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NBC Universal Anchors and Correspondents
By Josh Mankiewicz Correspondent
Dateline NBC
updated 4/11/2009 10:24:50 AM ET 2009-04-11T14:24:50

Wilmington, N.C., July 30, 2006. It's 2 a.m. Last call at the Junction Pub and Billiards. And for one woman who walked out this door into the shadows, last call very likely marked the last moments of her life.

Lisa Valentino: I got a phone call from my father saying there's a problem. He said your sister Allison is missing. They can't find her.

Suburban New Jersey. Lisa Valentino heard the news from her father, John. He learned that his youngest daughter, 34-year-old Allison Foy, was missing. But how he learned it was just as unsettling.

John: A message was left on the phone. Please call the police department that your daughter's missing.

Josh Mankiewicz: Did the two of you find it strange that you had to find out about this from the police department, and not from Allison's husband?

Both: Yes, I did.

Josh Mankiewicz: Why didn't her husband call?

Lisa Valentino: His answer to me was he couldn't find my number.

Allison was a married mother of two young daughters. An accomplished dancer, and gymnast. The only member of a tightly-knit family to have moved out of the New York area to North Carolina.

Lisa Valentino: The day that she actually went missing, I was having a birthday party here, and she had called and I said, you know what Allison, everybody's coming here. She said, Okay I'll give you a call when things settle down a bit. And I said okay, and that was it. Unfortunately that's the last time I ever spoke with her.Allison had been reported missing by her husband Michael. Wilmington Police Detective Mike Overton and Captain Marshall Williamson started working on the case and found a marriage very clearly on the rocks.

MikeOverton: At the time she went missing, she'd been going out late at night to bars, leaving the husband and kids behind.

As police in Wilmington tried to reconstruct the night Allison Foy vanished, they discovered she'd gone to work at her new job as assistant manager at a Wilmington hotel, then spent those last hours at the Junction Pub in the company of another man. Not a lover, but by all accounts, a confidante who said he thought Allison was too drunk to drive home, and asked the bartender to call a cab for Allison.

He saw a cabbie poke his head in the door and watched Allison walk out with him.

But that wasn't the only story police heard.

MikeOverton: We've heard she left alone. We heard she left in a taxicab. We heard she left in someone's car. We know she didn't leave in her car. Police found that in the Pub's parking lot. No clues inside it.

Allison's family simply could not believe the theory that she might just have taken off without telling anyone.

Josh Mankiewicz: Is it possible, that if Allison had decided to walk away from her life, that she wouldn't have told you?

Lisa Valentino: No way! No way! There's no way that she would've just picked up, one, and left without telling any of us, but two, not taking her kids? Never!

The family converged on Wilmington. Hitting the streets. Passing out flyers.

Josh Mankiewicz: You woulda gone anywhere to find her!

John: Without a doubt, one hundred percent.

Allison's husband's behavior became an issue. He didn't help in the search for her. And just days after she vanished, he cut off service to Allison's cell phone.

Josh Mankiewicz: Why would he do that?

Lisa Valentino: His answer was that he didn't have enough money to pay her bill.

MarcBenson: Spotlight! Spotlight goes right on him!

Marc Benson, private eye with more than 20 years in law enforcement. The family hired him to aid in the search. Video: What are the possible connections between the victims?

Josh Mankiewicz: Her husband Michael was essentially unconcerned about her well-being at the beginning.

MarcBenson: He was thinking that she was somewhere alive and well where she shouldn't have been.

Michael Foy did not want to speak with Dateline. He told police he had nothing to do with his wife's disappearance, and as the weeks began to pass, police came to the same conclusion.

Josh Mankiewicz: Did Allison's husband Michael have an alibi?

Mike Overton: He was home with the kids was his alibi. You know, we went through the house, he gave us his computer, came in and wrote statements. He's done everything I've asked him, except for one thing.

Josh Mankiewicz: What did he not do?

Mike Overton: He did not take a polygraph test.

Josh Mankiewicz: Because the question, are you glad she's gone, might have looked incriminating even though he might not have had anything to do with it?

Mike Overton: That's correct.

And that's where things stood a few months after Allison's disappearance. We turn now to our team members for their thoughts: Dwayne Stanton, retired homicide detective from Washington, D.C. Investigated Chandra Levy's murder. Yolanda McClary, crime scene investigator in Las Vegas, and a model for the character on the hit series, CSI. Alan Jackson, prosecutor in Los Angeles who specializes in high profile cases.

Josh Mankiewicz: What's your initial impression here?

Alan Jackson: There are a couple questions about Michael Foy that have to be answered. Number one, why wouldn't you call the person that your wife is closest to, but number two and much more chilling to me, is he didn't take part in the search! That's a big red flag. I mean, don't you agree?

Dwayne Stanton: I agree. I agree. And that he immediately cut off her cell phone which makes you think, y'know what? She won't be using this phone again.

Yolanda McClary: But on the other hand, people handle emotional stress in different ways. He's a very angry, angry man. He thinks his wife ran away with somebody. And anger takes over to do things I don't think that you would normally do.

Josh Mankiewicz: At this point, she's missing. Is she still alive?

Alan Jackson: No. No way. The kids! The kids. My first reaction is, she'll leave the husband. But she's not gonna leave the kids. Video: Team begins to build a profile of the killer

Yolanda McClary: The possibility's getting slimmer. We need to look at all avenues, don't stick on one thing because we need to find her, if she is still alive. And if the facts don't face up to it, then move on.

Our team focused on two key witnesses: Allison's confidante, who by his account, saw a cabbie poke his head in the door of the pub, and watched Allison walk out with him.


Dwayne Stanton: You want that cab driver! The person who stuck his head in the door and that she left with. I'm sure that they can track down what cab was at the junction pub that particular night.

Alan Jackson: Well, you'd hope so!

Where was that cab driver? And where was Allison? The answer? Not far from where she was last seen. But when she was found, police also found more than they were looking for.

Wilmington N.C., spring 2008. Allison Foy, married mother of two daughters, had been missing for nearly two years. She had just started a new job in hotel management. And the last time her sister had spoken with her, on the day before Allison disappeared in July 2006, Allison had been celebrating.

Lisa Valentino: She was the most upbeat that I had heard her in months!

And then she was gone. Her best friend saw her leaving the Junction Pub and Billiards at closing time with a cab driver. Since then, no trace. Not a word; not a credit card charge, not a phone call.

Our team of investigators wanted to find that cab driver. And of course, so did the Wilmington police. Detectives searched, but something strange: There was no record of any cab being dispatched to the pub, no record of any calls made from the pub to any cab company.

At the same time, Allison's unhappy marriage was pointing police toward her husband, Michael. But then, within a few weeks, investigators moved in new directions.

Mike Overton: He was concerned for her safety, the longer she was gone.

The family hired a local private eye.

Marc Benson: We were just waiting for the next phone call.

Josh Mankiewicz: You were getting nowhere?

Marc Benson: Getting absolutely nowhere.

Three miles from the pub. April 2008. A man walking through a strip of woods just off the main road found bones bleached white from the North Carolina sun. It's a set of human remains.

Mike Overton: I had one of those police officer gut feelings. I know this is gonna be Allison. This is gonna be who I've been looking for for basically two years now.

DNA tests would later prove that the remains were those of Allison. Her skeleton had been covered with growth and debris, and from that, forensic experts estimated that Allison's body had been there just about since her disappearance nearly two years before.

Josh Mankiewicz: When you find out that it's her, are you glad?

Lisa Valentino: There was a little. Because now I know what happened. And I can give answers to her kids. And my dad can have answers about his daughter and maybe we can mourn a little bit and bring her home and, y'know, kind of put her to rest in a way that is deserving of her.

But that was not the real surprise. What completely shocked everyone - and that's not too strong a word - what made headlines and turned this case in a completely new direction was that just ten feet from Allison's remains, was another skeleton. A second female victim. A second murder.

Josh Mankiewicz: Were these remains in the same condition? Had they been there the same amount of time?

Mike Overton: No, there was basically a year’s worth of forest growth growing over one of the skeletons, and the other one was fairly close to the surface.

Police concluded Allison's body had been there likely since the night she went missing; the second body, about half as long. Both bodies, simply dumped. No sign of posing or ritual. Discarded, like so much trash. But who was this Jane Doe?

Months later came an ID: Angela Nobles Rothen, 42 years old. A mother of one. She'd last been seen 9 months earlier. But Angela was much different from Allison Foy. She had drug problems, and had been known to work the streets as a prostitute.

Sonia Williams. At the time, she worked those streets too.

SoniaWilliams: She had a good heart, she'd give anybody the shirt off her back. She deserved to live, just like anybody else.

Josh Mankiewicz: What connects Angela and Allison? That had to be the first question you asked yourself.

Mike Overton: We did.

Josh Mankiewicz: There's no evidence they knew each other?

Mike Overton: None at all. They didn't hang out in the same places. Didn't go to the same, y'know, restaurants or bars that we could tell.

Two women connected not in life, but in death. Who killed them? How? And where their bodies were found, investigators found little evidence otherwise.

Mike Overton: There was some clothing found. But not all the clothing that you would expect to find.

Josh Mankiewicz: So it's likely to believe that these bodies were naked or nearly naked when they were dumped?

Mike Overton: It appears that they were probably naked from the waist down.

So perhaps a common motive: sexual assault. And a common manner of death: by knife. Autopsies showed Angela's throat was slit.

Josh Mankiewicz: We know that Allison was stabbed?

Marc Benson: They found up to 40 stab wounds in the sweater alone!

Lisa Valentino: It was a terrible way that her life was taken from her. And her two daughters got robbed. Somebody took their mother away. She was a great mom. And her life were her two daughters.

Josh Mankiewicz: What does 40 stab wounds say to you?

Dwayne Stanton: Passion!

Yolanda McClary: It’s personal.

Alan Jackson: And it tells us some things about the criminal who's committed the crime as well. I'd tend to think it was a bigger person rather than a small person. This is a first-degree intentional homicide. This is somebody who wanted her dead, and wanted her to suffer, and she was never, ever, ever, gonna take another breath on this earth when he was done with her.

Josh Mankiewicz: Is it too much of a jump to say there's a serial killer in Wilmington?

Alan Jackson: My answer to that is yeah, a serial killer in my mind is someone who's randomly acting to assuage demons they've got inside them and randomly killing.

Josh Mankiewicz: And you don't think this is random?

Alan Jackson: I do not. In my mind it's not enough to think yet that these are random killings.

Josh Mankiewicz: As soon as you find a second victim, all of a sudden the husband doesn't look so good anymore?

Dwayne Stanton: The husband is not as exciting as he once was. Absolutely.

Josh Mankiewicz: Your first avenue I'm guessing, would be to try to figure what those two women had in common?

Yolanda McClary: Well, y'know, on the surface it appears they don't have anything in common but in reality they have one thing in common, and that is they both live a little bit of a higher-risk lifestyle. Okay, you've got one who's a prostitute, that's definitely high-risk, being with men that you have no idea who they are.

Josh Mankiewicz: And the other one is hanging out at bars late at night.

Yolanda McClary: And she left quite drunk, which means you've lost all your senses, you've lost your control and you're placing that in the hands of someone you don't know, so they do have something in common.

Alan Jackson: What is the connection between the junction bar and this field, where the bones were laid? Is this a well known place? Is this a secluded place?

Josh Mankiewicz: The area where the bodies were found is near an area in Wilmington where prostitutes are known to take their clients. So prostitutes would've known that area.

Dwayne Stanton: Prostitutes as well as johns! The people who solicit prostitution!

Alan Jackson: If they've been there, which narrows the focus even more. This was not a random body dump. This place was chosen for its seclusion, it was chosen for its familiarity. The person didn't go back once. They went back twice. Secure the second time with the idea that he'd gotten away with it the first time!

Dwayne Stanton: He's comfortable with it at this point. Maybe someone who'd been there before.

It turns out that private eye hired by Allison's family had made a discovery that will give our investigators - and the case - a whole new direction.

A boneyard in Wilmington. Allison Foy, Angela Rothen. Two women, two vastly different lives, sharing, apparently, only a common grave. And as our team of investigators points out, a killer who felt comfortable and safe in the area where their bodies were dumped.

Then, a break in the case: incredibly, via e-mail to Marc Benson, the private eye hired by Allison's family, an e-mail sent by a woman to the radio station where Benson hosts a Saturday afternoon talk show.

Marc Benson: She said, there is talk amongst the people in the bar that my husband may have had something to do with Allison's disappearance.

The bar? Junction Pub and Billiards. Where in July 2006, Allison spent what is believed to be the last night of her life. The woman's name? Susan Iannone.

Josh Mankiewicz: She was in the bar that night?

Marc Benson: She frequents the bar all the time. As a matter of fact, her husband/is a fixture at the bar!

Her husband? Tim Iannone.

Marc Benson: He wasn't even on the radar at the time.

Josh Mankiewicz: What was your sense of why Tim Iannone's wife was calling?

Marc Benson: My initial response was that she was calling out.

Josh Mankiewicz: She wanted you to investigate him?

Marc Benson: I think so, I really do. So when I called her I said, y'know, why would they say that? And she said because he had an altercation with a prostitute a week before.

A prostitute? Remember, the second body next to Allison's, just down the road from that bar, was that of Angela Rothen. Who at the time of her death was believed to be working as a prostitute.

Marc Benson: I immediately went to the Wilmington police department. Found out that there was an actual case involving her husband. That he'd picked up a prostitute and had assaulted her.

Sonia Williams, Angela Rothen's friend. A now-drug-free-former-prostitute. There's more to her story. She claimed she'd been assaulted by Tim Iannone.

SoniaWilliams: He had an open large-sized box cutter knife and he got it and put it to my neck and he said, You will do what I tell you to do. And at that point, he grabbed the back of my hair and made me continually have oral sex with him.

Josh Mankiewicz: While he's holding his knife on you?

SoniaWilliams: Yes.

Both Angela and Allison were murdered with a knife. Video: What are the possible connections between the victims?

SoniaWilliams: He told me I could leave and when I tried to leave, he grabbed me and dragged me down on the seat, he tied me up with duct tape, he beat me in the head.

Josh Mankiewicz: It sounds like you thought you were in a fight for your life.

SoniaWilliams: I thought that if I didn't get away from him, I was going to die.

Sonia did manage to break free, and escape. Within hours, Tim Iannone was under arrest.

SoniaWilliams: I know what he did to me. And I know that he is dangerous!

Iannone was charged with kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon in the attack on Sonia Williams. But rather than be a reliable witness, Williams admits to giving police and prosecutors the slip, preferring not to relive the horrors of the experience, but instead to get high to blot out the memory. The result: without her testimony, Iannone was offered a plea deal, and was sentenced to probation.

For private eye Mark Benson, a pattern was emerging. Three more hookers told police that they, too, had had violent sexual encounters with Tim Iannone. Benson knew Iannone had convictions for embezzlement and larceny on his criminal record, but no history of sex crimes.

The evidence against him is entirely circumstantial, but there is a lot of it. For example: the spot where Iannone's alleged assault of the prostitute took place? It's located perhaps 100 yards from where Angela's and Allison's bodies would later be found.

Josh Mankiewicz: Did that make him the number one suspect in Allison's disappearance?

Marc Benson: Absolutely, it did!

So the private eye narrowed his focus to the case he was hired to solve: Allison Foy's murder.

And two more details jumped out: in July 2006, Tim Iannone lived just around the corner from the pub where Allison was last seen. And finally, there was this:

Remember, on the night she disappeared from the pub, Allison's best friend said she'd had too much to drink to drive her own car home. So a call was made. And her friend said Allison left that night with a cabbie who stuck his head in the door and said, Did anyone here call a cab?

And what does Tim Iannone do for a living? At the time of Allison's disappearance, he was a cab driver.

Josh Mankiewicz: So it's possible that when the bartender that night called a cab for Allison, she was calling Tim Iannone?

Marc Benson: Coulda been!

In fact, Iannone - who was a regular at the pub - had his cell phone number on a special list, kept behind the bar as a cabbie to call if anyone needed a ride home. That could explain why police hadn't found any record of a cab being called to the Junction Pub and Billiards that night.

The P.I. asked Allison's best friend to describe the cabbie she left with.

Marc Benson: The cab driver came in with a ball cap and scruffy beard he believed. And “country stocky.” that's all he could tell me, was that he was "country stocky."

Josh Mankiewicz: That describes Tim Iannone?

Marc Benson: To a tee! I mean he's maybe 5'10, 240.

Josh Mankiewicz: And so now we have a cab driver who was a regular at the bar

Dwayne Stanton: And frequents prostitutes! It doesn't get much better than this!

Alan Jackson: We're looking for a sexual predator with a history of violence, someone who is in some way connected to the Junction Pub, someone who is at least in some way potentially connected to a cab, someone who likes knives, someone who fits the description “country stocky,” and we're looking for someone who has a connection to the burial site! You can put a check mark by every single one. He goes to the top of the list immediately. Did anyone see him that night? In other words, start showing his picture around. Is he the guy that poked his head in?

Josh Mankiewicz: No one can identify him.

Alan Jackson: No one can, or no one would?

Josh Mankiewicz: No one has. What do the three of you make of Tim Iannone's wife essentially making him a suspect?

Dwayne Stanton: That's pretty powerful! My experience has been when women put their husbands on the radar screen in the police department, usually it's because of fear. Or they've done something to irritate them or make them mad. Why is it that she didn't she go to him? To Tim and say, honey, are you involved in this? I heard in the bar that you might be involved in this. Why would they be saying that, honey?

Josh Mankiewicz: Do you guys believe that there really were any rumors?

Yolanda McClary: No, I think somebody would've called in that for ten thousand reward if they really thought it was him.

Dwayne Stanton: She knows within her heart that it's him.

Yolanda McClary: Or she has this possibility that it could be him.

Josh Mankiewicz: What's your first move? Find Mr. Iannone and bring him in?

Dwayne Stanton: Find Mr. Iannone, bring him in and spend some quality time with Mr. Iannone.

Wilmington, N.C., population 98,000. The question being asked was whether, hidden among the residents, was a killer. Stalking women.

A seemingly innocent e-mail to private eye Marc Benson - a message from a woman worrying about her husband - had led to a suspect in the murders of Allison Foy and Angela Rothen. That suspect, cab driver Tim Iannone, had been involved in that incident with a prostitute at a location close to where the bodies had been found. And he was a regular at the pub where Allison had been last seen.

Josh Mankiewicz: Sounds to me like this guy's a tailor-made suspect.

Mike Overton: On the surface, that's exactly what it looks like.

Wilmington Police Detective Mike Overton took the private eye's information, and soon found more: A witness had spotted someone, a cab driver, he said, acting suspiciously in the area where the bodies were found.

The result? This sketch.

Mike Overton: It resembles mr. Iannone. It does!

Josh Mankiewicz: You polygraphed Mr. Iannone?

Mike Overton: We polygraphed him.

Josh Mankiewicz: And he passed the polygraph?

Mike Overton: Passed all questions asked, actually.

Despite Iannone denying any part in the murder, and passing the polygraph, in June 2008, police had enough circumstantial evidence against Iannone to make their move. Executing a search warrant that gave them permission to search Iannone's home, his vehicles, his previous residence - and any taxi cabs that Iannone might have driven during the time frame of the murders.

Josh Mankiewicz: And?

Mike Overton: Searched the house he was presently living in. Nothing. Storage shed, vehicles, found absolutely nothing to link him to these crimes.

Josh Mankiewicz: And nothing in any of the cabs?

Mike Overton: Nothing in any of the cabs.

Suburban New Jersey. For Allison's family, finding nothing was hard to believe.

Lisa Valentino: I just don't understand how they swear out a search warrant, there's all this circumstantial evidence, and then they turn up, y'know, nothing!

Josh Mankiewicz: Maybe there was nothing there.

Lisa Valentino: Maybe there wasn't. I don't know.

Time to talk to the man at the center of the case. Meet the cab driver. Tim Iannone. He and his wife Susan agreed to sit down with us in December 2008, largely in response to what they claim was irresponsible coverage by the local TV stations and newspapers in Wilmington, after details of the search warrant became public.

Josh Mankiewicz: Why are you doing this interview today? What do you want people to know?

Tim Iannone: You're pre-judging and your lip service to details that you know nothing about hurt people. Hurt people that don't need to be hurt.

Josh Mankiewicz: What's happened to your reputation?

Tim Iannone: It's been dreadfuly tarnished.

Josh Mankiewicz: Do you think people who see you on the street who read about you in the newspaper - do they think you're a guy who got away with murder?

Tim Iannone: Yeah. Basically a monster, I guess you would say.

At this point, investigators believed Iannone was either a killer, or one of the unluckiest men on earth. A man whose own wife put him on the law-enforcement radar screen in that e-mail to the private eye. That was after after Iannone was charged in that incident with now-former prostitute Sonia Williams.

Josh Mankiewicz: How and why did you reach out to Marc Benson, the private eye?

Susan Iannone: Truthfully? And this will be the first time that my husband's ever heard this. And if I have tears, you'll understand that. I feel responsible for all this. And he doesn't even know it rumors were going around that my husband had something to do with Allison. Well, that made me mad.

So what did Susan Iannone do to defend her husband of 24 years, the father of her two children? She essentially turned him in, to private eye Marc Bensen, hoping she says, that the P.I. could help clear her husband's name.

Susan Iannone: I called him to ask him simply if he had heard that.

Josh Mankiewicz: The rumors that your husband was involved with Allison's disappearance?

Susan Iannone: Right.

Josh Mankiewicz: Is that the first time you've heard that?

Tim Iannone: Yeah. Thats the first time i've heard that.

Josh Mankiewicz: Is she in trouble?

SusanIannone: The reason for contacting Marc was, this is crazy! Let's get this out of the way.

Josh Mankiewicz: You're much more interested in defending his reputation than he is.

SusanIannone: Tim and I are two very different people, if you haven't seen that already. Of course I'm gonna defend him. I know what the truth is.

But is it the truth about the encounter that put Iannone under a microscope for the murders?

Josh Mankiewicz: Sonia Williams, you know her?

Tim Iannone: No. I met her that night.

Josh Mankiewicz: And you picked her up, and you attacked her?

Tim Iannone: No, that's not what happened.

Josh Mankiewicz: What did happen?

Tim Iannone: I really don't know that I can talk about that to be honest, because I don't know about the civil litigation that supposedly might be pursued on her behalf.

SusanIannone: You can simply tell 'em that she stole from you! But you don't have to elaborate any more than that.

Tim Iannone: She stole from me, more or less. But there was no assault. No beating. The worst thing I ever did was pull her hair to keep her from running. But it was not an attack, a rape. It was nothing like that.

Sonia Williams denies stealing from Iannone, sticks by her story, and now wishes she had shown up as a witness to help seal a case that was eventually pleaded down.

Josh Mankiewicz: You pled guilty to?

Tim Iannone: Crime against nature, having oral sex in a public place. More or less.

Josh Mankiewicz: You believe him? There was no rape, there was no assault? Video: Team begins to build a profile of the killer

SusanIannone: I absolutely believe him!

Josh Mankiewicz: You know there are times he hasn't told you the truth?

SusanIannone: Sure.

Josh Mankiewicz: But you believe him about this?

SusanIannone: Yes.

Josh Mankiewicz: Is Sonia Williams the only prostitute you've ever picked up?

TimIannone: Yes.

Josh Mankiewicz: So other prostitutes who say that you've assaulted them, they're also lying?

TimIannone: Yes.

Josh Mankiewicz: And they'd be doing that why?

TimIannone: I have no idea.

SusanIannone: Sometimes you have to consider the source, be it right, be it wrong.

Josh Mankiewicz: Meaning that a prostitute's word is worth less than a guy who works for a living?

SusanIannone: In my opinion, sure.

December 2008: Tim and Susan Iannone sat down to answer questions about Tim's possible involvement in the murders of Angela Rothen and Allison Foy.

Like the Wilmington police, our team members had specific questions they wanted answered.

Alan Jackson: If there's something we don't know, if he has an airtight alibi that, y'know, he was on a beach in Jamaica someplace, let's reassess.

Josh Mankiewicz: So the question of whether Tim Iannone has an alibi becomes a very big issue?

Dwayne Stanton: Sure it does!

Alan Jackson: The central issue in my mind.

Josh Mankiewicz: What's your alibi for the night that Allison disappeared?

TimIannone: I don't have one. I don't know where I was that night. I mean, I was home I would guess.

SusanIannone: I do! We were home by seven o'clock. And that's where we stayed. That's where he was.

Josh Mankiewicz: You're his alibi?

SusanIannone: Yes. I'da knocked him out if he wasn't at home with me!

Josh Mankiewicz: It's hard for me to believe that you don't understand why you would be a suspect. You were accused of assaulting prostitutes!

TimIannone: Yeah.

Josh Mankiewicz: In exactly the area where the bodies were later found!

TimIannone: Right.

Josh Mankiewicz: You lived a stone’s throw from the bar at which one of these women was last seen.

TimIannone: Uh-huh.

Josh Mankiewicz: You drive a cab. One of the victims was last seen by at least one witness trying to get a cab to leave the bar.

TimIannone: Correct.

Josh Mankiewicz: So it's not a leap, I think, for anybody to think the police ought to be looking pretty seriously at you.

TimIannone: Correct. I never had a problem with the police investigation, I mean as far as them looking at me. I would have looked at me!

Josh Mankiewicz: You took a polygraph. Police told you, you passed?

TimIannone: Yeah.

Josh Mankiewicz: They asked for DNA evidence, you gave it? They asked for hair evidence, you gave that?

TimIannone: Yeah.

Josh Mankiewicz: Are you a murderer?

TimIannone: No.

Josh Mankiewicz: Did you kill Allison Foy?

TimIannone: No.

Josh Mankiewicz: Did you kill Angela Rothen?

TimIannone: No.

Josh Mankiewicz: What do you think happened to those women?

TimIannone: I couldn't even speculate. I don't know what kind of mind could contemplate doing something like that. I have no idea.

Josh Mankiewicz: What do you think ought to happen to the person who committed those murders?

TimIannone: Execution. Plain and simple.

Josh Mankiewicz: What do you want to say to the families?

TimIannone: We're very sorry for your loss. But I'm not the ones who had any- I'm not the one who had anything to do with this.

Josh Mankiewicz: What do you make of his construction there at the end, “I'm not the 'ones'… I'm not the one - who had anything to do with this.” Significant or a slip of the tongue?

Yolanda McClary: He also says “we're” very sorry.

Dwayne Stanton: Right, “we're,” as in plural.

Yolanda McClary: She's not the one being looked at!

Josh Mankiewicz: Anything in body language catch your eye during this part of the interview?

Dwayne Stanton: Something that I found extremely interesting in that video clip was you asked him, are you a murderer? He said no. Words said no. But his head said yes. He nodded his head, yes. You asked him did you kill her. He said no. And again his head nodded “yes.” I've seen that before. It’s body language. He can't control that. That happens!

Josh Mankiewicz: What do you make of the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Iannone are willing to do this interview?

Dwayne Stanton: My experience has shown me that a lotta times people wanna sell you a package! I've interviewed people, they walk into an interview room and they have stamps across the forehead, you know what, that say I'm not gonna say anything and then they turn around and say.

Yolanda McClary: Everything!

Dwayne Stanton: Talk for hours and hours and hours, because they're trying to convince you! They want you to believe their story!

Josh Mankiewicz: Okay, or he didn't do it and he's tired of having his name dragged through the mud.

Alan Jackson: Correct, absolutely. That's a good possibility.

We checked out Iannone's claim that he'd only picked up one prostitute, Sonia Williams, for sex. With the help of police, we found this woman who's no longer working the streets of Wilmington. We agreed not to identify her.

Woman: He picked me up on numerous occasions, at least 10 to 15 times. He gave me his cell phone number to have me call him if I needed a ride, if I didn't have money instead of exchanging money me paying for the ride, we exchanged sexual favors.

And Wilmington Police tell Dateline that Iannone has admitted to picking up nine prostitutes for sex. We confronted Mr. Iannone with this information.

Tim Iannone: I'd say that was an inaccurate statement.

Dateline: So the number 9 is not true.

Tim Iannone: Not true.

And what about that alibi? Police tell us cab records show Iannone did not clock out from driving a cab until after midnight the night Allison went missing. And so he could not have been home at 7 p.m. as his wife Susan described in our interview.

Tim Iannone: I mean, the only reason I would've said 7 o'clock was because it was a Sunday and it may not have been a Sunday. We don't remember.

Dateline: So you think maybe you were mistaken?

SusanIannone: I mean, sure, I could be. That was 2006!

Josh Mankiewicz: Well, that alibi met a sudden death.

Alan Jackson: It was too much to believe at the time, and it doesn't surprise me in the least that that fell flat. He's now lying to not only the authorities, but he's lying, he and his wife actually are lying to you!

January 2009. The spotlight of suspicion that was shining so brightly on Tim Iannone in the summer of 2008 had been nearly extinguished.

The cab driver who's been so cooperative with police has not been linked to the killings with any hard, physical proof. That's despite what even he acknowledges to be significant circumstantial evidence against him in the murders of Allison Foy and Angela Rothen.

Josh Mankiewicz: You've probably tried people with a weaker circumstantial case than that.

Mike Overton: All that's great circumstantial, but you still have to link it, y'know, legally.

Iannone was so eager to help the police, he phoned Detective Mike Overton and volunteered to come in for an interview.

Josh Mankiewicz: How long you been doing this?

Mike Overton: Twenty-six years.

Josh Mankiewicz: How often in those 26 years do guilty people come in and offer to talk to you?

Mike Overton: It’s pretty rare.

And by late 2008, police were backtracking on some of the evidence that led them to execute that search warrant on Iannone's home, car, and taxicabs.

Remember this sketch, the result of an eyewitness, who said he saw a cab like the one Iannone drove, parked at the site where the bones were found?

Police now dismiss him as a witness.

Mike Overton: I don't put a whole lotta credibility in this witness at this point.

Josh Mankiewicz: Because?

Mike Overton: I can't go into a whole lotta “becauses” but we've just done so much more investigation, I just don't put a whole lot of credibility today into what he told us then.

And Wilmington police went even a step further, making headlines in November 2008, when they told reporters that Iannone was no longer a suspect.

Josh Mankiewicz: What was the exact language police used when they called you?

Susan Iannone: Please tell Tim that he is cleared. And I said I certainly would.

Josh Mankiewicz: What was your reaction to hearing that?

Tim Iannone: Well, I guess that's good. But I expected that to be followed by the announcement of them arresting someone for this.

That hasn't happened. But Wilmington police say they are still working hard on the case. With new leads that are promising.

Williamson: We're goin' in other directions away from Mr. Iannone at this point.

Lisa Valentino: I'm hoping and praying the police are doing their job and they know what they're doing and that if he's not the guy, then he's not the guy!

John: If they cleared this gentleman, then there's gotta be somebody else out there that's responsible for this.

Josh Mankiewicz: So we're back at square one. Or square zero.

Lisa Valentino: Square zero is right.

Alan Jackson: I have to tell you, to sit there and watch John and Lisa struggle with the idea that this has got to sort of start over is heartbreaking. But in the end you can't wish for evidence to show you a certain thing. You have to follow the evidence where it takes you. And if it's not him, it's not him. But it's somebody.

Josh Mankiewicz: What do you guys still want to know that you don't know? Video: Team begins to build a profile of the killer

YolandaMcClary: I want DNA evidence.

Josh Mankiewicz: Wilmington police have done a lot in this case. They've made a lotta headway. One piece of evidence they don't have back yet is DNA that they're gonna get off the sweater and other garments found at the dump site.

Alan Jackson: This was a Lizzie Borden bloodbath! It was horrendous, so the killer came in contact with her sweater, came in intimate close contact with her sweater.

Josh Mankiewicz: You think the DNA could close this case?

Alan Jackson: That DNA is at the center of this investigation. It's either gonna be Tim Iannone's best friend, or his worst enemy.

Dwayne Stanton: Absolutely!

Josh Mankiewicz: You still leave your mind open for other suspects?

Team: Always, of course, sure.

Alan Jackson: It always comes down to the question: What have we missed? What have we missed?

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