Some stories are unforgettable.
This is one of them.
Everybody get back!
It is an explosion. There is a fire.
We have one confirmed fatality at this time.
- I knew. - You knew she was gone?
Mm-hmm. I knew it was her.
He's a cute little bunny.
She was just beautiful inside and out.
How a person is killed can tell investigators a lot.
In this story, the killer's weapon of choice
spoke volumes.
This is murder by bombing. - Exactly.
The husband was aware that Ildiko was cheating on him.
How many other guys were there?
A good five or six.
Elizabeth hated her.
- She sent Ildiko photos. - Right.
Which we won't show on television.
What's the most common motive in human history for murder?
It's love.
If this is intentional, I would be a person of interest.
Just naturally.
Someone in this story was being lied to
in a big way.
We had to decide if I should be the one
to break it to them.
It was one of those moments where my hairs
stick on the back of my neck.
- You thought, that's the end? - No.
If you watch "Dateline", there's always an end.
That wasn't it.
This is Dateline: Unforgettable.
I'm Josh Mankiewicz with a fresh look at
Death at the Spa.
Aliso Viejo is a leafy green wedge
of the suburban sprawl that makes up Southern California's
mythic Orange County.
It's just down the road from where the Real Housewives
live their best lives.
Not a lot happens in Aliso Viejo.
And around here, they like that.
Except on May 15, 2018, just past 1:00 PM,
something did happen.
Something big. - I heard it.
I was on my lunch break at home and I'm like,
"That's weird."
Holly Salceda was about a mile away
from what sounded to her like a huge explosion.
Others close by saw the aftermath seconds later
and began recording. - Wow!
A two story commercial building
had been severely damaged.
Holly's co-workers confirmed it.
I said, "Well, what street was it on?"
And they said, "Mareblu."
When Holly heard that, she worried.
Her friend Ildiko Krajnyak owned a day spa on Mareblu.
Had a gas leak inside the building,
caused the explosion? - Get an ambulance!
Or could this be terrorism, either foreign or domestic?
You know, we cover a lot of stories in small towns
where people don't lock their doors.
Well, this wasn't that town.
In Aliso Viejo, a lot of people don't just lock their doors.
They buy an expensive security system.
And when they see something, they definitely say something.
It is a place where locals expect to be safe.
Spoiler alert--
The explosion on that sunny spring day was no accident.
And some of the people we met are still feeling
its aftershocks.
Within minutes of the blast,
an Orange County sheriff's deputy
arrived on scene. - Hey, everybody, get back!
Everybody get back.
- Dash camera recording. - It is an explosion.
There is a fire.
Is there anybody hurt?
283-- I've got body parts.
Loss of life was a guarantee.
Someone had been blown literally to bits.
Severed limbs lay on the ground.
Debris from the building was strewn across the street.
The sulfurous smell of fireworks and a plume of white smoke
filled the air.
Valerie Stone was at work several miles away
when she heard about the explosion.
She immediately thought of her boyfriend
who helped run a spa on Mareblu Street.
I was texting back and forth with Stephen.
Stephen Beal was at home that day.
So right after he heard from Valerie,
his thoughts turned to Ildiko too.
They were business partners at the spa.
He texted her in an apparent panic.
He got no response.
He was calling every number he had for her,
trying to reach her. And no answer.
Stephen wasn't the only one trying to reach Ildiko.
Sarah Thomas had been at the spa that morning,
getting her lashes done.
Just a few hours later, Sarah saw the building
where the spa was located on the news.
I didn't really know what to think of it.
I just thought like, "Oh, my gosh,
there was a gas explosion, like, when I left."
- Did you try to contact Ildiko? - Um, I did.
I-I texted asking if she was okay.
You know, you see it and you don't wanna
believe it either.
You're hoping that maybe it just looks like
it's in that area.
There was a news conference. My co-workers put it on.
We arrived at the scene of an obvious explosion.
I didn't have to listen to it.
I-I knew what they were going to say.
We have one confirmed fatality at this time.
There were two injuries.
Both were transported to area hospitals.
Holly dialed Ildiko's cell phone with dread.
My iPhone was going to green when it should be going to blue.
I knew. - You knew she was gone?
Mm-hmm. I knew it was her.
Police weren't saying it, but they knew the same thing.
48 year old Ildiko Krajnyak was dead.
The two women critically injured
had been Ildiko's clients at the spa.
One of them told a first responder
how she saw Ildiko open a box
and then an instant later came a bright light,
and then darkness, as the shock wave hit
and the building crumbled on top of them.
Orange County Sheriff's Investigator Jack Ackerman
had been called to the scene.
To him, the explosion sounded alarmingly familiar.
In March of that year in Texas,
there had been a person doing package bombs.
Tonight, a suspected serial bomber
may have struck again.
In my head, I thought maybe somebody was doing
a copycat of that. - So, Ackerman wondered,
were there more packages out there,
maybe headed for other targets?
We started the process of trying to interview people
who might be close contacts with, uh, the victims.
They set up a tip line.
Hundreds of calls came in, including one from Stephen,
Ildiko's business partner.
He possibly had information to provide us.
Stephen indicated he knew Ildiko well
because he was Ildiko's ex and helped her manage the spa.
He told the dispatcher he'd tried in vain
to reach Ildiko.
Ackerman's team drove 32 miles north of Aliso Viejo
to where Stephen lived to ask some questions
and also make sure he was safe.
We didn't know if the business was the target.
Uh, we didn't know if Ildiko was the target.
We didn't know if Mr. Beal was the target.
When they got to Stephen's house,
their concerns felt quite legit because some boxes
had just been delivered.
It was a horrific scene.
A package bomb had gone off at a day spa in a Aliso Viejo.
A woman had been killed, two others injured.
This isn't a town where, you know, crime is rampant
o-or things like this happen.
When things like this do happen, the FBI responds.
The Bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Force mobilized.
Special Agent Ashley Merrick was assigned to speak with
the surviving victims.
Lead Agent Nick Vicencia went straight to the scene.
We had a massive debris field, a huge crime scene.
And we wanted to initially come up with
an investigative plan
and a plan to process the crime scene
as soon as possible.
A bomber was on the loose and other potential targets
were out there.
Agent Vicencia knew timing was everything.
He set up a command post, staffed around the clock.
Orange County Sheriff's deputies had arrived at the home
of Ildiko's business partner, Stephen Beal,
and saw he'd just received some packages.
Our team made quick contact with him
so that we could make sure it was safe for him.
They had Stephen step outside.
Stephen sat with investigators in their car
while the bomb squad went to work in his house.
They were not devices. They were benign.
They were benign, right.
So he had been doing some remodeling in his house,
and he was getting packages with various items for remodeling.
Stephen didn't appear to be a target.
So... was Ildiko?
Ackerman believed the answer was yes.
Based off of her injuries a-and our experts
and the interviews with the surviving victims,
it was more likely going to be a homicide.
- This is murder by bombing. - Exactly.
That definitely made this story stand out.
Most of the murders we cover are crimes in which the killer
and the victim are face to face or nearly so.
Using a package bomb is about as antiseptic
as a homicide gets.
The killer doesn't have to lay a hand on the victim
or even be in the same ZIP code.
It is a calculated act of violence
that shields a murderer from the grisly reality
of taking someone else's life.
Investigators asked Stephen the usual first question.
Of course, his own ties to Ildiko
put him on the list of people to rule in or out.
Stephen understood that and consented to
a search of his home
while he continued to talk about Ildiko.
Investigators were speaking with Ildiko's friends, too,
and her story quickly started to emerge.
Bunny! Look at it!
He's a cute little bunny.
Look at the ears.
She was just beautiful inside and out.
Ildiko was a well respected esthetician
who'd been recommended to Holly.
How was she? - Wonderful.
From the very beginning.
Wonderful technically or wonderful as a person or both?
Both. Both, yeah.
She made me feel like a friend right from the start.
Holly was going through some hard times then,
and Ildiko was a good listener.
They connected the same way hairdressers sometimes become
a data bank of their clients' secrets.
I confided in her and she confided in me.
They had some things in common.
They were both boy moms.
She loved her son. He was number one.
- Talked about him all the time? - Mm-hmm, yes.
Just like I talked about mine.
There was another frequent topic.
Ildiko's relationships with men.
And not just the one she had with her husband of 22 years.
I knew she had her boyfriends on the side.
How many other guys were there?
Um, a good five or six.
There was always someone.
Holly didn't approve of Ildiko's affairs,
but she did understand them.
She just wanted to be loved
and she loved attention from men.
Her husband's not one of those men?
No.
What was wrong in that marriage?
I do believe, from what she said,
he was a good man.
You know, he took care of her mother.
Very good to her mother.
But she just wanted to feel loved.
And they grew apart.
When Ildiko and her husband, Ranilo Vestile, met,
Ildiko had recently moved to the US
from her native Hungary.
Ildiko's cousin, Eva Boni, says their relationship
was beautiful.
They were a very cute couple.
And they were in love. - You could tell?
Yes, of course.
Just the warmness, what they have between them.
They had a son who was now in college.
And along the way, something in the marriage changed.
Eva wasn't sure what.
She would not, um, give me her private life,
um, nor asking me my opinion.
That was her life.
Like Holly, Ildiko's friend and client, Sarah,
knew about Ildiko's extramarital adventure.
Did Ildiko's husband know what was going on
in her romantic life? - I assumed so.
She did make it seem like they had an arrangement.
Was Ildiko planning to end that arrangement?
When Sarah saw her the morning of the explosion,
Ildiko talked about a man she had recently started seeing.
She said, "I want to be with him.
I don't want to be dating all these people."
And that she was going to move forward with this guy.
A couple of hours after that conversation with Sarah
at her spa, Ildiko was gone.
Now an intense investigation was underway into Ildiko's life.
Investigators learned she had recently returned
from Hungary.
Agents pulled her travel info for the days leading up to
the explosion,
and they requested her cell phone records.
They also spoke with Ildiko's husband, Ranilo,
who actually found them.
When the explosion happened, he came down to the scene.
He tried to ask if Ildiko was okay.
Those feel like the actions of a person
who didn't have any involvement.
It felt to us what we observed was a-a frantic individual
looking for information.
Ranilo said he was at work when his brother told him
there was an explosion on Mareblu
and one person had died.
He said he wasn't sure if Ildiko
had returned from Hungary.
So he texted, asking if she was back in town.
Ildiko did not respond.
And that's when Ranilo says he drove to Ildiko's spa.
Can we tell him anything?
You know, did we see if her car was in the parking lot?
Investigators couldn't answer any of Ranilo's questions,
so they told him to go home to the house
he shared with Ildiko.
We put a surveillance team on him right away.
Um, so we were watching his movements.
When Ranilo made it home,
Ildiko's cousin Eva met him there.
I asked him what does he know?
And, uh, he said he doesn't know anything.
And then came a knock at the door.
Five to six, like, a military style with the rifle
people enter the house.
48 year old Ildiko Krajnyak had been killed by an explosion
after she opened a package at her day spa.
Investigators had ruled out any connection
to those Texas bombings
and now believed Ildiko was the intended target.
The big questions were why, who built the device
and how did it get to her spa?
With an explosive device,
they all have their unique signatures.
The chemicals, how it was contained,
how it was delivered, how it was gone off.
So you're kind of working from inside out
to trying to find the person or persons responsible for it.
FBI bomb technicians told lead agent Nick Vicencia
the device that killed Ildiko was a flash powder bomb
hidden inside the cardboard box
Ildiko's client saw her open right before the blast.
Agent Merrick spoke with her.
Her recollection of that was very good.
As they continued to collect evidence from the debris,
bomb techs were identifying the components
of the explosive device.
They found the jacket of a CVS brand 9 volt battery
completely split open.
Cells from the battery were found lodged in the ceiling
right above where the bomb went off.
Investigators believed that battery powered the bomb.
The bomb itself tells you that you're looking for someone
who has some specific, specialized skills.
This is not a device that just anybody could make.
Correct.
We were looking for anybody with experience with chemicals
and electric fusing systems.
That's a fairly sophisticated piece of knowledge,
in both those cases. - Very much so.
Investigators needed to find whoever that was.
The night of the explosion, what looked like a SWAT team
showed up at Ildiko and her husband Ranilo's house.
Nilo, as he was called, was there
with Ildiko's cousin, Eva.
I asked them why you guys are here and Nilo was very calm.
But I was keep asking them and they couldn't give me
any answer.
They told me that we don't know anything, ma'am.
Then says Eva, 20 to 25 agents went through the house
inch by inch.
The search continued overnight and into the next day.
A news chopper captured the scene.
Okay, good. Oh, got them bringing stuff out.
Ooh, there we go. I'm gonna follow him, Aldo.
With the package.
When it was over, did the house look like
a tornado had hit it? - Yes, yes.
It was upside down. Yes.
By now, it was clear to Eva, Ildiko had been killed
in the explosion at her spa
and that law enforcement was taking a hard look at Ranilo.
Did you at any point think that Nilo could be a suspect?
Never, ever in my life.
I mean, in this country, sadly, marriages break up
and husbands kill their ex wives.
I mean, that happens. - Yeah.
But I would never, ever believe that of Nilo.
I would believe that the neighbor or anyone else.
But not him.
Investigators wanted to know a lot more from Ranilo
about his relationship with his wife.
Ildiko and her husband still lived together,
but essentially lived separate lives.
They lived in the same home.
They were raising a child together.
They had dinner, um, on a regular basis together.
But, I mean, Ildiko was dating men who were not her husband.
And he was aware of that.
I think he had a sense of it.
Maybe. But during his interview,
Ranilo expressed nothing but love and respect
for Ildiko to investigators,
and they found nothing suspicious in Ranilo
and Ildiko's home.
This is going to be a very difficult situation.
One day after the explosion, law enforcement
finally released Ildiko's name.
Eva stood outside Ildiko's place as a family friend
spoke to the press.
This is a complete shock to family and friends.
We are in full support of our public authorities
to do their jobs in hopes of finding answers
to many of the unanswered questions.
- Who'd want to kill Ildiko? - I didn't think anybody would.
You'd never heard her express any fear of anybody?
No, but I knew that she had complicated relationships.
I don't know, maybe somebody she was--
I-I don't know what she was mixed up in.
Maybe Ranilo did.
When he spoke with investigators,
he did share a couple of interesting details.
There was a handyman named Max who had a key to Ildiko's spa.
Ranilo quoted Ildiko as saying,
"Max would sometimes park overnight in the lot
and sleep in his car."
So we definitely wanted to talk with the handyman.
When they did, nothing alarming stood out.
They moved on.
Ranilo also talked about a woman who'd been sending him
angry messages recently.
She was upset that Ildiko had gotten between her
and her husband.
Stephen Beal, had mentioned this same couple.
That'll put somebody on the radar screen pretty quickly.
Yes, and it-- and it did. Quickly.
Ildiko Krajnyak had been in someone's crosshairs.
As a result, she was dead.
Now, investigators had heard twice about a couple
Ildiko had somehow become entangled with.
A couple that lived in Aliso Viejo,
just a few miles from her spa.
They were Elizabeth and Gabor Papp,
names familiar to Ildiko's friends.
Tell me about Gabor.
She had a little fling with him.
Holly said Ildiko met Gabor in 2015.
They had an intimate relationship, as far as I knew.
It was a complicated relationship, too.
The major complication here being that she and Gabor
were both married.
He thought he was going to leave his wife
and end up with Ildiko. - Mm-hmm.
That did not happen.
Instead, there was a confrontation at Ildiko's spa
after Elizabeth said she found Gabor and Ildiko having sex.
Voices were raised, and it got physical.
Unclear who started that.
In the end, Gabor returned to Elizabeth.
Two years later, Ildiko poked Gabor on Facebook.
According to Elizabeth, she also began seeing Ildiko
drive by their home.
And Elizabeth responded.
She sent Ildiko some photos,
which we won't show on television.
- Right. - But they were intimate photos,
sort of taunting Ildiko that, "I got him. He's mine now."
- Right. - What did Ildiko say about
getting those photos from Gabor's wife?
She thought she was crazy sending another woman
photos like that.
Even so, Holly says Ildiko never expressed any fear
of Elizabeth or Gabor.
Should she have taken the history of
that love triangle a little more seriously?
FBI agents were wondering the same thing.
Less than 24 hours, you're talking to the Papps
about their relationship with Ildiko.
Correct.
Elizabeth told the agents a long, tawdry story
about Ildiko's affair with her husband,
about the shouting fight at Ildiko's spa,
and about how Ildiko had tried to reconnect with Gabor.
That's when the scorned wife, Elizabeth,
texted the scorned husband, Ranilo.
And then this, just a month and a half before the explosion.
Ranilo texted back, suggesting she block Ildiko
on Facebook.
To which Elizabeth responded...
Elizabeth, um, was very forthright
of her feelings for Ildiko.
She admitted she didn't like Ildiko.
And it stemmed from an affair that Ildiko had
with her husband. - Correct.
The Papps gave investigators consent to search their devices
and their home.
There was no evidence that, uh, her or her husband
had any knowledge or materials to detonate a device
in this manner.
- You didn't find anything? - Nothing.
No evidence of bomb making, maybe.
But Elizabeth sure seemed on the verge of detonating
whenever she talked about Ildiko.
She told the bureau they should have no trouble
finding suspects, because the men in Ildiko's life
were a never ending revolving door.
We always aim to tell the most well rounded story possible,
but we don't always get to interview all the people
we'd like to.
My producer and I had a very long dinner
with Gabor Papp to persuade him to talk with us on camera.
He said he would think about it,
but ultimately he declined our invitation.
He told us he was afraid of making Elizabeth angry
and wanted to keep his wife happy.
Agents knew they'd have to speak with every one of the men
in Ildiko's life.
It doesn't sound as if Ildiko was very concerned
for her own safety.
She didn't think there was anything to be nervous about.
Sarah, on the other hand, worried.
And she couldn't help but wonder about a guy she saw Ildiko with
the morning of the explosion.
She came out of her room rushed,
with, um, keys and mail in her hand.
And that's when the guy was starting to come towards us,
and she sort of shooed him off.
What did he look like?
He appeared to be pretty tall, bigger, gray haired.
I asked her who it was, and she said,
"Oh, just a friend."
Ildiko didn't share any details.
It was all sort of insignificant to me.
It didn't seem out of the ordinary...
Until later.
Until you leave a place and a bomb goes off.
Then everything seems weird.
Which is why she contacted law enforcement.
And soon FBI agents were at her door.
They asked me to try to identify who I saw that day,
which I could not do. - They show you any photos?
Yeah, but they were like yearbook size.
Like this small, really grainy, bad photos
on a paper like this.
And so all I could tell them at the time was,
"It's definitely not him."
Turns out the man Sarah saw that morning
showed up at the spa after the explosion
because he had lunch plans with Ildiko.
His name was Scott Mullally and investigators spoke with him.
He told us that he and Ildiko met at a casino
a few weeks prior.
He dropped her off at the airport
when she went to Hungary, and he offered to pick her up.
Ildiko agreed and so he picked her up from LAX
the night before.
They spent the evening together,
and he drove Ildiko to her spa the next morning.
And so there certainly wasn't any bad blood
between two of them.
- No. - No.
When investigators looked at the video from LAX,
there he was, with Ildiko at baggage claim.
He seemed to be telling the truth.
Even so, they checked his records and searched his car
and home, and there was this...
Before landing at LAX, Ildiko made a stop
at the San Francisco airport.
Investigators obtained that video, too.
There was Ildiko, and she wasn't alone.
Who was that?
Investigators needed to find out.
When investigators obtained Ildiko Krajnyak's
travel information, they saw that
before landing in LAX on her way home from Hungary,
she'd made a stop at the San Francisco airport.
We got the airport video.
We saw her coming through customs.
They also saw that Ildiko wasn't alone.
This turned out to be a man named Laszlo Zabo.
Who is that?
It was a person she was, uh, off and on dating,
and she went on the trip to Hungry with.
He and Ildiko flew back to the States together
and parted ways in San Francisco
before Ildiko caught a flight to LA and met Scott.
You talk with him?
- Yeah. - Oh, yes.
Laszlo told investigators he'd been in Hungary
for the last few weeks
and he hadn't visited Southern California in months.
Investigators had plenty to keep them busy,
including Ildiko's business partner, Stephen Beal,
whose house they were searching.
His girlfriend, Valerie, said on the day after the bombing,
Stephen couldn't stop thinking about Ildiko.
And he's like, "God, I got t-this weight,
you know, on his shoulders."
And he's, like, really concerned about what's going on
with the investigation.
And so at that point, we decided to go
to the police department.
He comes down to our Aliso Viejo substation
and says, "Hey, I'd like to talk to, uh, the investigators
in charge of the investigation."
So Investigator Ackerman
from the Orange County Sheriff's Department
and an FBI agent sat down with Stephen.
That conversation was recorded.
Real quick, before we start, I just wanted to--
that you're here voluntarily.
You came in, drove in on your own?
- Yes. - Keep in mind,
at this point in the investigation,
Stephen Beal was very much a person of interest.
Law enforcement was eager to learn more about him.
And Stephen was about to save them a lot of time.
If oversharing were a sport, he'd be an Olympian.
He just randomly starts sharing bits of information
about the relationship and the business.
Stephen was a grandfather now, a widower
with four adult children.
He and Ildiko met in 2016 when they both swiped right
on a dating app and then immediately hit it off.
We went away a lot.
We were, uh, exclusively dating with one another.
And, you know, all of those sort of texts
that you send at 3:00 in the morning
when you can't sleep, saying, you know,
"I miss you, I wish you were here."
You know, like, "Pillow's not the same."
You know, all that , right?
Over time, Stephen says he got involved
with Ildiko's spa.
We both signed a lease together.
- Okay. - Um, y-you know, so--
And we're building that business, uh, and--
And quite, quite successfully.
And while their business appeared to be thriving,
their romantic relationship started falling apart.
About a year and a half into it,
Stephen said Ildiko seemed to be hiding something.
I confronted her with some changes in her behavior.
Like, what? What do you mean?
Well, when we first started dating,
she gave me, uh, access to, you know,
she gave me her sign on credentials
for her United account,
numerous little things like this.
And then, um, she, at one point, just for seemingly no reason,
she, like, changed her password.
Stephen knew full well Ildiko was married
to someone else, but until then,
he thought he was the only other man in her life.
Now he realized world traveler Ildiko
was also a frequent flyer in the world of romance.
The issue was, for me, you know, why
and why are you trying to hide it?
- Yeah. - You know?
Because the reality is, if she had said--
if she had come to me and said, you know,
"I really think that I want to, like,
open up our relationship a little bit.
I don't want to be exclusive.
I want to, you know, date other men."
I would've said, "Okay..."
But it was the hiding it that was the deceit,
planned deceit is a problem. - Sure.
Stephen said the path of their relationship
reminded him of a song.
You know, when you wake up in the morning and you're--
and you're humming the Carole King song,
"One of us is changing.
Or maybe we just stopped trying", you know?
You know something is-is amiss.
And now it was too late.
Ildiko had been killed by a package bomb
that ripped open their spa.
Stephen once again said he had no idea
who could be behind it.
Like, your whole deal is, you know, means, motive,
and-and opportunity.
And I don't know people that--
I don't know anybody that has the motive.
Okay, what about the means?
I-I don't know what's in my garage.
I don't know what chemicals they found.
So I-- you know, I suppose I could probably
fall into that category if- if the chemicals are right.
Law enforcement tends to pay attention
when you tell them you could be a suspect
in the crime they're currently working on.
And investigators who were, at that moment,
still searching Stephen's house
had found large quantities of explosive chemicals
in Stephen's garage.
Stephen said there was a simple explanation for that.
He used to make his own fireworks
and was a longtime rocket hobbyist.
A friend of mine and I, w-we would build model rockets.
And I started this years ago when my kids were little
and it got to be almost an obsession.
And so my kids, we built a 25 foot tall,
6 inch diameter, 4 stage rocket.
It had been years since he built one, he said,
and those chemicals were just sitting in the garage unused.
Investigator Ackerman wanted to know more.
When they do their analysis of chemicals found there,
chemicals found in your- your home,
it would just be a coincidence if the same...
Again, I don't remember what chemicals
are around in the house
because I haven't-- I haven't taken them down,
I haven't looked at them, I haven't thought of them.
I didn't even know where they were.
If there's an oxidizer, I mean, sure,
there was some sort of an oxidizer that was in the bomb
that was placed because you'd have to.
Um, and it clearly is possible that I have that oxidizer.
An oxidizer, meaning a chemical agent
that helps ignite fuel and cause an explosion.
Would someone with your type of experience
be able to convert that into something on a bigger scale?
I saw the devastation, you know,
in the pictures and news reports.
I have no idea how you would, like, put something together
that would-that would cause something like that.
Ackerman now had his doubts about that.
I don't know what Mr. Beal was thinking
when he came in there and talked to you,
but if he was trying to get himself out of the spotlight,
it feels like he did exactly the opposite.
He definitely put himself as more of a person of interest
as that interview went on.
And Stephen Beal wasn't done.
He gives us a lot of these extraneous details
to things that really don't make much of anything
except for kind of allude to what's going through his--
his mind, maybe.
Like the idea he was about to reveal
for a screenplay about an assassin.
I can't believe he's telling me this story.
Stephen Beal had walked himself into
the Aliso Viejo sheriff's station.
And, over several hours, he had talked himself
into more trouble than he was already in.
The whole interview is-is odd to me, um,
from the beginning. - Because why is he there?
Right.
The interview had veered into some truly bizarre territory.
Stephen told them about a screenplay he was writing
about a soccer mom who was a part time assassin.
Now, she's very good.
She planned every step of the way.
She covered her tracks.
He also told several jokes.
Then he performed a magic trick on someone
in the process of investigating a murder.
He did the, you know, pull a coin
from behind my ear kind of- kind of trick.
- You're kidding me? - No. I was blown away.
Unusual, yes.
Then again, Stephen was also an aspiring actor.
Stephen had worked for years as an executive consultant,
he said, and was on disability now.
He was apparently looking forward to
turning this new unfortunate set of circumstances
into something positive,
as he shared a conversation he'd had with his girlfriend,
Valerie, after the explosion.
She said, you know, actually, when you get past all of this,
you need to do a stand up comedy routine about it.
Because there's a lot of really, you know,
potentially humorous anecdotes that are just wrapped up
in the most intense life situations.
- Yeah. - And, you know,
the audience can relate to- to what you're going through
and it's delivered in-in a, you know, a humorous manner,
people love to be entertained.
I've never experienced that in all the interviews I've done
in my police career.
I think he thinks he's outsmarting everybody.
Wrong again.
Stephen may have thought he was the smartest guy in the room,
but he evidently missed this basic truth--
Telling police you think your ex lover's violent death
would be great material for a comedy routine
is not something that will take you off their radar.
Investigator Ackerman was not entertained.
He was convinced Stephen wasn't grieving at all.
Far from it.
But Ackerman played it cool.
You said you have the means.
Now look at the traditional motives o-of homicide
and there's a couple motives there that stand out.
And-and-- - Excuse me.
D-Do you think that you fall into the categories
o-of having those motives?
Love gone wrong? No, no.
- Do you have some war wounds? - No, not at all.
Okay. I rely on evidence, um, but in my heart.
- You got a gut too, though. - Yeah, in my heart, my gut,
I-I'm thinking he-he's the one definitely who killed her.
They had no evidence linking Stephen Beal
directly to Ildiko's murder.
However, in the search of his home,
investigators found what looked like sticks of dynamite
you'd see as props on a movie set.
This morning we learned 59 year old Stephen Beal
was arrested.
So the feds arrested him, not for murder,
but for being in possession of
unregistered destructive devices.
Ackerman had some reservations about the arrest.
He knew evidence in the case was still scarce.
I wanted to get to the bottom of a homicide
and not arrest somebody for having some type of devices.
So you wanted to follow him around for a couple of days
and see what happens?
I wanted to follow him around.
I wanted another chance to interview him,
talk to him again at a later date.
Any variety of other investigative techniques
is what I would have preferred.
And the Bureau wanted him locked up?
Yes.
Then about a week later, Stephen Beal
made headlines again.
This was a very unusual move by federal prosecutors.
They went to a judge over the weekend
to ask that charges be dismissed against Stephen Beal.
- Federal prosecutor Mark Takla. - The FBI lab examiner,
could not rule out these items
as possibly being used in rocketry.
So you end up dropping the charges.
Correct.
And he walks out of the lockup.
He does.
Ildiko's friends didn't know what to think.
I just didn't know if they were ever going to find--
Find the person responsible. - I was very upset.
I didn't understand it.
- You thought, "That's the end"? - No.
Because if you watch Dateline, there's always an end.
And that wasn't it.
Oh, she's right. This wasn't the end.
Because a mundane ingredient of the bomb that killed Ildiko
was about to become a key piece of evidence
when video surfaced of this guy purchasing a 9 volt battery
just days before the bombing.
It was one of those moments where my hair sticks
on the back of my neck. - And later, a sting operation.
I had to sign documents so they could go in
and put cameras and listening devices in our room.
It was a nightmare.
For some people, finding love is easy.
Others don't have the same kind of luck.
Like Valerie Stone.
I've dated people who are still stuck on their exes,
and that obviously doesn't work out.
In her online dating profile,
Valerie warned those guys away.
Must not be stuck in the past
or stuck on your ex, or, you know,
something like that, and--
'Cause I was so tired of it.
You want to weed out those guys who can't move on.
Exactly.
I mean, who wants to be in a relationship
with someone who doesn't really want to be with you?
Then she came across Stephen Beal's photo,
and she swiped right.
So did he.
A few days later, they met for dinner.
And she says they instantly connected.
It was great. We just--
No holds barred on the conversation.
We talked about anything and everything.
Complete honesty.
And right away, Stephen brought up Ildiko,
his ex.
He was completely upfront.
He says, we're no longer dating.
She's moved on. She's dating other people.
Any indication he was thinking about her?
Not at all.
Stephen told Valerie he and Ildiko
were still business partners, but that was all.
I was completely okay with it.
They were friends.
He had nothing but nice things to say about her.
I never saw anything in terms of anger towards her.
And you were probably listening for that,
weren't you? - Uh, you bet I was.
Only a month after that first date,
Stephen Beal was at the center of the investigation
into Ildiko's murder and had been arrested
for possession of unregistered destructive devices.
Okay, now, Valerie, reality check.
Is there any feeling in your head saying,
maybe this is not the guy I thought he was,
maybe this is not the person I should be involved with?
Yes, the thought across my mind.
I guess the thing is,
is I've had so many poor relationships that--
And this one was going well up until
this horrific in-- incident happened,
that it was kind of like, but if he's not guilty,
where could this possibly go?
How good could this be?
Now, maybe that sounds like I'm desperate.
Desperate's not where I was going.
Foolish might be where I was going.
Okay.
I also need to point out to you that there are
other men out there, online and elsewhere,
who are not targets of law enforcement.
True.
He didn't have handcuffs on up until that point.
Because that point is the point where
a lot of people might think to themselves,
"This is where I get off the Stephen Beal express."
Yeah.
And here you are.
Stephen had handed Valerie a big bouquet of red flags,
which she ignored.
And in that respect, she's not unique.
Covering this beat, I have seen more times than I can count
just how blind love can really be.
That's a cliche for a reason, because it happens a lot
and it can be costly.
When the government dropped those charges,
Valerie was there to take Stephen home,
still wearing his jail issue jumpsuit
with his belongings in his hand.
And you and Stephen both think, that's it.
"We're done. Nightmare over."
Yep.
The next day, says Valerie,
she and Stephen were running errands
when suddenly they realized they had company.
We're going down the freeway,
and I see an Orange County sheriff.
Next thing I know, he's behind me
and his lights are on.
I was just like, oh, God, pull over.
They're like, "Well, do you see who's in your car with you?"
And I'm like, "Yeah.
"And you guys released him from jail."
Dropped the charges.
What's the problem?
Deputies searched their car
while Valerie hit record.
Those are posters. You can open them.
We spent about three hours on the side of the road,
and they brought in a bomb-sniffing dog,
and I swear there were probably 13 cars behind us.
They uncovered exactly nothing.
To Valerie, it felt like harassment.
And even though Valerie and Stephen
were allowed to leave, Stephen's daughter,
Charlene Brown, said she knew the search for evidence
against her father was not over.
They want to bring whoever did this to justice
and they clearly want it to be him.
For investigators, combing through that evidence
was a huge task.
We continued to analyze hundreds,
if not thousands, of hours of CCTV footage,
tens of thousands of digital media
from both Ildiko, Stephen Beal,
other family and friends, business records,
financial records.
And it takes a long time to process micro-bits
of evidence when a bomb goes off.
Just sort of slowly building a case.
We wanted to do it right, yeah.
Then came what looked like a major clue.
A deep dive into Stephen's financial records
led to this purchase.
We found him buying a twelve, by six, by six box.
Right, and we were able to obtain CCTV footage
of him buying that.
That was at a store right around the corner
from the spa.
About a week before the bombing.
The box matched the description of the one
the surviving witness said Ildiko was opening
at the moment of her death.
Then there was this.
Bank records also showed Stephen Beal getting cash
from this ATM.
When an investigator familiar with the area saw that,
he remembered that just down the street
was a CVS store.
He checked the store's security video.
And that guy you saw at the register?
It's Stephen Beal, one week before the bombing,
buying a CVS brand single 9 volt battery
and paying in cash.
That changed everything for me.
It was very compelling.
At one point, you have to stop and say,
when do the coincidences stop?
That's the battery and that's your bomber.
- Right. - Correct.
What's more, investigators were now hearing stories
suggesting Stephen and Ildiko's relationship
was not at all like the one Stephen had described
to investigators.
There was one night she told him
she was out to dinner with Holly.
And he apparently didn't take her word for it.
He did not believe that she was with me.
So he kept blowing up her phone, texting her,
calling her.
He assumed she was with another man.
When we walked out of the restaurant, he was there.
He was pretty angry that night.
- And pretty jealous. - Yes.
Well, stories about jealousy are not evidence of murder.
And if Stephen had trouble moving on earlier,
that seemed to have passed.
A couple of months after the explosion,
Stephen certainly seemed serious about Valerie.
He wrote me a love letter,
and at the end of the letter asked me to marry him.
Did you have to think about it at all?
Nope. I didn't.
I'd moved into the house.
I mean, I'd been through everything in his household.
Sock drawers, you know. I mean...
You'd done your own warrantless search.
Exactly.
I mean, I did my due diligence in the house, you know.
I didn't see anything that was of concern.
- You said yes right away. - I did.
Charlene approved.
I think she's good for him. I think he's good for her.
And she doesn't shy away from a guy
who has already seen the inside of a lockup.
I said to her that if you at any point
decide to walk away,
not that it matters what we think,
but none of us would blame you.
- But she stuck around. - But she stuck around.
That loyalty of Valerie's was about to be tested.
- You get another proposal? - Yeah.
This one from some guys in gray suits.
Yeah.
And you had to say yes to that, too?
I didn't feel I had a choice.
Valerie Stone and Stephen Beal were engaged.
He gave her a ring, a diamond solitaire.
- Let's see it. - A little over a carat.
- Very nice. - It is.
Sometimes an engagement is when people drop by with gifts.
Not these guys.
They pull up in a black Suburban
and ask me to get in, so I get in.
And they tell me, we're gonna go off site.
We need to talk to you.
It was the FBI.
They showed up at her work and drove Valerie
to a nearby park.
And they say, "Okay, leave all your electronics
"in the car."
Then she says two agents walked in one direction
while the agent in charge walked in the opposite direction
with Valerie.
He has a file.
And he shows me some pictures of the, um,
inside of the building after the explosion.
And then I think there was one of Stephen buying boxes
or something.
All of that's supposed to both horrify you
as to what the crime actually was
and also suggest that they have evidence that he's involved.
Yeah, yeah.
The feds were asking Valerie to become
what they call a cooperating witness.
You might call that an informant.
They were trying to get me to get him
to admit that he is the one
who packaged up the box,
and that he had used the box that he had bought
to make the bomb.
Without revealing their specific tactics,
I can tell you the feds pulled every lever they knew
to get Valerie to cooperate.
She was under what I would consider to be
pretty significant pressure to wear a wire.
Valerie told me she believed that if she turned them down,
her reputation would not be the only thing
that would suffer.
She also says she felt it was the right thing to do.
I said, "I want you guys to catch the person who did this."
You know? - Even if that's Stephen.
Even if it's Stephen.
I told him I didn't think it was.
But if it is,
"I'm okay with him being locked up."
It was such a horrendous crime
that whoever did this to Ildiko
deserves to be behind bars.
And if it was Stephen, it was Stephen.
How would she bring herself to get the man she loved
to admit to such a terrible crime?
I was like, "Oh, well, we're doing this Malibu wine hike."
Valerie says the FBI wanted in on the romantic getaway
she and Stephen had planned,
and they offered some free upgrades
that aren't usually included in the resort fee.
They're like, "Okay, well, we'll pay for the hotel."
So in-- for them to pay for the hotel,
I had to sign documents so they could go in and put cameras
and listening devices in our room.
It was a nightmare.
There's not just two people in the room.
There's like, what, 25? - Yeah.
Except, 23 of them are watching and listening.
You guys have fun that weekend?
Not a lot, no.
It was, um, extremely stressful.
Your boyfriend's thinking, "This is great.
"We can leave all our troubles behind
"and have a nice weekend together."
You're thinking maybe I can get him to confess
to a murder? - Yeah.
They also bugged Valerie's car and her phone.
And it turns out they did have a gift.
A necklace with a hidden listening device
to be worn the entire weekend.
And Stephen did not say, where'd you get that?
Actually, I had a-a-- a reason.
I said, "Oh, look what I found.
"I hadn't seen this in forever.
"I thought I'd lost it."
I mean, that, to me, is like you delivering for them.
I was trying. I mean, I--
I tried very hard.
Agents Vicencia and Mericle were there for it.
Did you guys have a nice weekend?
No, we didn't really enjoy the weekend.
Perhaps because the itinerary was derailed.
She brought up Ildiko, brought up the bombing,
tried to get him to discuss it.
Correct.
And he didn't really incriminate himself at all.
He didn't really talk about it at all.
The FBI wouldn't give us the tape,
but apparently the operation was a bust.
I was doing everything within my power
to get him to do something.
And nothing. No confession.
FBI agents continued to keep a close eye on Stephen.
- Hi, I'm Stephen Beal. - Online,
they found his acting reels.
I believe, though, that an actor
has to have a life outside of the camera.
Art illuminates life, but also life illuminates art.
He spent more money getting classes, um,
and lessons than he did ever making any money from acting.
- Welcome to showbiz. - Yeah.
So when Stephen was cast in the play
"Twelve Angry Jurors,"
the FBI was in the audience.
We were there, too, to watch the aspiring actor
play the role of a jury foreperson
in a murder trial.
The Bureau went to the play because agents
were investigating Stephen's disability claims.
They learned he'd been on disability
for more than a decade,
because, Steven said, he suffered from aphasia,
difficulty communicating, memory loss,
and an inability to read.
He was able to memorize lines
and recite them,
which was contrary to what he was providing
on the disability forms
as things that he was not able to do.
He had to know he was still in the FBI's sights.
Yeah, he did.
And, yes, he was concerned about it.
But you can't let that stop you from living your life.
Something he loves to do.
I don't know.
Pretty interesting play that he chose to be into.
Maybe a surprising choice.
Or maybe not a surprising choice.
Maybe a poignant choice.
Because the message of that play is how people
can believe one thing, all of them,
and then it turns out what they thought they believed
actually isn't true. - Right.
Now, Stephen Beal's offstage life
was about to take yet another turn.
- You thought this was over? - I thought it was over.
Heartbreaking.
It was just the beginning.
March 3, 2019.
It was a Sunday.
Steven had left to run some errands.
I was still in bed. Kissed me goodbye.
Then Valerie's phone rang.
Steven was calling.
And he's like, "I've just been arrested."
And then hands the phone to the special agent in charge.
This time it was the charges and not the vacation
that received an upgrade.
Mr. Beal was arrested pursuant to a federal criminal complaint
that charges him with the malicious destruction
of a building, resulting in death.
The charge carries a potential sentence of life
in federal prison without the possibility of parole.
This adds up to a murder charge
in terms of what he's facing. - Correct.
What sort of got you over the hump?
The lab finished, you know, its analysis and conclusions
of all the hundreds of pieces of evidence
that we submitted to them.
It sounds like there wasn't any one particular thing.
It was sort of the totality of everything adding up.
- He's in shock. - And you must have been, too.
I really was. I was--
There's, like, no way.
There's no way they have a case against him.
And so days, weeks, months went by.
Stephen Beal sat behind bars without bond.
Valerie once again stood by her man.
You've never felt like you were at risk
by being with Steven? - Never.
If all this ends with an acquittal
and he walks out of jail a free man,
you still have no worries? - Nope.
- You believe him. - Wholeheartedly.
- You love him? - Yes.
Do you believe him because you love him?
No.
No, I believe him because I believe
he's not a sociopath or a psychopath or--
Murderer, is the word.
Yeah, he's not a murderer either.
Proving that Stephen Beal was a murderer became the job
of federal prosecutors Mark Takla
and Annamartine Salick
You confident you got the right person?
Absolutely.
100%.
The case finally went to trial in 2022,
four years after the explosion.
Prosecutors reminded the jury Ildiko wasn't the only victim.
Two other women have for years dealt with
the medical repercussions from that blast.
The government played for the jury an excerpt of a poem
Stephen Beal recorded for Ildiko while they were dating.
I love how when I dream of my life partner,
the only person that I can see is you.
They told the jury Stephen Beal was a obsessed
and infatuated with Ildiko.
And when he learned of her deceit,
he was humiliated.
The government showed photos found on Stephen Beal's phone
of Ildiko's text conversation in Hungarian
with her San Francisco guy, Laszlo Szabo.
Prosecutors said Stephen found those texts
while on a trip with Ildiko just two months
before the explosion.
And so the only reason that we could determine
why he would take those pictures
is so that he'd get those translated later on.
In those texts,
Laszlo and Ildiko are discussing plans
to go dancing during Ildiko's trip to Hungary.
According to prosecutors, it was then that Stephen
made his plan to kill Ildiko.
He knew how to make rockets and fireworks,
and those are the exact things one needs to know how to make
to make a bomb.
And he used that to end her life.
Prosecutors also showed jurors a video
investigators found of Stephen demonstrating
how to safely mix explosive chemicals
when making homemade fireworks.
The advantage of this method is that even if
you're using highly sensitive materials,
this is extremely gentle and will not cause
the formulation to spark or self ignite.
That shows his expertise.
Hard to argue that the guy in that video
wouldn't have known how to build an explosive device.
And could do it safely.
You know, the person has to be really confident
that they're able to put this thing together
without killing themselves.
And that is a special, special skill set
in electrical and chemistry.
The government told the jury Stephen used materials
he had in his home to build the bomb,
including an oxidizer,
which caused the bomb's distinct grayish white smoke.
The forensic evidence was clear.
The chemical residue that was found at the scene
that was determined to be part of the bomb
was from the same specific types of chemicals
that Stephen Beal kept in his home.
Prosecutors said that just days before the explosion,
Stephen Beal bought two items to complete the bomb package,
a box and that CVS brand 9 volt battery.
What are the odds that somebody else purchased
a battery from that lot available during that time,
same kind of battery as was in the bomb?
I'm not a statistician.
I can't talk to probability.
But what I can say is that Stephen Beal purchased
the exact same type, make and model of battery
that the evidence shows was part of the bomb.
And because Stephen was involved
in Ildiko's business and had full access
to her schedule,
prosecutors said he found the perfect moment
to plant the bomb.
And then he waited.
He repeatedly, for no reason that we could discern,
was checking her appointment schedule
and her Facebook account over and over on the day
he knew she would be returning to the United States,
to the spa to see clients.
And there was this.
Prosecutors told the jury Stephen was searching
for information online about whether a narcissist
could beat a polygraph test.
And so that suggested that he's thinking of a polygraph.
And he thinks of himself as a narcissist.
Correct.
According to Stephen Beal's defense team,
what that really showed was a massive case
of tunnel vision.
The entire force of their investigation
was proving Stephen did it, rather than finding out
who actually killed Ildiko.
And they were about to tell the jury
how the government's case appeared to be a strong one,
but not if you look just below the surface.
Was this the murder trial of an obsessed, spurned lover?
No, said his defense.
Stephen Beal was simply a hopeless romantic.
One of the themes is that Mr. Beal
was a jilted ex lover.
It's a nice sound bite. It's great for TV.
But the evidence directly refuted that.
Craig Harbaugh was
Stephen Beal's lead defense attorney.
He told the jury the relationship between his client
and Ildiko Krajnyak was complex,
that even after he'd moved on, Stephen still cared for her
and she for him.
These texts were exchanged just a couple of weeks
before the explosion.
Ildiko To Steven...
Seconds later, Steven de Ildiko...
The strongest piece of evidence
is Mr. Beal's total lack of motive.
He said there were plenty of others
with a motive to kill Ildiko,
people who weren't thoroughly examined,
like Elizabeth Papp,
the woman who despised Ildiko for getting involved
with her husband.
Elizabeth hated her, wanted her out of her life,
and made it very clear in all of her communications.
It got to the point where Elizabeth reached out
to Ildiko's husband, Ranilo.
She demanded that he do something about it,
challenged his masculinity
when he wouldn't stop Ildiko.
That was about a month and a half before the explosion.
When Elizabeth took the stand,
she said she had nothing to do with Ildiko's murder,
even though she knew that after the explosion,
law enforcement would seek her out.
And when they did, the defense argued
the FBI search of the Papps' home
was perfunctory at best,
as demonstrated by these photos taken at the scene.
The photographs are completely illegible.
They're completely dark.
In contrast to the hundreds of photos taken
of Mr. Beal's home.
The Papps, particularly Elizabeth,
were dismissed too quickly as possible suspects,
said the defense, as was Max, the handyman
who had full access to Ildiko's suite.
She was reporting her fear of Max being there.
The defense pointed out to the jury
that the cameras in the building
were not working at the time.
And a handyman would have known that.
So he knew he could get in and out of Ildiko's spa
without ever being seen.
And of course, there was Ildiko's husband,
who had some pretty obvious reasons to be angry with her.
The husband was aware that Ildiko was cheating on him
while they lived under the same roof.
And as for the government's evidence
against Stephen Beal, the defense argued
there were easy explanations for some of it.
For example, that 9 volt battery he bought with cash.
It makes sense that Stephen would have purchased
that battery.
Ildiko needed 9 volt batteries
as a regular part of her business.
And the box the government said contained the bomb?
Stephen was remodeling his home,
packing up his belongings and moving them around.
The defense argued purchasing a box wasn't unusual.
He used his Staples rewards card,
not hiding who he was.
The defense said the government could not prove
that box had been used to make the bomb,
despite one of the blast survivors
saying it was very similar.
And they said the chemicals the FBI found at his home
were simply part of a harmless hobby
building rockets and fireworks.
And as for Stephen's online research
about passing a polygraph examination,
the defense had an explanation.
Mr. Beal had been offered an audition
to be a polygrapher.
That search was within days of that audition.
Simply put, said the defense,
law enforcement got the wrong guy.
Mr. Beal is a warm, funny,
kind of quirky older man,
has raised children,
has grandchildren,
loves his hobbies,
which, unfortunately, those hobbies
made him a target of law enforcement here.
Seven weeks of trial, 66 witnesses.
Now, Stephen's first fate was in the hands of 12 strangers,
the jury.
Probably he did it,
but I'm not firmly convinced he did it.
Probably is not good enough.
Probability is not-- not good enough.
This is what I think, and I have no proof--
Stephen Beal's life and Stephen Beal's art
were on a collision course.
Here, he was acting in real life.
Stephen was literally a captive audience,
as the case against him was laid out for jurors,
critics who would have the final say.
We sat down with three of those jurors.
Maricella, Klaus, and Malcolm.
He had the materials,
and he would have known how to do it.
- Yeah, absolutely he did. - Yes.
And I think we all agreed on that.
Yeah.
Those were some of the first things
we checked off that no matter what side you fell on in it,
we all agreed that he had the means to do it,
he had the knowledge to do it.
The question was whether he acted on that knowledge.
That's where jurors struggled.
They didn't disagree about whether Stephen
had purchased a 9 volt battery,
only about whether it was part of the bomb.
To Klaus, there was no doubt that it was.
There's only one way something gets shot
into the ceiling at that kind of speed,
and that's if it's sitting right on top of the-the thing
that detonates.
Maricella wasn't so sure.
You were not convinced, ultimately,
that the 9 volt battery was part of the bomb?
Not beyond a reasonable doubt.
And there was the motive, or lack of one.
Based on what you heard in that courtroom,
was Stephen Beal obsessed with her?
And was he so furious that she no longer wanted
to be with him that he killed her as a result?
It wasn't obvious from the testimony that, uh,
that he was the kind of person who would fly off the handle.
Frankly, this was what I saw as the biggest weakness
in the government's case.
Usually men who kill their exes nearly always telegraph
that fury long before any blood is spilled.
If Stephen was obsessed with Ildiko
and burning with jealousy,
why wasn't there more evidence of it?
I asked prosecutors about that.
I don't really see the venom here from Steven to Ildiko.
Where's the text where he says,
"You'll never be with another man?"
Where's the text where he says,
"You will pay for this?"
He was an individual that was trying to win her back.
And so I think that reaction that you're asking about
might not have been the best way for him
to interact with Ildiko to keep her in his life.
That's not who Steven Beal is.
Steven Beal is a calm, calculating individual.
Stephen Beal thinks he is the smartest person
in the room.
Well, even the sharpest among us
are sometimes tripped up by the complex details
of the webs they weave.
During that very first interview outside his home,
you may have noticed Stephen was talking about Ildiko
in the past tense.
No question, she was no longer among us.
But up to that point, law enforcement
had not yet identified Ildiko as the person
who had died in the explosion.
Jurors took an initial vote.
- Eight to four. - Which way?
Uh, eight to four to convict.
I said, probably he did it,
but I'm not firmly convinced he did it.
Probably is not good enough.
Probability is not-- is not good enough.
There were raised voices. There was pointing.
There was a-- a little bit of, um--
- Yeah. - There was some acrimony.
Yeah, definitely.
Finally, jurors sent the judge a note.
A hung jury.
No way around it.
What was that like?
Horrible.
I was so disappointed, just for her family.
The judge declared a mistrial.
For prosecutors, a setback, maybe a temporary one.
Was there ever any thought about whether or not
you were going to go ahead and retry?
No.
We were always going to retry that case.
For Stephen Beal, a victory,
also perhaps temporary.
Acquittal would have been better,
but certainly a hung jury
is better than a wrongful conviction.
Stephen remained in jail, waiting for another trial.
That began in June 2023.
And prosecutors again presented their evidence.
The box, the battery.
What they said was Stephen's obsession with Ildiko
and his expertise with explosive materials.
There was just simply no one who had that amount
of overwhelming evidence against them.
Not her husband, not the handyman,
not anybody that she had dated.
Not the Papps, no one.
- No one. - Just Stephen Beal.
Just Stephen Beal.
None of that evidence was new,
which is why in a retrial,
the defense typically has the advantage.
It's like playing a football game over again
and knowing the plays in advance.
The defense has already seen the prosecution's case.
However, a retrial is also an opportunity
for prosecutors to refine their strategy.
And that is exactly what happened.
This time, they concluded their case with a recreation
of the explosion that killed Ildiko,
and played it for jurors side by side with the video
and photos of the actual aftermath
at the spa.
It really showed how that bomb could have gone off
and what the effect on Ildiko would have been.
It also matched the chemical used in the bomb,
which matched the chemicals the defendant had
at his residence.
The courtroom was silent as the images played,
complete with photos of Ildiko's scattered body parts.
And the eerie piece about that demonstration
was the mannequin had disintegrated.
The hands and arms were blown into bits.
The legs were severed from the mannequin's body
in very much the same way that Ildiko was found
after she died.
It was a vivid reminder of what happened to Ildiko
as well as a demonstration, said the prosecution,
of what Stephen Beal was capable of.
To prove Stephen Beal was no murderer,
this time, the defense would rely on the woman
who'd been by his side all those years.
His fiance, Valerie.
You still think he's innocent?
I do.
Stephen Beal's fiance, Valerie Stone,
had stood by him for five years.
All I want is a not guilty verdict
because I know he didn't do it.
Now she would take the stand for him in court
as the defense's star witness.
For this trial, Stephen had a new defense team,
Meghan Blanco and Anthony Solis.
They told the jury Stephen Beal was merely
a rocket and firework hobbyist.
He wouldn't have built a bomb.
And they said he certainly wasn't furious enough at Ildiko
to kill her.
Instead, he moved on.
And the proof of that was Valerie.
He starts a new relationship.
Psychologically, that is not what jilted lovers do.
The defense wanted the jury to hear
about that relationship directly from Valerie.
We called Valerie Stone to the stand to help give the jury
a better understanding of what was going on
in Mr. Beal's life.
And Ms. Stone was able to tell the jury
that he had moved on.
She was able to explain to the jury
what their relationship was like.
Valerie testified about that wine hike in Malibu,
the bugged necklace she wore,
and how the FBI's sting went nowhere.
They instructed her to ask him specific questions
in an attempt to elicit
some incriminating evidence from him.
And nothing came of it.
Stephen Beal never said anything that ended up
getting introduced? - No.
There's no admission.
And she told the jury after that was all over,
she confessed to Stephen she'd been an informant.
She says he wasn't angry at all.
A horrific crime that required a lot of planning.
It required a lot of emotion,
and we just didn't have that.
Now the case was again in the hands of a jury.
In less than two hours, five years after the explosion
that shook Aliso Viejo, the jury reached a verdict.
Guilty.
Ildiko's cousin, Eva.
I was very happy to hear that, very relieved.
It's not going to bring her back,
but we-we did something together,
all these people who worked on this case and helped us.
After the verdict, I spoke with Valerie again.
A few things have happened for both of us.
You moved out of Southern California
to another state? - Yep.
I went on a big diet. I lost 70 pounds.
Here's something that didn't happen,
which is you didn't break up with him.
You guys are still together.
Mm-hmm.
Valerie still believed Stephen was innocent.
If he were guilty, she said, he would have confessed
during that sting she was part of.
I did everything that they asked me to.
They asked me to try and get him angry,
to see if he, you know, have an outburst.
He never did.
He was always calm, cool, and collected.
Okay, it's possible I've seen too many movies.
But maybe there was a reason for Stephen
not taking the bait.
During those conversations,
you hold up a piece of paper like that.
- Nope, nope. - You didn't warn him?
Nope.
Did not.
Because she was on the witness list
for both trials,
Valerie missed a lot of what happened in court.
What came next wasn't pleasant for either of us.
I read her some text messages between Ildiko and Stephen
that were presented to the jury.
Those were texts Valerie hadn't seen.
If you'll recall, she and Stephen started dating
in mid April 2018.
And it was then he said his relationship
with Ildiko was over.
He was still friends with her.
They weren't romantically involved any longer.
- Are you convinced of that? - Absolutely.
"Building a relationship with you
"is the single most important period of my life.
"Ildiko, you rock my world.
"You are the woman that I've always dreamed of.
"I will love you forever."
That was on April 22nd of 2018.
Oh, wow.
April 28th, he texts Ildiko,
"I'm also missing you."
Wow.
That kind of makes me feel right now.
I-I'm sorry about that.
I do want to say
that perhaps not everything that somebody says
in a text to somebody else
has to go through a lie detector.
- Yeah. - Like, sometimes--
I know this is gonna come as a shock to you.
Men say things to women that are not 100% true.
Sorry.
Now I really need to reevaluate things.
I mean, it's been five years alone
and hoping. - Yeah.
You owe yourself something here too.
Not just him. - Yeah.
My producers and I talked at length about
whether we should tell Valerie about those texts.
We decided she was entitled to the same information
the jury had seen.
Valerie later told me hearing the texts
that exposed Stephen's lies had the effect of tough love,
and it helped her move on.
She and Ildiko ended up having one big thing in common.
They both trusted the same wrong guy.
In January 2024, 64-year-old Stephen Beal
appeared in court again, this time to hear his sentence,
which was life in federal prison,
plus 30 years.
He is appealing.
Eva spoke outside the courthouse.
After five years of waiting and wondering,
our family and friends have peace in knowing
that Mr. Beal will spend his remaining days in prison.
She will live forever in our hearts
and never be forgotten.
What do you miss most about her?
Her calling and checking on me,
like every day that-- "What are you doing?"
You come over, we go here and there
and then just her laugh.
She has this energy that you go in and you depressed,
and you leave the salon and you're flying
because she will bring up something positive about you.
So go see Ildiko and come out feeling great.
Yes, yes, exactly.
For Ildiko's loyal client slash friend, Holly,
that's exactly the way Ildiko made her feel.
She was the sunshine in some of my darkest days.
And I just miss her and love her.