The Secret Life of the Homecoming Queen

Summary

Dateline NBC – “The Secret Life of the Homecoming Queen”

Aired April 1, 2026
Host: Lester Holt | Reporter: Dennis Murphy

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Episode Overview

This Dateline NBC episode delves into the seemingly idyllic life of Michelle Reynolds, a small-town homecoming queen and devout member of the Hollywood Baptist Church in Rome, Georgia. Through interviews, investigative reporting, and courtroom drama, the episode unpacks the shocking unraveling of her marriage, her affair with the church family pastor Scotty Harper, and the brutal murder of her husband Thad Reynolds. The murder delivers a jolt to the tight-knit, faith-based community and exposes the darkness lurking beneath the surface of a picture-perfect family.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who is Michelle Reynolds?

• Early Life & Persona (02:09–06:46)
  • Michelle Reynolds (née Sullins): Acclaimed high school beauty, 1986 homecoming queen at Pepperell High, beloved in her community.
  • Married her high school sweetheart, Thad Reynolds, right after graduation. Both came from strong Baptist backgrounds.
  • "[Thad] was the football player, she was the cheerleader. ... They had it all." – Beverly Owens, Thad’s sister (05:39).
• Marriage and Family Life (07:07–08:02)
  • Church was central; volunteer work, home schooling, church plays.
  • Four daughters; family often described as “Ken and Barbie.”
  • “We had goals. We wanted to buy a house, go on a cruise…” – Michelle Reynolds (07:53).

2. Cracks in the Perfect Marriage

• First Divorce & Remarriage (08:11–09:32)
  • Both Michelle and Thad had affairs. Divorce lasted four years but maintained close ties, leading to remarriage.
  • “We still did things together. We had Christmas together… So it’s almost like we really wasn’t divorced.” – Michelle (08:50).
• Church & Social Circles (11:24–14:44)
  • Faith remains central; Michelle and Thad become spiritual leaders.
  • Close social links: the Harpers become main family friends.

3. Scotty Harper Enters the Picture

• Parallel Families (13:51–15:44)
  • The Harpers, another devout couple, mirror Michelle and Thad.
  • Paige Harper grows distant, sensing tension between Michelle and Scotty.
  • “Scotty told me… she [Paige] was jealous of me… started getting away from me.” – Michelle (15:23).
• The Affair Begins (20:52–26:06)
  • Michelle feels overlooked as Thad contemplates full-time ministry.
  • “My husband was married to his job and church… I needed a date.” – Michelle (21:30).
  • Emotional and erotic emails exchanged; coded language develops.
  • “Somebody is showing me attention… saying you’re awesome.” – Michelle (23:30).

4. Secrets, Code Words, and Escalating Tension

• Affair Deepens, Plans to Escape (25:10–29:50)
  • Secret rendezvous; Portland becomes their fantasy escape.
  • Dark jokes about 'solving' spouse problems by poisons or “outliving” them.
  • “If you want me as your bride, then you’re just going to have to outlive Thad.” – Michelle, as recalled by Scotty (28:55).
  • Jokes or signals? Prosecutors allege it was more than talk.

5. Murder of Thad Reynolds

• Prelude and Crime Scene (31:25–36:17)
  • Michelle provides Scotty with Thad’s whereabouts.
  • Scotty buys a replacement knife; on July 5, 2004, Thad Reynolds is stabbed 19 times at work.
  • “Lots of stab wounds. It was a bad crime scene.” – Investigator (13:13).
  • Michelle receives word: “I just fell on the floor crying.” – Michelle (35:12).

6. Investigation and Arrests

• The Evidence Mounts (40:00–44:19)
  • A hospital tech overhears Michelle and Scotty’s phone flirtations, mentions their “gnat” code for spouses, tips off police.
  • Emails between Michelle and Scotty are graphic and incriminating. Wheel of Fortune-style explicit messages, reference to plotting.
  • “She put the full court press on him to try to seduce him.” – Prosecutor Carter (44:19).
  • Physical evidence: glasses, knife sheath, witness accounts, bloody van.

7. Legal Proceedings: Who's Responsible?

• Dueling Narratives

  • Prosecution: Michelle is the “puppet master.” “She aided, abetted, encouraged and helped plan this.” – Prosecutor Carter (55:28).
  • Defense: Purely Scotty’s crime; coded language is innocent, Michelle never urged a murder.
  • “Guilty of adultery… not murder.” – Michelle (67:11).

• Michelle’s Behavior Scrutinized

  • Michelle appeared cold, made inappropriate jokes (“now that Thad’s dead, I think I’m going to get a nose ring” – 53:48), had a new black dress for the funeral.
  • “Every woman needs a black dress… I had like two other dresses with the tags on.” – Michelle (73:38).

8. Deals, Confessions, and the Resolution

• Prosecutorial Deals (74:03–76:07)

  • Scotty testifies in exchange for removing the death penalty. Michelle pleads guilty to voluntary manslaughter and burglary, receives 20 years. Scotty gets life without parole.
  • “He is gonna have to give us her and her part in it and her complicity in it.” – Prosecutor Carter (74:48).

• Scotty Takes the Stand (77:06–84:50)

  • Admits killing Thad out of obsession with Michelle.
  • “She was everything… She said: ‘You’re probably just going to have to live on her own if you ever want to be with me.’” – Scotty (77:43).
  • In explicit detail, Scotty recounts the murder. “Every mirror I passed, I mouthed the word, you just killed Thad, you killed Thad.” (83:43).

9. Aftermath: Remorse, Regrets, and Community Reaction

• Families Destroyed (87:47–91:12)
  • Michelle cannot contact her daughters until they turn 18. Thad’s family cares for the girls.
  • Scotty’s wife divorces him; “I’m sorry. It doesn’t cut it.” – Scotty (91:01).
  • “She uses people as objects. If you’re useful to her, she’ll use you for a while. And then she’s going to cast you aside.” – Prosecutor Carter (91:31).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Reckless Passion:
  • “It was exciting. Risky. ... Michelle has become your drug and you cannot get enough of it.” – Lester Holt and Scotty Harper (77:35–77:43)
• On the Motive:
  • “She’s the brains and he’s the muscle.” – Prosecutor Carter (55:45)
• On Michelle’s Alleged Callousness:
  • “Thad didn’t like them. She’s cold, ice cold.” (About the nose ring comment) – Prosecutor Carter (54:04)
  • “There was like no emotion… She wasn’t crying. ... She was making jokes.” – Thad’s sister and mother (52:59–53:11)
• From the Investigation:
  • "I've never had a case where somebody gave me not only the receipt for buying the murder weapon, but packaged it all up along with what they were wearing at the time." – Prosecutor Carter on finding the knife, clothes, and receipt hidden by Scotty (62:40)
• On Justice and Morality:
  • “Why not just get a divorce?” – Prosecutor Carter, reflecting on motives (86:54)

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Key Timestamps

• Michelle’s Early Years & Marriage: 02:09–07:07
• Affair’s Start and Escalation: 20:52–29:50
• Murder and Discovery: 35:31–36:41
• Police Build Their Case: 44:00–46:19
• Eerie Calm After the Crime: 52:59–54:23
• Legal Maneuvering & Pleas: 74:03–88:35
• Scotty’s Graphic Confession: 77:06–84:50
• Reflection and Final Comments: 87:47–92:08

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Tone & Language

The tone is investigative, dramatic, and at times somber, with a focus on community betrayal and shattered trust. Lester Holt and Dennis Murphy maintain a probing, methodical style; interviewees range from emotionally raw (family members) to defensive or remorseful (Michelle, Scotty).

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Conclusion

This episode of Dateline NBC exposes a chilling intersection of suburban faith, marital breakdown, and obsessive desire, culminating in murder. Through firsthand interviews, evidence breakdown, and court records, the narrative grapples with themes of trust, community, betrayal, and the unpredictability of human longing. Both Michelle Reynolds and Scotty Harper ultimately plead guilty and are sentenced to lengthy prison terms, leaving a fractured community, orphaned children, and a haunting question: Did passion and manipulation drive a man to murder, or did a woman orchestrate it all?

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Additional Noteworthy Quotes

• “I don't believe that I've ever been loved as much by somebody as I have by you.” – Michelle Reynolds, jailhouse call (59:49)
• “No. I couldn't believe what I'd done. I couldn't believe what I'd done.” – Scotty Harper (82:09)
• “Morally, because I had the affair, I feel responsible because had I not had the affair, this wouldn't have happened.” – Michelle Reynolds (88:58)

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For those seeking a nuanced, dramatic exploration of the case, this episode provides a gripping journey from small-town adulation to tragic downfall.

Transcript

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[Michelle Reynolds]

A lot of people called us Ken and Barbie. I just felt, you know, head over heels for him.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

Sweethearts in high school, cheaters in marriage.

[Aunt Trish Benefield]

One had cheated, the other one had cheated.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Somebody is showing me attention.

[Scotty Harper]

I wanted what I wanted, which was Michelle.

[Crime Scene Investigator / Detective]

Lots of stab wounds. It was a bad crime scene.

[Michelle Reynolds]

I just fell on the floor crying.

[Prosecutor Carter]

She wasn't shedding a tear.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

Was she a devastated widow or was she in.

[Prosecutor Carter]

She's been referred to as a puppet master.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

Her lover said one thing.

[Scotty Harper]

I see no guilt on her part. I really don't.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

The fact that she had a brand new dress ready for a funeral said something else.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Every woman needs a black dress.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline. Here's Dennis Murphy with the secret life of the homecoming queen.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

He was number 15, a boy named Thad Fate. Maybe because number 15 was her lucky number. The girl from the crosstown rival watching the game up in the stands, the pretty blonde named Michelle who would become 1986 Homecoming Queen at Pepperell High.

[Michelle Reynolds]

It was an honor because the whole school votes for the queen and so it was an honor.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So you were the really cool girl at school?

[Michelle Reynolds]

I guess.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Number 15. Thad Reynolds and Michelle Sullins were prom dates. Married right out of high school.

[Beverly Owens (Thad's Sister)]

They were both popular, both nice looking, both friendly, had a lot of friends, social. I mean, they had it all but

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

years on, people had strong opinions about the one time homecoming queen.

[Prosecutor Carter]

She is one of the most evil people that I've ever dealt with.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And that's because of what happened.

[Crime Scene Investigator / Detective]

Early one morning, lots of stab wounds. It certainly was a bad crime scene.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

With their church at the center of their lives, supportive families Living right next door. How had it come to what it did?

[Crime Scene Investigator / Detective]

This kind of gruesome murder was very

[Scotty Harper]

eye opening for our community and very big news.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

So much lost in the blink of an eye. So much blood.

[Scotty Harper]

I'm looking at myself in the rearview mirror for a minute before I go in. It's hard to believe things got to where it was.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

A sense of place is important to this story. And here it is. Rome, Georgia. A county seat northwest of Atlanta. Population about 35,000. Not too big, not too small. Proud to be in the Bible Belt and all that implies about how you live your life and treat your neighbors, a great many of whom you'll know by name. Growing up here in this conservative community in the 70s was a sparkly little girl named Michelle. She always seemed to end up front and center in the family snapshots kept by her aunt Trish. Trish Benefield.

[Aunt Trish Benefield]

She was always wanting to pose for my camera. She would sit at my mom's and dad's in the swing. I would take her pictures. So grab the little poodle, you know, the doggie, and take another picture.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

What the old photos of a happy kid don't reveal were the fault lines in Michelle's childhood. Her parents split up when she was a little girl and her father died when she was only 13. Her single mom raised Michelle and her two older brothers with the teachings of the Baptist church as a moral foundation. Michelle grew older and stayed cute, a kind of little Miss Sunshine who always thrived in the attention her golden looks brought.

[Aunt Trish Benefield]

I mean, it's just a beau. Absolutely. Walk into a room and everybody looks. She had that presence.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

There were teenage boyfriends, but no one special. Until she went to that football game, the one with number 15 on the field.

[Michelle Reynolds]

And I asked who number 15 was, and it was. It was Thad. And I saw him at a dance and then I just felt, you know, head over heels for him.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad Reynolds, football player, wrestler, later on in the school year and an athlete not afraid to be in the school play in skits, seen here dancing in his number 15 jersey, he started seeing Michelle, someone as full of life as he was. Thad's sister Beverly remembers it as a match made in high school heaven.

[Beverly Owens (Thad's Sister)]

He was the football player, she was the cheerleader. I mean, I guess that's how it started.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The pair reminded their friends of another couple.

[Michelle Reynolds]

A lot of people called us Ken and Barbie. And he was just fun to be around.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Fun for Thad was down home and yee haw.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Our first date was a tractor pull. In Atlanta with his family.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

A tractor pull with his family.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Prosecutor Carter]

This is a good start, right?

[Michelle Reynolds]

And actually, when we got back to their house, I got sick and threw up because I was so nervous.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Still, Michelle remembers having a good time and two months later, Thad asked her to wear his class ring. The Challenger, with a schoolteacher and six regular astronauts on board, was consumed by a giant fireball explosion. No sooner had she slipped it on than 10 minutes later. They both remember the space shuttle exploding, the date January 28, 1986. But they didn't see the disaster as a personal omen. They finished high school as a couple.

[Michelle Reynolds]

We went to the prom together, Thad John Lynn Reynolds.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And right after Michelle and Thad graduated, the football player and the homecoming queen got married. They picked 8-15-15, their now mutually lucky number. They had a big church wedding at Hollywood Baptist, the church that would be so important in their lives in the years ahead. Ken and Barbie were now Mr. And Mrs.

[Aunt Trish Benefield]

This was it. This is her family. She was finally going to have what she wanted.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So how was it to be a young married woman?

[Michelle Reynolds]

It was awesome. I enjoyed it. And having our own place was nice, reliable.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad was unlike the father that had left the family. Her aunt Trish wasn't surprised that Michelle married young Security.

[Aunt Trish Benefield]

Because when I saw them together, I saw that, I saw that security. I know she loved him, but I also know that she could lean on him and depend on him.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad, like Michelle, had been raised religious. The Baptist church was a cornerstone for the young couple. Thad was a coming, even when he was sick, kind of hard worker at a grocery.

[Michelle Reynolds]

We had goals. We wanted to buy a house. We wanted to go on a cruise and buy a camcorder. And we did all three. And after that we decided to try and start having children.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

They had a little girl and named her Olivia. But the young marriage was foundering. Five years in, Michelle and Thad divorced.

[Aunt Trish Benefield]

One had cheated, the other one had cheated. So you have both stories.

[Michelle Reynolds]

We had problems.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle got an office job and started dating a little. Thad kept on plugging along, sort of. But he especially took the divorce hard. His mom remembered getting a bad phone call from Thad.

[Kitty Walker (Thad's Mother)]

He was in an apartment that he had rented. And I can remember him saying that he curled up in the fetal position in the closet and ask for God and ask for reconciliation.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle, too, wasn't finding much satisfying as a single mom in the dating scene.

[Michelle Reynolds]

I dated a few times, but I knew back in my mind that I still loved that. And I kept Our wedding rings in our safe. But we still did things together. We had Christmas together and some holidays and I even went to Florida with his family. So it's almost like we really wasn't divorced.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

After four years apart, Thad and Michelle went into counseling and at the end of that, they decided to try it again. They would get remarried. So one Sunday at Hollywood Baptist, with some of the same friends from the first wedding looking on, Thad and Michelle exchanged marriage vows for a second time.

[Aunt Trish Benefield]

It was a beautiful ceremony because it involved Olivia. It was the three. It wasn't just the two of them. It was a family.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The local papers splashed a heartwarming story about the young couple who'd overcome adversity and been reunited with all their church members. Looking on, the article concluded, theirs isn't a fairy tale, it's a love story. Aunt Trish, though, thought Michelle looked at it through less rose colored glasses.

[Aunt Trish Benefield]

I thought it was more, I'll have a home for my child and for future children and he'll provide, which he did, a great provider.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Later on, with everything that happened, some church members would rue the day they ever encouraged Thad and Michelle to get back together.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Coming up, our children were like best friends and we would go out to eat with them, go to a movie. Scotty told me she was was jealous of me and asking him if he thought she was prettier than me.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad and Michelle, after four years apart, began marriage.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Take two.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

They built a little house for themselves on a plot right next door to his parents. Thad and fellow church members pitched in on the construction. By then, his mom, Kitty Walker, knew that Michelle would always be her B.O. one and only.

[Kitty Walker (Thad's Mother)]

He just fell head over heels and it was total commitment.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Commitment to a growing family. He and Michelle would have three more girls. Commitment to his job, working his way up the ranks at Frito Lay, and commitment most of all to the God he worshiped every Sunday at Hollywood Baptist Church.

[Aunt Trish Benefield]

You know how they always say God, family. I think God was first than his family.

[Church Member / Pastor]

God working in my life, watching God work in their lives.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad was perfectly comfortable rising in front of the congregation at Hollywood and speaking with the conviction of a polished preacher.

[Church Member / Pastor]

John 8:36. God has done a miracle in my life. God says, pursue righteousness, pursue faith, pursue love with others who call on the Lord.

[Kitty Walker (Thad's Mother)]

I really truly, deep down think he wanted to be a missionary.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad and Michelle decided to home school their four little girls to shield them from the secular worldly influences of public classrooms.

[Michelle Reynolds]

When we were getting back together, he had asked, you know, if I'd pray about it, about homeschooling our children.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So I think I hear you saying you're really living quite an active religious Christian life.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The church became their family's focal point. Thad was elevated to deacon at Hollywood Baptist, a volunteer position as one of the pastor's right hand men. Michelle became active with the teens putting on dance performances.

[Michelle Reynolds]

A lot of Baptist church that I've been to, they're just, you know, quiet, don't clap or anything. It's to where you know there's more freedom to worship. Hollywood, you're good, Lord, you are good.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The teen group Michelle helped organize was footstompingly professional.

[Narrator / Commentary Voice]

We worship you, Lord.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Hallelujah. And to further cement their commitment to God, Michelle and Thad both starred in an elaborate church play.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Now that you've asked Jesus into your heart, we're a complete Christian family.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad and Michelle are featured in a scene about a Christian couple. The wife traditional. The husband understanding of her lapses.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Oh, honey, I was so busy this morning I forgot to put the roast in the oven. You know how crazy it gets around our house on Sunday.

[Church Member / Pastor]

That's okay, sweetheart, I understand.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

We'll go out for lunch. When Thad's sister Beverly Owens looks back, those days of church and family were good times for her brother.

[Beverly Owens (Thad's Sister)]

If I had to pick a time that he was his happiest, it was when he had all four kids and Michelle at home.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And the church provided like minded, God fearing friends. One of those couples was Scotty and Paige Harper, almost a mirror image of Thad and Michelle in so many ways.

[Scotty Harper]

Scotty on Thad, you know, he was, he was a good guy.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Like Thad and Michelle, they lived next door to his parents. Like Thad, Scotty was deeply religious and also a church volunteer leader. He was the volunteer family pastor giving his time to tend to the young people of Hollywood Baptist. And Scotty and Paige had their own three small children also, all girls.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Our children were like best friends. And we would go out to eat with them, go to a movie, barbecues,

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

volleyball, camping trips, prayer groups. Thad and Michelle, Scotty and Paige and all the kids together. The husbands who'd first met when Thad was divorced became especially fast friends. The Bible and scriptures their glue. Thad thought so highly of Scotty, he praised him in front of the congregation.

[Church Member / Pastor]

Our family pastor official title now, Scotty Harper has always taught the people that are under him and the kids that we need to teach them the things that are relevant to them. These Days. That's his key word, right? Relevant how to minister to them right now at their lives.

[Scotty Harper]

He is a good role model.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad and Scotty became the tightest of friends, helping each other hold firm to their faith.

[Kitty Walker (Thad's Mother)]

Sunday mornings before church that him and Scotty and several other guys at Hollywood meet at McDonald's and have a little worship there before they actually went on to church.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The two moms, though Michelle and Paige, never grew as close.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Scotty told me later on that she was jealous of me and asking him if he thought she was prettier than me. And she was just jealous of me, and so she just started getting away from me.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But Michelle was getting closer to Scotty. Her church performances for the middle schoolers came under his direction as the family pastor. They talked church business on the phone and exchanged emails. Scotty had actually gone to the same high school as Michelle, two years behind her when she'd been elected homecoming queen.

[Scotty Harper]

I knew who she was. If I saw her, I might say, hey. But we really didn't cross many paths in high school.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

After a tour in the Air Force, including duty in Desert Storm with a combat communications unit, Scotty parlayed his electronics savvy into a good job at the county's major medical complex, Floyd Medical Center. He helped keep the computer systems going.

[Scotty Harper]

Everything was good, you know, as far as vocationally, you know, good job.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But there was some turbulence on the home front with Page. He prayed for his marriage with Thad, who, as part of his duties as deacon, regularly counseled church couples at his home.

[Scotty Harper]

He and I, over the years, have batted things off of each other. I mean, he's had some downs, I've had some downs, and we built each other.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

For her part, Michelle was happy to see Scotty at her house. He was always so complimentary about her church work with the teenagers and her effervescent good spirits.

[Michelle Reynolds]

He was fun to be around and made you laugh and just had a great sense of humor.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

By 2004, there were signs that Michelle was getting restless about Rome, Georgia, and maybe even all the churchiness in their marriage. Like a lot of families in the area, Michelle and Thad liked to visit the campgrounds in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, in the Smoky Mountains. Michelle felt so itchy. She seriously wanted to buy a cabin resort property from her family, uproot from Rome, and cater to the tourists in Tennessee.

[Kitty Walker (Thad's Mother)]

It was a million dollars or something. They had already qualified for it, and some guy stepped in, supposedly before they did and bought it. And that was Thad's excuse. As to why she was so down in the dumps and everything.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

That spring, Michelle started popping in on her in laws next door less frequently. When Thad got home from work, she'd say she'd had a long day with the kids and she was going off to shop. Thad, meanwhile, was becoming even more involved in the church. After a missionary trip to Cuba, he came back home afire with the idea of becoming a minister full time, leaving his job to see where Jesus would lead him. Michelle was said to be frosty to the idea. When did it begin? We'll never know. But Michelle, feeling she was playing second fiddle to God in her marriage, began telling someone she was having naughty thoughts about him, someone very taboo. And he was only too happy to say funny. Me too.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

Coming up, two of the faithful play with fire.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

He's saying, boy, you are a beautiful girl.

[Michelle Reynolds]

You're awesome.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Very welcome words for your ears at that point.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

When DATELINE continues.

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[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle Reynolds had become almost a theatrical producer at Hollywood Baptist Church. Her Christian rock and gospel presentation with the church's young people were slick and pol. But in their marriage. By May 2004, Michelle and Thad had again hit a rocky patch. He was thinking about pursuing the ministry full time. That would mean major changes in their lives with four little girls, certainly less money. Did Thad, who'd been through an excruciating divorce from Michelle, even realize that his wife was feeling ignored?

[Michelle Reynolds]

My husband was married to his job and church, and and I did everything from A to Z in our household and homeschooled and had toddlers taking care of babies. And I would tell him I needed a date. I always told him, I need a date. I need a date now.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

They did have an active social life, but it was mostly with other young couples from the church, mainly Scotty, Thad's friend, the youth pastor, and his wife, Paige. They went on weekend camping trips together, grilled burgers, played family volleyball. But something had made its way back to Michelle when Thad had been counseling Scotty over some marital problems he'd been having. Thad told Michelle to be careful around Scotty because when Scotty had confided in him during those sessions, it dawned on Thad that Michelle would make his best friend Scotty the perfect wife.

[Michelle Reynolds]

My husband, he told me to stay away from Scotty because I'm everything that he wants in a wife.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But even if she wanted to, which she didn't, there was a problem with avoiding Scotty. He was her boss, in a way. All those church youth extravaganzas were planned with him.

[Michelle Reynolds]

I wouldn't, you know, have to ask him if I needed, like, costumes or something for one of the dramas, and he would tell me how to go about getting it.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Now, on Scotty's end, he says his wife, Paige, was sensing that her husband and Michelle were getting way too cozy after a rafting trip they'd all taken together that May, when there seemed to be electricity dancing between the two of them. Scotty says Paige told him to back

[Scotty Harper]

off from the show, not want me to be around her without Paige around, not want me to talk to her.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But they did talk, and a favorite topic their spouse's suspicions that something flirtatious was going on between them. By the end of May 2004, Scotty, who seemed to put the one time homecoming queen up on a pedestal, and Michelle the ignored spouse, were crossing the line from friendship to intimacy.

[Michelle Reynolds]

I started getting the attention from Scotty and I was like, well, okay, somebody is showing me attention and you know, saying that you're awesome.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So here comes Scotty and he's saying, boy, you are a beautiful girl.

[Michelle Reynolds]

You're awesome.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Very welcome words were your ears at that point.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle began by sending Scotty an explicit erotic email. The Kama sutra of things she'd like to do with him.

[Scotty Harper]

I would have never suspected that we'd go there.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty was tingly and hit return with equally naughty thoughts.

[Scotty Harper]

I mean, you don't get tempted by something that you don't want.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The weekend. Following the exchange of sexy emails, the two church leaders and their family shared a camper vehicle together. In the afternoon, Scotty and Paige went off to the lake with the children

[Michelle Reynolds]

and Thad and I were left in our camper sleeper. And I tried to make love with my husband and he said no. He brushed me off and that was very frustrating.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

That night in the camper with Thad sleeping next to Michelle, paged by Scotty, Scotty says there was erotic midnight tension crackling between the two, not yet lovers, only a few feet apart.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Was she flirting with you?

[Scotty Harper]

Yeah, we were.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Her husband there and your wife there and the kids around and yeah, she was coming on to you?

[Scotty Harper]

We were just enjoying the weekend. Yeah.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

On that camping trip, Scotty says Thad teased him about losing Thad's hunting knife. Scotty promised to replace it. The following Tuesday, Michelle met Scotty in the parking deck of the medical center where he worked. She waited for him in her SUV and they clambered into the backseat like teenagers. The two had crossed the line, and for Scotty anyway, there was no looking back.

[Scotty Harper]

I wanted what I wanted, which was Michelle.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So this was the big thing. You thought you'd met your soulmate here?

[Scotty Harper]

Yeah.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

It was June 2004 and Scotty, the family pastor and Michelle, the youth pageant director were suddenly hot and heavy. Mornings when they used to go to the gym were now passed in illicit hours at motels just down the road from Hollywood Baptist. They started whispering about Portland, the city of their fantasized exit strategy. They called and emailed all day long. There was even a stolen dinner together and a movie in a neighboring town.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

I'm guessing neither one of you wants to be found out at this point?

[Scotty Harper]

No.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

You want each other, but you still want to keep what you have. Is that the dilemma?

[Scotty Harper]

We want each other and we don't want to destroy what we have.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So how do you get out of that box?

[Scotty Harper]

The easy thing. We can just keep going day to day. But that obviously wasn't. Wasn't a reasonable.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

That wasn't working, huh?

[Scotty Harper]

No.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle also felt trapped between the two men.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Did you start to feel bad, Michelle, about what was going on?

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

That you were cheating on Thad?

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, I actually did. At times I was like, I can't believe that it came to this. I really wanted to grow old with my husband. We always talked about walking on the beach, all pruned out.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Mid June and another families together weekend. A big one. A road trip to Alabama, where Michelle's kids from the church dance troupe would attend a Christian gathering at a place called the Ramp. Thad had stayed behind at home. The group overnighted at a nearby motel while most of the parents, including Scotty's wife Paige, stayed in rooms piled high with sleeping bags. Chaperone Scotty, the family pastor, arranged for Michelle to have her own room.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

I get the picture of you kind of easing your way out of the room after lights out, tiptoeing down the hall. Is that the way it happened?

[Scotty Harper]

Correct. Yes.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Into Michelle's room?

[Scotty Harper]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Spend the night with her?

[Scotty Harper]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Make love and then sneak back into your own bed?

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Pretty much that night in Michelle's single, the two in pillow talk used an expression for the first time that would become their lover's code. The word ugly. A word that would come to hint at where they were headed. At the end of the weekend, they headed back home to Rome, Georgia. But they'd all be getting together again soon for the big Fourth of July weekend. Racing up on them.

[Scotty Harper]

Everything about Michelle was great to me.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

You loved her.

[Scotty Harper]

Yeah.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

Coming up, Michelle tries one more time to put. Put her marriage back together.

[Michelle Reynolds]

He said, y' all pray for me. I'm not a good husband to Michelle.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

At the church meeting.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So pick a word for how you feel.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Listening to this, I was disgusted.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The deacon's wife and the family pastor were having a torrid affair. In only a month's time, they'd crossed the line from friends to lovers. Scotty didn't think his wife knew.

[Scotty Harper]

I think Paige knew that Michelle and I was closer than she wanted us to be.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

She didn't know you were physical?

[Scotty Harper]

No.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle was sure her husband Thad was in the dark. Not surprising, as she says he was oblivious to everything but his job and church.

[Church Member / Pastor]

Be not therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord and what he's done in your life.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

All of which she says pushed her into the affair with his best friend.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Was this love or lust we're talking about here?

[Michelle Reynolds]

I would say a need. A need that needed to be met that I wasn't getting at home.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But there was a major lover's problem here. Scotty was reasonably sure that Paige would give him a divorce. Michelle was just as certain that for her, divorce wasn't in the cards. By then, Thad had started chatting with friends and family about becoming a full time minister. Being a two time loser at marriage wasn't going to do him any good. Scotty says Michelle started joking with him that if you want me as your bride, then you're just going to have to outlive Thad. In the midst of their hot sheets, mornings at local motels, the two began to email each other about other ways to get around their problem with their neck. That's what they called their partners, gnats. Scotty says he joked with Michelle that, for instance, she could slather extra butter in Thad's food to induce a heart attack. Or maybe they could have a spaghetti dinner for their spouses with two pots bubbling in one dinner for Thad and Paige. They would poison the sauce.

[Scotty Harper]

Maybe it did put some things in my head.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

You think it did?

[Scotty Harper]

It did. Maybe I was already thinking things I can't really say.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Wheels started turning. Scotty began toying around with Internet searches and the lovers increasingly talked to each other about Portland.

[Michelle Reynolds]

I had seen something about Portland, Oregon and I said I would like to visit there. And we had said, had we gotten married that we could move out there.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Portland became their code word. They drop into a conversation when the Nats were all together at a gathering. Portland's naheed this time of year. They'd say with a private smile.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Was that a fantasy or did you actually think it would happen?

[Michelle Reynolds]

A fantasy. I believe it was a fantasy.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But they both realized they were now in deep and the spouses had to be told. It was agreed that Scotty would be the one to tell Thad.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Are you insisting that he be the one to tell him?

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir. I was afraid that my husband might hit me and I was just afraid that he would blow up.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

It's late June now and Michelle starts telling her lover Scotty places where her husband Thad is going to be, say in the following day, suggesting to Scotty that those are locations where he can Deliver the very unpleasant news that he and Michelle are on and that his best friend Thad is odd man out in a lover's triangle. At least that's what Michelle claims those messages were all about. Another code word by then was ugly, meaning how things might get. When Scotty finally confronted Thad, it first crept into their pillow talk during that Alabama weekend. How the two men had to talk and how the talk might get ugly.

[Scotty Harper]

I took ugly to mean something. And when ugly meant something, talk all of a sudden took a different meaning as well.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty followed Michelle's instructions on her husband's whereabouts and haunted spots where Thad was expected to show up. He couldn't work up the nerve to confront him, though, and sense Michelle was growing frustrated now.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Have you been on Scotty? Have you talked to him yet? Have you done the thing you promised you were going to do?

[Michelle Reynolds]

I just asked him when he was going to talk to him.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

On July 1, a Thursday, Scotty had walked into this Kmart and bought a knife like the one he says Thad had blamed him for losing. Was it a replacement or what? The next morning, Friday, he sat waiting for Thad to come out of this restaurant.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

And what'd you do?

[Scotty Harper]

Nothing.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Chicken out.

[Scotty Harper]

Yeah.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

That afternoon was a low point in the Scottie and Michelle affair. Michelle wanted him to meet her by the town's levee at lunchtime. But this time she wanted to talk, not make out. Scotty could feel her pulling back, dousing cold water on their fling.

[Scotty Harper]

I don't remember exact words, but I felt like she was, to the point of, you know, the conversation not going to happen.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

You're not man enough to do this thing you said were going to do, basically, and forget about me, bud, because I'm going to be gone.

[Scotty Harper]

I don't know that I really saw that she was doing that, but I guess I saw that she was willing to do that.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle was aloof by the river that day. She says she was starting to have serious second thoughts about the relationship.

[Michelle Reynolds]

That was actually when I was trying to cut it off at that point, and he said no.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

But it kept going.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But to make an even bad rendezvous worse, Michelle told Scotty that she and Thad were going out that night. The date she'd been going on and on about with Thad that she really needed to have. So they went out. But before dinner, Michelle says Thad's date night began with an unexpected stop at a prayer group.

[Michelle Reynolds]

I was a little frustrated with that type of situation. And he said, y' all pray for me, I'm not a good husband.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

At the church meeting.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

In public, out loud, stand up and talk.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir. He says I'm not being the husband that I should be to Michelle. That's exactly what he said.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So pick a word for how you feel.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Listening to this, I was disgusted. I was thinking, don't go to these people, come to me. Let's talk about it.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So that probably wasn't a great date.

[Michelle Reynolds]

No, sir.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The Saturday of 4th of July weekend, the two families and a few other couples were getting together for the usual festivities. Scott, Paige, Thad, Michelle and the seven girls. Michelle says she was starting to get edgy about her affair with Scott.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Was it starting to eat at you?

[Michelle Reynolds]

Just feeling convicted? Yes, sir.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But that night, whatever concerns there may have been were pushed aside to watch the fireworks the next day. Sunday, a cookout and volleyball. Michelle says Scotty's wife commented on her wearing attire too skimpy for an afternoon family picnic.

[Michelle Reynolds]

We got together with some couples at the park and played some volleyball and Paige even commented on my clothes there

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

in kind of a snide way.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yeah, I can't believe you're wearing that tank top. So that was uncomfortable.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty had his own reasons for feeling uncomfortable at the afternoon cookout.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

How strange is it that the guy you're cooking steaks with is the husband

[Scotty Harper]

of the young Strange like any affair.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Later that afternoon, Scotty received an email from Michelle with information about where Thad was going to be the next morning. Monday after the chilly talk at the levee, Scotty knew full well that he might lose Michelle unless he confronted Thad soon. Even if it turned out to be that lover's shorthand they had ugly coming

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

up, a bloody pre dawn discovery.

[Michelle Reynolds]

I told me about it and I just fell on the floor crying.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

When DATELINE continues.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The fourth of July weekend was over. Thad's mom had babysitter her granddaughters. When Thad and Michelle had gone out on their date night that Friday, he

[Kitty Walker (Thad's Mother)]

went and come and picked up the girls and he said, thanks mom, we needed that. And that's really the last conversation I can remember having.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad shift at the Frito Lay warehouse often began before dawn. That's where a co worker found him. 36 year old Thad Reynolds had been stabbed to death in a frenzy. 19 wounds. Sheriff Tim Burkhalter could barely believe what he was hearing. A well liked local man brutally stabbed at his office. We typically have maybe two murders a year.

[Crime Scene Investigator / Detective]

This kind of gruesome murder was of course

[Scotty Harper]

very eye Opening for our community. And very big news.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

It was a scene right out of the movie Psycho, not one you would normally ever see in the quiet city of Rome, Georgia.

[Narrator / Commentary Voice]

No one could make sense of it. It just seemed out of character for what is a nice, quiet place to live.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Assistant district attorney Natalie Stats and her boss, Lee Patterson, got news of the murder that morning.

[Prosecutor Carter]

When the first officer arrived, they called in for detectives to come in. They didn't know at that point who to even focus on.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The warehouse wasn't a place to have cash lying around. The drivers picked up their snack orders there.

[Prosecutor Carter]

They wondered if it was a stranger murder where somebody had just walked by and saw the lights on, saw the cars outside, and then came in.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

While detectives gathered evidence at the scene to try to make sense of the crime, the pastor from Hollywood Baptist went to break the news to Michelle that that was death.

[Michelle Reynolds]

They came and knocked on the door and had told me about it, and I just fell on the floor crying.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad's mom, Kitty, found out while at work.

[Kitty Walker (Thad's Mother)]

I got the call from the pastor at Hollywood, and he said, you need to come home. You need to come home now. Michelle needs you. And I guess it was just, like, automatically I knew it was Thad.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Kitty raced to Michelle's, where she was officially told her son Thad was dead.

[Kitty Walker (Thad's Mother)]

That's a mother's nightmare, basically. From there, it's, like, all a blur.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad's sister Beverly had arrived, too. Her mom told her, I just kind

[Beverly Owens (Thad's Sister)]

of lost it right then there in the front yard.

[Kitty Walker (Thad's Mother)]

I remember her going to her knees.

[Beverly Owens (Thad's Sister)]

Yeah, they helped me get back up, and I walked in and went to Michelle. She was sitting on the couch. I hugged her.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

When she heard the news, Aunt Trish came to the house to comfort her niece.

[Aunt Trish Benefield]

She seemed like she was in shock because.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Obvious grief. Crying, sobbing.

[Aunt Trish Benefield]

No, she was like, almost like she was in a trance because, like I say, almost in shock because she said, I keep waiting for him to walk in the door, for Thad to walk in the front door.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

An emergency prayer request went out to the Hollywood Baptist community, and members of the congregation started arriving to comfort Michelle, the new widow.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Were you taking medications?

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir. I was an antidepressant and a sleeping pill. And actually, one of the girls that I go to church with is a nurse, and she brought me some Xanaxes.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Some of the people helping you through your grief, there's Paige.

[Michelle Reynolds]

It was only like a five minute that I remember her just hugging me, and that was pretty much it.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Paige was joined at Michelle's by her husband, Scotty. The pastor had called him and told him the news at his office at

[Scotty Harper]

the hospital, he told me that Thad was dead.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty showed up at Michelle's house with a bandaged right hand. A weightlifting accident at the gym, he explained.

[Beverly Owens (Thad's Sister)]

He'd sat there and played games with Thad's kids and my daughter. I mean, they were all just sitting around cutting up, playing games.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Meanwhile, at the crime scene, the police were recovering what would turn out to be key evidence. Great stuff. A homicide detective's dream. Whoever the killer was, he had been a bungler. He dropped his prescription glasses on the ground Nearby. They found a sheath for a knife, the apparent murder weapon. And a witness recalled seeing a burgundy minivan as a murder.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

How clumsy is this crime?

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Incredibly, the killing of a family man and church deacon in Rome was of course a big story. There was a man who had heard the news of the murder. He worked on the phone systems at the Floyd Medical Center. Later that night, he was sitting down with homicide detectives and they were very interested in in what he had to say coming up.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

They would also be interested in certain

[Prosecutor Carter]

emails, things like I want to taste you. That's a tame part of it.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So not. Not Hallmark cards and kittens and clouds.

[Prosecutor Carter]

No.

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exit, turn right into the drive thru.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Nope.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

I'm making dinner tonight.

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You don't have time. Josh has practice.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Oh, that's right. I'll just get a salad and fries. No, just the salad.

[Grainger Commercial Narrator]

But salad cancels fries.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Salad only.

[Grainger Commercial Narrator]

Fries.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Salad, fries.

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[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Hey, can I get the fries?

[Narrator / Commentary Voice]

Salad.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Sorry.

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[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Floyd Medical center in Rome, Georgia is the largest employer in the county. Keeping its vast phone system up to speed is a big job. There was a tech person who was helping the hospital change over to a new phone system. You might say he was a perfectly legal eavesdrop.

[Prosecutor Carter]

So. So if a department would say, we're having problems with our phones, we're hearing a lot of static, it was his job to go in and find out what the problem was and clear it up. So he was monitoring some phone lines.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

DA Lee Peterson says one day as this tech was working to switch over the phone lines, he heard fellow employee Scotty Harper having an intimate conversation with a woman who wasn't his wife.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Sizzling stuff.

[Prosecutor Carter]

I don't know about sizzling. It was obviously that he was having an affair with someone and they referred to their spouses as gnats. Pesky creatures. It bothered him.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The technician was discreet. He didn't tell anyone that he'd caught Scotty in an affair cooing with a woman named Michelle. Something didn't tell until the day of Thad Reynolds murder, when he happened to drive by the crime scene that morning abuzz with police activity, and later heard this crime stopping be on the lookout for a burgundy van.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So this phone troubleshooter at the hospital would turn out to be fairly important in the investigation. He'd have a little role to play.

[Prosecutor Carter]

He absolutely did.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Now, the technician didn't hesitate to share what he knew.

[Prosecutor Carter]

He's listened on these phone calls, and he knows that Scott Harper is having an affair with somebody that's not obviously his wife. And he knows that Scott Harper drives a burgundy van and he immediately calls the police. And so at that point, the police began to focus their investigation on Scott Harper.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

With that tip, the detectives went to the hospital to get Scotty Harper's computer with all his emails. What the cops find reads like steamy porn. A month's worth of erotic messages between Scotty and Michelle. More than enough to persuade them that Michelle had lit the spark that started the affair.

[Prosecutor Carter]

She put the full court press on him to try to seduce him, and she used everything in her power to do that. She's very good at it, obviously, but

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

she was taking the lead.

[Prosecutor Carter]

I think that absolutely.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

They even referred to one of the messages as the Wheel of Fortune email. It was Michelle to Scotti after she Confided to him that she was having bad thoughts about it.

[Prosecutor Carter]

She sent him an email that details what she wanted to do to him sexually. And it would be a series of phrases like I want to. And then there'd be several words or several blanks that you'd have to fill in the letters to form a word.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Just like on the TV game show.

[Prosecutor Carter]

Just like on the game show.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

And when you bought a vowel and filled it in, what were the kinds of things she was talking about?

[Prosecutor Carter]

They were pretty graphic. Things like, I want to taste you. That's a tame part of it. I want to make love with you. But they were extremely more graphic.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So not Hallmark cards and kittens and clouds?

[Prosecutor Carter]

No, he filled in the blanks. And so there's a series of emails that go back and forth between them. And that was when their relationship changed.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Put us in his state of mind and who he was at that time. Why do you think he was vulnerable or receptive to this Wheel of fortune email? Wow, that seems like a good idea. I thought of that. Michelle.

[Prosecutor Carter]

I think that I don't know how to put it any. Any nice way she put it on him.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle and Scotty tried to keep their cool with their spouses as though nothing at home had changed. The custom of the two families getting together most weekends continued and was a kind of COVID for their infatuation.

[Narrator / Commentary Voice]

People who have affairs, often when they think they're being secretive and they're hiding things and they think they're, you know, in this little bubble, will think that if you're with a big group of people and the two of you are together and you can talk with the big group of people there, that no one will think there's anything about it.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But now detectives were thinking all about it, and the evidence was threatening to burst Michelle and Scotty's bubble.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

Coming up, cops confront Scotty with pointed questions.

[Prosecutor Carter]

Where are your glasses? Have you had an affair with Michelle Reynolds?

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

He knows they're pinning him in at that time point, huh?

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

While Michelle remains calm, too calm for some. Also surprising, her plan for Thad's remains.

[Beverly Owens (Thad's Sister)]

I was shocked, but I knew that there was, you know, nothing we could do because she was calling the shots.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

When DATELINE continues.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad Reynolds had been murdered. Investigators were now looking into a steamy affair between Thad's wife Michelle and best friend Scotty Harper. And they were finding their secret tingles, lover's code words, a discreetly brushed hand, all with her husband and his wife only a few feet away.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Is she the initiator here.

[Prosecutor Carter]

Absolutely. Absolutely. He would never have crossed the line. He would never have initiated this.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

And he was willing to go along.

[Prosecutor Carter]

He absolutely was.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But the homicidal math was starting to add up. Thad the deacon, stabbed to death. The family pastor in a sexual relationship with the murdered man's wife. A dropped pair of prescription glasses spattered with blood. A burgundy van. On Tuesday night, the day after Thad's murder, the detectives told Scotty they wanted him and his wife to come to the police station for an interview. The next morning, he arrived at there with his wife Paige.

[Prosecutor Carter]

They ask him, you know, where are your glasses? Have you had an affair with Michelle Reynolds?

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

He knows they're pinning him in at that point, huh?

[Prosecutor Carter]

He can't explain and he's lying to him flat out when he says he's not having an affair to him. And they already had the emails and they already had knowledge at this point,

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

does he give it up? Does he say, you got me?

[Prosecutor Carter]

No. They asked consent to search his van, the burgundy van, and he agrees.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The police go to the hospital to get Scotty's van for processing. Paige is with them now, well aware from the police questioning where this is heading.

[Prosecutor Carter]

He wants to go back into work to the hospital. And Paige says, no, we're going to your mom and dad's right now.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Investigators believe Scotty was desperately trying to get back to his office to delete anything on his computer that would link Michelle to the building case.

[Prosecutor Carter]

He's trying to get rid of those emails because that's going to hook Michelle that he loves, into this.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Surprising, of course, that a computer professional like himself would have kept the emails on his laptop in the first place.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

What was he thinking? Why does he let this stuff reside on the computers?

[Prosecutor Carter]

Of course he would save them so he could go back and reread and be excited all over again about this affair and its progression and all these things that they wrote to each other. He writes these long, flowery emails to her about how much he loves her and how much he cares for her and how much he wants to be with her. And when she writes back to him, that's catnip to him. He's not going to destroy that.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Even an armchair detective would have started following the trail right to Scotty Harper's door. The killer had used a knife like this to stab Thad Reynolds 19 times that Monday morning. The detectives knew that on the morning of the murder, Scotty Harper. Harper had gone to the ER of the hospital where he worked to have a cut hand stitched Up. Those explicit emails he failed to get rid of told them he was a month into an affair with the murdered man's wife. Had Scotty Harper murdered his best friend, the husband of his lover?

[Scotty Harper]

Every mirror I pass, I mouth the word. You just killed that, Killed that.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty was confessing to the mirror, but not to anyone else.

[Scotty Harper]

There was nothing I could say that could take it back, and there was nothing I could do that could fix it.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Even prosecutors who'd seen a lot were sickened by the savagery committed on Thad Reynolds.

[Prosecutor Carter]

With a gun, you can stand far away from somebody and shoot them, and you don't have to touch them and you don't have to smell the blood and you don't have to put your hands on them. But a knife is pretty cold.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And as unimaginable as it was for detectives in the early hours of the investigation, all signs were pointing to Thad's close friend Scotty Harper as the killer. And the night before, Scotty Harper had gone down to the police station for questioning by detectives. He called Michelle and confessed to her that he was indeed the killer.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

I told her I did it in her words.

[Scotty Harper]

As you recall, she got quiet. I remember her saying, nightmare never ends. She ended up saying she had to explain. She said, I gotta go. I gotta go.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

After hanging up the phone, Scotty says they talked again. And Michelle pleaded with him that if he was going to confess to the crime, that he not do it until after Thad's funeral, still two days away.

[Scotty Harper]

We talked later. She said, I don't want my girls to ever know you did this. This is crazy. I said, well, that's. They're going to. And she said, can you at least give them the funeral?

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Don't talk to the police until after the funeral. That's your message.

[Scotty Harper]

I was wanting to talk to her oldest daughter and dad's mom and her. I was wanting to be able to sit down with all three of them. That's when she said she didn't want her daughters to ever know that I did this.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And while he'd confessed to his lover, Scotty still hadn't broken the news to his wife.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Had you told Paige?

[Scotty Harper]

No.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But the morning of the detective's questioning, Scotty says his wife had started to figure out that he had killed Thad Reynolds.

[Scotty Harper]

We go to my mom and dad's house, Paige and I. They call my sister over there. They call the pastor over there.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

You say, I did it.

[Scotty Harper]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

I was the one that murdered Thad.

[Scotty Harper]

Yes.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

In the next 24 hours. Scotty met with a lawyer and then checked himself overnight into a psychiatric hospital.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

The lawyer suggested it.

[Scotty Harper]

He said, I think you really need to go there. And I probably did. I'm not suggesting I was insane when it happened. I remember it happening.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty, out of sight overnight in a psych ward was also buying Michelle the time she wanted to prepare for Thad's funeral without the pall of Scotty's involvement hanging over it. But no one in their circle suspected yet that Scotty Harper could be the killer. Friends were nonetheless privately buzzing about the new widow's demeanor. Why did Michelle seem so calm? And why did she tell the ladies who asked if they could help her shop for a funeral dress that that wouldn't be necessary. She had a new black dress in her closet with the price tag still on it. What was going on with the newly widowed Michelle? Thad's mother and sister don't remember Michelle shedding any tears at all.

[Beverly Owens (Thad's Sister)]

There was, like, no emotion. No. I thought maybe she was in shock.

[Kitty Walker (Thad's Mother)]

I remember Michelle coming outside and hugging me, but I saw no tears.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle had also requested that police not give her any details about her husband's murder. The investigators saw it all as odd behavior.

[Prosecutor Carter]

Everybody thought that she acted very strange. There weren't really any tears. She wasn't crying. People at the church, again, were just devastated. And she wasn't shedding a tear. In fact, she was making jokes to some of the people that came in and would say inappropriate things.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Friends at the house told investigators, though Michelle would later say she was just joking, that she initially talked about getting a nose ring. Soon after Thad was killed, Michelle looked

[Prosecutor Carter]

over and said, do you like so and so's nose ring? And the lady said, no, I don't really. I don't really like nose rings. And Michelle said, well, now that Thad's dead, I think I'm going to get one. And everybody in the room just kind

[Narrator / Commentary Voice]

of went something like, he can't, because he won't be able to say anything about it.

[Prosecutor Carter]

Yeah, Thad didn't like them. She's cold, ice cold.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle, Thad's family says, is also talking about cremating Thad's remains. If that was his wish, he'd never mentioned it to them.

[Beverly Owens (Thad's Sister)]

I was shocked, but I knew that there was. Was, you know, nothing we could do because she was calling the shots.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And it all started crashing down on Thursday morning when Thad's mother went over to the house and was told that she couldn't go in.

[Kitty Walker (Thad's Mother)]

One of the ladies from church kind of backed me up against the car and said, you can't go in. They're searching the house, they're seizing the computer. And that's when she told me that Scotty and Michelle had had an affair.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

When the detectives were read through all the emails that Scotty, the computer expert, had failed to delete. When they saw a message from Michelle about when and where Scotty would be able to find Thad the morning he was killed, and when they considered how coolly the new widow took the news of her husband's death, arrest warrants were drawn up not just for Scotty Harper, but surprisingly, for Michelle as well. She would be charged as his co killer.

[Prosecutor Carter]

She is one of the most evil that I've ever dealt with in all the years I've been a prosecutor.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The two lovers, the deacon's wife and the family pastor, were issued jailhouse jumpsuits and charged with murder. They would face the highest count.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

You announced your intention to go for the death penalty on the both of them?

[Prosecutor Carter]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Her as well?

[Prosecutor Carter]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Even though she was clearly not at the scene?

[Prosecutor Carter]

Even though she was clearly not at the scene. She is a party to the crime. She aided, abetted, encouraged and helped plan this.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But could the state prove that Michelle knew all along what Scotty was going to do? The prosecutor was confident she could.

[Prosecutor Carter]

She's the brains and he's the muscle.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

Coming up.

[Narrator / Commentary Voice]

It always amazed me they were talking about how much they missed each other.

[Michelle Reynolds]

I don't believe that I've ever been loved as much by somebody as a hand.

[Narrator / Commentary Voice]

There were several of these conversations and in none of them are there denials of any of it.

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[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Then the king said to all his servants, do you not know that a

[Scotty Harper]

crowd prince and a great man. Forgive me. Has fallen this day in Israel.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad Reynolds was eulogized as a man of God, sent to his rest by his many friends at Hollywood Baptist Church, where he'd been a beloved deacon. So poignant, those four little girls stair stepped in size, their father suddenly dead and their mother charged with killing him.

[Kitty Walker (Thad's Mother)]

If you could hear them pray. Olivia prays just exactly like her daddy and the baby. She always says when she prays. She says, you know, the usual stuff. Keep our family safe. Bless mama, Bless papa. Bless mama. Bless daddy.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Mama. Michelle Reynolds was not at the funeral, but in the county jail, charged with planning Thad's murder with her lover, Scotty Harper. Both were denied bond as flight risks. If convicted, both could face the death penalty. But the two were still apparently so desperately in love that they convinced a recently released fellow inmate to set up three way calling for them. An inmate at the Floyd County Jail. If you wish to accept this call. The inmate turned out to be a jailhouse snitch.

[Natural Cycles Commercial Narrator]

Hey, hey, he's on the other line.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Okay.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And while Michelle and Scotty talked, their conversations were being recorded. It's not in Brandy. Listen for yourself. Scotty and Michelle from behind bars, still hinting at ending up in Portland, their fantasy city where they'd start a new life together. I wonder how Portland he is. Even though they faced the possibility of death row, Scotty and Michelle's conversations remained light, flirtatious, even racy.

[Scotty Harper]

We were.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And they kept speaking of their devotion to each other as investigators listened in.

[Narrator / Commentary Voice]

It always amazed me. They were talking about how much they missed each other.

[Michelle Reynolds]

I don't believe that I've ever been loved as much by somebody as I have by you. And I mean that I'm with you.

[Prosecutor Carter]

They're stopping in the middle of the conversation and saying things like, oh, wait a minute. I love you. Did you know that? I love you? And they'll say it over and over and over.

[Scotty Harper]

Hello.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

No, you don't.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, I do.

[Scotty Harper]

Yes, I do.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And it's what they weren't hearing from Michelle, a lack of outrage that reinforced the prosecutor's conviction that Michelle knew all along that murder was afoot and was actively planning it with Scotty.

[Prosecutor Carter]

If you were arrested for the murder of your spouse and you got to have communication with the person who actually committed the murder, don't you think you would say something like, what have you done?

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

What did you get me into?

[Prosecutor Carter]

Why did you do this?

[Narrator / Commentary Voice]

There were several of these conversations, and in none of them are there denials of any of it.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

There were prison letters exchanged, too. In one, from Michelle to Scotty two weeks after the murder, she uses some verses from the Bible to pass on an only slightly encoded message to him. The letter page is headed Freedom for me and my children. She quotes a verse from Genesis, and you see that she's underlined the word. All the next bit of scripture is from Psalms. Who have I in heaven but you? The I is underlined. In all, Michelle writes out 17 verses with certain words underlined. And when you read all those underlined statements together, it forms the thought. All I knew was that you were going to speak to him about us. Help me. If a man would give for love.

[Prosecutor Carter]

And that's her message to him, she still. She knows that he loves her and she wants him to save her and take her away from this, take her out of it.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So that's her campaign at this point?

[Prosecutor Carter]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

She's setting up her defense, which is. I had no idea.

[Prosecutor Carter]

Right.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

You were so much in love with me. I had no idea that you would go to that.

[Narrator / Commentary Voice]

Yes.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And in the days following the arrest, the detectives continued to build their case. They took note of an insurance policy on Thad that would have paid Michelle More than $250,000. Was money part of the motive? But what the detectives initially didn't have was the murder weapon, the knife Scott Harper had used. But that changed when one of his co workers at the hospital had an inkling of what where a good hiding place would be.

[Prosecutor Carter]

He and another guy who worked at the IT department started looking, and they went into the server room and they took the suction cup device and they started pulling up the tiles one at a time. And I think he told us he got to the third one and he pulled it up, and there was the JC Penney's bag.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Inside this bag was Scotty's bloody clothing, his shoes, the knife, and even this receipt for the knife from Kmart. It was virtually a murder conviction in a bag.

[Prosecutor Carter]

I've never had a case where somebody gave me not only the receipt from the buying the murder weapon, but packaged it all up along with what they were wearing at the time they did it.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Later they'd recover the security camera tape from Kmart. Scotty, seen here, goes into the store to buy the 4 inch hunting knife.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So is he among the world's stupidest guys? Yeah, you got everything but a movie of him doing.

[Prosecutor Carter]

That's true. Hers is definitely the harder case.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Not in any of the recovered emails had Michelle written words to the effect we need to kill Thad. So instead, the prosecutors focused on that fourth of July weekend that began with that frosty rendezvous at the levee on Friday. By that day, Scotty had already failed on two occasions to confront Thad. After, he says, Michelle had given him instructions as to where he would be to Scotty. She seemed to upset that afternoon that he hadn't been manly enough to tell Thad he thought he'd lost her. Sunday. She emails Scotty letting him know where Thad will be early the next morning. And the best nugget the prosecution had was this. An email exchange late Sunday evening. He writes, stop me if you have any hesitations. She replies, I'm ready. Please be observant of your surroundings and be careful. I can't wait to be your bride. Was it enough? Would a jury buy that as her knowing deliberately giving her head over heels lover a green light for murder, Michelle had hired seasoned criminal defense lawyers Jimmy Berry and Vic Reynolds. They were very worried about trying a case in a town they believe was ready to convict their client with biblical fury.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

In this case, there was absolutely a moral backlash against Michelle. I think. I think there was a perception by the community that she had initiated this affair, had taken this man of God with her womanly ways, sexual ways, had gotten him to do this heinous act. And I think the community was convinced that that's what Michelle had done.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But despite the defense attorney's fear a local jury would be willing to brand their client with a scarlet letter, they didn't believe those emails between the lovers gave the prosecutors the smoking gun they needed to send Michelle to death row.

[Crime Scene Investigator / Detective]

There's a lot of ways to interpret what some of these emails may have indicated.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The defense attorney's version of events would be that Scotty acted entirely on his own, just crazy in love with their client. Talk to Thad. He suggests Means that and only that. No coded language.

[Crime Scene Investigator / Detective]

She basically indicates to me that she never indicated to Scotty that she wanted to wanted him to kill her husband.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

So which was it? Two lovers who'd carried out a murder in order to get to their fantasy land of Portland together? Or was she totally in the dark? Was it really about one crazed man killing the husband who stood in the way? And would the prosecutors be forced to cut Michelle loose from their case altogether? Was it time for prosecutors to play their least favorite game, let's Make a Deal, coming up.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

And how about let's piece together the evidence? Some wondered why Michelle seemed to have a brand new funeral outfit ready to go.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Every woman needs a black dress.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

When DATELINE continues.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle would write in an email later that she could relate to the words of that old song, torn between two lovers.

[Michelle Reynolds]

I loved my husband and I didn't want him to be hurt.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But the prosecutors had come to look at Michelle Reynolds in the worst possible light. A seducer who used her sexual powers to dupe a SAP of a lover into killing her husband for her.

[Prosecutor Carter]

She's been referred to as a puppet master. She was absolutely pulling his strings and pushing him and hinting and saying, we're never going to be together unless.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Unless they argued Scotty killed her husband.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Did you ever have a conversation, Michelle, where you said, we've got to think about the worst possible thing, the only way we're going to be together is to get rid of that?

[Michelle Reynolds]

No, sir.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle denied that she sent her lover to kill her husband as she talked about her extra affair with dateline.

[Michelle Reynolds]

At one point we were both talking about it, you know, we need to stop. And then he came back and he says, I can't. I can't stop.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Guilty of adultery, she says, but not murder. And as you hear her tell her story, you'll realize that for Michelle, it was never endless love. She talks of Scotty indifferently, as though he's an inconsequential old boyfriend she has to squint to remember.

[Michelle Reynolds]

We met in the parking deck at his job and we just kissed.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Did anything else happen that day?

[Michelle Reynolds]

No, sir.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

And when did you go past kissing into actual having sex?

[Michelle Reynolds]

We actually didn't have sex.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

You never had sex?

[Michelle Reynolds]

No, sir. He couldn't get. He couldn't get an erection.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty, Michelle was saying, was impotent, a startling revelation if true, given all the horror that had spilled out of the affair, she says, the trysts at the motels, all heavy petting and making out without consummation and ditto for him sneaking into her room during that weekend in

[Michelle Reynolds]

Alabama again, he couldn't get an erection.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Kissing and hugging.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes sir.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

And then at dawn he'd leave.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes sir.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

When Scotty was in the county jail months after the murder, authorities confiscated in his cell a 58 page letter he'd written Michelle but she'd never received. Over and over he writes lines like I want to love you, spend the rest of my life devoted to you and making you the happiest woman alive. But the letter is more than just another avowal of his endless love for her. It's also a bullet point outline for how they need to keep their stories together for their upcoming trials. In this photo, in the phone book of a letter, Scotty also outlines for her how he plans to defend himself. He's going to argue that he took a pill for erectile dysfunction. Something which triggered a psychotic episode during which he killed Thad. Not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. So this idea of impotency is floating around the case. But the prosecutor isn't buying the argument. She says she has on the record. Michelle boasting about her sexual dexterity.

[Prosecutor Carter]

She bragged about that she had shown him positions that he'd never seen before

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

and he loved it.

[Prosecutor Carter]

Those were exactly her words and he loved it.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Whatever the truth, Michelle and Scotty were only a few weeks into their romantic relationship when they met at the levee. The day she didn't want to cuddle, she wanted to talk about the dead end they were facing. Unless Scotty had a man to man confrontation with Thad as he promised.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Were you on him Singh? Have you talked to him yet? Has this happened?

[Michelle Reynolds]

We are discussing because there at that time he said oh my gosh, I'm losing you. Because Thad had said was going on a date. And so that even increased his want to move forward even more.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

So that was the Friday of 4th of July weekend when a dejected Scotty felt he was losing Michelle. That weekend there was barbecue, volleyball, fireworks. And on Sunday Michelle remembers Scotty telling her he was finally going to talk to her husband.

[Michelle Reynolds]

He said send me your husband's schedule so I'll know where he's at and I'll, you know, hook up with him. And that's what I did.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

What did that mean to you Michelle?

[Michelle Reynolds]

That he was going to go and confront him about us?

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Did you get the feeling he was talking about a violent resolution to this thing?

[Michelle Reynolds]

No sir, I really. Scotty was, he was a nice outgoing guy. I would never imagine him hurting anyone.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But what about those troubling emails the lovers exchanged on Sunday, the day before the murder.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Scotty sends you an email that says, I'm ready for tomorrow. Stop me if you have any hesitation. Do you remember that?

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

What did you think that meant?

[Michelle Reynolds]

If I wanted him to go and tell that about us or not?

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

And you reply, no hesitation. I'm ready. Please be observant of your surroundings and be careful. I do want to spend time with you. I want to be your wife.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Is there any way to read that, Michelle, other than to say be careful in what we both know is going to happen and look over your shoulder and do pull this thing off?

[Michelle Reynolds]

I know that there's people there because they come in and out. Being careful is like, don't get in a fight.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Remember during that church trip in Alabama, Michelle and Scotty started using the words talking about and ugly as a lover's code for Scotty's upcoming confrontation with Thad.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

You used as shorthand the word ugly between you.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

What did the word ugly mean to you?

[Michelle Reynolds]

Them getting in a fight.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So when you say in this email, be careful, you're thinking about, don't do something dumb, don't fight.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Right.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle says she never told or even hinted to Scotty that he needed to kill Thad. There were no special looks, no nods, nothing.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Had you told Scotty explicitly or given him some sort of body language that we've got to kill Thad?

[Michelle Reynolds]

No, sir.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

This is how we're going to be together?

[Michelle Reynolds]

No, sir.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And when Scotty called her that morning, she says she still didn't suspect that he had killed Thad.

[Michelle Reynolds]

He had said that he met with him and told him, but he didn't bring up the fact that what happened.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So what did you think had happened? I mean, you're a bright woman. Here was the morning of the confrontation, he says they did have the confrontation and then Thad is found stabbed to death.

[Michelle Reynolds]

I didn't want to believe that it was him.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Did you suspect it?

[Michelle Reynolds]

No, because that's just not his character. It's not part of him. He's just an all time sweet guy. And. No.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So at the very moment he's supposed to have this confrontation, which is going to be unpleasant and the best of all worlds, it happens. And then out of the blue somebody else comes into the place of business and stabs your husband 19 times at dawn in a botched robbery. I mean, that doesn't add up.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle also says there was no dark humor between her and Scotty about killing Thad.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

You don't remember joking with him about, well, we'll make a poison batch of spaghetti and that'll take care of it?

[Michelle Reynolds]

No, sir.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

We'll annihilate them.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

As for the perception that she seemed unreasonably cool at the house in the days after the murder, Michelle says she was simply in shock.

[Michelle Reynolds]

In all honesty, I was blacked out for the most part because those people that said they came to my house and that they saw me and I don't ever recall.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And the fact that she had what seemed to some a pre need black funeral dress already hanging in the closet. Michelle says this has been taken entirely out of context.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Every woman needs a black dress. And along with that black dress, they didn't mention the fact that I had like two other dresses, a top and skirt still with the tags on them.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

To Michelle's lawyers, none of it may have looked good, but it was still all very thin evidence for the prosecutors to build a capital murder case against their client.

[Crime Scene Investigator / Detective]

They were all just bad innuendos.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And even the prosecutor knew if they were going to get a conviction on Michelle, they'd need Scotty to testify against her. And four years after the murder, as the two lovers sat in separate cells in the county jail, prosecutors finally got just that.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Do you fully understand what's going on here today?

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

A sworn taped confession from Scotty Harper.

[Prosecutor Carter]

Are you freely, cooperatively giving us this statement?

[Michelle Reynolds]

All right.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty cut a deal with the district attorney. He taped this confession and would testify for the prosecution in Michelle's upcoming trial, provided the state dropped the death penalty on not just him, but also on her.

[Prosecutor Carter]

I had to hold my nose in a major way.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

You don't offer a get out of death row free card casually.

[Prosecutor Carter]

No. He is gonna have to give us her and her part in it and her complicity in it. Not. You know, I love her and she had nothing to do with this. He's got to tell.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

He's got to come off that line.

[Prosecutor Carter]

Yeah, he's got to tell the truth.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But would they ever get the complete truth from a man who would do anything for the woman he loved?

[Scotty Harper]

Coming up, my sense for Leah.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

You're talking about relief on the part of Michelle's part.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

Scotty recounts what happened when he called Michelle to tell her he'd finally confirmed confronted Thad.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Did she say words to the effect, Scott, is he dead? Did you kill him?

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[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

at him eating whatever he wants, never gaining a pound. Well, I'm stuck with the boring special

[Michelle Reynolds]

and can't lose an ounce.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

How's your lunch man?

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Amazing. Yours? So good.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Oh, I'm so happy for you.

[Scotty Harper]

Cool buddy.

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[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So same time next week?

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

No, definitely and your friends.

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[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty Harper had fallen hard for the former homecoming queen at his high school. The enormously tangled dilemma was that Michelle Reynolds was also his best friend's wife, the mother of four little girls. For him, what had started out as email flirtations turned into irresistible hot sex.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Was it exciting? Was it risky? Was it good?

[Scotty Harper]

Exciting? Risky is something I wanted.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

I think I hear you saying this is like a narcotic, that Michelle has become your drug and you cannot get enough of it.

[Scotty Harper]

I guess that's fair to say. She was everything, yeah, everything I needed, she said. You're probably just going to have to live on her own if you ever want to be with me.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

As part of a plea deal with the state, Scotty Harper had agreed to testify for the prosecution in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table for both of them, she said.

[Scotty Harper]

If we're going to continue, we're going to get golf. It's not a matter of in this

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

sworn confession that was taped before Michelle's pending trial, Scotty described the path he says they traveled down that ultimately led to murder. It all started in earnest, he says, at the weekend church trip in Alabama when he he sneaked away to the private room he'd arranged for Her.

[Scotty Harper]

She asked me, she said,

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

When you

[Scotty Harper]

talk with dad, what if it gets ugly? And I asked her, I said, well, let me ask you your perspective. What? And she told me, she said, I love you. As long as I end up with you, I can feel just about anything you believe.

[Michelle Reynolds]

In Michelle's mind, talking meant a lot

[Prosecutor Carter]

more than just saying words to somebody

[Michelle Reynolds]

and then taking some action eliminating Thad.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty also said he heard relief in Michelle's voice when he spoke to her the morning of Thad's death.

[Scotty Harper]

I sense for living you're talking about

[Prosecutor Carter]

relief on the part of.

[Michelle Reynolds]

On Michelle's part.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

But when Dateline talked to Scotty Harper, he backed away from that position he'd given the prosecution as part of his plea deal, that Michelle was relieved the morning Thad is found dead and that she even knew what talk and ugly were really all about. He seemed to once again want to protect her from any involvement in the murder.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So what's the truth?

[Scotty Harper]

There's nothing to cover for. There's nothing to protect her from. The truth is, I did this. I see no guilt on her part. I really don't.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty said he acted alone and that when he went to sleep that Sunday night, even he didn't know how the confrontation with Thad was going to play out. He said he got up before 5 that Monday morning, but instead of his usual trip to the gym, he made the decision to drive to the Frito Lay warehouse.

[Scotty Harper]

It's hard to believe things got to where it was. Pull in. I'm looking at myself in the rearview mirror for a minute before I go in.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Was that always going to be the outcome from that moment on? As you're looking at yourself in the

[Scotty Harper]

rear view, it's like I was sitting outside looking in, and I'm not. And I'm not removing myself from the responsibility because that was me. But it's hard to imagine myself or the thoughts that I was having.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

See yourself walking in?

[Scotty Harper]

Yeah.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Hear him saying, hey, Scotty Harper, what are you doing here?

[Scotty Harper]

Yeah.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

What do you say to him?

[Scotty Harper]

I want what you got,

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Michelle.

[Scotty Harper]

Correct.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty says he then pulled the knife out of the sheath. Fatty says thought he'd simply come to return the hunting knife he'd lost on that family camping trip.

[Scotty Harper]

It's in my right hand. He sees it. He looks down. He holds out his left hand.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

As though you're gonna, what, hand the knife to him?

[Scotty Harper]

I guess so. You know me saying, I want what you got. He had a little confused look on him. So easy. He didn't know what I'm starting to.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

But he didn't have much time to reflect. Because you're on him with a knife right away.

[Scotty Harper]

Correct.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

The worst minute of your life and a lot of other people's lives.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Thad tried to fight back.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Do you remember anything about it?

[Scotty Harper]

Very much.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

They would say later in the autopsy report that you stabbed him 19 times.

[Scotty Harper]

I don't remember 19 stabs, but I remember enough.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

He went down and stayed down. Did you say, I want what you have again?

[Scotty Harper]

I said it more than once, yes.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Did you think, now I've got her?

[Scotty Harper]

No. I couldn't believe what I'd done. I couldn't believe what I'd done.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty left Thad, his best friend, bleeding to death on his office floor. He knew he needed to get away quickly.

[Scotty Harper]

I had to wrap my fingers, I'd cut myself.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

And there go your eyeglasses. You lost them. It's dark and they're gone and you've lost the sheath to the knife.

[Scotty Harper]

No plan.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

This is no plan, Scott.

[Scotty Harper]

No plan.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

What's going on?

[Scotty Harper]

No idea how it got there. Not a thing to do to take it back.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

What are you going to do Next? That's what 6am is about. What's 7am? What's 8am? What are the next years of your life going to be about? Coming off of this moment.

[Scotty Harper]

The after effects wasn't planned. Not thinking about running, escaping, doing anything,

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

but also not going to the police.

[Scotty Harper]

And also not going to the police.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

He drove to the hospital where he worked and entered through a side door.

[Scotty Harper]

I had blood all over me. I changed clothes. There's other people going to be coming in. Not going to just leave bloody clothes and a knife sitting out. I just put them under the floor and it's a raised floor data center where we're at our servers that you can pull the tiles up.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So did you think, wow, this is going pretty good now?

[Scotty Harper]

No. At no point during that time I felt like, this is going pretty good.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

He then headed to the ER to get stitches for the knife wound on his hand. Later, he drove to his gym to shower up.

[Scotty Harper]

Every mirror I passed, I mouthed the word, you just killed that. You killed that. It just seemed surreal. It was like it didn't happen, but I knew it did.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Your blood's on him. His blood's on you. You're a good friend.

[Scotty Harper]

Yeah.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty then calls Michelle.

[Scotty Harper]

She has me. Had you talked with him? I said yes.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Did you say it got ugly?

[Scotty Harper]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Did she say words to the effect Scott, is he Dead. Did you kill him? Is it over?

[Scotty Harper]

No. No.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

You're saying that her understanding was that you've had the talk with him and it was nasty and it was ugly and what? I'll talk to you later.

[Scotty Harper]

Yeah, I mean, she says she's sure she'd hear, hear all about it a little bit later.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Soon after speaking to Michelle, Scotty got the official word from their pastor that Thad was dead. He headed over to Michelle's where he was immediately surrounded by Thad's family. And these pictures were snapped of him holding the dead man's youngest daughter.

[Scotty Harper]

I see his daughters, the children who

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

don't have a father.

[Scotty Harper]

Yeah. I see his sister. See his mom.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

The mom of the man you've just murdered.

[Scotty Harper]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Now, how are you holding it together? Why don't you just come undone at that point and say, I throw myself at your mercy. This thing happened.

[Scotty Harper]

There was nothing I could say that could take it back and there was nothing I could do that could fix it.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So you're just gonna muddle forward and see what happens?

[Scotty Harper]

I didn't know what to do.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty says he and Michelle had barely any time left alone that day. Too many friends were arriving to express their condolences. But when he called her late that night, he says it still hadn't occurred to her that he was the killer.

[Scotty Harper]

Before we hung up, she said, do you think this was a sign?

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

A what?

[Scotty Harper]

A sign.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

A sign from where? Of what?

[Scotty Harper]

A sign from God. And I asked her, what are you talking about? And she said, of all days for you to go talk to her. I saw then she didn't know.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

She didn't know that you were gonna go kill him?

[Scotty Harper]

No. No, she didn't. When I went to bed that night, I can't say I knew that I was gonna kill him. So I know she couldn't have. Michelle had no idea.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty Harper's story from friendship to homicide, all for a one time homecoming queen who now says their fling was just a big mistake.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Was he still the 15 year old boy in high school, fixated on the homecoming queen?

[Michelle Reynolds]

I believe so. Yes, sir.

[Prosecutor Carter]

Coming up, she taught him how to walk on the wild side. And he didn't want to ever give that up.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

And now after everything, what would you say to Scotty?

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

When DATELINE continues.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

One woman, two men, seven children among them being raised in good, solid middle class homes.

[Prosecutor Carter]

I don't know how you explain it. If you try to wrap your mind around it, you can't because we always come back to the question, why not just get a divorce. But they didn't.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

And the prosecutor Carter believes it was Scotty Harper's sexual obsession with Michelle that led him to murder.

[Prosecutor Carter]

She taught him how to walk on the wild side, and he didn't want to ever give that up.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Even apparently, if it meant going to prison for the rest of his life for it, there would be no trial. Scotty Harper pleaded guilty to stabbing to death his good friend Thad Reynolds. You previously entered a plea of guilty and the charges of murder of Mr. Thad Reynolds. He was given life in prison without the possibility of parole. Michelle Reynolds also ended up taking a deal from the prosecutor. You understand that you're presumed innocent until proven guilty?

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Do you understand that by entering a guilty plea, you're giving up these rights?

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Knowing that Scott was. Was planning to testify for the prosecution, Michelle agreed to a sentence of 10 years for voluntary manslaughter and 10 years for party to the crime of burglary. A charge related to Scotty entering the Frito Lay warehouse. And how do you prove that charge is guilty or not guilty?

[Crime Scene Investigator / Detective]

It's always hard to roll the dice when you're talking about a death penalty.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle's lawyers were prepared to go to trial and argued that she had no idea that Scotty was going to kill her. Her husband. But when they hadn't managed to get a change of venue out of Rome, Georgia, and when the prosecution was offering to swap the death penalty for a much lesser charge, they advised Michelle to take the deal.

[Crime Scene Investigator / Detective]

It's the Bible Belt. Nobody likes folks in the Bible Belt having affairs. Everybody pretty much had made up their mind that she was guilty, that she forced this boy and never been in any trouble. Good boy. She forced him into killing her husband so that they can be together.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Michelle accepted the 20 year prison term without a trial because a part of her does feel responsible for Thad's death.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Morally, because I had the affair. I feel responsible because had I not had the affair, this wouldn't have happened. And I'm deeply sorry that so many people were hurt that. I've hurt a lot of people.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So you agreed to do 20 years for an affair?

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Is that what it comes down to?

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

But you didn't ask your lover to kill your husband?

[Michelle Reynolds]

No, sir.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Scotty, though, says he wished Michelle had fought the charges.

[Scotty Harper]

I don't understand why she pled, because

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

if she lost her bet, she might have ended up on death row.

[Scotty Harper]

You're innocent. Why would you plea? I mean, I just. I just don't understand Scotty told us

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

he took the plea deal because he didn't want his family to go through a death penalty trial and he didn't want Michelle to face that either.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Was that as important as your deal that they take death off the table for her?

[Scotty Harper]

Correct.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

So you're still trying to do her some good?

[Scotty Harper]

For what good it is? I mean, I can't say that I've done good for anybody, but yeah.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

As part of her sentence, Michelle could not have contact with her four children until each turned 18.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

What would you say to Scotty at this time?

[Michelle Reynolds]

I don't have anything to say to him.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

He's just a memory. And not good ones.

[Michelle Reynolds]

Yes, sir.

[Scotty Harper]

I was definitely crazy about it, but now some things you have to suppress.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Suppress. It's there, but you don't want to touch it.

[Scotty Harper]

You can't, so you don't.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

The other thing that Michelle said, which just really surprised me, when you think of everything that you guys gambled. She said that you never really completed a sexual relationship.

[Scotty Harper]

I've heard that from people I don't know.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

She said that basically you were impotent with her and never consummated the act.

[Scotty Harper]

I'm not sure why she said it, but I'll just leave it at that.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

You loved her.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Yeah. Michelle's four girls went to live with Thad's family. His life insurance went to their care. Scotty's wife, mother of his three, divorced him. He was left with only regrets.

[Scotty Harper]

I'm sorry. It doesn't cut it. That's all I have now. There's nothing I can say. Undo what I've done.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

The prosecutor is not surprised by any of it. That Scotty said he still loved Michelle from behind bars and that Michelle seemed

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

not to care when last he was still hanging the moon and the stars for her.

[Prosecutor Carter]

Yes, and probably will for the rest of his life.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

As giddy as a teenager.

[Prosecutor Carter]

He still loves her.

[Narrator / Commentary Voice]

She's still all he has.

[Interviewer / Lester Holt]

Well, what about her?

[Prosecutor Carter]

She never loved him. She used him. She uses people as objects. If you're useful to her, she'll use you for a while. And then she's going to cast you aside.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

Sweetheart.

[Church Member / Pastor]

Wasn't the service great today?

[Michelle Reynolds]

It sure was, Sweetheart.

[Narrator / Documentary Voice]

In the church Michelle and Thad were featured in, they go to a cotton candy heaven as their reward. This is heaven. This is what we've lived for. Isn't it wonderful? A Sunday School dream. Nothing in that script about sexual obsession and a hunting knife. A man who wanted what the other had.

[Narrator / Lester Holt]

That's all for now. I'M Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.

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