Five Miles From Home - Ep. 1: Mickie

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

There is so much NFL on ESPN right now.

Monday Night Football, plus pregame and postgame. NFL Live, NFL Primetime. Everything you need to stay on top of every game, every week.

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Unbelievable.

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And now, NFL Network is on the ESPN app. More football, more coverage, more ways to watch. Football's on, all season long on ESPN and streaming on the ESPN app.

Courage. I learned it from my adoptive mom. Hold my hand.

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You hold my hand.

SPEAKER_3 (0:36)

Learn about adopting a team from foster care at adoptuskids.org.

SPEAKER_4 (0:40)

You can't imagine the reward.

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Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.

Keith Morrison (0:57)

What was she thinking as she secretly slipped into a car wearing just her pajamas? Her mind at turmoil as she rode down Interstate 80 across northern Nevada.

Would she, reveal what she knew? She was just 18, tiny, 98 pounds and barely 5 feet tall. But the story she took with her on that torture drive, was, she knew, going to change everything.

SPEAKER_3 (1:30)

She came and we talked and we recorded the conversation with her permission, and it was dynamite.

Keith Morrison (1:37)

The man she had come to talk to was a distinguished attorney. If anyone could advise her, surely it would be he, about the story she said she had to tell.

SPEAKER_4 (1:48)

It had been eating at me and eating at me. I couldn't sit there and live with myself, knowing what I knew.

Keith Morrison (1:55)

And then out it came, the whole terrifying story, possibly true and possibly a careful and cunning deceit.

SPEAKER_4 (2:06)

I was too in shock and numb. I didn't know what I was feeling. It was like I was in a daze.

Keith Morrison (2:16)

Still was, she said, about the thing that happened and about who was there and what happened after and what might happen next in a small town deep in the American desert.

Celia Costanzo (2:29)

They deserve to be in hell for doing that.

And there is nothing they can say or do that will make it better. They cannot fix this.

Keith Morrison (2:40)

Some things aren't fixable. Some things are hard to explain.

Christina (2:45)

It doesn't make sense. I still wonder to this day, why? What's the real reason?

Or what even really happened?

Keith Morrison (2:57)

I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Five Miles From Home, a podcast from Dateline.

Episode 1, Mickie.

There is a place, a remote, windy place, tucked away in a sliver of northeast Nevada, next to the Utah border. You'd certainly see it if you cruised along Interstate 80 Casinos, five of them, flashing away like some Vegas in miniature. A golf shot or two off the highway. The town of 4,000 or so spilling out onto the surrounding desert. And if tempted by a meal or a rest or a roll of the dice, if you pulled off that highway, you'd be welcomed by a great, grinning cowboy or the improbable towering image of one, 63 feet high, garish and weirdly charming as it waves a welcome. A giant concoction in neon and steel they call Wendover Will, for West Wendover, name of the town. And a reminder of more innocent days.

Christina (4:15)

That's pretty much the only thing Wendover was known for.

Keith Morrison (4:18)

Her name is Christina. She knows what happened to innocents, knows all too well.

Christina (4:24)

Now, you know, everybody's like, oh, Wendover, oh, do you know that girl? And it's a question, unfortunately, that gets asked, because we have a lot of tourists that come into the casino towns from all over. And that's what Wendover is known for now.

Keith Morrison (4:40)

Yes, even now, all these years later. And how did it begin? That memory is as clear as the morning sun on the high desert. And cold, like the desert wind that Thursday morning in March 2011

Sixteen-year-old Michaela Costanzo, Mickey, as everybody calls her, was up early preparing for school. She was a creature of habit, was Mickey. She stuffed her signature polka-dotted black bag full of track gear and then made sure she had her lanyard full of keys with her favorite charm, little panda bear.

Well, Mother Celia, a single mom, quickly dressed so she could drop Mickey at school before heading to her hosting job at one of the local casinos. All very routine, except for one little thing, the thing about coming home after school.

Celia Costanzo (5:40)

She was supposed to walk home, which is not a normal thing for her.

Keith Morrison (5:46)

Usually, Mickey would ride home with Christina.