Talking Dateline: The Grudge

Blayne Alexander (0:05)

Hi, everyone, I'm Blayne Alexander, and today we are Talking Dateline. I am joined by my dear friend, Andrea Canning, to discuss her episode, The Grudge. Hi, Andrea. Hey, Blayne. If you haven't seen it, you can watch the episode on Peacock or listen to it in the Dateline podcast feed, and then of course, come right back here. Later on, we'll have a clip from Andrea's conversation with Judge Salas four years after the original Dateline episode aired, and that's when they catch up about grief and parenting. But first, let's talk Dateline.

Andrea Canning (0:32)

Let's do it.

Blayne Alexander (0:33)

Andrea, I have to say, I mean, as soon as I started watching this, I just came into it blind, didn't know anything but the title.

But as soon as I saw the judge, I said, gosh, she looks so familiar. And then immediately said, I remember this case. This happened in 2020, right during kind of like the heart of COVID.

Andrea Canning (0:48)

Yes.

Blayne Alexander (0:48)

And it was such a huge story at the time.

Andrea Canning (0:51)

Such a horrific situation where Judge Salas describes a wonderful weekend with her son Daniel, her husband, Marc. Daniel had friends staying. They had gone home and Judge Salas and Daniel were in the basement, and they hear the doorbell ring. And Daniel says, I'll go get it. He bounds up the stairs. His dad had already answered the door.

And it's a man dressed as a delivery driver, only he's not a delivery driver. And this is at a time, as you said, during COVID when people were getting a lot. And we get so many now deliveries. But remember, we didn't get nearly as many before COVID. Oh, yeah.

Blayne Alexander (1:31)

Everything was delivery.

Andrea Canning (1:32)

Right, everything was delivery. And so I don't think they thought twice about answering the door for a delivery man, as many of us may not even today think twice about it. But it was during a time of a lot of packages, they opened the door and it was a man who shot Marc and shot Daniel.

And Esther could hear it, the gunshots and she ran upstairs. And it was just so incredibly heartbreaking. Her son, of course, Daniel did not make it, her only child. And it turned out that it was a man who had been in her courtroom, who she is a federal judge. He was angry with her.

Even though she had ruled in his favor, it was about the draft. He has all these issues with men's rights, and he felt that women should be in the draft as well. And she had said that the case could move forward, but it wasn't moving fast enough for this man.

Blayne Alexander (2:32)

When you think of a motive like that, and somebody who just, somebody that you kind of come across in your daily life, don't think much about the interaction, don't think, I mean, she has many hundreds of people come in and out of her courtroom every day, I'm sure. I remember when she said in the episode with you, yeah, I remember the case, but it wasn't one that like stuck out. They were thinking about more high profile cases where there could have been more anger. It just really kind of makes you think about, gosh, these professions that you don't necessarily think would be dangerous can be, can really put you in somebody's crosshairs like this.

Andrea Canning (3:05)

Yeah, I mean, she's a federal judge. We know that not everyone who leaves a courtroom is happy, right? That, you know, there's a lot of anger in courtrooms, a lot of things that go on.

I think this man clearly had a lot of anger about a lot of things.

Blayne Alexander (3:22)

Yeah, there was a piece that really stuck out to me where somebody told her that he hated you as soon as you were born, because she was a woman and she's Hispanic, right? When I heard that, immediately thought, okay, yes, she ruled in his favor, but here is this woman, this minority woman that he has to go to who's in a position of power, somebody like him would have a great deal of resentment over that, just based on what we know about him.

Andrea Canning (3:44)

I mean, you would think so, yeah. Like we're not in his head, but everything we've heard and read and seen, that makes total sense. Sure, yeah. And meanwhile, what he resents is everything that I love about her.

It's like, I see the other side of that, that here's a woman who came from absolutely nothing. And she told this incredible story about her life and all of her siblings and they had a fire and she had a single mom and no money and got herself through law school and worked her way up to federal judge.