I'm craig melvin
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
- Something wasn't right at her house.
I saw a lot of police cars.
That woman was a fighter.
She would never leave her daughters.
She would never do it. - Michele ran the home.
- She was very proud about
How she was able to make ends meet.
- Lloyd helped with the kids.
- They're wonderful girls. They're amazing.
- The end came much too soon.
- There appeared to be a body hanging from a banister.
From first look, it would appear as though
It was a suicide.
- But then they looked closer.
- It appeared that there was a struggle.
My gut was telling me there's something wrong here.
- Did someone want michele dead?
Was someone else willing to help?
- At that point, we're shell shocked.
- A bond forged in blood.
- We call it the lie and cry conversation.
- Betrayed by blood.
- What are you hoping for?
- Some conversation between the two of them
About the death.
- We had an investigator look at the video surveillance
And he goes, "I don't like what I'm seeing."
- You're theorizing the darkest scenario?
- Yes, we are. Evil.
♪♪
- Hello and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
High school sweethearts michele and lloyd neurauter
Were devoted to their three daughters.
Michele home schooled the girls.
Lloyd took them to dance class.
When the couple divorced,
The split took a toll on everyone
And soon someone's loyalty would be tested.
Every family has secrets but the betrayal
At the center of this mystery seemed too twisted to be true.
Except that it was.
Here's dennis murphy with "the ultimatum".
- The long road to prima ballerina,
The dreams of thunderous bravos, the cascade of roses
Begins for the youngest of dancers
In a ballet school of tutu'd 10-year-olds.
Stretching, stressing.
- It's very disciplined.
- An athletic discipline of concentration
And body control.
Learning poise under pressure.
- It took a lot, um, especially when we were young,
To stick with it, but it was worth it.
- A ballet academy in upstate new york
Was where amina raj got to know her friend
Karrie neurauter.
- I met karrie when she was eight.
She was very sweet, very bubbly personality.
- Both of them were girly girls
But wanted to grow up to be like their dads.
- Our dads were both engineers,
So we were both going to become engineers
And be professional ballerinas on the side.
- And everyone could see that
Karrie was very close to her dad,
Lloyd neurauter.
Every Saturday, he'd not only drive his daughter
To class in corning, new york, he'd stay to help out.
- He was the only father there that was bringing the kids
In the morning at that time.
- Mina's mom, cynthia, would see him on those saturdays
But rarely his wife.
- Instead of doing the children's hair at home,
He would always sort of bring them there
And brush their hair out a-and put these buns together, um--
- With some skill and art? - Um, yes.
And-and h-he definitely enjoyed the admiration
Of the other mothers around him.
- As their daughters rehearsed for the annual "nutcracker",
Cynthia and another friend, rose coluccio,
Became friendly with lloyd.
- Lloyd was, I would say, eccentric.
Always, um, the center of attention.
- Of course, we eventually asked about his wife
And he said that Saturday was really her days off.
- Lloyd's wife michele had a full plate of her own.
She had a master's degree in literature
But chose to be a full time mom, home schooling their kids
And taking an active role in charity work.
Here she is making thanksgiving dinner
For the needy at their local church.
- It would be really odd to have thanksgiving at home,
Just us, and not be here.
Thanksgiving is celebrating with the community,
Giving back.
- Michele had met lloyd in high school.
Her mom, jeanne, remembers a teenaged boy
Who was smitten from the first date.
- I think she thought he was intelligent,
And she could have intelligent conversations with him.
- So, maybe a peg above the other kids in the schoolyard
Or her circle? - Yes. Yes.
- The high school sweethearts
Married when michele was just 20.
They'd later settled into a farmhouse in upstate new york
And had three girls, karrie the middle child.
Michele's younger sister, also named karrie,
Admired her so much.
- Tell me about your sister as a mom.
- She always, like, wanted the best for her girls.
She was always very supportive
Because, of course, when I had children,
I asked her all my questions and looked up to her.
I always looked up to her.
- Though they lived close apart, michele's sister
And her husband were close with the nieces.
- The oldest one really bonded with kevin
And karrie and I very much bonded.
- But as with so many people,
The neurauter family ran into lean times,
Diminished prospects during the great recession.
Lloyd moved out of state to find work as an engineer.
- What happened is, uh-- lloyd-- it was a tough time
In corning, new york
And he took a job in new jersey.
- Michele stayed behind with the girls
Out in the country in corning,
But the separation put a strain on the marriage.
And in time, michele and lloyd divorced.
- She was always positive,
Gonna make the most of everything.
And then one day out of the blue,
She called me and said, "we're divorced."
I was like, okay.
- Right. It was very random.
- After the divorce, michele sold the farm
And the kids split up.
The oldest went to live with her dad in new jersey
While karrie and the youngest daughter
Stayed in corning with mom in a new house.
But the divorce was hard on everyone.
Karrie and her mom sometimes butted heads.
The arguments could get heated.
- The issue was living with her mother,
Finishing high school,
But it got more and more strained as the years --
As she approached her senior year.
- By late August 2017, karrie, the one-time ballerina,
Had left home and was a sophomore
At rit in rochester.
Her younger sisters still lived with their mom.
It seemed like a typical Monday afternoon
When a family friend came by the house
To pick up the youngest for swim practice.
But something looked very wrong.
He called 911.
- The friend said he glimpsed a shadowy female figure
On the stairway.
- Something very dark had happened in that house.
And when the curtain was pulled back,
It would reveal a monstrous story
Like something out of a greek tragedy
With an ending no one could fathom.
- This is absolutely ghoulish. - Yeah.
- Coming up...
- There appeared to be a body hanging inside the door
About 15 to 20 feet, hanging from a banister.
- This is, as they say,
A house that's known to law enforcement?
- Yes. - And somebody was missing.
- No 14-year-old was discovered.
- So, where is this child?
- That was one of the first concerns.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- August 28, 2017.
Police officers responded to the home of divorced mom
Michele neurauter.
A friend of hers had called 911 to report a disturbing sight.
- There appeared to be a body hanging inside the door
About 15 to 20 feet, hanging from a banister.
- Corning police chief, jeff spalding says
His officers got in and found the body.
A woman with a rope tied around her neck.
It was michele.
- Apparently, a suicide? - Uh, from first look, yes,
It would appear as though it was a suicide.
- No reason to think not, huh? - No.
- Officers searched the home.
They found no suicide note and the house was empty.
Daughter karrie was away at college,
But the youngest, who lived there with michele,
Was nowhere to be found.
- No 14-year-old was discovered.
- So, where is this child?
- That was one of the first concerns.
- It turned out the youngest was actually with karrie
At school in rochester 100 miles away.
Police learned that when karrie called them herself
After a friend gave her the shocking news.
- Karrie told police she had stopped by the house that night.
- In karrie's words, they had a fight,
Her mom, um, went yelling and screaming.
- Karrie told investigators she stormed out of the house,
Taking her teenage sister with her.
Not all that unusual.
Police learned that raised voices in that household
Were sadly routine.
A bad divorce with kids caught in the middle.
This is, as they say, a house that's known to
Law enforcement? - Yes.
- There had been -- over the years been what?
911 calls to that location?
- Uh, probably in a course of two or three years, a dozen--
A little more than a dozen calls.
- So, chief, I'm thinking even with
This brief history you had,
This fragmentary history of trouble inside the house,
Mother, daughter, something's going on,
It does maybe give you an explanation of
Why she's a death by suicide? - Uh, exactly.
- Investigators also got in touch with
Michele's ex-husband, lloyd, who lived in new jersey.
He was rushing to upstate new york
To be with his daughters.
- Lloyd told the detective by phone
He wasn't completely surprised to hear the news.
He said that despite her cheery demeanor,
Michele had actually contemplated suicide
In the past.
- Police continued to process the scene
While michele's body was taken to
The medical examiner for autopsy.
- What is she finding?
- Uh, the words again consistent with suicide are used.
- In a round of phone calls,
Michele's sister out in california
Got the news about the suicide.
- When you first heard that,
Did it make sense in any kind of way to you that...
[sighs]
...Maybe she's gotten in a bad place and...
- I mean, I knew that she had been fighting with the girls.
I-I really thought, like, maybe she had a bad moment.
- Then she had to relay the awful news to their mom.
- She said michelle died. And I said, "no, she didn't."
I said no -- I said, "no, she didn't,
"that's a lie. Don't say that."
I said don't tell-- don't say that.
- The friends back in corning could hardly take it in.
Michele gone and by her own hand.
- My mom called me.
She didn't want me to see it online
Or on social media before she -- I heard it from her.
- And you went to see her or--? - I did.
I went home. It was so shocking.
- As funeral arrangements began,
Michele's friends were haunted by a request she made
Just months before her death.
- She said "well, promise me that
"if anything ever happens to me
"that you'll look out for my daughters."
And then I reassured her, naively perhaps,
That she was going to live a long life, um--
But she was pretty persistent, and so, I said okay.
And we left it like that.
- Sorry, she got me with that story.
- But even in their grief, there was confusion and doubt.
The friends thought the michele they saw
In her final days was anything but suicidal.
- What were her plans? Was she forward-looking?
- Constantly.
We were always working on what was next.
- That wasn't where she was in her life?
- I would say she's a fighter, right?
That woman was a fighter.
On Saturday morning when the rest of us
Would be lounging around in our sweatpants,
She'd say, "it's a good day.
"we're going to get up, we're going to get dressed,
"and we're going to make the best of it."
- Even if michele were suicidal, they just could not see
Their friend hanging herself like that
In a way that her daughters could find her.
- I started googling means that females use for suicide
And I think it was -- what I could find was
Around 9% of females will actually hang themselves.
The most popular option, by far, is pills.
- But michele's mood and statistics aside,
They kept coming back to that lack of a suicide note.
- Michele had a master's in english as well as an mba.
She was a prolific writer.
Michele would have written a note of explanation.
So, once there was no note, I think...
- Right, right.
- Yeah, we just said something's wrong.
- Little did they know
Exactly how wrong this would all turn out to be.
- Coming up... Maybe it wasn't a suicide.
- Apparent suicide, did that make any sense to you?
- No.
- My gut was telling me there's something wrong here.
- Maybe it was murder.
- The way that it went around her chin
Did not seem consistent with a hanging.
On her face, you see, it looks like scratch marks, um,
Like maybe she's pulling at whatever is around her neck,
Trying to get it off.
You can see where her bed was pushed out of place.
It appeared that there was a struggle.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
Police were investigating the hanging death
Of michele neurauter as a possible suicide.
But they still needed to know more
About her final weeks and days.
- Investigative only.
- Hey, how are you? - Good.
Just cautious about how I approach a car.
- Oh.
- I don't want to startle anybody.
- The deceased's ex-husband, lloyd,
Resettled in new jersey, had rushed to upstate new york
After michele's body was found.
Now, sitting in a police car, he seemed eager to talk.
- How long has michele lived at the residence
Over on deloit? Do you know?
- It's about five years. - Okay.
- She bought that after we divorced.
- He told them about his early relationship
With michele.
- We went away to school together.
- Um-hmm. - We did everything together.
So, I never thought like that,
Like, "oh, under some circumstance,
"I'll just walk away."
- When did you guys divorce?
- We divorced in August 2012.
And so actually, that does help me.
I think she...
- He explained that while the divorce
Had been finalized years earlier,
Their custody issues were far from settled.
They were still fighting over their youngest daughter.
- She wanted to live with me, and her mom threw a tantrum.
- Lloyd suggested his ex-wife was unstable,
An emotional wreck.
- Michele was screaming and furious.
I know of that from past behaviors
That there was an occasion
Where michele was having a tantrum
That she would open the door and scream things down the stairs
And then slam her bedroom door.
And did that so many times,
She actually broke the door frame from doing that.
That she was just completely out of control.
- But lloyd admitted his information was secondhand.
He'd heard the stories from his children.
- I don't even know if she was seeing anybody
Or who else she was doing things with.
- Right.
- She really pushed me out of her life.
- Lloyd spoke with police for over an hour.
As the interview ended, he had a question.
When could the kids retrieve their stuff?
- In case I could pass a word, is there any idea
When the kids could get into the house to look for.
- That's -- I'm... - We'll work on that, too.
- If it were a simple suicide,
The investigation wouldn't take long.
But new york investigator, eric hurd,
Who was among the first on the scene,
Thought not so fast.
- My gut was telling me there's something wrong here.
- It wasn't just cop intuition, there was physical evidence,
In his experience, inconsistent with a suicide.
Starting with the position of the thin nylon rope
On michele's body.
- The way that it went around her chin
Did not seem consistent with a hanging.
- He noticed wounds on michele's head, too.
- On her face you see it looks like scratch marks.
Like maybe she's pulling at whatever is around her neck
Trying to get it off.
- And then there was michele's friend rose.
She rushed up to the scene with something urgent to say.
- Apparent suicide.
Did that make any sense to you?
- No.
- She had told me, she's like I know her,
She's friends with me.
She would never do this to herself.
We were just with her the other night.
We were having a great time. She wouldn't do this.
- It's not exactly evidence, but it's a piece.
- It's not evidence at that point.
- And when police formally interviewed the friends,
They got a different picture of michele and the divorce.
They said lloyd was the crazy one,
Relentlessly badgering his ex-wife
With dragged-out custody fights.
- I was at their house, and I think lloyd had just put--
Served another petition for child custody
Of the younger child. And she was frustrated.
Her life was looking very positive,
And this came up again.
- Objective appraisal or friends taking sides?
Either way, they insisted michele wasn't a frazzled,
Out of control single mom.
She was making the best of a bad situation
And dealing with an ex who demeaned her for years.
- Basically, everything she did was criticized.
He made her feel she was really ugly.
He made her feel that
She couldn't make any right decisions.
She was a lousy mother,
That she couldn't do anything right.
She was unemployable and she came to believe this,
Regardless of the fact she had achieved so much
In her time before meeting him, you know?
Being an a student and being really extraordinary.
- So, homicide versus suicide.
On the one hand, the nasty divorce
May have given michele plenty of reasons
To be depressed and want a way out.
But it was a police photo of michele's bedroom
That caused investigator hurd to think otherwise.
- You can see where her bed was pushed out of place.
- He spent hours pouring over the pictures.
- Looking at the wall and kind of zooming in,
You can see things
That are maybe not visible to the naked eye.
- Didn't jump out at you at the time?
- Didn't jump out at first to anybody.
But it looks like --
We see something that looks like blood on the wall.
So, that was concerning.
- Blood on the wall and a bed out of place.
To hurd, it pointed to only one scenario.
- It appeared that there was a struggle.
- He believed michele had been attacked.
The suicide scene staged.
At the house, there was no sign of forced entry,
Nothing taken.
And investigators theorized that a random intruder
Wouldn't bother arranging such an elaborate scene.
- And an unknown intruder, the one-armed man,
Doesn't figure in here either, right?
- No, we never thought -- never thought that.
- No, they thought, someone close to michele
Had to be responsible.
- So, what do we do now is the question?
- Yes.
- It was time to go looking for suspects.
- Coming up...
Investigators start with the obvious suspect,
Michele's ex-husband, lloyd.
And he had an alibi.
- He said he had been in rochester
To help his daughter move into college.
Spent the night in the hotel,
Stayed in the hotel all night long.
- I think I have every receipt for the last seven days.
- Michele liked to save things too.
Could the mystery be solved from beyond the grave?
- I started finding court documents
And I started finding screenshots of texts.
My daughter documented everything.
- What was the narrative picture that had come together for you
Of what had happened in her life?
- That she was just constantly abused,
Emotionally abused.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm craig melvin.
Michele neurauter was found dead in her home,
Hanging from a banister.
Investigators suspected the scene was staged
To cover up her murder.
During police questioning, michele's ex-husband, lloyd,
Described her as unhinged.
But a secret stash of documents
Found in michele's home painted a different picture
Of the stay-at-home mom and her ex.
Back to dennis murphy with "the ultimatum".
- Michele neuratuer's mother, jeanne,
Was still dealing with the loss of her elder child.
And atop that grief was a longstanding sorrow.
Estrangement.
Michele had abruptly stopped talking to her mom
10 years before.
- I missed her, I loved her, I didn't know what was going on
Because we had never had a fight.
If we'd had a fight and hung up on each other
And, you know, you get over it.
But we did not have that fight.
- Jeanne didn't know exactly what had gone on
In michele and lloyd's marriage,
But she knew she'd never liked him.
- And my husband was like,
"okay, she can do better than this."
"why is she -- what does she see in him?"
- In looking back, what -- what makes you say that, jeanne?
- He was arrogant from the beginning.
He was always arrogant. He was full of himself.
- Michele's sister agreed.
- He wanted to be like,
"oh, I'm going to put you in your place."
- Did you talk to her about how things were?
With her and lloyd? - No.
- Or do you just seal that away?
- No. I knew.
- Is that a no-go topic? - That's a no-go topic.
- Michele's family says
Lloyd's my way or the highway attitude
Extended to the way he disciplined the children.
The doting ballet dad
Wanted his girls to be a little too "on pointe."
- He kind of raised his kids with a military bearing, huh?
- Yes. I mean, they had to--
He would snap his fingers and they would line up
And they would stand there like little soldiers.
- He would make them kneel with their nose to the wall,
Hands behind their heads,
Like they were being executed.
I'm like, what's this? - I'm sorry?
For a minor household infraction?
- Yeah, like for nothing sometimes.
He would just be mad at them.
- After michele's death, jeanne flew out
To the east coast to be with her granddaughters.
That's when she finally learned
Just how bad things had become for michele.
It was all there in her daughter's journals
And boxes of court papers.
- I started finding court documents
And I started finding screenshots of texts.
My daughter documented everything to death.
- What was the narrative picture that had come together for you?
Of what had happened in her life?
- That she was just constantly abused.
Emotionally abused, um--
- By her husband lloyd?
- Mm-hmm, yeah. Especially--
- And you believed that he ganged up
The children against her? - Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yes.
- Michele's mother read how the unhappy marriage
Turned into an unhappy divorce.
- He was taking her to court over and over and over.
- The acrimony between lloyd and michele
Had been well known to michele's friends for years.
They'd seen it up close.
If her death was a murder,
The history of that marriage and divorce
Told them exactly what happened.
- When asked at the scene what I thought,
My answer was I think he did it.
- The husband? The ex? - Uh-huh. Absolutely.
- No problems.
- The very same lloyd who had calmly and clearly
Volunteered so much information to investigators.
- She was just completely out of control.
- Demeanor. What are you hearing in the--?
- Uh, he was very cooperative.
- Would you like me to move up a little?
- No, you're fine, I'm fine. - Are you sure? Okay.
- Police had reason to believe michele died
Sometime after midnight Saturday going into Sunday.
So, the question, where was lloyd?
- Tell me the way, uh, you came up at first.
- Sure. To-to go to rochester.
- He'd told police he'd driven up
From new jersey to rochester
To help karrie move into her college apartment.
- She couldn't fit everything in the car.
So, I had totes back in princeton
That I had to bring.
So, when I arrived on Saturday...
- Okay. - ...I went to the apartment
And I unloaded my car of her stuff.
- At karrie's apartment?
- Yeah, at karrie's apartment. - Okay.
- And then he said he spent the night
In a nearby hotel.
- From 11 until 7 then, you're in the hotel?
Ish? - Yes.
- By yourself?
- Yes.
- He said he had been in rochester
To help her-- his daughter move into college,
Spent the night in the hotel,
Stayed in the hotel all night long.
- Lloyd said he drove home the next day
And only returned to the corning area
After michele's body had been found.
He could account for all of his movements.
- I think I have every receipt for the last seven days.
- Now, they needed to put lloyd's timeline
Under a microscope.
Police pulled his phone records, and guess what?
His cell never left the hotel that night.
So far, so good.
And the story told by the phone meant he couldn't be
An hour and a half south in corning
As michele was about to die.
So, police had to consider others
In michele's inner circle.
And that included the last known person
To have seen michele alive.
It was someone who had admitted in a phone call
With police to fighting with michele that very night.
Her middle daughter, karrie.
- I'm sorry.
- Okay.
- Sure, karrie sounded distraught,
But the officer who first took down
Her account of that night
Didn't like what he was hearing.
- He said right away, he's like something's not right.
- What was he referring to?
- Karrie specifically was not telling the truth
About what happened that night.
- What was karrie hiding?
Investigators turned to another daughter for clues
And hear a very different version
Of karrie's late-night visit.
- Coming up...
- The younger sister says I get woken.
It sounds like somebody is in the house
Attacking my mom.
Then her sister comes in the house
And tells her we've gotta leave.
Mom's upset. She's really mad.
We've gotta go back to rochester.
You're coming with me.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Here's a truism.
Cops don't like to be lied to.
Especially cops investigating an unsolved death
Like that of the corning mom michele neurauter.
Especially if they're suspicious that
The victim's 19-year-old daughter
Is the one doing the lying.
In a statement to investigators,
Karrie, the middle child,
Admitted she had arrived at her mother's house
Just shortly before her death.
- She had initially told us that she, um, got there
And had a fight with her mom and she left.
So, she led us to believe this was a 15 or 20-minute
Stay at her mom's house.
- The thing was her cellphone records said otherwise.
- You could see that she's at the house
For about two hours,
A lot longer than we anticipated her to be there.
- So, was karrie hiding something about
What happened after that argument?
Those who knew her best never considered karrie
To be anything but honest.
Family friend rose was one of the first people
To speak with karrie after michele was found.
- We just sat on the phone together
For about a half hour and just cried.
- And mina said there was no way
Her smart and kind-hearted friend
Would have played any kind of role in a murder.
- I could never, um, picture her being violent.
- But police had a different take.
They remembered there being turmoil in michele's house.
All those calls to police years earlier.
Had that shouting finally boiled over, ending in murder?
And there was an ear witness, of sorts.
Karrie's kid sister, the 14-year-old,
Had been sleeping downstairs.
She told a detective she remembers hearing screams.
- The younger sister says I get woken.
It sounds like somebody is in the house
Attacking my mom.
- She used that word? - Yes, she did.
Then her sister tells her we've gotta leave.
Mom's upset. She's really mad,
We've gotta go back to rochester.
You're coming with me.
- Karrie's story was way out of whack.
As hard as it was to wrap their heads around it,
The detectives were coming to believe
That the college student daughter
May have murdered her own mother.
Unthinkable. This is her mother.
And I just keep coming back, this is the mother.
- The mother. Her own mother.
That, to me, was the most chilling part
Of this whole thing.
- But if it were true, the young woman was
Too petite, they thought, to have pulled it off alone.
- There's no way that karrie could have physically
Carried out the act.
If it was to be homicide,
She would have needed some help.
- But from whom?
They naturally looked to those closest to karrie.
And who was closer than her dad, lloyd?
Going all the way back to those ballet school days.
Cops also knew that lloyd had been in the area that weekend
Helping karrie move into her college apartment.
- I think the more detail you can tell us about things,
Obviously the more that is helpful to us.
- But what about his apparently ironclad alibi
Backed up by his cellphone records?
That he never left his hotel that night.
- From 11 to 7 then, you're in the hotel?
- Yes. - All right.
- Investigator hurd sent a colleague to spool through
The hotel security cam footage.
- He goes, "I don't like what I'm seeing."
- Hmm. - It looks like
That dad and karrie left together
About 10 o'clock that night.
- What was that?
The dad and the daughter together, leaving?
And when they fast-forwarded the hotel security video,
There was lloyd neurauter seen again,
Walking through the parking lot at 6:30 a.M.,
More than eight hours later.
- Are you theorizing the darkest scenario
That dad and daughter are in on this thing together?
- Yes, we are. - That's a monstrous theory.
- Yes, it is.
- The authorities held their cards close to the vest.
None of their suspicions leaked out.
Steuben county district attorney brooks baker
Was consulted as investigators got search warrants
So they could tap father and daughter's cellphones.
- Now, what are you hoping for?
- What we're hoping for is some conversation
Between the two of them
About the death, about money.
- And? - We didn't get much.
- Investigators decided to ratchet up the pressure.
What's called, in cop talk, tickling the wire.
- We have an investigator from corning pd
Call karrie and say, "hey, I want to talk to you."
And the hope is that that'll get a conversation going
Between lloyd and his daughter.
- With her wire tickled, would karrie take the bait
And call her father with the latest?
She did exactly that.
[chuckling]
- We call it the lie and cry conversation
Because it's-it's when all of our hackles kind of went up.
- He's telling his daughter to lie.
- He's telling his daughter to lie to the investigator,
Lie to him, and-and, by the way,
If that doesn't work, can you cry.
- Yeah.
- By now, investigators had a working theory of the crime,
That it was probably not the dad helping the daughter,
But the reverse.
That dad, they theorized, was the mastermind.
But authorities lacked hard proof of anything.
They needed more.
- You're not ready to go to grand jury with that yet?
- We're-we're not even close.
But that gives us enough reason
To keep on listening.
And as we listen, we never hear the smoking gun
We're hoping for.
But we do get bits and pieces.
I mean, he's-- lloyd talks about
How he's going to buy a tessla
And-and have it at some point in the near future.
We've already begun running his finances.
- Well, let's talk about that.
What's the picture coming together of lloyd's finances?
- It's-it's pretty bleak.
The reality is that lloyd, um, he's got a good income.
He's an engineer. - Six-figure guy?
- Six-figure guy. He's doing pretty well,
But he's also absolutely upside down.
He, um, is basically robbing peter to pay paul
Every single month.
- Oh, good. - Yeah.
- After two more months of tapping the phones,
They decided showtime had arrived.
They would simultaneously appear unannounced
To interview both karrie and lloyd
In separate locations
And confront the two directly.
In late January 2018, like commandos
Synchronizing their watches, they swoop down.
- In new jersey, two fbi agents appeared
At lloyd's workplace.
He agreed to meet with them in a conference room.
The agents gave him an update on the case.
- And instead of jumping and saying,
"no, this is my daughter.
"she wouldn't do something like that!"
- It's the longest pause in the entire time he talked.
- So, he's not papa lying, protecting his cubbies here.
- No. He's-he's how do I sort of
Toss her under the bus kind of thing.
- Lloyd had to realize the walls were closing in.
Still, the interview ended with handshakes.
- The agents allowed lloyd to leave
After his very bad day at the office.
Then they tailed him and listened in
As he phoned his daughter.
- 250 miles away in syracuse, new york,
Daughter karrie had also been confronted by police.
And she, too, had had a very bad day.
What did she tell her inquisitors?
- Family secrets are about to come tumbling out.
And as evidence mounts against the father-daughter duo,
One of them makes a dangerous move.
- Coming up...
After one staged suicide, would this one be real?
- There he is out on the ledge.
- On the ledge?
- Five stories down into concrete,
Threatening to kill himself.
He's gonna jump.
He's got his phone,
And he wants to talk to his daughter.
- When "dateline" secrets uncovered" continues.
- Karrie neurauter, who'd always been on-script
About the night her mother died,
Said they'd had a fight, she'd left, end of story.
But now, she sat in a room
With new york state investigators
Determined to get the truth.
- Karrie quickly caved and admitted she'd lied.
Her dad had been there with her.
- And there was more.
[sobbing]
- Then it started to tumble out.
The nightmare story.
She told investigators her dad, drowning in alimony
And child support payments, had given her an ultimatum.
Him or her mom.
- Why, at the crossroads, did she decide to help?
She says she saw no other alternative.
- Then she told the investigators
What her father did.
- Karrie's job was to disable any security devices
And to distract her younger sister
Asleep downstairs, totally unaware
Of what was going on.
- Now we had the framework of the story together now.
- I mean, what a bombshell in the room,
To the ears that are listening to this.
- At that point, we're shellshocked.
- At last, the authorities had enough to arrest lloyd.
He had left work,
Seemingly unnerved by his chat with the fbi.
And new jersey state police had tailed him
As he drove to the top
Of a five-story parking garage,
Got out of his car, and sat on a ledge.
Apparently, suicide seemed a better option than prison.
- And there he is out on the ledge.
- On the ledge?
- Five stories down into concrete,
Threatening to kill himself.
- So, he's gonna be a jumper.
- He's gonna jump.
He's got his phone,
And he wants to talk to his daughter.
- After a 90-minute negotiation,
A homicide detective tackled lloyd
And put him under arrest.
Back in new york, authorities read
His daughter karrie her rights, too.
Murder charges for both.
Michele's mom, across the country,
Was in disbelief.
- I said, "no, not karrie, not karrie.
"please, not karrie."
- The friends in corning couldn't absorb it either.
Him, of course, but her, too?
The little ballerina they'd watch grow up
Now charged with murder.
- That's the unbelievable part.
- I mean, we loved this child.
- As time has passed, michele's friends are starting
To learn of a family's brainwashing,
Of a controlling father who poisoned his daughters' minds
With the drip, drip of a phony story
That went on for years,
That their mother was no good, crazy,
That they'd all be better off
With her out of the picture.
A father's manipulation that went all the way back
To ballet class days and probably earlier.
- What flashed back to me was that time I saw
A 7-year-old karrie
Standing front and center, shaking.
And I personally believe
It was this accumulation of control.
I felt that she had been brainwashed.
- And looking back, michele's mom
Is now certain it was lloyd
Who was behind the unexplained rift
With her daughter.
- I think that he'd already started alienating her,
Manipulating her mind.
- Putting a false narrative in her head
About who she was and who her people were?
- I have often referred to him as jim jones.
- It's almost cult leader-esque, uh, what he has done
To karrie and his-- and her sisters.
- It appeared that father and daughter
Would be tried together.
Both entered pleas of not guilty.
But as the case moved forward, karrie, alone in her cell,
Removed from her father,
It was as though the spell was broken.
Karrie flipped and decided to testify
Against her father.
- At what point, did your dad first approach you
With this plan?
- Now, she gave a second, even more detailed confession
And prepared to be the star witness
At her father's murder trial.
And a new wrenching detail,
She had helped move her mother's dead body.
- We dragged her around the corner,
And he tied the rope to the--
To the one prong of the banister
And lifted her up and put her--
Threw her over the side.
I'm sorry. - That's okay.
- But her dad's trial never happened.
Lab results came back showing the ex-husband's dna
Was all over michele's bedclothes
In that house he claimed never to have been inside.
In October of 2018, lloyd neurauter
Pleaded guilty to murder one.
- I was stunned. He gave it up.
Um, he told us exactly what happened.
- Lloyd gave a full statement,
Owning up to being the master manipulator
That friends and family said they'd witnessed all along.
- He described the process by which
He would abuse michele in front of his girls,
Belittle her, convince them that she was insane,
That she was dangerous.
He's a narcissist. The world revolves around him.
His password to his-- um, to all of his accounts
Was all-my-girls-love-me.
- Oh, you're kidding.
- That's-- no, that's-that's how he operated.
Ultimately, that power led karrie to say yes
Because, you know, dad says it's so.
If dad says it's so, it must be so.
- Lloyd was sentenced to life without parole.
- Any last words, lloyd?
- District attorney baker allowed karrie
To plead to a lesser charge of manslaughter.
She was sentenced to one to three years.
The d.A. Sees the daughter as a victim, too.
- You want to be sympathetic
Because she's a sympathetic character.
She deserves sympathy for where she was.
But she's still guilty of murder.
And that's-that's the-- and justice has to happen.
- And friend cynthia can't shake
That emotional conversation she had with michele
Just before she died.
The one where she promised to take care of her daughters.
- If anything happens to me? - Yeah.
That came back very strong for me.
- Cynthia kept that promise, visiting karrie in jail
And trying to help a bewildered young woman
Find her way through this.
- She's very remorseful.
She misses her mother very much
And she has said that her mother
Would know what to do right now.
She would know how to help me.
- Still grieving over the death of her daughter,
Michele's mom is now facing another kind of sorrow,
Coming to terms with this unthinkable crime
And the granddaughter who said yes
To a father's deadly ultimatum.
- She is a human being.
She's still a child.
She might be considered an adult,
But I hear the child.
- And yet she killed your daughter.
- And she killed my daughter.
Um, she's a victim.
I struggle with this. I struggle.
I ask michele.
I say, "michele, what do you want me to do?
"what do I do with this child of yours?"
And I honestly believe that my daughter
Would want her to be accepting responsibility
For what she did. And she is.
I don't know if I forgive her,
But I understand her.
- That's all for this edition of
"dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm craig melvin. Thank you for watching.