- I'm craig melvin
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
- She was brave.
She was incredibly brave.
Why didn't I know that she needed me
And that she was alone and that she was hurt?
Nothing was the same after that, nothing.
- They found her at the soccer field.
The straight arrow student killed by a single bullet.
- I just hit the floor. - I remember the pain.
Every time I talk about it,
The pain comes, like, rushing back.
- That someone would shoot my child...
Like, why?
- This was a small town whodunnit.
- Oh, yeah, we were afraid.
- What had happened that night?
Was the answer somewhere in her circle of friends?
- We're trying to find out why.
- I would never hurt halee.
- They came and talked to me.
It was four fbi agents.
- He's there, he's got a gun.
How could it have not been him?
- Then a secret spills out in court.
- That's a bombshell. - That definitely was.
I feel like I had gotten my heart ripped out.
- For that mother to get on that stand,
It was absolute silence.
- Hello, and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
Smart, beautiful, and kind.
To her parents, halee rathgeber was the perfect daughter.
She made siblings and friends feel safe.
But no one was able to protect halee
The horrific night she was shot dead.
Her killer confided in the one person he trusted most.
But sometimes, a secret is a burden
Too heavy to bear.
Here's andrea canning with "on the outskirts of town."
♪♪
- I'm miles from my family in new york,
But I'm driving, oddly enough,
Through a place that feels like home.
Quaint downtown.
Kinda place you feel safe.
This is newburgh in southwest indiana.
You can see the early days of the midwest
In these historic buildings.
Open farmland everywhere.
Hometown usa.
A place for putting down roots.
- Turn left onto county road 475 west,
Then your destination will be on the left.
- And there it is, what I've been looking for.
A gravel lot by a soccer field.
A spot to play sports, to hang with friends.
Not a place for a young woman to die.
It's jarring to think that when a life ends,
So much begins.
A family's grief, a community's shock,
And in this case,
Right here where I'm standing,
A murder investigation.
Heather collins has always been
Proud of her three girls.
Especially her oldest daughter, halee,
Who even at a young age,
Was eager to lend a helping hand.
- There's, you know, so many pictures of her
Holding the baby sister,
You know, and just taking care of them, yeah.
She's always leading the way.
- My kids, they, you know, they wanted to feed the bottle
And, "can I change the diaper?"
- She was the best diaper changer ever.
- A mother's helper,
And sister, emily's best friend.
With halee, she says, she felt safe.
- She was always definitely a--
What you picture an older sister being like.
The big, protective, don't mess with my sisters
Or I'll come at you type sister.
- That protective streak continued all through school,
Even extended to friends.
Carley sollars and ansley bowles.
- She kind of just acted like everyone's mom
Because she was so caring.
- She was tall, and everybody,
All of our friends were so short.
And so, it was always, like, she stuck out.
And she didn't care that she was tall.
She wore heels and wedges and whatever.
And so, we would go places and she would just, like,
Tower over all of us,
Which made the mom thing even more funny,
'cause she would, like, huddle over us.
- Mom and all her kids. - Yeah.
And so people always, like,
She was the first one that they noticed.
- The world was kind of like her catwalk?
- Yeah. - Yeah, pretty much.
- Beautiful girl? - Yeah.
I love when I get told that I look like her.
It makes me really happy. - Aw.
That's really sweet.
[laughing]
- But halee's beauty was more than skin deep.
Tattoos, like this one on her back,
Testify to her strong faith.
- I said prayers to the girls every night.
- Tharon rathgeber is halee's dad.
- And at the end of our prayer,
The most important line was,
"and those that are less fortunate than we are."
And I think she really grasped that.
- And drew strength from it, especially in difficult times.
One night in particular
Was a defining moment for young halee.
She was just 12 when she went
To a friend's house for a sleepover.
- That night, the brother of the girl
That my daughter was staying with had a friend stay over,
And he was 19, my daughter was 12.
And, um, he tried to molest her.
- At first, halee said nothing to her parents.
But when she learned that the man
Had preyed on other girls,
Her instinct to help led her to act
In a way few her age would have the courage to.
- She testified and sent him to prison.
And after that,
I think that's when people realized
They could always go to halee,
That she would fix anything
'cause she would stand up for the weak.
The less fortunate.
- It was no surprise, then,
When halee announced she wanted to continue
Helping others as a nurse.
After high school, she enrolled at
Nearby university of southern indiana.
I hear that the girl
Was constantly buried in a book.
- She worked really hard.
- Where does that come from? - I don't know.
- To just want to study all the time?
- 'cause I don't have it. [laughing]
She had so much drive and, like, ambition
And she knew what she wanted
And she was gonna get it.
- When she wasn't hitting the books,
She was waiting tables at the texas roadhouse.
That's where she met and started dating
Isaiah hagan, a shy fellow waiter.
- He seemed really nice to me
And he seemed to let halee
Do her own thing, which I liked.
- How did you feel when you saw them together?
Did they seem like a good match?
- Yeah, I mean...
They weren't lovey dovey at all,
Which I prefer, to be honest.
He joked with us.
Um, he actually took an interest
In talking to us,
Which is more than I can say for a lot of guys.
- The romance didn't last long,
Though the two remained good friends.
Besides, 20-year-old halee was laser focused
On her schoolwork.
On a Sunday in late April, 2017, she was home,
Studying for a big exam the next day.
Just hours later, the sun was rising,
And halee's mom, heather, was starting her morning.
- I was reading facebook,
Having coffee on a Monday morning,
Just sitting on my porch,
And, um, I scroll across a news article.
- It was shocking.
Police had found a body in a soccer field near newburgh.
- It says it's a young female.
So I immediately start looking for the younger two,
Because they're in high school in newburgh.
- You just wanna make sure. - Yeah.
- You just wanna find your kids. - Just as a mom,
I just wanna make sure everybody's safe.
- Yeah, I just wanna find my kids.
- Heather found her two youngest.
They were okay.
But halee wasn't answering her phone.
And friends told heather she didn't show up
To take her exam at the university.
- It's not like her to miss class.
Um, not like her to have her phone turned off.
- Not like halee rathgeber to go missing.
- What happened to halee?
As each excruciating minute ticks by,
Her family grows more desperate for answers.
- Are you getting a sick feeling?
- Oh, I was sick all morning.
It was so much anxiety.
- I just started screaming her name.
Like, my stomach had dropped and I was like, oh, my god.
Where's halee? Where could she be?
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Heather collins couldn't get the news out of her mind.
That morning, April 24th, 2017,
Local police found the body of a young,
Unidentified woman at a nearby soccer field.
- You know, immediately, I'm worried about
Whose child this is.
- It certainly wasn't hers.
At least, that's what heather told herself.
And yet, she was worried.
She couldn't reach her eldest, halee, by phone.
- I called her friend, ansley, and said,
You know, "hey, have you heard from halee?"
- She's like, "I know you have her apartment key.
"can you drive over there and see what she's doing?"
- When ansley did, she saw halee's car
Parked outside the apartment,
Meaning halee must be inside.
Ansley put the key in the front door.
- I swung open the door, I was like, "halee!"
And I just started screaming her name.
Like, my stomach had dropped and I was like,
"oh, my god," I was like, "where is halee?"
I was like, "where could she be?"
- Around the same time, halee's sister, emily,
Was driving to work with a friend.
Suddenly, a sense of doom washed over her.
- I'm freaking out, something's wrong.
- Just like, out of the blue,
This feeling came? - Yeah, just out of the blue.
Like, we were driving and all of a sudden,
I was just like, "you gotta turn around.
I gotta find my sister, something's wrong.
Like, I don't know what's wrong, but something's wrong."
- Emily posted a picture of halee on instagram.
"if anyone hears from my sister, please contact me."
Friends responded, telling her that police
Were trying to identify a woman
Found dead that morning.
- And that's when people started sending me that article.
- Oh, gosh.
- At the time, I was just like, "no, like,
I get you're trying to be helpful.
Like, but that's not her."
Like, and it wasn't even like I felt like
I was in any denial.
I just 100% knew that that was definitely not my sister.
- Meanwhile, warrick county sheriff's detective
Paul kruse was just pulling up to the soccer field
To begin his investigation.
Officers had already roped off the scene.
When you pull up, what do you see here?
- There's a body, um, we've got a body laying here
With a terrible wound to the head.
- This is a very desolate area.
I mean, I'm sure when people are playing soccer,
It's active, but... - Sure.
- In the middle of the night,
There's nothing around here.
- This place is just pitch black
In the middle of the night.
The nearest neighbor's probably a half a mile
In a straight line away,
Separated by trees and fields.
- Even at a glance, the detective could tell,
The woman had been murdered, left to die in agony.
The coroner would later cite the cause of death
As a gunshot wound.
- What did it tell you
That she was shot in the back of the head?
- Tells us that she knew
And trusted the person she was with.
- Could you get a sense of her last moments?
- Unfortunately, the evidence here at the scene showed,
Um, that she had lived for a while
After being shot.
- You could see it in the gravel?
- You could, it almost looked like a snow angel
Where one of her legs had-had rubbed back and forth
And rubbed a bare spot in the gravel.
- And this was odd.
Next to the woman lay a blue towel.
Other than that,
There was little to this crime scene.
- Did you find a weapon? Did you find a bullet?
A casing? Anything that might help you?
- No, we had detectives actually assigned, uh,
To get on their hands and knees with scissors
And cut the grass away looking for a shell casing
Or bullet or anything. - Wow.
- We didn't know who she was, there was no identification,
No phone, no--
Nothing laying with her at that time
To help us identify her.
- But that mystery would be solved soon enough.
Heather, by now in a panic, called an old friend for help.
- I contacted...
A detective I knew from vanderburgh county and--
- I mean, I'm getting chills right now.
Are you getting a sick feeling?
- Oh, I was sick all morning.
It was so much anxiety
And I didn't know what to do
And I just kept thinking I'm wrong.
- She gave the detective halee's full name and description
And he forwarded the information
To the warrick county sheriff's office.
Investigators there immediately checked facebook
Where they found halee's profile and picture.
- And there was a tattoo visible on facebook that matched,
So we were pretty certain at that point
Who our victim was.
- Warrick investigators called heather collins
And asked to speak with her in person.
She walked into the meeting dreading what they might say.
- They said, you know, there's a body found
And-and, um, you know,
We've identified her as halee.
- In an instant, your whole world is shattered.
- Nothing was the same after that, nothing.
- Every time I talked about it, it--
Just the pain comes, like, rushing back.
Like, how awful, and I've never felt so awful.
Like, I just remember just--
I didn't wanna exist anymore.
- The family was horrified to learn that halee,
Just 20 years old, had been murdered
With a shot to the back of the head.
- That was the most shocking part.
Never in a million years would I have thought
That someone would shoot my child.
Like, why?
- As you're processing the most horrific news
You've ever had in your life,
That your daughter is gone,
Do you immediately ask these detectives
Who did this?
- They asked me. - Oh, they asked you?
- "who do you think?" you know?
- One name sprang to mind immediately.
Heather blurted it out.
- Their eyes just--
They couldn't believe what they were hearing.
- Detectives knew that name from another case,
One involving an unthinkable death.
Halee knew the name, too.
And it was someone she suspected was hiding a secret.
- Coming up...
- She had said, "what if they wanna talk to me?"
Like, you talk.
- Had someone wanted to keep her quiet?
- Haley could be poking a hornet's nest.
She starts making accusations.
- She absolutely could have.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back.
It was a horrendous crime.
Halee rathgaber had been shot in the back of the head,
Leaving her family reeling
And investigators searching for answers.
The crime scene offered few clues,
But detectives were about to discover
Halee had a curious connection
To another case they were investigating.
Now, they wondered
Was it a little too curious to be a coincidence?
Here, again, is andrea canning
With "on the outskirts of town."
- Theron rathgaber never thought
He'd outlive his own daughter.
- When they, you know,
Said she'd been murdered...
Now, I went into, you know,
To the dark side we all have.
I wanted to kill myself
'cause I wasn't there to protect her, you see?
- It was hard for him to know how to move forward.
But even in death, halee was a comfort to her family.
- And the things that've impacted us the most is, um,
Her tattoo that had, uh, psalms 46:5.
And it was, "god is within her.
She will not fall.
He will help her at break of day."
- It's just so difficult to-to imagine why
Any human would do something that horrific
To another human being.
- Detective paul kruse looked for answers
With grim determination.
Halee's murder was not the only tough case
Weighing on him that April morning.
A few weeks before, he and his partner
Were assigned to look into the suspicious death
Of a 10-month-old baby named jackson.
When detectives spoke to heather
After her daughter's death,
She revealed something that stunned them.
- Halee was the godmother of jackson.
- So their jaws dropped? - Yeah, yeah.
- Heather told police baby jackson
Was the son of halee's old schoolmate, jordan.
- She had got a baby to play with
Without having to have a baby, so...
- But then, a terrible accident.
Jackson had fallen down some stairs.
Halee rushed to the hospital
Where jordan explained what had happened.
Her boyfriend, a man named thaddious rice
Had dropped the baby down the stairs
After tripping over a diaper bag.
- Jordan was crying and we, like, gave her a hug
And I looked at halee and halee, like, looked at me
And I was like, "what are we gonna do?"
- They did what they could to help.
They got jordan some food and went to her apartment
To get her some clean clothes.
- We walked in and halee's like,
"do you know what's weird?" and I was like, "what?"
She goes, "the diaper bag is sitting right there."
Like, as soon as you walked into the door,
The diaper bag was sitting right by the couch.
It didn't look like the diaper bag
Had fallen down the stairs like what thad had said.
- So you're thinking, we might've just caught
Thaddious in a-- in a big lie? - Yeah.
- After two days on life support, jackson died.
Grief stricken, halee agonized over
Whether she should tell police about her suspicions.
- She had said, you know,
"what if they wanna talk to me?"
Like, you talk, you know?
- But the more halee's mom thought about it,
The more she worried what might happen to halee
If she spoke out.
Thaddious had a bad reputation around town.
Halee could be poking a hornet's nest.
- She absolutely could have.
- If she starts making accusations.
Now, halee was dead
And heather wondered if her fears had come true.
Had thaddious killed halee to shut her up?
- I just felt like, you know,
He was looking at some pretty serious charges.
If I had to think of people who had reasons to hurt her,
That would've been number one.
- The day after halee was murdered,
Someone sent heather this snapchat video.
It was thaddious brandishing a gun.
- Oh-- - you got that video,
So that must've really heightened your suspicion.
- Oh, the video was huge.
I was positive at that point.
He did it.
- And heather wasn't the only one
Pointing the finger at thaddious.
Halee's friends knew that she'd gone to see
The baby's mom, jordan, the night she died.
- There's these messages, um,
The night she was murdered where she was
Messaging back and forth with jordan,
"hey, I'm gonna go pick up my wallet from your house."
Late at night the night she was killed.
So, then that was the theory.
She went, she told jordan, thaddious killer her over it.
- Investigators decided it was time to find out
What thaddious and jordan knew.
Thaddious refused to talk to them, but jordan did.
- We did interview thaddious's girlfriend.
She was-- she said they were home together
All night at thaddious's brother's house.
We checked out the surveillance video
From that neighborhood and we were able to see
Halee come into the neighborhood
When she was there to get her wallet
And we saw halee leave the neighborhood,
But we never saw jordan or thad leave.
- It seemed like thaddious had a good alibi.
Heather worried that investigators seemed
No closer to making an arrest.
- I-I think that the fear was overwhelming.
I kept saying, "I hope that they make
An arrest before her funeral."
I don't know how I can stand there
And wonder who's hugging me
And-and who's coming through this line.
You know, did they hurt her?
- But as heather prepared for her daughter's funeral,
Investigators were already talking to someone
Who'd surely be standing in that line of mourners.
Someone very close to haley.
- Take a seat over there.
Video from the night of the murder.
Police have a few questions for halee's friends.
- So were you thinking,
They think I might be involved? - Yeah.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin.
Detectives suspected halee rathgaber's murder
Was tied to another case they were investigating.
Halee had seen something that made her worry
Her godson's death was no accident.
To test their theory, police retraced
Halee's final hours, and it led them
To someone with a secret.
Once more, here's andrea canning
With "on the outskirts of town."
♪♪
- The young people who had worked with halee
At the texas roadhouse were reeling.
The shock of her murder, the fear.
Waiter, jake allen, was one of them.
- They were gonna have a candlelight vigil
At the soccer field where she was found
And I was just about to leave my apartment
And go there when my roommate told me,
"hey, there's-there's somebody at the door.
It looks like a cop."
- Investigators wanted to talk to jake
About his best friend since eighth grade,
Isaiah hagan, halee's ex.
They asked jake what he and isaiah had been up to
The night of halee's death.
Police had recovered security camera video from
The night halee died showing isaiah picking her up
At her apartment a little after 10:30.
An hour or so later, he met up with jake.
They played video games and then went to walmart,
Where this camera captured them at about 2am.
There was no sign of halee.
- So are you thinking,
They think I might be involved in halee's murder?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Jake told police he hadn't seen halee that night,
But isaiah had told him where he'd taken her.
To a local park a few miles from the soccer field.
He told me he dropped her off
And he went on his separate way
Because she wanted to go there to meet somebody.
- That didn't sound right to jake.
- I feel like he wasn't that type of person
To just let her be there alone at that time of night.
He was way too overprotective.
- Something wasn't adding up for you.
- Not at all.
- And there was something else that bothered him.
Jake told police that the isaiah he knew
Had always been a stand-up guy.
But recently he'd heard stories
About isaiah stealing from people.
- His roommate was telling me,
"he owes us rent. He stole my tv."
And I said, "he did what?"
- Oh, my gosh, so he was on a downward spiral.
- Something was going on.
- Isaiah had been borrowing money, too.
Halee was one friend who'd helped him out.
- She mentioned that she had loaned him $600,
Um, to pay his rent. - That's a lot of money.
- But apparently not enough.
- Me and halee had been hanging out,
And she goes, "it looks like someone
Had taken money out of my bank account."
And she's like, "hang on, I can pull up a picture."
And she pulled up a picture of the check,
And it said "to: Isaiah hagen for groceries"
And it was $300.
- Halee being halee,
She told friends she'd forgiven isaiah
After he promised to pay her back.
- Three days after halee's death,
Police decided it was time to talk to isaiah themselves.
- He sat there in that chair.
And I sat here.
- What was his-- what was his demeanor like?
This is a big case. This is a young guy.
- Almost surprisingly calm. Um, he was very quiet
And didn't show much emotion at all.
- Isaiah told investigators the same story he told jake.
He picked halee up at her apartment
And then dropped her off at that local park.
- What isaiah didn't know
Was that more than a dozen investigators
Were watching his interview remotely from the next room,
And they had proof he was lying.
They checked the park's security cameras,
And there was no trace of isaiah and halee.
Cell phone data showed where they had really gone:
To the soccer field where halee's body had been found.
- We saw him leave her apartment complex
On surveillance video.
The cell phones are traveling,
Her and his cell phones are traveling together.
- So they're-they're definitely together at this point,
If you go by their cell phones.
- And they're traveling straight to this location,
Right here to the soccer field.
- What happens to the cell phones
At that point once they're here?
- Her cell phone goes dark while they're here
And remains dark.
His cell phone stays on,
And we see his cell phone leave here
And go back to evansville.
- Isaiah didn't miss a beat when the detective
Confronted him with that information.
He insisted he'd left halee alive and well
At the soccer field with her wallet and phone,
But investigators questioned that, too.
Their analysis showed halee's phone
Had been in the same location as isaiah's phone hours later
When he was long gone from the soccer field.
Detective kruse pressed isaiah to explain,
Moving his chair closer.
Isaiah's explanations kept changing.
- He said that it just happened to catch his eye
When his headlights hit it.
- Just driving along, and there it is?
- Yeah. - And does he pick it up?
- Yeah, so that's what he says in that version.
- Are you buying any of this?
- Absolutely not.
- And where was the phone now?
Isaiah said he'd thrown it out of his car widow.
That didn't make sense either.
- He texts her that morning after the body's been found,
Saying, "are you okay?" or something to that effect.
He knows she's never gonna get the message,
Because he threw her phone out the window.
- And you believe he was establishing
Some type of, uh, alibi?
- He was trying to lay down an alibi at that point.
- Detective kruse raised the heat again.
He tag-teamed with other investigators
To get isaiah to confess.
Isaiah stuck to his story.
It was 3:30 in the morning
When investigators finally let him go home.
Jake says an fbi agent told him to keep clear of isaiah.
He didn't know what to think.
- He never has been an aggressor.
I've never known him to be that type of way.
He's never been temperamental
Or, you know, violent.
- So you must've had a lot of conflicting feelings,
Because something's bothering you,
And yet you don't think he's capable of murder.
- Right.
- Was isaiah really behind this?
- It seems like a leap to go from forging checks
To cold-blooded murder. - Oh, absolutely.
- To even be considered to have committed
Such a heinous act to another person
Was just inconceivable.
- All I could do was hold him.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- As his father, I poured everything I could
Into that young man.
And to even be considered
To have committed such a heinous act
To another person is just inconceivable.
- Isaiah's father, wandel hagen,
Was dumbfounded when police told him
His son was a suspect in halee rathgeber's murder.
He and his wife donna,
A corrections officer who worked for the sheriff,
Said isaiah had always been a good son.
- He was pretty shy as a kid,
Good natured, happy,
Easy to get along with,
Um, eager to please.
Everyone loved him.
- The hagens said they raised isaiah
To put his faith first.
The family went to church several times a week.
Their other love was sports.
Isaiah was a gifted soccer player,
Even scored a partial scholarship to college.
- He talked about wanting to be a teacher
And teach athletics.
- They didn't know much
About isaiah's relationship with halee,
Didn't realize how much she meant to their son,
Until he told them she died.
- He was very, very distraught.
- I mean, his elbows, his hips, his knees,
His ankles, everything gave.
He was collapsing to the floor, and we caught him.
- But police believed isaiah was a cold-blooded killer
Who had shot halee from behind, then robbed her.
They hauled him down to the station again.
- Isaiah asked to speak to his mother.
Donna, the corrections officer who had brought suspects
To these interrogation rooms for years,
Was allowed to see her son alone.
- All I could do was hold him.
I just felt extremely helpless.
- Whatever they talked about,
Donna wouldn't tell the detectives.
Isaiah stopped talking, too.
But police were convinced they had the right suspect.
They charged isaiah with two counts of murder
And one count each of robbery and obstructing justice.
But when the trial began in the summer of 2018,
Prosecutor michael perry knew
That proving the charges would be difficult.
His case against isaiah was largely circumstantial.
- This was not a slam dunk.
- The prosecution team methodically laid out
Every piece of the puzzle before the jury.
- We wanted to show them
That isaiah was the last person to see her alive,
That he lied about her cell phone,
That he had money problems,
That he did a lot of things to cover his tracks.
- And the prosecution presented
Perhaps the most explosive piece of evidence they had:
What investigators found
When they searched the home of wandel and donna hagen.
- We were able to locate
A, uh, towel from that home
That was actually the same make,
The same model as the towel
That was located at the soccer field.
- And there was something else investigators discovered.
Wandel owned several guns.
One of them was missing.
- Did you think that maybe isaiah took it?
- It wouldn't be something that we would suspect,
Because-- - he didn't like guns.
- He didn't like guns, was not comfortable around them.
- The prosecution told the jury
That isaiah owed his father some cash,
And on the night halee died,
Wandel sent a text to his son, "got the money yet".
- We do know that he left $210 for his dad
The next morning on the counter.
- One of the things that seems somewhat weak
Is the motive.
I mean, we're talking about, what, a couple hundred dollars?
To just kill somebody for?
- Right. I've actually prosecuted cases
Where somebody was killed for far less than that.
- It seems like a leap to go from forging checks
To cold-blooded murder. - Oh, absolutely.
It's, you know, zero to murder in 3.5 seconds.
It's-it's not the usual situation.
- It wasn't the usual situation, because it didn't happen.
That's what isaiah's defense attorney
Mark phillips said.
He argued the prosecution
Had been fixated on isaiah from the start
And had built a case out of guesses,
Nothing more.
- We had no physical evidence.
Uh, they had no gun. They had no bullet.
They had no casing.
- And that blue towel investigators found
At the crime scene?
- The dna testing they did on that towel, uh,
Showed that none of isaiah hagen's dna was present.
- Though there was one thing that was plain to see:
Isaiah's lies,
Right there in the interrogation video.
The prosecution played the entire 9 1/2 hours of it
To the jury.
- I think anytime somebody says something
That the state contends isn't true,
You have to try to understand
The dynamic of where it was said.
- Phillips noted the detectives questioned isaiah
Aggressively for hours.
They used profanity, invaded his space,
Intimidated him.
Maybe, he theorized, isaiah simply lied
To make them go away.
- Were you worried that the jury is going to hear lies?
And that's just gonna trump everything else.
"this guy's lying.
"why should I believe him, that he didn't kill her?"
- That's a hard one to overcome.
But he had no confession, first and foremost.
Isaiah never said anything like,
"I killed halee rathgeber."
- So if isaiah didn't kill halee, who did?
The defense pointed to thaddeus rice,
The man halee suspected of killing 10-month-old jackson.
Thaddeus was eventually found guilty
Of neglect of a dependant
And reckless homicide.
But at the time of halee's murder,
He was roaming free.
Had he been worried halee had evidence against him?
- He knew information about the suspicious circumstances
Of jackson wheeler's death.
He and jordan were the last two people
To see halee other than isaiah, we believe,
Uh, based on the information
That we were provided in discovery.
And it just seemed curious to us
That for some reason they weren't pursued.
- And according to the defense,
There was other evidence
That showed isaiah could not have killed halee.
After halee's cell phone stopped sending a signal
Just before 11:30 on the night she died.
It had mysteriously turned on about four hours later.
And pinged off a cell tower near the soccer field.
When that happened,
Cell phone data showed isaiah was miles away.
- At the time that her phone came back on
And started traveling, it was nowhere near isaiah.
In fact, he was in a different county.
So he could not have been pinging
Off the same tower that she was.
- Which according to the defense,
Meant someone else had to have halee's cell phone.
- But the prosecution insisted isaiah had the phone all along.
- It looks like it powers back up at the soccer field,
But we've since come to the theory
That when you power your phone up,
It hits on the last tower that it was on
When it powered down,
So that explains the, uh,
The reason shy it looked like it was traveling.
- Is that exact science, or is that the theory?
- That's a theory,
But we have found absolutely zero evidence
That there was anybody else involved
Other than isaiah hagen.
- The prosecution and the police,
They believe that she was shot
Before isaiah left the soccer field,
That his alibi doesn't hold up because she was already dead.
- Well, that's hard-- hard for me to understand,
Because there was testimony by the coroner
That he could not determine a time of death.
- Halee's friend carly,
Who attended every day of the trial,
Watched with growing uneasiness as the defense poked holes
In the prosecution's case again and again.
- Every day my dad texted me
And would ask how the trial went.
Every single day I was like, "yeah, we're not gonna--
We're not gonna get this conviction."
- It was that bad? - It was that bad.
- And then a bombshell.
- Huh, that's putting it mildly.
- A stunning moment in court.
Isaiah's mom on the stand.
What would she reveal?
- That almost doesn't even really happen
In tv dramas because it's too hard to believe.
- Right, truth is stranger than fiction.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back.
Was isaiah hagen in such dire financial straits
That he'd murder halee rathgeber for a couple hundred bucks?
That's what the prosecution believed.
And they argued the web of lies he spun for detectives
Proved he was a killer.
The defense countered
That police intimidated isaiah into telling tall tales.
But soon an explosive secret would be revealed in court,
Stunning both sides.
Here's andrea canning
With the conclusion of on the outskirts of town.
- As each day of trial passed,
Heather collins became less hopeful.
There was no direct evidence
Tying isaiah hagen to her daughter's murder,
No gun, no dna, no eyewitnesses,
Nothing to prove isaiah was a killer.
I was at the point where
I was prepared for him to be walking the streets.
- Prosecutor michael perry urged patience.
- We knew that we did not have enough evidence to convict
At that point,
But that's why you go to the end.
- There was one person in particular
He wanted the jury to hear from,
Donna hagen, isaiah's mom.
The prosecutor had no idea what she'd say on the stand,
But he had reason to believe
Isaiah had confided in her that day at the police station
About the night halee died.
- So the mom takes the stand, in your words,
As a reluctant witness. - Yes.
- Would a mother actually reveal something
He'd told her in confidence?
- Tell us what happened.
- I don't specifically remember what question was asked,
Uh, but the answer that she gave
Was that isaiah had told her
That he had shot halee and had done it accidentally.
- And with those words,
Donna hagen turned the trial upside down.
Instead of defending her son,
She pointed the finger right at him.
- I mean, that almost doesn't even really happen in tv dramas,
Because it's too hard to believe.
- Right. - Nobody would do that.
- Truth is stranger than fiction.
- Isaiah's attorney, mark phillips,
Could not believe what he was hearing.
- I started sweating.
I felt like I had been sucker punched.
- Had she just torpedoed your defense?
- Yes. She said something that we couldn't, um, expect,
We didn't expect,
And as I sat there in that moment,
I had no idea how to, uh, how to address it.
- No one saw it coming.
It was probably the first time that everyone in the room cried.
It was an amazing gift.
- The judge called for a recess
And cleared the courtroom.
All sides left to absorb the enormity
Of what had just happened.
Heather drove to the soccer field to reflect.
She honors halee by wearing the same tattoo
Her daughter once had.
The prosecutor went home, humbled by a woman's confession.
- I don't know that I've ever had more faith
In the words coming out of somebody's mouth
Than a mother that would actually say that
Against her son.
- You almost look like you're getting emotional.
- I am getting emotional. I'm sorry.
- The defense attorney, on the other hand,
Got straight to work.
He needed a new plan to save his client.
When court reconvened,
He called donna hagen back to the stand.
His goal: To show the jury that she couldn't be believed.
- On cross-examination,
She admitted that she believed
That if the jury heard
That isaiah said it was an accident,
Then they couldn't convict him of murder.
- So you think that perhaps his mother had said these things
So that her son could get perhaps a lesser sentence?
- Well, yes.
- The problem is the genie's out of the bottle.
- Yes. - The jury cannot unhear
What she said about her own son.
How do you now overcome that?
- Well, I think it goes back to we have no confession,
We have no direct evidence, um, we have no dna,
And we have no other significant piece of evidence
That's compelling.
- And in his closing,
He made those same arguments to the jury.
But the damage was done.
It only took the jury four hours
To find isaiah hagen guilty on all four counts against him,
Including murder.
- That's the most relief I'd felt since it all happened.
'cause all I wanted forever
Was just to get justice for her.
- But the hagens were angry.
They didn't believe isaiah should've been convicted
Of the most serious charge against him: Murder.
- You were in the courtroom for the verdict?
- Yes.
- What was that moment like for-for you two?
- I was in disbelief. - Yeah.
And just devastated.
- Just how did we get here?
How did we get here?
Um, I know this isn't right.
I know this isn't right.
- Their pain was compounded
When isaiah was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
On appeal, the court ruled that
Three of his four convictions relied on the same evidence
In what amounted to double jeopardy.
His robbery conviction was reduced to theft,
A misdemeanor,
And one of his two murder convictions was thrown out.
But on the remaining count, the jury's verdict stood,
As did isaiah's sentence.
- We want him to know, um,
That we're-- we love him,
And we're, um, gonna be there for him
No matter what. - We will always love him,
Regardless what you,
Anyone else has to say.
He's my son as long as I'm living.
- This is a very special place for you and halee.
- Yeah. We came here a lot when she was little.
- Heather collins doesn't want to think anymore
About isaiah hagen.
She comes to this park to think about halee,
The good times they had here as a young family
And the woman halee could've been.
- I don't think that we, any of us
Have come to terms with what happened yet,
And that she's really gone.
You think that she's just gonna come walking back in the door
To pick up her laundry, you know?
- Emily finds herself picking up the phone
To call her big sister,
Only to have the sad reality come crashing down,
Only to be left with one sad, unanswerable question,
Why did isaiah do it?
- I wonder how he could do something like that
And what made him do that.
Why was he so desperate to hurt someone so kind?
And there's no one that could say
She wasn't the most giving person,
So why wouldn't he just ask?
'cause if you would've just asked her,
I'm sure she would've given you the world.
- That's all for this edition of "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin. Thank you for watching.