then the doctors came in and told me they did everything they could. but that joel was gone. 800 miles away in montana, joel s mom and stepfather received the most terrible news parents can hear. you raise your children and the things you do to protect them, and somebody in one minute takes his life. like you ve stolen my child. joel, just 38, left behind not only his family and fiancee, but a daughter, alexa, from his first marriage. you hear there s an accident. you think that it s something that can be fixed. so, i went to a hospital thinking he s hurt, not dead. later, joel s step dad learned more about the horrible details. the grand forks police department called us. they determined that it was a murder. who would want to hurt him? i don t know. i don t know anybody who had that much hate in their heart to commit a crime like that. so, this is just, what, bad
it is the friday night of the last weekend before the midterms. and i m gonna leave you on one note. there may be four days to go before official election day, but americans have already been voting and massive numbers. right now, 36 million americans have cast of ballots in these midterm races. which is on track to be a record breaking number. from early in person voting, returning to drop boxes, or through the mail. as as people are to this country, and that is great for democracy. undeniably. that is the only way that this process works. and this thing is working. so keep doing it! if you haven t already, go cast that ballot, we ll see you on the other side. w e ll see you o i m craig melvin. and i m natalie morales. and this is dateline. someone just sucks the life out of you and tells you that dream life isn t going to happen. that wedding you re planning,
you can see joel leave the bar? absolutely. and you can see the clown leave the bar. no doubt. 3 1/2 minutes later? right. plenty of time for the people in that crowd to have confronted and attacked joel. and we know the cowboy, the gangster, the construction worker had gone out and the bus was still there. in court, the lead detective was forced to concede the police timeline was flawed. we know that they have 3 1/2 minutes to do that, have this face-off and be back on the bus, right? right. 3 1/2 minutes. plenty of time for plenty of people other than travis stay to murder joel. travis never took the stand, leaving open the question of his amnesia during the most important moment of his young life. lucky. anybody ever tell you you re personality change when you re drunk? most of my friends would
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evidence that they thought would bring the details. here is josh mankiewicz with under a halloween moon. in the month after her fian fiance s murder, heather eastling s pain was beyond words. it sucks the life out of you and tells you your life isn t what you wanted it to be. your dream life isn t going to happen. grand forks detectives had been working around the clock to solve this rare murder case. and then those dna tests of travis lion costume came back. some of that blood on travis was his own. but some of it belonged to joel lovelien. and with that, police had everything they needed. and then one morning there was a knock on the door and there was the detective sholes and detective simon came in and said that there was bad news and that joel s blood was on me. and they were arresting me for his