keith Morrison]

That's true. You know, it's a good call. It's hard to know. It's hard to know whether it would have been better or not, but that was the choice he made.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

When we get back, we've got two interview clips to play that did not make it into the broadcast from friends and family. So now we're joined by Keith Greenberg, one of the producers of this episode. And also my favorite, Keith.

[Keith Morrison]

I'm gonna say that's not a hard call, Josh.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

You know, we haven't talked quite enough about. I mean, she absolutely could have gotten a job teaching on Staten island right near her family.

[Keith Morrison]

Oh, sure.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Instead, she chose to go to a much tougher neighborhood in Brooklyn. And that really kind of tells you a lot about her.

[Keith Morrison]

Sure. And I'm sure you. You spoke to some of her students too, didn't you, Keith?

[Keith Greenberg]

I did, yes. You know, I think that she truly believed she had at one point contemplated becoming a nun. And I do think she was dedicated to a life of service. She was very good to animals and very kind to animals. She would pick up strays, and she felt her life was to serve these children. And in some ways, she's still doing it because they all have taken something of her with them.

[Keith Morrison]

She would take her underprivileged kids out for dinner together to celebrate various things, places that they would never otherwise have been able to go. But she wanted them to see what life could be if they continued with their studies. She was a very popular teacher, so.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

We spoke with some of her friends and family, obviously, for this episode, but not everything made it into the episode. We have an extra clip here of Sissy's cousin Victoria and her childhood friend Eric. Let's listen to Those.

[Victoria]

Was about 10 years older than I am, and I looked at her like a big sister. Growing up. I had a difficult home life, and she helped my brother, and I have a sense of family and guidance. Cissy laid down the blueprint for how I wanted to be as a woman.

[Eric]

I literally lived next to Simonette Meeps. My room was right next to her room. So she'd knock on my wall, and then we kind of talk a little bit through the wall. I mean, the walls were kind of paper thin back then. Oh, man. Simonette, I tell you, she had a heart of gold, to be honest with you. She was extremely nice, extremely kind, and just a very loving heart.

[Keith Morrison]

Yeah, that gives you an idea.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

It really does. I mean, it really gives you a sense of who she was and what a loss this was. So Sissy's mom, who really, I thought was kind of the emotional heart of this story, and you really got a great sense in this episode of sort of the anguish that she went through and is still going through because this doesn't go away. You know, they had that conversation the night before she was murdered. And that's the kind of thing if you're a parent, you just end up Replaying again and again and again and again, looking for even now. You know, you know, what did I, what did I not hear? What should I have asked? I mean, that. That has to be miserable for her to go through. I mean, I don't. I think maybe they had a sense, her family and, and Cissy also had a sense that, you know, Jonathan was maybe not the right guy for her, but that he was a threat to her life. I don't think they sensed that at all.

[Keith Greenberg]

No, no one ever sensed that. The students never sense that he was loved at his school. He was someone. One of his former students called him, quote, a big little kid. He would talk to the class in cartoon voices and came to school once dressed as the character Wolverine. And I remember the brother telling me a story when we were just chatting that one time he brought Jonathan Croupy to a bachelor party. And Jonathan Croupy didn't seem to know how to behave properly in a strip club. He seemed embarrassed. And so her family thought he was the last person who could be involved in something like this.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Here's, here's something that, that wasn't in the episode, which is that we know that Jonathan Croupie was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but after he was incar incarcerated, apparently he created an online dating profile.

[Keith Morrison]

Yeah.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

And on his profile, this sounds like a macabre joke, but it's not. He wrote, I'm not married and I don't have any kids. No baby mama drama here. I'm guessing that his, that Simonette's family is not thrilled about that.

[Keith Greenberg]

Yeah, yeah, they're aghast. You know, and he's a bright guy, so he's also, from what I understand, teaching in prison. And so, you know, he's, he's, you know, he's doing time, but it might be considered easy time by the standards of her family.

[Keith Morrison]

I'm sure to her family it's easy time. Yeah, it probably is.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Yeah. Up next, we are finally going to answer some of the questions you've been leaving for us on Keith's voicemail. Let's, let's go to viewer mail. Viewer mail.

[Keith Morrison]

All right, fine.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Yes. That's always Keith Morrison's favorite part of talking voice.

[Keith Morrison]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

We play some of the 911 call and, you know, you know, you listen to enough Dateline, you're, you're, you're gonna hear a lot of 91 calls. Yeah, yeah. Some of them frantic, some of them anguished, some of them phony. I will say that again. I didn't know anything about this story. When I, when I watched the episode a couple of days ago and my first thought was, okay, well, this is the guy because yeah, this sounds utterly phony.

[Piper]

I just came home, my wife is dead. Oh my God. I think my house was robbed.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Jenna Lant on Facebook wrote, you can hear the fake in his voice. Danielle Dennis on Facebook said from the 911 call he was instantly guilty. That's exactly what I thought. I was like, wow, you're, you're incriminating yourself just by your tone of voice, just by talking.

[Keith Morrison]

Yep, it's, it was true and it really came through on that 911 call and that the, the, the prosecution was able to use that. But the, the thing about 911 calls though is that they can be very tricky. You know, you can make a judgment about them right away. And quite frequently in some investigations judgments are made and it often will lead the police in the wrong direction sometime tragically. So, you know, they take it with a grain of salt.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

But I mean, look, look, it's, I mean, I, I, I, I did a, I, I did a story several years ago in, in, in New York State in which a woman called 911 and she said, I've just found my mom and she's been stabbed. And, and I think she was walking downstairs and she was holding a knife and the cat must have tripped her and then so she fell down the stairs and she stabbed herself. And the cops are like writing all this, they're like, wait, wait just a second, right? She says, and by the way, I pulled out the knife so you're gonna find my fingerprints and DNA on the knife. And my, my mom is worth quite a bit of money, but this is not how I wanted to get the inheritance. The cops are just like, the cops are just like, okay, please continue because we're eating this up and it's not her. She was not guilty in any way.

[Keith Morrison]

Years ago, years ago did a story about this poor sad sack of a fellow whose daughter was murdered in the middle of the night in a bedroom just down the hall from his by somebody, a stranger came into the house. He didn't know what had happened. He woke up in the morning, he found her dead. And he assumed that she had seen strangled on a blanket that was wrapped around her neck. So he called the police and he was very, but his, he was a just a low, very shy, low key person. And his 911 call sounded fake. It sounded like he didn't care. It was just one of those tragic cases that started with a 911 call that sounded fake, but wasn't.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Roxanne Demeza from. Also I think on Facebook has a theory about the DNA on the door. She says maybe rather than accidentally putting Ms. Pumpkin's DNA on the doorknob, Jonathan did it on purpose to throw off investigators so that they would look for a female killer. Possible. I'm going to say that shows a higher degree of planning on Jonathan's part than I think he was capable of at the time.

[Keith Morrison]

I think I'd have to agree.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Keith Greenberg is nodding yes.

[Keith Greenberg]

I would have to concur with that. He was not a criminal mastermind, even though he thought he was. You know, he was a. He lived in a bit of a fantasy, and I think he read too many comic books.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

We. We checked the talking Dateline voicemail and came across a bunch of interesting things. First of all, Keith Morrison, you have a overdue bill at Sneakers R Us, so. That's true. Yeah, get in there.

[Keith Morrison]

And I'm always behind on that one.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Um, here's one for both of us.

[Piper]

Hi, my name is Piper, and I have a question for, I guess, the whole team. Do you ever finish an interview with someone, specifically the person who perpetrated a crime and just wonder how they can deadpan lie to you? Or do you ever just get so angry that people are so clearly lying and have you ever mouthed off to any of them to just tell them that you think they're horrible people? Thanks.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Keith. You want to answer?

[Keith Morrison]

Well, you know. You know, when you're talking to somebody who's accused of committing murder and probably did that, they've got a story that has been very carefully rehearsed over and over again. They're going to tell you that story, and they're going to tell it with a straight face, and they're going to put them. They're going to be on their absolute best behavior. Even if they've been convicted of the crime and they're been sitting in jail for a while, they're coming off.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Their whole thing is. That's not being. This is all. This is all. You know, my. My ex wife's family and the cops, they're all in league together to make me look like a terrible person.

[Keith Morrison]

But there have been a couple of occasions where somebody has their. Their excuse was so egregious and so took advantage of people so horribly that I did get somewhat cross with them. I have to confess.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Yeah. Here's my answer to this, which is, if you're a reporter, you got to get used to people lying to you because it's not just murderers that lie to us. It's a huge number of people that I've covered in what's now nearly a 50 year career. And instead of getting angry, your obligation as a journalist to the audience and to the, or your readers, if you're a newspaper reporter or print, is to expose those lies, not yell at them. So there have been times when I, you know, you can say a lot more with a look on television than, than, you know, with a, with a, with any particular comment. But sir, yeah, Keith and I and Andrea and Blaine and Lester and Dennis, we've all said, yeah, come on, come on, come on, try something else.

[Keith Morrison]

Yeah, they're pitching a story. And you know that there's an old rule when you're interviewing people in, involved in something like this is that everybody lies. Everybody lies all the time. So you just adjust your behavior accordingly.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

That's it for talking DATELINE this week. Keith, thank you.

[Keith Morrison]

Other absolute pleasure.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Thank you.

[Keith Morrison]

Oh, you're talking to the other Keith. Of course you are.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

I'm always talking to the other Keith.

[Keith Morrison]

Well, I must say, other Keith, it's been a delight having you on the program, somebody who actually is astute and remembers all the details. I appreciate it very much.

[Keith Greenberg]

Well, thank you very much. And, and I, I enjoyed being here.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

And remember, if you have any questions for us about Dateline, you can always reach us 24. 7 on social media @dateline NBC or you can leave us a voicemail. And we know who answers those voicemails now. That number is 212-413-5252. Thanks for listening. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.