Keith Morrison will talk about the mysterious disappearance of a mother of two in 2011 on NBC Dateline this Friday. She is said to have given her 3-month-old daughter to a pastor and his wife and never come back.
Marie Carlson was last seen in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, in October 2011. Since then, no one has seen or heard from her. The way she went missing just didn’t make sense to her family.
The episode of NBC Dateline that will air on July 22, 2022, is called “Secrets on the Emerald Coast.” It will go into more detail about a cold case from 2011. It will talk about how a TV show called Cold Justice, which was made by the same person who made Law & Order, helped to solve the case.
Dateline on NBC asked, “Who was Marie Carlson?”
Marie Jane Carlson was born in 1974 in the Philippines. People who knew and cared about her said she had a spirit of adventure. She loved cooking and going to karaoke nights. She also enjoyed working in criminal justice. Her case took too long to get to court, which was a shame.
Marie was 37 years old and a mother of two when she went missing. Her ex-husband, Jeff Carlson, was the father of her first child. She also had a new baby daughter with a pastor named James Flanders, with whom she was in a polygamous relationship that also included his wife Tanya.
The last time Flanders saw Marie was on October 17, 2011. Two days later, her family got a mysterious message from her saying she was leaving to do something she had always wanted to do.
Marie’s family was worried and suspicious, so they wouldn’t let go. On October 24, 2011, Jeff finally reported her missing.
What happened to Marie Carlson? (NBC Dateline)
Marie’s car was found at the local airport after she went missing, but authorities said she had never left the area.
Even though James Flanders was suspected at first, nothing solid was found to move the case forward.
There was no dead body, and Flanders said he left the house between 6 and 7 pm on the day his wife Tanya went missing while taking the baby out. He said that when the two people went back to the house, Marie and her car were gone.
But something didn’t seem right, because Marie would never have left her newborn daughter behind. Her things were still at home, and she hadn’t taken any money out of her bank account.
In 2015, the show Cold Justice tried to work with police to look at old cases in a new way. The producers were interested in what happened to Marie Carlson after they learned that no one had seen her since October 17, 2011, but there was also no direct proof that she was dead. Also, an FBI alert for missing people and a $10,000 reward had been for nothing.
People who didn’t want to go to church came anyway because a film crew was in town. They found out that Marie and Flanders’ relationship had been tense, and that the day she went missing, the two of them had a fight.
After looking at Flanders’ old cell phone records and seeing where he was on the day Marie went missing, the police were able to get in touch with him again.
Flanders was caught at his home in Arizona. He had moved there three months after Marie went missing. He was taken to Florida and told the judge that Marie was his “sister wife.”
In exchange for a shorter sentence, Flanders pleaded guilty to manslaughter in April 2016 and said he killed Marie by putting her “in a choke hold.” He also showed the police where her body was buried.
Judge William Stone of the Okaloosa County Circuit Court gave him the maximum sentence for manslaughter, which was 15 years in prison.
On July 22, 2022, at 10/9c, only NBC will show NBC Dateline: Secrets on the Emerald Coast.