Talking Dateline: Conversations at CrimeCon Part 2

**Lester Holt** (0:05)
Hi, everybody, Lester Holt here. We've got a special Talking Dateline for you this week. It's part two of a conversation Josh Mankiewicz had at this year's CrimeCon with Ellison Barber, his NBC News colleague and host of the Netflix video podcast, Allegedly. The conversation was taped in front of a live audience at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. And the audience had some questions of their own for Josh, which we'll play later.
But first, Ellison, who is a lifelong Dateline fan herself, asked Josh what it's like talking to families who have suffered the unimaginable.

**Ellison Barber** (0:44)
Hi, guys. I'm so happy to be here at CrimeCon. I'm so honored to be here with you. How has your CrimeCon been?

**Josh Mankiewicz** (0:50)
It's been wonderful. I've seen a lot of familiar faces. I gather this is, if it's not the biggest CrimeCon, it's certainly pretty close. It's a lot of people.
I cannot find my way around Caesars.

**Ellison Barber** (1:11)
No one else can either.

**Josh Mankiewicz** (1:12)
But I bring you greetings from everybody at Dateline, particularly, what's his name?

**Ellison Barber** (1:21)
Let's talk Dateline. One of your old episodes I recently watched, I think it's called Haunted.
It's they're investigating a pair of double murders that took place in Nebraska years apart. Oh, yeah. Police are starting to realize they think that they're dealing with a serial killer.

**Josh Mankiewicz** (1:36)
Right.

**Ellison Barber** (1:37)
One of the things in that, that I thought a lot about after was there's a moment, one of the victims was an 11-year-old. I think his name was Tom Hunter. And there was a moment when you're doing interviews with some of the families and you say something about how grief presents itself in different ways. And for me, I think about that a lot when I'm covering stories because it's hard to know how anybody will react in a traumatic situation.
But I also think of recent cases where there have been instances where people have felt like the family has come under a microscope unfairly. There was a case recently involving a dentist where he and his wife were murdered. And there was a situation where the brother-in-law, and I've spoken to him, where he talked about people speculating when he was doing media interviews of thinking that he was behaving in a way and he had nothing to do with this and how painful it was for him and his family. And I was curious when you think about that concept of sort of grief presenting itself in different ways, what have you learned in that regard and how does it impact the way you cover stories?

**Josh Mankiewicz** (2:35)
One of the things I never say in Dateline and that I try not to use if we get interviews on this is the idea that settling one of these cases, figuring out who it was, maybe locking somebody up, represents something called closure. Because that doesn't exist. And it's a nice idea, but it is not reality.
And I hate it when people talk about, well, now the family can have some closure. They're not, that's not going to happen. Your life is split in half, the part before and the part after. And, you know, I think that sort of the ripple effect of murder is something that isn't as well understood. It's something I certainly didn't understand until I started covering this, which was about about 20 years ago at Dateline.
And the extent to which things that happen, these losses that families suffer, end up affecting people who maybe didn't even know the person who was killed.
You know, kids who grow up and then have families of their own, and then they have a kid in junior high who says, can I go to the sleep away? And the answer is absolutely not, you cannot. And they say, well, everybody else is going, yeah, well, well, you're not. And parents sometimes can't really explain why that is. And it's because it mirrors too directly the situation that their own family member went through. So I mean, I think that the idea that distance and time sort of mitigates what people feel. Again, it's like closure. It's a nice idea. It's not always real life.

**Ellison Barber** (4:38)
And some of these stories that you've done in the families that you have gotten to meet.
Nicole Schmidt is here, Gabby Petito's mom. You and I both been able to meet her and she's such an amazing person. And for me, when I think about that story and all the news coverage that came around it, I find hope because I think that it is the lesson that comes from it is that there is a chance that everybody can do something that can have a big impact. How has that been for you, seeing families go through the unimaginable, being put in positions they never asked for, having their lives irreparably changed, and then choosing to use it to do something?