Killer Story | 4. Dead Body Waking

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Binge Cases: Killer Story

Episode 4: Dead Body Waking

Host: Steve Fishman
Date: February 23, 2026

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Overview

This episode, “Dead Body Waking,” dives deep into the Las Vegas cold case of Sabrina Kidd, a teenage girl whose disappearance haunted tabloid reporter Lyndal Marks. Driven by her own unresolved trauma, Lyndal teams up with Detective Robert Leonard to make a breakthrough in the case with the discovery of new evidence: a life insurance policy naming Sabrina’s landlord Tom Preston as beneficiary. The story unfolds with a compelling blend of investigative tenacity, emotional reckoning, and the high stakes of seeking justice for the forgotten.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Life Insurance Bombshell

• [02:58] Lyndal receives a fax at her newsroom—a $400,000 life insurance policy taken out on 17-year-old Sabrina, naming landlord Tom Preston as the beneficiary.
  • Lyndal: “Here it is. Here’s the motive.” [03:40]
  • Steve: “You don’t need a degree in tabloid news to understand this. Motive. Greed. One of the oldest in the book.” [03:43]
• The insurance policy is a game changer but, as Steve notes, it only provides circumstantial evidence—proof of motive, not murder. [04:07]

2. Friction and Alliance: Lyndal and Detective Leonard

• [05:01] Detective Leonard, previously indifferent after writing off Sabrina as a runaway, is confronted by Lyndal and her camera crew.
  • Leonard on his first impression of Lyndal: “She talks 100 miles an hour.” [07:11]
• Lyndal gets Leonard’s attention with the life insurance policy:
  • Leonard: “Why in the world would someone who’s not a relative or anything be taken out of $400,000 insurance policy on a teenage girl? … Became very apparent that there was something wrong.” [08:00]
• Despite their differences, they become an unlikely team—Lyndal, relentless and emotionally invested; Leonard, stoic and methodical.
  • Leonard: “She had put so much time and effort into it. I thought we were almost like a team at that time.” [08:30]
  • Leonard on Lyndal’s drive: “She just grabbed hold of it and wasn’t gonna let go.” [10:18]

3. The Search for Sabrina: Missing or Murdered?

• [11:03] Initial attempts to trace Sabrina using records, arrests, and social security turn up nothing.
  • Leonard: “That would raise your interest as to how she could have been gone for four years and not had contact with anybody … and be out and about still.” [11:36]
• The absence increases suspicion that Sabrina is dead.

4. The Riverside Discovery

• [13:01] A break comes when a fisherman finds a female body in the Colorado River, technically in Arizona.
  • Lyndal: “I remember getting the call from Detective Leonard who said a body that had been recovered from the river just days after this girl was reported missing. And I’m thinking, oh my God, this could be Sabrina.” [13:54]

5. The Agony of Identification

• The body cannot be ID’d by witnesses or basic dental records; dental work last reported when Sabrina was 12. [14:57]
• Lyndal: “The dental records were incredibly disappointing.” [14:57]
• DNA and fingerprints are complicated due to the state of the remains. Juvenile records are locked, while the hands from autopsy yield little. [15:34]

6. A Mother’s Contribution

• Lyndal pursues an alternative—items touched by Sabrina. Her mother Bobby Sue, in Texas, finds a beloved math certificate in Sabrina’s suitcase.
  • Lyndal: “They found this little math certificate.” [18:43]
• Lab experts manage to extract a usable fingerprint from both the certificate and the remains, achieving a match.
  • Lyndal (on the process): “They were perfect match for one clean fingerprint on that math certificate.” [19:44]
• Steve (on Lyndal’s reaction): “Linda was beside herself. Detective Leonard raised an eyebrow.” [20:08]

7. Confirmation of Murder

• The autopsy reveals no water in Sabrina’s lungs, signifying she was dead before her body entered the river. [21:34]
• Lyndal: “There wasn’t any water in her lungs. She was dead before she entered the water.” [21:34]
• The hyoid bone was fractured, a strong indicator of manual strangulation.
  • Leonard: “She had died of a manual strangulation.” [22:08]
• The case is officially reclassified as a homicide.

8. Raw Family Grief

• Lyndal calls Bobby Sue and the family with the tragic news, delivering both devastation and a form of closure.
  • Lyndal: “They were absolutely devastated because now they knew that their daughter, their niece, was dead. … but there was a relief that after so many years, they knew they had closure.” [22:38]
• The trauma deepens for Bobby Sue, who spirals into self-destruction and guilt.
  • Lyndal (quoting Bobby Sue): “I am a failure. I failed as a mother. I let my daughter die.” [24:17]

9. Targeting the Suspect, Tom Preston

• All suspicion points to Tom Preston, but evidence is circumstantial.
  • Leonard: “It all pointed towards Preston. However, there wasn’t a lot. Everything we had was circumstantial, meaning the evidence didn’t directly prove a thing.” [24:48]
• Despite taking the case to the district attorney, the lack of direct evidence stalls prosecution.

10. High-Risk Confrontation: Lyndal Interviews Preston

• Lyndal arranges a meeting with Tom Preston in a Las Vegas diner, going undercover and wired—against the wishes of her husband/editor, Dan.
  • Lyndal’s resolve: “I’m a lone wolf. I go out there, I do the story. I get the story. No one’s gonna tell me not to put a microphone on and go and ambush a killer. I’m sorry. No one’s gonna tell me not to do that.” [28:33]
• The tense encounter sees Preston initially charming but quickly suspicious. When Lyndal presses him, he abruptly ends the meeting and flees.
  • Lyndal: “He just said, I’m done, and he walked out. … This is just going pear shaped.” [31:01]
• She attempts a confrontational question as Preston escapes, captured on camera.

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• Lyndal’s Eureka Moment:
  "Here it is. Here’s the motive." — Lyndal ([03:40])
• On the Insurance Motive:
  "Why in the world would someone who’s not a relative or anything be taken out of $400,000 insurance policy on a teenage girl?" — Detective Leonard ([08:00])
• Leonard’s View of Lyndal:
  “She just grabbed hold of it and wasn’t gonna let go.” ([10:18])
• Lyndal’s Grit:
  “I’m a lone wolf. … No one’s gonna tell me not to put a microphone on and go and ambush a killer.” ([28:33])
• On Identification’s Challenge:
  “Dental records were incredibly disappointing.” — Lyndal ([14:57])
• On Family Devastation:
  “I am a failure. I failed as a mother. I let my daughter die.” — Bobby Sue (via Lyndal, [24:17])
• On Breaking the Story:
  “He just said, I’m done, and he walked out. Oh man, this is just going pear shaped.” — Lyndal ([31:01])

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Key Timestamps

• 02:58: Introduction of the life insurance policy—game-changing evidence
• 05:01–08:00: Lyndal confronts Detective Leonard, secures his involvement
• 13:01: Breakthrough—discovery of a Jane Doe in the Colorado River
• 18:43–20:08: Bobby Sue’s find and the successful fingerprint match from the math certificate
• 21:34–22:08: Autopsy confirmation—death by manual strangulation, confirmation of murder
• 22:38–24:17: Notification and emotional fallout for Sabrina’s family
• 24:48–25:53: Mounting case against Tom Preston; prosecutorial obstacles
• 28:33–31:46: Wired meeting between Lyndal and Tom Preston; tense, high-stakes confrontation

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Episode Tone & Character

The tone is investigative and tense, with both emotional reflection and hard-hitting journalism. Lyndal is depicted as dogged and daring, while Detective Leonard is world-weary but quietly caring. Emotional beats are handled with sensitivity, particularly around family trauma and Lyndal’s personal stakes.

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For the Next Episode

The episode ends on a cliffhanger, teasing revelations from Tom Preston’s son and former boyfriend Jim Bixel, suggesting new, explosive leads to be uncovered.

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This summary captures the essence, tension, and progress of Episode 4, giving listeners a vivid sense of the story’s direction and stakes—even if they've never tuned in before.

Transcript

[Steve Fishman]

Listen to all episodes of Killer Story ad free right now by subscribing to the binge. Visit the binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit getthebinge.com to get access. Wherever you listen the binge feed your true crime obsession.

[Lindell]

The binge.

[Steve Fishman]

Previously on Killer Story. That's when I noticed the teardrop.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

A bloody tear.

[Lindell]

This woman tells me that her niece is missing because I just want someone to love me. And they told me this nice man who seemed to be managing her career, Bobby sue, that was like, you know, Christmas has arrived. She said that he tried to control what she did.

[Shopify Ad Narrator]

And I told her, like, this guy's

[Lindell]

kind of full of shit. I looked down, it was just looked like a document, a boring document. But then I saw $400,000.

[Steve Fishman]

And at that point I said, okay, go for it. But be careful. This is Killer Story. I'm Steve Fishman. Episode 4 Dead Body Waking.

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[Steve Fishman]

A few weeks ago, documents came over the facts at the current Affair office and completely changed the narrative for the Past year, Lindo Marks had been investigating the disappearance of Sabrina Kidd. And now the fax delivered a copy of an application for a $400,000 life insurance policy on 17 year old Sabrina. The beneficiary, Sabrina's landlord, Tom Preston. For months this story has been Lindell's clandestine operation. Now she believes she has a game changing document in her hand.

[Lindell]

Here it is. Here's the motive.

[Steve Fishman]

You don't need a degree in tabloid news to understand this. Motive. Greed. One of the oldest in the book.

[Lindell]

This wasn't hearsay. This wasn't an interview. This was actual documentation. Proof that would take this to the absolute next level.

[Steve Fishman]

Yeah, Lyndall's thrilled. We hear it in her voice and we're rooting for her. But let's pause for a second. Lindell says it's proof, but proof of what? It doesn't prove that Sabrina was murdered. It actually doesn't even prove Sabrina's dead. And without that, it's difficult to accuse someone of murder. Lindell's aware of this?

[Lindell]

We didn't even know. You know, she still might just be missing.

[Steve Fishman]

So Lindell needs to locate Sabrina or her body. She doesn't have the resources to do that on her own. She needs help. The help of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. That's right. The same cops who've been indifferent to this case for years.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

I happened to be there. So they said, well, here you're handling it.

[Steve Fishman]

This is Detective Robert Leonard. He's the cop who's about to be interviewed by the reporter from New York with the funny accent. And he's not just any cop. He also happens to be one of the cops who looked at the case of the missing teenager four years ago and then dropped it. He's at his desk at police headquarters. He's wearing his usual billowy white shirt and thin black tie. An undertaker's uniform, more or less. And he's watching Lindell march toward him with a film crew in tow. Camera, sound, the whole Hollywood works. Lyndall spots Detective Leonard across the floor of the detective unit. A big open plan office with bright lights overhead, which aren't particularly good for makeup. On tv, a couple dozen desks are spread out.

[Lindell]

Phones ring, Homicide detectives all working in their little stations.

[Steve Fishman]

Linda walks toward the detective and takes a seat in front of him.

[Lindell]

He kind of had short, cropped brown hair, wore a suit.

[Steve Fishman]

Her first impression, not promising.

[Lindell]

He kind of looked at me in like silence. He's one of these people that didn't say a lot.

[Steve Fishman]

All right. So Detective Leonard is. Let's call it relaxed. But then he's not expecting much. He did a look at Sabrina's case file when she first disappeared. To him, back then, Sabrina looked like a runaway just from her past history,

[Detective Robert Leonard]

you know, her arrest and then not wanting to stay with her mother, coming back to Las Vegas, that just kind of made it seem like she was. What would you call fly by night flitty.

[Steve Fishman]

I mean, runaways. You see a lot of them in Las Vegas. And Detective Leonard, he's busy with murder cases, thank you very much. So Detective Leonard stares absently at this journalist with the Australian accent who for some reason has come to talk about this dusty old case.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

I meet her for the first time, and besides not being able to understand her, I mean, she talks 100 miles an hour.

[Steve Fishman]

But Lyndall has come with a plan to get his attention.

[Lindell]

I told him that a nurse had gone out to do a physical. He kind of raised one eyebrow.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

My first reaction was, oh, yeah? Who said that?

[Steve Fishman]

Meanwhile, Lindell's fingering some papers sitting in

[Detective Robert Leonard]

her lap, and then all of a sudden, she throws out this copy of the policy at me. I didn't know anything about this.

[Steve Fishman]

His head swivels from the documents in his hands to look at Lindell. Some cops would resent being set up this way. Detective Leonard's detective brain switches on.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

Why in the world would someone who's not a relative or anything be taken out of $400,000 insurance policy on a teenage girl? That. I mean, it was. It became very apparent that there was something wrong.

[Steve Fishman]

Lyndall got his attention, and now Detective Leonard climbs on board. He wants to know more. He wants to work together.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

She had put so much time and effort into it. I thought we were almost like a team at that time.

[Steve Fishman]

They are an odd pairing. The morose detective, he doesn't show his

[Lindell]

emotions and he's, you know, just goes along. Nothing stresses him out. He's at one level the whole time.

[Steve Fishman]

And the speed talking Lindell, she is

[Detective Robert Leonard]

just bubbly all the time. I don't know how you can be bubbly like that all the time.

[Steve Fishman]

Truthfully, Detective Leonard kind of likes Lindell's cheerful personality. Plus, she's already done so much work on the case, and he appreciates that, too. Did you ever say to yourself, why is this girl Lindell so interested in this case?

[Detective Robert Leonard]

I really couldn't understand it.

[Steve Fishman]

Detective Leonard doesn't know about Lindell's personal stake about the attack when she was a teenager. She keeps that to herself. And Leonard has things that he doesn't mention to his new partner, Lindell. In his career, he's investigated over 200 murders. All those murders, he hates them, and he hates the murderers. But he bottles up that emotion.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

Well, you take it home, but you can't. Can't discuss it. I mean, it's with you all the time, but you can't. You don't never talk about your cases. It just wasn't done. So if you did anything, you go to the bar after work and you drink with your friends and try to forget.

[Steve Fishman]

Okay. Back to the investigation.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

She's like a bulldog. She just grabbed hold of it and wasn't gonna let go.

[Steve Fishman]

The bulldog. Lyndall was definitely the team leader.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

Most of my stuff was just following up on leads that she would give me.

[Steve Fishman]

So Lindell gives Detective Leonard his marching orders. Get me a body. How do you find a missing girl?

[Detective Robert Leonard]

The first thing you want to do is to find the girl. If you can't find the girl, well, then. Well, maybe there is a body.

[Steve Fishman]

I mean, you were very tenacious on finding.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

Well, I was being pressed to do that by somebody else, too.

[Steve Fishman]

He means by Lindell.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

I had a number of sources where I could get information from credit bureaus and Social Security and things like that, and I utilized all that I could.

[Steve Fishman]

Nothing turned up. How about arrests since she disappeared?

[Detective Robert Leonard]

So she would probably be arrested just like most of them girls war at that time. Checking, though, we came up with nothing. And that would raise your interest as to how she could have been gone for four years and not had contact with anybody or anything and be out and about still.

[Steve Fishman]

Detective Leonard is saying Sabrina couldn't be out and about still.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

So then you start looking for bodies.

[Steve Fishman]

The stakes are high here. If Detective Leonard doesn't find one, the case collapses. If he can't locate a dead body, it's unlikely a prosecutor will pursue a murder case. As they say in the murder business, no body, no murder. The detective gets on the phone, calls sheriff departments in and around Las Vegas.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

I checked. Nothing was shown. That would have possibly been her.

[Steve Fishman]

So Detective Leonard expands the search area.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

There was nothing on our side. So then we checked with the Mohave County Sheriff's Office.

[Steve Fishman]

That's in Arizona, just across the Colorado river from Nevada. And after weeks of swings and misses, a hit.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

Some fishermen had recovered a body, taken it over to one of the sites on the Arizona side of the river, and then contacted authorities. Called me a fisherman. I've never thrown a fishing line in that river.

[Steve Fishman]

Technicalities, Tom and Linda Percival, whose voices you heard in episode one, had come upon a dead female body while boating on the Colorado river at the spot they found her. The Colorado river flows along the border between Nevada and Arizona.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

So anything that's found on the river could go to either jurisdiction.

[Shopify Ad Narrator]

Could be either one.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

So I think they just set the

[Steve Fishman]

closest one, which was in Arizona. So a Nevada Jane Doe had been hidden away in Arizona.

[Lindell]

I remember getting the call from Detective Leonard who said a body that had been recovered from the river just days after this girl was reported missing. And I'm thinking, oh my God, this could be Sabrina.

[Steve Fishman]

Could be.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

I had to identify the body as being Sabrina's in order to go to our case.

[Steve Fishman]

That was the next challenge. Identify the body. Detective Leonard showed the boaters photos of Sabrina, but they couldn't identify her. Uh oh. There are other ways to ID a body at autopsy. A doctor had removed a portion of the jaw to check against dental records. Detective Leonard contacted Sabrina's dentist. But Sabrina hadn't had an appointment since age 12 when she had braces. Bobby sue wasn't going to let Sabrina into the world with crooked teeth. But Sabrina's dentist said he couldn't be certain of a match.

[Lindell]

The dental records were incredibly disappointing.

[Steve Fishman]

They tried DNA, but techniques were rudimentary back then. And a pair of waterlogged hands didn't yield the quality needed. Another avenue is fingerprints at autopsy. Back then, the practice was to cut off the hands below the wrist and. And store them until needed. Which means that in some gray storage locker somewhere, hands float in jars waiting to be ID'd. First thing, Detective Leonard puts the prints from the Jane Doe through a national database of fingerprints.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

They did not come up with any matches for the fingerprints. She was a juvenile, so that would negate a lot of her possibility of having been fingerprinted.

[Steve Fishman]

Sabrina had been arrested for shoplifting, but as a juvenile and juvenile records are closed. And so Lindell is distraught. Will another perpetrator skate free without identification? Is this as far as Sabrina's case can go? Bubbly Lindell turns fearful that I'm going

[Lindell]

to be silenced, I'm going to be silenced and I'm going to lose the story. These are the things that are going through my mind. How am I going to do this? How am I going to tell this story?

[Steve Fishman]

The team of Lindell and Detective Leonard convene once again at the sprawling Las Vegas homicide offices. Every avenue they've walked down has hit a dead end. Any ideas, anyone? Detective Leonard takes out some photos of the bloated body. Perhaps there's a clue there. They leaf through them.

[Lindell]

I remember just how hideous it is, seeing the bloated body and bloated face and bits of skin that's just been eaten by various fish. Yeah, and how hideous that is to see a beautiful young girl has become this misshapen, bloated blob, barely human. A drowning, I think, is probably one of the worst things to see for once.

[Steve Fishman]

The hard bitten detective chimes in, well,

[Detective Robert Leonard]

it's obvious you haven't seen a burn victim then.

[Steve Fishman]

So flipping through the photos turns out to be a diversion. Horrifying and kind of intimate. But no help in identifying the body. They need something else.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

She kept talking about, was there some way to get fingerprints or something? We had no records of any fingerprints. They had no place to look.

[Steve Fishman]

Or did they? Linda wonders, how about the mother, Bobby Sue? She must have something with Sabrina's fingerprint on it. The detectives view. All right, Linda, have at it. So she calls Bobby sue in Texas. In the days after Sybrina went missing, her mother, Bobby sue kept in touch with Preston. He told her he couldn't understand why Sabrina would take off and he wanted to help find her. He returned Sabrina's suitcase. One of two of her suitcases were on a Greyhound bus. And that suitcase was now sitting in Bobby's mother's home in Texas.

[Lindell]

I phoned them and I said, have you got anything, anything she may have touched?

[Steve Fishman]

It had to be a clean print, preserved, unsmudged for the past four years. A long shot, to be sure. Bobby rummaged through the suitcase.

[Lindell]

They found this little math certificate.

[Steve Fishman]

Sabrina's math achievement certificate, received when she was 13 years old. She obviously cherished it. A sign, however distant, that someone once saw potential in her. Sabrina had slipped it into a plastic sleeve in her photo album. She packed it in one of the two suitcases she traveled with. The one that happened to have made it to Texas.

[Lindell]

We didn't know would it have a fingerprint or not.

[Steve Fishman]

Detective Leonard sent the certificate to the lab technicians, turned to the disembodied hands from the Jane Doe. That previous fingerprint wasn't usable any longer and they faced a new challenge. An aged and waterlogged hand won't yield a usable fingerprint. But you could peel off the skin, slip it into a gloved hand and usually get a clear print. You had one shot per finger.

[Lindell]

You know, the skin had been eaten by various creatures in the water and had been, you know, scaled back so the skin had been really interfered with. But they were perfect match for one clean fingerprint on that math certificate,

[Steve Fishman]

Linda was beside herself. Detective Leonard raised an eyebrow.

[Lindell]

Very professional, you know. Doesn't get carried away with emotion.

[Steve Fishman]

But that couldn't last forever. Detective Leonard is in his 70s now.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

Things have changed. Nowadays.

[Steve Fishman]

No. Nowadays, I think you're saying you're emotional every few minutes.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

Yes, and I don't know why.

[Steve Fishman]

Every few moments his eyes well up with tears and his voice gets full. Maybe making up for lost time.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

That's been suggested.

[Steve Fishman]

The Sabrina case was maybe one of those he was making up for soon after he'd retire.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

And I was basically, to be honest with you, just sick of people and how they act. All I wanted to do was get away.

[Steve Fishman]

After they found the body and identified it. Now the investigation shifts. Now they can ask the crucial questions. What happened to Sabrina? Did she drown? Was she the victim of foul play? Was there, in fact, a murder? The ID'd body came with an autopsy report. This is Lori Miller. You heard her at the top of episode two. She reviewed the report.

[Lindell]

There wasn't any water in her lungs. She was dead before she entered the water.

[Steve Fishman]

Had she drowned, her lungs would have been filled with water.

[Lindell]

A hyoid bone is a little like U shaped bone. It is positioned in such a way that it would have to be a fluke or a really freaky accident for it to break. Other than someone's hands or a rope or something being wrapped around that area and it being compressed to the point that it actually fractures.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

She had died of a manual strangulation.

[Steve Fishman]

This was no longer a missing person

[Detective Robert Leonard]

case, a full blown murder investigation.

[Steve Fishman]

Now a grim duty informed Sabrina's mother and aunt. They'd clung to the hope that Sabrina had been kidnapped and was just missing. Linda volunteered to make the call. Detective Leonard was happy to let her.

[Lindell]

They were absolutely devastated because now they knew that their daughter, their niece, was dead. And at the same time, I think there was a relief that after so many years, they knew they had closure. I think. I think there's nothing worse than not knowing.

[Steve Fishman]

Lyndall thought of Bobby sue and of tv. She flew Bobby sue to Kingsman, Arizona, to the little cemetery where. Where the unidentified body of a young woman had been interned with a prayer for the deceased since she had no name. At the gravesite, Bobby sue trudged toward a headstone marked with the name Jane Doe. Tape was placed over it. And on the tape, Bobby wrote one word. Sabrina. As she wrote, you could see her pink fingernails, just like Sabrina's. It was heartbreaking. And Bobby Sue's Heart did break. Now she knew with cold certainty she'd never speak to her baby again.

[Lindell]

Bobby pretty much destroyed herself after Sabrina died. She really got heavy into drugs and everything else.

[Steve Fishman]

That's Dewana, Bobby Sue's niece. Sabrina's cousin. She'd moved in with Bobby sue after Sybrina disappeared.

[Lindell]

Every time she cried, she blamed her own self for abandoning her daughter, not taking care of her daughter.

[Steve Fishman]

What would she actually say? What were her words?

[Lindell]

I am a failure. I failed as a mother. I let my daughter die.

[Steve Fishman]

So much for the benefits of closure. The investigation didn't have closure either. The biggest questions were still unanswered. Who killed Sabrina and how to prove it? Detective Leonard had questioned people like the dodgy ex boyfriend. Nothing came of those interviews. Everything he'd heard led Detective Leonard to target one suspect.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

It all pointed towards Preston. However, there wasn't a lot. Everything we had was circumstantial, meaning the

[Steve Fishman]

evidence didn't directly prove a thing. You could infer, you could draw conclusions from what they had, but there was no forensic evidence. Nobody had witnessed the crime. Detective Leonard brought the case to the district attorney, said he thought Preston was the killer.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

He thought it was a prosecutable case. He would never actually say that he thought he was guilty.

[Steve Fishman]

Linda was nervous. They'd come so far. They had the insurance policy, but that too just created suspicion, not certainty. Lindell needed something more than inference and suspicion, or else these months of investigation could be a waste. Lindell contemplated in her mind, there is one person who knows everything.

[Lindell]

She calls him, totally conned him.

[Steve Fishman]

And Preston agrees to meet her at a diner. She's going to lunch with a man who may be a killer. For Lindell, Tom Preston is the face of evil. She wants justice for Sabrina and by proxy for herself. So her hope is to entice Preston to divulge information that could be used against him.

[Lindell]

I wanted to hear what he had to say. The first time I spoke to him was on the phone to see if he'd actually meet with me, to talk to me. And he was just charming on the phone.

[Steve Fishman]

Lyndall could do charm, too.

[Lindell]

Wow, you poor man. This is awful. You've put this girl up and you've given her so much support, and here she goes and runs away. And that must be awful for you. You know, we're doing this story on runaway teens in America, and that's what he thought. He had no idea.

[Steve Fishman]

She had no intention of doing a story on runaway teens. Meanwhile, back at the Current Affair offices, Dan hears about Lindell's plan to meet Preston and loses it.

[Detective Robert Leonard]

I was.

[Steve Fishman]

I was frightened for her. He was by now her husband as well as her news editor. I mean, here's a guy that might have murdered Sabrina. You know, I just thought it was too dangerous. So Dan gets Lindell on the phone in Las Vegas just as the crew is wiring her. A tiny mic is hidden under her lapel, which is covered by her hair. Under no circumstances are you to talk to Preston without other people around. Is he talking to his husband or boss? Lyndall doesn't care.

[Lindell]

I'm going to be wired. The crew's going to be right there.

[Steve Fishman]

I said, okay, but I want the crew in there with you.

[Lindell]

They're going to be around the corner. They're going to hear what's going on.

[Steve Fishman]

Dan gets angry. I do not want you alone with a murderer.

[Lindell]

I'm doing it. It's too late. Gotta go.

[Steve Fishman]

Click. Lindell's not going to give up this interview. In a way, her life since a teenager has led up to this. She didn't confront her own attacker. She's going to confront the person she believes to be Sabrina's.

[Lindell]

I'm a. You know, I'm a lone wolf. I go out there, I do the story. I get the story. No one's gonna tell me not to put a microphone on and go and ambush a killer. I'm sorry. No one's gonna tell me not to do that.

[Steve Fishman]

But Dan's not done. He calls the crew, which has now moved to a rooftop across from the diner. Get your fucking asses in there right now. And they hung up on me. Lindo gets ready to head into the diner as planned. She's wired. The crew stays across the street.

[Lindell]

It's high tension. High. High adrenaline. I was very aware.

[Steve Fishman]

Lyndall straightens her blazer, checks her mic. Testing, 1, 2, 3.

[Lindell]

It was the Peppermill Diner on the Strip in Las Vegas.

[Steve Fishman]

Elvis and Tarantino both ate there. To Lyndall, the diner looks dingy and dark. Preston got there early.

[Lindell]

He'd chosen a booth in the deepest corner of this diner. I was shocked when I first laid eyes on him. He was this very big man, very large man. And I walked up to him, and of course, I had to shake his pudgy hand. And that kind of made me feel sick.

[Steve Fishman]

But Preston isn't what Lyndall expected.

[Lindell]

So sweet and seeming like, so innocent. And he sat there like this big, oversized, cuddly little teddy bear. And he cared for Sabrina. He didn't know where she went. I mean, it was easy to believe that he genuinely cared.

[Steve Fishman]

He's convincing. So is Lindell. She talks about her missing children's story with emotion. A story that doesn't exist.

[Lindell]

I had to play the game of being sweet and cordial and respectful and lovely to meet you and thank you for your time. What I was hoping, I think, was that he might actually say something about what he thought might have happened to Sabrina.

[Steve Fishman]

Suddenly, Preston freezes. His expression changes. He realizes this luncheon date isn't as described.

[Lindell]

I probably asked one too many questions about Sabrina and his relationship with her. He just said, I'm done, and he walked out. Oh, man, this is just going pear shaped.

[Steve Fishman]

Lyndall's on her feet now and shouting into her mic to the crew.

[Lindell]

So I'm following him out, and I'm now saying to the crew who were waiting on the top of a building opposite, get down now. Come and get a shot of him. Get down now. He's onto me. They rushed down, and just as they turned the corner, and with a moment to spare, I was able to say, Mr. Preston, can you tell me what happened to Sabrina? There are a few people that have told me things about Sabrina. I'd like your comment.

[Steve Fishman]

Preston looks stunned as he gets into his car. Lindell didn't get the information she wanted, but she's happy. Preston looks guilty of something, and he just sped off. Linda would never know that just a year earlier, Jim Bixel, Sabrina's old boyfriend, got a mysterious phone call from his best childhood friend who just happened to be the son of Tom Preston. Because I need to talk to you now. And I said, what. What's this about? And he says, this is about my fucking dad. He goes, he's a fucking asshole, Jimmy. He says, and I'm in trouble. I need to talk to you. That's next time on Killer Story. Holy crap. You know? And I'm like, what? What is going on? He had something to do with Sabrina's disappearance 100% when he gets up there

[Lindell]

and he says he's never lied. Now, I know better than that. I mean, I. I've been around a

[Steve Fishman]

lot of the lies that we've told. Don't want to wait for that next episode. You don't have to unlock all episodes of Killer Story ad free right now by subscribing to the binge podcast channel. Search for the binge on Apple podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on apple. Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. As a subscriber, you'll get binge access to new stories on the 1st of every month. Check out the Binge Channel page on apple podcasts or getthebinge.com to learn more. Killer Story is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Company Number one creator and host is me, Steve Fishman Executive producers Arlindo Marks, Kevin Wardes and Jonathan Hirsch from Sony Music Entertainment producers Jackie Pauley, Hannah Biel and Austin Smith Production coordinator Austin Smith series consultant Emil Klein sound designer Brit Spangler Fact check Ryan Alderman Our Lawyers are at Clarislaw. Special thanks to Emily Rasik, Steve Ackerman, Catherine St. Louis, Sammy Allison, Allison Haney, Fisher Stevens and the glamorous Rhea Julian. We also thank our agents at wme, Evan Krasek, Marisa Hurwitz, Ben Davis and a special thanks to Shelly Shenoy for voiceover casting. Our voice actor for this episode is Lindsey Smart for Bobby Sumay. And a special special thanks to the inimitable Emile Cl. Sa.