When the Smoke Clears

Dateline NBC

NBC News

True Crime, Culture, Social, Society & Culture, News

4.4 • 38K Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2021

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this Dateline classic, a young woman is killed in her home. Detectives thought they knew who had killed her, but they had to prove it. And with help from the victim herself, they would. Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on NBC October 23, 2009.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It was just a burnt cigarette, but maybe the answer to a mystery.
0:10.4	Her name was Christie.
0:11.4	I thought she can't be dead.
0:14.4	Just 25.
0:15.4	When she was murdered, she was nude.
0:19.2	She was bleeding from the head.
0:21.4	But without much to go on, the case soon grew cold.
0:24.8	So few clues.
0:26.8	Except for that cigarette.
0:31.0	Was it left behind by her killer?
0:33.9	And how could you prove it?
0:35.8	We had one chance to get this done.
0:38.9	Detective said a trap, but it's Christie who cracks the case.
0:43.0	Christie really solved her own murder.
0:45.6	A killer caught by the woman he killed on the smoke clears.
0:53.4	Five to seven minutes.
1:01.3	The time it takes for a cigarette to burn.
1:04.2	The time it takes to tamp down a craving.
1:07.2	It's cover up a crime.
1:12.1	Or mark the time between life and death.
1:21.7	It was Mother's Day weekend, 1989, the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier.
1:27.0	That's when it happened in a condo there, where they found the burned-down smoke at the
	...

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