The Missing Intern & The Congressman: Life Sentence — Ep. 5 | MK Confidential

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**Gary Condit** (0:30)
Courage. I learned it from my adoptive mom.

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**Megyn Kelly** (0:45)
In July of 2016, a woman who calls herself Babs Proler is living out of a country inn and suites in Annapolis, Maryland. She has just been evicted from her home and she has a golden retriever, Buddy, with her.
One afternoon, the hotel's sliding glass lobby door closes on the dog and Buddy, spooked, will not move or go back inside.
A man Babs has never seen before quickly crosses the lobby to help. He gathers the animal up and carries the dog into the hotel for her. I thought he was a dog lover, she will say later. He tells her his name is Phoenix. Babs shares her story with ABC's 2020

**Babs Proler** (1:26)
He was very kind, he was very friendly. He seemed like a very personal, nice guy. Was there a spark going on here? No, there was no spark.

**Megyn Kelly** (1:37)
They become friends over the next few days. Phoenix watches Buddy when Babs needs the help. They talk about Buddhism, about the military, about a daughter he says he lost somewhere in his life.
Then he begins to fill in the rest. He has just gotten out of prison and he shows her his prison identification to prove it. 20 years inside.

**Babs Proler** (1:58)
I said, 20 years? You must have almost killed someone to be in for 20 years. And his answer was, I wish it would have only been one person.

**Megyn Kelly** (2:07)
He tells her the things he did to get there, the things he lets her know he is still capable of. He tells her that a man can melt 10 foam cups down into a single shank, drive it through another man's eye and, in his words, penetrate that shell into their brain and take their life.
What turns their friendship is the violence of his talk and the fear that comes with it, the fear that he might make good on a threat against her ex-husband. So she does the only thing she can think to do to protect herself. On July 11th, quietly, she begins to record him in the car, driving around Annapolis and on the concrete floor of her storage unit while he helps her move her boxes.

**Babs Proler** (2:53)
I only started taping because I truly was afraid.

**Megyn Kelly** (2:56)
By the end, she has about seven hours of Phoenix talking. The man who calls himself Phoenix is named Armando Morales, a five-time felon and a leader of a California prison gang. Six years earlier, his was the single voice that persuaded a jury to send Ingmar Guandique to prison for 60 years for the murder of Chandra Levy. He is living in this hotel because the government has put him here. Morales is about to be its star witness all over again because there will be a second trial. The conviction his testimony delivered has been thrown out. And here is why. On the stand, Morales swore he had never been a government informant, that speaking up about Guandique was the first time in his life, he had ever helped law enforcement. But that was not true. And the proof was sitting in the government's own files, a letter documenting that Morales had cooperated with authorities before, years before he ever said a word about Guandique.
A rule called Brady from the 1963 Supreme Court case Brady versus Maryland, requires prosecutors to turn over any evidence like that. Evidence that is potentially exculpatory or helpful to the defendant, to the defense. Here, the letter undermined the credibility of a key state's witness. The defense was entitled to it. But the prosecution never produced the letter until 2011
The Fresno County Sheriff's Department alerted the US. Attorney's Office prosecuting Guandique, that its star witness had cooperated with law enforcement in the past, exactly what he swore under oath he had never done. Fresno County had interviewed Morales years earlier.