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Hello, I'm Blaine Alexander, and I'm here with Andrea Canning, and we are talking Dateland. So this episode is called The Premonition. It's about the 2006 murder of a beloved dentist, John Yelnick, who predicted his own death and the obstacles that investigators had to overcome in bringing his killer to justice. Now, if you haven't listened to the show yet, it's the episode right below this one on our list of podcasts. So just choose from that. You can go there, listen to it, or if you want to watch it, of course, you can stream it on Peacock and then come right back here. When you come back, Andrea has an extra clip that she wants to play for us from her interview with Dr. Marc Perlin, the Chief Scientific and Executive Officer at Cyber Genetics. And then later, of course, we're going to answer some of your questions from social media. So make sure you stay tuned for that. Okay, let's talk Dateland.

Let's talk Dateland. Hey, Blaine.

Hey, Andrea. How are you?

I'm good. I haven't even seen you in the new year, so it's a little late, but Happy New Year, Blaine. Thank you.

It's always appropriate. And Happy New Year, back to you.

Yeah.

I have to tell you that this story, it literally had me hooked from the very line, right, to say, Hey, I paid you $10,000 to investigate your murder, and I'm not dead yet. That's wild.

It is wild. It's something we see in different forms on Dateline, where someone writes a letter to themselves or they write it to someone else, or they tell someone, if something happens to me. So this was more uncommon because he's paying money and he's actually enlisting the help of his attorney. But definitely, over the years, people have predicted their own murders on Dateland, sadly.

There were so many parts of the story that were just gripping. I think past the premonition, the person who found John's body, his nine-year-old neighbor, Zack, found his body Yeah, and this really gory scene. What was it like talking to him? Of course, many years later, but that was just a hard, hard thing.

Well, it's always horrible when a child has to be the one to find someone who has died. It happens too often where children are dragged into these things, where they have to see these horrific things that they can't unsee. Imagine how that shapes your life at that point, that you've seen something so gory and awful, and you're just a child.

I mean, you're forced to grow up, right? You're forced to, in that moment, grow up much faster and much more immediately than you would ever expect, right?

Yeah. I mean, in this case, the neighbor was collateral damage, right? That he had to be the one to find him.

To find him. Yeah. And he was going over to look for a playmate. He was looking for his son, JJ, to play together. That one touched my heart. Like, oh, he just wanted to find a friend, and that's what he found. My gosh. I know. I want to talk about John, 39 years old and clearly successful, right? I mean, he'd wanted all his life to be a dentist. He's always on the honor roll. He's a partner at his own dental practice where he used to go growing up. It had to have been a really interesting full circle moment for him.

Yeah. I mean, he put his mind to something. He set out to do what he wanted to do, and he made happen.

I'm curious about full circle moments. I was thinking about this. I mean, it's something he always wanted to do. He was able to do it. Did you always know that you wanted to be a journalist? Like, is that... Did you start off intentionally on this path?

No. No. Absolutely not. No. I think I've told this story before. I'm going to date myself here, but I also lived in the country. We had three channels. After school, 6: 00 rolls around. All I want to do is watch TV, and all that would come on was the news. I'm like, Darn news. I don't like this. This is all that's on my three channels. What am I supposed to go do? Read a book? Then I went on a shoot with a TV commercial. Then I was like, I'm interested in TV. Then that just unraveled into TV news. Then now I'm a news junkie. That's all I watch now during the day is news, news, news.

That is so fascinating. But at first you were like, No, absolutely not.

Oh, gosh, no. No. I just couldn't... What about you? Were you on your dad's lap going, I'm going to be a reporter, daddy?

Yes, I was the exact opposite. I grew up watching Today's show. I would watch Tom Brokaw on the news as a third grader, a second grader. I loved the news. I think that at some point I realized, okay, the news tells people when things are important. Like, that was my realization. I identified with that full circle moment like, oh, gosh, I always want to be on the news and then to do it. I definitely identified with John on that. It had to have been so cool to go back and actually work for that practice. Let's talk about him meeting Michelle. He meets Michelle, and they... I mean, he falls head over heels pretty quickly. I wonder how he felt. Do you think that he felt he was lucky to be with her? When you talk to his friends, did you get that impression that he felt lucky to have found somebody like Michelle?

I think he was like, I got the Budweiser girl. I got the homecoming queen. There's a lot of guys who would be excited about that, right? That they got the girl that all the guys want because the Budweiser girls, back in the day, I don't know if they still have them, but they were popular. Michelle was definitely attractive. Sure.

I think that also speaks to just the dynamics of their relationship. Michelle already had two kids, but John was all in, and not everybody would necessarily sign up for that, right? To come in and parent to other kids. I feel like that tells us a lot about the person, the type of person that John was.

Yeah, I think John wanted a family so badly, and he certainly wanted a child with Michelle, but I think this was a way to just kickstart that family that he wanted so badly. He stepped right in as a father figure to her children. He was in love with her, and she was a package deal. Yeah.

Especially after having lost his own parents, right? This longing for family or longing for his dad, right?

His dad, yeah. Then his mom, of course, later in life. But yeah, like losing his dad when he was just a baby. Absolutely. He was able to be a dad to her kids and then ultimately to their child that they adopted from Russia.

And speaking of JJ, I mean, when they have JJ, they have now their three children, and it really seemed like everything was falling into place. I remember looking at the home that they had, and I said, This is gorgeous. Obviously, this was before Instagram. This is early 2000s. But when you think about seeing people's lives on social media and thinking, Oh, my God, this is perfect, they would have been the people that you would have looked at and said, Oh, they're perfect. They adopted a child. They're so cute. To go from that to this It was very, very bitter divorce. There's certainly a lot in there that we'll never know, but it was just really an interesting fall, unfortunately.

Yeah, and infidelity on both sides.

Yeah, yeah. That was one of the points. Michelle admits that she sheeded on John, but then he admits the same, and she just loses it. Talk about that dynamic.

What is it? Don't throw stones at glass houses. I just feel like if you're going to have an affair, then you really can't judge your partner for having an affair.

Absolutely. I I want to talk about this heated custody battle for JJ. Jj really becomes at the center of this, right? One of the people that you interviewed was Maggie, one of John's friends, who said that at one point he was crying on the phone to her, saying that he didn't think that he would see his son again. That's just heartbreaking for any parent. It seems like a lot of these cases do stem from custody battles. Yeah.

What if it was amicable? What if there was a different way to handle it? Could his life have been spared?

When we come back, we have an extra clip from Dr. Mark Perlin, the Chief Scientific and Executive Officer at Cyber Genetics. His technology played a crucial role in solving John's murder.

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Watch the Today Show with Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin, weekdays at 7: 00 AM on NBC. Now they had the final answer, or did they? Nothing has more suspense than a dateland mystery, and no one wants to wait to find out what happens next. That's why everyone needs Dateline Premium, where listening is always ad-free. You get the whole story and nothing but the story. Or do you? Yes, actually. You do? Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or datelinepremium. Com. Hey, guys, Willy Geist here, reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit Down podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with Emmy, Grammy, and Tony winner Cynthia Arrivo. To talk about her experience playing Elfaba opposite Ariana Grande's Glinda in the highly anticipated Hollywood adaptation of the Broadway classic Wicked. You can get our conversation now for free wherever you download your podcast.

I want to talk about Corporal Janel Lydic. She was the MVP of this story, and I was so... I've got a couple of questions about her. I just was really struck by her inings, even though this was her first murder case, right?

Yeah. Yeah, it was.

The first thing that really stood out to me is that she gets the call. She's on a family outing, right? She's got her husband, she's got her kids in the car. Yeah, four kids. And they just turned... Four kids? And they just turned out to go to the crime scene. It's like a family field trip. I know, right?

I was surprised by that. I know. I know. Yeah, it's amazing. She just was on it. I remember when I had to go to an interview at a jail and I had my kids with me because we were doing a handoff or something. I can't... Somebody was coming to get them because we had been somewhere. Mm-hmm. They were always asking me when they were little, What does a jail look like? What does a jail... And I'm like, Well, here you go. Here it is. Here's the jail. We're at the jail now. We're not going inside. You're not.

I think a lot of moms to identify with that, right? Yes, exactly what you said. There's a handoff. At some point, you have to do something. But I also thought that it was interesting because it showed her dedication to the job. She was like, I want to get there. I want to be there immediately. I don't want to waste that time going home. Then at one point, she describes how she's standing in between the car and the house to block her kids.

We went in that house. We shot in that house. It's always like, add that extra layer of chilling moments when you get access to the house where the murder happened or the field or whatever it may be, because you're really going back to that moment exactly where you can see that person going through what they went through.

Of course. But I want to talk about the psychics.

The Psychic Sisters. Oh, my gosh. The Psychics. Can we talk about the Psychics. Have you ever had psychics involved in a story before? I'm trying to think if I've interviewed other Psychics. I probably have at some point, but no one stands out more than the Sisters.

Oh, my gosh.

I mean, I still remember sitting there outside talking to them. They were funny, but they said that they felt a dog tag. They were thinking military, but they weren't that far off. I mean, police, military, maybe Maybe that's where they were headed.

It's so interesting to me. I think that time and time again, you see people when they turn to psychics or just some unexplained anything, people are really at their most desperate point. They want to know. They want answers. They've gone through everything, and they're like, Well, maybe these people know something, right? That's what we saw.

But then there's people who actually believe in psychics as well. So maybe they're not desperate. They just actually really believe The power of that. The power of that. I mean, I've been to psychics in my life. I wouldn't say that I'm some huge psychic believer or regular visitor to a psychic. But I remember it's so funny. I still have the piece of paper. The psychic, This was before I was married. She said... She was writing everything down, and she said, Your husband is up in the air. I was like, Well, up in the air? Yeah, of course he's up in the air. Everyone's husband is up in the air if you're single, right? And then I ended up marrying a pilot. A pilot? Yes. That's amazing. He was up in the air.

Isn't that funny? It's always interesting to hear people's experiences with that.

Yeah. I'm glad we interviewed them because we don't, we don't I don't really get to interview psychics. And sometimes police will... Like in this, Corporal Lydic was like, You know what? Whatever helps at this point.

Exactly. Why not at this point, right? Yeah. Like, nothing at all.

Why not? It can't hurt.

So, let's talk about the evidence. The bloody footprints at the scene. That was a big deal. They're brought up, of course, in the trial. The state calls the director of ASIX, the tennis shoe company, to talk about the shoe. First off, imagine you're the head of ASIX and you get a subpoena to come testify in a murder trial. That had to have been shocking.

Yeah, that was interesting because those shoes were not available for purchase in the area. Then, of course, they find out that Foley has ordered those shoes through a law enforcement type website where you can... I mean, wow.

What are the odds? What are the odds that you commit a crime and you're wearing these shoes that are so rare? He had to have been kicking himself for that one.

Right? I'm going to use a pun, gumshoe detective work at its best. Absolutely.

It was. It was such a big piece of evidence, though. Corporal Lydic, she had some interesting instincts. The fingernails. She kept them in an evidence refrigerator just because she thought, Eh, maybe I should just hang on to these.

Well, I think it was that Well, he's a state trooper.

Yeah.

And she's being told not to interview him or Michelle. Yeah. Which is just odd. That baffles me to this day. And also, apparently, Trooper Foley I would make comments like, I wish he was dead, and things like that. And they're going through a divorce. I mean, hello.

That's the first place you look. Yeah.

So, putting the fingernails. I think she just had that instinct. I think she was just nervous that given his connection to the state police, I'm going to keep these a little closer. So cybergenetics was also presented during the trial.

They've been now used to solve a plethora of cases, right? But at the time, this was something that was really groundbreaking, this DNA technology. Their technology showed that the DNA under John's fingernail had a 189 billion to one match to Kevin's DNA. And that was huge. That compares to the FBI's match of like one in 13,000. Yeah.

Dna is an investigator's best friend. Those fingernails just became everything.

We're going to hear a little bit more from your interview with Dr. Marc Perlin, the Chief Scientific and Executive Officer at Cyber Genetics. He's talking here about how he ended his work in the courtroom.

Do you have that hesitation, though, of, How am I going to convince these people? I'm a scientist. It's a different animal going into a courtroom. The Foley testimony happened in two stages. The first was a hearing where my only audience was a judge. What I was armed with was scientific studies and metaphors and translating for the judge that the science predicted exactly what we found. The judge obviously agreed and allowed it into trial? Yes. A judge is one thing, a jury is another.

Correct.

Now the jury was 12 interested students as opposed to one. Did you have any doubt that the DNA found under John Yelnick's fingernails belonged to Kevin Foley? Mathematically, based on our studies, no. You were convinced you had your math? The chance of it not being him was so small, based on the match statistic, that it was not feasible. Interesting.

Yeah, very. I think about DNA technology, and nowadays, it's used all the time to solve cold cases. But just hearing from him, I mean, that was really stunning when you talk about that level of certainty. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, that's hard to get around.

Yeah. The best evidence you have. At the end, I mean, Kevin was sentenced to life in prison. I think when we first started hearing about Kevin in this episode, we heard John's cousin say that she thought, Hey, he's going to be a good influence on the kids. And one of John's friends even told you at some point that it was hard to see Kevin as the bad guy. I'm curious, where did things go so Well, something we see a lot in these stories is where the...

We'll just use mom as an example. The mom tells the new boyfriend that her ex is a monster and he's doing these horrible things. A lot of times, the mother will get the new boyfriend, new husband riled up, right? He did these awful things. That could be the case here. It doesn't excuse anything. It doesn't mean you could kill someone, but it certainly could get somebody They fired up Sure. About another person.

But there were no charges brought against Michelle.

Yeah. I think that doesn't sit well with some people.

What happened when you and our team reached out to her?

She did not want to talk to us. But I think for John's friends, they were upset. They really felt like she got away scot-free. That's their opinion.

I could see how they could still feel some frustration there. Yeah. Let's talk real quick about John. You ended this story on a sound bite that I thought was just so beautifully poignant. I was actually watching this with Jay, my husband, and we were doing our own things. He's listening, and he hears the sound bite. His friend Dennis said, If there was ever a person that I knew that deserved to die peacefully in bed, surrounded by a loving family, it was John. And my husband goes, Oh, that says it all, right? I mean, it really did. I think we all hope to be spoken about that way. Yeah.

And he got anything but that, and that's not what he deserved.

Okay, and after your break, we will be back here to answer some of your questions from social media.

Hey, everybody. I'm Al Roker from The Today Show. I am so excited to kickstart the new year with help from our all new Start Today app. It has everything you need for your wellness journey all in one place. Fitness challenges for all levels, meal plans that are easy and delicious, and so much more. It's built to fit your lifestyle, and our experts will guide you every step of the Come on, let's do this. To subscribe, download Start Today from the App Store on your Apple device now. Terms of supply cancel anytime through Apple under profile settings. I'm Keith Morris. This story is about the end of the world. A frostbitten pet cemetery, and zombies. This is a story about a woman linked forever to the awful things that happened to her children. It has to be heard to be believed. Think you know every Dateline story? Think again. Listen to Mommy Doomsday and a dozen other riveting series when you follow the Dateline Originals podcast.

We have some fun social media questions, and these are audio questions, which makes it all the more fun. Here's Ali from X, formerly Twitter, and here's what she wanted to know. Is there a case or mystery that you wish Dateland would cover but hasn't yet?

Hmm.

Well, we usually do a lot of them.

We do. Yeah, we do a lot of them. There's one case that I would like to do Olivia Lonebear. She is an Indigenous woman that we talked about on an episode that I did. She was found in a lake in her car in the passenger seat. That case has gone unsolved, but I would like to do that as a full dateland. Yeah. And I would like to see it solved.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, if There's one that comes to my mind, very, very different from our typical dateland. Who killed Tupac? Who killed Tupac and Biggie? I would love to see that as a dateland.

Wait, isn't somebody behind bars for that?

For Tupac, yes.

For Tupac?

But there's still a lot of unanswered questions about it, and I think it can make it great. I mean, there are so many twists and turns in that story, and then the Biggie case. As long as we're bringing out undatelined cases, that would be an interesting one. Those would make good episodes. We've got another one. This is from Instagram. This is from Taviba Gordon-Bennet with a question.

I just got done listening to an episode of Talking Dateland. It was Keith Morison, who I love, and Josh Mankowitz, who I also love. They were trying to be funny with each other. Keith person called Josh an infidels, and Josh was like, Yeah, I'm totally an infidel. But there was so many moments of that. It felt really almost like, Do they really not get along, or do they get along? Are they frenemies? It was an interesting back and forth, and now I'm not sure. I want Andrea Canning to chime in and let me know if they're actual frenemies. That was a great question. No, I can absolutely tell you that they are friends and they love rubbing each other and they love getting into these conversations with each other. I've been around them so many times, and I have never seen anything but love between those two.

And only Josh and Keith, right? They're the only ones who can do that, and it's hilarious. I love it. No, that's a fun question. Thank you for that. Well, Andrea, I think that's it for talking Dateland. We've talked a lot. It's been great to talk with you.

We have, Blaine. Thank you.

Of course. Thank you. And thanks everyone for listening to this week's episode. Remember, if you have any questions for us about our stories or any of the cases we should cover, reach out to us on social at datelandnBC or send us an audio message for your chance to be featured here on our next Talking Dateland episode. And of course, we will see you Fridays on Dateland on NBC..