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Nancy Grace
New Details on Investigation Into Missing Pregnant Army Wife; Case of Missing Pregnant Army Wife
Aired March 10, 2011 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAT LALAMA, GUEST HOST: Breaking news tonight in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, an Army wife and mother, five months pregnant with her second child, vanishes. In a shocking twist, it`s revealed the father of Bethany Decker`s unborn child is not her Army husband, it`s her boyfriend, and according to cops, he`s the last person to see Bethany.
This just in tonight. We uncover brand-new details about the mystery boyfriend who we just learned lawyers up. And we also discover exactly what cops seized from the boyfriend while executing a search warrant. What does the evidence reveal? All this, but cops are still insisting there`s no evidence of a crime and no suspects. Tonight, what happened to Army wife Bethany Decker?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NANCY GRACE, HOST: Bethany Decker, five months pregnant, goes missing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: January 29th is the last day she was last seen.
GRACE: Neither the husband nor the boyfriend (INAUDIBLE) be able to produce a solid alibi.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Police know that both of these men saw her that day.
GRACE: The husband is with her that morning.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They were staying at the grandparents` home together. She then at some point leaves.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The boyfriend saw her in the afternoon.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Early report that she was at her apartment that day. That`s where we suspect it was that the boyfriend perhaps last saw her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She lived with the boyfriend in that apartment together for two months. He moved out in early February.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her husband, Emile, had just deployed to Afghanistan on February 2nd.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was noticeably not there.
GRACE: That was February 2nd. They do not report her missing until February 19?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I find that incredibly troubling.
GRACE: I do, too!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LALAMA: Good evening. I`m Pat Lalama, in for Nancy Grace. New developments in the search for an Army wife, pregnant with her second child, missing without a trace.
For the very latest, let`s go out to NANCY GRACE producer Rupa Mikkilineni, who is following the case live from Washington, D.C. Rupa, the latest, please.
RUPA MIKKILINENI, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: Right, Pat. I spent today in the neighborhood where Ronald Roldan -- we know now the name of the alleged boyfriend, who is the father of the unborn child of Bethany Decker. His name is Ronald Roldan, 30 years old, and he`s now -- he moved out of the apartment where he was residing just a few weeks ago with Bethany Decker in her apartment, and he`s now living with his mother. And this is at the home in Centreville, Virginia, where the search warrant was executed earlier this week and where police seized several items.
They initially executed a search warrant that said under suspicion of first degree and second degree murder, and they were searching for all sorts of things, Pat. We`re talking about bodily fluids. We`re talking about fingerprints. We`re talking about weapons, notes, photographs, anything that might suggest as to what could have happened to Bethany Decker.
Now we have the search warrant return, and we`ve learned that they did collect certain items. They seized two BlackBerry cell phones from this house, three other phones, a Mac notebook computer, unified video recorder, photos, ticket stubs, a receipt from a gas station, immigration papers and a black duffel bag with documents in it.
LALAMA: You know, what I`m wondering, Rupa -- isn`t it important to search that apartment where they were? I mean, you know, the house, the apartment -- there`s more than one location to search relative to this man, correct?
MIKKILINENI: Absolutely. And my understanding is that police did go to this apartment where she was last residing. Now, let me just take you back a little bit, Pat. Remember, she vanished -- the last day she was seen by anybody was January 29th, just after she went on a holiday with her husband, her what police refer to as estranged husband. And then they went to Hawaii, came back, spent the evening at her grandparents` house on the 28th. Then she returned to this area and returned to her apartment where she was living with her boyfriend, Ronald Roldan. And this is on the 29th.
Now, according to search warrant affidavits, she was seen -- apparently, both the boyfriend and her husband both saw her that day, her husband earlier in that morning, on January 29th, and then later that afternoon, she saw her boyfriend. And then, of course, the husband took off for military duty in Afghanistan. And he was deployed on February 2nd, and she never showed up to say good-bye to him.
LALAMA: Absolutely. Alex -- or, excuse me, Alexis Weed, NANCY GRACE producer -- you know, it`s interesting to me. We`re talking about seven cell phones. I mean, there`s a lot of technology in what law enforcement has been able to retrieve from his property, correct?
ALEXIS WEED, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: Right, Pat. There were a lot of cell phones at this home. There were two Verizon LG phones, two Verizon BlackBerry cell phones, three or four other phones, in addition, a Nokia phone, Samsung phone, a computer, a Mac notebook computer, also a video decoding device, Pat, also a memory card that would go into a cell phone, photographs, ticket stubs. But you`re right, really heavy on the electronics.
LALAMA: Paul Penzone, former sergeant of Phoenix PD and child advocate, what does that say to you, all the technology? Could that be a key? Something about him? Maybe he`s got, you know, a few identities working?
PAUL PENZONE, FMR. SGT., PHOENIX POLICE DEPARTMENT: I think what it is, is -- my understanding is there were a few other people living at that apartment also. They have to look at everything that was available to him and see what kind of communications he had, if there were text messages, and really try to surround this with what were his patterns of behavior and what was he doing on and around the time that she went missing. So you don`t want to overlook anything now, gather as much as possible. And as you learn more about where this young lady is, or what occurred to her, then you`ll have information to surround that investigation with.
LALAMA: Rupa, back to you for a second. You know, it`s been now a few weeks. He has lawyered up, we understand?
MIKKILINENI: That`s right. When I was actually at his house yesterday, as well as today, I did see one of his attorneys. I`m not sure what her name is, but I believe she might be the attorney that represented him on prior criminal history that he has. And Pat, that`s what`s interesting here. This guy has a criminal background. And I can go through with some of this background with you right now. We`ve got...
LALAMA: Please do. Yes.
MIKKILINENI: Yes. We`ve got a 2006 public intoxication and destruction of property charges, which he was found guilty for. We also have 2000 concealed merchandise charges, also found guilty. In 2001, identity fraud. In 2006, DWI. Now, this is a first offense, and he was also found guilty of this.
LALAMA: Now, there is a little bit of violence -- I don`t know if violence is maybe too harsh a word. He broke a window in a restaurant. He broke a window in a female`s car, is that correct?
MIKKILINENI: That`s correct. One of the probable cause affidavits mentions this. This is the public intoxication and destruction of property charges which he was found guilty for.
LALAMA: Eleanor Odom, senior attorney, National District Attorneys Association, death penalty-qualified, can you glean anything from that police record that we`re hearing about?
ELEANOR ODOM, NATIONAL DISTRICT ATTORNEYS ASSOC.: Well, I think one thing you can glean, Pat, is that he`s got a temper. There are some anger issues here going on. And that`s something I`d want to look at because you`ve got two separate incidents. And we always like to say a leopard doesn`t change his spots. So certainly, he`s got something here in his past that I want to look at as far as his anger.
LALAMA: John Manuelian, criminal defense attorney, are we overstepping ourselves, at this point, based on this, you know, relatively minor criminal record, or do you see something in here?
JOHN MANUELIAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: We might be. But remember something. There`s two people that have motives to kill Ms. Decker. One could be this boyfriend that lived there that was jealous because she took off to Hawaii with her ex-husband. And the ex-husband could be jealous because she`s pregnant with this person`s child.
So we shouldn`t just rush to judgment because this person has some minor offenses in his background. But it does paint a picture of somebody that`s angry, and it`s possible that because of this anger problem, he may have been the person to kill this -- Ms. Decker.
LALAMA: Peter Odom, also a defense attorney, what`s interesting to me is that we seem to know so little about her relationship with both of these men. But to me, that`s the link that would help us understand who`s angry and why they`re angry.
PETER ODOM, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, clearly, she was probably being secretive about both relationships with each of them. She was hiding the boyfriend from the husband and trying to downplay her relationship with her husband to the boyfriend.
But Pat, what troubles me is throwing around -- you and the other prosecutors on the show throwing around this phrase "lawyering up." When you say "lawyering up," do you mean exercising the constitutional right to protect himself from the police investigation? If, indeed, he`s lawyered up, I hope everybody that`s listening understands that that`s not any kind of an indication of guilt. There`s not a single suspect -- there`s not a single suspect that`s been named in this case at this point. They don`t even know if a crime has been committed.
LALAMA: Well, there hasn`t. There hasn`t. But to "lawyer up" means to protect oneselves -- you know, one`s self if you`re under the glare of the legal spotlight. He might feel he`s headed for trouble.
PETER ODOM: Well, he also might feel that he needs protection from overzealous police, and it`s perfectly appropriate to hire a lawyer to help you in that circumstance. And I hope nobody would draw an adverse inference from it.
LALAMA: Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst, author, "Deal Breakers," you know, we were talking earlier before the show about, you know, what motivates this young woman. She goes to Hawaii with her husband. She`s living with another guy. I`m not casting any aspersions on her life. I don`t know what`s going through her mind. But she could have been in a very confused state about what she wanted in her life, correct?
BETHANY MARSHALL, PSYCHOANALYST: Yes. A couple things stand out to me. It`s so unusual to me that she had a 17-month-old infant and that her family offers to take care of the infant so that she can go to school. That makes no sense. We know of teen moms, high schoolers, who have babies and they find a way to parent and to continue their education. So what else was going on in this young woman`s life that she could not mother her own child?
And then we think about this guy. Paul Penzone made an excellent point about the technology and the boyfriend, that it`s important to look at patterns of communication in the technology. What I would wonder about the boyfriend -- did he have a pattern of jealousy with girlfriends, of stalking, of trying to assume control over them, of breaking into their accounts because...
LALAMA: Well, I...
MARSHALL: Yes?
LALAMA: Let me interrupt real quickly because, Rupa Mikkilineni, isn`t it true that he allegedly wanted her to take pictures of her locations, where she is, to prove to him that she`s not doing anything untoward?
MIKKILINENI: Right. Well, we don`t know this for sure, but Pat, the search warrant affidavit states that the family, Bethany Decker`s family, was told by Bethany Decker that her boyfriend was quite possessive, very controlling. And an example of this was having her take cell phone photos of herself and text message those back to him, so that at any given moment when he was not near her or around her, he would know exactly where she was.
LALAMA: And Alexis Weed, is there any evidence that maybe she planned to just get away from him? And you know, we`ll talk more about her husband in a minute, but for now talking about the boyfriend. Could she have been planning to leave him, if she was going to Hawaii with her husband?
WEED: Pat, at this point, there`s no sign that she planned to leave. The early reports were that when the police went into her apartment, they searched it. And while she had maybe some plans to be out of that apartment by the end of January, there was no sign that she intended to leave for any extended period of time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Why would someone go on her FaceBook account and pose as her?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whoever is accessing and mimicking her FaceBook account is going to be the person responsible for whatever it is that happened to Bethany.
GRACE: Were they trying to make friends and family believe she was alive?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Every last one of the search warrants that has been released says it`s on suspicion of first degree or second degree murder.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They have also stated in this affidavit that Bethany told them that the boyfriend was very abusive and very controlling.
GRACE: The search warrant -- it says murder.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Talks about seeking photos of Bethany, fingerprints, biological stains, fluids, trace evidence, records, receipts, weapons, notes, controlled substances, all evidence pointing to a possible murder.
GRACE: She`s pregnant. By the boyfriend. Not the husband.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The last time the husband saw her was in the morning of January 29th. It`s the boyfriend, the last person to see her, known by police, known to be alive, is the afternoon of January 29th.
GRACE: It`s the boyfriend`s baby. I`m not sure how we know that, but we know that. Did the husband know that? That`s the big question.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What role does this boyfriend have in all of this?
MIKKILINENI: I am standing here in front of the home where 30-year- old Ronald Roldan, boyfriend of Bethany Decker, missing pregnant mom, who went missing three weeks ago -- he is now residing here at this home with his mother after moving out of the apartment with Bethany Decker.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LALAMA: I`m Pat Lalama, in for Nancy Grace. I want to go out to Dr. Evelyn Minaya, women`s health expert and doctor. You know, my question is -- and we`re so hoping that this young woman still is alive and that all is well. But as time goes by, here`s a pregnant woman, concern for her and we`re also concerned for her unborn child.
DR. EVELYN MINAYA, WOMEN`S HEALTH EXPERT: I absolutely agree. And you know, you have to remember one thing, and if you go back in history, the most violence that`s against women, believe it or not, in pregnancy is somebody that they know. And it`s usually murder. So it`s your boyfriend, it`s the husband, and those are the people to look at. But most importantly, what are we going to do? This poor woman, she might not (ph) have no nutrition. So if she has no nutrition, she`s not giving any nutrients to that unborn child, as well. And remember, we have now follow- ups, sonograms and really crucial tests that we need to know if the baby is healthy or not, that she`s probably not even getting because we don`t know where she is.
LALAMA: You know, I want to go back to the issue of the search warrant stating the suspected crime being first or second degree murder. Yet this is still missing person. There`s no suspects. Paul Penzone, can you put that in some sort of perspective for us?
PENZONE: Absolutely. And I know that law enforcement is often cautious about assuming foul play until they have something definitive. But if you look at the circumstances surrounding this -- the vehicle still being there, no activity whatsoever for whatever financial support she might have, no activity on her phone, and what we know on her FaceBook was it was perpetrated by someone else -- it shows you that it`s very unlikely that this girl is in a safe place (INAUDIBLE) she could have gone on and taken care of herself if she needed get away.
Therefore, the presumption is that something, unfortunately, did happen. Now, when they get some physical evidence or something to indicate that more strongly, then they`ll take the next step. But right now, as you do the investigation, you have to establish your search warrants based off the crime that you believe is likely to have occurred.
LALAMA: Lots of people interested in this case, one of them being Connie from Kentucky. What is your question this evening, Connie?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thanks for taking my call, Pat.
LALAMA: Sure.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Has Bethany`s boyfriend taken the lie detector test yet?
LALAMA: Very good question, Rupa Mikkilineni. Any lie detector tests going on?
MIKKILINENI: Pat, we don`t know yet if he has, but we have been told by police that he is being very cooperative.
LALAMA: Beverly, New York. Good evening.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Pat. What I`m wondering is, the husband, is he back in the United States? And why aren`t they looking at him because he could have snuck back to the apartment that night because he left, what, three days later?
LALAMA: Well, you know, it`s a good question, Alexis Weed, because the fact of the matter is -- and we`re assuming that it could be one of these two men because of their relationships with her. But I can see whether either one of them might blow a gasket knowing she`s involved with another man. Will her husband come back? Is he being questioned? What`s going on with him?
WEED: Pat, we know that police have asked him to come back, but we don`t know -- we`ve made repeated requests to find out whether or not there are any measures that have been taken to actually bring him home. We don`t know at this point.
LALAMA: Well, it`s a process, though, isn`t it? I mean, you have to appeal to the Army, and they just can`t let him go to come home because his wife is missing.
WEED: Right. It`s up to the commanding officer, as we understand it. And so you`re right. There is a process. He is in Afghanistan. His base is in a remote location and so it would take some time.
LALAMA: You know what, Eleanor Odom? What I think about it is here`s a young woman who is going to classes and apparently had a job as a waitress. Now, if she`s missing, I would think her employer would say, Gee, where`s Bethany? Let`s call somebody. Or her professors would say, Gee, where`s Bethany? We should call somebody. It`s so odd to me that there wasn`t an alarm sounded earlier.
ELEANOR ODOM: And that`s right, Pat, because what we`re missing are those crucial minutes, those crucial hours when she was first missing, when there could perhaps have been more evidence collected. And I wonder, too, if maybe she was late to work, or skipped work and classes, and that`s why there wasn`t a concern at the time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She always saw her husband off when he was deployed back to the military, back to Afghanistan. So that day, on February 2nd when he deployed, she was noticeably not there. That is the first time that has happened, and that`s very suspicious.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Hawaiian vacation, they leave on January 18th. They visit Bethany`s father, who lives there. They come back on the 23rd.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The family says at the time that they went to Hawaii, they did not understand or know that there were any marital troubles. They say this in this affidavit.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On the 28th, they`re at the maternal grandparents` home, where they stayed when they came back from this vacation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s the 29th that she`s last seen.
GRACE: The Hawaii vacation -- I`ve got a feeling that`s where things started to boil over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LALAMA: I`m Pat Lalama, in for Nancy Grace. Rupa Mikkilineni, you know, this guy, Ronald, he just seems like a really mysterious man. I don`t know if he`s guilty of anything, but there`s so little we know about him. Does he work, for example? Does he have a job?
MIKKILINENI: Pat, this has been so difficult to find out. You know, I`ve been here, I`ve been in the neighborhood where he`s living right now with his mother. It`s a four to five-bedroom home that he`s staying in. He`s staying in the basement where I believe his mother rents out the basement from the people that live upstairs. So he`s been staying there for the last few weeks.
The neighbors don`t know him. And so I`ve also visited the area where Bethany Decker was living a few months ago -- not the apartment that she had disappeared from, but the apartment she`d been residing in with her husband at one point, and then also with this boyfriend up through December, through the Christmastime period. And again, they kept to themselves. The neighbors don`t know them. I knocked on all the doors.
So the communities where they live, I guess, you know, essentially, the neighbors aren`t such a community and they don`t -- they`re not too friendly. And it`s also very transient. you know, they`ve only lived in each of these places a few months at a time.
LALAMA: Very interesting. John Manuelian, criminal defense attorney, right now, the only thing that you could say about this guy is that he was inconsistent about stating the location of her car. Not enough to hang your hat on for a prosecutor.
MANUELIAN: Not as a prosecutor. But as the police officers, that`s a flag. To them, they`re thinking, Why did this guy lie about that one little fact? What is he hiding? So that raises a flag. And as the other guests said before, I think at some point in time -- I think your producer said this. At some point in time, the police officers would want to give somebody like this a lie detector test. But as you said, he, quote, unquote, "lawyered up" at this point.
LALAMA: But Peter Odom, you know, that`s all that`s happened. And if we find no trace of her, if there`s no forensic evidence, if there`s nothing they find on those cell phones, I mean, if there is foul play, it could seem like the perfect foul play.
PETER ODOM: Well, it`s pretty early in the investigation right now. What I need to emphasize is that just because someone says something different about a little detail like where a car is, that doesn`t necessarily mean that anybody lied about anything. In fact, if that`s the only problem with his story, I think he`s doing pretty well at this point, given the vagaries of human memory.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She is pregnant.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Five months pregnant.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Search warrants were issued. And in there is the allegation that this boyfriend is the father.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Police are searching her boyfriend`s home.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They have done extensive searching in the area surrounding her apartment, but nothing came up from those searches.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NANCY GRACE, HOST: Bethany Decker, five months pregnant, goes missing.
RUPA MIKKILINENI, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: January 29th is the last day she was last seen.
GRACE: Neither the husband nor the boyfriend be able to produce a solid alibi.
MIKKILINENI: Police know that both of these men saw her that day.
GRACE: The husband is with her that morning.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: They were staying at the grandparents` home together. She then at some point leaves.
MIKKILINENI: The boyfriend saw her in the afternoon.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Earlier report that she was at her apartment that day. That`s where we suspect it was that the boyfriend perhaps last saw her.
MIKKILINENI: She lived with the boyfriend in that apartment together for two months. He moved out in early February.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Her husband Emile had just deployed to Afghanistan on February 2nd.
MIKKILINENI: She was noticeably not there.
GRACE: That was February 2nd. They do not report her missing until February 19?
MARC KLAAS, PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER, KLAASKIDS FOUNDATION: I find that incredibly troubling.
GRACE: I do, too.
MIKKILINENI: This home where Ronald Roldin has been staying for the last few weeks was searched by police. A search warrant affidavit was executed on this home and various items were seized.
The search warrant affidavit was returned today and we now know seized from this home where Ronald Roldin has been staying with his home for the last few weeks. Items such as telephones, cell phones, video recorders, a unified video recorder apparently, photos, ticket stubs, receipts from a gas station, and immigration papers, and a black bag with other documents were taken from this home earlier this week, while investigators are thoroughly investigating the case of Bethany Decker.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
PAT LALAMA, GUEST HOST: Pat Lalama in for Nancy Grace.
Dr. Evelyn Minaya, woman`s health expert. As the -- as time goes by, you know, the hourglass, you know, ticking away there, it`s harder and harder to come up with any kind of forensic evidence, correct?
DR. EVELYN MINAYA, M.D., WOMEN`S HEALTH EXPERT: Correct. Absolutely. And remember, it`s also with the elements, the rain, the cold. How are you going to pickup anything in that time frame of her being missing? It`s almost going to be a month. Almost two months later that we are not going to have any forensic evidence maybe to track back.
And even a scent of a dog can even pick up or anything else like that for her so it`s really tragic, it really is.
(CROSSTALK)
LALAMA: And you know Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst and author of "Dealbreakers." You know someone presumably, or at least according to authorities using her Facebook, pretending to be her, creepy beyond belief, is it not?
BETHANY MARSHALL, PSYCHOANALYST, AUTHOR OF "DEALBREAKERS": It is so creepy --
LALAMA: Buying time essentially.
(CROSSTALK)
MARSHALL: Well, true. And stalking her. And maybe even trying to get information from friends and family about her activities in the past so they can confirm whether or not they should be jealous.
And the boyfriend, I have to say, the fact that he would move in with a married woman who has a 17-month-old baby, impregnate her, make her take pictures of her whereabouts so that he can keep track of her, this is the kind of guy who could become very stabilized -- destabilized if she goes off to be with the husband.
I don`t think it`s apples to apples between the boyfriend and the husband. It seems that the boyfriend is the one who has the criminal history and the one who is jealous and who`s a stalker.
LALAMA: But you know what, Paul Penzone, I mean there`s really -- you know, I suppose there`s something maybe a military wife syndrome, you might call it. Your husband`s away, you`re feeling lonely. You could be easily inspired to go off with someone who makes life sound good while he`s away.
PAUL PENZONE, DIRECT OF PREVENTION PROGRAMS, CHILDHELP.ORG, FMR. SERGEANT, PHOENIX PD: Unfortunately those are not uncommon circumstances, you know, for men at war and the wives at home.
I think there`s really two critical windows we need to look at. First, if she was reconciling her relationship with her husband when he returned, why was there that three-day window from when he last saw her to when he left?
But more importantly with the boyfriend, as controlling and possessive as he is, there was a considerable window where if he had not had any contact with her, then why didn`t he follow up with that? Why didn`t he -- why wasn`t he on her door? Why wasn`t he calling her family?
That`s why the electronics are so critical. The kind of correspondence that went on prior to her going missing and then what occurred afterwards. I think he would have been bothering everybody close to her because he was so controlling and possessive.
LALAMA: Yes. And that`s a scary thought.
Eleanor Odom, senior attorney, National District Attorney`s Association, death penalty qualified. This whole Facebook issue is really, really fascinating to me because that`s someone who`s thinking, who`s calculating, who`s thinking how can I buy myself a few weeks, how can I make people think she`s still alive.
I mean there`s a certain -- you know, intellectual capability there.
ELEANOR ODOM, FELONY PROSECUTOR, DEATH PENALTY QUALIFIED: You`ve got to remember, too, somebody who`s using her account knows her well enough that they know her password.
For example, I know my husband`s password. I get on his Facebook page and pretend to be him. So it`s going to be somebody close enough to her to have that type of information.
LALAMA: Well, back to Paul Penzone for just a second. You know, you`re a former sergeant, Phoenix PD, and child advocate. You know you`re talking to someone who`s not technologically qualified here.
In terms of Facebook, can you -- I mean is it just a matter of knowing someone`s password? Can cops look into that and figure out who it might have been who got into that page?
I`m not even really sure how to pose the question. But can they track that person? How easy is it?
PENZONE: And I fully understand what you`re asking. Definitely.
LALAMA: Thank you.
PENZONE: Forensic examiners who are -- who are competent with computers and technology, they can go in there and find IP addresses and other information that will indicate where those transmissions, where that communication came from. If not from her original laptop. If it came from other locations.
And the previous point is very strong one. Those closest to her are either the ones who likely can access her account so who has the motive to want to make it appear as though she is still out there, she`s still communicating when in fact we know that`s highly unlikely.
LALAMA: Let`s get back to our callers for a second.
Sheeba in Illinois, good evening, Sheeba.
SHEEBA, CALLER FROM ILLINOIS: Hi, Pat. My question is, have they gone to her apartment that she was living in, and Luminoled it and did all this stuff to see if there was anything, any trace evidence there?
And I`d like to know --
LALAMA: Good --
SHEEBA: Is this her first indiscretion while her husband has been in the military?
LALAMA: Very good questions -- to you -- from you, Sheeba.
Alexis Weed, what do we know about Bethany and her, you know, relationships with anyone? And I`m curious, what`s happened inside that apartment where she lived with this guy?
ALEXIS WEED, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: Yes, we`ve tried to reach out to the family. They`ve been very quiet about what her behavior was romantically. As far as we know, there`s just this boyfriend at this point. We know about the husband obviously.
In terms of Luminol, we don`t know. We know that the apartment was searched. Don`t know the particulars. We don`t have a return from that location.
LALAMA: But -- and Alexis, is there any evidence that one guy knew about the other? When she went to Hawaii with her husband, was that presumably - - I mean, let me go back a little bit.
I know that legal paperwork has -- police paperwork has referred to him as her estranged husband.
WEED: Right.
LALAMA: So we can assume they weren`t together anymore.
Did the boyfriend know she was going off to Hawaii with her husband and was she trying to reconcile with her husband?
WEED: That`s a big question here, Pat, we don`t know. We know that the police, like you said, calling the husband estranged. But we do not know whether or not the husband knew the father of the child, whether he thought he was the father of the child.
There have been reports out there that the father could have conceived this child based on when he was home with Bethany previously.
LALAMA: Very interesting.
Another caller, please. Michelle in Michigan. Good evening, Michelle.
MICHELLE, CALLER FROM MICHIGAN: Hi, how are you?
LALAMA: Great, thank you.
MICHELLE: Yes, my question is -- yes, how long has he been stationed in Afghanistan? And when was the last time that he was home on leave to be with his wife before this last time that he was home?
LALAMA: Rupa, do you have any knowledge about his leaves prior to the one that he was just able to take?
MIKKILINENI: Right. We know that they do have a 17-month-old baby together. The husband and Bethany Decker. We also know that he was in Afghanistan before. We also know that he was in the vicinity of Virginia in this area, not in Afghanistan, around the time that this child was conceived, which is five months ago.
Now we also know that he was back here in the country, again, around the time that she disappeared. And then got redeployed again on February 2nd.
LALAMA: Peter Odom, does it concern you at all that it seems that people have not stepped up to the plate to say, gee, we haven`t talked to our family member in a few weeks?
PETER ODOM, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: No. This is a woman that had several different parts of her life. She was a student. She worked. She was an army wife. And she was very close to her family.
The family members assumed when they didn`t see her for a couple of days she was at school. The people at school when they didn`t see her for a couple of days assumed she was with her family. The people at work, et cetera.
So it wasn`t unusual for these people not to have contact for several days. Really unfortunate for the investigation. But not necessarily suspicious.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: No one has spoken to Bethany, who is five months pregnant, since the family gathering in Maryland.
GRACE: Five months pregnant with a second child.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Inside her apartment, no sign that she packed bags or had plans to leave.
KIM NELSON, MOTHER OF MISSING PREGNANT ARMY WIFE, BETHANY DECKER: It`s so hard not knowing anything and not being able to reach her.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a missing person.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: 21-year-old Bethany Decker.
GRACE: Search warrants, and it says suspicion of murder.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: They want to search the home where the boyfriend is living with his mother. They want to search the Facebook page, cell phones, computers, joint bank account between Bethany and her husband.
GRACE: We know that she`s five months pregnant. We know now that it`s the boyfriend`s baby.
MIKKILINENI: We know that the boyfriend was living with her up until February. And that he just moved out.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: She hasn`t been seen since January 29th.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And bank records, credit cards, her cell phone. There`s been no activity since January 29th.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: But he moved out after she allegedly disappeared on January 29th.
KLAAS: The boyfriend has to explain exactly his timeline.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The husband takes of to Afghanistan because he`s a military guy on duty. So he leaves on February 2nd.
KLAAS: The husband does need to come home and talk to the authorities and explain exactly his timeline.
GRACE: This is about possible murder.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
LALAMA: I`m Pat Lalama in for Nancy Grace.
Back out to Eleanor Odom, senior attorney, National District Attorney`s Association. Do you think that the police know more than they`re telling us?
E. ODOM: Pat, they always know more than they`re telling because they`ve got to keep things quite close to the vest, so they`ll have those things when they`re looking and investigating the case. So of course they`re not going to tell the public everything.
LALAMA: Well, I`m wondering, John Manuelian, if they`d even -- I mean, is there any chance they`re looking at anyone else besides the boyfriend and the husband?
JOHN MANUELIAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, we`re not going to know.
LALAMA: Would they wasting their time?
MANUELIAN: Well, again, the two closest suspects to this victim is who they`re going to be looking at. And this is going to be her husband Decker in Afghanistan and the boyfriend now. Those are the two only suspects that were with her -- seen with her last. So unless there`s some sort of other evidence, DNA or otherwise, they`re going to stick with these two people.
LALAMA: Alexis Weed, NANCY GRACE producer, what do we know about her husband besides that he`s in the military, and serving his country? Is he broken-hearted to have heard about a boyfriend? Is he talking to police? Does he have a criminal record?
WEED: We haven`t found any criminal record for the husband, Pat. And we also know, though, that he`s been serving in the U.S. National -- Army National Guard. And other than that, you know, that`s where he has spent most of his time, as far as we know.
LALAMA: Any kind of criminal record that we know of?
WEED: Not that we know of, no.
LALAMA: Bethany Marshall, you know, and again, making no judgments at all, but it just seems like such a unique scenario that we have going here, such a young woman, already with one child, with a husband. Why is the child living with the grandparents? I suppose you could argue it`s too much for her, she`s trying to get through school and she needs help.
But it just seems a little strange to me. I wish I knew more about what was going on inside of her life and her mind.
MARSHALL: Yes, Pat, you and I were talking about that before the show. And I think it`s such a critical question. Because the family did not report her missing, even though she was not in contact with her own 17- month-old baby for three weeks.
What do they know about her that would lead them to believe that that was OK? Did she have a psychiatric illness, impulsivity, hyper sexuality is secondary to a bipolar illness? Was she impulsive in her personal or romantic relationships?
Did she have a drug or alcohol problem? Or was she very sort of infantile and child-like and they were just co-dependent and always covering up for her?
If they could step forward and talk a little bit more about that, that would provide such an important clue.
And you were talking about the husband and the boyfriend. There`s a reason that we look to those two figures, because it is in the context of our most intimate relationships that homicidal feelings emerge. Betrayal, jealousy, envy.
You have something I want. I`m going to take it from you. You took something away from me, now I`m mad at you. It`s not strangers that feel homicidal, it` our intimate acquaintances.
LALAMA: Paul Penzone, former sergeant, Phoenix PD, and child advocate, are we putting too much weight on the fact that the family didn`t seem to be alarmed with all that time passing?
PENZONE: It`s a shame. And this has been said before by other guests. You`d hope that they are more astute to these issues like this so they can react more quickly to help the investigation.
One thing I`d like to talk about for just a second which I find interesting is law enforcement always keeps things close to the vest because they don`t want to disclose anything that`s going to undermine the investigation.
In order to interview somebody effectively, they have to be in front of you, so you can see the nonverbals, their behaviors when you asked them certain question and look for deception.
I find it interesting that law enforcement doesn`t seem to be in a real hurry to bring that husband back quickly, which makes my gut tell me that maybe the focus is really is more so on the boyfriend, otherwise they`d have him on the first plane back working with the military.
LALAMA: But the military certainly would cooperate if they felt there was something going on there, I`m sure.
Back to our callers. Have Jason in Illinois. Good evening, Jason. Your question?
JASON, CALLER FROM ILLINOIS: Good evening. Thanks for taking my call, Pat.
LALAMA: Sure.
JASON: My question was, they said someone was on her Facebook account pretending to be her, which is identity theft.
LALAMA: Right.
JASON: If I`m not mistaken, didn`t they say the boyfriend was arrested once for identity theft? Which would make it easy for him to get her password, having experienced identity theft in the past?
LALAMA: Let`s find out.
Alexis Weed, what about that? Has he been -- I`m sorry, I`ve forgotten whether you told me if it was identity theft he was arrested for at one point.
WEED: Pat, he was charged in 2001 with identity theft but he wasn`t prosecuted for that offense.
LALAMA: All right. Well -- but at least charged with it?
WEED: Right.
LALAMA: So it might be something he might be good at doing perhaps. We don`t know for sure.
Karen in Florida. Good evening, Karen, your question.
KAREN, CALLER FROM FLORIDA: Hi, Pat, thanks for taking my call. Was the husband --
LALAMA: No problem.
KAREN: -- on leave in the U.S. when the child was conceived, even though we know that he is not the actual father? And did he know she was pregnant at the time they went to Hawaii? Perhaps she realized she was pregnant, had not told him that the baby was not his and planned to say that she got pregnant while in Hawaii knowing that he was going back to Afghanistan. And that once the baby was born, so many months earlier than the husband thought, she could just say the baby came early.
LALAMA: Very interesting conspiracy.
Rupa Mikkilineni, what do you think about that?
MIKKILINENI: Right. I think it`s interesting to note that if you look at the move-in, move-out date of her apartment, she shared an apartment for two months with this boyfriend, Pat.
So this means that if she`s cohabitating in this apartment with this boyfriend and she cohabitated in the previous apartment with this boyfriend around Christmastime, the husband had to have some knowledge that she was having another relationship.
Now it`s very unclear whether he knew that the baby, the unborn baby, belonged to him or to the boyfriend.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: This was a boyfriend and this was the father of her unborn child.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Foul play.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: She`s dead.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Homicide.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: They were searching with scent dogs in a wooded area nearby.
MIKE BROOKS, HLN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: 21-year-old Bethany Decker just disappeared.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The case of a missing army wife.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: 21-year-old Bethany Decker.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Her army husband, 21-year-old Emile Decker.
BROOKS: She didn`t show up at the airport to say good-bye to him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If she`s not showing up at the airport to say good- bye to her husband going off to war, I already smelled a rat --
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: We`re told that the husband is cooperating.
BROOKS: She still is married. Her husband`s deployed and she`s got a boyfriend?
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
LALAMA: Pat Lalama in for Nancy Grace.
Paul Penzone, you know, the search warrants her -- Bethany -- as a victim. Is that just a technicality?
PENZONE: I don`t believe so. Probability here looking at the totality of the circumstances, they`re going play both sides. They`re not going to say suspects, they`re not going to say crime yet. But they`re going to be doing their due diligence to make sure this investigation starts quickly.
LALAMA: John Manuelian, criminal defense attorney, you know, on the one hand, hate to -- you know, beat this to death here, but on the one hand the family says we talked to her continuously, she would never let time go by. And then it`s, oh, we figured she was busy at school, she`s got a lot going on.
Is there an inconsistency there for you?
MANUELIAN: It certainly looks like or it sounds like she`s living a double life and it`s possible that her parents don`t really know what she`s doing. It`s possible that she had an affair with this boyfriend and the husband and the family has idea and are clueless as to what her lifestyle is all about. So I`m not surprised that the parents are confused about the facts of this case at this point, frankly.
LALAMA: Dr. Evelyn Minaya, it`s a little frightening if this man is -- was abusive to her. We can only hope that the worst has no occurred, but at this point, does it seem like it doesn`t look so good?
MINAYA: Well, again, assuming that this gentleman has this history and things like that, especially for pregnant women, and like I said, it is a person that you usually know and that`s the most important thing when in terms of incidence of violence.
LALAMA: Thank you so much.
MINAYA: No problem.
LALAMA: Tonight, let`s stop to remember Army Specialist Daniel Cagle, 22 years old, from Carson, California. From a family of military veterans. He was awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Army Service Ribbon.
He loves sports, karate, surfing and watching the History Channel. He leaves behind parents Gale and Patrick, stepfather, Andrew, a Vietnam veteran, and his sister Nicole, an Air Force veteran.
Daniel Cagle, an American hero.
Thank you to all of our guests and to you at home.
We want to wish a special happy anniversary to Ann and Chuck Lynch in Fayetteville, Georgia. They`re celebrating -- get this -- 54 years together.
Bless you. Happy anniversary.
And get well to Sheeba in Illinois. She`s set to have back surgery.
Sheeba, get well very soon. We`re thinking of you.
See you tomorrow night, 8:00 p.m. sharp, Eastern.
Thanks so much, Nancy, for the opportunity.
Until then, good night, everybody.
END
