Good evening, everyone. I'm Marisa Burke,
[narrator] For over 20 years,
Scranton, Pennsylvania, welcomed local anchorwoman Marisa Burke
into their living rooms.
[Jacquelyn] Everybody knew Marisa Burke.
[narrator] Seasoned professional,
she was always first to report the news of the day.
People around here
are talking about the delay in Timothy McVeigh's execution.
[narrator] She also shared her life with her audience.
[Marisa] The news did cover my wedding,
and they are excited to see the new baby.
[narrator] But behind the cameras, a dark story was playing out.
[Justin] I think it was an easy cover to have this normal family life
and a deep, dark secret.
[narrator] And this time, she'd be the last to know.
[Marisa] He said, "Marisa, I see the FBI, state police,
and it looks like they have your house surrounded."
It was like somebody punched me in the gut.
I was always giving the news
and never did I think I would actually become the news.
It was the '80s.
I had just graduated from Ithaca College in New York
with a degree in broadcast journalism.
And after a year and a half in Southwestern Virginia, uh,
I'd landed my dream job in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
It was just so exciting for me
to work at a station that was so reputable.
Marisa Burke, Newswatch 16, Dunmore.
We're talking about a top ABC affiliate in the country
with an audience of millions every day.
I would have to be at the station by five o'clock in the morning,
so it didn't allow for a lot of social time.
[announcer] This is Newswatch 16 at eleven.
Good evening, everyone. I'm Marisa Burke.
[Marisa] In 1990, all of a sudden,
I became the main anchorwoman
of the six and eleven o'clock news.
I was only 29 years old,
and all of a sudden,
I am the face of those newscasts.
Everybody knew Marisa Burke
because she was always on camera,
always on the news every night.
She was just very friendly. People could relate to her.
And I think that's why she was so popular.
[Marisa] The career was going so well,
but the thing that was missing was finding somebody.
[narrator] That all changes in August of 1992
when close friends host a barbeque and play matchmaker.
There is this gentleman who was impeccably dressed.
Dark hair, almond-colored eyes.
His name was Mark Kandel.
He started cracking jokes
and his sense of humor just mesmerized me.
[Jacquelyn] To me, he was a magnificent person
and very charismatic.
He was an educator
and kids were important to him.
He was, like, a great package.
[Marisa] He was starting his doctoral work at the University of Maryland
in administrative studies and special ed curriculum.
I was thinking, "Wow, this guy is amazing."
And before we left my friend's house that night,
he turned to me and he kissed me on the cheek
and said, "I would like to see you again."
He was living in a fraternity house,
but he was being paid for being an advisor
and this was helping him pay for his doctoral degree
at the University of Maryland.
It was kind of a weird time visiting on the weekends
because sometimes there would be parties going on around us.
And we would try to seek that privacy and that intimacy,
hearing the fraternity parties in the background.
It didn't matter because I was focused on Mark.
I couldn't find anything wrong with him.
And I'm thinking, "He can't be so perfect."
He just almost seemed too good to be true.
[narrator] Six months later,
Mark invites Marisa to his parents' vacation home in Florida
and pops the question.
A year later, the couple marry in Danville, Pennsylvania.
-[people applauding] -[camera shutter clicking]
[Marisa] The news did cover my wedding, yes,
at the Basilica of Saints Cyril and Methodius
which was just a beautiful landmark.
[people applauding]
It was something out of The Sound of Music.
We spent our wedding night in Bloomsburg
at a very quaint, intimate place.
And the emotional level for me just got to a point where,
all of a sudden, I just started crying.
I thought, "Wow. It's over.
After all of this planning, it's done in one day."
And he said, "Honey, it's okay.
I'm not gonna push you to do anything you don't wanna do tonight."
And he was so understanding.
[narrator] Despite this awkward beginning,
in the weeks and months that follow,
the newlyweds seemed destined for a fairytale marriage.
[Marisa] The sex life was amazing.
We were so compatible.
I was gratified. I felt satisfied.
I just thought their marriage was perfect.
If perfect is a... I mean, I know there's no such thing as perfect.
Seeing them interact together
and how he was so attentive to her...
When we would go anywhere, they would hold hands.
Always hold hands, call each other "Hon."
The way he would make her laugh.
They just laughed all the time.
I envied her. I envied her.
[Marisa] On January 5th of 1996,
I gave birth to Rachel.
[Mark] There she is.
There's our big girl. There's our big girl.
[Mark] Rachel?
I am not a big, showy person,
but that night, it was on the air.
[newsreader] Our own Marisa Burke
gave birth to a daughter this morning.
We're happy to report that mother, daughter and father Mark Kandel
are all doing just fine tonight.
Pictures of me holding my newborn, and Mark right there,
and we were just a new family.
[Mark] Rachel, open up your eyes, honey.
Daddy's here.
The world seems to be...
[narrator] Marisa continues to be the main breadwinner of the family
as her status at WNEP steadily rises.
Mark completes his PhD,
starts teaching at local colleges
and wins a seat on the Scranton School Board.
In 1997 they welcome their second daughter, Sarah.
[Jacquelyn] He really became Mr. Mom.
He started to cook, he started to bake, he cleaned the house.
[Marisa] In a marriage, it's never 50/50.
But with the two of us, we knew that,
"I'll be the prime breadwinner
if you can pick up the work that is required to raise two babies."
I was just so fortunate because he was such a great father.
[narrator] The next year, the family moves to a bigger home with a pool.
Mark takes charge of renovations.
Mark Kandel converted the downstairs
into what can be described as kind of like a man's cave.
It had everything that guys would like.
It was filled with sports memorabilia,
workout equipment, big-screen TV.
It had doors going from the basement
into the backyard where the pool was.
[Marisa] When you have a pool,
neighbors and friends seem to gravitate there
and it was just the perfect atmosphere to entertain.
[Jacquelyn] Mark would have young men there
that were supposedly taking care of drinks, or bartenders.
One party, a young man was walking around in a bow tie with no shirt.
My husband would say, like, you know,
"Isn't that odd?"
And I always thought everybody's kinda let their guard down anyway.
Everybody has a little bit too much to drink.
We had a lot of parties
and sometimes they actually got out of hand.
[narrator] Marisa doesn't begrudge Mark having fun,
given the heavier load he carries at home,
but sometimes he pushes the limits.
Every so often, Mark would say,
"They're having a party this weekend
and I wanna go and see some of the guys."
At first, I thought, "Wow," you know, "you're a grown man.
Why would you want to go back to a campus environment?"
I... I'm not one to judge. I would take girl trips.
But he did do it a lot.
And I just found it odd that he would go so much
and drive all the way to Maryland.
During one of these outings,
my niece came across some pictures that...
Her uncle was at one of these fraternity parties,
and it was a toga party.
And even my niece, at the time, had said,
"Don't you think that's odd?"
[narrator] Before long,
Marisa would discover that this was just the tip of the iceberg.
I think it was an easy cover to have this normal family life
and a deep, dark secret.
[Michelle] He tried to live a life that was expected of him
and he just couldn't do it 'cause he had these urges.
That's where all the lies and the manipulation and the stories come in.
[narrator] In 1997,
three years after his marriage to Marisa Burke,
Mark Kandel is still traveling back and forth to the University of Maryland
where he parties like a single man.
[Marisa] At one point, I did ask him,
"Why are you still going to these fraternity parties?"
And did not blink an eye.
His response was always, "Honey, you've gotta realize
I was the founding father of these fraternities."
I actually dismissed it
because he had such a valid explanation.
[narrator] In the early 2000s,
Mark lands a prestigious new job in Pennsylvania.
[Jacquelyn] He worked at the Northeast Educational Intermediate Unit
where I worked as well.
He would perform a lot of teacher in-services.
When I was doing my cooperating teaching
in the local Scranton districts,
the teachers would look forward to him coming in to evaluate me
because, you know, he was just funny, good-looking, very popular.
[narrator] By 2004, like many busy professionals,
Mark and Marisa have drifted apart.
[Jacquelyn] She would say once in a while,
"Well, we're like two ships passing in the night.
I work one shift, he works the other."
[Marisa] In the beginning of our marriage,
the sex life was amazing.
But it started diminishing
in the few years leading up to our 10-year anniversary.
[narrator] With this important milestone approaching,
the couple makes plans for a romantic getaway.
[Marisa] And I thought, "Wow.
It's just gonna be him and me for an entire weekend.
We can pay attention to just the two of us.
It's gonna be perfect."
I was preparing for days.
And I had purchased special lingerie.
I had bought perfume and did my nails.
And that evening, I went into the bathroom and got all ready,
and when I came out of the room,
Mark was asleep.
When I started touching him in bed,
hoping that there would be some sort of arousal,
he just turned to me and said, "Goodnight, honey bunny,"
and then went over on his other side.
And there I am, laying in bed,
thinking, "What in the world is going on?"
Was it me? Did he not find me attractive anymore?
I was in shock.
[narrator] For the first time, Marisa wonders if her relationship is in trouble.
Things only get worse when she receives two anonymous emails
that come in on the newsroom's public server.
[Marisa] The emails were telling me
to go and get checked for communicable diseases
because my husband was fooling around with young guys,
and, "You don't know who your husband is,"
and, "He is doing this behind your back,"
and, "We care about you,"
and knowing full well that everybody else in the newsroom was reading them.
The embarrassment I felt was incredible.
I thought, "Who in the world sent these emails
describing Mark in this way?
Where is this coming from?"
I thought, "This can't be true."
And I dismissed it.
I never even brought it up to Mark
because I did not want to embarrass him.
Mother's Day, 2008, the girls and I decided
to head to my mother's house in the Danville area.
I said to Mark, "Let me take the girls
and we will be back Sunday."
And Mark said, "Terrific idea because
I will spend the weekend getting the property ready
and getting the swimming pool ready for the summer season.
I will have a nice dinner ready
and we can open up your Mother's Day gifts."
We returned back to Peckville Sunday evening
and, as Mark promised, he had the dinner all planned out for us.
He had gifts already wrapped for me to open for Mother's Day.
And it was a terrific Mother's Day for me.
Then a few weeks later...
[phone ringing]
...I received a phone call at work
and it was Mark, and he said,
"Honey, I'm at the district attorney's office
and I think I may be in some trouble."
[Michelle] He had a plan.
He was a master manipulator.
His public persona was so honorable,
no one ever suspected any bad motives on his part.
[narrator] 14 years into her marriage,
Marisa Burke receives an alarming call from her husband.
I was in such a state of shock and disbelief.
I said, "What are you talking about?"
And he went on to say,
"That weekend that you went home for Mother's Day,
I held a gathering where some young guys were at the house."
I didn't know about the gathering at our house on Mother's Day weekend.
He kept all of that quiet.
And I'm thinking, "Why did he keep that from me?
Why didn't he tell me that he had some guys over?"
[Michelle] I was the deputy district attorney
in charge of crimes against children.
So that's how I got involved at that point.
The mother that brought this to light
had two sons involved with Mark Kandel.
One was above the age of 18 and one was a minor.
And those two sons were both at that party in May of 2008
and they came home drunk.
And so we had enough to launch an investigation.
[narrator] Later that evening, Marisa gets Mark's side of the story.
[Marisa] He said that a 17-year-old boy had snuck in
and he ended up being out all night drinking.
But instead of telling his mother
that he had been out with other high schoolers all night long...
And said that he was at our house drinking.
I believed him.
[newsreader] The trouble started when Kandel was arrested
after hosting a party at their home while Burke was out of town.
Authorities accused him of providing alcohol to a 17-year-old.
It was all over the news and it was huge.
Obviously, somebody leaked something to the competition.
For them to do a story and to make it the lead story...
It was like somebody just punched me in the gut.
And as part of the story, they showed my house on TV,
and then talking about my husband as though he were a criminal.
Neighbors are turning on the news.
They're hearing about Mark.
I broke out in this sweat and I remember just thinking,
"Everything is crashing in right now."
You might say it's an encore...
[Jacquelyn] She was scared about it.
You know, she was worried that this was gonna affect her job.
It was really tarnishing her name
and popularity within the community
and that was devastating to her.
I felt that he was being wrongly accused as well.
For some strange reason,
the assistant DA really was trying to hammer him on this.
[narrator] Mark is charged with furnishing alcohol to a minor
and is forced to resign from his job.
Soon after, Marisa is called to the DA's office.
[Marisa] I remember walking into the assistant district attorney's office
and I said, "What is all of this about?"
They were questioning a photo that they found on Mark's work laptop.
It was a picture of the girls with their rear ends exposed.
They were fooling around because they had just seen the movie
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective with Jim Carrey.
And there is a scene in that movie where he shows his backside,
and the girls were trying to mimic that.
Mark just happened to take a picture.
I was there and my mother was there.
But they were turning this photo
into something sordid and salacious.
They ordered Mark from the home.
And I remember the look on my girls' faces.
And...
I was just feeling all sorts of emotions
from anger to sorrow.
And my girls were crying and not understanding any of it.
So, we had to follow up on everything
just to make sure that his daughters were safe.
When you tell their mom that they have to be forensically interviewed
and examined for sexual abuse...
That didn't sit well.
Finally, they cleared Mark of any wrongdoing in that respect.
[narrator] Mark ultimately pleads guilty to the alcohol charge.
He's sentenced to 90 days of house arrest and nine months of probation.
It definitely ruined his reputation as an educator.
We knew that he would probably never have another job in teaching.
I was really, really disappointed and upset
with the prosecutor's office
that they would think that my husband
was such a monster.
And he wasn't.
[narrator] Over the next four years,
the family tries to put the painful episode behind them.
[Marisa] Mark ended up finding a job with an insurance company.
Things were still going well for me at the television station.
And for the first time in a while,
people were not talking about what happened to Mark.
We felt as though we were finally getting beyond that horrible ordeal.
[text alert pings]
Around this time,
Mark was really starting to pay a lot of attention to his phone.
And every time we looked at Mark, he was looking at his phone.
I had enough and I said,
"Why are you on your phone all the time? Why?"
And he looked at me and he said, "Just checking scores."
Then a couple of nights,
I noticed that Mark was not coming to bed.
And when I asked him about it, his answer would always be,
"I was watching television in the basement and I just fell asleep."
And that was that.
[narrator] Rumors about Mark's odd behavior circulate amongst his friends.
[Jacquelyn] We had a couple that we were friends with,
and the husband would go to the same gym as Mark.
Once, he witnessed Mark
saying things that were not appropriate to a young male in the gym.
This is when I started feeling, "I think I made a mistake."
[Marisa] It was the beginning of November
and I had just finished the noon newscast,
and I picked up my cell phone and I saw that my neighbor across the street
had called and left a voicemail.
And he said, "Marisa, I don't know whether you know this or not,
but I'm looking out my window and I see the FBI, state police,
members of the district attorney's office, and the local police,
and it looks like they have your house surrounded.
And it also looks like they're trying to break down your front door.
[narrator] Moments after receiving a voicemail from her neighbor,
Marisa Burke is in a full panic.
[Marisa] I felt as though time had stopped.
I didn't wanna reveal what my neighbor had told me, out of fear.
So I left.
And it had to have been the longest ride home for me.
I was trying frantically to call him to find out what was going on
and there was no answer.
I did have this feeling in my gut again that,
"My God, is Mark in trouble again?"
[narrator] In fact, Mark is in deep trouble.
The DA's office has received several complaints about him since his 2008 conviction.
[Michelle] We had a lot of smoke, a lot of suspicion.
We probably could have held him accountable
for more serious crimes in 2008
had we had more cooperation.
But we didn't.
Between 2008 and 2012, reports kept coming forward.
Why are all these young men congregating at his house?
Neighbors talked.
They saw and they heard the parties that were going on in the backyard.
But there's nothing illegal about that.
Some would say, "You know, he's just taking care of these boys.
He's being good to them."
I started noticing young guys showing up to the house
looking for help with their schoolwork.
There was always... Always an explanation.
"They're getting ready for college entrance exams."
That sort of thing.
[Michelle] I think he is a predator,
and I think every predator has a type,
and his type was young boys, maybe 13 and up.
Maybe he has suppressed feelings about his own sexuality.
And a lot of those feelings were illegal
because they were directed towards minors.
[Justin] And then there was some other information that came forward
about him paying young boys to cut his grass or do yard work,
and then paying them extra money
to take their shirts off while doing it.
[narrator] But if the boys are being paid for doing more than taking off their shirts,
no one is telling the police.
He was buying gifts. He was giving money,
sneakers and shoes, video games...
A variety of different things.
Speedo bathing suits. That was a hallmark.
When they came to swim at his house,
he would give them Speedo bathing suits.
Working out with them.
Telling them how to build up those muscles,
how to show off those muscles.
"Come over and lift weights with me and I'll give you $50.
$100 if you take your shirt off."
Now you have high school boys
who are getting money left and right from this guy for different things.
[Michelle] It's a grooming process
when you're trying to get close to a child or a minor.
People groom people to do what they want them to do,
and children are particularly vulnerable to that.
Depending upon their age, whatever entices them to come a little closer,
that groomer knows.
Getting victims to talk is one of the most difficult things.
And young boys are not gonna talk about
any kind of sexual feelings that they have.
You know, they're embarrassed. They're ashamed.
They don't want their peers to know.
They don't want their mom and dad to know.
[narrator] Finally, in 2011,
a boy comes forward to share some texts that Mark sent him.
From these, it's obvious that Mark has a thing for a certain type of underwear.
Calvin Klein underwear.
The "CK" underwears, he would call it.
That's a huge red flag,
that an adult man is buying high school boys
these tight-fitting Calvin Klein underwear.
So my partners and I went to speak with all of them and review the messages.
[beeps]
It was like joking messages, but joking sexually.
"My little Speedo boy."
This victim wasn't very close with Mark at the time.
He was just starting to try to chat with him.
[narrator] It's not enough to press charges,
but it is enough for investigators to mount an undercover investigation.
So, what we decided to do was to assume his online identity.
I began communicating with Mark as this juvenile male.
Now, the communication was very late at night.
It was, perhaps, a week long.
But he was cautious. He would say things like,
"You're a good boy."
"You're a good Christian boy."
"You would never try to set me up, right?"
"I need to be able to trust you."
"Can we meet up?"
Why, again, is a 40-something-year-old-man
chatting at two or three in the morning
with someone he believes to be 15 or 16 years old?
Based on my experience conducting these types of investigations,
Mark had been at the border of what we could look at being criminal.
[narrator] One year later, police finally get their opportunity to snare Mark
when the DA receives an anonymous email.
[beeps]
[Justin] The email said, "I don't know what to do.
I've been talking to this guy named Mark Kandel.
I'm getting scared.
He's coming to my work.
He's saying a lot of, you know, strange or inappropriate things."
And attached to that email was a picture.
And that picture, ultimately, was Mark Kandel's lower torso
uh, with his genital region bulging.
I mean, it's not just saying, "Hello."
As soon as I saw that, I knew that,
"We need to figure out who this email came from and talk to them immediately."
This is an emergency at this point.
This minor came forward with his parents,
was interviewed, turned over his cell phone.
[narrator] This time,
the photographic evidence from Mark on the boy's phone is explicit,
enough for authorities to take action.
For all these years, we didn't have that exact and that direct evidence.
[narrator] The FBI and Lackawanna district attorney's office
execute a search warrant on Mark and Marisa's home.
[Justin] We began pounding on the front door,
and I see Mark go across a balcony on the second floor.
In my mind, it's an officer safety issue.
Is he destroying evidence?
So at that point, we decided that we were going to breach the door
and enter the residence.
I identified myself to Mark
and I said, "We have a search warrant for your home.
I'm here now and I will listen to you,
and now's the time for you to finally talk to somebody
and go deep into this sexual attraction to young boys.
And we did.
[narrator] After years of stonewalling police,
Mark Kandel is ready to talk to Agent Justin Leri.
He provides a glimpse into his twisted mind.
[Justin] He would be overcome with these sexual urges.
It's something he really couldn't control.
And sometimes, he would masturbate to the communications.
How he phrased it was, "Overwhelming sexual feelings."
But he denied any physical sexual contact with the young boys.
[narrator] By the time Marisa arrives home, the police have already gone.
Mark was there, and he was very calm and collected.
And I kept on asking, "Why would they do this?
Something motivated the authorities to raid our house again."
He finally said to me,
"I think there were some questionable text messages on my phone.
I think some of those text messages were sexual in nature."
And I looked at him in disbelief and said,
"So you were sending these sexual messages to high schoolers?"
And he finally looked at me and said, "Yes."
Nothing was ever the same after that moment.
I basically threw him out of the house.
[narrator] Mark's confession is backed up
by a motherlode of digital evidence from the boy who came forward.
[Michelle] Nearly a thousand text messages with that minor in one month were recovered.
And they were over the top,
and they were enticing, encouraging, perverted.
They were intended to persuade and coerce
and to engage in sexual conduct.
He pretty much found the wrong victim.
That young boy who brought those text messages into the light in 2012
led to dozens of young boys being interviewed,
which basically opened the floodgates
to thousands and thousands of inappropriate communications with Mark Kandel.
[Justin] Penis sizes to shaving pubic hair to masturbation.
There would be a lot of other innuendoes
and sexually explicit pictures.
[Michelle] Part of his pleasure
was looking at these young boys, looking at their bodies.
And what better environment to get an opportunity
to see these young boys and their bodies than in your backyard pool?
And then give 'em alcohol.
And I believe his... The word...
The phrase that some of these young boys used was "puff and rub"
because he would give them money to go buy pot
and then whatever sexual would happen would happen.
[narrator] In one month alone,
Mark had sent 13,000 texts to at least 17 underage males.
[Michelle] We had him.
We had explicit talk, explicit offerings,
and we had young men who were willing to come to court to testify.
[narrator] Within two days of the raid,
Mark is arrested and charged with one count of online enticement of a minor.
Marisa learns the full extent of Mark's sex crimes
when she reads the arrest affidavit.
It was like pieces of a puzzle all of a sudden coming together.
These kids coming to the house.
The obsession with the phone.
The constant, non-stop texting.
I read through the affidavit thinking, "This guy's sick."
And I felt used and betrayed.
It was just horrible.
The girls knew about the seriousness of the charges.
They looked so sad and desperate.
And I think we all felt that way that evening was,
"Where do we go from here?"
[Scott] This is a very difficult night for us here at the news station.
We learned this afternoon that Mark Kandel,
the husband of Newswatch 16's Marisa Burke,
was arrested on charges of sex abuse involving a minor.
[newsreader] Lackawanna County detectives brought Mark Kandel
to the district attorney's office in Scranton in handcuffs.
This concludes more than three years of investigation.
[Marisa] I felt as though none of our neighbors wanted anything to do with us.
I was ostracized by people in the community.
I experienced that public humiliation
because I was still very much a public figure.
Mailing bomb threats. Cops say he's a 17-year-old boy...
And I thought, "This is trauma. This is what trauma does.
And this family is broken, completely broken."
[Marisa] I look back and think I didn't know about what was going on with Mark
because, perhaps, I did not want to know.
Two beautiful children...
I did not want anything to ruin this
or stand in the way of my life crashing down.
[narrator] On December 5th, 2012,
Mark is charged with four more counts of online enticement.
Marisa files for a divorce and the hits keep coming.
He had forged my name on some documents
in order to withdraw some retirement money.
It was actually a lot of retirement money.
In the time that he wasn't working,
this is how he was helping to pay for the bills
and for some of the teenage boys' gifts.
[narrator] In 2013, Mark Kandel accepts a plea deal
for one count of online enticement of a minor.
There's no trial and Marisa does not attend the sentencing.
But her youngest daughter does
and reads a victim impact statement to the court.
[Michelle] She wanted her father to hear it coming from her mouth.
She wanted him to know what he had done to her and her sister and her mother.
He was a primary caretaker for those daughters.
Their bond was tremendous.
So for her to come to court and read the words that she wrote,
and to tell the judge
that she wanted her father to receive the maximum sentence,
it was a "wow" moment.
And it was a moment that really made you appreciate
the harm that he did to his family.
And I hope he felt that. I really hope he felt that.
A former educator from Lackawanna County
has been sentenced to 14 and a half years in prison.
He's a former member of the Scranton School Board
and also worked for the Northeastern Educational Intermediate Unit.
He will be a registered sex offender for the rest of his life.
[Marisa] I had to survive.
I had to survive for the sake of my career that I worked so hard for
and I had to survive for the sake of my girls.
I couldn't allow what Mark did to us to ruin their lives.
I put them both through school and through college.
But now it is time...
[narrator] Marisa remains the face of the six o'clock news
until she retires in 2016.
[Marisa] I wanted to write my story
so that, no matter how horrible things may be,
no matter how much you were betrayed and lied to,
that you can get past that.
This nightmare was real.
I think once I came to terms with that,
I was able to be okay with myself
and ditch the self-pity and move on
and be the better person for it.