Original subtitles

Your emergency? 911, what is the address of

oh, my god! I need an ambulance right away.

Ma'am, calm down. What's going on there?

I think my mother fell down the stairs, and there's a knife

in her hand and stabbed herself. Oh, my god! No!

Is she breathing? Ma'am? It looked like she was

strangled, stabbed and beat in the head. To me, that's

definite overkill. I see my mother laying

there. I assume she was hurt. There was a knife sticking out.

I mean, I figured she fell. Whenever someone of

considerable wealth is murdered, we look at who has a motive.

They were already trying to focus in on me. Where was I?

What was I doing? It was all about greed and money. Who has

access to the house? Five unique perspectives.

Five points of view. One murder.

I'm Peggy nadell's daughter. I was the lead detective.

I am a longtime friend. I was a close friend of Peggy

nadell's. I was a prosecutor.

My name is susanne nadell‐scaccio, and I'm Peggy

nadell's daughter. My relationship with Peggy was

very close, as I would say, most daughters'and

mothers'relationships are. My mother and father made a very,

very handsome couple. They were striking. My mother used to

like to go to the city and to the museum and to theater and

movies. They loved to travel. They traveled all over the

world together. When I was 3, my brother Jamie came into the

world. I think my brother developed ‐‐ I‐I‐it's hard to

put my finger on. I think he was a strange adolescent and he

developed into a strange adult. His differences spoke volumes.

He was not social. He was very cerebral. He went away to

school. Moved to Florida. Never came home to see my family.

Never came home to see my parents. My father passed away

in 2003 very unexpectedly, and it was devastating. I knew that

my mother would want me to be strong. And I didn't want to

let her down. I wanted to be as strong as she was. My

relationship with my mother was very close. I would speak to

her probably two or three times a day. Not a day ever went by

that I didn't either see, physically see, visit, or have

a phone conversation with my mother. Saturday morning, I

always call between, I don't know, 7:30, 8:00. 8:00, 8:30 on

the weekends. I tried the house phone. It was ringing, ringing,

ringing. The answering machine never kicked on. I called the

cell. Ringing, ringing, ringing, ringing. I said, you know,

maybe she went out to the end of the driveway to get the

newspaper, to put something in the mailbox. I must've called a

dozen times to each number, and she was not picking it up. So I

told my husband, Bobby, "I'm going down there. My mother's"

not answering the phone. I want to make sure everything's

"okay." I open the door, and I realized the alarm wasn't on.

I'm like, "gee, why wasn't the alarm on?" I walked in, and I

found her. And I immediately ran over. And the first thing I

noticed, she was bashed in the head and she was bleeding, and

I saw blood coming out around the rise in her nose and the

side of her mouth. I said, "oh, my god. She fell down the"

"stairs." once I got in and got close, I saw it was more than a

fall down the stairs. The knife was stuck in peggy's chest.

Then I'm like, "oh my god. She stabbed herself," and I pull

the knife out. And I was gonna do cpr, and I checked for a

pulse, and she was cold. I'm like ‐‐ and then I realized I

‐‐ you know, I mean, everybody says, "what did you do that for?"

What are you thinking? "You just react. I mean, you don't"

‐‐ you don't think about what you're doing. I ran outside. I

call 9‐1‐1. Oh, my god! Oh, my god!

911, what is the address of your emergency.

I need an ambulance right away! My mother's fallen! She

fell. She had a knife in her hand! Oh, my god!

Okay, is she breathing? No, I don't think so. Oh,

I'm afraid to go back in. Oh, my god. When the police showed

up, they kept me outside and they were asking me questions.

And at that point, they wanted to take both myself and my

husband, Bobby, down to the police station, so I had no

choice but to go. When I was in the police station being

interviewed that Saturday, they came into me and said, "this"

was not an accident. Your mother did not fall. Your

"mother was murdered." I was shocked, and I could not

possibly conceive who would do this to my mother. And that's

when they started asking questions. I told them that I

pulled the knife. I said I was trying to do cpr on her and

then I realized it was past that point. I also told them my

fingerprints will definitely be on the knife as my DNA will be

all over this house. I'm here two, three times a week. My

hair will be here. My fingerprints will be on every

doorknob. I think at this point, they were already trying to

focus in on me being that they had me in the police station

for several hours and were asking me questions. I'm like,

"why are you asking me that question?"

Your mother had some assets. My mother has a lot of

assets. Probably close to $3 million. Do I need my lawyer?

Why? I don't know. I'm just

asking. You're asking me all these questions. The following

day, which was sunday, the detectives called me and asked

me to come down to the police station to talk to them. And at

that point, I felt it was being directed at me, and I'm like,

"wait a second. I don't want to talk to you now." And I hired

an attorney. They didn't like that.

My name is Earl lorence. I...

My name is Earl lorence. I was the lead detective working

the murder of Peggy nadell. The morning of January 25, 2014, I

was the assigned detective working that weekend. So at

around 8:00 that morning, I was at the local bagel store.

That's where I received the phone call. And the desk

sergeant said that there was a death of an elderly woman

inside her residence and that she had slipped and fallen on a

knife. The house is in an upper‐middle class neighborhood

in valley cottage, New York, very tidy, very well‐kempt. The

daughter of the victim, susanne nadell‐scaccio, she was in a

frantic state ‐‐ panicked, yelling, screaming. Upon

entering the home, the victim was just inside the threshold

of the doorway at the base of the stairwell. You try not to

harden yourself too much to each situation. So at this

moment, it really did kind of hit ‐‐ hit home because this

was an 80‐year‐old woman at home alone. My mother is 80

years old. She lives alone. That does have a personal

connection there. So you want to do all you can. My first

instinct, obviously, was that it was a homicide. There was no

way she accidentally fell down the stairs and stabbed herself

in the chest three times. We saw the knife, which was very

obvious, a few feet away from the victim. She had obvious

trauma to her head. She also had what appeared to be at

least one or two stab wounds to her chest. Her neck appeared to

be quite bruised, black and blue. Now, it looked like she

possibly was strangled. It looked like she was stabbed,

and she looks like she was beat in the head. Now, to me, that's

definite overkill. The first thing I want to determine is,

is there a break‐in? I looked at the front door, and there

was no apparent force used to get into the house. I walked

upstairs and went to the master bedroom. There was drawers

pulled out and placed on the floor, totally out of place

because you don't put them on the ground like that. So it

looked like a stage burglary. About that time, susanne

understandably was stressed out. She wanted us out of

there. She wanted us to clean up the scene, get her mother in

an ambulance, and take her to the hospital. There were red

flags immediately with this investigation. One of the very

first things she says in the first couple of minutes of us

arriving is that her mother is worth high seven figures, "oh",

and my DNA and my fingerprints are gonna be all over that

"house and that knife." It just seemed like an odd thing to

focus in on. It struck me as odd. Because she was so erratic,

it took a long time to kind of settle her down and to get her

to go back to the station and just talk about who may or may

not have done this thing. Susanne, she said she came to

the home, her mother's home, and when she opened the door,

obviously, she saw that her mother had the knife in her

chest and she pulled the knife out.

So I thought maybe she fell down the stairs because of the

way she was, and I saw the knife. So I pulled the knife. I

touched her neck. I touched her face. I said, "oh, this is not"

good." that was a big concern for

us. Why would you touch the murder weapon?

I guess I shouldn't have touched the knife, huh?

With susanne, we basically just wanted to go back the last

couple of days. We wanted to know what she was doing, where

she was going, where she had been. We spoke to her for a

number of hours, but these investigations take time. We

might have to revisit the same witness over and over again. So

we made an appointment for the following day. The next day,

she hired an attorney and stopped talking to us. She

refused to cooperate. To me, the biggest red flag of all is

when you hire an attorney and refuse to help law enforcement

when your own mother is the murder victim. So if you don't

want to help the people who are trying to find the people who

killed your mother, who are you going to help? After susanne

told us that she wasn't going to cooperate any further, we

had to refocus our energies. As it turns out, there was no DNA

evidence. There was no fingerprints. There was no hair,

saliva, nothing. We were beyond frustrated, but obviously we

didn't stop. We kept ‐‐ we kept digging. We had to keep moving

forward. We go back to basics. We take a look at the phone

records for Peggy. At the same time, we're getting her son's

phone records and her daughter‐in‐law's phone records,

as well. I was parsing through each individual phone call. I

got to like the sixth number. We discover a phone call at

approximately 1:30 in the morning the night of the

homicide coming from a throw phone. The burner phone, I was

ecstatic. We also get a notification from the alarm

company that she had spoken to the alarm company because the

alarm went off around the same time. So we actually have

peggy's voice speaking to the alarm company, telling the

alarm dispatcher that everything is okay.

Hello, this is the monitoring center with bullet

security. This is Peggy nadell. The,

uh, code word is, uh, "Max." I'm sorry.

That's okay, ma'am. Everything's fine.

I'm glad everything's okay. We'll disregard for you. Have a

good night. It was about a 20‐second

phone call, and in conjunction with that, the alarm going off,

and no forced entry at the front door, at that point, we

were positive. This was not a stranger lurking around the

neighborhood killing old ladies. This was somebody that

Peggy knew.

I'm Anne Martin, and I was a close friend of Peggy nadell.

When I found out that Peggy was murdered, I mean, I just ‐‐ I

just couldn't believe it. It was sunday morning. I remember

picking up the phone and susie's hysterical. She's

saying, "my mother's gone! My mother's gone!"

Anne, it's susie. My mother's gone.

Say, "she passed away." She's passed away.

She just didn't even know what to do. The police were

questioning her. I think she was just in a state of shock.

It was unbelievable. People were saying, "oh, well, she"

could have done it. Why did she pull the knife out? "Well, I'm"

sure if I saw my mother lying there, I would think, "my

"goodness, maybe this hurts." I don't know. You don't know what

you would do if you're in that situation. The detectives came

to my home probably one or two days right after that. You know,

asking me all kinds of questions and, of course, they

‐‐ they did ask me what kind of a relationship she had with her

children. Jimmy and susie, they were both, I'd say, different.

Susie was, uh, strong‐minded. She knew what she wanted. She

could take care of herself. Peggy was more protective of

Jimmy. I think Peggy probably worried about Jimmy a little

more because he was far away and he did march to a different

drummer. After he graduated college, when he went to live

in Florida, he started to work for a hospital as a

psychologist, and that's where he met Diana. They went

together for several years before they had any intentions

of getting married. When Peggy found out that Diana was

pregnant, she was delighted. She was beside herself. Peggy

would fly to Florida to help. When Peggy would talk about her

grandchildren, her whole face would just light up. She just

thought the world of them. Diana, she liked to have

designer clothes. She liked nice jewelry. They really

couldn't afford all these things. And then she would

depend on Peggy. I think the issue started to come up

between Peggy and Diana when Diana started to become a

little too demanding. Peggy was always sending them money.

Peggy said, "you know, Diana, this is just a little bit too"

"much. You know, I won't go along with this." Diana says,

"well, if you won't come across with the money, " she says, "I

"just won't let you see the children." Well, that just

absolutely devastated Peggy. I mean, not be able to see or

talk to her grandchildren was horrible. It was a terrible

thing to do. Peggy did mention to me that they were having

problems, Diana and Jimmy, and that they might separate. And

of course, Peggy was concerned. I mean, she was concerned about

her son, his happiness, and how this was going to affect him.

Peggy was very astute when it came to finances. She had her

will and her trust. Everything was in order. Everything was

divided equally between her son and her daughter. They were to

get the bulk of her estate. She made it clear that if they ever

separated or divorced, that, you know, Jimmy was to get the

money and that Diana was not to get any of peggy's estate ‐‐

none ‐‐ none whatsoever. So aunt Diana, when she found out

that this was so, of course, was not very happy. After Peggy

died, she came in, just putting her name on everything she

wanted. She wanted peggy's jewelry. She wanted peggy's

purses. Peggy had a lot of nice handbags. She wanted the

furniture from the house. You start thinking and putting two

and two together. And you think, "you know, she has a good"

motive. It's very possible that she would do something like

"this."

My name is Darcy Greenberg, and I am a longtime friend of

susanne. After susanne got out of the police station, I was

waiting for her at her home and we were treating it as an

accident. We were, you know, comforting her because her

mother fell with a knife. It's a different feeling when you're

comforting someone for a tragic loss like that. And then you

get accused of being the one that did it. That changes

everything. Sometimes I think the authorities say who has

access to the house, and 95% of the time, it's family. "Oh, it"

"must be her." Every day, I was at her home. We would wave to

the undercover cop sitting in front of her house. They

watched every move she made. They had to become more

intimate with the family, with susanne, with Peggy, to really

know who could have done this to her. I have been speaking

with the investigator since the beginning. You take the

information that there's a lot of money involved and you also

take the information of a knife being put through someone's

heart, and they tell you that it's most likely a family

person, somebody that had something to gain. I looked at

them, and I'm like, "everything you're saying and the reasons"

why you think somebody would do this, I agree with you, but

"you're looking at the wrong person." I told them susanne

didn't need the money. She had her own. Susanne was a

laid‐back jeans girl with the same kitchen from the 1960s,

the same furniture her dad picked out when she moved in.

Knowing that it wasn't susanne 100%, knowing that they felt it

was family, my instincts was for them to follow the greed,

follow the money, follow Diana. Anyone who didn't really know

Peggy would not know her wealth because she was not a flaunter.

She was very smart about how she spent her money, who she

spent it on. Peggy was always financially providing whatever

Diana needed because it was important to her to have a good

relationship with Diana, to be able to have that good

relationship with her grandchildren. Most of the

money would just go directly to Diana. She was in charge of the

household, the bills, the money, all of that. Jimmy trusted her.

From what the police told me, when they spoke to her, she was

at her cousin's wedding in Maryland and her phone pinged

in Maryland. And as far as they were concerned, that's where

she was. I don't know. Maybe I watch too much TV. Something

just didn't sit right with me. Just because the phone is

somewhere, it doesn't mean a person is there, too.

Eventually, they noticed that the phone was not used. It was

just there. She wasn't anywhere near the area of Maryland where

the wedding was, and that was just the beginning of

everything just exploding and unraveling and getting to the

truth. Shortly after that, I started getting phone calls at

my house, and Diana started calling me, and she was, you

know, very upset. She was calling me almost every morning,

and it would be from different phone numbers. And she seemed

very rattled and very off and very asking me a lot of

questions where it seemed like she was getting nervous, like

the police may be looking at her, which I said, "they have"

to look at everybody. They have to look at you. They have to

"follow their leads, and don't worry about it." And as each

day went on, it felt like it was getting worse and she was

getting more nervous and more upset about her being

questioned or her being thought of as a possible suspect. Now,

one morning she called me and she thanked me for listening

and said she's leaving and taking one of the kids and

she's moving back to Jamaica. I got off the phone, and I'm

thinking to myself, "she's leaving the country. That's it."

"Whether she's guilty or innocent, that's it." Once

she's gone, she's gone. That can't bring her back. So I

called the police. I said, "listen, she's leaving. She's"

got her tickets. She's getting on a plane. If you think she

"did this, you need to go get her."

My name is Richard moran, and I was a prosecutor handling

this matter. When the Diana nadell called her friend and

said, "I'm leaving Jim and we're going to Jamaica," it

was at that point we decided, you know what, we've got to go

to Florida. You've got to be very careful when you

investigate these cases because one wrong move, and your target

knows you're looking at them. When you first start

investigating a case ‐‐ it's her daughter‐in‐law. Your

thought really isn't that she's gonna be the one that did this.

Diane, she had an alibi that she was at a wedding in

Washington, d. C. What it kept coming back to is, yes, her

phone was in d. C., but other than those phone calls, there

was really nothing to corroborate that she was there.

A big key of this investigation was the fact that just prior to

Peggy nadell being murdered, her phone received a call from

an alarm company. And in looking at the caller I. D., we

saw that just before the alarm company called, it was what

some people called a burner phone ‐‐ a phone that's prepaid,

that's not really associated with any one specific person.

When we learned that the track phone was purchased in Florida

so close to Diana nadell's home, that was a game‐changer for us,

and it really shifted the focus of our investigation. We did a

thorough analysis of Diana nadell's phone records. Just a

day or two before Peggy nadell was murdered, all of a sudden,

Diana nadell starts speaking on the phone with a person named

Andrea Benson who's in Washington, d. C. She also

starts communicating with a person named tanisha joyner in

the days following the murder ‐‐ people she had never spoken

with prior to this happening. At that point, we had enough to

go up on a wiretap. What we decided would be the perfect

trigger is, let's ask Diana nadell about her alibi. Who was

she with in Washington, d. C.? And we were asking her if they

could just give us a call and confirm her alibi. And once we

did that, her phone calls exploded. She reached out to

tanisha joyner, and there was this very interesting call.

Tanisha says, "wait a minute. Was I with you from 9:00 p. M."

To 6:00 a. M., or from 6:00 A.M. to 9:00 p. M.? "Because she"

doesn't know because she wasn't with her. There were several

phone calls with Andrea Benson. They wouldn't talk about the

case on the phone, but there was one time where Andrea

Benson said, "listen, I'm in this with you. I'm in this",

"too." the adrenaline starts pumping. We feel like we're

really getting to the point where our theories are now ‐‐

they're not theories. Now it's evidence. It was after that

phone call about her going to Jamaica, we decided to move. We

sent people to interview Diana and all of the people that she

had involved in this plot. We had the teams actually with

people under surveillance. At the word "go," everybody went

into action. Tanisha joyner was taken into custody. Andrea

Benson was taken into custody. And that all happened

simultaneously. Once these people are being spoken to and

interviewed by detectives, Diana nadell's entire story

starts to break down. Tanisha joyner was being interviewed in

Baltimore and was telling the detectives there that Diana

nadell had asked her to make phone calls that evening. When

we interviewed Andrea Benson, we learned a lot of details

about this case that we just didn't know, things that we

thought were always going to remain a mystery. She met Diana

nadell through her aunt. Andrea's aunt was supposed to

pick up Diana nadell from the airport in Washington, d. C.,

but she couldn't, and so she sent Andrea. When she picked

Diana nadell up, Diana asked her if she wanted to make $10,

000, and to do so, she would have to go up to New York and

kill diana's mother‐in‐law. While driving up to valley

cottage, Diana had Andrea Benson activate the burner

phone, and that was along route 95. On their way up, Diana,

every time they were at a toll Plaza, would hide her face so

that her face couldn't be seen on camera. Once they got to

Peggy nadell's home in valley cottage, Diana nadell called

Peggy from the burner phone and told her she was in the area.

Could she come in? It had to have been such a surreal

scenario for her. Her daughter‐in‐law is at her door

with a stranger. It's 1:00 in the morning. Nonetheless, it

was her daughter‐in‐law, and she let her in, gave her a

glass of water, sat down and spoke with her. At that point,

Diana asked Peggy, "can we go upstairs?" Peggy told Diana

she was gonna go use the restroom, so Diane and Andrea

were in the room alone. And Diana begins, like, "we're"

"gonna do this now." And Andrea told us that she had taken off

the strap from her pocketbook. It unhooked on either side. And

she was gonna use that to strangle Peggy. Diana starts

talking to Peggy about the family jewelry. And they start

going down the stairs, and peggy's in front, andrea's

right behind her. That time, Andrea starts strangling Peggy

from behind. And in interviewing Andrea, she kept

repeating the phrase, "but she wouldn't go. She wouldn't die."

Diana ran to the kitchen and grabbed a kitchen knife and

brought it back and was telling Andrea, "stab her! Stab her!"

And Andrea said she refused to do it. And so while she was

choking Peggy, Diana stabbed Peggy nadell in the chest. Once

Diana was picked up in Florida and brought in for an interview,

at first, she didn't know why she was there. And then she saw

detective lorence and detective cole‐hatchard walk in the room,

and her face dropped. The first words she said was, "you think"

I killed my mother‐in‐law?" You know who we are, right?

Yeah, why wouldn't I know who you are? They think I

killed my mother‐in‐law. Is that what this is about? I did

not murder my mother‐in‐law. Under those circumstances,

it was very telling. Diana nadell and Andrea Benson were

both arrested and charged with murder and had to wait to be

extradited to the state of new York. Just when we thought this

case couldn't get any crazier, it did.

I was fast asleep. It was like 11:00 at night, 10:00 at

night, and Bobby came in and woke me up and said, "your"

cousin is here." I came out. They said, they told me, "they

arrested Diana, " and I was ‐‐ I was shocked, but I wasn't"

surprised. I think the first thing I said, "I knew she had"

something to do with it." When Andrea Benson and Diana

nadell were first charged, they were charged with murder in the

second degree. Once Andrea Benson flipped and became a

witness for the prosecution, we were then able to upgrade the

charges against Diana nadell to murder in the first degree,

murder for hire. Tanisha joyner also became state's evidence

and pleaded guilty to a lesser crime.

Andrea, she doesn't come from a lot. She's had a tough

upbringing, as it were, and she has quite a criminal history.

She has a young child at home, doesn't have a husband, works a

menial job at one of the local supermarkets. Diana offers her

$10,000 if she would help her kill Peggy. She agrees on the

drive from the airport. Andrea Benson only received

$500 up front and was going to get the rest of the money when

Diana got her money, which never came, obviously.

I received a phone call from a detective in the jurisdiction

of where Diana nadell was being held in custody, pending trial,

and we were told that an inmate had reported that Diana nadell

tried to hire her to arrange for the murder of tanisha

joyner. There are some people that can't help but to try to

control every aspect of a situation, and Diana nadell

kept trying to do that even while she was in jail. We met

with the inmate. She was fitted with a recording device and

went back into the area where Diana nadell was, and at that

time, Diana nadell did exactly what the inmate said she did.

She gave her the information of tanisha joyner, said she needed

to be dead. We went into grand jury and indicted Diana nadell,

at that point, for attempting to have this witness murdered.

And at that point, she had no choice but to plead guilty.

Diana nadell's attorney came to us and asked us if we would

consider a plea of 23 to life. And after speaking with the

family and weighing everything, for us, that was something we

could live with. I saw Diana when she was

being arraigned. That's the first time I saw her after my

mother's murder. She wouldn't even turn around and look at

me. This murder was about greed.

Diana learned that if she left her husband prior to peggy's

death, she would get nothing. And that wasn't something she

was willing to accept. Diana saw my mother as a

cash machine. Diana thought she knew what my mother was worth.

I didn't know what my mother was worth. I knew there was

money. I didn't know how much money. It didn't matter.

It sounds cheesy, but you become a prosecutor because

it's one of the only jobs in the world where your job is to

just do justice and to do the right thing. This case began

with walking into Peggy nadell's home and seeing her

brutally murdered on her floor, and it ended with Diana nadell

serving what I believe will be the rest of her life in prison.

I know that Diana is not enjoying jail. I've heard

through the grapevine, Diana refuses to tell anybody why she

is there. I guess she's embarrassed. She doesn't want

anybody to know she's a murderer. I think, to this day,

she's still claiming she was framed.

She just ruined so many lives. You know, friends,

family. I mean, what susie had to go through and even, I'm

sure, what Jimmy had to go through.

Now susanne and Jimmy have to live without their mother

and live with the nightmare of what happened. Not only did