- I'm craig melvin,
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
- Marie is a very loving person.
She had a heart of gold.
What happened to this woman?
My job is to be a truth teller and seek out the truth.
I wanted to solve it.
- Her case was a mystery for years,
The mom with a tender heart and tough as nails career.
- She was part of the sheriff's department.
Her ultimate goal was to try to get into the fbi.
- She had found a new sense of purpose in the church.
Her pastor and his wife like family.
- They had taken her in. They were helping her out.
- I was like, "I'm proud of you."
I go, "you're finding god."
- Then one baffling text, and she was gone.
- I go, "I know I probably watch
"a lot of 'law and order,'
"but I have this really gut feeling."
- Because I was a mom,
I just knew that she didn't leave on her own.
There was no way she left that baby.
- Two moms at opposite ends of a mystery.
Could one get justice for the other?
- This case, for sure,
Was an investigator's worst nightmare.
- Soon, clues to a hidden life.
- A very amorous, romantic, wild relationship.
- It was lustful. Oh, my goodness.
- There were secrets here, deadly ones.
- It hit me hard. I'm like, "no, no, no, no."
- Come to jesus moment. - It was. Yeah.
I was scared to death.
♪♪
- Hello and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
Marie carlson lived her life with gusto.
Her enthusiasm was contagious, but she also battled demons.
The divorced mom was down on her luck
When a pastor and his wife welcomed her into their lives.
Marie seemed to have found salvation.
Then, suddenly, she vanished.
It would take investigators years to untangle
The unholy secrets at the center of this mystery.
Here's keith morrison with "secrets on the emerald coast."
♪♪
- How do you catch a dancing sprite?
Do you put her in a bottle?
Can you package the joy she brings?
Can you keep it when she goes?
- She was like a gravitational pull.
- Her name was marie, marie carlson.
- She was, um, magnetic.
- When she was happy,
She could make the whole world sing.
- Live life to the fullest, is what marie would tell me.
You know, you might not have tomorrow.
- And so, she offered herself, her goodness.
Gave her vulnerable heart and stored her secrets until,
Well, what happened.
But she was always that way, was marie,
From the time of the very first secret in her life.
She was born in the philippines to a single mother.
Then taken in by the family of an american serviceman,
And it was years later
When she learned that kind serviceman
Was actually her father, which meant that esta bridges,
The best friend she grew up with,
Was also her sister.
What was that like to find that out,
That she is actually her sister? - I was happy.
I was really happy because I always thought she was
Since we were little girls.
- When they got older, esta and marie moved to florida
And lived together. The location ideal.
- We chose an apartment that was behind a karaoke club.
- Perfect.
- So that we could just go there all the time
Like we were stars.
- And she wore pink, always pink.
- It was her. It was her personality.
It's-it's full of life.
- And always trying to perk up everyone else
With her favorite word, "beautiful."
- It's like, "oh, she's so beautiful.
"you know, I wanna be like her."
But she always used to tell me, "no, you are beautiful."
- She loved that word.
- Kay barber was like a mother to marie.
Hers the second family to take marie in
When she was 18 and struggling.
- Marie's nickname that I gave her, uh, was rosie
Because she was always just, you know, peachy,
And rosy, and happy.
- Like she was when she met jeff carlson, and he fell hard.
- And it was, like, instant. [snaps]
- So, the married and they had a daughter named paris,
And they thought their life together would be grand.
Marie got a college degree in criminal justice--
Became a deputy sheriff.
- Her ultimate goal was to try to get into the fbi.
- But then, for all the love between them,
There were issues.
Jeff learned there were more secrets,
That as a girl, marie had been sexually assaulted,
And sometimes her love and joy
Were chased into a darker place.
- The biggest issue was she didn't love herself.
- They tried, but the marriage didn't last.
And after that, marie drifted a little.
Jobs fell through. She had to move frequently.
Jeff suggested paris, then three,
Would have a more stable life with him.
- She fought it initially, but she agreed that
It was probably for the best. Um, so, paris was with me.
- Though she saw paris often and called all the time.
And then marie finally found what her vulnerable,
Loving soul seemed to need.
- I was actually happy for her because she found god.
- Marie had found a spiritual home
At the calvary emerald coast church.
It was hardly a fancy cathedral.
The place was in a strip mall, but fancy wasn't the point.
Salvation was.
Here, finally, marie felt right.
- And jesus is saying, "you know what?
"you're missin' out."
- The pastor was a charismatic man named james flanders,
Who preached the bible four square,
Preached in jeans and sneakers,
Live streamed and youtubed his sermons.
- It was a very happening place.
- Jason anderson was the youth pastor.
- They didn't fall asleep listening to his sermons.
[laughter]
- But more than that, the pastor and his wife,
James and tanya flanders, were known for their big hearts,
Their charity, and that's when, for a third time,
A family took in marie.
- She is saying that she was there
Until she got on her feet.
- But a whole year went by, and then what was coming
Couldn't be hidden.
The story floating around?
There had been an abusive boyfriend
Who abandoned her and left her pregnant.
And in July 2011, marie gave birth to a baby girl
And named her grace.
The pastor and his wife took care of both of them.
- It was explained to me that they were helping her out,
That she was kinda down on her luck.
- She was, by all appearances, saved, spiritually by faith
And practically by the pastor and his wife.
So, imagine the surprise
When a strange group text message popped up
On the phones of her family and friends.
Can you still remember the words of that mass text?
- She said that yesterday she left fort walton beach
To do somethin' that she'd always wanted to do.
She didn't want us to try to stop her.
Her last words was,
"I love and appreciate you all."
- But the biggest surprise?
Marie did not take her three-month-old baby.
She left grace behind with the pastor and his wife,
And, right away, her sister, esta,
Sensed that something wasn't right.
She called her family.
- I go, "I know I probably watch
"a lot of 'law and order,'
"but can you find out what's going on
"because I-I have this really gut feeling?"
And she's like,
"oh, you watch too many of those kinda shows."
I'm like, "no, this is different."
- It was the fall of 2011, the very same time
That a detective named nesli suhi-moore
Became a mother, a fact which, as you will see,
May have made all the difference.
- You get a better understanding of what it's like
To love somebody to the end of the world and back.
- It was almost like fate intended to
Tie these two together in a mystery of love,
And lies, and loss.
- Coming up...
Where had marie carlson gone?
The detective with a new baby at home
Dives into the mystery.
- The investigator said, "we're gonna open a case,"
Which surprised me.
- I just knew that she didn't leave on her own.
There was no way she left that baby.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Marie carlson had notified family and friends
She was leaving fort walton beach,
And nobody could figure out why or where she went,
And this was very strange.
She left her three-month-old baby
In the care of her pastor, james flanders,
And his wife, tanya, and not her family,
Not the woman she looked to as a mother figure,
Kay barber.
- It was heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking.
- Marie's ex-husband, jeff carlson, got the text, too.
Didn't make sense to him that she'd leave without calling
Her seven-year-old daughter, paris.
Kay called jeff and said he should file a report.
- And she said, "I-I don't know what's goin' on,
"but I-I think somethin' happened,"
And I said, "yeah, I agree with ya."
- And then jeff called
The okaloosa county sheriff's office
To report marie missing.
- The investigator said, "we're gonna open a case,
An investigation on this," which surprised me
Because she's an adult. She could've just left.
- Because marie was adventurous, she liked to travel,
And when the mood struck her, sometimes she just took off
For a few days on some whim,
But something seemed different this time.
- She would never have left without talkin' to me about it
And talkin' to paris.
- She'd been gone a week when the sheriff asked
Detective keith matz to look into it.
That text message, something off, said her family.
- This doesn't sound like marie.
- Huh. So, when you go that one,
The antenna must have gone up, huh?
- The antennas did go up.
- Detective nesli suhi-moore didn't hear about
The case then because...
- 'cause I was on leave.
- On maternity leave. - Correct.
So-- and I came back, uh,
Two weeks after she was initially reported missing.
- And that's when nesli heard from other detectives
About the case keith was working on.
- Poor keith had no idea that I was gonna come
Bully my way into that investigation.
- Hmm.
And why did you wanna bully your way
Into the investigation?
- I think the connection of just having a child.
I just knew that she didn't leave on her own.
- So, here they were, partners, the young detective,
Who happened to be a brand-new mother,
And the veteran who'd seen just about everything
And who soon learned from friends and family
That marie was deeply attached to
Both her daughters.
- She had a heart of gold and loved her paris
More than anything in the world.
- Mm-hmm.
- Enough to be able to let paris go live with jeff
So that she could have a stable life.
- Sure.
- To me, it was a sacrifice on her end as a mother.
- But what happened in her life,
And how did she end up with another baby?
From esta, the detectives learned about the divorce
And how marie had lost her job
And how the pastor and his wife offered her a place to stay.
But the questions about baby grace?
Esta said her relationship with marie was always supportive
And not judgmental,
And when marie didn't tell her who the father was,
She didn't push the subject.
- I've never questioned her. - Uh-huh.
- Because marie will tell me in her own time
If she wants to tell me.
I've learned, with my sister, I never pry.
- But that was the job of the detectives,
Nesli and keith, to pry and hopefully to find marie.
One of their first calls was on her church pastor,
James flanders, and his wife.
Impressive guy they discovered.
James flanders-- what was he like?
- Very charismatic, um,
I-I would say he was good at his job.
- Wonder what it would be like to listen to him preach.
- You can youtube him. - Yes, you can.
- We all, at times, forget the promises of god's word.
- The pastor grew the calvary emerald coast church
From scratch, spread it through youtube,
And by the time marie began attending,
Every service filled up.
- They were a tight knit family, that church.
- And now, with marie gone,
They were caring for little grace.
So, did the flanders have any idea
What happened to marie?
Perhaps they knew who the father was
And where that abusive boyfriend might be found.
And, oh, yes, there was a story all right.
- Coming up...
Questions mount and leads are running out.
Was time running out, too?
- We searched it, but it was-- there was nothing to search.
It was clean.
This case, for sure,
Was an investigator's worst nightmare.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- The calvary emerald coast church
Of fort walton beach, florida was far more than
Just a place to gather on a Sunday morning.
Led by pastor james flanders and his wife, tanya,
This place was a beacon of charity, too.
The pastor and his church sacrificed their own needs
To send money to the victims of katrina.
And when marie carlson needed help,
They took her in, too.
- It's what pastors do for their congregation.
- But now...
- I'm left with a missing person
Who's just vanished off this earth.
- A week and a half after marie vanished,
Or drove away, or whatever she did,
The detectives went calling on the flanders,
Who said they fully expected marie would return soon.
This wasn't the first time
She took spur of the moment trips, they said.
- Never to the point where she had to be reported
To law enforcement missing, though.
She came back.
- Although, the flanders told detectives
They were quite worried about marie's state of mind.
- They noticed a downward spiral.
- Like she was going into a depression or something.
- She might be going into a depression state.
Yes.
- Thing was, said the pastor and his wife,
Marie could have wild mood swings.
They knew she had a diagnosed mood disorder.
Did they tell you that she was bipolar?
- Yes, told me she was bipolar.
She had been takin' medication
And was off of her medication,
Probably because of her giving birth of the child.
- But there was another prescription bottle, too.
- And then they also showed us a bottle that was empty.
You know, that-- maybe alluding to the fact that
She had taken medication and was gonna use it
To hurt herself.
- The day she left, james told detectives he was so worried
About her state of mind he stayed home from work
To keep an eye on her.
- James says that she was acting up,
And he didn't wanna let marie take the baby.
- He was afraid the baby might be harmed or something.
- Right.
- Then, late that afternoon, said pastor james,
Marie said she was tired, went to lie down.
Tanya took the baby out shopping so marie could rest.
The pastor said he waited around for a bit,
Talked to her briefly when she woke up,
And then went out for a run, and when he returned,
Marie and her white mazda pickup truck were gone.
Strangely, the flanders said,
Marie had packed her bags but didn't take them.
- Why would she take off and not take her bags with her?
- Anyway, said the flanders, when she didn't come back
That day or the next,
They drove around town looking for her.
Went to the airport.
Maybe she'd parked her car there and flown away.
Did they find it? - They did.
James says that he finds it in long term parking.
- At least part of the mystery was solved,
Said the pastor.
She must have flown off to visit someone.
They took her pickup home.
So, the mazda-- what did you do about that car
When you got your hands on it?
- We searched it, but it was--
You know, there was nothing to search.
It was clean.
- They went to the airport.
- We checked the airlines.
There's nothing. She didn't fly out.
- So, why would marie's car be at the airport
If she hadn't flown out of there?
Of course, she could have been trying to hide her tracks
From snoopy friends and family,
Or what if someone else took the car to the airport,
Someone who wanted to make it look like she'd left town?
Rather fishy.
Then the detectives had an idea.
You know the machine that spits out tickets
When you enter an airport parking lot?
That very ticket goes back to the tollbooth when you leave.
- Keith and I went to the little tollbooth
Where you give their-- your ticket.
- Maybe, thought the detectives, the parking ticket for
Marie's mazda would tell them not just when it
Was dropped off but a more important question.
By whom?
- We were thinking, let's get a-a thumbprint
Or a fingerprint and went through every single one of them
Until we found the one that marie's car had received.
- And, yes, they got a print, but, no,
It wasn't clear enough to tell whose it was.
Then another thought.
- Hey, let's go pull surveillance video and,
Of course...
- You looked at all of it.
- Well, no, the video didn't work.
It wasn't working during the time that we needed.
- Oh.
- This case, for sure,
Was an investigator's worst nightmare.
- Dead ends everywhere. - Yes.
- And weeks went by-- no sign of marie anywhere.
Time to embrace the thought they'd, frankly,
Had all along, and it wasn't a good one.
- Keith and I both no longer believed
We had a missing person.
We believed we were dealing with a homicide investigation.
But what's the hardest homicide investigation
You can be given? One without a body.
- Yeah. - And we didn't have marie.
- No proof yet that marie had been murdered,
But investigators are about to discover
The new mom was living a lie,
And she was not the only one.
Coming up...
The startling secret that marie kept from
Just about everyone.
- I went up, and I put my hand on her stomach, and I said,
"what's-what's goin' on with this?"
- When "dateline secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
Welcome back to "dateline secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin.
Marie carlson had been living with
Her church pastor and his wife.
Then the couple told police marie packed her bags
But left without them.
She left her infant daughter behind, too.
Detectives were short on clues,
But then the church congregation
Started to whisper.
There were secrets, they said,
But were they just rumors,
Or did someone have a confession to make?
Back to keith morrison
With "secrets on the emerald coast."
- What a nest of puzzles.
What happened to marie carlson?
Where did she go, or did she go anywhere?
And what about grace, the baby she'd left behind?
Who, for example, was the father?
Churches tend to be beehives of gossip,
So the detectives asked around.
This is a member of the calvary emerald coast church.
In other words, she was going to have an abortion,
But pastor flanders and his wife
Had strong views about abortion,
And when they discovered her situation,
They offered to help solve her dilemma.
The flanders had an older daughter,
Always wanted another child,
But one miscarriage after another.
And so, as this church elder told the detectives,
The pastor and his wife came to an arrangement with marie.
- A gift? Maybe.
It was just like marie to be generous toward
The couple who'd been so good to her.
But to skeptical detectives,
Especially this brand-new mother,
Something about the story didn't sound quite right.
The father, for example.
In fact, the alleged abusive guy didn't seem to exist,
But then they talked to ex-husband, jeff,
And the story he heard completely different,
And it came directly from marie when she came to
Visit jeff shortly after she got pregnant.
- Put my hand on her stomach and I said,
"what's-what's goin' on with this?"
And she wasn't really showing, and, uh, her story
At that time was, "well, I'm just being a surrogate
"for james and tanya, so we did basically
"a type of artificial insemination."
- Well, well, well, the pastor was the sperm donor.
In this new story, marie's gift was to be
The pastor's artificially inseminated surrogate,
But why the conflicting stories?
To find out, the detectives consulted
Three special church ladies,
Tanya flanders' closest confidantes.
Did you have a name for this group?
- We called then the inner circle.
- And the inner circle said, yes,
Tanya told them, but swore them to secrecy,
But then tanya gave up a little more.
The method was very homemade.
Wait. At that point?
Yes, because tanya couldn't just
Leave it there.
The next time, she admitted something very, very shocking.
James and marie had sex,
Which tanya told the ladies was okay with her.
And as months passed and marie started showing,
There was a baby shower,
But, oh, no, not for marie.
This baby shower was for tanya.
She put a balloon under her shirt
For a funny photo with marie,
But something here didn't seem quite right.
The inner circle had to keep their secret.
If the story got out, it could threaten
Everything she and the pastor had built.
And as it got more, and more, and more
Into weird stuff... [chuckles]
It was just that the stakes got higher.
- Yeah. - That's right.
Imagine the secrecy that, uh, the inner circle that
Tanya actually told the truth to,
That it's james' baby.
- But no room for secrets in an official investigation.
The detectives invited james and tanya to
Voluntarily come in for a chat,
But only tanya showed up,
And here, in this little room at the sheriff's office,
She let it all come out about that night
Of sake and sex when grace was conceived.
- Wait. I mean-- I mean--
- Yes, in the room.
But, of course, she was, said tanya.
And almost casually, she revealed the heresy that,
Should it ever become public, would surely ruin them.
- Marie was gonna move in and she was gonna be number two.
- A plural wife or whatever you call them.
- Yes, a sister wife. I think.
- Plural marriage. It was, in short,
Polygamy or their homegrown version of it.
Tanya told detectives
She understood the bargain very well.
A very secret bonus, of course,
Kept from almost everyone.
But inside the bubble of their relationship,
Tanya said, they were happy.
But then-then marie gave birth,
And it wasn't cool for marie,
Not anymore, and certainly not adoption.
So, maybe tanya wouldn't get baby grace.
Maybe marie wanted it all, the baby and james,
All for herself.
That's what this member of the inner circle believed.
- Did tanya strike back somehow?
Fight for her marriage by getting rid of marie?
Listen to how church members quoted tanya's words.
So, wouldn't that lead you like a bloodhound
Direct to tanya?
She certainly would have a motive.
- She would.
- Tanya now the only mother figure in grace's life.
Did she know more than she was saying?
Did she do something?
- Coming up...
A confrontation in the congregation.
- This is a, forgive my saying,
Come to jesus moment.
- It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.
- And divine intervention-- a sudden earthshaking tip.
- I can remember getting that tip and thinking, "no way."
- When "dateline secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Jesus is saying you need to learn
To really think different.
- An attentive churchgoer might have noticed
The intrusion of an odd idea in one of the sermons
Of pastor james flanders.
- What do you think we'd experience?
- When he mentioned a couple of verses in the old testament
That seemed to approve somehow of polygamy.
- He wanted to justify his relationship to everybody else
Through a biblical sense.
- So, he went with the old testament
And-and pulled up those few lines that suggest polygamy.
- That's correct.
- A trial balloon?
If it was, it quickly imploded,
And the very practical polygamy in the home
Of the pastor stayed carefully under wraps.
So, if the news got out to the rest of the church,
Did tanya worry about what might happen there?
- That's what she was covering up.
She had to protect james and protect their--
That was their world.
- Did she do something to marie to protect james?
Two months after marie disappeared,
The detectives got permission to look at
The cell phone records of all three of them.
Would they prove tanya was with marie when she vanished,
And thus, maybe did something to her?
- Cell phone tower information put her away from the area.
- No, nowhere near marie.
So, then they checked the cell towers for james' phone.
And what do ya know?
When marie sent that mass text message
Saying she was leaving town,
Both her phone and the pastor's were pinging off
The same cell tower two blocks from his house.
And when marie's mazda was dropped at the airport?
- We've got james flanders' cell phone touching
Towers near the airport.
Why would his phone be near the airport?
- Well, either james innocently drove marie
To the airport and neglected to reveal that,
Or he drove her car there to cover up a crime.
No way to prove it either way, so they were stuck again,
Which is when jason, the youth pastor--
Remember him?
Out of the blue, jason came to call.
He had something the detectives needed to hear, he said.
I mean, it would take a certain amount of, uh, courage.
- Absolutely.
We would have never known about that
If jason wouldn't have come forward.
Known what?
The secret incident that got junior pastor jason involved.
It happened soon after marie disappeared when
A very distraught james asked this church elder for help.
James seemed suicidal, said the elder,
So he called a doctor friend,
And the doctor committed the preacher to a psychiatric ward
For ten days during which time jason anderson
Took over preacher duties.
But then jason heard things
Not about what happened to marie
But about the polygamy.
With other church leaders,
He confronted james and tanya.
This is a, forgive my saying, come to jesus moment.
- It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do,
Um, myself personally, was to confront,
Yeah, my pastor.
- Your mentor, your senior guy.
- Yeah, right, sure.
- And james admitted it.
He'd been sleeping with two women
In the same house.
But then, youth pastor jason told the detectives,
In that cloistered setting, james kept talking
And told a terrible story.
- Him and marie had had a physical altercation,
Um, before she went missing,
And she had scratched him on his arms.
- James insisted marie was still alive
The last time he saw her.
- I was just so in-in shock of everything.
- Buffaloed, I would think, yeah.
- That was it.
He could not continue as pastor.
James would have to resign.
He announced that he and tanya were leaving town.
- They were supposed to leave the following morning
To say goodbye to some church members
And, lo and behold, around 12 or 12:30,
They got in that truck, and they hauled butt.
They went to arizona.
- They fled.
- Like thieves in the night with baby grace.
It was a few days after they left
When jason went to the police
To tell his disturbing story.
Then a piece of luck.
Before they left, marie's friend, kay,
Had asked the pastor and his wife
For marie's belongings,
And they gave her marie's computer.
The bad news was, it had been erased, but...
- I brought it into the sheriff's department
For them to take a look.
- We had our forensic tech reanalyze the computer,
And it gave us a beautiful copy
Of her phone download that she had done
When she backed her phone up.
- Wow.
But maybe it wasn't so lucky.
There were thousands of text messages,
But they were an unreadable jumble
Of symbols and words.
- This particular coin-- - though look at this.
Marie shot this video that did survive
Showing the pastor hocking gold and silver online,
Apparently while running the church.
- Valuing this coin at over $500.
Let me tell ya. That's exciting stuff.
- Was james just a pastor or a part-time flimflam man?
[phone ringing]
So, this is where things stood
When an anonymous tip came in.
- Emerald coast crime stoppers.
- Startling.
If true, it would solve the case.
- And in the tip, it says that james buried her
In the backyard.
- That's some tip. - Yeah.
I can remember getting that tip
And thinkin' no way.
Like, who would-- who would kill somebody
And bury them in their own backyard?
- Could be bogus, of course, just another false lead,
But nesli was hopeful.
- We brought cadaver dogs and ground penetrating radar,
And we didn't find anything.
- Nothin'. - Nothin'.
- No body,
So what happened to marie?
[phone ringing] - more months went by.
Police kept trying to speak with james
But got no response.
- Hi, this is james flanders.
I can't take your call.
- And then, after a whole year,
They tried again, and he picked up.
But he did talk.
Talked for two hours, in fact, from his car,
At times sounding like he was the victim.
The pastor said he knew he was the prime suspect.
And that was that.
They were stalled.
Marie was missing,
And the case was getting very cold.
- Detectives needed a miracle.
What they got, was an x-rated download
That broke the case wide open.
Coming up...
New revelations from the pastor.
- They were sending pornographic photos
Back and forth from the church.
- And an answer, at last, to the biggest mystery of all.
Where was marie?
- Nesli passed me a note that said,
"I missed her."
- I was pretty devastated, the guilt,
The feeling of I could have found her
Six months after she was reported missing.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back.
Investigators were convinced james flanders
Killed marie carlson.
The fallen pastor admitted to church leaders
That he and his wife, tanya,
Had a polygamous relationship with marie,
And, according to rumors, they had a baby together.
When their secret was exposed,
James and tanya fled town with the baby,
And the investigation stalled.
Now, marie's computer was about to help authorities
Reboot the case.
Here's keith morrison with the conclusion
Of "secrets on the emerald coast."
- Unlike a fine wine, a cold case
Doesn't get better with age.
It just gets colder.
And state attorney bill eddins wasn't optimistic
It would ever be solved.
What chance did you give it?
- I really felt that it was about a 50-50 chance
Of it bein' solved.
- Eddins assigned one of his most experienced prosecutors,
Angela mason, to work on it.
She wasn't optimistic, either.
- I was certainly vulnerable in that
I did not have a body.
I also was vulnerable with the tanya element,
That people thought she could be a suspect.
- And then, three years after marie disappeared,
The most amazing thing happened.
Marie's computer yielded to a new forensics program,
And out spilled, in crimson blushing clarity,
Text messages between marie and james.
- "I love you. I love you so much."
And gettin' graphic details
Of what he wants to do with her.
- Kinda pornographic.
- Pornographic even to the point
They were sending pornographic photos
With each other from the church.
- Some things are hard to unsee.
We'll spare you.
Oh, and, most important, everything stopped
The day she disappeared.
- No credit cards, no phones--
I thought that was strong evidence
That she was, in fact, dead
And not, in fact, missing.
- And her last conversation with a family member was...
- She wanted out of the circumstances she was in,
Um, but she wasn't gonna leave her baby behind.
- And then there was this,
One of those sermons posted on youtube
Just a month before marie vanished
And now in the evidence file.
- Now, whenever someone is backstabbing me,
Lying about me, gossiping about me,
Trying to tear me down or whatever,
You know what I want to do?
My feelings say choke the life out of them.
[laughter]
- Is that what the pastor did to marie?
The detective spelled out their case,
Circumstantial, difficult,
But the prosecutors bought it,
And james flanders was charged
With second degree murder.
Persistence paid off.
- We were 4.5 years in.
Most people would have given up by now.
- But as the pastor waited in jail for his trial,
His attorney and former church member
Glenn swiatek was optimistic.
What did you think your chances were
If you went to trial?
- I didn't believe that the state
Had second degree murder.
They didn't have a body.
- Maybe not,
But as the pastor and his attorney
Looked at the evidence
That might put him in prison for life,
Just before the trial, they made a deal.
The state reduced the charge from second degree murder
To manslaughter,
And james agreed to tell them what he did to marie
And where he put her.
Marie's family grudgingly agreed.
- That was the hardest thing,
But I wanted to know where my sister was.
I didn't wanna go years, and years, and years
And not know.
- As much as I just absolutely hated
To agree to it,
I knew that was probably the only way.
- What's your name, again? - Bill.
- First, as part of the deal,
The pastor told the story of marie,
Of the polygamy arrangement.
He said marie even had a name for their relationship.
Throuple.
Then the pastor offered his version
Of that last awful night.
He claimed that marie was in a downward spiral mentally
And erupted after he told her
She should be hospitalized for depression.
A fatal bear hug?
Not possible, thought nesli,
And then she braced for the answer
She'd waited five years to hear.
At that point, the detective got up
And left the room.
- Nesli passed me a note that said, "I missed her."
- I was pretty devastated.
I was in that backyard in 2012.
Um-- - not like you didn't look.
- Yeah, but, you know, human nature,
You still have, uh, uh, the guilt,
The feeling of I could have found her
Six months after she was reported missing.
- The pastor insisted that tanya wasn't around,
Was shopping, knew nothing.
Do you wonder whether tanya had more to do with this?
- I think that'll always be in the back of our minds,
But, you know, I think she may have known
More than she wants to say.
- But tanya was never charged, and her defense attorney
Said she was truly shocked by james' confession.
- I can tell you as a matter of fact
From having to tell her what happened,
She did not know.
- Later that afternoon, nesli escorted james flanders
Into his former backyard
Where he marked with little flags
The spot where he buried marie carlson
Five years earlier,
And then he fell on the ground, and cried,
And told her, "I'm sorry."
"what an act," thought nesli.
It took hours,
But, finally, almost five feet deep
Wrapped in a blanket,
They found what was left of marie.
- I was shaking.
I was crying so much.
I don't think I've ever cried so loud.
- Nesli and prosecutor angela mason wept, too.
- It's my fault.
- Back in court that afternoon,
James flanders was sentenced to 15 years.
With good behavior, he'll be out in 11,
Free to join tanya in arizona
And grace, whose mother he killed.
- He's gonna get to have a life after he's done.
Marie is gone forever.
She doesn't get a life, especially with her kids,
Which is, for most mothers, the world.
- Jeff carlson had to tell his daughter, paris,
Her mom was not coming back.
- Wasn't easy.
What do you say?
You don't know how to prepare them
For the future of living with this.
He deprived her of her mother.
- Later, marie's family and many others gathered
For a celebration of marie's life.
They did her favorite thing.
They sang karaoke,
And esta told us that when marie's daughter, paris,
Comes to visit her little girl,
The two cousins sit down at the piano
And play, make music,
Just like their mothers years ago.
And grace?
- I wanna tell her all about her mom.
It's-it's one of those where I just--
I wanna show her, you know, like,
Your mother really did love you.
- Maybe someday she'll know about
That uncontainable woman,
Who, while she stayed, brought joy, marie.
- That's all for this edition
Of "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin. Thank you for watching.