♪
♪♪
- Some stories are unforgettable.
This is one of them.
- I was a victim of lies and manipulation for far too long.
It was hard. It was really hard.
I'm not a victim. I'm a survivor.
- First came the lies, then a murder.
- As we go in the front door, Jon is lying on a sofa,
gunshot wound to the forehead.
He was a firefighter.
He had everything in the world going for him.
- They took my pride and joy from me.
My son gets murdered for what?
- The person that called was Jennifer McKay.
She had been dating Jon.
- Turns out that she had a previous relationship.
- The motive was not what made this case stand out.
Infidelity, married people.
This could be a classic ingredient in a homicide.
- Correct.
- I just said, like, "Stay away from my husband."
- My life had already been flipped upside down.
- The eye-popping piece of the story
was something the killer overlooked.
We got an absolute prime piece of evidence.
- It's surveillance footage from next door.
- This camera captured the intruder, the killer.
- It was just unfathomable.
♪♪
- This is Dateline: Unforgettable.
I'm Dennis Murphy with a fresh look at
The Killer On Camera Four.
♪♪
[Amazing Grace playing]
- Amazing Grace, the bagpiper's mournful lament
for fallen firefighters.
It's the way a brotherhood says farewell to one of its own.
But this firefighter didn't fall amid the smoke and ashes.
His death was deliberate.
- He had everything in the world going for him.
- I just lost it.
My only child...
And I lost-- I lost him.
[trembling sigh]
♪♪
- A Baltimore firefighter gone too soon.
And the haunting question, who would kill a man
so dedicated to saving lives?
Firefighters go to work every day
knowing full well they might die on the job.
And when they do make it home after a shift,
they've reached the safe zone.
At least that's the order of a perfect world.
But as you know, dangers sometimes lurk
where they're not expected.
The people I met in this story didn't catch a whiff
of the threat that was barreling their way.
Thursday, November 30, 2017. Early afternoon.
A routine request to the Baltimore Police
for a wellness check.
A police officer wearing a body cam arrived
to find one Jennifer McKay on the scene.
- How're you doing? - Good.
- Her boyfriend hadn't shown up for a date the day before,
and she hadn't heard from him since.
She was distressed. This wasn't like him.
- And you've obviously posted to be like,
"Hey, are you around?" - Yeah, I Facebook message him.
I called, I've texted.
- First responders arrived.
- The landlord said that he'd open the door.
- Okay. - So we'll just see what we see.
- They would discover a terrible scene.
- Don't touch anything.
- Veteran Detective Val Vaughan and her partner,
Detective Ryan O'Connor, got there on the double.
- Let's do this. Let's go in and take a look.
And see what we're talking about.
I'll follow you. - Yeah.
- The boyfriend, Jon Hickey, had moved to
Upper Fells Point recently,
the area regarded as safe and quiet.
- Jon's apartment was on the first floor.
- What I remember most was it was dark.
N-No lights were on in there.
- As we go in the front door,
there's a living room area right there,
and right there is where Jon is lying on a sofa,
and he is deceased.
- Jon Hickey, 31 years old, a volunteer firefighter,
photographer, and Jennifer McKay's new guy,
dead on the couch.
Obvious injury to him? - Yes.
He has a gunshot wound to the forehead.
And it looks like Jon has on T-shirts, shorts,
and he's lying on his back.
There's no other trauma that I could see on Jon's body.
- Could it be a suicide, Detective?
Before you'd really examined t-the scene?
- I didn't believe it was a suicide.
- What told you no?
- The positioning of Jon's hands.
They were folded.
- You're not gonna roll the body and find a weapon?
- Yeah, I-I didn't think so.
And no, there was no weapon.
- Val, come here. - No weapon.
But it appeared someone may have rifled through his bedroom
in the back of the apartment.
- When I go back there, it looks like
the bed's repositioned,
a couple dresser drawers that are drawn open.
- Maybe a botched robbery?
- It's possible.
- On closer inspection, detectives realized
Jon had some pricey equipment that hadn't been touched.
- Jon was into photography.
All of his photography equipment was still there.
- Good stuff, expensive stuff? - Yeah, computers, cell phone.
- So a puzzling scene in a case that quickly became
a little extra for Detective Vaughn.
- I'm invested in all of my cases.
Um, this one extra because he had no idea.
The one thing that came to my mind was,
"My God, this kid was sleeping."
- And a kid, a young guy. - I say I call him a kid
because at the time, he was the same age as my son.
So, yeah, I called-- He was a kid.
- And now, Val Vaughan, Baltimore detective
and a mother herself, had to track down another mother
and give her the unbearable news.
- I remember her just putting her hands up to her face
like, "Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
I don't understand."
- When she told me that he was murdered,
I-I couldn't believe it.
- Kim Hickey, Jon's mom. - I-I said,
"I just talked to him not too long ago."
And she said, "Well, he was found a-and shot",
and I just lost everything.
I mean, they took my pride and joy from me.
- I got a phone call, um, and I think it was from you.
- Jon Hickey is Kim's brother
and a volunteer firefighter himself.
His nephew, young Jon, was named for him.
Mother and uncle went to Jon's apartment,
still in shock, in grief, and utterly baffled.
H-He's a firefighter.
You accept danger with every shift.
- Mm-hmm. - And then to be shot to death
in your own home. - Exactly. It just--
It didn't make sense.
- A death so sudden and brutal, no one could make sense of it.
- Somebody's got a beef with him.
But who? Who would it be?
- Finding that out would take Jon Hickey's family
down a dark path, revealing long held secrets.
A stunning piece of evidence.
That's got to be a huge light bulb moment.
Look what we have here, huh? - It was.
It was one of those moments where you say, "Wow!"
- And a wife confronted with a devastating accusation.
- I mean, what do you want from me?
- Absolutely nothing. - T-There's no secret!
♪♪
♪
♪♪
- We need to get in touch with family.
- When first responders arrived at Jon Hickey's
Baltimore apartment for a wellness check,
they met Jennifer McKay, Jon's new girlfriend.
She was worried sick.
- I've Facebook messaged him, I've called, I've text.
- She and Jon had been on a date earlier in the week.
Here they are on CCTV.
Then Jon went silent.
She waited while responders went into the apartment.
- Ma'am, we're gonna have, uh--
We're going to have the medics come.
- And she got the devastating news
right there on the spot.
- In order to resolve this situation, hopefully,
we're gonna need y-your help.
We're going to need you to stick around, okay?
- Hours later, Jennifer sat down with detectives
in this interview room.
How does it go down?
- I think Jen was in shock to be here.
- At that stage of the investigation, detective,
what specific questions did you have for her?
- Basically a sequence of events, a timeline.
- The timeline began some six weeks before,
when Jennifer McKay and Jon Hickey met online
and then in person.
Who is she turning out to be?
- Turns out that she was trying to start a new life with Jon.
She appeared to be happy.
Just a regular boyfriend, girlfriend situation.
- Jon seemed to feel the same way.
Vaughn and O'Connor learned that he spent Thanksgiving
with Jennifer and gushed about her
to his mom, Kim Hickey.
You met her. What did you think of her?
- I thought she was pretty nice. We got along great.
- Do you think this was a serious woman in his life?
- He said, "Mom, s-she loves everything I'm doing.
She's into the hockey and all this stuff that I do
and everything."
And I thought, "Okay, well, you know, it's too soon,
but I-I'll just keep an eye and hope everything works
the right way for you.
- His firefighter buddies heard about her too,
and they gave him a little good natured grief
about love in bloom.
- Brian McDermott, Jon's mentor.
Scott Amigh, a volunteer who rode with Jon
and Uncle Jon Hickey.
He was smitten, huh?
- No, he was in love. He wasn't smitten.
- W-We talked about that too, when he, uh, posted his--
He changed his status to in a relationship on Facebook.
- And then Jen made the joke.
"Yeah, he told everybody else before he told me!"
But you could just see he had butterflies.
You just could see it.
He was, uh, he was in love.
- Things were coming together for Jon
in his professional life too.
He came from generations of firefighters,
began volunteering when he was 21.
His home station was here,
the Woodlawn Volunteer Fire Company, Station 33.
Did he have it? Was he gonna make it?
- Well, you don't know that 'til he hits that fire.
But when you hit that door, that's when you know
if you have a firefighter for you or not.
- That firehouse measure of the right stuff.
I like the thought.
Do you have what it takes when you hit the door?
Can you run into a burning building?
That phrase "hit the door" went a long way to explaining
what made Jon Hickey tick and why he was so beloved.
How did he do? - He went through the door.
He went through the door, and- and I'll say 90% of firefighters
probably can't make it through that door.
- The detectives learned Jon was about to become
a full time firefighter
for the Baltimore City Fire Department,
due to enter the fire academy a few days after he was killed.
- He was so excited, he called me, he said, "Mom",
he says, "I told you,
everything is falling into place.
He says, "I got my house.
I just got accepted to the city fire department.
Everything is coming together, and I found the person I love."
- Now, Jon's new love, Jennifer McKay,
was sitting in a police interview room,
and she was about to shed some light
on his mysterious death.
In the weeks before Jon was killed,
she said strange things started happening.
Then a week before Jon was killed, his dog,
a border collie named Chance, suddenly died.
- Well, the dog was his, you know, that was his world.
Just a beautiful dog.
- He came in that day, he was in tears.
And you were, too. - Yeah.
- He came home and found the dog dead?
- The dog started getting sick all of a sudden.
The dog was in perfect health, and we assume he was poisoned.
- There was never any proof of that.
But then something happened that was potentially deadly.
The brakes in Jon's car were tampered with.
- It was cut, which would eliminate your brakes completely
once the fluid ran out.
♪♪
♪
♪♪
- Jon Hickey's family was reeling over his murder.
As far as they knew,
he didn't have an enemy in the world.
- I didn't know anybody that was really angry with him.
That's why I couldn't figure out how come, you know,
my son gets murdered? For what?
- He was just that person that would--
He was always giving, always giving, you know?
- Yeah, that was him. - No matter what it was.
- But it seems someone had targeted the young firefighter
in the weeks before he died.
Jon was getting harassing calls.
The dog he adored died suddenly.
And then the most chilling thing of all,
at the end of a weekend at his girlfriend's home
an hour north of Baltimore.
- And when Jon went to leave Monday morning,
there was something weird going on with his vehicle,
like his brakes weren't working correctly.
- Jon Hickey knew his way around a car.
He made his living as a mechanic.
- Jon's mechanically inclined. - And his buddy Scott Amigh
owns an auto body shop.
When Jon showed Scott what had happened,
Scott was sure someone had deliberately tampered
with the rubber brake line.
- No doubt in my mind that this was a cut brake line.
Whether it was a pair of scissors or a knife,
it was cut,
which would eliminate your brakes completely
once the fluid ran out.
- Which meant if he tried to drive the vehicle,
it would end up in wreck, huh? - Correct.
- What does that tell you?
Something's going on with this guy.
- It appears that someone is out for Mr. Hickey.
- Did you think there was a straight line to
him being a victim, dead on his couch of a gunshot?
- It seemed like a series of events
were starting to add up to, um,
what ultimately ended up being his death.
- But how to find whoever was behind those events?
Were they even connected to Jon's murder?
They couldn't rule that out.
In the police interview room, the detectives probed
Jennifer McKay, looking for leads.
It would be up to Vaughan and O'Connor to connect the dots.
They were wondering exactly how Jon's new girlfriend
fit into the picture.
You don't suspect her
or you can't go that far, at this point?
- At that point, I don't suspect, I don't.
We had nothing that, you know, tied her to
the death of Jon Hickey.
But keep in mind also that when we're speaking with her
at that moment, remember this-- The case is unwinding,
like we're gathering information as we're going along.
- The detectives continued to gather information
from the crime scene as well, focusing on
how the killer may have entered Jon's apartment.
- There is a, uh, rear door open.
- First responders found the front door locked
and bolted.
So it looked as though the killer got in
from the back of the apartment,
accessed by this narrow passage.
Detective, you really got to scope these buildings out
to figure out what's back here
and how you find where you're going.
- Yes, you definitely do. - You do.
- And have to watch your-- Watch your steps.
- The passage leads here.
So where are we now? - We're behind Jon's house.
This is his apartment.
- When detectives surveilled the back alley, they saw this.
- And lo and behold, there's a camera,
looking dead at us. Picture perfect.
- The camera was mounted on a neighbor's house,
pointed at Jon's back door.
- Is that where you'd want to place a camera
for what you're looking for? - Oh, absolutely.
I couldn't ask for anything better than that right there.
- For this case, it was perfect. - Picture perfect.
Picture perfect.
- A TV director himself would have put it
in that same place. - Right there.
- But accessing the camera wasn't going to be simple.
This is a citizen's camera. It's his property.
Presumably it's not a city-- - Yes, yes.
So we have to make efforts to contact the owner of the camera
and get permission to get the camera itself,
so we can pull the footage and review it.
- The million dollar question, was it even running
on the night of the murder?
- Sometimes, uh, we get lucky.
- And this was one of those times.
The camera was running that night.
That back alley surveillance device
would become known in the evidence file
as camera number four.
It would prove to be almost as valuable to the investigation
as any DNA or blood evidence.
Detectives sent it off to the crime lab
to download the footage,
then turned their attention back to the scene
and another promising lead.
Something lying in plain sight.
A document belonging to a stranger.
So in the front room, we've got a man
shot through the forehead. - Correct.
- And in the back room, we've got a passport.
- Correct. Who is this person?
- Is this your killer,
who may have inadvertently left this ID behind?
♪♪
♪
♪♪
- It's a suspicious death.
It appears to be a gunshot wound to the head.
- Baltimore police were investigating the death
of a volunteer firefighter, Jon Hickey,
discovered dead on his couch.
No signs of a struggle.
Jon's station house buddies were still trying to
wrap their brains around it.
I mean, all of you know you may not come back
from a given shift if something goes wrong,
but that's not what this thing was.
- No, and we could accept it if it--
- Yeah, if it was a different story.
If he died in a fire, we'd still be terrible.
Terrible thing to do, but... - Guy sleeping on his couch
and gets a bullet between the eyes.
- Can't get much more innocent. - Sleeping!
I mean, it is just devastating.
- It was horrible.
- It was a scene that haunted even a seasoned detective
like Ryan O'Connor.
- Something I always remember is his slippers were, like,
perfectly lined up right in front of the couch
where he was laying.
It was literally like he took his slippers off
and then was gonna lay down and watch TV.
- He had everything in the world going for him.
Everything. He was nice looking.
He was young, he was energetic.
He had the world at his fingertips.
- The detectives were working several intriguing leads,
but so far, they hadn't caught any big breaks.
- We didn't have a witness. - Ah.
- The witness is the most key thing
that you could possibly have in an investigation.
It was basically, uh, unfortunately,
a dead person inside of a house
and no witness to tell us the story behind it.
- You wish the neighbors heard something, they didn't.
- Yes. - You wish the crime scene techs
had come up with something, they didn't.
- Fingerprints, DNA, something that says
we're in the right ballpark.
- Cancel your vacation, huh? - It's going to be a long one.
- They knew one thing.
The scene in Jon's bedroom looked fake,
as if someone wanted it to look like a robbery.
But nothing was taken.
- It looks like it was tossed, but it looks staged.
That's what it looked like.
- Someone wants me, the detective,
to think that this was a burglary.
- It looks staged.
- Jon's photography equipment wasn't even touched.
And it was high end gear.
Jon was a passionate photographer,
earnings money from his pictures,
posting videos of himself on YouTube,
prowling around camera in hand.
One time he finagled his way into this old building
down by Baltimore's docks.
- Somehow he sweet talks the guard
to get through the gate and he's in his abandoned building
and he gets his picture of this amazing lifeboat.
It has to be 100 years old or something.
- It was a hobby that sometimes took him into dark corners
of the city. - He loved the city.
He would go all over the place in the city.
- Yeah. - Yeah. All hours of the night.
He'd go into places where you and I not necessarily
would want to be.
But he had no fear.
- Did a nighttime encounter in one of those abandoned buildings
come back to haunt him?
Or was it someone closer to home?
The detectives had discovered something at the crime scene,
a clue, perhaps, almost staring them in the face.
A passport belonging to a man no one seemed to know.
A guy named Brandon.
So in the front room we've got a man
shot through the forehead. - Correct.
- And in the back room we've got a passport.
Are these things related?
That's what you're wondering, I guess, as a detective.
- Correct. Who is this person?
- Is this your killer,
who may have inadvertently left this ID behind?
- So, the-the-- - In the frenzy
of fleeing the place, somehow lost his passport.
- Yeah. So that was definitely part of the investigation
that we had to track down and run out that lead.
- And that's what they did.
Tracked down Brandon and interviewed him.
Brandon told them he couldn't remember
because he'd been in a coma following a nasty
motorcycle accident the year before.
- He had a traumatic brain injury,
and he said he-he-- there were a lot of things
he didn't recall.
He did not know who Jon Hickey was,
and he believes that he lost his passport at some point.
Not sure where, how, or when.
- How Brandon's passport got into the apartment
remained a mystery.
When detectives asked Jennifer McKay about it,
she said she'd never heard of him.
But there was someone else Jennifer mentioned to detectives
that caught their attention.
She said she called a man right before she asked for
that wellness check on Jon.
- It was weird.
It was-It was odd at best. I didn't understand it.
♪♪
♪
♪♪
-
- Pr
- Pres
- Presen
- Present
- Present ar
- Present arms
- Present arms!
- One week after Jon Hickey's murder,
friends and family gathered to bid him a final goodbye.
- It was a huge procession for his funeral.
Flying flags, we had bagpipes.
We had a sea of blue.
- Firefighters go before us and created what we have today.
They better us by what they've done in the past.
Jon bettered us by what he did.
- May he rest now forever in God's peace.
Amen. [shouts cadence]
- Jon, you never got him out of the fire academy.
- Yep.
It's tough.
Um, yeah, he was the one to carry it on.
Um, he was.
I-I didn't have a son to carry it on with,
and he was kind of like a son to me.
Yeah, I miss him.
- Detectives believed whoever killed Jon Hickey
might somehow be connected to his new girlfriend,
Jennifer McKay.
After all, Jennifer was the subject of those
harassing phone calls Jon had received.
And Jon's brakes were tampered with
while he was staying at her house.
So detectives took a closer look at something Jennifer said
during her interview.
Something about a call she made moments before asking police
to check on Jon.
The call was to a Daniel Greene.
She told detectives she called him for advice
on how to request that wellness check.
So who was Daniel Greene?
How did she describe her relationship with this guy,
Daniel Greene?
- She basically said that they were friends.
- Detectives dug into Jennifer McKay
and Daniel Greene's relationship
and went back in time, years before the murder.
Daniel was a firefighter, part of the brotherhood,
just like Jon.
But Daniel served for a company in the suburbs,
about an hour outside Baltimore.
You do a little background check o-on him?
You coming up with anything?
What do the computers tell you?
- He has no criminal arrest record.
He seems to be, by all accounts, a loyal son.
The great father.
- And detectives learned
Daniel was married to another Jennifer.
She goes by Jenn.
The two met in a bar back in 2006.
And how was this guy? You'd just met him?
- Um, he was, you know, nice, charismatic, funny.
We had similar interests.
We were both raised in the church, you know,
so that just kind of drew me to him.
- Jenn, a stay-at-home mom and freelance travel agent
liked that Daniel was a well-respected firefighter.
- He was very proud to be a firefighter.
He seemed to love it.
- Good day, you saved somebody's life.
- Yeah, for sure.
- Most important of all, Daniel doted on
Jenn's daughter Kayla from a previous marriage.
Did she like him? - She did.
She liked him a lot. They were very close.
- So close that when Jenn and Daniel
decided to tie the knot,
he made sure Kayla took center stage
at their wedding.
- After we did our vows, he read something to Kayla
and gave her a ring, and was, like, promising
to take care of her and be there for her.
So it was like a whole thing.
- Words that you were happy to hear?
- Yeah, very much so.
- Daniel and Jenn went on to have a child of their own,
baby Madeline Grace.
- He was a very dedicated and devoted dad.
Very present for both kids.
- So you thought you made a good choice.
He's a good guy? - I did, I really did.
- But things began to change in 2009
when Daniel suffered a serious injury on the job.
While fighting a fire,
he inhaled hazardous gasses that damaged his lungs.
- And then he started with like a really bad cough,
difficulty breathing.
Um, anytime he got a cold or anything like that,
it was full-blown respiratory issues.
- In June of 2013,
Daniel was medically retired from the job.
- How did he deal with that?
I mean, he's hanging up this career
that he's so invested in.
- Uh, terribly.
You could see that he just didn't really know
how to deal with the loss of this career.
He was not the same person after that.
- The job loss took a toll on their marriage as well.
- The tides were turning with us
and there's tension in our marriage,
and what are you going to do?
How are we gonna pay our bills?
- Jenn said Daniel slowly grew more distant.
- I noticed that he wasn't, uh, really accepting
advances for me anymore.
And as a woman, you kind of are like,
there aren't many men that are going to turn it down.
Uh, that's just how men are.
So I kind of put two and two together
that, you know, he has
to be getting this from somewhere else.
- Cops have their own investigative tools,
DNA analysis and the like.
Suspicious spouses, we've learned
over and again on Dateline,
have something else.
Their instinct that something is afoot.
Jenn's nose was twitching for sure.
- Then, four months after Daniel retired,
Jenn discovered gut-wrenching proof.
Daniel was having an affair.
- How'd you know that he was messing around?
- It was all over our phone bill.
Thousands of text messages to his mistress.
- Did you know who she was?
- I did. I called the number,
and she picked up, and I knew her voice.
- Turns out the two women ran in the same social circles.
And she knew you.
- She knew who I was. She knew who his wife was.
She knew who his kids were. She-- yeah.
She knew who his family was for sure.
- Who is this person? Who is the other woman?
- Jen McKay is her name.
- Jennifer McKay, Daniel's longtime friend,
The same woman who would later start dating Jon Hickey,
and who'd call police asking them to check on him.
During their investigation,
Detectives learned about the affair, too,
from Jennifer McKay herself.
- Did she know, Detective, that he was a married guy?
- Yes.
- But what did all of this have to do
with Jon Hickey's murder?
Detectives were determined to find out.
After all, affairs of the heart can be messy,
and Cupid's arrow can be deadly.
- I mean, the common denominator is Ms. McKay.
She seems to be the lynchpin for whatever occurred.
-
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- Firefighters subscribe to the adage
- Firefighters subscribe to the adage,
where there's smoke, there's fire.
Homicide detectives have one, too.
Where there's murder, there's often infidelity.
I'm thinking this could be a classic ingredient
in a homicide. - Correct.
- Infidelity, married people.
- Domestic related.
- Do-do you do that same kind of math?
- Yes.
- Detectives Vaughn and O'Connor learned
that four years before Jennifer McKay
started dating Jon Hickey,
she began having an affair
with the very married Daniel Greene.
- Jenn, how hurtful was this infidelity?
- Oh, it was-- - Put some words to it.
- It was horrible. It was just--
you know, you wonder, where did I go wrong?
I finally confronted him and, you know, said,
Hey, what's going on here?
And he's like, we're just friends.
I'm like, I have a lot of friends,
and we don't text message thousands,
like 1,500 a month text messages
between them. - Wow, wow.
- You know, I was like, look, we can go to counseling.
We can talk to about what's going on.
And he was like, No, no, no, there's nothing wrong.
I'm gonna stop talking to her.
I've stopped talking to her.
- It's all over. It's done, huh?
- It's-- and it's not on my phone anymore,
you know, on our phone bill, so I'm like, okay.
- Helping matters, Daniel, by now had landed
a great new job teaching military personnel
how to use firefighting equipment.
- And that required travel to different army bases.
- Seemed to be a good fit for his skill set.
- Totally.
- But the smoldering embers of an illicit affair
can be hard to extinguish.
Jenn began to sense Daniel drifting away again.
His work trips were getting longer and longer,
while family vacations were getting shorter and shorter.
- I specifically remember one.
We took Madeline-- We surprised her
with a trip to Disney World.
And at the end of the trip, he said,
um, I have to leave.
He's like, I need you to drive me
to the airport in Tampa.
And we were in Orlando.
And I'm like, why do you need to fly out of Tampa?
- He was running out on you. - Yeah.
Just, like, leaving us high and dry.
And I flew back home with my daughter alone.
- People probably wonder at this point
why you didn't give him his marching orders.
Hello, 1-800-DIVORCE. You're done.
- Yeah, I grew up in a-a Christian home
where you, you know, you fight for your marriage.
You figure out, Hey, what's going on here?
- Then came November 2016,
one year before Jon Hickey's murder,
the weekend after Thanksgiving.
Daniel told Jen he was taking their daughter Maddie
to a buddy's house to watch football.
- They came home at, like, you know,
seven or eight o'clock that evening.
And in line with, like, when a football game would end.
- While putting Maddie to bed,
Jen asked her if she'd had fun watching the game.
That's when Maddie unwittingly dropped a bombshell.
- And she said, we didn't go there.
- And I said, what do you mean?
And she said, oh, we went to daddy's friend's,
Jen's house for Thanksgiving with her family.
- With her family. - With her family.
And I was like, what? - And your daughter together?
- Yeah, and I was like, I'm sorry,
What did you just say?
- Is this a big moment on the timeline?
- Huge, huge moment for me.
- Jenn had hit her breaking point.
After putting Maddie to bed,
she stormed downstairs to find Daniel.
- I just said to him, Hey, you know,
were you at Jen's house tonight?
And he was like, no, you're crazy.
Why would you say that?
And I said, well, Maddie just told me you were there
for Thanksgiving with her family.
And he's like, why would you listen to a little kid?
She's lying.
- That's when Jen grabbed her car keys
and drove off to confront Jennifer McKay.
If her husband wouldn't tell her the truth,
maybe her husband's girlfriend would.
- He was calling me non-stop,
calling me, texting me, telling me to come back.
You know, I better not go to her house.
I better stay away from her.
I knocked on her door, she answers the door
and I said, you know, was my daughter here today?
And she said, uh, yeah, it was Dan's weekend.
And I said, I'm sorry, wh-what?
And she said, It was his custody weekend.
- It took Jenn a moment to absorb the word,
custody, as in child custody after a divorce.
- And I said, um, I think we need to talk.
We're still married.
And her-her face just kind of went blank,
like, um, what?
And she just said, come inside.
- So, sister, we gotta talk, huh?
- Yeah.
- It didn't take long for the two Jens
to reach the same conclusion.
Dan had been lying to both of them.
- She tells me, I thought that you guys were divorced
and I thought you had joint custody.
- Daniel, she said, even had proof.
- He had shown her fake divorce papers
and she pulled them out.
- Fake divorce papers? - Yeah.
- During Jennifer McKay's police interview,
she told detectives about Daniel's deception.
- He's leading her to believe he left his wife for her.
They're gonna build, uh, their own happily ever after.
- The two Jens spoke for 15 head-spinning minutes.
Then Jenn Greene left Jennifer McKay
with these parting words.
- It just kind of went,
stay away from my husband and my family.
And I walked out of her house
and came home.
- As Jen pulled into her driveway,
she expected to find her husband,
primed with apologies, waiting for her at the door.
She was wrong.
- He didn't even talk to me.
He just left.
- Daniel, she said, headed straight to Jennifer McKay.
- He wasn't even interested in making it
okay with me.
He was more concerned with going to her
and making it right with her.
- Extra hurt, huh?
Yeah, I mean, in my-- in that moment,
my whole world collapsed.
I didn't think that he was that enamored with her
that he was willing to put everything on the line
that we had to be with this woman.
- It didn't take long for Jenn to decide
she wasn't budging.
She told her husband that if he wanted to leave the house, fine,
but she was staying.
- It sounds like you've come to an arrangement.
- My stance was always,
if you're unhappy, you can leave.
This is where our children live.
This is where--
you know, if you're unhappy, you can leave.
There's the door.
- Dan said he would stay.
Though he left the house often for days
to be with Jennifer McKay.
When he was home, he slept on the couch in the basement.
So this is his hangout when he's in the house, huh?
- Yeah, if he's here, he's downstairs.
He's never upstairs.
- Soon there would be no place for Dan
with Jennifer McKay too.
Frustrated by his apparent refusal
to commit to her,
she called it quits in August 2017,
three months before Jon's murder.
- She was tired of being second fiddle.
She was tired of being the other woman.
So after a while, she said she couldn't live like that.
So she moved on.
- Moved on to Jon Hickey.
But detectives learned that despite the new relationship,
Jennifer McKay and Dan Greene
continued to call and text each other.
- Here's what gets me.
She starts talking to Greene about the new guy in her life,
her new boyfriend.
- She was.
It was perplexing to hear,
because I could not understand
why are you still conversating with this guy
if you're done with him,
and especially telling him about
the new man in your life?
Did you actually talk to him about
the relationship with Jon?
- Only that I was dating him and seeing him.
- Any reason in particular why?
- So hopefully he would have closure and accept
that I'm moving on with my life.
- Okay. - I made it clear
because I wanted him to leave me alone,
which he hasn't done.
- So he-he has not left you alone.
- No.
- But McKay made one thing clear.
Whether Dan let go of her or not,
he'd never resort to violence,
let alone murder.
- I mean, I don't-I don't see him doing
anything stupid in this sense
because he has kids,
a kid and a stepdaughter.
I don't see him jeopardizing that relationship.
I don't think he would go to that extreme.
- As detectives unraveled
all of the complicated relationships,
they got word from their crime lab.
It turns out there were several surveillance cameras
rolling the night Jon died,
and technicians had downloaded the footage.
It was this camera, camera number four,
that provided the breakthrough
detectives had been hoping for.
A man emerging from the shadows,
pacing the back and forth behind Jon's apartment.
- Pacing between the T and the alleyway right there
up-up here, checking windows.
Basically getting up the courage to-to actually--
- Boy, you know, am I really gonna do this?
That's what you see as the thought balloon
in his head, huh? - Yes.
- This surveillance footage is so remarkable,
I was just blown away the first time I saw it.
Remember, as the camera was recording,
Jon was inside his apartment,
said to be asleep on his couch,
unaware that his killer, just feet away,
was skulking outside.
We know what happened next,
which makes the rest of the video
even eerier to watch.
He seems to be trying out one window after another.
- He does. He goes in between.
He goes-he goes in between this window.
He's trying that one.
He tries this window right here.
And ultimately he's successful that he's able
to hoist this window up
and get his body-- - That's where he just
gets himself up and pulls himself in.
- He goes completely inside the window.
Yes, and he disappears.
- And he's about to kill a guy and you can't stop him.
- Yes, yes.
So once the-the intruder makes his way
inside of this window,
um, there's some time that passes.
And you see there's someone leave out of this door,
who we believe is the intruder.
- You see the figure? - Yes.
He comes out of this door.
And what you can also make out
is that in his hand,
it appears to be a handgun.
- Wow.
How important was that as evidence for you?
- It was crucial.
It was literally the biggest piece of the puzzle.
- Those security cameras had recorded
the prelude to a murder,
and the killer's getaway.
Now, one of those images was about
to point detectives to a suspect.
Did you think, how can a perpetrator be so stupid?
- No, I just thought, how could we get so lucky?
-
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the security camera that recorded him
breaking into Jon's apartment
and then leaving minutes later.
A costly mistake.
At one point, the man's face comes into full view.
Here's my close up.
- Yeah, that's my face.
Did you think, how can a perpetrator be so stupid?
- No, I just thought, how could we get so lucky?
- The alley is dark,
the figure hidden by an oversized jacket,
the hat pulled down low.
But Detective Vaughn had seen Dan Greene's
driver's license photo.
And the minute she saw the video, she felt sure.
- The first thing I say is,
Oh, my God, that looks like him.
Oh, my God, that looks like Daniel Greene.
It was shocking.
Shocking that there's a guy on this video
that looks just like the boyfriend
of our victim's girlfriend.
- But in order to make their case,
they needed an identification
from someone who really knew Dan.
And few knew Dan better than Jennifer McKay.
- They brought her to the station again
and showed her the surveillance video
and some close up photos of the intruder.
- Fair to say, the person in your chair
is having the worst days of her life?
- She is.
That's what I see too
when I'm sitting across from her
and I'm asking her to sit there and tell me
if this is, uh, Daniel Greene,
if this is the man that you once loved.
Because we're saying
that we-we believe that he killed
your new boyfriend, Jon Hickey.
- How close do you get to a positive ID,
of those photos as being Daniel Greene?
- When she says, "This is Dan,"
we're cl-- We have a positive ID.
- Your past maybe-shoulda?
- Yeah, we're-we're-- we're well beyond,
you know, the woulda, coulda, shouldas.
We are positive, "This is Dan."
- Dan Greene was arrested on December 5th, 2017.
A week after Jon was murdered.
- 35-year-old Daniel Greene, a married father of two
with no criminal record,
faces 11 counts against him,
including first-degree murder.
- In some of our "Dateline" stories,
the arrest of a suspect surprises almost no one.
This was the opposite.
When the news broke of Daniel Greene's arrest,
Jon's firefighter brothers were completely floored.
To them, it was unthinkable that Jon's murderer
could be one of their own.
- This isn't a street criminal coming into grab stuff.
It's a fellow firefighter.
It's one of the brothers.
- Yeah, that's the first thought's,
No, a firefighter couldn't do such an act.
That's what I thought. - Right.
- I mean, some of us could be screw ups, right?
I mean, but to kill somebody,
let alone another firefighter
in your family or brotherhood, how?
- Jon's girlfriend, Jennifer McKay,
had attended Jon's funeral,
but she kept her distance, consumed by guilt
that her former boyfriend might have been responsible
for Jon's murder.
But when Kim saw her in the back,
she graciously invited her to sit with the family.
- She did not feel that she wanted
to come near me because she thought
I was angry with her
for all this happening to my son.
- Were you? - And I-I as not angry
with her at all.
I said, I'm not angry with you.
Because you did not put the gun in the guy's hand.
You did not tell him to go shoot my son.
- Police came to the same conclusion.
Jennifer McKay had nothing to do with Jon's murder,
but they believe they had plenty of evidence
to put away her former boyfriend
for the crime.
First, that back alley video, they said,
showed Dan Greene climbing into Jon's apartment.
But also, Dan was arrested
while driving a black pickup truck.
And detectives believe it was was the same truck
they spotted on surveillance video
near Jon's apartment on the night of the murder.
- So we found a camera next block up
that shows a black pickup truck
driving, uh, parking, and the suspect
getting out and going down towards Jon's house.
And then same black pickup truck,
suspect goes to, drives off.
And the time, it matched up
between, uh, showing up in the alley
to, uh, the person darting out the back door.
- We couldn't tell who was driving the vehicle
based on the footage,
and we couldn't get a tag number,
but it appears to be the same truck
that he was arrested in.
- Investigators were using that surveillance footage
to build their case frame by frame.
They were also watching Dan's movements off-camera.
And they were about to learn he had some secrets.
- He's living a double life.
He's going to-going to extreme measures
to-to live his lies.
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Dan Greene breaking into Jon Hickey's apartment
the night Jon was murdered.
And there was other compelling circumstantial evidence.
That same night, Dan shut off his phone at 8:25 PM
then turned it back on the next morning at 9:20 AM.
For a man who lived on his phone,
that was strange, to say the least.
Is it out of character for him to
not have his phone with him?
- It-it would be probably out of character, yes.
- Even stranger, the last place Dan's cell phone pinged
hours before the murder
was a vacant house nowhere near his home or work.
What was he doing there?
Detectives got their answer when the homeowner
went to check on his property.
- And when he gets there, he discovers
that someone has been living in his property
without his permission.
They set up house. They had food in the fridge.
They had clothes in the dressers.
They had dishes.
- They even had a cat.
And mail, addressed to Daniel Greene.
- There were pictures and letters from Jen McKay there.
There was also a Prince George's county firefighter's uniform
hanging up in the bedroom closet.
- I mean, how weird and bold is this
to break into an empty home
and fill it with stuff to make it look like you lived there?
A staged cat?
On this beat, I've seen people go
to extreme lengths to pull off a deception,
but this one took the cake.
Detectives believe Dan Greene squatted in the house off and on
after Jennifer McKay broke up with him.
They said it was all part of his ruse
to convince her he'd left his wife for good
and to rekindle their relationship.
- What does it tell you about him?
What did you make of that?
- He's living a double life.
He's going to-going to extreme measures
to-to live his lies.
- Dan was willing to break the law
to keep his girlfriend.
What was he willing to do
if he was about to lose her to Jon Hickey?
For detectives, the answer seemed obvious.
Murder.
- I just want to understand why you killed Jon Hickey.
- I didn't kill Jon Hickey, so that's a moot point.
- During his police interview, Dan freely admitted
that he had an affair with Jennifer McKay.
- Tell me about you and Jen's relationship.
- Um, it was very good and very passionate,
and I couldn't move on
and fully commit to her.
- I asked him, did you know about the boyfriend?
How did you feel about the boyfriend?
And he says, I wish her well.
I wanted her to move on.
Do you believe that if, um, Jen came back,
would you take her back?
At this point in your marriage, in your life?
- Probably not, no.
- He also told me, he says,
Well, I really wasn't in love with her.
Do you still love her?
- No, I-I really don't.
- You can't just stop loving her.
It's like saying I stopped breathing over the weekend.
That doesn't even make sense.
- There are different types of love.
This is not a white hot I will drop my world
and come running to you.
But there will be feelings, and there is a feeling for her
that will be there. - Mm-hmm.
- And it'll always be there. - Mm-hmm.
- But it's not that, What do you need?
I-- Whatever, you want me to ditch my life,
ditch my family, and I'll come--
No, that-that's gone.
- That, Detective Vaughn thought, was a lie.
Jennifer McKay had shown her post breakup emails
and text messages
in which Dan seemed obsessed with her.
Police theorized it was unrequited love,
and it drove Dan Greene to shoot Jon Hickey
while he slept.
- You thought nobody saw you.
- I wasn't there, so they couldn't have seen me.
- Okay, all right.
So you thought nobody saw you,
when in fact, everybody saw you.
In case you haven't figured out in 2017.
- Uh-huh? - Guess what?
Everybody has video. - Okay.
- Everybody has video.
And just so you know, you're on video.
- But Dan Greene kept insisting
that wasn't him climbing into Jon's apartment,
and he claimed he could prove it.
- It sounds like you made your mind up, but--
- No, the facts have made their mind up, sir.
The facts. It's called evidence.
- Well, you have pieces of evidence.
You don't have the full evidence, it appears.
I think you don't have much to work with,
and you're throwing things at the wall
at this point.
- I don't care what you-- I don't care what you got.
- Yeah, you got the wrong guy.
I have-I have an alibi.
It wasn't me.
- Dan's alibi.
It was so surprising and unexpected.
Police didn't see it coming.
And when Dan's wife, Jennifer Greene,
walked through the doors of the police station,
detectives realized they had a problem.
- When your husband cheats on you as long as mine did,
you know, when he comes to bed at night
and when he doesn't.
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- Detectives told Dan Greene that his obsession
with Jennifer McKay
gave him every reason to kill Jon Hickey.
- Someone else is making her smile.
Someone else is making her-making her day,
and it's not you.
- In your theory, why is Daniel Greene's life
better improved by killing Jon Hickey?
- If he couldn't have Jen, then no one could.
- At the police station, Dan insisted
that he didn't have any lingering feelings
for his former lover.
And in fact, about a week before Jon's death,
he had a revelation.
- Watching my wife struggle through
and never giving up.
And it might not be perfect,
but it's rare to find someone that is that devoted.
And that is probably... something I need
to take into account a lot more.
- So he started making an effort, showing up,
trying to be the husband Jenn wanted him to be.
The night Jon was killed, Dan told investigators,
he was in bed with his wife, Jenn.
- I think Tuesday and Wednesday, I was--
I slept with my wife in bed.
- At any point did you leave the house?
- No, sir.
- Given the state of Dan's marriage,
it was a curious alibi to say the least.
But at the time, it made total sense
to Dan's parents, Beth and Randy Greene,
who were squarely on their son's side.
- It takes a while for it to sink in,
and even then, you don't get it.
- Beth and Randy were horrified at his arrest.
Their Daniel behind bars and accused of murder?
It was incomprehensible.
- If you were in a fire, he'd be the very first guy
in the house trying to get you out of the house.
But that's the kind of person he is.
When a man gets shot in the head like that,
that shows a lot of hate.
That's a lot of anger built up.
- Execution style. - Why-- yeah.
Why are you-- why would you go into somebody's house
and do that?
Our son would never do that.
- Back then, Beth and Randy were determined
to prove their son's innocence.
So they began methodically picking apart
the case against him,
starting with that video from the alley.
- There's a guy walking,
and we said, Daniel doesn't walk like that.
The guy looks bigger, he looks wider.
The clothing's different.
- We knew it wasn't Daniel,
but we wanted to be able to prove that
beyond a shadow of a doubt.
- Toward the end of the video, they thought they'd found
what they were looking for.
A moment, where for a split second,
the intruder turned his face to the surveillance camera.
Why is this not a picture of your son?
- Uh, there's a break right at the nose
right up here.
Initial-- right at the bridge of the nose.
There's another break right there.
So this man's had his nose broken at least two times,
in my opinion.
- Most likely something's going on with the nose.
- Yeah there's-there's a bald spot on the chin
right there.
Daniel has a full beard.
There's also a bald spot on the mustache right there.
There is some bruising on the side of the face
that's right through there.
It's not him.
- Randy Greene had a forensic lab
enhance the photo and then sent it to police
and the state attorney's office, hoping they would reconsider
their case against Daniel.
- They never did. - They never did.
- It's a situation where they zeroed in on one person.
They said, this is who it's going to be.
Now, let's-let's come up with a story
that fits that narrative.
- Tom Maronik Jr. is a defense lawyer
who worked on Dan's case and took a close look
at the evidence against him.
Tom, I think I hear you saying
that this is a rush to judgment.
- That's exactly what it is, Dennis.
It's a rush to judgment.
- And there are no forensics, which juries love,
to button it up and make the decision for them.
- Forensics can rule someone out.
Forensics can indicate a high likelihood
that it's the person they're accusing.
But they didn't do any of that here.
That's right, said Dan's trial lawyer,
Warren Brown, who charged the investigation was a mess
from the get go.
He pointed to a palm print on a windowsill
in the back alley that he says police never analyzed.
- They didn't check to see the size of it,
whether it was his size.
- What about the man whose passport police
found inside Jon's apartment?
Yes, detectives tracked him down
and interviewed him,
but Brown said they didn't scrutinize him enough.
- He told them he had been in an accident.
He didn't have much of a memory about back then.
And he's not sure how his-his--
his passport ended up in the deceased's home.
They said, "Okay.
"All right, have a good day.
"We just had to check you off."
But that was it. I mean, they--
they took his word for it.
- Then there's the issue of the black pickup truck
police believe Dan drove to Jon's apartment
on the night of the murder.
Dan didn't own a black pickup truck,
but he sometimes borrowed one from his neighbor Jim Rohrbaugh.
- Back in 2017, I had a black Ford Ranger, and it--
I always parked at the same place
I park my truck now,
the red Ram, down at the garage there.
- Rohrbaugh said that police never questioned him
about the truck.
And if they had, he would have told them there was no way
Dan took the truck the night Jon died.
- And this is where we, uh--
This is where I hang our keys for our vehicles.
If Dan would have came in that night.
We have a Jack Russell terrier here in the house,
and he's our watchdog, and he barks.
He goes crazy whenever anybody comes in the house.
And we didn't hear peep out of him that night,
so I'm-I'm sure Daniel didn't come in to get the keys.
- And as to Dan's alleged motive for shooting Jon...
- The boyfriend is jealous and kills, you know,
his girlfriend's new beau.
- But Brown said that during her affair with Dan,
Jennifer McKay had several relationships
with other men that Dan knew about.
- So why is this now becoming motive to kill this--
All they gotta do is out-wait him.
They ain't gotta go kill him.
- Murder, said Brown, was the last thing
on Daniel Greene's mind as he headed to bed
that November night.
The night he said he spent with his wife, Jenn.
- Well, I think that I was at home with my wife,
who will account that I was home with her.
- Okay.
- Would she?
After four years of enduring her husband's cheating,
betrayal, and lies,
What would Jenn Greene have to say?
- If you could, just start from the beginning
and tell me what you remember about that night in particular.
- Um, I got home at 11:00. Came in.
Dan was downstairs on the couch watching TV.
And I went upstairs, checked on the kids.
Both kids were asleep.
And got ready for bed.
And maybe, like, midnight, Dan came upstairs,
got in bed.
- There it was, clear and unequivocal,
Dan's alibi.
- That night in particular,
why is that so vivid to you? That night.
How do you remember that?
- When your husband cheats on you as long as mine did,
you know when he comes to bed at night
and when he doesn't. - Okay.
- And I know he came upstairs and got in bed with me
that night.
And like, those things might be seem mundane
and (BLEEP) to you guys,
but those moments were mattering to me in a big way.
- She knew, um, that we knew about Jenn McKay.
And we-- me, myself, personally mentioned it
multiple times just to remind her
that she was possibly covering for somebody
that was treating her family like that.
- I mean, what do you want me to say?
- Nothing. Like, absolutely nothing.
- There's no secret here that my husband is (BLEEP) up
when it comes to being a good husband.
Like that-- you're not really throwing anything at me
that I don't already know.
- So she stood by her man.
- Yes, she did.
- I think my husband screwed up,
but I think my husband loves his wife and kids
and didn't really know how to fix the mess he made.
- The detectives held back their most important piece
of evidence until the end of the interview.
That's when, without warning, Detective O'Connor
laid them in front of Jenn.
The photos of the intruder from the surveillance video.
- If you just get a moment,
just take a look.
She glances down at 'em.
And looks back up at us. - No sighs, no swallows?
Nothing? - No.
- And she left.
- Okay, thank you very much. - Okay. Yeah.
- Jenn Greene, who had every reason to hate Dan,
still vouched for him.
And that detectives knew wasn't good for their case.
- You thought you had this all rolled up in a gift box.
- Well, I never think that.
But I thought we had a good case.
I call it a bump in the road.
- But this bump in the road
was about to turn into a sinkhole,
because attorney Warren Brown's next move
would deal a potential death blow to the investigation
and possibly set Dan free.
There went your case.
- It went out the door quick.
♪
♪♪
- Summer, 2018.
The trial of Daniel Greene was set to go.
It was shaping up as the story of two Jenns.
The wife providing an emphatic alibi.
- Dan came upstairs, got in bed.
And maybe lights out, 10, 15 minutes after that.
- And the ex girlfriend identifying the accused
in that chilling video.
Without direct evidence, Jennifer McKay's ID
was make or break for the prosecution.
No jury was ever going to hear about DNA,
or bloody footprint, or anything like that.
- It was about the video of Dan Greene.
- The defendant's parents thought Jennifer McKay's ID
of their son from the security camera footage
was a travesty.
No way was that their Daniel.
And during her interview with police,
McKay seemed to have her own doubts.
Daniel Greene's defense attorney, Warren Brown.
- It was a torturous process to get her to finally say,
"Yeah, that's-that's him."
You didn't have to be a lawyer to see it.
The Q and A of Jennifer McKay,
which is the, uh, uh-- this positive ID,
and it's just laughable.
- Defense attorney Tom Maronick Jr.
- She's worn down.
That's essentially what it was.
They just beat her down long enough
until she decided to identify Daniel Greene.
- So there was bias. They put the thumb on the scale.
- Bingo.
- It was so bad that it caused us to give a shot--
give it a shot at having it thrown out.
- The defense filed a motion to keep McKay's identification
of Daniel Greene out of the trial,
arguing a jury should never hear an ID
that was coerced.
The identification of Jenn McKay is the big rap
against your case,
that you guys were putting your thumb on the scale.
You were influencing her decision.
- I wouldn't change a thing that we did.
- I know we did not put our thumb on the scale.
I know we didn't do that.
- But in a stunning ruling, the judge decided police
did use improper suggestive methods
to get Jennifer McKay's identification.
And it should not be heard at the trial.
That gutted the case against Daniel Greene
in the blink of an eye.
Boy, there's a bad day for you, huh?
- It was. It was a tough day.
- There went your case.
- It went out the door quick.
- If this doesn't get before a jury, look,
you don't have a case, do you?
- That's it. And I was like, that--
That's what worried me the most.
Because he was going to get out,
and then he was going to disappear on 'em.
- Prosecutors appealed, and Daniel Greene
was held in jail while the issue worked its way up
to the Maryland Supreme Court.
And there was another big ruling
about potential evidence.
Remember how investigators learned the brake line
on Jon Hickey's car had been cut?
- They later got cell phone records
linking Daniel Greene to that.
- That cell phone told us that during the time
that those brakes were tampered with,
that Daniel Greene was in the area of Jenn McKay's home,
where Jon Hickey's vehicle was parked at the time.
- But the trial judge said that wasn't relevant
to the murder,
and threw out the cell phone records.
Another blow to the state's case.
All the wrangling over evidence delayed the trial date.
And when COVID hit,
the wheels of justice ground to a halt.
The delays went from months to years.
They were tough times for the Hickeys
and for the detective who formed a special bond with them.
- Let me tell you something.
I've been in Ms. Hickey's situation.
I've had that knock on my door.
- Detective, what was the knock on your door?
- 1995.
I'm getting ready to cry.
Let me get it together.
- The knock on Val's door changed her life forever.
It came from a police officer
after her own grandfather was killed.
An innocent, random victim of gun violence.
- I remember the compassion and the care
that those members gave me and my family
when they were investigating my grandfather's death.
So when I'm fighting, I'm not just fighting for Jon.
I'm fighting for his mom.
I'm fighting for his uncle, and he bears his namesake.
Like, those are the people I'm fighting for.
Everyone that loved him.
- And there, in a single story, you have who Val Vaughn is.
Remarkable cop, remarkable person.
Jon Hickey's murder was the final case of her career
as a homicide investigator.
And she was determined to see justice delivered
for Jon and his family.
Was that helpful for you to see her steel her spine
in all of this?
- Without her, I would have been lost.
I wouldn't have known what else to do.
- In September 2021, four long years
after Jon Hickey's murder, Val Vaughn got a call.
There was news. Big news.
- It was just like Christmas that day.
It was literally like everything lined up,
like, oh, my God.
This is the break we needed.
This is just what we needed.
♪
♪♪
- When Jennifer McKay's identification of Daniel Greene
on the security camera footage was thrown out by a judge,
the whole case seemed to hang in the balance until..
- Jenn Greene says, "I need to talk to you all."
- The other Jenn, Daniel Greene's wife and alibi,
wanted a meeting with prosecutors and detectives.
What was this all about?
- She comes forward and we meet.
Prosecutor, myself, and other detectives
meet with Jenn Greene.
And she says, "A lot has changed."
- The changes for Jenn had been seismic.
Her husband's infidelity had been devastating.
And when he was charged with murder,
it was more than she could bear.
- I don't live in a world where people say
someone's being arrested for first degree murder.
It was just unfathomable.
- Unfathomable, and also impossible
because she claimed Daniel was in bed with her
on the night of the murder.
But according to Jenn, that critical alibi came
only after she was pressured by Daniel and his family,
especially her father in law, Randy, who told her.
- You know, Daniel said, you guys were in bed together,
and he was home that night, and, you know,
you're his alibi.
And it's just constant from his family,
just unrelenting.
- Jen's first statement to police was unequivocal.
- Like midnight, Dan came upstairs,
got in bed.
- But when detectives showed her three photos
from the security camera, she froze.
- The minute I saw him in this, like, very distinct way
that Daniel stood, I just knew it was him.
And I just stopped.
Everything inside of me, just my heart stopped.
Everything just stopped.
- But at that moment,
Jen did not identify her husband,
and detectives say her face revealed nothing.
She was stoic.
Jenn's thoughts were anything but.
- It was just very scary and very surreal, and I--
Honestly, I don't know how I kept it together.
I actually had a friend drive me downtown,
and once we got away from this building,
closer to the parking garage, I just collapsed in her arms.
- It was an overwhelming moment.
But Jenn was still prepared to take an oath
and be her husband's alibi.
- I wanted to wholly believe that he wasn't capable
of doing something like this,
that my children weren't going to have this cloud over them
for the rest of their life, that their stepfather
and their father murdered someone.
- But when the trial was postponed,
she had a lot of time to think.
And as the months passed, she started to waver.
- And I'm just in this whirl of back and forth,
of, you know, was he in bed?
Is that really him?
- Over the next few years, Jenn dedicated herself
to changing her life.
She started working full time as a travel agent
and was able to support her family on her own.
She says she became a new woman,
confident and independent.
- I removed myself from having a relationship with Dan.
I removed myself from having a relationship
with his family.
I was no longer getting calls from jail, from him,
reminding me that he was in bed.
I was no longer getting the pressure from his family.
- After a lot of soul searching, Jenn reached a tipping point
and says she was finally able to accept the truth
about her husband on the night of the murder.
- I realized he was not home in bed.
- It was a startling reversal,
triggered by a crisis of conscience.
- I needed my kids to see that, you know,
doing the right thing is never wrong.
And now I have to do the right thing.
- Which is to-- - To tell the state.
- What a tumultuous journey Jenn Greene had been on.
I've seen this before.
A change in the timing of things
can cause a witness to get cold feet.
All the delays in going to trial
gave Jenn occasion to nurture second thoughts
about throwing Daniel a lifeline.
And where she was about to come down
would change her family's life forever.
As she told me her story, I had nothing but respect
and admiration for her courage.
Four years after she'd given detectives
a powerful alibi for her husband,
Jenn was on her way now
to tell them something very different.
I wasn't at all nervous or anxious.
I was actually relieved to finally be able
to talk to somebody and say, "Hey, here's--
"Here's the truth of the matter.
"Here's what's really going on."
- They met in a restaurant, tucked away in a quiet booth.
- She says it was a lot going on,
and I want to apologize to you,
but I can't be his alibi witness.
- Can't be his alibi witness?
- And she said, "He was not with me."
- And there went Daniel Greene's alibi.
Jenn's original story had been the bedrock
of her husband's defense.
Her new version turned her into a star witness
for the prosecution.
And the jury's gonna decide what to make of you.
- Exactly.
- She told it one way this time, that she-- he was the alibi.
And now she's saying, this guy's guilty,
guilty, guilty. - Exactly.
I did say that he was in bed, but I was coached.
I was reminded repeatedly that he was in bed.
- A jury would have to decide.
But Jenn's reversal looked like a tremendous blow
to the defense and to Daniel Greene's parents.
This is a huge bombshell.
- Yes. - Was it a betrayal,
or is that too strong a word?
- No, it's a betrayal.
- I think what she did is very calculated.
- Calculated, The Greenes told us at the time,
because Jenn was now asking for a divorce,
and Daniel refused to agree to her terms.
- She demanded everything.
It was totally unreasonable.
- "I want to be taken care of the rest of my life.
"And Daniel, you're going to do this for me.
"And if you don't do that, you're going to spend
"the rest of your life in prison anyway.
"Because I'm going to make that happen for you."
- Vindictive? - Yes.
Yes.
- I don't need him or his money to survive,
but he should be responsible for his child.
And to think that I'm some kind of vindictive ex,
you know, that's ridiculous.
Like, come on.
- Especially galling for the Greenes was the idea
that they pressured Jenn to be Daniel's alibi.
You deny that. You never-- - It never happened.
Never happened.
- The Greenes insisted Jenn's original version,
given at the family's first meeting with defense attorneys,
was the truth,
and she could not have been more clear.
- Jenn blurts out, "Randy, he was with me.
"I was-- I remember that day perfectly."
- A betrayal to the Greenes felt like a gift to the Hickeys.
- I thought, "Oh, Lord, thank you, Lord,
"for helping me."
And I looked up and I said, "Jonny, thank you
"for putting a bug or whatever in anybody's ear
"to get this going."
- There was another huge development in the case,
and it was good news for the Hickeys and the prosecution.
The Maryland Supreme Court decided a jury could hear
Jennifer McKay's identification of Daniel Greene.
Prosecutor Rita Wisthoff-Ito.
- If we had lost, we might have not had a case anymore.
The case might have had to be dismissed
at that point in time.
- The state's case looked strong,
but the defense was primed to attack.
Jenn Greene's high stakes reversal
would become high drama in the courtroom.
Warren Brown would see to that.
- Her motive now was to hurt her husband
and really not provide the truth.
And so we felt pretty good that their case
was riddled with reasonable doubt.
- After years of drama and delays,
it was time to put that confidence
to the test at the trial of Daniel Greene.
- June, 2023.
Six years after Jon Hickey's murder,
the trial of Daniel Greene got underway
at the Mitchell Courthouse in downtown Baltimore.
Let's talk about the trial, huh?
Jon, are you there? - I'm there.
I was there the whole time.
Yeah, I was not going to miss it.
- It was a circumstantial case.
But prosecutor Rita Wisthoff-Ito thought it was a strong one.
- There was just so many things in this case.
Video footage was very good.
It's clear, it's close.
You know, the black pickup truck.
Testimony of Jen McKay and Jenn Greene were most--
were very key.
- The prosecution also had a treasure trove of new evidence
Jenn Greene had discovered in a hidden file on her laptop,
which the prosecutor believed her husband was using.
Searches on how to make untraceable calls
which seemed to connect the defendant
to those harassing calls to Jennifer McKay.
And according to the prosecutor, there were lots of searches
that showed Daniel Greene's obsession
with a man he was accused of murdering.
- You just see this progression in his searches
of trying to figure out who Jon Hickey was.
Where was he, you know, his actual address.
Based on those searches, he knew where Jon Hickey lived.
- Of course, the jurors got to see
that critical security camera video,
and they heard the two women who knew
Daniel Greene intimately identify him,
and not just from his face.
Something else gave him away.
- I saw my husband just standing there
with his arms in his pockets like he did, looking up,
and I just-- I knew it was him.
- When prosecutor Wisthoff-Ito looked at footage
of Daniel Greene pacing in a police interview room
with his hands in his pockets,
it was a revelation.
- That footage of him walking around in that interview room
compared to the video footage of him pacing around
in the back of that house, that's-that's Daniel Greene.
There's just no-- there's no doubt.
- And when Wisthoff-Ito showed the jury
that interview room footage,
Warren Brown realized he had a problem.
- I was ready to knock over the pitcher of water
just to distract the jury.
It was certainly the strongest evidence
to bolster Jennifer McKay and Jennifer Greene's assertion
that that's him on that video outside this man's house.
- When defense attorney Brown got his turn, he told the jury
that in a rush to judgment,
detectives neglected obvious leads
like that mysterious passport and the palm print
on the windowsill.
- They wanted to close this matter
and move on to another one.
And so there wasn't much due diligence.
It wasn't checking all possibilities.
- We weren't going to get fingerprints,
or DNA for that matter, because the video showed
who we believe is Daniel Greene wearing gloves at the time.
- Did you talk to passport guy? Did you get his story?
Because some people on the defense side say
he wasn't really looked at as closely as you would have.
- He did not look in any way, shape, form
like Daniel Greene or the person in the video.
- Everything led to Daniel.
There was nobody else to look for.
- The defense believed its best opportunity
was to discredit Jenn Greene.
Brown subjected her to a withering cross examination,
hoping to show the jury she was testifying
against her husband out of revenge.
Jenn rebuffed Brown's questions.
But then something extraordinary happened.
- When she-she-- on the witness stand,
she lost her composure.
- It was an explosive moment.
Jenn on the witness stand, eyes fixed on her husband.
- Dan just had this smirk and this glare,
and it was one that I was very familiar with.
It was the disapproving, shut your mouth.
Know your place.
And I just-- I just said,
"You can stop looking at me like that."
- You told him, you said-- - I looked right at him.
And the judge cleared the courtroom.
And, you know, I got really emotional
because I thought, oh, no.
I let the jury see me angry at him.
And that was what the defense was trying to paint.
- I loved it because we wanted to say to the jury,
you see how much she hates him.
You can see it in court.
She's got a motive to come in here and lie.
And we were like, good, man.
We're doing pretty well with this thing.
[laughing] We're doing pretty well.
- Daniel Greene's parents thought the defense
could have done better.
They wanted the jury to see a side by side comparison
of the enhanced security camera still
and Daniel's mugshot.
Proof positive, they said, that Daniel was not the killer.
- The guy in that surveillance video
is not Daniel Greene.
- Which is your opinion of this image, right?
- Yes, but the jury--
- Why is that any difference than Jen McKay's opinion
or my opinion?
- Look at that picture. Look at that picture.
Look at that nose. Look at that nose.
- A lot of people say, this couple cannot believe
that their son did this thing.
And they're living in this bubble.
And that's what they need at this point
just to get through. - That is not a bubble. That's--
That's a very vivid picture. - It doesn't add up.
What's the motivation for Daniel doing this to this man?
- If I thought my son did it, I'd be the first one to say,
Daniel, plead guilty, ask for mercy.
- But the jurors would be the finders of fact.
And after deliberating for just three hours,
they reached a verdict.
Daniel Greene, guilty of first degree murder.
Also guilty of home invasion and firearms charges.
- I was like, thank you, God.
We got the justice. And that was it.
- We've got him. We're done.
Sentence him. Put him away.
- Daniel Greene was given a life sentence,
which he appealed.
And that may have been the end of the story,
were it not for a stunning development.
A year after Daniel's sentencing,
a friend of Jon Hickey's got a hold of a note
circulated at the Greene's church
asking for prayers, called a prayer mail.
In it, Randy and Beth Greene
wrote that Daniel confessed to them
he murdered Jon Hickey.
"For seven years, we believed him to be innocent
"and defended him as such," the note read.
"His sin and deception has hurt and affected many people."
We reached out to Randy and Beth to ask about the mail.
They declined to comment, as did Daniel.
Court records show he has withdrawn his appeal.
Jenn Greene said that when she heard
about Daniel's confession,
she felt angry for all of the people he betrayed.
She also felt proud of the way
she confronted Daniel in court.
- Even though I had that moment where I thought I screwed up,
I just felt like, you don't have any power
over me anymore.
You have not earned that, and you don't get to have that.
So...
- Did it feel good to let loose with the thought?
- It did. It felt really good.
- A verdict, of course, can't restore what's been lost.
- The two Jenns at the heart of the story
have been rebuilding their lives.
Jennifer McKay got married and became a mom.
Jenn Greene told me she could hold her head high
because ultimately, she did tell the truth.
In a story with many victims,
Jenn does not want to be counted among them.
- I hate the word victim.
I'm not a victim. I'm a survivor.
- She is a survivor.
You know, we-we all are survivors.
We will survive this.
[bagpipes playing "Amazing Grace"]
♪♪
- I love you, baby.
- Survivors, still dealing with a terrible loss,
but grateful for reminders of the young man they loved.
Jon, I can't help but notice down by your feet,
you got a firefighter's helmet.
What is it? Tell me its story.
This is who my nephew was.
He was a person of character.
He was a firefighter.
He would give anything, do anything for anybody.
- That was his gear. - This is his helmet. Yes.
I keep it on a table as a reminder
of who my son was for me.
♪♪