Talking Dateline: The Man Who Loved Christmas

Dateline NBC

Blayne Alexander sits down with Dateline producers Allison Orr and Kim Krawitz to discuss the 'The Man Who Loved Christmas' episode. The dis

Key takeaways

• Harold 'Peanut' Allen was poisoned with ethylene glycol via a root beer float.
• The investigation was triggered by a burglary at Marsha Allen's home, caught on 'cat cams'.

Main topics

• Poisoning investigation
• Digital evidence analysis

Notable quotes

The cat burglars brought down by the cat cam.

Conclusion

The episode provides a gripping look at how unexpected digital evidenc

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) Hi, I'm Kate Snow, NBC News anchor and host of the NBC News podcast, The Drink. This month, I'm sitting down with actor, writer, producer, Brendan Hunt. Most of you know him as Coach Beard from Ted Lasso, but there is so much more to his story. We sit down, we talk about all of it, from his bumpy upbringing to his years in improv comedy and how a Hollywood rejection opened the door to co-creating Ted Lasso. It's an open, funny conversation about perseverance, creativity. and the winding road that brought him right here. We hope you'll join us for the drink. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 6 (0:37) Stay informed with the NBC News app. Speaker 4 (0:40) Major developments out of the White House. Speaker 6 (0:42) Read, watch, and listen throughout your day. And now, unlock even more with an NBC News subscription. Get deeper reporting and exclusive articles. Plus, more insight, analysis, and content only for subscribers. When you really look inside these numbers. It's more context and clarity from the reporters you trust. Download the NBC News app now and subscribe for more. Speaker 1 (1:13) Hi, everyone. I'm Blayne Alexander, and I want to welcome you to what I guess we could call a special edition of Talking Dateline today because we are joined by not one, but two of our fantastic Dateline producers, Allison Orr and Kim Krawitz. Thank you, ladies, for joining me. Hi, Blayne. Hi, Blayne. All right, guys, we are going to be discussing our latest episode called The Man Who Loved Christmas. Now, if you haven't seen the episode yet, you can, of course, stream it now on Peacock or listen wherever you get your podcasts and then come right back here and listen to our conversation. Later on, we've got an extra clip of some police body camera footage with the man who got this entire investigation started. And as you will know, if you watch the episode, he is quite the character. And then, of course, we're going to answer some of your questions from social media. All right, ladies, let's talk Dateline. Let's talk. So first, before we get started, Allison and Kim, I'm going to get you ladies to each kind of walk us through just a quick summary of what this story was about. Of course, first, starting with the person that we're focused on throughout this entire story, whose name was Harold Allen, or as he was known to his friends and family, Peanut. Tell us about the story. Well, the story is Speaker 2 (2:22) about Harold Allen. Peanut, that was his nickname. He's a man from southern Indiana. He was married about three years to a woman that he had met later on in life. And he died somewhat suddenly from what was termed to be cardiac arrest. He'd been sick for just a few weeks and his health deteriorated very rapidly. It was determined to be natural causes. And it stayed that way for a long time until something crazy happened. Right, Kim? Nine months later. There is Speaker 3 (2:54) a burglary. There's a burglary at Marsha Allen's house. She is the widow and she her house. She's away. with her parents, and she gets a security alert on her phone in the middle of the night, and it shows her someone is in her house. And in fact, there were two men in her house. She immediately recognizes one of them. She recognizes the man to be a good friend of her daughter's. And so Speaker 2 (3:25) she calls the police. The man who broke into the house ultimately tells the police all about a murder plot that ends with... the investigators implicating Harold's widow, Marsha, and her adult daughter in poisoning him with ethylene glycol. Speaker 1 (3:39) Yeah. Let's talk about the man who's at the center of all of it, Harold Allen. You know, I really enjoyed getting to know Harold by talking to his brothers and his sisters-in-law because it was so clear just from, I mean, the first moment of our first interview, just how incredibly close. this family was. And I have to say, I mean, all three of them looked, yes, they had their differences as brothers, but they looked so much alike. You could just see in those pictures the bond that they had. And then when they talked about their growing up, there was so much of it that we obviously couldn't fit in our Dateline episode. But I mean, Kim, you were there for those interviews. These were emotional interviews. They just had such beautiful memories of growing up together. I mean. Speaker 3 (4:22) so, so tight. One of them said, we never had so much as a harsh word to one another. I mean, the love, you know, it struck me as this is just like, you know, you don't hear it all the time that siblings are this close and they loved each other so much. And Peanut was 10 years older than the youngest. He was almost like a... a father figure in a way to the youngest. Yeah. Speaker 2 (4:49) And there's just no, there's no closing, there's no making up for that loss. I could see how emotional they were talking about the loss and the hole that will be inside that, those three brothers and that family forever. It's tragic. I Speaker 1 (5:03) think one thing that stood out to me in our interviews was when they talked about the fact that Peanut really had a difficult time. with love. He was so talented in so many different ways. He loved people. He was giving. He taught himself to play musical instruments. I mean, he had all of these talents and gifts. But just when it came to that love piece, they knew. And I think that all of us can identify with that in some way that maybe there's a family member or somebody who just, ah, you just keep making the same mistake or you just keep going down this wrong road. You can't pull someone back. You can't tell someone what to do because they're an adult. But it just was heartbreaking that they both saw that and they knew that about their brother. Speaker 3 (5:42) Yeah. Yeah. Harold had been twice divorced and he he just was always looking for love. We all want love. Right. And and, you know, I think it was one of the brothers who said he meets someone and she's the best thing ever. She's the best. This she's the best that. I think he had a big heart and he expected to get back what he gave with love and wanted a family. They told us he really wanted a family. He wanted to be a father. He Speaker 2 (6:16) didn't have his own children. And Marsha came with family. She came with a daughter and a granddaughter, and they all lived together under one roof. And you have to wonder a little bit. I wondered if, you know, that... desire for him to have a partner and to be connected and with a family if were there red flags that he didn't see? We don't know. We weren't inside that marriage. Everything is a mystery. But I will say my impression for Marsha as she progresses through the story is she is a very cool cucumber. And maybe she's a fantastic actress. We don't know. Maybe she also loved him and we don't know what turned. But you can see how she You know, I thought that she was just incredibly composed in what should have been pressure situations. So Speaker 1 (7:05) I'm just, you know. The interrogations. Yeah. The police interrogations. Sure. Well, let's talk about Marsha. Let's talk about the point at which Marsha enters this picture. And it was interesting almost from the beginning because they described how Harold met Marsha at a high school reunion. And I think all of us who have been to high school reunions or any sort of class reunions. You come back. These are people that you knew, people that you typically grew up with or at least went through school with for a number of years. And so the notion of meeting someone for the first time at a 30th high school reunion is so surprising. They said there were only 70 some people in the Speaker 3 (7:42) class and and he didn't know her, which the family was like, how did you not know her? But I think it's probably more like, you know, you go through high school people, you maybe you don't recognize their name. But you kind of knew them. You knew who they were, but you don't know them. And I think that's probably what it was. Perhaps they remembered each other's first name. They never knew each other. And of course, they would be Speaker 2 (8:07) different people many years later, too. A lot changes in 30 years. So you may meet somebody back at your high school reunion and they're not at all the person. They didn't turn out the way you thought. You're a completely different person. And then there are sometimes you go to those reunions and it's exactly like, that's Dan, still Dan. Right. It's always something like that. Speaker 1 (8:28) Exactly. You know, it's interesting when we interviewed James, Harold's brother, he talked about the fact that when he first met, when they first met Marsha, they thought, okay, she actually seems better than some of his previous, you know, love interests, right? They were encouraged momentarily. And it was just interesting hearing them talk about the kind of evolution, but they had some suspicions. They had some questions about