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A Walk in the Rain

2022/10/18
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Dateline NBC

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Josh Mankiewicz
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Lester Holt
索尼亚的姐姐和姐夫
索尼亚的朋友
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索尼亚的朋友: 我最好的朋友索尼亚失踪了,这让我难以置信,她才19岁。凶手知道该攻击谁,他知道他在寻找哪些受害者。我当时不知道该相信谁。 索尼亚的姐姐和姐夫: 我们担心索尼亚在诺姆没有足够的警惕性。我们从未想过会有这么多妇女失踪。我们决心为她伸张正义,我将索尼亚的照片贴在警察局的墙上,希望他们不要忘记这个案子。听到索尼亚去世的消息,我非常震惊和难以置信。 警官布莱恩·韦亚沃纳: 我们在一条很少有人使用的道路上发现了一具女性尸体。我看到尸体是一名赤裸的女子,但我看不清她的脸,但我猜想是她。诺姆警察局无法独自处理此案,需要阿拉斯加调查局的协助。我被指派负责索尼亚的案子,我感到荣幸。我感到沮丧,因为我的同事没有与我分享任何信息。我决定重新调查整个案件。我决定与一位名叫弗洛伦斯的证人谈谈。我与一位名叫弗洛伦斯·哈布罗斯的证人谈话,她提供了重要的线索。弗洛伦斯提供的信息非常重要,我们需要让阿拉斯加调查局来接手这个案子。 埃里克·伯罗斯: 凶手非常谨慎,几乎没有留下任何证据。凶手拿走了索尼亚的衣服,因为衣服上可能有转移的证据。诺姆警察局只有三辆福特探险者,他们实行“热座”车辆制度,没有人可以带车回家。当晚值班的两名警官是马特·欧文斯和斯坦·佩斯科亚。在两名警官接受测谎仪测试之前,一辆警车失踪了。欧文斯在贝西坑发现了失踪的警车,并报告说发生了枪击事件。欧文斯声称有人向他开枪,然后他逃进了苔原。欧文斯承认他很害怕,并考虑到了他四岁的儿子。索尼亚认识凶手。纸条暗示凶手偷了一辆警车,并用它来引诱索尼亚。调查就像拼图一样,需要找到足够的碎片才能拼出完整的画面。我们在欧文斯经常去的狩猎营地里发现了线索。我们在火坑里发现了索尼亚穿的鞋子眼圈和文胸零件。我们在火坑里发现了索尼亚穿的牛仔裤纽扣。我们在火坑里发现了一把钥匙,可能是欧文斯的。我们从犯罪现场发现了弹壳,这表明凶器是自动枪。我们在诺姆警察局的证据室里发现了一把詹宁斯.22口径手枪。与谋杀案相关的卡车轮胎不匹配,这与谋杀案无关。 卡丽·卡萨特: 在犯罪现场,我们发现了一些线索,例如轮胎痕迹和血迹。我们发现一辆车经过了犯罪现场,车上有蓝色油漆痕迹,轮胎不匹配。索尼亚的身上有多处瘀伤,头部有一处枪伤。在库努克的卡车上发现了大量的血迹,以及三支步枪,其中一支步枪上也有血迹。 马特·欧文斯: 我坚持我没有杀害索尼亚,也没有偷警车。我的性生活与索尼亚无关。我不记得我当晚驾驶哪辆车了。当晚我没有与索尼亚交谈,也没有送她去任何地方。我听到枪声,然后出去巡逻了一个小时,试图找出枪声的来源。我认识索尼亚,她在医院工作。除了送醉酒的人去医院,我几乎没跟哪个女孩说过两句话。 斯坦·佩斯科亚: 我不记得我当晚驾驶哪辆车了。当晚我没有与索尼亚交谈,也没有送她去任何地方。 拜伦·雷德伯恩: 我是第一个发现可能与谋杀案有关的警官的人。 弗洛伦斯·哈布罗斯: 我看到索尼亚上了警车。索尼亚上了车,然后他们向北驶去。 库努克: 我当晚不在诺姆。卡车上的血迹是动物的血迹,轮胎痕迹也不匹配,蓝色油漆也不同。 蒂默里: 我最后一次见到索尼亚是她独自一人走在雨中。索尼亚没有来上班,这让我开始担心。索尼亚的化妆包没有动过,这让我更加担心。我向诺姆警察局报案,但他们好像觉得我在开玩笑。我后悔没有和索尼亚一起回家。我们非常想念索尼亚。 迈克尔·海因泽尔曼: 我来到诺姆后,很快就听说过欧文斯杀害索尼亚的案子。诺姆警察局需要重建公众信任。 克里斯蒂娜: 我们教孩子们要小心谨慎,包括警察。 汤姆: 我们教孩子们要小心谨慎,包括警察。

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They called it the happiest place on the high desert, home to a tight-knit group of 30-somethings who like to party. It starts as a Playboy Channel fantasy, but this is real life. Where passion leads to murder, and a killer seeks God's help with the cover-up. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Deadly Mirage, an all-new podcast from Dateline. Listen to all episodes now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi everyone, it's Jenna Bush Hager reminding you to check out my podcast, Open Book with Jenna. In this week's episode, I sit down with best-selling author Jenny Han. She joins me to talk about building her media empire that showcases diverse characters and young women coming into their own. Plus, what it was like adapting her popular book series, The Summer I Turned Pretty for television, and what fans can expect in season three. You can listen to the full conversation now by searching Open Book with Jenna, wherever you get your podcasts.

Tonight on Dateline. Sonia, she was my best friend. I just dropped. I just couldn't believe it. I mean, she was only 19. You get the news that a body's been found, and it turns out that's somebody you know. Yeah, no one was expecting what happened. This is out in the wilderness, in the tundra. Why is she out here like this? It's very hard.

There was nobody that would want to harm her. An SUV or a truck had driven through there. We thought that the person driving that vehicle could potentially be the person that killed her. All of a sudden, you guys are looking for a shooter out there. Yeah. And there's a note. I watch every move you make. I will also shoot you in the head if you get close. It's like something out of a movie. It is. He knew who to prey on. He knew who he was looking at for victims. I didn't know who I could trust.

It's nothing that I want to remember. Get ready for a mystery in Alaska, the last frontier, and the killer just might be the last person you'd suspect. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Josh Mankiewicz with A Walk in the Rain. When people talk about Alaska, they say it's the last frontier, and they use words like wild, untamed, beautiful.

Those people are probably not talking about Nome. We're just a couple of degrees south of the Arctic Circle, in a gold rush town whose big money days are probably behind it. A weather-beaten hamlet that's grimmer and grayer than your picture postcard vision of Alaska.

The motto here, inevitably, is "There's no place like Nome." And that's probably true. This is the endpoint of the famous Iditarod sled dog race. Right now, we're closer to Russia than we are to the rest of the United States. Only about 3,800 people live here. So by lower 48 standards, this is a small town. Around here, it's definitely the big city. And like any city, Nome has seen its share of evil.

Where'd Sonja go? Sonja? Sonja? Sonja Ivanoff saw Nome as a way station on the route to somewhere warmer. That's according to her best friend, Timmery. She definitely knew that she wanted to go to Hilo, that she wanted to live in Hawaii because we were tired of the cold weather in Alaska and she was determined to make money and go to college.

Fresh out of high school in 2002, Sonja came to know from Unalakleet, a native village 150 miles to the southeast. Unalakleet's on a little spit, so you have the ocean on one side and the river on the other side. It looks like an island, but it's not. It's connected by land.

Sonia was the fourth of six kids. Older sister Christina and her husband Tom say if you think Nome is small, Unalakleet is miniature. Everybody knows everybody in a place like Unalakleet. Related to pretty much half the town. And so everybody knew her. Our first contestant is Sonia Ivanov.

Not long after Sonia arrived in Nome, she entered something unique to Alaska, the Arctic Native Brotherhood Pageant. It's not a traditional beauty pageant. Nobody's wearing a ball gown or a bikini or anything like that. No, they're all using native clothes.

Her dad, Larry, says Sonja hoped to win some scholarship money for college. These mittens were made from my aunt's altar that passed away. She was proud of her heritage, wasn't she? Yes, she was. Proud to be Alaskan-Haitian. You were proud of her? Yes. Sonja found work at the admitting desk of a local hospital. And a few months later, in the summer of 2003, her BFF, Timmery, also left Unalakleet for Nome.

And so they roomed together. Without a car between them, the two walked everywhere. Is it as safe to walk around at night in Nome as it is in Unalakleet? We thought so. We felt safe walking in Nome. It just, it felt like home too. Well, these were kids from a small village. And Sonia's sister and brother-in-law were worried she didn't have the radar necessary for Nome. You sat her down at one point, Tom. I did.

I didn't know who she was hanging out with and that's exactly why I said I don't know who you're hanging out with. I don't if you went missing I wouldn't even know where to start to look. There's a crisis of indigenous women going missing in the U.S. The numbers are hard to pin down but what's clear is that in Alaska the problem is worse.

The fact that Native American women disappear at a much higher rate in Alaska than almost anywhere else is not a secret. But it probably was something that she didn't know or think about. No. Yeah, no. At the time, we never thought about that. Yeah, we never thought about it. We never thought about the amount of missing women. Soon, they would think about nothing else.

Sunday, August 10th, 2003. Sonja and Timmery were doing their thing, hanging out with friends. In a town that seems to run on alcohol, they were sober. Timmery remembers Sonja had just one beer. It was still kind of early. I mean, we went out, I think it was around 11 o'clock, and that's early for high schoolers, to a friend's house. And they were playing board games there.

It was summer in Alaska. The sun sets just before midnight. Around 1 a.m. Monday, Timmery, who had to be at work in six hours, decided to crash at a friend's place. Sonia wasn't due at work until Tuesday afternoon.

So she had all the time in the world. She felt like being out. It was actually a little mist raining. She loved the rain, anything with the rain. When we parted ways, I walked towards my friend's house, and she continued walking down the street, but it was towards our house area. We always had this saying, "Peace out, pal."

And then we go like this and then like this and then peace out. And we did that and she jumped in the rain and started walking. Timmery watched her best friend walk off into the light rain she loved so much. And that was the last time you saw her? Yeah. When we come back, what had happened to Sonia? When she didn't go to work, that's when we started looking. Asking questions.

people if they've seen her. I actually went to the police station. I just told them I hadn't seen Sonia and they kind of took it like it was a joke or something. Timmery and Sonia were the type of best friends who were almost never out of touch. They lived together and shared makeup, clothing, even a bed. Except on that Monday morning when Timmery got home around 5 a.m. to get ready for work.

Their bed was empty. Sonja wasn't there. You know, we didn't have cell phones back in the day, so I figured she was just at a friend's house. Timmery headed to the Aurora Inn where she worked the front desk. I didn't hear from her at work all day. Usually she would call me, but I mean, it wasn't super not normal. It wasn't super normal either. Timmery was worried enough that she made some calls to try to find Sonja.

I did call her sister to see if she stayed over there, but her sister hadn't seen her. Tom and Christina remember thinking there's nothing to worry about. Sonja's silence could be just a byproduct of teenage drama. My wife and I discussed it, and we were like, well, maybe Sonja don't want to be around Timmery today, you know. That was Monday. Sonja wasn't due at work at the hospital until Tuesday. So if Tom and Christina were right...

She was just somewhere else other than with Timmery. Timmery, though, was getting more concerned. By evening, she knew. Sonia hadn't just slept late somewhere. And what really worried her was Sonia's makeup bag, which had not been touched. I think more in the evening when I hadn't heard from her, I kind of started to worry because it's not normal for her to not go home and do her hair and makeup.

Tuesday morning, still no Sonia. Timmery went to work, and as soon as she could, she phoned Nome police to ask the most unlikely question. Was Sonia Ivanoff in the slammer? The dispatcher told her no one by that name was in custody. I didn't know what to do. I did a lot of calling around, and nobody had seen her or anything. By the time Timmery's shift was done, her concern had grown to panic.

Around 5.15, she walked into Nome PD, a historically white agency that had a rep for not always taking seriously crimes against Alaskan natives. I think I was hysterically crying just because I was so scared because, I mean, in Unalaklea, we don't have really official officers like what Nome does. I didn't even know how to, where to begin or how to tell them. I just told them I hadn't seen Sonia and Nome.

They kind of took it like it was a joke or something. They were like, are you sure she's not out partying? Tuesday evening, Tom and Christina heard Sonia never showed up at work, and now they began to worry. When she didn't go to work, that's not Sonia. That's when we started looking. Asking people if they've seen her.

People that we knew she might have been with. We spent the whole in the car looking, scanning. They also tried to think of people she might be with and settled on a guy named Kunuk. And he was definitely interested in Sonia. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And did they get along? They did. Oh, yeah. They were good friends. Gonna be boyfriend-girlfriend there for a while, but Sonia... He wasn't her type. Yeah, yeah. So...

Even so, Tom thought, maybe Sonya and Kunick were together somewhere. I actually went to the police station. I was there just looking for information. Maybe they knew where Kunick's camp was. And they say what? They were unconcerned. Let's just say that. Known police did seem to step it up after Sonya's boss called to report her missing.

On Wednesday, an officer named Byron Redburn came to talk with Timmery. He asked about Sonia's mental health and how Timmery and Sonia got along. That conversation was recorded. Generally, overall, her mood is... Happy. Are you guys arguing or anything? No, I mean, we've never... If we argue, then we get back and we talk about it. On the recording, you can hear Timmery's concern.

I mean, I can't stand being home and just sitting there because she's not there. She's somewhere. That afternoon, the police chief asked the fire department to help with a search. That's when it really hit reality, was when we saw the search and rescue boats. Timmery was also looking for Sonia. I was driving around with my friend Maya, and

And we pulled up to the hospital. One of, I think it was Sonia's coworker, told Maya just to bring me down to by the police station. And when I got there, there was a big gathering of people. So I was like, oh great, they found her. She was half right. They had found Sonia, but it wasn't great. Coming up.

He brought us to our porch and that's when he told us. Down a lonely road, near an old gold mine, a heartbreaking discovery. I think I just dropped. I just couldn't believe it. When Dateline continues.

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Now they had the final answer. Or did they?

Nothing has more suspense than a Dateline mystery. And no one wants to wait to find out what happens next. That's why everyone needs Dateline Premium, where listening is always ad-free. You get the whole story and nothing but the story. Or do you? Yes, actually, you do. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or DatelinePremium.com.

Hey, everybody. I'm Al Roker from The Today Show. I am so excited to kickstart the new year with help from our all-new Start Today app. It has everything you need for your wellness journey all in one place. Fitness challenges for all levels, meal plans that are easy and delicious, and so much more. It's built to fit your lifestyle, and our experts will guide you every step of the way. Come on.

Let's do this. To subscribe, download Start Today from the App Store on your Apple device now. Terms apply. Cancel anytime through Apple under profile settings. It was Wednesday evening, two and a half days since Sonya Ivanov had last been seen. Known police had told Tom and Christina to sit tight. We had quit looking just because they told us to kind of wait at home. There was no way to prepare for the story that was coming.

Around 8:30 p.m., a volunteer firefighter helping with the search had followed fresh tire tracks down a rarely used road and found something. He immediately went to the police station. Officer Brian Wayovana accompanied the firefighter back to the scene. So we gathered up cameras and bags and whatever we thought we needed to document, and we drove here.

The spot would be over there where the taller willows are. This was on a trail just off an old gold mining track called Dredge 5 Road. We tried not to disturb any evidence or make new tracks. I saw the body was a naked woman, but I couldn't see the face. I knew most likely it was Sonia. The chief of police went to Tom and Christina's.

He brought us to our porch outside, and that's when he told us they had found Sonia, and she wasn't alive. Tom called Sonia's parents. It was the hardest phone call I ever made. Outside known PD was Timmery. I think I just dropped, and I just couldn't believe it. While family and friends reeled, a murder investigation began.

Out on Dredge 5 Road, Officer Wayavana knew the tiny gnome PD couldn't handle this case alone. We needed to preserve the scene as best we could for the Alaska Bureau investigation team that would come up. So they covered everything. The road, the trail, and Sonja's body. They worried about weather and about grizzly bears. Officers took shifts guarding the site.

It was going to be a while before the cavalry came. Solving crime in Alaska is a little different than in the lower 48, isn't it? It is. Eric Burrows was the case officer for the Alaska Bureau of Investigation. In the investigative world, you know, they talk about the first 24, the first 48 hours, and how important they are to a case, which is true.

But in many times, in cases that I had to respond to, as well as other troopers, the first 24 or 48 hours might just be getting to the scene. All of that sounds like it's a good place to commit a murder, if you're a murderer. It's called the last frontier state for a lot of reasons. It's not like the big city at all.

The crime lab and its investigators are based in Anchorage, more than 500 roadless miles from Nome. Criminalist Carrie Cathcart caught the first flight out. As soon as she got to the scene, she saw clues. There was a blood pool kind of close to her body. We could tell a vehicle had driven through that.

The tire had obviously gotten blood on it. The tire tracks were still there, so we documented those. We could tell, like, one of the treads looked different than the other tread. So you're suggesting it had three of one kind of tire and then one of another? Yes. There was at least one tire that looked different than the other. They found more evidence that a vehicle had recently been down Dredge 5 Road. There was a paint transfer on a branch there.

On that same road, it was a little bit higher to suggest that an SUV or a truck of some kind had driven through there. And it was a very faint, light blue paint transfer. So you're looking for a blue vehicle with mismatched tires. Correct. That's probably your killer. Yeah. Then Cathcart got to Sonia's body, naked except for one sock, bruises on her face and chest, and a single bullet wound in the back of her head.

Right then, any doubts about whether this was a murder evaporated. And then I'm guessing police come to you and say, who could possibly have done this? Who didn't like her? What problems was she having? Yeah, that she had no enemies. I mean, there was other girls that were possibly jealous of her, but there was nobody in general that I could think of that would even want to

Even the night Timmery reported Sonja missing, the night police seemed so disinterested, no police had asked her to write up a list of Sonja's friends. And now that Sonja had been found dead, the one friend cops were most interested in was Kunik, real name Daniel Angusuk.

He always had a hot-headed, "I'm tougher than you" type of attitude, but underneath all that was a big Kunick teddy bear. ABI investigator Eric Burrows says Kunick's teddy bear core was not always evident. He had a girlfriend. They believed they had a child together. There were domestic violence issues between him and his girlfriend.

He had a temper. Of course, all this was already known by the known police department. And so he becomes a person of interest initially that they want to talk to. And that wasn't just because of Kunick's temper or his interest in Sonia. Police also learned he drove a blue truck with one tire that did not match the other three.

In terms of his truck, it's not just that one of the tires is mismatched, it's that the correct tire is mismatched. Correct. Yes, exactly. That couldn't be a coincidence. Or could it? Coming up... We pulled a tarp out. Just a significant amount of dried blood on it. There was also three rifles, and one of those had blood on the end, and he had blood on his tennis shoes. The evidence against Koenig seems to mount. Was this Sonja's killer?

Sonia Ivanoff didn't live to her 20th birthday. A killer had made sure of that. Her family made sure Sonia was brought home to Unalakleet for the final goodbye. We weren't going to have an open casket because of her bruising, and we were like, no. And she liked her makeup, and she liked to look good. And so I did her makeup, and...

That's how we were able to do an open casket. You did it. I did it. I recognize that as an act of love, but that had to be brutally difficult. It was very hard. It was all hard. There was so many people, not just from the village, but from surrounding villages. We held her service. Was that the school gym? That would be the same gym in Unalakleet where Sonia had drained her first jump shots.

What did she like about basketball? I think the camaraderie with her teammates is what she enjoyed. And she was super tall. 5'11"? She was 5'11". While her family mourned Sonya, law enforcement kept working. Criminalist Carrie Cathcart processed the scene on Dredge 5 Road. And aside from the tire tracks and the blue paint transfer, she found no usable forensic evidence. Even Sonya's clothes were missing.

Meaning no evidence of sexual assault. What evidence they did have pointed straight at Kunick. On the floorboard of his truck, they found what looked like obvious drops of blood.

and using a chemical that lights up green in the presence of blood, they saw a lot more.

They towed his truck to Nome PD and we examined it and we pulled a tarp out and what appeared to just have a significant amount of dried blood on it. As if somebody had driven through a pool of it. Right, yeah. And there was also three rifles just behind the driver's seat and one of those had blood on the butt end of the rifle and he had blood on his tennis shoes.

As Cathcart worked on the blood evidence, Nome Officer Byron Redburn, his tape recorder in hand, went to Kunick's apartment. Kunick told Officer Redburn he was 70 miles outside of town the night Sonya disappeared.

He said he was hunting with friends who could back up his story. Then Redburn noticed something that looked like evidence. Kunick said that came courtesy of his baby mama. Redburn took Kunick to the hospital. Right, you want to just drop your pants.

where his body was examined with the help of a nurse. We're just going to check if there's any secretion. Redburn told Kunick the nurse would take a sample of his DNA. That way they'll have some comparison things to compare to whatever they do find with Sonia. And if the two don't jive, then that's good for you. Yeah.

But if they do jive, then that's not good for you. How can it? I wasn't even in town when anything happened. Officer Redburn told Kunick his truck matched the forensic evidence found at the scene. There's been some things coming up that make you and your vehicle interesting. What's that? Turns out there's a bunch of tire impressions out there.

They're similar to the tires that you wear on your car. And what's that? Do you mismatch tires? I have mismatched tires. It's blue painted to crime scene, okay?

The most important questions for Koenig were about all that blood police found in his truck, in its wheel well, and on his gun. Is there any reason that anybody would be finding any blood on their vehicle? No. Later on, Koenig explained how there might have been blood. He said he'd run over a rabbit, which didn't die immediately. Hit her down the head. Okay.

His story, that blood on his shoes and truck was from the rabbit. Or if not the rabbit, maybe from a porcupine. Hunick said he shot one while hunting.

We did not think it was a credible story. We thought it was made up. And he drove a blue truck, and it had a mismatched tire on it, and he knew that area, and he knew Sonia. Correct, yes. Everything lined up. Police had the perfect suspect. I mean, didn't they? Coming up.

An intriguing new clue: a witness who saw Sonya that fatal night. She speaks to the driver, gets into the passenger vehicle, and then they head that way north. When Dateline continues. Sonya Ivanov was seven years younger than her sister Christina. When Sonya was alive, Christina and her husband Tom felt protective of her. After her death, they felt a burden on them.

to find her justice. And so, one week after the murder... You showed up at the police department with a picture of Sonya and stuck it on the wall. I wanted to put it up on the wall. My intention was that we didn't want to lose focus of, this is who you're working for. Tom's gesture did not go over well. He says one officer shouted at him and wanted him to leave. They just redid the police station with new drywall.

And he's in my ear just yelling at me. That didn't keep Tom from visiting the Nome PD again and again. I would go every day about 8 o'clock in the morning. I wanted to make sure that they knew we were still here. Although they didn't tell Tom, Nome PD was pretty confident they already had their man, Kunick. Or at least they were confident until the blood work came in.

The blood on his gun, the blood on the truck, the blood on his shoes, it's not human. None of it. Yeah, all the blood was animal blood. And the tire treads at the scene do not match the tires on Kunick's vehicle. The tire tracks did not match either. And the blue paint on Kunick's truck wasn't the same as the blue paint that had rubbed off on a bush on Dredge 5 Road. His story had seemed literally unbelievable. And yet...

Turns out, Kunik was telling the truth. He was telling the truth. Every odd detail actually checked out. They found the porcupine right where he said it was. Within like a mile or so. So he's off the hook. He's off the hook. Which cow leaves you with no one. Yeah, it was back to zero.

After Kunick was cleared, no other blue truck with mismatched tires popped up. And while the case had been all hands on deck at the beginning, that didn't last. It was just as Sonja's family had feared. The investigation started to slow down. A week after Sonja went missing, only two of the eight Nome officers remained on her case. Byron Redburn, who had interviewed Kunick early on.

and Brian Wayovana, who was among the first officers at the scene when Sonja's body was found. I thought they would assign one of the other officers who were there a little longer, but when they said that I was assigned to that case, Sonja's case, I was humbled. I felt honored. Christina and Tom were encouraged because Brian was a friend. Then, almost immediately, Wayovana started feeling frustrated.

He says Redburn, who worked days, wasn't sharing any information with him. And Wayovana was stuck on the night shift. Not a great time to interview potential witnesses. After 3 a.m., after the bars closed, I worked alone and I thought, how am I going to work on this? Eventually, Officer Wayovana, who describes himself as a laid-back type B, did something very type A-like.

I told my dispatcher, oh, f*** this. I'm tired of not knowing anything. I'm going to start this whole case over. I got the folder that had all the information. That review of the file, that's all in the middle of the night. Yeah. So maybe working the night shift was good for you. Yeah, and maybe not knowing anything was good for me too because basically I just thought, well, I'm just going to do my job.

In the case file was a handwritten note about a tip that had never been checked out. I don't know when that note was written or who wrote it, but it was there and I thought, man, we gotta look into this. A woman named Florence had called in after hearing of Sonia's death, saying she had important information. Boyovana decided he'd talk with Florence. And so nearly four weeks after Sonia vanished, when he was back on the day shift...

by Ivana grad Chief Ralph Taylor and a tape recorder. I said, hey Ralph, let's go for a ride. You sent this case in a whole new direction. I just gathered information. The witness's full name was Florence Habros. She said on the night Sonia disappeared, she and her sister had been out on the porch smoking when Sonia walked right by them.

Florence said her sister knew Sonia a bit, so they all waved. Florence said she also saw a car that night. And although Florence could not tell who was behind the wheel, it was clear the driver had an eye on Sonia. The car drove off, only to reappear at the next corner, where it intercepted Sonia's path.

Florence was close enough to hear Sonia's voice. She said, what's going on? And he started rolling down his window down. She speaks to the driver, gets into the passenger vehicle, and then they head that way, north. That's the direction of Dredge 5 Road, where Sonia's body was later found.

Florence said she looked at the time. I went inside and checked on my sister had a watch. It was 1.26 a.m., a little less than half an hour after Sonia told Timmery, peace out. So if Florence's story was true, hers was the last reported sighting of Sonia. That alone was significant. Much more significant was this. According to Florence, it wasn't just any car Sonia Ivanov had gotten into.

It was one Sonja had to have recognized. Coming up... Someone with that kind of information, they have to be courageous to speak up. The tip that turns the case upside down and then gunfire on the tundra. He says a shot rings out and then another one. Was the killer hunting a new target?

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A true crime story never really ends. Even when a case is closed, the journey for those left behind is just beginning. Since our Dateline story aired, Tracy has harnessed her outrage into a mission. I had no other option. I had to do something. Catch up with families, friends, and investigators on our bonus series, After the Verdict.

Ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances with strength and courage. It does just change your life, but speaking up for these issues helps me keep going. To listen to After the Verdict, subscribe to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at datelinepremium.com. They were sweet little old ladies, Helen and Olga. Their mission to get homeless men off the street. And then one day, tragedy.

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September 2003, as the fall chill settled into Nome, the investigation into who killed Sonia Ivanov seemed finally to be getting a little warmer, all because of a tip that was nearly ignored. I thank God for cigarette smokers who don't smoke in their house. The smoker was Florence Habros, who'd been outside at just the right moment to see Sonia getting into a car. Happened right here.

And it upended this investigation. Not just because Sonia got in the car, but because of what Florence saw on the car. Actually, on the door. It was a decal. And the decal said, "Nome Police Department." The police officer stopped on the site and she said, "What's going on?" Weyavana knew Florence's call to the cops about one of their own could not have been easy to make.

Someone with that kind of information, they have to be courageous to speak up. Right after that, you tell your chief, we can't investigate this anymore. This points right back at Nome PD. We need to let the troopers know, you know, be transparent. They have deeper pocketbooks than we do and more manpower. And they're not implicated in the murder. Exactly.

The known police chief called in the Alaska Bureau of Investigation to take over the case. Tom and Christina didn't know any of the details, but they definitely saw that the troopers had returned. There was people everywhere.

One of the things that strikes me is that, you know, you get the feeling you could drive from one end of Nome to the other in just a couple of minutes. I mean, this is a real small town. It is. ABI case officer Eric Burroughs knew one thing before he landed in Nome. Sonja's killer had left very little evidence behind. And that made Burroughs think.

You thought your murderer was evidence aware, whoever they were? From the very beginning, yeah, because of the missing clothing. This is not a scene like in a hotel room or a bedroom where you might expect to find somebody unclothed. This is out in the wilderness, in the tundra. You take the clothing because there's the transfer, blood transfer, fiber transfer. You get rid of the clothing because the murderer might have left something on it. Absolutely.

Burroughs' first priority was to figure out who was driving the police car Florence said she had seen.

How many other police vehicles are there that have that same similar look and who else is authorized to take vehicles out, maybe take home cars, maybe when they're not on duty? The, um, Nome PD had three Ford Expeditions and they did, uh, they had a practice called hot seating vehicles. They only had three, so no one had a take-home vehicle. So this investigation suddenly goes from just about everybody in Nome being a potential suspect to two officers who were on duty that night. Correct.

The two officers on duty that night were Matt Owens and Stan Pescoia, each driving his own cruiser. Owens had been on the known force about three years, and he was the officer who'd gotten prickly when Tom tried to hang Sonia's photo on the police department wall. Pescoia also had about three years on the force, and he was the officer Timmery had described as not taking her seriously on that first day.

We needed to essentially start the investigation over. Starting over with the two officers, and it was arranged for the two officers to come to Anchorage for an interview and polygraph. And then, before either officer could get to Anchorage, one more strange thing happened in Nome. One of the town's three police SUVs disappeared. It was shortly after midnight on September 23rd.

When a sergeant noticed the cruiser called 321 wasn't at the police department, he radioed the officer on duty, Matt Owens, and asked if he knew where it was. Owens said he did not. And when he couldn't find it anywhere else, the sergeant called the chief. It was late September, when the sun here sets around 9 p.m., so they were looking in the dark for the stolen cruiser.

Pretty soon there's a fairly large mobilization for Nome. For Nome, yes. That search leads here. It does. At 2:51 a.m., Officer Owens called in. He radios that he finds the vehicle at a place called the Bessie Pit. It's a gravel pit. It's actually just across the road from where Sonja's body was found. Two minutes later, Owens called in again, this time urgently. He radios that shots fired.

And so now that all the other officers are concerned, they, you know, flip on their lights, they're running code, and they're responding to the scene as quickly as they can. By the time the next officer arrived, everything was quiet. Owens later recounted what happened. He says, a shot rings out, and then another one, and he runs off into the tundra. After the other officers arrived, Owens came out of the pit and made his way back up here to the main road.

And that's when he confessed something to his chief, something that maybe a lot of other officers would not have. Owens said he was really scared back there, and he thought a lot about his four-year-old son growing up without a father. Owens said he'd realized something about himself. Maybe he wasn't cut out for police work after all. They searched, but couldn't find any culprit. And ominously, they also couldn't find the Remington 870 shotgun that was kept in the back of 321.

Coming up.

Inside that envelope, an ominous threat. You leave me alone, and I will leave you alone. I will also shoot you in the head if you get close. That's like something out of a movie. It is. When Dateline continues. Gnome, where the northern lights have seen strange sights. This among them. I watch every move you make.

Investigator Eric Burrows is reading from a note found inside Nome Police Unit 321. Pigs, I hate cops. It's a message, apparently typed by Sonia Ivanov's killer. And it's not a thank you note. You leave me alone, and I will leave you alone. I will also shoot you in the head if you get close. That's like something out of a movie. It is. It is.

The note suggested the killer had stolen a known police vehicle the night of the murder and used it to lure Sonia to her death. As you can see, it was easy for me to take your pig car keys right there. It was not her fault. She thought I was a pig, and s*** just happened. She was just a person, and I just wanted to see if I could that night. If the note wasn't convincing enough, the author included proof, a souvenir of the murder.

Inside this envelope is essentially a sort of ID with Sonia's picture on it. Burroughs soon learned that a theft of a known police vehicle was not out of the realm of possibility. What we found out, these vehicles are not necessarily controlled. They'd be left in front of the police department. They'd be unlocked, maybe keys in the ignition. At the same time, he was skeptical of the note and the story it told.

There's not that many officers in Nome. Everybody knows who the officers are. The evidence says she leans into the vehicle and talks with him like she knows him. And if it's some unknown person who's just stolen the vehicle, she's not going to react in that way that she was familiar with the person. Correct. She would not have got in the vehicle willingly.

Burroughs suspected the note and the whole 321 episode might be an attempt to take the heat off of one or both of the officers who'd been on duty the night of the murder, Matt Owens and Stan Pescoia. Both were scheduled to head to Anchorage to be interviewed and polygraphed on August 24th. That was the day after the 321 incident.

Owen said he was shaken up by getting shot at. So instead of getting on the plane, he went to see a therapist who worked with the police department. That meant Officer Stan Pasquale was the first to sit down with the ABI. Which vehicle were you driving that night? I don't remember which one. I think it might have been a new Expedition, but I'm not real sure. Investigators dug for details.

He said he handled a domestic violence call with Matt Owens. The suspect tried to fight the officers, and Pescoia had to pepper spray him. I think I finished all our paperwork before bar closing at 1.30, quarter to 2.

Remember, the eyewitness saw Sonja get into a police car at 1:26 a.m. Stan says he was a known PD doing reports during the time of Sonja's disappearance. And that's verifiable? As verifiable as you can with what is written in the dispatch log. Did you stop and talk with Sonja that night? And did you give her a ride somewhere? No. Pescoia said he didn't kill Sonja and he never saw her that night.

Who could you absolutely vouch for for not having done this besides yourself? The officers. Meaning it was no one at the Nome PD. Thanks for coming in here to see us. Yes, sir. Five days later, Matt Owens made the trip to Anchorage. How was your flight? It was a little rough. A little bit of weather? As they had with Pescoia. ABI investigators asked Owens about the night Sonia was seen getting into a police car.

Owen's recollection of the night Sonja disappeared wasn't much different from Pasquia's. He said it was just another night at Nome, some patrolling, some paperwork.

And that domestic violence call he and Pascoya went on that turned into a brawl. He hits me upside the jaw. It's pretty damn hard. My hagloves fly and my glasses are off. And I'm trying to restrain him. Like Pascoya, he said they brought the suspect to jail and then went their separate ways. You don't know what time that was? It's in the dispatch box, sir.

Owens said he headed out on patrol, then to bar closings around 2 a.m. About an hour later, he drove Pasquoya home, then returned to the police station. Just walked back in and was going to sit down and write sort of report and heard this, what sounded to me like a gunshot. Owens said he went back out and patrolled Nome for about an hour, trying to figure out where the gunshot sound came from.

He couldn't find it. Then dispatch sent him on a call, and then he came back to the PD. At 7 a.m. when his shift ended, Owen said he picked up the sergeant. Nothing Owen said put him anywhere near Sonia Ivanov.

Even so... Both officers' stories lined up. Both maintained their innocence. Investigators felt certain one of them was lying. Coming up...

On August 11, 2003, did you give Sonya Ivanov a ride in your patrol vehicle? No. In August of this year, did you shoot Sonya Ivanov? No. Two officers put to the test which one was telling the truth.

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Hey guys, Willie Geist here, reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit Down podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with Lisa Kudrow to talk about her new Netflix series, No Good Deed, and to reflect on her time as one of six friends on one of the most popular and enduring shows in the history of television. You can get our conversation now for free wherever you download your podcasts.

Officer Matt Owens didn't know it, but while he was talking to the ABI in Anchorage, Investigator Eric Burrows was checking him out back in Nome.

What was his reputation within the LMPD? His reputation was he didn't necessarily follow the rules. They felt that he would do the right thing in a tense situation with shots fired. He would be adequate for backup. He didn't always do the right stuff, but, you know, he was an okay guy. Burroughs also learned Owens liked the night shift and requested to stay on it. And on those night shifts, Owens liked company.

He would often bring a friend with him for an unauthorized ride-along.

They had spoken to Owens on multiple occasions about not doing that anymore. Did that seem to make any difference? No. Burroughs had heard Matt Owens liked to pick up women. And after interviewing some of them, he discovered Owens seemed to be using his patrol unit like a dating app. We're talking about these women in his vehicle as ride-alongs, but it's really more than that, right? I mean, they're not just observing the scenery when they're with him.

The initial information that we had is that he was having sex with them on duty. And the stories you were hearing were that the women were doing this willingly or that he was using his uniform and his standing as a police officer to coerce them? It sounded like that it was probably being done willingly because these women were seen in his vehicle. They're not in the back of the vehicle being arrested or under restraint. They appeared to be there on their own volition.

Key to what Burroughs heard was this. Some of the women said Owens would follow them in his patrol car while they were walking and then drive ahead of them to cut them off. I guess what's significant about this is that the story that Florence and her sister tell about the police unit traveling around the block and intercepting her is the same story that other women later told you about Matt Owens. Yes, that's correct.

Burroughs also found out Owens and Sonia were not complete strangers. Sonia worked nights at the hospital. So if he were to bring in somebody who needed to get stitched up, they might have crossed paths. Their paths are going to cross. He knew who she was. Burroughs relayed this information in real time to his colleagues in Anchorage who were questioning Owens.

- In your time in Nome, working and stuff, is Sonya a person that you would know if you saw her on the road or is she like a complete stranger to you? - She would definitely be, it's somebody I know who she is.

Owens admitted he knew Sonja from the hospital but said that was all. If I brought a drunk up there for a title 47 or something like that and there wasn't a nurse down there, I'd go up to the nurse station and say, "Hey, can you get me a nurse down here?" Other than that, I don't think I ever spoke two words to a girl in my life. He also admitted he brought civilians on ride-alongs. Would it be unusual for you on a patrol at night to pick up women or meet women or give people a ride?

It wasn't the man the ABI wanted to know about.

The interview was really part one.

In turn, Pesquia and Owens were each strapped to the polygraph. Is your last name Pesquia? Is your last name Owens? Then came the money questions. On August 11, 2003, did you give Sonja Ivanov a ride in your patrol vehicle? No. In August of this year, did you shoot Sonja Ivanov? No. Testing number. Please sit still. Thank you, Matt, for going through that with me. It'll take a little bit of time to run through this. See what it tells you.

What do you suppose that would be? Coming up... Has there been females in there that I've given rides to? Uh, yeah. More questions for Officer Owens. The women in his patrol car. Why do we need to talk about my sex life? And those gunshots on the tundra. Does any part of the story he tells about being shot at make any sense to you? No. When Dateline continues...

Stan Pescoia and Matt Owens, the two known police officers on duty the night Sonia Ivanov was murdered, had both agreed to be polygraphed. Stan Pescoia flies to Anchorage, does an interview with you guys, takes a polygraph, and is cleared. That's correct. That left Owens. How does Matt Owens do on the polygraph? He failed. To my amazement, he didn't pass those polygraph exams.

The mood in that room changed. ABI investigators read Owens his rights. You have the right to remain silent. Do you understand that right? Yes, sir. Owens continued to say he had nothing to do with Sonia's murder. Sonia, as again I said yesterday, had never been in my control car. He did admit he'd given rides to other women. Has there been females in there that I've given rides to? Uh, yeah.

Investigators saw a pretty clear pattern of behavior that matched Sonya's disappearance. Owens did not. And he didn't understand why that looked exactly the same to you? No, he would say, "What does my sex life with women have anything to do with her getting into a vehicle?" Why is my sex life a part of this investigation or whatever? Why do we need to talk about my sex life? Because when your sex life happens on duty,

My sex life does not happen on the roof of the initiative. I mean, it doesn't. Owens also denied having anything to do with the theft of vehicle 321. Every time I got out of that, I staged that cop car. I absolutely did. How did I do that? Does any part of the story he tells about finding that police vehicle and being shot at make any sense to you? No, it doesn't. It's up here on one highway. See, like I said, what it looks like, brake lights. Brake lights only flash if somebody's pressing on the brake pedal.

Within a minute, you're down behind the vehicle and you notice the tailgate is up and the shotgun is missing. Suggesting that somebody stopped the vehicle, immediately got out and got the shotgun, and they're armed. Right. In all the training any police officer has done, this is not a normal situation. This is a dangerous situation. As you come up on the driver's side, are you checking it for occupants? Not really. I can't say as I am.

He doesn't clear the vehicle, he doesn't pull out his flashlight, he doesn't pull out his firearm, even though he says he just saw brake lights. Which would be standard protocol. Absolutely. Burroughs says that what Owens claims he did after being shot at also makes no sense.

He runs off into the tundra. There is all kinds of abandoned equipment, rocks, piles of gravel in the immediate area, great for taking cover and returning fire if necessary. Still, no matter what investigators believed, they needed proof.

And they didn't have it. He's not facing any charges. Not at this point. Matt Owens had not been charged with any crime. Even so, his life was in free fall. He returned here to Nome, but not to work. The police department had put him on administrative leave. He was in the midst of a messy divorce and a custody battle over his four-year-old son. He was living in a friend's spare room. More importantly, Matt Owens was the prime suspect in the biggest murder case Nome had ever seen.

The ABI continued to investigate. They spoke with Owens' soon-to-be ex-wife, who mentioned a phone call from Matt. Owens calls his ex-wife. He has their son, and he says that he needs to drop off their son because there's a missing girl. He has to go into work early, and it doesn't look good. She said the date of the call was easy to remember because it was August 12th, Matt Owens' birthday.

As for the time, she said it was before she left work, around 4.30. And at that point when he makes that call, Sonia hasn't even been reported missing yet. Yes. The walls were closing in. Burroughs heard from a woman who spent time with Owens, who said he wanted her to leave Alaska soon with him. The ABI wasn't going to let that happen. October 25th, 2003.

Two and a half months after Sonia Ivanoff was killed, Matt Owens was arrested for her murder. The next day, Tom and Christina went to his arraignment. We weren't prepared for the greeting we got. Which was what? Oh, man. We were met with hostilities, for sure. Because a police officer's been arrested for a murder, and people are angry at you? No.

They were angry. He didn't do this. Officer Wayavana says it was members of Owen's mostly white church who spoke up on his behalf. They had their opinions, and they voiced them. They weren't afraid to voice their opinions. The lack of respect on their part was easy to understand if you're Native. For Timmery, just out of high school when her best friend was killed...

Owens' arrest was stunning. You instantly recognized that name? You already knew him? I mean, I knew him as a police officer. Did that make any sense to you? No, it didn't. I was confused because these guys are supposed to help us. They're supposed to protect us. They're supposed to be the ones keeping us safe. Two days after his arrest, Matt Owens was fired by the Nome PD. It wasn't long before some of the women of Nome came forward to say that for quite a while...

Matt Owens had been doing the opposite of protecting and serving. Coming up... Now we start getting a different set of women coming forward. These are women who wound up in his patrol car not by their own choice. That's correct. New accusations and new evidence. We start digging and literally we treated it like we were panning for gold. What would investigators find?

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Nothing has more suspense than a Dateline mystery. And no one wants to wait to find out what happens next. That's why everyone needs Dateline Premium, where listening is always ad-free. You get the whole story and nothing but the story. Or do you? Yes, actually, you do. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or DatelinePremium.com.

They called it the happiest place on the high desert, home to a tight-knit group of 30-somethings who like to party. It starts as a Playboy Channel fantasy, but this is real life. Where passion leads to murder, and a killer seeks God's help with the cover-up. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Deadly Mirage, an all-new podcast from Dateline.

All episodes are available now. To listen ad-free, subscribe to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or datelinepremium.com. The arrest of Officer Matt Owens shocked many citizens of Nome, but by no means all of them.

ABI investigators soon began hearing troubling stories about Owen's long nights on patrol. Now we start getting a different set of women coming forward that want to say something because they felt safe. These are women who wound up in his patrol car.

Not by their own choice. That's correct. In one case, one of them was arrested, and then he sexually assaulted her. It could have been an arrest or just like, hey, do you need a ride to your home? He's on the grave shift. It's the middle of the night. Owens denied the sexual assault allegations, including those from a woman who says that after he forced her to have sex, Owens told her, no one will believe a drunk Alaska native over a police officer.

So here's the really awful thing. Owens may actually have judged the situation accurately. The six women who came forward after his arrest told stories that ranged from stalking to rape. One said she'd gone into the police department to file a complaint. Another said she'd mentioned Owens' behavior to someone else at the PD and nothing ever happened. Eric Burrows was running a murder investigation with a lot of missing pieces.

For example, investigators found the shotgun from Unit 321 but got no usable forensics from it. And on the cruiser itself, no DNA or prints that would connect Owens to the theft or to Sonja. They hadn't found the clothing Sonja was wearing the night she died or the weapon used to kill her. And each missing piece was a problem.

When you're conducting an investigation, I describe it like this. Imagine that you have three or four jigsaw puzzles and all the pieces are thrown into a box. You don't have any idea what the picture is. You're trying to grab all these pieces and you hope that you can get enough of the right pieces to make a picture that everyone can see and understand. The hunt for missing pieces sent Burroughs and his team to an actual hunting camp called Coffee Creek.

70 miles north of Nome, Matt Owens was known to go there. He was observed burning some gloves that were virtually new. Burroughs wondered, if Owens torched his gloves, what else could be found there? We start digging up into the fire pit, and literally we treated it like we were panning for gold. And we got some water, and we put some of the ashes in a bucket, swirl it around, and get rid of the ashes and see what we could see.

And I found an eyelet to a shoe. Like where the laces go through? Where the laces go through, yeah, an eyelet to the shoe. It had obviously been in the fire and it was corroded and stuff, but I can make out Skecher. Sonya was wearing Skecher's. She was wearing Skecher's shoes on the night she disappeared. They moved the entire ash pit to Nome and went through it for days. The result?

More eyelets from Skechers, metal parts from a bra, and a metal button with a logo tilt. Then Burroughs turned to Christina for help. He did come over to the house and showed me a picture of stuff they had found in a fire pit. Could you identify any of that stuff? I did. They were the brand jeans that my sister wore.

Presumably anybody could have burned stuff there. It doesn't have to be Matt Owens. Right. So it's not the smoking gun evidence that says, aha, Matt, this is yours. Then in the same burn pit, they found a key and it could be connected to Owens. It was for his uncle's post office box. The hunt for the murder weapon was equally painstaking. So we knew from the autopsy that the bullet was a 22 round bullet.

Which means it's from one of several possible guns. Right. At the crime scene, investigators cut back the plants. And we actually found the bullet casing or the shell. Which told you what? It's an automatic as opposed to a revolver where it's going to stay in the weapon. That narrowed down the list a bit. Nome police officer Byron Redburn suggested investigators look for the gun in the Nome police evidence room.

So we go up to the known PD evidence room. The evidence locker and the evidence room key is in one of the sergeant's mailbox. Anybody can get it. So pretty much anybody could help themselves to anything in the evidence room and not get caught. As long as they get into the police department, yes, essentially. In evidence, they found this, a Jennings .22.

The firearms analysis gave us a list of guns. The Jennings .22 was one of the guns on the list. Was it possible Owens or someone else had secretly borrowed the gun and then replaced it after they'd used it to commit a murder? That was possible, yes. However, it was hardly, and forgive me here, a smoking gun.

No forensics linked Matt Owens to the Jennings, and his service weapon wasn't a .22. Investigators did manage to tie up one loose end, the truck with the mismatched tires. So this guy and his girlfriend just happen to park out here just because they need to answer nature's call. Exactly. And they don't realize that they're, what, just a few yards from Sonia's body? Correct. It was entirely unrelated to the murder.

While investigators were working the case, Matt Owens was working on bail. Officer Matt Owens is locked up on a murder charge and gets bail. Ridiculous. In a town of 3,500 people. That was sickening. After two months in jail, Owens got what he wanted, supervised release. He also hired a respected and aggressive attorney and began to prepare his defense.

Coming up... Officer Owens takes the stand, and the defense points to someone else... was the wrong cop on trial. When Dateline continues...

The trial of former known police officer Matt Owens began on January 18, 2005, 17 months after Sonya Ivanov's murder. Investigators had assembled evidence like pieces of a puzzle.

Now it was Prosecutor Rick Svobodny's job to show the finished picture to the jury. He put on nearly 70 witnesses, laying out a circumstantial case against a man once trusted with a badge. There was Matt Owen's call to his ex-wife about a missing woman before Sonia was reported missing. His incredible story about finding 321.

And how Owens had ample time to kill Sonia and then cover his tracks. On the morning Sonia died, the defendant is unaccountable for over five hours. Timmery testified about the last time she saw her best friend. When you left, did you leave together? Yes. Three witnesses testified they'd seen Sonia passing by on foot that night.

tracing her path from the time she left Timmery until Florence Habro saw her get into a police car. Where was Sonia when the window came down? On a passenger seat. What was the strongest part of your case, do you think? Coffee Creek. Where Owens was seen tossing gloves into a burn pit. They went through it and they came up with physical evidence. The tilt jeans button. The sketcher's eyelets.

and the key link to Matt Owens. After the prosecution built its case, the defense tried to tear it down. Owens' attorney called a witness who said he saw Sonja speeding past him in a blue pickup on Monday night, half a day after the prosecution's timeline had her dead.

I had gone down to Subway, and when I went in the door, there was a missing person's photo on the door. It just struck me, like, that looks like the girl that was in that pickup. Haven't you said nobody will ever make me say it was her? I don't know that I've said it that way, but I won't say that it was her. I've already pointed that out. I've said that I wasn't 100% sure it was her. Under cross-examination, the state's firearms expert admitted the gun found in the evidence room...

was probably but not absolutely the murder weapon. As for the mailbox key from Coffee Creek, the defense put on the mailbox owner, who said Owens never had a key. And then, staring down the barrel of a murder charge, Matt Owens took the stand in his own defense. You were working the night that Sonia was murdered, right? Yes, sir, I was. He told the jury his ex-wife had her dates wrong. His call about the case was a week later than she thought.

he did acknowledge an interest in Sonia. He admitted looking her up on the police computer. That's right. I think from day one, when he had Sonia's name run by the dispatcher, she was a young, attractive girl, and he wanted to know something about her because maybe something could happen. On the witness stand, Owens did admit he had run Sonia's name just to make sure she was of legal drinking age.

The sex-based allegations from the six women who came forward were all ruled inadmissible, so Owens didn't have to answer for them at trial. Under oath, Owens insisted he didn't kill Sonya Ivanov, and he had nothing to do with the theft of 321.

Then his attorney presented an alternate theory of the case. A cop may have killed Zanya, but it wasn't Matt Owens. The defense suggested Officer Byron Redburn should have been a suspect. And who was it communicated and coordinated with the troopers about the Ivanov case? Officer Redburn.

He was the one who thought the murder weapon might be found in the evidence room. If Redburn, for whatever reason, killed Ms. Ivanoff, he has an obvious and huge motive. A motive, the defense argued, to frame Matt Owens. They told the jury Owens had reported Redburn for punching a suspect. Redburn carried a grudge about that, they said. And he was even angrier, because Owens was having an affair with Redburn's daughter.

The defense did not offer any solid evidence pointing to Redburn. And in case the jury didn't find him to be a convincing suspect, the defense offered the original one for good measure. Well...

Kunick comes right to mind. It would be incredible. In his closing argument, Prosecutor Svobodny told the jury that Sonia's killer was Matt Owens and only Matt Owens. Now you've heard the case of a cop who was a killer. After more than 40 hours of deliberation, the judge called everyone back to the courtroom. Counsel, I received a note from the jury saying

which reads the jury is deadlocked and cannot reach a unanimous decision. The judge declared a mistrial. Matt Owens walked out the door while Sonya's parents' hearts ached. It was hard. And to go through a second trial was just this hard. Something you don't want anyone to go through. After the trial, Owens' attorneys asked for a change of venue.

And so when the second trial began, seven months later, it was in Kotzebue, a plane ride away from Nome above the Arctic Circle. The person who killed Sonia was what police call evidence aware. The prosecution's case was a virtual carbon copy of the first trial. No telling if it would result in an identical outcome. Then, after prosecutors had rested and the defense began putting on its witnesses...

ABI investigator Eric Burroughs got a phone call about new and possibly explosive evidence. You'd never heard that. Never had heard that. He relayed the new information to the prosecutor. And he said, you need to get on a plane, you need to go down to Nome. And I said, but we've already arrested, what are we going to do with this? And essentially he's like, you let me handle that part, you do your investigator part. Coming up.

It was one of those jaw-dropping moments. The race is on to find a crucial new witness. Then, tears in the courtroom. This time, there would be a verdict. Investigator Eric Burrows hurried back to Nome, trying to gather new evidence in the last moments of a murder trial. He knew he faced long odds, but he also knew Nome gave him one big advantage.

Noam is a small town, and sometimes it seems that everyone knows everyone. Take Officer Brian Wayavana, for example. He was friends with Sonja's family. He was also the first to uncover evidence that a police officer might have been involved in her murder. Now, during Owens' second trial, Wayavana was chatting with a neighbor, and that neighbor told him something potentially explosive about Matt Owens. He asked, did it ever come up in trial that

Charlotte Calandrelli saw Sonia's ID in Matt's bedroom. It was one of those jaw-dropping moments. Charlotte Calandrelli had rented a room to Owens after he and his wife split. Burroughs believed Charlotte was probably talking about the same gym car that was found in Police Vehicle 321, so it could tie Owens both to the murder and the subsequent cover-up.

If true, that would be huge for the prosecution. That is, if the judge would allow it into evidence. I mean, this is third-party hearsay, right? Yeah.

Burroughs had to trace the new information back to its source. He first spoke with Officer Wayavana's across-the-street neighbor, a guy named Dealey Blackshare. It came up that she had seen in the area where Matt was, in their house. The area where he was living? Yeah. She saw a woman's wallet and Sonia Ivanoff's ID card.

Crucially important was when Charlotte saw Sonia's ID. Before the patrol car shooting. Meaning before Sonia's pool ID showed up on the front seat of 321. Now remember, Blackshear's story was still hearsay. You gotta go find Charlotte and get her to repeat that story on the stand. Ultimately, yes. Burroughs knew the Calendrelles were old family friends of Owens, and he worried Charlotte would just deny everything.

So he obtained a warrant. Well, Charlotte, I may have opened my mouth and spoken out of turn. Which allowed him to record a phone call from Dealey Blackshear to Charlotte Calendrelli. The conversation that I remember, we were concerned that you had seen, along with Matt's other stuff, you had seen Sonia's ID or rec card. And my recollection is that you said, I'm going to go tell the lawyers today. Well, Charlotte said she never did tell anyone except Dealey.

because she thought she'd seen in the paper that the cops already had the ID. So I didn't think any more about it then. Here's what's crucial. She did not deny seeing Sonia's ID. Back in Kotzebue, the prosecution asked the judge to put Charlotte Calandrelli on the witness stand, and the judge agreed. Except, just as Burroughs had feared, when Charlotte testified...

Did you see Mr. Owens with any identification of Sonia Ivanoff? No. She denied everything. Did you see him with a wallet of Sonia Ivanoff? No. So the prosecution played the tape of Dealey Blackshear's conversation with Calendrelli. Then the attorneys laid out their arguments. She got into a known patrol car driven by the defendant.

And this is the wrong man. This is the wrong cop. Once again, the case went to a jury. This time there was a verdict. We, the jury, Dooley and Pendleton, sworn to try the above entitled case, find defendant Matthew Owens guilty of the crimes of murder in the first degree. For Sonja's family, there were tears. Not quite of joy, but maybe of relief. We're happy that he got his guilty verdict for being a cold-blooded killer.

Investigator Burroughs believes Owens had his eye on Sonya for a while, and that when he saw her walking alone that August night, he thought, now's my chance. He gets her to get into the vehicle, like he's done with so many others. He probably starts propositioning her about sex. And somewhere in there she says, not only no, but I'm going to tell. Matt Owens had picked the wrong victim.

She was outspoken. If you made her mad, she would tell you. Whatever Owens had planned for her, she was not going to just sit there and suffer. No. Nope. Matt Owens was sentenced to 101 years in prison. Owens would not speak on camera, but in a statement sent by his brother, told us, he did not kill Sonya Ivanov, and he denies engaging in stalking or abusing women in any way.

He also said he couldn't get a fair trial in the Nome area. Ever since the murder, Sonja's story has echoed through Nome. When former Nome police chief Michael Heinzelman first arrived in 2018, he'd never heard of Matt Owens or the murder of Sonja Ivanoff. That changed quickly. We went to a city council meeting and we had...

people standing up telling about how they did not trust the police department and that they remember that a police officer had murdered one of the Alaska Native ladies in town. I thought to myself, we're going to have a lot to really gain the trust of these folks. Not only did Heinzelman have to overcome that history, he took over a department with a dismal record of handling sexual assaults. An internal review found 460 open cases in Nome.

mostly involving Alaska Native women. Today, the Nome PD has moved into a new building, and Heinzelman told us it's a new agency too, one that knows it has to serve all of the people of Nome. Though there are no sworn Alaska Native officers or investigators, there is an Alaska Native victims advocate who focuses on domestic violence and sexual assault. Like the people in Nome who've never forgotten Sonja's story,

Christina and Tom also have trouble trusting. They've raised their children with warnings. To be very cautious with anybody. Including police officers. My message is the evil comes in different forms. You always got to watch out. Timmery says she's still haunted. I had to stop going to college because every police, anybody in uniform scared me. I mean...

I didn't know who I could trust. She's moved back to Unalakleet. She feels a little safer there. Even so, you don't get over losing your best friend. You have some guilt about this, don't you? Yeah, I think what if I just would have stayed with her and just walked home? We should have just walked home together. You said it yourself. You felt safe. She clearly did too. I mean, this isn't on you.

It's just something that I really regret. You didn't do anything wrong here. Yeah. Thank you. Hey, Sonia, let's go get some more action. Sometimes Timmery takes herself back to the before times when she and Sonia were both alive and both carefree. She brought that camera on a lot of ball trips. She watches and rewatches the one tape she still has.

She was tall and beautiful and made everybody laugh. She was a loving, caring person and goofy. She had a big heart. And we sure do miss her. Sonia! Where'd you go? That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.

A true crime story never really ends. Even when a case is closed, the journey for those left behind is just beginning. Since our Dateline story aired, Tracy has harnessed her outrage into a mission. I had no other option. I had to do something. Catch up with families, friends, and investigators on our bonus series, After the Verdict.

Ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances with strength and courage. It does just change your life, but speaking up for these issues helps me keep going. To listen to After the Verdict, subscribe to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at datelinepremium.com.