MERIDIAN -- On Friday, the country will be introduced to a Treasure Valley case on NBC's Dateline. It's the story of Rob Hall, a man convicted of murdering Meridian attorney Emmett Corrigan in a Walgreens parking lot in 2011.
Correspondent Keith Morrison was in Boise earlier this year when Rob Hall was sentenced, and he interviewed Rob Hall, his wife Kandi Hall, the victim's former wife Ashlee Birk, and others.
Morrison spoke with KTVB, and Dateline provided interview tapes for a preview of Friday's story.
Keith Morrison: 'This is a play that Shakespeare would write'
It's a classic tragedy of two families who had achieved the dream, Morrison told KTVB. They were living the life they had always wanted to live. They had luck, they had health, they had everything going their way. It wasn't enough. They tore it all down, and they did it themselves. They were the architects of their own misfortune.
A jury convicted Rob Hall last year of shooting and killing Corrigan because his wife, Kandi Hall, was having an affair with Corrigan. Ashlee Birk, Corrigan's wife at the time of the murder, told Morrison she never suspected her husband was cheating with Kandi Hall--
The way [Corrigan] described [Kandi Hall] was she was an older woman who he looked up to in a motherly way. He said, she just believes in me. She thinks I'm going to be this great lawyer, Birk said.
Ashlee Birk: 'Maybe this is the grand finale'
With recent other problems at home, Birk actually thought something may happen the night of the murder. In court, she said the two had been talking about getting help with their marriage and she was hoping to work on things, but he decided to go out anyway, leaving her and her children at home, to meet up with Kandi Hall.
I kind of felt like, okay, maybe this is the grand finale. Maybe he'll get in a wreck tonight, and he'll sit in a hospital bed and he'll realize how much we love him, Birk said. Or maybe, I pictured him sitting in a jail cell for what, maybe a month, and then coming out and being the man that I married, and realizing that he had a wife that loved him, and he had kids who adored him. I thought maybe if he was given an opportunity to be humble, maybe he'd feel that love.
Kandi Hall: 'It was very surreal'
Kandi Hall, the only eyewitness to the murder, described seeing her husband and Emmett Corrigan fighting that night in the parking lot.
That's when I said, enough! That's enough! You get in your truck, and Rob we gotta go! Kandi Hall said. I walked around Rob to go to my car. And as I was walking to my car, another car came by, and I had to stop, and at that point, when that car was coming, I hear, pop... pop, pop!
She says she first saw her husband, Rob Hall, drop to the ground, covered in blood. Then, she says she saw Corrigan and ran to him.
I gave him a kiss on his cheek, and I'll never forget, ever. But he took that last deep [breath], Kandi Hall said. It was very surreal. Just turning gray... I didn't have time to think of much other than thinking to myself... oh my god. He's dead.
Rob Hall: 'I wish I'd never gone there that night to get my wife'
Just hours after he was sentenced, Hall told Keith Morrison his take on the night, doing the interview inside the Ada County Jail. He says he's not responsible for intentional murder, and he says Corrigan was the aggressor.
I don't think I made four steps before I was ripped off my feet. When I hit the ground, first thing I thought is my cell phone hit the ground, and I looked over and it was my gun, Rob Hall said. [Corrigan] reached down and grabbed my gun, and we just struggled over it. Last thing I remember was the gun pointed at my head, and the feeling of being hit upside the head with a baseball bat. [Then] I remember seeing everything black and gray, and that's all I remember until Sunday in the hospital.
Morrison asked if Hall regretted taking a gun to find his wife that night.
I think that. I do the what if game on that, and then I think, what if he'd have pounded my face into the cement and not stopped? Then people would say, why didn't he have his gun with him? Hall said.
Hall, who was also shot in the head that night and hospitalized, has maintained he was defending himself. Prosecutors have said Hall shot Corrigan, and then turned the gun on himself in an apparent suicide attempt. Hall denied that in Morrison's interview: I've never been suicidal.
Morrison: 'You'll learn some things you didn't know'
Morrison says what viewers from the Treasure Valley will see are interesting people who show kind of a lesson in the scary side of our humanity .
Kandi Hall is an interesting person, say whatever else you will about her. The judge said some uncomplimentary things, but in fact, I had a charming couple of hours with her that day, Morrison said. And Ashlee's a lovely person. And Rob Hall? You know, you kind of want to believe him in some ways. But they're all people who could be a brother, a sister, a next door neighbor, and these volcanic events happened to them.
As for interviewing Rob Hall, Morrison says what stood out to him is his attitude and view on what happened in 2011.
He does not see himself as the person who caused this. He believes he is as much a victim as anybody else in the drama, Morrison said.
KTVB asked Morrison: Is that what you expected? He responded: Not exactly. Although I'm not surprised. It's kind of what people do. And I'm not saying that he isn't right. He might be. But somehow I expected to walk in there and talk to someone who was prepared to offer abject apologies to the family of the victim and say, it was my fault. I'm sorry. It was my fault. And what he was saying was, I'm sorry, it wasn't my fault.
Watch Dateline NBC's Deadly Desire on KTVB Friday night at 8.
