- I'm craig melvin,
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
- What she saw was a nightmare.
She screamed and she yelled
And she cried. It's terrible.
Did she fall down the steps?
No one was thinking someone did this to her,
But did someone do this to her?
It just unraveled from that moment on.
- The fashionista with red lipstick.
She meant the world to me.
- When she walked into a room,
It was like a movie star walked in.
- Corporate executive, caring mom,
A million-dollar smile,
And a $4 million estate.
- Murder.
- I went screaming out of the house.
- This was a prominent woman, murdered in her home,
Late at night.
- Almost certainly someone she knew.
- Correct. - Where would it lead?
A twisted case of betrayal and greed.
- The finger's being pointed at me.
- Her own daughter, a suspect from the start.
- You pull the knife out and you tell the police,
"oh, you're gonna find my fingerprints on the knife."
- Her son-in-law, who seemed so devoted.
- They interrogated us for eight hours.
- Or maybe someone else with a million-dollar motive.
- What's going on here?
How many people were involved in this?
- Devious.
Devious as an evil mind.
- Someone just doesn't turn into a murderer.
♪♪
- Hello, and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
Peggy nadell had a successful career
Behind her, and two grandchildren she adored.
Then she was found brutally murdered in her home.
Police quickly focused on one person
Who clearly benefited from the wealthy widow's death.
But, to catch the killer,
Investigators would be forced to unravel
A complicated web of lies
Until a family's dark secret
Was finally revealed.
Here's josh mankiewicz with "the evil to come."
- It was hard to look away when peggy was in the picture.
Her beauty was captivating.
But she was also smart, ambitious,
And she loved that little girl.
Peggy nadell's image survives in home movies
And in memory, from the days when
She was relishing motherhood,
Blissfully unaware...
Of the evil to come.
- I was always close with my mother.
Always.
- Susanne nadell-scaccio was that little girl,
And says her mom, peggy,
Was everything a mother should be.
- As a child, I ice skated,
My mother would sit in the rink...
And freeze. She'd sit there with a coat on,
All bundled up, shivering.
- Susanne and her younger brother, jim,
Grew up in suburban rockland county,
About 45 minutes north of new york city.
- We were able to go away to sleepaway camp
When we were little.
My parents traveled.
- At first, peggy did what many women did in the 1960s:
She stayed at home while her husband, rob,
Headed off to work.
But peggy was drawn to something bigger
Than her suburban sanctuary.
When susanne was young, her mom was back in school,
Earning her mba.
- She was probably one of the few women in the--
In the graduating class.
- And then went into a man's business.
- And then went into a man's business,
And worked very hard.
- Much like the fictional character peggy olsen
In the hit series "mad men."
The real-life peggy
Broke the glass ceiling at xerox
And became a rare member of the executive boys' club.
Ann martin was in that club, too.
- We didn't have too many female managers,
And peggy, she rose very quickly
Because she was very intelligent.
- And always well-dressed.
- Peggy wore a lot of black.
She loved to dress and wear the latest fashions.
- Unlike her fashionable mom,
Susanne was a blue jeans and t-shirt kind of girl.
- Susanne?
How do you explain susanne?
She's quirky.
She's outgoing.
She's athletic.
- Darcy greenburg is one of susanne's best friends.
- She's spontaneous.
She's talkative.
She also likes to be close to home.
- After college, she came back to rockland county
And went to work at xerox herself.
One night in a bar,
Susanne, then 21, fell for--
Well, actually, fell over a 17-year-old racecar driver
Named bobby scaccio.
- She actually s-- dis-- stepped on me.
I was-- we were fooling around, and I somehow
Wound up f-- slipping on the floor.
She's picking me up, then, uh, we saw each other,
And, uh, started talking.
- Thirteen years later, susanne and bobby,
Who was, by then, a welder and steamfitter,
Were married.
Peggy was okay about it.
- It's not unreasonable to believe that maybe she was
Kinda hoping that her daughter would marry a guy
Who wore a suit to work.
- I think so, I think, uh, yeah, I think she was
Hoping for a harvard son-in-law, but she got
A son-in-law from the--
That went to the school of hard knocks, you know.
- Bobby made a good son-in-law.
He was always there for peggy,
Especially after her husband died in 2003.
By then, peggy was retired, but never slowed down,
Traveling the world and treasuring her family.
Her son, jim, was now a psychologist living in florida
With his wife diana and their two children.
I get the sense that jim was not as close
To your parents as you were.
- I'll agree to that.
- A-and why would that be?
- Maybe because of the distance,
That he was...
So far away.
He did call, he did speak to them,
But my brother is my brother.
He kind of lived in his own world.
- But susanne and her mom
Were very much in the same world.
How often did you see your mother?
- Every-- almost every day.
- Susanne, always on the road for her work
As marketer for a hospital,
Would often drop in on her mom.
And when she wasn't visiting, she'd be calling.
- Speak to her in the afternoon,
In the evening, make sure she was home.
- So it's almost like you were sort of the parent
And she was the kid.
You were checking up on her-- - oh, absolutely.
- Life was good for this family,
Until one morning in January of 2014.
Susanne went to check on her mother.
- Oh my god! Oh my god!
Oh my--
I need an ambulance right away!
- And everything changed.
- I was screaming.
- Susanne is in the driveway, looking rather frazzled.
- The first thought was "oh my god,
"she tripped and she must've hit her head."
- No way did she fall down the stairs.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Saturday, January 25th, 2014
Started off cold and snowing.
Susanne says her day started off as it nearly always did...
Calling her mother, peggy.
- Called the cell, she didn't answer.
I called the house, she didn't answer.
I said, all right, maybe she's in the bathroom
Or she went out into the garage for something.
- Susanne, who lives in a suburb of new york city,
Called diana, her sister-in-law,
In florida.
- And I said "have you spoken with mommy this morning?"
She says "you know, I called her at 7:30
"and I haven't heard back from her."
- Now worried, susanne got in her car
And drove to peggy's house.
- As I'm driving, I'm calling the house,
The cell, the house, the cell,
No answer, and now I'm getting panicky.
I pull into her driveway
And I saw the roof of her car
Through the garage door.
And I said "oh, this is not gonna be good."
- She was right.
Susanne says she found peggy
Crumpled at the bottom of the stairs
With a knife in her chest.
- And the first thought was, "oh my god,
"she tripped on the cat and fell and stuck herself."
- Then, she says, she saw the blood.
- And I said "oh my god, she musta hit her head
"when she fell."
- And then, susanne did something
That would later raise a number of questions.
- I pulled a knife, I was gonna do cpr.
- You pulled the knife out of her.
- Yeah. If your mother was laying there
With something sticking out of her
That was hurting her, what would you do?
You wanna make that hurt go away.
- Could you tell whether she was dead or alive?
- When I touched her neck,
And it-- and she was kinda cold.
- Susanne ran out of the house and called 911.
- I was screaming.
I'm sure the neighbors that were around heard.
- Susanne was right about one thing...
Peggy nadell was dead.
Her next call was to her brother jim, in florida.
- I called my brother's house.
He didn't answer, I called diana on her cell,
And I said, "mommy's gone."
And she started screaming
At the other end of the phone.
"what do you mean, mommy's gone?"
I said "she's gone, she died,
"something happened. She died."
- Soon, clarkstown police detectives steven cole-hatchard
And earl lawrence were on the scene.
They noticed that susanne looked a wreck,
Standing in front of the house in the snow.
- Susanne is in the driveway, at the foot of the driveway,
Kind of pacing, looking rather frazzled.
- She told detectives what she'd told the 911 operators--
That peggy tripped over the cat.
- Her mother must've, uh, tumbled down the stairs
And stabbed herself with the knife.
- While detective cole-hatchard stayed outside
With susanne,
Detective lawrence went inside the house.
This is police video of the scene,
Taken that morning.
Lawrence knew right away, this was no accident.
- No way did she fall down the stairs
And trip over a cat.
- Detective lawrence saw peggy had been strangled,
Then stabbed.
And it also looked as if she'd been beaten
With a statue head found under her body,
And a gold metal ball near her hand.
- The crime scene itself was very concentrated.
Everything was at the bottom of the stairs,
And in the bedroom upstairs.
- Something else caught the detectives' attention...
Two chairs were pulled out of the kitchen table,
As if peggy had been sitting and talking with someone.
Peggy's computer, wallet, and jewelry were missing,
A jewelry box lay near a chair
In the living room, empty.
But to earl lawrence, the burglary looked phony.
Staged.
- Uh, the bedroom drawers,
They were neatly pulled out,
And neatly placed on the floor
In front of the dresser.
At normal burglary scenes, stuff is everywhere.
- People go through it like a tornado.
- Correct.
- And this wasn't a break-and-enter job.
Police could tell that
When they looked at the fresh snow
Outside the house.
- There was one set of footprints,
And that was the responding officer
Checking the perimeter of the home.
- So, nothing suggesting that somebody had walked around,
Cased the place, looked to see who was in.
- Not a thing.
- The front door hadn't been jimmied or broken in.
- Which key in the deadbolt in the front door
That's required to open the door from the inside,
And that was in the lock.
- Meaning, peggy had unlocked it from inside.
- Peggy unlock-- correct.
- That afternoon, detectives brought susanne
And her husband, bobby, to the police station
And started asking questions.
- Susanne told them contractors had been doing work
On peggy's bathroom,
And that peggy also had landscapers
And a cleaning woman working for her.
I'm guessing you guys spent some significant time
And effort running down all the people
Who had worked on the house. - Absolutely.
- Any of that go anywhere?
- Dozens of people, not a thing.
- Who would wanna kill peggy nadell?
And why?
Richard moran, then a rockland county assistant d.A.,
Thought he had an answer for that second question.
Financially, she was in pretty good shape.
- Uh, very good shape.
- Peggy and her late husband
Had built quite a large nest egg.
- All in all, the estate ended up being worth
About $4 million. - Wow.
You've probably seen people killed for a lot less.
- A lot less.
- And who would stand to benefit?
- A closer look at susanne.
- You pull the knife out,
And you tell the police right away,
"oh, you're gonna find my fingerprints
"on the knife."
- A few million motives for murder?
- My mother's worth high seven figures.
- This is not the way I wanted to get my money.
- My money.
- That's the exact words she used.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Peggy nadell had been murdered in her home
In suburban rockland county, new york.
Detectives steven cole-hatchard and earl lawrence
Say the team from the crime lab
Had shaken peggy's house to its foundation
Looking for a lead.
Forensically, you guys got almost nothing off the scene.
- Not almost nothing.
Nothing.
- No fingerprints.
- No dna.
- No blood, no hair.
Nothing.
- But the scene did tell them something.
- I felt very early on that it was most likely
A-a female, or two females.
- What pointed to it being women?
- The fact that there was seven or eight lacerations
On peggy's skull from the statue head.
- That statue is heavy,
An effective weapon in strong hands.
- My non-medical opinion is that,
If she was hit in the head with that statuette by a man,
Her head would've caved in.
- A man would've been able to swing the statue head harder.
- One or two times, at the most.
- And all of that pointed straight to peggy's daughter,
Susanne.
Not only did susanne stand to inherit
Half of her mother's $4 million estate,
Detectives thought her behavior was suspicious
From the moment they arrived on the scene.
- She's saying "my fingerprints are all over the knife,
"my dna is all over inside the house."
- And she was telling detectives the same thing
She said during the 911 call:
That it was an accident.
- In the 911 call,
You are offering a theory of what happened.
That's very unusual.
- No, like, that she fell.
- Secondly, you pull the knife out
And you tell the police right away,
"oh, you're gonna find my fingerprints on the knife,"
Which sounds like somebody who's thinking ahead
To the fact that that knife's gonna get dusted
For fingerprints. - Sure, sure.
- Would you not agree that all of that is pretty suspicious
When taken together?
- Maybe to them. Wasn't to me.
I mean, obviously they formed an opinion
From the get-go.
- Detectives thought this was odd as well.
- She said "listen, maybe this was a burglary.
Check for a large ring, a laptop, and jewelry."
And I call in to earl, and I said,
"earl, check for those three things."
He called me back and said "hey,
"pretty much those are the only three things missing."
- Then, again, in those first few moments,
Susanne started talking about peggy's money.
- One of the things she yelled out was, uh,
"my mother's worth high seven figures."
- And...
- "this is not the way I wanted to get my money."
That's the exact words she used.
- Someone wants to talk her way right into sing sing.
- Yeah. Absolutely.
- At one point, you said,
"this is not how I wanted to get my money"?
- I don't recall saying that.
But if they have that on, you know, on record--
- But you believe me that that's what you told police.
- Yeah. - Because, again,
You're answering a question police haven't even asked yet.
- Mmm-hmm.
I guess I watch too many of those "dateline" shows
In the middle of the night.
- Detectives had already talked with susanne
And her husband, bobby, on the day of the murder,
Questioned them for hours.
But you had nothing to worry about.
- No, no, not at all. Not at all.
F-farthest thing from my mind is that I would be a suspect,
Or my wife would be a suspect.
- Police were feeling differently,
And as their scrutiny intensified,
Bobby and susanne decided to hire an attorney
And stop talking to police.
Assistant district attorney richard moran
Said that slowed everything down.
- Best way to get information about,
Uh, the investigation would be through her,
And when she stops talking to us,
Things take a lot longer.
- There was a point at which you and your wife
Stopped cooperating with police
And hired an attorney.
- No, we didn't stop cooperating with the police.
That's what they want you to believe.
Anything they wanted to know,
Alls they had to do was ask my attorney.
- Your wife feel the same way about that.
- Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
She was scared that they were gonna try
And pin it on her.
- Once again, susanne was right.
- We had, we believed,
Probable cause to arrest susanne,
We just couldn't do it, 'cause something was wrong.
- What's wrong?
I mean, everything points at her.
- It would've been the easy way out to do that,
Too early.
- Sometimes you gotta grab ball.
- This wasn't a ground ball.
- This would be no easy out.
Detectives would be going into extra innings.
- The final two phone calls of peggy nadell's life.
One came from a secret phone.
- These are the phones used by drug dealers,
Killers, cheating spouses.
- Exactly. - That's correct.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered," continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin.
Peggy nadell had been murdered,
And her daughter, susanne, was suspect number one.
She stood to inherit half of her mother's fortune,
And police found her behavior at the crime scene
Suspicious.
Now, they were about to turn up the heat on susanne.
But soon, they would discover there was another nadell,
Who also had a couple of million reasons
To want peggy dead.
Back to josh mankiewicz with "the evil to come."
- Four days after peggy nadell's murder,
Family and friends gathered for her funeral.
For peggy's daughter, susanne, it was all a blur.
What's it like to process both the fact
That your mom was actually murdered,
And that you're the suspect.
- It was horrible. Horrible.
I lost my mother, I lost my best friend,
And now, the finger is being pointed at me.
- As 80-year-old peggy nadell was led to rest today,
Her daughter, susanne scaccio, has hired a lawyer.
- People in the area, it's all they talked about.
- Susanne's friend, darcy greenburg,
Was hearing it almost every day.
- There were people who said "she did it, oh, she did it."
Even I heard a neighbor yelled out,
"when are you gonna arrest her for killing her mother?"
I mean, this is someone that probably knew her
Since she was a child.
- Darcy was convinced susanne loved her mother
And would never have hurt her.
- She was grieving, she was crying every day,
She could barely get out of bed,
She couldn't sleep at night.
- Peggy nadell's murder was now the biggest case ever
To hit the clarkstown police department.
- We had the whole detective bureau on this,
And some other agencies,
And-and I've never seen them work harder
On anything in my life.
- Perhaps because police couldn't talk with susanne,
They stayed very close to her and her husband, bobby.
And, very visible.
- They parked outside my house and sat.
When I left, they left,
When I came home, they came home.
They were following my husband.
- Did you think police were gonna come...
Put handcuffs on you? - Yes, yes, I did.
I was sad, and I was scared.
- Police even looked into susanne's shopping habits
And found something that intrigued them.
Susanne bought her groceries at a nearby shoprite,
A big supermarket chain.
In fact, she was a creature of habit,
Visiting here 22 times
In the month prior to peggy's murder.
But on the 23rd time,
The night before peggy's murder,
Susanne shopped at a different store:
The one near her mother's house.
What'd she buy?
- She bought cleaning supplies, rubber gloves,
And some other items like that.
- Some food--
- Had the crime scene been cleaned up?
Detectives didn't think so,
But still found it suspicious.
Just before your mother was murdered,
You go to the shoprite.
Not the one near your house,
The one near your mother's house.
- Mm-hmm.
- And you buy rubber gloves and cleaning supplies.
- I did.
I mean, I buy cleaning supplies all the time.
I have a cleaning girl,
She probably needed rubber gloves.
She probably needed floor cleaner, or--
That's interesting. They knew what I bought.
- And detectives wanted to know more
About who peggy might've had contact with
In the hours before her murder.
So they made this list of numbers
They found on peggy's home phone,
And as they looked at them, one stood out.
It was a call from an odd area code,
And it came in at 1:17 in the morning.
- That was from what turned out to be a tracfone.
- They're commonly referred to as "burner phones"
Or "throwaway phones."
- These are the phones used by drug dealers,
Killers, cheating spouses.
- That's correct. - Exactly.
- A few minutes after that tracfone call,
The alarm at peggy's front door was tripped,
And at 1:23 am, the alarm company called.
- It was probably the last time peggy's voice
Was heard by anyone except her killer.
Police were convinced, still are convinced,
Peggy was letting in someone she knew.
Susanne? Maybe.
But why would she use a tracfone to get her mom
To open the door in the middle of the night?
- She wouldn't have to let me in.
I have a key, and I know the-- how to work the alarm.
- Right, so if you wanted to kill her,
You coulda just waited until she went to sleep--
- And went in. - Unlocked the door--
- And went in. - Disarmed the alarm.
- There you go, there you go.
- Police had warrants for all the family members' phones,
And a few weeks later,
They had boxes of records to comb through.
Detectives analyzed susanne's first.
What could you tell about susanne
From her cell phone records? - A lot.
- Robin arias, then an investigator
With the westchester county d.A.'s office,
Specialized in phone data analysis.
- I've-I've figured out a pattern of susanne's life,
Just based on her records.
- And on the day of peggy's murder...
- That day was like every other day
In susanne's life.
There was no change for that particular day.
- A-and you'd expect to see a change
If somebody was in the process of committing murder
For the first time.
- Correct, correct.
- Suggesting... She's innocent?
- Either she's innocent, or she has another phone,
But there certainly wasn't communication
That indicated that something was going to happen.
- As hot as detectives were on susanne's trail,
They had never stopped looking at the other members
Of peggy's immediate family.
- You took to peggy's son jim and his wife diana
Right after the murder.
- Yes. - When they came up.
- They lived in florida. - Correct.
- Were they in florida at time of the murder?
- Uh, jim was in florida, and diana said she was in d.C.
- Why was she in d.C.?
- Said there was a family wedding.
- And the records backed that up.
When robin arias looked at jim's cell phone,
It never left florida.
Diana's phone records checked out, too.
Where was diana's phone during that time?
- In d.C. - That's it? Didn't move?
- Yep, did not move.
The phone went to d.C., went back to florida.
- Reasonable to assume that diana never left d.C.?
- Absolutely.
- You're smiling.
- The ph-- there was just a break,
The-the pattern just was off.
- Diana's records were speaking to arias,
And detectives were about to get a break
That would shift the direction of the entire investigation.
Let's just say
This case was about to go south.
- An intriguing discovery is about to lead detectives
To a whole new circle of suspects.
- So what's going on here?
How many people are involved in this?
- That's the question of the day.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Detectives working on peggy nadell's murder
Had been looking at her daughter susanne.
But now they were also looking
At peggy's daughter-in-law diana.
Diana and peggy's son jim
Had been married for 17 years,
And while he may not have been that close to his mother,
Diana was always on the phone.
- My sister-in-law used to call every morning.
She-- my mother would be on the phone with nancy.
"ooh, I gotta go, diana's calling on the other line."
- Diana was a stay-at-home mom with two kids, leah and harris.
Peggy doted on her grandchildren,
And would fly them up to new york
To spend summers and holidays.
Detectives had already confirmed that diana's cell phone
Had been in washington, d.C., at the time of the murder.
But when phone analyst robin arias
Looked more closely at diana's calling pattern,
Something seemed off.
- When she was in d.C.,
Her activity was just all over the place.
Kind of the frenetic feel.
There was definitely something going on.
- Now arias looked at who diana was calling,
Putting names and faces to the numbers on her phone.
She noticed diana suddenly seemed to have
A lot of new friends in washington, d.C.
- A lot of people could just popped up
In diana's life for a very brief moment.
- Arias calls them "frequent users,"
People diana was calling repeatedly.
- What was also interesting to me
About these frequent users
Is that they just had such different lives.
- Diana was a suburban mom,
And some of these people, well...
- A lot of them had criminal histories,
Living in d.C.
- Remember, diana had been in d.C. For a wedding.
Maybe these people were, you know,
Those friends of the groom you have to invite?
So detectives got the guest list.
- And none of the high-frequency callers were at the wedding.
None of those people.
- And when arias looked at diana's phone records
On the night of the murder,
Friday night into Saturday morning...
- The time of the homicide, there was v--
Very little activity on her phone.
Like, eerily quiet.
- What did that mean?
Diana's phone had been in d.C.
That looked like a dead end.
So detectives went back to that tracfone
That had called peggy's house moments before her murder.
The kind of phone you can buy for cash,
Activate from almost anywhere,
And then dump when you're done.
- A lot of times, it's a dead-end.
A lot of times.
- Not this time. - Not this time.
- To figure it out,
Detectives began by using the tracfone number
To find where the phone had been sold.
And where was it purchased?
- A family dollar store in miami, florida.
- Miami.
- About two miles from diana's home.
- Detectives contacted the family dollar chain,
And got very, very lucky.
Family dollar was able to give them security video
Of someone buying a tracfone on January 23rd,
Just two days before peggy was murdered.
- Is diana on the tape?
- It doesn't appear so.
- So, end of the road?
- No.
- No, because the woman buying the phone
Was someone detectives recognized.
Not diana. - Definitely not diana.
- Who is it? - Karen ham samuel.
- And how did they know who she was?
- Karen ham was somebody I had already profiled
As a person who came up frequently
On diana's call records.
She was a high-frequency caller.
- So you got a friend of diana's
Buying the disposable phone that called peggy
Just before she was killed.
- Yeah.
That was a big moment.
- Now they knew who had bought the phone.
The next step was to figure out
Who turned the tracfone on.
Tracfones need to be activated
Using another phone to call an 800 number.
After three weeks,
Detective cole-hatchard finally persuaded
A tracfone manager to give him this piece of paper.
- He had circled a phone number, and it was the number
That called to activate that tracfone.
- Whose number was that?
- Andrea benson.
- Had that name surfaced before?
- Yes, absolutely.
- All over diana's phone records.
- She was one of those people who had popped into diana's life
When diana was in d.C.
And benson had a rap sheet.
So what's going on here?
How many people are involved in this?
- That's the question of the day.
- The other big question...
What did diana nadell do
While she was in washington d.C.?
Detectives started with her arrival
At reagan national airport, 9:30 Friday morning,
The day before peggy was murdered.
- We got the video from the airport,
To follow her through the airport,
And then follow her outside to where she got into a car.
- Here's video of diana being picked up curbside.
Who picks her up? - Andrea benson.
- How do you know it's andrea benson?
- It's her car registered to her.
- You can read a license plate with those cameras?
- They're pretty good.
- Detectives obtained data dumps from cell phone towers
In washington d.C.
That allowed them to map the travel of the cell phones,
As they pinged off the towers.
- Can you follow diana's cell phone?
- Uh, it bounced all around washington, d.C.,
Simultaneously with andrea's.
They were together the entire day.
- By late Friday, the night peggy was murdered,
Diana's phone stopped moving and went quiet.
But andrea's phone?
- We, um, saw andrea's phone head out of the b--
Washington area, and head up I-95.
- E-exactly the way you would drive
If you were heading for peggy's house.
- Right.
- Along the way, the tracfone was activated,
And at 1:17 am it pinged a cell tower
Right near peggy's house.
What was going on?
Was this murder-for-hire?
Did andrea benson drive up to new york,
Call peggy on the tracfone,
Somehow get into her house, and then murder her?
Assistant d.A. Moran didn't think so.
Peggy would never have let a stranger
Like andrea benson into her house.
So that had to be a friendly voice on the phone.
- Yes.
- Detectives thought that voice might've belonged to diana.
But they had nothing to put her on the scene in peggy's house.
At this point, is susanne off the hook?
- Diana is now the higher suspect.
Susanne wasn't off the hook.
- They could be in this together.
- Correct. - Yes, that's where it was.
- Because they both benefited.
- Yes. - Absolutely.
- Now, eight weeks into the investigation,
Detectives still didn't know who had killed peggy nadell.
With suspects in florida, d.C., and new york,
Detectives came up with a new strategy,
And their phone expert liked it a lot.
- Gutsy, like, I mean, a lot of people
Don't go to those lengths on a homicide case.
I thought it was brilliant strategy.
- But would it solve the case?
- Did you have anything to do with your mother's murder?
- The daughter or the daughter-in-law?
- Was one of them the killer?
- Oh, god, her eyes were probably about as big
As the headlights on a volkswagen beetle.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back.
Who murdered peggy nadell?
From the first moments of the investigation,
Police suspected her daughter susanne
May have been involved.
Then, another relative landed on their list:
Daughter-in-law diana.
Both stood to benefit from the wealthy widow's death,
But the evidence pointed to one woman
As the mastermind behind the crime.
Now, detectives were about to launch
A secret plan to bring her down.
Here's josh mankiewicz
With the conclusion of "the evil to come."
- Three months after the murder of her mother,
Susanne nadell-scaccio was still saying she was innocent,
And she couldn't believe she was ever a suspect.
- You watch "dateline." - all the time.
- Sometimes, as you know, people look guilty,
But they're really not.
Are you in custody right now? - Nope.
- Were you ever arrested? - No.
- Did you have anything to do with your mother's murder?
- No.
- Deep into the investigation of peggy nadell's murder,
The prime suspect was no longer her daughter susanne.
It was her daughter-in-law diana.
Detectives knew that diana's friend,
Karen ham samuel, had bought the tracfone
That called peggy's house just before she was murdered.
Diana had told police from the beginning
That she'd been in washington, d.C.,
To attend a wedding.
But her alibi was wobbly.
Diana couldn't account for her time in d.C.
- She hit washington at about 9:30,
And didn't a-- reappear again
Until about 8:00 the next morning.
- So detectives called diana, asking her to fill in the gaps.
- We had to keep it real simple with her.
"listen, we just wanna get you cleared, um,
Where'd you spend the night?"
- What did they not tell diana?
Detectives had a warrant, and they were tapping her phone.
Police now sat back and listened as diana made multiple calls
To people she knew in d.C., as she tried to find someone,
Anyone, who would say they were with her
In washington at the time of peggy's murder.
Was she ever successful enough to find somebody to say
"yes, I will say, diana, that you were with me."
- Yes, she did. - Yes.
- Which was her third attempt.
- Detectives heard diana tell a female friend
To say diana had been at her house in d.C.,
But the woman seemed confused.
- Disorganized crime.
- Not the most intelligent people involved,
I don't believe.
- Sure enough, when detectives called diana's friend,
Here's what she said:
- Of course, detectives already knew
The woman was lying,
And that diana was trying to cover her tracks.
But they still didn't have enough to charge diana.
So they headed to miami to speak with diana's friend
Who bought that tracfone, karen ham samuel.
They brought karen into miami police headquarters
For questioning.
- Karen admitted she bought that tracfone for diana.
And then they asked her if diana had said anything
About peggy nadell's murder.
Her answer blew them away.
- Prosecutor richard moran was there,
Listening in another room.
- That's the first time we have firsthand information,
Um, that diana was in the house.
- Before long,
Diana was in that same miami interrogation room,
Where she recognized some familiar faces
She probably wasn't pleased to see.
- And she knew why they were there.
- Yes, it was, and after five months,
Their investigation was about to end.
- That same day,
Another team arrested andrea benson in d.C.
Detectives lawrence and cole-hatchard
Were confident they had the right people in custody,
And that susanne was finally off the hook.
She heard the news from relatives.
- They said they arrested diana
From-- for my mother's murder,
And that there were other people involved in it,
And I was shocked. - W-what'd she look like?
- Oh, god, her eyes were probably 'bout as big
As the headlights on a volkswagen beetle,
And her instant reaction was "I knew it, I knew it."
- Susanne says her mom had been sending money
To diana regularly to pay for home repairs
And expenses for the kids.
But she says diana wanted more.
- She wanted to live my mother's life.
Do all the things that she couldn't afford to do.
- And to do that, all she had to do was enlist
The help of a few friends and commit a murder.
- Mm-hmm. - Yeah.
- Detectives did not think jim knew anything
About his wife's deadly plan for his mother.
And what exactly was her plan?
Diana had stopped talking and asked for a lawyer,
But her friend andrea benson did talk,
And told d.A. Richard moran the whole sordid tale.
Andrea said she had never met diana before,
And had been told by a relative
To pick diana up at the airport,
And as they were driving...
- Diana nadell said to her,
"I'm not really here to go a wedding,
I'm really here to kill my mother-in-law."
- She says this to a person she's never met before?
- Yes.
- And andrea benson says...
Okay? I'm in?
- For $10,000.
- And right there, the deal's done in that car.
- And the plan starts taking shape.
- Benson said she drove the four hours
Up to peggy's house,
And then diana used that tracfone
And called her mother-in-law.
- Diana tells her "I'm here, don't you miss me?
I wanna come see you."
- At 1:30 in the morning.
And peggy lets her in.
Benson said she went in with diana.
They were wearing hairnets and gloves
To keep from leaving evidence.
Diana and peggy sat across from one another and talked.
Benson said at one point,
Peggy went upstairs, perhaps to call for help.
She and diana followed her.
Then as peggy came back downstairs...
- That's when andrea benson started choking her.
- Andrea said peggy was still alive
When diana hit her mother-in-law with a metal ball
And beat her with that statue head.
- Andrea benson's words were "she wouldn't die."
At that point, according to andrea benson,
Diana nadell went into the kitchen,
Got a knife, came over,
And started stabbing peggy.
- Andrea benson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
The sentence was 20-to-life.
- I need you to know just how sorry I am.
- The woman who bought the tracfone,
Karen ham samuel,
Was never charged with anything.
Diana, apparently not content to wait in jail for trial,
Was caught on tape trying to arrange for hitmen
To kill karen ham samuel in miami.
- After that, diana also pleaded guilty
To first-degree murder.
Diana did not respond to our requests
For an interview.
She did speak on the day she received a sentence
Of 23 years to life.
- I would like to say that I'm very sorry for my actions,
And that I am extremely sorry for any pais--
Pain I may have caused, especially to my husband.
- Susanne was there at sentencing.
- You took away a wonderful mother and grandmother,
And you're gonna die in hell.
I hope you stay in prison until you take your last breath.
Enjoy prison.
- On mother's day,
Susanne and bobby went to visit peggy's grave.
- Hey, mama.
- Finally, it was all over.
- You kinda look at life a little bit differently,
You know, life is very valuable.
It's precious. - It puts things in perspective.
- You've done anything special for yourself?
- I treated myself to a-a car.
She's a fancy german lady that likes to go fast.
My mother always said "spend a little.
Enjoy your money, you'll have mine someday."
Who knew that someday was gonna be so soon?
- That's all for this edition
Of "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin. Thank you for watching.