Talking Dateline: "Heartless” with Josh Mankiewicz | Dateline

Episode Overview

• Hosts Keith Morrison and Josh Mankiewicz examine the investigation into the March 2020 disappearance and murder of 53-year-old Wagoner, Oklahoma resident Talina Galloway, as covered in the Dateline episode "Heartless" (with Morrison promoting Dateline streaming on Peacock and the sister podcast Before & After with Lester Holt, and Mankiewicz noting coverage by Dateline's digital franchise "Missing in America").
• The discussion contrasts the efforts of amateur internet sleuths—who generated national buzz and false tips—with the work of local sheriff's investigators who actually solved the crime.
• The narrative explores bizarre twists in the investigation, including Talina's participation in the "Gorean" subculture and a prior, previously undetected ricin poisoning attempt in Wisconsin by her roommate, Kore Bommeli.
• The episode concludes by analyzing Kore Bommeli's potential motives, her "no contest" plea to first-degree manslaughter, and unresolved viewer questions surrounding the disposal of the freezer containing Talina's body.

Key Concepts

• The Double-Edged Sword of Internet Sleuthing: While digital coverage (like the Dateline: Missing in America poster listing Talina at 5'7", 210 lbs, last heard from on March 27, 2020, with an April 7 Facebook post claiming she had COVID-19, and tip number 918-485-3124) and amateur sleuths led by a woman named Jess brought attention to the case, they did not solve it. In fact, false sightings (such as one in the Los Angeles suburbs) can slow police down, and aggressive online accusations on the "Justice for Talina" page threatened the police strategy by alerting Kore Bommeli that she was under suspicion. Morrison notes he has only seen online sleuths make a major difference in one Jane Doe case, while Mankiewicz cites podcaster Chris Lambert's work on the Kristin Smart case as a rare exception.
• Separating Subculture Red Herrings from Behavioral Credibility: Talina and her late husband (who died of a stroke a couple of years prior) practiced the "Gorean" lifestyle, a master/slave subculture based on a series of novels and a movie. Although Kore tried to pin the murder on a Gorean member named Marty ("Wolfie"), police quickly ruled the subculture out as a factor. Investigators assessed physical capability and truthfulness: Marty had a drug problem (later dying of a drug overdose) and was in too poor physical shape to inflict the fatal blows on Talina as she slept or move her body in a freezer, plus he was honest with police—even confessing to breaking into Talina's house to take and return a chainsaw. Conversely, Kore shaded the truth, changed her story, and lied about small details, despite projecting an affect in interviews that seemed genuinely innocent.
• The Escalation from Unpunished Past Crimes: Although Mankiewicz notes Kore's early past is "kind of murky" and she was never investigated for prior crimes before Wisconsin, her ex-husband Alec provided a crucial break. He warned police that Kore had previously made ricin (a recipe later found on her computer) and spread it in the home of their elderly Wisconsin neighbors, the Zieglers, over a perceived complaint about noisy, foul-smelling animals that the Zieglers hadn't actually made. Because the ricin was incompetently made, six years passed with the Zieglers suffering no ill effects until the Oklahoma investigation uncovered it, leading to an attempted murder conviction in Wisconsin (though both Talina and Marty tested negative for ricin). Getting away with attempted murder for six years likely emboldened Kore in Oklahoma.
• Evaluating Motives Through the Killer's Frame of Reference: Mankiewicz outlines three proposed motives for Talina's murder, hedging that he is "not pretending to know which one of those it was": 1) unrequited romance (which Mankiewicz notes has the least foundation beyond anecdotal musings of friends), 2) financial greed (accessing Talina's bank account, credit cards, and selling her household items online), and 3) anger over an impending eviction after a fight. Understanding how a mundane dispute like eviction or credit card theft leads to murder requires abandoning normal moral logic and adopting the frame of reference of someone who believes they live without consequences.
• Legal Distinctions in Plea Deals and Eyewitness Reliability: Rather than going to trial for first-degree murder, Kore pled "no contest" to a reduced charge of first-degree manslaughter, receiving a sentence that will effectively keep her in prison for the rest of her life. Unlike an "Alford plea" (where a defendant admits the evidence would convict them without admitting guilt), a "no contest" plea means the defendant neither admits guilt nor acknowledges the sufficiency of the evidence, simply declining to contest the charges. Additionally, the case highlights that eyewitness accounts are not always 100% reliable: a former private detective named Janalyn claimed she saw two people in a truck dumping the freezer containing Talina's body, which police believe was a mistake (or someone talking on a cell phone), while Talina's friends theorize Kore may have paid an unaware homeless person $50 to help move it.

Quotes

• At 6:33 - "At one point, investigators told her to sort of slow down because Kore, their suspect, was reading the 'Where is Talina, Justice for Talina' web page and thinking, 'I'm under suspicion,' which from those people, she absolutely was. I think the cops wanted her to feel like, 'No, no, you're not under suspicion, you're—it's still safe to talk with us.'" - Josh Mankiewicz explaining why aggressive public speculation by amateur internet sleuths can actively hinder law enforcement interrogation strategies.
• At 7:52 - "Alec, her ex-husband, calls police when he hears Talina's missing, and he's like, 'Look, couple things: one, you're not looking for a live person or a body, you're looking for body parts. And second, you're looking for ricin.'" - Josh Mankiewicz detailing how Kore Bommeli's ex-husband alerted Oklahoma investigators to her horrific past methods and the previously unknown Wisconsin poisoning attempt.
• At 15:21 - "When Talina's husband died, she really disavowed interest for a long time in anything romantic or sexual, and when I finished my relationship with my ex, um, I took vows of celibacy. I was really not interested in any future relationship either." - Kore Bommeli (wearing court wardrobe rather than prison garb in an archival clip) claiming her relationship with Talina was strictly platonic, countering theories of an unrequited romance motive.
• At 18:29 - "That's usually a mistake, because the only frame of reference that matters in a murder is the one of the murderer. It doesn't matter what you and I would do in that situation; it matters what they would do in that situation." - Josh Mankiewicz explaining why ordinary people struggle to comprehend how minor financial greed or facing eviction can serve as sufficient motive for murder.

Takeaways

• Abandon your own moral framework when analyzing criminal motives: Do not dismiss a mundane motive (like avoiding eviction or stealing credit cards) simply because it wouldn't justify violence to a rational person; evaluate the situation strictly through the psychological and behavioral history of the perpetrator.
• Look past sensational lifestyle details and superficial demeanor when assessing guilt: Avoid assuming an unusual subculture (like the Gorean lifestyle) is the cause of a crime, and do not equate a suspect's calm, "innocent" conversational affect with honesty; instead, look at physical evidence, capability, and whether a person lies about small, verifiable details.
• Exercise restraint when participating in online true-crime communities: If following an active investigation online, avoid publicly broadcasting accusations against prime suspects, as tipping off a perpetrator that they are being watched can cause them to stop cooperating with detectives.