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Dateline NBC

The Black Candle Confession

Dateline NBC

NBC News

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

4.438K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2020

⏱️ 83 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

During a childhood sleepover, nine-year-old Jessi Becker glimpses a woman sobbing and lighting black candles and the image is seared deep in her memory. Decades later she reveals what she saw, reigniting an investigation into the unsolved murder of local bartender Corey Wieneke. Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on NBC on January 17, 2020.

Transcript

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0:00.0

We were taking a walk and we heard sirens going out.

0:05.0

They said that he was found beaten to death.

0:09.0

Everybody left Cory.

0:11.0

It broke our family.

0:12.0

You look at this crime scene. This is rage.

0:17.0

There is no physical evidence that there wasn't that fingerprint.

0:20.0

There wasn't that DNA. The investigation ran cold.

0:25.0

I knew something that could make a difference.

0:29.0

The new information is this nine year old girl seeing this strange thing going on.

0:35.0

Right. What we called the confession sound.

0:37.0

There were candles lit. She was sobbing and saying, I'm so sorry.

0:42.0

You hear this story and you say, who? How? What?

0:54.0

It was late. Too late.

0:57.0

For little nine year old girls to be awake.

1:00.0

Even on a sleepover, so close to Halloween.

1:04.0

Upstairs in the old farmhouse.

1:06.0

They opened the bedroom door, suppressed their giggles,

1:09.0

sneaked into the dark hallway.

1:11.0

They tipped out to the back staircase.

1:14.0

And eyes wide, feeling naughty, crept down toward the gloom of the living room.

1:21.0

And that's when it happened. When they saw her.

1:25.0

There was a woman down there, lighting candles, black candles,

...

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