Talking Dateline: Open Desert

Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Canning and we are Talking Dateline. Today I'm here with Josh Mankiewicz. Hey, Josh. How you doing?

Yeah.

Right? That happens to all of us as parents. You know, at first it's like, no big deal. Your kid didn't answer their phone. You don't really think much of it.

Yeah. And that's what Jim Yolacky was going through. He also, you know, there's one more component to that, which is, in this case, he knew how long it took to get from where he'd last seen his daughter to where his daughter said she was going. So, like, she should have been home. She should have been reachable.

Sounds like such a great dad. Such a softie with his daughter.

Yeah, because she completely changed his life.

And I loved how he said, you know, I'm dad first, and then I'm the best friend, or the friend.

Yeah. He was super protective of her. I mean, he paid a lot of attention to where she was, what she was doing, where she was going. I mean, he was on her.

And in this case, of course, we had the worst outcome, that they had to discover her body in that way. You know, and it's amazing that they eventually even found her, when you look at that landscape. And, you know, as the name of the show, right? Open Desert.

Right. I mean, it's gorgeous country. I sort of wasn't prepared for that. There's no easy way to get there. You gotta, you know, fly somewhere and then drive for a long distance.

Yeah. And it's interesting, because it sort of reminds you of the Wild West, you know, old-fashioned, but then it's got this edge to it where I noticed the teenagers, you know, have nose rings. They were free spirits, right? They were just being themselves. I looked at Brittany's eye shadow, and it was multiple colors, like one of those really pretty sunsets in the mountain that has, like, every color in it.

Yeah, I mean, like a lot of the people we cover, this was somebody who was just, you know, on the cusp of adulthood and, you know, loved the rodeo and loved being around horses. and, you know, really wanted a life that encompassed some part of that world. And whereas, you know, a lot of people that you run into in a small town like that, they can't wait to get out. Like, I gotta go. I want to be in LA or I want to be in New York.

One thing that made me really sad in this episode, and it was a really powerful red herring, was that girl fight that was caught on video at the rodeo. I did not like watching that video.

Well, first of all, you can see in Britney her dad, right? I mean, like that, I'm not backing down from a fight. I'm not afraid of you. And she got in a fight with some kids in school, but then it ended up spilling over into the rodeo and some of that was caught on video. And I mean, law enforcement had absolutely no choice but to, like, figure out who that is, because, you know, is it conceivable that somebody who's 16 years old could be killed by other 16-year-olds, that they had some kind of, like, you know, nebulous dispute with?

Yeah. And I didn't know how the story ended, so for me, I was thinking this is a viable lead right here.

Right. Exactly. I mean, there were a lot of twists and turns. in this case. It was the blackmail thing, the kidnap scam.

So cruel. And all you want is to cling to some hope.

Yeah. The toughest thing I think the police had to do in this was say to Brittany's mom, listen,

Yeah.

And the hardest thing that law enforcement had to do was say to her, hey, this is nothing. Yeah.

Okay. After the break, we'll be back with an extra clip from Josh's interview with Brittany's dad, Jim Ulacke.

For true crime fans, nothing is more chilling than watching Dateline. Have you ever seen such a thing before? For podcast fans, nothing is more chilling than listening.

What goes through your mind when you make a discovery like that?

And when you subscribe to Dateline Premium, it gets even better. Excuse me if I sound a little skeptical. Every episode is ad-free.

Wow. So this could be your ace in the hole.

And not just ad-free. You also get early access to new intriguing mysteries and exclusive bonus content. So what were you afraid of? Dateline Premium. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or datelinepremium.com.

You ready for what's coming?

Which I'm okay with.

I am okay with that. I know that you, with all those girls in your house, I know you are okay with that. But that has changed. And it's sort of hard to figure out what an involvement is. And so that's kind of, you know, a little bit about what was going on between Brittany and Bryce.

Yeah. And her dad said, clearly, this was someone, before he, you know, figured out Bryce, someone that she trusted.

Right. There's no question about that. She did not see him as some annoying guy who was pestering her, who was stalking her, who wouldn't leave her alone. I mean, they were friends. And they were thought of as friends by everybody who knew them.

And her dad actually talked to you about that in a clip. that did not make the show that we're going to play right now. that's right up that alley of what you're talking about.

Going back to now, back when Bryce seemed like a decent, trustworthy guy, when they were friends, what was her relationship with Bryce?

I only met Bryce twice. Every guy had to meet me before she could do anything with him. And I'd do the typical dad thing. But, you know, I've been to jail a lot in my younger, radical years and everything. And I would tell them, I'm not that dad who says I've been to jail and I haven't.

That would have worked with me.

So I'd seen him for probably two or three minutes. And then they left. He came by one other time. I've very briefly seen him. But he mainly showed up around her mom.

OK. So you had that conversation with Bryce. But he wasn't really a boyfriend, right? No. I mean, she sort of made clear, this is just my friend.

Yeah. And it was not her boyfriends that she brought over. Just any guy that she was hanging around with, I would just say that.

So there was nothing really to fear with Bryce initially?

No, there was nothing suspicious. And he and his family had been in that town forever. Like, they were all sort of known quantities.

And it's amazing, because usually it's like, you look back, oh, the red flags were there. You know, oh, he did this, or he said that. And it all makes sense. But not in this case.

Yeah, that's right. Bryce did a fairly good job of steering the investigation away from him, even to the point of coming to a memorial for her. Because, I'm guessing, something told him, if you don't go, it's going to be suspicious. And he went, and people were putting their arms around him.

Well, we know that law enforcement detectives, they go to the funeral, or they sit outside the funeral, you know, usually trying to hide the fact that they're law enforcement.

Right, but sometimes they're taking photos of every license plate in the parking lot.

Yeah, because very often, the killer does go to the funeral, just like an arsonist might go to the burned-down building.

Right, and a killer might go to the funeral, one, because not going might make them seem suspicious, and secondly, because so often, murders are committed by somebody that the victim knows.

That the victim knows, exactly. And that's, you know, the majority of our Dateline episodes.

In a way, that maybe should give people a little bit of comfort, which is the, you know, the random madman or madwoman who, you know, breaks into your house, kills you. Like, that's pretty rare. Like, you're mostly in danger from people you know, from relationships you already have. Yeah. But one of the things about this story that made it an interesting story to tell was that there was this mythical other suspect, this cowboy named JT that, you know, drove a particular kind of pickup truck, and Bryce gave a description of this guy and of the truck, and that, I turned over a lot of stones looking for JT, looking for that truck, and, you know, looking for those initials.

Yeah, and I made a note of that. as, you know, his story kept changing, that this is why defense attorneys tell people not to open their mouths. That's right. Right? Because this is what got him in trouble.

I mean, yes, in the sense that a defense attorney would have said, don't talk with police, or just talk with police once and then say, look, if you're going to treat me like a suspect, I'm not going to talk with you anymore. But, you know, once her body was found and once DNA is found from the tobacco that was spit on the ground near the body, then that's going to lead back to Bryce.

That leads me to talk about the clues in this case, which were really good ones, especially if you're really eagle-eyed, apparently, unlike me, you know, he spit in that body cam video, the police body cam video, which I noticed, I really noticed him spitting. But then the chewing tobacco, when they say they found it at the scene, I didn't put two and two together with the chewing tobacco and the spitting. So I missed that clue, but then thought, wow, somebody out there watching Dateline surely picked that up.

Oh, surely.

And the other one that was so good was the desert landscape, you know, in the photo with the mountain ridge and how they were able to line that up.

That was a great, that was, I mean, there was very good police work in this. And that was part of it was lining up the mountain ridge that really existed behind them in the photo.

Yeah, it was, it was really right out of a movie. You know, that clue, I feel like it was an exact match, right? I mean, it was pretty amazing.

No, they did a great job with that.

Now we're going to take a quick break, and then we'll be back with a special guest, Dateline producer, Ann Priceman.

They are the families of the missing in America. And they're desperately searching for answers.

Somebody knows something.

I'm Josh Bankens. Join me for season three of Missing in America. Listen carefully, because just one small detail might allow you to solve a mystery.

We have seen miracles happen.

Dateline, Missing in America, all episodes available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

What we're going to do now is we're going to bring in Ann Priceman, who, as I said, is a good friend of mine. And I've done many Datelines with her, and she was your producer on this episode. She was. And she is going to tell us a little bit about her experience with the story and answer some questions from social media. So let's bring in the incredible Ann Priceman.

Hello, great to be with you.

Ann, so you made a vlog while you were out filming this episode. Let's just play it for our listeners really quickly.

Hi, I'm Ann.

And I'm Rachel.

And today we're taking you along on a shoot for an all new episode of Dateline.

We're in Elko County, Nevada, which is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been while traveling for Dateline.

In fact, this area is known as the Swiss Alps of Nevada.

After a couple of hours of filming, we headed back to town.

Although we ran into a problem, a lot of big problems, actually. So we're driving back from our B-roll shoot.

And we're having some trouble getting home.

Eventually, they moved out of the way and we made it back to town.

So what the listener can't see is that you're driving through this gorgeous valley and then your SUV is suddenly surrounded by a herd of huge dairy cows.

Eventually, they turned around and they're like, oh, there's a car.

It's the same philosophy that Ann uses when dealing with me, which is you just wait and eventually it works out. You're patient enough.

Josh, you made a vlog as well in Canada.

I did because I had that trip, which, by the way, was the other kind of story that we were just talking about, which is, it was not a friend of the victim. It was somebody completely random. And that was kind of a swerve for us, in that there was no relationship at all between killer and victim. And where we were going in Canada was so far away and it was so hard to get there. And it took so long.

If you hadn't have documented it, I don't know that I would have believed it that you were in Moosonee, Canada.

I know. And it took two days to get there and two days to get back. I was only there a little while. Yeah.

I was so proud of you for braving the cold, Josh, you California guy.

I know that you and Keith grew up with that, but I did not.

All right. So we are going to dig into some social media questions. The first one is from daleron7 at danielrhawker1.. He talks about how this is a very tragic story and sad story that all parents should watch with their kids and tell them. this is why we ask questions.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's right. I think Jim Yolacki did everything right. I mean, he paid a lot of attention to where his daughter was, who she was hanging out with, what was going on in her life. He was not some absentee father.

Yeah. And it's kind of an instinctive thing, right? There's no manual. You kind of just have to figure it out and hope for the best and do everything you can, which is what Jim was clearly doing. Which leads me to our next viewer, Jossie at JocelynD20,, who said, and I think she speaks for all of us, this dad has me in tears.

You know, and when we were originally talking with him, we sat down, he's very sort of taciturn. He doesn't talk a lot. But man, once we started him talking about this story, he was great all the way through. And he was one of the main storytellers of this story, which, you know, sometimes, on Dateline, the people that know the victim the best aren't their parents, but not Jimmy Lackey. He was a player in her life all the way through.

And Katie Bumble said, Brittany's father left a deep impression on me. May all daughters have a dad who loves them this much.

And his pain was so palpable. I mean, we're around for what we do, a lot of victims. But this was so different. Like you felt it, you almost took it on yourself.

So on to Bryce. the killer, Nancy Carol Harvey on Facebook said, I knew right away Bryce did it, talking about the cowboy hat and the truck. There are so many of the same color truck in that town and cowboys.

That definitely set investigators off on a whole other path, which they, I mean, if you were JT and you lived in Elko County, you probably were getting investigated. So, I mean, it was a clue just broad enough to guarantee a lot of investigator hours.

It's the land of F-150s.

Yeah. And cowboy hats. Yeah.

It's cowboy country.

I think people around here forget that there's a whole other world out there in America. You know, there's places where there's not Starbucks on every corner.

Josh found a Starbucks in town.

I did find it.

Okay, maybe there's one on the corner.

It wasn't actually a Starbucks. I think it was a Starbucks type place.

One of our cameramen is a coffee aficionado. This is obviously a sidebar. But so every place you go, he finds a little specialty roaster place.

Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. There isn't a Starbucks in every town, but...

And you don't need a Starbucks if they have these little cute specialty coffee places.

But there are places that serve coffee, and I will find that. Yeah.

Okay, this is from the Dateline team. Brittany's main hobby was horseback riding, and she loved the rodeo, of course. During the show, we asked viewers what their favorite hobby was as a teenager. We got all kinds of answers, but we want to know, Josh and Anne, what were your favorite hobbies as teenagers? And do you still do them today?

Anne, you go first.

This question underlies how much of a dork I was. I watched a lot of TV.

Oh, gosh, me too.

Wonder why we're in this position.

My parents hated it too, by the way. I don't know about you. My parents were like,

stop watching TV.

I mean, I was Gen X and a little bit latchkey. So again, Love Boat reruns and Magnum PI were my jams.

Absolutely.

Yeah. I remember one of my favorite hobbies was watching Keith on television when I was a small child. So that was-.

Wait, are you joking, or you mean when he was an anchor in LA?

No, I mean, I'm joking. When I grew up, I read a lot. I'm still doing that. I watched a lot of television. I watched a lot of crime dramas on television, kind of like now.

Me too, me too.

My mom used to say to me, you know, Josh, television is not a life. You know, well, wrong again, Mom. Wrong again, to all of our parents.

All right. Well, on that note, thank you, Anne, for joining us today. That was a nice special treat.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you, Josh, as well, for sharing all your insights into this episode.

Thank you, guys.

Okay, and that is Talking Dateline for this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can reach out to us on social media at DatelineNBC. Also, be sure to check out the newest season of our podcast, Dateline Missing in America, featuring missing person cases brought to our attention by our followers on social media. Listen to the first episode now, wherever you get your podcasts. And see you.