Verdict watch in Navy optician's murder trial. Accused killer's ties to Zizians. Plus, AI scams.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Hey, good morning.

**Andrea Canning** (0:02)
It's the start of another workday for the Dateline team.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:05)
They present pretty hard in this interrogation.

**Andrea Canning** (0:08)
Our producers are catching up on breaking crime news.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:11)
There's always been a question of whether she would get some sort of new deal.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:16)
It's a super high-profile case.

**Veronica Mazaka** (0:18)
Oprah gets involved.

**Andrea Canning** (0:21)
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's July 9th, and here's what's on our docket.
In Pennsylvania, prosecutors connect a woman accused of murdering her parents to a cult-like group called the Zizzians.

**Rich Shapiro** (0:35)
They see themselves as people who can essentially save the world.

**Andrea Canning** (0:39)
In Dateline Round Up, a judge puts the attorneys on both sides of the Karen Read wrongful death suit on blast, and the US. Coast Guard releases dramatic new video from its investigation into a woman who went missing in the Bahamas.

**SPEAKER_6** (0:53)
Okay, any weapons on board?

**SPEAKER_7** (0:55)
Okay, do not reach for them.

**Andrea Canning** (0:57)
Plus, NBC News chief consumer investigative correspondent Vicki Nguyen will be here to tell us about AI-powered scams on social media and how to avoid becoming the next victim.

**Vicki Nguyen** (1:08)
In this era, remember that seeing is no longer believing.

**Andrea Canning** (1:12)
But before all that, we're heading back to San Diego County where we're on verdict watch at the murder trial of Navy optician Larry Millete.
For seven weeks, jurors at the San Diego County Courthouse listened to sensational testimony about infidelity, spell casters and poison.
Prosecutors have called on 66 witnesses to build their case against Larry Millete, a man they say was so consumed by his wife Maya's desire to end their marriage, that he murdered her and then dumped her body somewhere it's never been found. From day one of the trial, the defense has pointed to the lack of physical evidence that a murder even took place. But when it came time to present their case, the defense called just three witnesses offering their own surprising theory about what could have happened to Maya the night she disappeared. Then on Wednesday, the jury finally got the case and started deliberating. Here to take us inside the final days of the trial is NBC 7 investigative reporter Alexis Rivas. Welcome back, Alexis.

**Alexis Rivas** (2:18)
Hi, Andrea. Always great to be here.

**Andrea Canning** (2:20)
Yes, we love having you on the podcast. I mean, it's almost like this trial felt like it just went on and on and on. It's been a long trial.

**Alexis Rivas** (2:29)
I will say we were all gearing up for a three month long trial and were shocked watching the defense sum up their entire case in three hours.

**Andrea Canning** (2:38)
Who did they call as witnesses to make their case?

**Alexis Rivas** (2:41)
So they just called three witnesses. They started with two canine officers. They said that their dogs didn't detect Maya's body inside of the Millete house. And I think that really underscores a major point for this defense. There's no crime scene, none. There is no blood spatter, nothing. No proof that the homicide even happened.

**Andrea Canning** (2:59)
The defense did not stop at planting seeds of reasonable doubt. Their third witness was a private investigator who came up with a theory about where Maya may have gone that night. Tell us about that.

**Alexis Rivas** (3:10)
This guy is really interesting. He's considered a pretty top notch private investigator here in our legal community.
His main point was to refute one of the biggest, maybe more incriminating pieces of evidence from the prosecution that, hey, the last video we have of Maya alive, she's walking into her house, and none of these surveillance cameras from any of her neighbors ever got her leaving her house. Well, he finds a way to essentially get in and out of the house without being caught on any of the cameras. He suggested for that to happen, you could hop over the fence and there's a drainage ditch. That ditch runs kind of right behind their backyard, all the way to a hiking trail that's pretty popular here, and that trail also leads into kind of a neighboring suburb. So technically possible. Now, whether or not they actually wanted people to really believe that that's what happened, that's different, it's a reasonable doubt case. They just need just enough.

**Andrea Canning** (4:03)
Yeah, absolutely. He's not trying to prove or say what happened. He's just trying to say, here's another possibility.
Alexis, how did the prosecution handle this private investigator on cross-examination?

**Alexis Rivas** (4:15)
Well, he had to speak about how he never tried doing this at night, and it would have had to happen at night. I think that stuck in a lot of people's minds, at least in the gallery. I overheard Maya's family talking about that same thing.