Death at the Spa

Tonight on Dateline.

Everybody get back.

We have one confirmed fatality at this time.

I knew. You knew she was gone. I knew it was her. He's a cute little bunny. She was just beautiful, inside and out.

Exactly. The husband was aware that Ildiko was cheating on him.

How many other guys were there? A good five or six.

Elizabeth hated her.

She sent Ildiko photos. Right. Which we won't show on television.

What's the most common motive in human history for murder? It's love. If this is intentional, I would be a person of interest, just naturally. It was one of those moments where my hair would stick on the back of my neck.

You thought that's the end?

No.

If you watch Dateline, there's always an end. That wasn't it. A bomb in a day spa and a victim with a string of lovers means no shortage of suspects. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

911, what is your emergency?

Except on May 15, 2018, just past 1 p.

Please, there's someone inside.

Had a gas leak inside the building caused the explosion? Or could this be terrorism, either foreign or domestic?

It is an explosion. There was a fire. Is there anybody hurt? 283,. I've got body parts.

Loss of life was a guarantee. Someone had been blown literally to bits. Severed limbs lay on the ground. Debris from the building was strewn across the street. The sulfurous smell of fireworks and a plume of white smoke filled the air.

I was texting back and forth with Stephen.

Stephen Beal was at home that day, so right after he heard from Valerie, his thoughts turned to Ildiko, too. They were business partners at the spa. He texted her in an apparent panic. There was an explosion there? Ildiko, are you okay?

He was calling every number he had for her, trying to reach her, and no answer.

Stephen wasn't the only one trying to reach Ildiko. Sarah. Thomas had been at the spa that morning getting her lashes done. Just a few hours later, Sarah saw the building where the spa was located on the news.

I didn't really know what to think of it. I just thought, like, oh my gosh, there was a gas explosion, like, when I left?

Did you try to contact Ildiko?

I did. I texted asking if she was okay. You know, you see it and you don't want to believe it either. You're hoping that maybe it just looks like it's in that area.

There was a news conference. My coworkers put it on.

We arrived at the scene of an obvious explosion.

I didn't have to listen to it. I knew what they were going to say.

We have one confirmed fatality at this time. There were two injuries. Both were transported to area hospitals.

Holly dialed Ildiko's cell phone with dread. My iPhone was going to green when it should be going to blue. I knew. You knew she was gone. I knew it was her.

In March of that year in Texas, there had been a person doing package bombs.

Tonight, a suspected serial bomber may have struck again.

In my head, I thought maybe somebody was doing a copycat of that.

So Ackerman wondered, were there more packages out there, maybe headed for other targets?

We started a process of trying to interview people who might be close contacts with the victims.

They set up a tip line. Hundreds of calls came in, including one from Stephen, Ildiko's business partner.

He possibly had information to provide us.

Stephen indicated he knew Ildiko well because he was Ildiko's ex and helped her manage the spa. He told the dispatcher he'd tried in vain to reach Ildiko.

We didn't know if the business was the target. We didn't know if Ildiko was the target. We didn't know if Mr. Veal was the target.

When they got to Stephen's house, their concerns felt quite legit, because some boxes had just been delivered.

This isn't a town where crime is rampant or things like this happen.

When things like this do happen, the FBI responds. The Bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Force mobilized. Special Agent Ashley Maracle was assigned to speak with the surviving victims. Lead Agent Nick Vicencia went straight to the scene.

We had a massive debris field, a huge crime scene, and we wanted to initially come up with an investigative plan and a plan to process the crime scene as soon as possible.

A bomber was on the loose, and other potential targets were out there. Agent Vicencia knew timing was everything. He set up a command post staffed around the clock.

Our team made quick contact with him so that we could make sure it was safe for him.

They had Stephen step outside.

Can they go inside and take a look at those packages? Please. Right, as you open the door, the packages are to the left. There's three, and they're in a stack.

Stephen sat with investigators in their car while the bomb squad went to work in his house. They were not devices. They were benign.

They were benign, right. So he had been doing some remodeling in his house, and he was getting packages with various items for remodeling.

Stephen didn't appear to be a target. So, was Ildiko? Ackerman believed? the answer was yes.

Based off of her injuries and our experts and the interviews with the surviving victims, it was more likely going to be a homicide.

This is murder by bombing.

Exactly.

Investigators asked Stephen the usual first question.

If you were going to try to figure on who would want to hurt her or her business, who would your best guess be? I cannot come up with a single thought for who would ever want to hurt her.

Of course, his own ties to Ildiko put him on the list of people to rule in or out. Stephen understood that and consented to a search of his home while he continued to talk about Ildiko.

She was always smiling. She had great advice for people. She, you know, she cared. She went out of her way to, you know, ease your burden.

Investigators were speaking with Ildiko's friends, too, and her story quickly started to emerge.

Bunny, look at it. It's a cute little bunny. Oh, look at the ears.

She was just beautiful inside and out. Ildiko was a well-respected esthetician who'd been recommended to Holly. How was she? Wonderful from the very beginning. Wonderful technically or wonderful as a person, or both?

They were a very cute couple, and they were in love.

You could tell?

Yes, of course. Just the warmness, what they have between them.

They had a son who was now in college. And along the way, something in the marriage changed. Eva wasn't sure what.

She would not give me her private life, nor asking me my opinion. That was her life.

Like Holly, Ildiko's friend and client, Sarah, knew about Ildiko's extramarital adventures. Did Ildiko's husband know what was going on in her romantic life?

I assumed so. She did make it seem like they had an arrangement.

Was Ildiko planning to end that arrangement? When Sarah saw her the morning of the explosion, Ildiko talked about a man she had recently started seeing.

She said, I want to be with him, I don't want to be dating all these people, and that she was going to move forward with this guy.

A couple of hours after that conversation with Sarah at her spa, Ildiko was gone.

When the explosion happened, he came down to the scene. He tried to ask if Ildiko was okay.

Those feel like the actions of a person who didn't have any involvement.

It felt to us. what we observed was a frantic individual looking for information.

Renilo said he was at work when his brother told him there was an explosion on Marablu, and one person had died. He said he wasn't sure if Ildiko had returned from Hungary, so he texted, asking if she was back in town. Ildiko did not respond, and that's when Renilo says he drove to Ildiko's spa.

Can we tell him anything? Did we see if her car was in the parking lot?

Investigators couldn't answer any of Renilo's questions, so they told him to go home to the house he shared with Ildiko.

We put a surveillance team on him right away, so we were watching his movements.

When Renilo made it home, Ildiko's cousin Eva met him there.

I asked him what does he know, and he said he doesn't know anything.

And then came a knock at the door.

Five to six, like a military style with a rifle. People entered the house.

Excuse me if I sound a little skeptical.

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48-year-old Ildiko Kronjak had been killed by an explosion after she opened a package at her day. spa. Investigators had ruled out any connection to those Texas bombings and now believed Ildiko was the intended target. The big questions were, why? Who built the device?

With an explosive device, they all have their unique signatures. The chemicals, how it was contained, how it was delivered, how it was gone off. So you're kind of working from inside out to try to find the person or persons responsible for it.

FBI bomb technicians told lead agent Nick Vicencia the device that killed Ildiko was a flash powder bomb. Hidden inside the cardboard box, Ildiko's client saw her open right before the blast. Agent Miracle spoke with her.

It was definitely rectangular. It was probably shoebox height, but I don't remember it being that wide.

Her recollection of that was very good.

As they continued to collect evidence from the debris, bomb techs were identifying the components of the explosive device. They found the jacket of a CVS brand 9-volt battery completely split. open. Cells from the battery were found lodged in the ceiling, right above where the bomb went off. Investigators believed that battery powered the bomb.

We were looking for anybody with experience with chemicals and electric fusing systems.

That's a fairly sophisticated piece of knowledge in both those cases.

Very much so.

Investigators needed to find whoever that was. The night of the explosion, what looked like a SWAT team showed up at Ildiko and her husband, Renilo's house. Nilo, as he was called, was there with Ildiko's cousin, Ava.

I asked them why you guys are here, and Nilo was very calm, but I kept asking them, and they couldn't give me any answer. They told me that we don't know anything, ma'am.

Then, says Ava, 20 to 25 agents went through the house inch by inch. The search continued overnight and into the next day. A news chopper captured the scene.

Okay, good. Oh, got them bringing stuff out. Ooh.

When it was over, did the house look like a tornado had hit it?

Yes, yes. It was upside down. Yes.

By now, it was clear to Ava Ildiko had been killed in the explosion at her spa and that law enforcement was taking a hard look at Renilo. Did you at any point think that Nilo could be a suspect?

Never, ever in my life.

I mean, in this country, sadly, marriages break up and husbands kill their ex-wives. I mean, that happens.

Yeah, but I would never, ever believe that that's Nilo. I would believe that the neighbor or anyone else, but not him.

Investigators wanted to know a lot more from Renilo about his relationship with his wife. Ildiko and her husband still lived together, but essentially lived separate lives.

They lived in the same home. They were raising a child together. They had dinner on a regular basis together.

But, I mean, Ildiko, was dating men who were not her husband, and he was aware of that.

I think he had a sense of it.

Maybe, but during his interview, Renilo expressed nothing but love and respect for Ildiko to investigators, and they found nothing suspicious in Renilo and Ildiko's home. This is going to be a very difficult situation. One day after the explosion, law enforcement finally released Ildiko's name. Ava stood outside Ildiko's place as a family friend spoke to the press.

This is a complete shock to family and friends. We are in full support of our public authorities to do their jobs in hopes of finding answers to many of the unanswered questions.

Who'd want to kill Ildiko?

I didn't think anybody would.

You'd never heard her express any fear of anybody?

No, but I knew that she had complicated relationships. I don't know. maybe somebody she was, I don't know what she was mixed up in.

Maybe Renilo did. When he spoke with investigators, he did share a couple of interesting details. There was a handyman named Max who had a key to Ildiko's spa. Renilo quoted Ildiko as saying Max would sometimes park overnight in the lot and sleep in his car.

So we definitely wanted to talk with the handyman.

When they did, nothing, alarming stood out. They moved on. Renilo also talked about a woman who'd been sending him angry messages recently. She was upset that Ildiko had gotten between her and her husband. Stephen Beal had mentioned this same couple.

Yes, and it did quickly.

Ildiko Kronjak had been in someone's crosshairs. As a result, she was dead. Now investigators had heard twice about a couple. Ildiko had somehow become entangled with. A couple that lived in Aliso Viejo, just a few miles from her spa.

Tell me about Gabor.

She had a little fling with him. Holly said Ildiko met Gabor in 2015.. They had an intimate relationship. as far as I knew. It was a complicated relationship too.

Correct.

Elizabeth told the agents a long, tawdry story about Ildiko's affair with her husband. About the shouting fight at Ildiko's spa. And about how Ildiko had tried to reconnect with Gabor. That's when the scorned wife, Elizabeth, texted the scorned husband, Ranilo. She almost destroyed my family.

Elizabeth was very forthright of her feelings for Ildiko.

She admitted she didn't like Ildiko. And it stemmed from an affair that Ildiko had with her husband. Correct. The paps gave investigators consent to search their devices and their home.

There was no evidence that her or her husband had any knowledge or materials to detonate a device in this manner.

You didn't find anything?

Nothing.

No evidence of bomb making, maybe, but Elizabeth sure seemed on the verge of detonating. Whenever she talked about Ildiko, she told the bureau they should have no trouble finding suspects, because the men in Ildiko's life were a never-ending revolving door. And agents knew they'd have to speak with every one of them. It doesn't sound as if Ildiko was very concerned for her own safety.

She didn't think there was anything to be nervous about.

Sarah, on the other hand, worried. And she couldn't help but wonder about a guy she saw Ildiko with the morning of the explosion.

She came out of her room, rushed, with keys and mail in her hand. And that's when the guy was starting to come towards us, and she sort of shooed him off.

What did he look like?

He appeared to be pretty tall, bigger, gray-haired. I asked her who it was, and she said, oh, just a friend.

Ildiko didn't share any details.

It was all sort of insignificant to me. It didn't seem out of the ordinary. Until later. Until you leave a place and a bomb goes off, then everything seems weird.

Which is why she contacted law enforcement. And soon, FBI agents were at her door.

They asked me to try to identify who I saw that day, which I could not do.

Did they show you any photos?

Yeah, but they were like yearbook size, like this small, really grainy, bad photos on a paper like this. And so all I could tell them at the time was it's definitely not him.

Turns out. the man Sarah saw that morning showed up at the spa after the explosion because he had lunch plans with Ildiko. His name was Scott Mullally, and investigators spoke with him.

He told us that he and Ildiko met at a casino a few weeks prior. He dropped her off at the airport when she went to Hungary, and he offered to pick her up.

Ildiko agreed, and so he picked her up from LAX the night before. They spent the evening together, and he drove Ildiko to her spa the next morning. And so there certainly wasn't any bad blood between the two of them? No. When investigators looked at the video from LAX, there, he was, with Ildiko, at baggage, claim.

We got the airport video. We saw her coming through customs.

They also saw that Ildiko wasn't alone. This turned out to be a man named Laszlo Szabo. Who is that?

It was a person she was off and on dating, and she went on the trip to Hungary with.

He and Ildiko flew back to the States together and parted ways in San Francisco before Ildiko caught a flight to LA and met Scott. Did you talk with him?

Oh, yes.

Laszlo told investigators he'd been in Hungary for the last few weeks and he hadn't visited Southern California in months.

He's like, God, I got this weight, you know, on his shoulders. And he's, like, really concerned about what's going on with the investigation. And so at that point, we decided to go to the police department. He comes down to our Aliso Viejo substation and says, hey, I'd like to talk to the investigators in charge of the investigation.

So Investigator Ackerman from the Orange County Sheriff's Department and an FBI agent sat down with Stephen. That conversation was recorded.

Real quick, before we start, I just want to, you're here voluntarily, you came and drove in on your own? Yes. And he just randomly starts sharing bits of information about the relationship and the business.

Stephen was a grandfather, now, a widower, with four adult children. He and Ildiko met in 2016, when they both swiped right on a dating app and then immediately hit it off.

We went away a lot. We were exclusively dating, you know, with one another. And, you know, all of those sort of texts that you send at 3 o'clock in the morning when you can't sleep, saying, you know, I miss you, I wish you were here, you know, pillows, not to say, you know, all that, right?

Over time, Stephen says he got involved with Ildiko's spa.

We both signed the lease together, you know, and we're building that business quite successfully.

And while their business appeared to be thriving, their romantic relationship started falling apart. About a year and a half into it, Stephen said Ildiko seemed to be hiding something.

I confronted her with some changes in her behavior. Like what? Well, when we first started dating, she gave me access to, you know, she gave me her sign-on credentials for her United account, numerous little things like this. And then she, at one point, just for seemingly no reason, she, like, changed her password.

Stephen knew full well Ildiko was married to someone else. But until then, he thought he was the only other man in her life. Now he realized world traveler Ildiko was also a frequent flyer in the world of romance.

The issue was, for me, you know, why and why are you trying to hide it? Yeah. Because the reality is, if she had said, she had come to me and said, you know, I really think that I want to, like, open up our relationship a little bit. I don't want to be exclusive. I want to, you know, date other men.

Stephen said, the path of their relationship reminded him of a song.

You know, when you wake up in the morning and you're, and you're humming the Carole King song, One of Us is Changing, or maybe we should stop trying to, you know, you know something is, is amiss.

And now it was too late. Ildiko had been killed by a package bomb that ripped open their spa. Stephen once again said he had no idea who could be behind it.

Like, your whole deal is, you know, means, motive, and opportunity. And I don't know people that, I don't know anybody that has the motive. Okay. What about the means? I don't know what's in my garage.

Law enforcement tends to pay attention when you tell them you could be a suspect in the crime they're currently working on. And investigators who were at that moment still searching Stephen's house had found large quantities of explosive chemicals in Stephen's garage. Stephen said there was a simple explanation for that. He used to make his own fireworks and was a long-time rocket hobbyist.

A friend of mine and I, we would build model rockets. And I started this years ago when my kids were little. And it got to be almost an obsession. And so, like, we built a 25-foot tall, 6-inch diameter, four-stage rocket.

It had been years since he built one, he said. And those chemicals were just sitting in the garage, unused.

When they do their analysis of chemicals found there, chemicals found in your home, would it just be a coincidence if it's the same? Again, I don't remember what chemicals are around in the house because I haven't taken them down. I haven't looked at them. I haven't thought of them. I didn't even know where they were.

An oxidizer, meaning a chemical agent that helps ignite fuel and cause an explosion.

Would someone with your type of experience be able to convert that into something on a bigger scale? I saw the devastation, you know, in the pictures and news reports. I have no idea how you would, like, put something together that would cause something like that.

Ackerman now had his doubts about that. I don't know what Mr. Veal was thinking when he came in there and talked to you, but if he was trying to get himself out of the spotlight, it feels like he did exactly the opposite.

He definitely put himself as more of a person of interest as that interview went on.

And Stephen Veal wasn't done.

He gives us a lot of these extraneous details to things that really don't make much of anything, except for kind of allude to what's going through his mind, maybe.

Like the idea he was about to reveal for a screenplay about an assassin.

I can't believe he's telling me this story.

Stephen Veal had walked himself into the Aliso Viejo Sheriff's Station, and over several hours, he had talked himself into more trouble than he was already in.

The whole interview is odd to me from the beginning.

Because why is he there? Right. The interview had veered into some truly bizarre territory. Stephen told them about a screenplay he had written for the show. About a soccer mom who was a part-time assassin.

She's very good. She plans every step of the way. She covers her tracks.

He also told several jokes. Then he performed a magic trick on someone in the process of investigating a murder.

He did the pull a coin from behind my ear kind of trick.

You're kidding me.

No, I was blown away.

Unusual? Yes. Then again, Stephen was also an aspiring actor.

How many more people are going to have to die before you do something useful?

Stephen had worked for years as an executive consultant, he said, and was on disability. now. He was apparently looking forward to turning this new, unfortunate set of circumstances into something positive, as he shared a conversation he'd had with his girlfriend, Valerie, after the explosion.

She said, you know, actually, when you get past all of this, you need to do a stand-up comedy routine about it. Because there's a lot of really, you know, potentially humorous anecdotes that are just wrapped up in the most intense life situations. Yeah. And, you know, the audience can relate to what you're going through, and it's delivered in a humorous manner. People love to be entertained.

Wrong again. By then, Ackerman was not entertained. He was convinced.

You said you have the means. And I look at the traditional motives of Homicide, and there's a couple motives there that stand out.

You've got a gut, too, though.

Yeah, in my heart, my gut, I'm thinking he's the one definitely who killed her.

They had no evidence linking Stephen Beal directly to Ildiko's murder. However, in the search of his home, investigators found what looked like sticks of dynamite you'd see as props on a movie set.

This morning, we learned 59-year-old Stephen Beal was arrested on suspicion.

The feds arrested him, not for murder, but for being in possession of unregistered destructive devices. Ackerman had some reservations about the arrest. He knew evidence in the case was still scarce.

I wanted to get to the bottom of a homicide and not arrest somebody for having some type of devices.

So you wanted to follow him around for a couple of days and see what happens?

I wanted to follow him around. I wanted another chance to interview him, talk to him again at a later date. Any variety of other investigative techniques is what I would have preferred.

And the bureau wanted him locked up?

Yes.

Then, about a week later, Stephen Beal made headlines again.

This was a very unusual move by federal prosecutors. They went to a judge over the weekend to ask that charges be dismissed against Stephen Beal.

Federal prosecutor Mark Tacla.

The FBI lab examiner could not rule out these items as possibly being used in rocketry.

So you end up dropping the charges? Correct. And he walks out of the lockup?

He does.

Ildiko's friends didn't know what to think.

I just didn't know if they were ever going to find the person responsible.

I was very upset. I didn't understand it. You thought that's the end? No, because if you watch J-Line, there's always an end, and that wasn't it. Oh, she's right.

It was one of those moments where my hair would stick on the back of my neck.

And later, a sting operation.

I had to sign documents so that they could go in and put cameras and listening devices in our room. It was a nightmare.

That does not point to the killer. There's not just two people in the room. There's like, what, 25?. Except 23 of them are watching and listening.

It was extremely stressful.

For some people, finding love is easy. Others don't have the same kind of luck, like Valerie Stone.

I've dated people who were still stuck on their exes, and that obviously doesn't work out.

In her online dating profile, Valerie warned those guys away.

You must not be stuck in the past or stuck on your ex, or, you know, something like that. Because I was so tired of it.

You want to weed out those guys who can't move on.

Exactly. I mean, who wants to be in a relationship with someone who doesn't really want to be with you?

Then she came across Stephen Beal's photo, and she swiped right. So did he. A few days later, they met for dinner, and she says they instantly connected.

It was great. We just, no holds barred on the conversation. We talked about anything and everything, complete honesty.

And right away, Stephen brought up Ildiko, his ex.

He was completely up front. He says, we're no longer dating. She's moved on. She's dating other people.

Any indication? he was thinking about her?

Not at all.

Stephen told Valerie he and Ildiko were still business partners, but that was all.

I was completely okay with it. They were friends. He had nothing but nice things to say about her. I never saw anything in terms of anger towards her.

And you were probably listening for that, weren't you?

You bet I was.

Only a month after that first date, Stephen Beal was at the center of the investigation into Ildiko's murder and had been arrested for possession of unregistered destructive devices. Okay, now, Valerie, reality check. Is there any feeling in your head saying, maybe this is not the guy I thought he was, maybe this is not the person I should be involved with?

Yes, the thought crossed my mind. I guess the thing is, is I've had so many poor relationships that, and this one was going well up until this horrific incident happened,

Desperate's not where I was going. Foolish might be where I was going.

Okay.

I also need to point out to you that there are other men out there, online and elsewhere, who are not targets of law enforcement.

True. He didn't have handcuffs on up until that point.

Because that point is the point where a lot of people might think to themselves, this is where I get off the Stephen Beal Express. Yeah. And here you are. When the government dropped those charges, Valerie was there to take Stephen home, still wearing his jail-issued jumpsuit with his belongings in his hand. And you and Stephen both think, that's it, we're done, nightmare over.

Yep.

The next day, says Valerie, she and Stephen were running errands when suddenly they realized they had company.

We're going down the freeway and I see an Orange County sheriff. Next thing, I know, he's behind me and his lights are on. I was just like, oh, God. I pull over. They're like, well, do you see who's in your car with you?

Deputies searched their car, while Valerie hit record.

Those are posters, you can open them.

We spent about three hours on the side of the road. Wow. And they brought in a bomb-sniffing dog and I swear there were probably 13 cars behind us.

They uncovered exactly nothing. To Valerie, it felt like harassment. And even though Valerie and Stephen were allowed to leave, Stephen's daughter, Charlene Brown, says she knew the search for evidence against her father was not over.

They want to bring whoever did this to justice and they clearly want it to be him.

For investigators, combing through that evidence was a huge task.

We continued to analyze hundreds, if not thousands of hours of CCTV footage, tens of thousands of digital media from both Illico, Stephen, Beal, other family and friends, business records, financial records, and it takes a long time to process micro bits of evidence when a bomb goes off.

Just sort of slowly building a case.

We wanted to do it right, yeah.

Then came what looked like a major clue. A deep dive into Stephen's financial records led to this purchase.

We found him buying a 12x6x6 box. And we were able to obtain CCTV footage of him buying that. That was at a store right around the corner from the spa. About a week before the bombing.

The box matched the description of the one. the surviving witness said Illico was opening at the moment of her death. Then there was this. Bank records also showed Stephen Beal getting cash from this ATM. When an investigator familiar with the area saw that, he remembered that just down the street was a CVS store.

That changed everything for me. It was very compelling. At one point you have to stop and say, when do the coincidences stop?

That's the battery and that's your bomber. Right, correct. What's more, investigators were now hearing stories suggesting Stephen and Illico's relationship was not at all like the one Stephen had described to investigators. There was one night. she told him she was out to dinner with Holly, and he apparently didn't take her word for it.

Yes.

Well, stories about jealousy are not evidence of murder. And if Stephen had trouble moving on earlier, that seemed to have passed. A couple of months after the explosion, Stephen certainly seemed serious about Valerie.

He wrote me a love letter, and at the end of the letter asked me to marry him.

Did you have to think about it at all?

Nope, I didn't. I'd moved into the house. I mean, I'd been through everything in his household. Socks, drawers, you know, I mean.

You'd done your own warrantless search.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I did my due diligence in the house. You know, I didn't see anything that was of concern.

You said yes right away.

I did.

Charlene approved.

I think she's good for him. I think he's good for her.

And she doesn't shy away from a guy who has already seen the inside of the lockup.

I said to her that if you at any point decide to walk away, not that it matters what we think, but none of us would blame you. I mean, if I'd been dating someone for four to six weeks and this all happened, I'll be honest, I'd probably peace out of there, right?

But she stuck around.

But she stuck around.

That loyalty of Valerie's was about to be tested. You get another proposal.

Yeah.

This one from some guys in gray suits.

Yeah.

And you had to say yes to that too.

I didn't feel I had a choice.

Excuse me if I sound a little skeptical.

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Valerie Stone and Stephen Beal were engaged. He gave her a ring, a diamond solitaire. Let's see it.

A little over a carat.

Very nice.

It is.

Sometimes an engagement is when people drop by with gifts. Not these guys.

They pull up in a black Suburban and ask me to get in. So I get in, and they tell me, we're going to go off-site. We need to talk to you.

It was the FBI. They showed up at her work and drove Valerie to a nearby park.

And they say, okay, leave all your electronics in the car.

Then she says two agents walked in one direction, while the agent in charge walked in the opposite direction with Valerie.

He has a file, and he shows me some pictures of the inside of the building after the explosion. And then I think there was one of Stephen buying boxes or something.

All of that's supposed to both horrify you as to what the crime actually was and also suggest that they have evidence that he's involved.

Yeah, yeah.

The feds were asking Valerie to become what they call a cooperating witness. You might call that an informant.

They were trying to get me to get him to admit that he is the one who packaged up the box and that he had used the box that he had bought to make the bomb.

Valerie says she believed that if she turned them down, her reputation would suffer. And she also felt it was the right thing to do.

I said, I want you guys to catch the person who did this, you know.

Even if that's Stephen?

Even if it's Stephen. I told him I didn't think it was.

But if it is, I'm okay with him being locked up.

It was such a horrendous crime that whoever did this to Ildiko deserves to be behind bars. And if it was Stephen, it was Stephen.

How would she bring herself to get the man she loved to admit to such a terrible crime?

I was like, oh, well, we're doing this Malibu wine hike.

Valerie says the FBI wanted in on the romantic getaway she and Stephen had planned, and they offered some free upgrades that aren't usually included in the resort fee.

And they're like, okay, well, we'll pay for the hotel. So for them to pay for the hotel, I had to sign documents so that they could go in and put cameras and listening devices in our room. It was a nightmare.

There's not just two people in the room. There's like, what, 25?. Yeah. Except 23 of them are watching and listening. You guys have fun that weekend?

Not a lot. No. It was extremely stressful.

Your boyfriend's thinking, this is great, we can leave all our troubles behind and have a nice weekend together. You're thinking, maybe I can get him to confess to a murder.

Yeah.

Are you a better or worse actress than you thought you were?

Probably better than I thought I was.

They also bugged Valerie's car and her phone. And it turns out they did have a gift, a necklace with a hidden listening device, to be worn the entire weekend. And Steven did not say, where'd you get that?

Actually, I had a reason. I said, oh, look what I found. I hadn't seen this in forever. I thought I'd lost it.

I mean, that to me is like you delivering for them.

I was trying. I mean, I tried very hard.

Agents Vicencia and Maracle were there for it. And you guys have a nice weekend?

No, we didn't really enjoy the weekend.

Perhaps because the itinerary was derailed. She brought up Iltico, brought up the bombing, tried to get him to discuss it. Correct. And he didn't really incriminate himself at all.

He didn't really talk about it at all.

The FBI wouldn't give us the tape, but apparently the operation was a bust.

I was doing everything within my power to get him to do something and nothing. No confession.

FBI agents continued to keep a close eye on Steven. Online, they found his acting reels.

I believe, though, that an actor has to have a life outside of the camera. Art illuminates life, but also life illuminates art. He spent more money getting classes and lessons than he did ever making any money from acting.

Welcome to showbiz.

Yeah.

What do you mean by that? So, when Steven was cast in the play 12, Angry Jurors, the FBI was in the audience. We were there, too, to watch the aspiring actor play the role of a jury foreperson in a murder trial.

Just remember that this is a first-degree murder charge, so if we return a verdict of guilty, the accused goes to the electric chair.

The bureau went to the play because agents were investigating Steven's disability claims. They learned he'd been on disability for more than a decade because, Steven said, he suffered from aphasia, difficulty communicating, memory loss, and an inability to read.

He was able to memorize lines and recite them, which was contrary to what he was providing on the disability forms, as things that he was not able to do.

He had to know he was still on the FBI's side.

Yeah, he did. And, yes, he was concerned about it. But you can't let that stop you from living your life, something he loves to do. I don't know, pretty interesting play that he chose to be into.

Maybe a surprising choice or maybe not a surprising choice.

Maybe a poignant choice.

Because the message of that play is how people can believe one thing, all of them, and then it turns out what they thought they believed actually isn't true.

Right.

Now, Steven Beal's offstage. life was about to take yet another turn. You thought this was over.

I thought it was over.

Heartbreaking.

It was just the beginning.

March 3rd, 2019.

I was still in bed. He kissed me goodbye.

Then Valerie's phone rang. Steven was calling.

And he's like, I've just been arrested. And then hands the phone to the special agent in charge.

This time, it was the charges and not the vacation that received an upgrade.

Mr. Beal was arrested pursuant to a federal criminal complaint that charges him with malicious destruction of a building resulting in death. The charge carries a potential sentence of life in federal prison without the possibility of parole.

This adds up to a murder charge in terms of what he's facing.

Correct.

What sort of got you over the hump?

The lab finished its analysis and conclusions of all the hundreds of pieces of evidence that we submitted to them.

It sounds like there wasn't any one particular thing.

It was sort of the totality of everything adding up. He's in shock.

And you must have been too.

I really was. There's like no way. There's no way they have a case against him.

And so days, weeks, months went by. Stephen Beal sat behind bars without bond. Valerie, once again, stood by her man. You've never felt like you were at risk by being with Stephen?

Never.

If all this ends with an acquittal and he walks out of jail, a free man, you still have no worries?

Nope. You believe him? Wholeheartedly.

You love him?

Yes.

Do you believe him? because you love him?

No. No, I believe him because I believe he's not a sociopath or psychopath or...

Murderer is the word.

Yeah. He's not a murderer either.

Proving that Stephen Beal was a murderer became the job of federal prosecutors Mark Takla and Anna Martine Salek. You confident you got the right person?

Absolutely. One hundred percent.

The case finally went to trial in 2022, four years after the explosion. Prosecutors reminded the jury Ildico wasn't the only victim. Two other women have for years dealt with the medical repercussions from that blast. The government played for the jury an excerpt of a poem Stephen Beal recorded for Ildico while they were dating.

I love how. when I dream of my life partner, the only person that I can see is you.

They told the jury Stephen Beal was obsessed and infatuated with Ildico, and when he learned of her deceit, he was humiliated. The government showed photos found on Stephen Beal's phone of Ildico's text conversation in Hungarian with her San Francisco guy, Laszlo Szabo. Prosecutors said Stephen found those texts while on a trip with Ildico just two months before the explosion.

And so the only reason that we could determine why he would take those pictures is so that he'd get those translated later on.

In those texts, Laszlo and Ildico are discussing plans to go dancing during Ildico's trip to Hungary. According to prosecutors, it was then that Stephen made his plan to kill Ildico.

He knew how to make rockets and fireworks, and those are the exact things one needs to know how to make to make a bomb. And he used that to end her life.

Prosecutors also showed jurors a video investigators found of Stephen demonstrating how to safely mix explosive chemicals when making homemade fireworks.

The advantage of this method is that, even if you're using highly sensitive materials, this is extremely gentle and will not cause the formulation to spark or self-ignite. That shows his expertise.

Hard to argue that the guy in that video wouldn't have known how to build an explosive device.

And could do it safely. You know, the person has to be really confident that they're able to put this thing together without killing themselves. And that is a special, special skill set in electrical and chemistry.

The government told the jury Stephen used materials he had in his home to build the bomb, including an oxidizer, which caused the bomb's distinct grayish-white smoke.

The forensic evidence was clear. The chemical residue that was found at the scene that was determined to be part of the bomb was from the same specific types of chemicals that Stephen Beal kept in his home.

Prosecutors said that just days before the explosion, Stephen Beal bought two items to complete the bomb package. A box and that CVS brand 9-volt battery. What are the odds that somebody else purchased a battery from that lot, available during that time, same kind of battery as was in the bomb?

I'm not a statistician. I can't talk to probability. But what I can say is that Stephen Beal purchased the exact same type, make and model of battery that the evidence shows was part of the bomb.

And because Stephen was involved in Ildiko's business and had full access to her schedule, prosecutors said he found the perfect moment to plant the bomb. And then he waited.

He repeatedly, for no reason that we could discern, was checking her appointment schedule and her Facebook account over and over on the day he knew she would be returning to the United States to the spa to see clients.

And there was this. Prosecutors told the jury. Stephen was searching for information online about whether a narcissist could beat a polygraph test.

And so that suggested that he's thinking of a polygraph.

And he thinks of himself as a narcissist. Correct. According to Stephen Beal's defense team, what that really showed was a massive case of tunnel vision.

The entire force of their investigation was proving Stephen did it, rather than finding out who actually killed Ildiko.

And they were about to tell the jury how the government's case appeared to be a strong one. But not if you look just below the surface.

One of the themes is that Mr. Beal was a jilted ex lover. It's a nice soundbite. It's great for TV. But the evidence directly refuted that.

Craig Harbaugh was Stephen Beal's lead defense attorney. He told the jury the relationship between his client and Ildiko Kroniak was complex. That even after he'd moved on, Stephen still cared for her and she for him. These texts were exchanged just a couple of weeks before the explosion. Ildiko to Stephen, miss you.

The strongest piece of evidence is Mr. Beal's total lack of motive.

He said there were plenty of others with a motive to kill Ildiko. People who weren't thoroughly examined, like Elizabeth Papp. The woman who despised Ildiko for getting involved with her husband.

Elizabeth hated her. Wanted her out of her life and made it very clear in all of her communications.

It got to the point where Elizabeth reached out to Ildiko's husband, Ranilo.

She demanded that he do something about it. Challenged his masculinity when he wouldn't stop Ildiko.

That was about a month and a half before the explosion. When Elizabeth took the stand, she said she had nothing to do with Ildiko's murder. Even though she knew that after the explosion, law enforcement would seek her out. And when they did, the defense argued. the FBI's search of the Papp's home was perfunctory at best.

The photographs are completely illegible. They're completely dark, in contrast to the hundreds of photos taken of Mr. Beal's home.

The Papps, particularly Elizabeth, were dismissed too quickly as possible. suspects said the defense. As was Max, the handyman, who had full access to Ildiko's suite.

She was reporting her fear of Max being there.

The defense pointed out to the jury that the cameras in the building were not working at the time. And a handyman would have known that.

So he knew he could get in and out of Ildiko's spa without ever being seen.

And of course, there was Ildiko's husband, who had some pretty obvious reasons to be angry with her.

The husband was aware that Ildiko was cheating on him while they lived under the same roof.

And as for the government's evidence against Stephen Beal, the defense argued there were easy explanations for some of it. For example, that 9-volt battery he bought with cash.

It makes sense that Stephen would have purchased that battery. Ildiko needed 9-volt batteries as a regular part of her business.

And the box the government said contained the bomb? Stephen was remodeling his home, packing up his belongings and moving them around. The defense argued purchasing a box wasn't unusual.

He used his Staples Rewards card, not hiding who he was.

The defense said the government could not prove that box had been used to make the bomb, despite one of the blast survivors saying it was very similar. And they said the chemicals the FBI found at his home were simply part of a harmless hobby, building rockets and fireworks. And as for Stephen's online research about passing a polygraph exam, the defense had an explanation.

Mr. Beal had been offered an audition to be a polygrapher. That search was within days of that audition.

Simply put, said, the defense, law enforcement got the wrong guy.

Mr. Beal is a warm, funny, kind of quirky, older man. Has raised children, has grandchildren, loves his hobbies, which, unfortunately, those hobbies made him a target of law enforcement here.

Seven weeks of trial, 66 witnesses. Now, Stephen's fate was in the hands of 12 strangers, the jury. Probably he did it, but I'm not firmly convinced he did it. Probably is not good enough. Probability is not good enough.

Now, this is what I think, and I have no.

Stephen Beal's life and Stephen Beal's art were on a collision course.

Okay, just remember, this has to be a 12 to nothing vote either way. Anyone not want to vote? All those in favor of guilty, raise your hands.

Here he was acting. In real life, Stephen was literally a captive audience, as the case against him was laid out for jurors, critics, who would have the final say. We sat down with three of those jurors, Marisela, Klaus, and Malcolm. He had the materials and he would have known how to do it.

Yeah, absolutely he did. And I think we all agreed on that. Those were some of the first things. we checked off, that. no matter what side he fell on in it, we all agreed that he had the means to do it, he had the knowledge to do it.

The question was whether he acted on that knowledge. That's where jurors struggled. They didn't disagree about whether Stephen had purchased a 9-volt battery, only about whether it was part of the bomb. To Klaus, there was no doubt that it was.

There's only one way something gets shot into the ceiling at that kind of speed, and that's if it's sitting right on top of the thing that detonates.

Marisela wasn't so sure. You were not convinced, ultimately, that the 9-volt battery was part of the bomb?

Not beyond a reasonable doubt.

And there was the motive, or lack of one. Based on what you heard in that courtroom, was Stephen Beal obsessed with her and was he so furious that she no longer wanted to be with him that he killed her as a result? It wasn't obvious from the testimony that he was the kind of person who would fly off the handle.

He was an individual that was trying to win her back, and so I think that reaction that you're asking about might not have been the best way for him to interact with Ildico, to keep her in his life. That's not who Stephen Beal is. Stephen Beal is a calm, calculating individual. Stephen Beal thinks he is the smartest person in the room.

Well, even the sharpest among us are sometimes tripped up by the complex details of the webs they weave. During that very first interview outside his home, you may have noticed Stephen was talking about Ildico in the past tense.

She was always smiling. She had great advice for people. She cared. She went out of her way to ease your burden.

No question, she was no longer among us. But up to that point, law enforcement had not yet identified Ildico as the person who had died in the explosion.

Eight to four.

Which way? Eight to four to convict. I said, probably he did it, but I'm not fairly convinced. he did it. Probably's not good enough.

There were raised voices. There was pointing. There was a little bit of... There was some acrimony. Yeah, definitely.

And then they're out forever. Not a good sign.

Not a good sign. Your mind is racing and speculating, what could I have done better?

Finally, jurors sent the judge a note. A hung jury. No way around it. What was that like?

Horrible.

I was so disappointed, just for her family. The judge declared a mistrial. For prosecutors, a setback. Maybe a temporary one. Was there ever any thought about whether or not you were going to go ahead and retry?

No. We were always going to retry that case.

For Stephen Beal, a victory. Also, perhaps temporary.

Acquittal would have been better, but certainly a hung jury is better than a wrongful conviction.

Stephen remained in jail, waiting for another trial. That began in June 2023.. And prosecutors again presented their evidence. The box. The battery.