Meet, Marry, Murder - Season 1, Episode 30 - Pate - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[rain] NARRATOR: A young nurse goes for a run and fails to return. She was running without her phone and without her dog.
NARRATOR: There's a storm. An anxious husband calls 9-1-1. As cops search for clues, they hear of a marriage in trouble,
a husband with issues. Sadly, I think Thomas had a volatile nature. He did have a penchant for alcohol and drugs.
NARRATOR: Micah Rine's family had never taken to Thomas Pate. It hurts to know that she makes that choice.
NARRATOR: She had chosen the man claiming to love Jesus, but Thomas Pate had other loves too.
I think it became clear to her that he was having an affair. And she may have confronted him with it.
NARRATOR: He had charmed a naive woman, he had persuaded her family to accept him,
but there was a dangerous side to Thomas Pate that his wife knew all about. It was clear that Thomas and Micah both knew about guns.
[music playing] NARRATOR: Searcy, Arkansas-- this was where college students Micah Rine
and Thomas Pate met in 2003. Thomas was an interesting young man. We teased, and he said it himself that he was the biggest
redneck city boy that he knew, because he was from Atlanta which is a pretty good sized city.
But he enjoyed being out in the outdoors, hunting, and fishing, and just hanging out really by himself a lot in God's nature.
He's athletic, and so it matched up with my sister wanting to play basketball and be
involved in those things. [whistle and cheering] NARRATOR: Micah had been raised in a close-knit,
god-fearing household. We are a Christian family, and we focus on trying to walk what we talk about.
We grew up at Camp Dakota which is a camp about an hour North of our home town of Searcy.
We loved spending that time out at Camp Dakota and swimming, and going hiking, and spending
that time together. We wanted to be authentic and actually live our faith. NARRATOR: Christian youth camps, weekly prayer meetings, church
on Sundays-- this was the solid framework of Micah Rine's childhood. She led a rather sheltered life though, I must say.
It was a small town in Arkansas. It's a very home, family based atmosphere. There's not a lot of exposure to the underside of the world.
She was very obedient and was a pleaser. Very energetic. She was very talkative.
[music playing] She also was very driven-- athletically and academically-- and did
well on the basketball court especially, and she enjoyed running. NARRATOR: At the age of 19, she met
fellow students Thomas Pate. Micah and Thomas met through a friend group. He was trying to connect one of his friends
with one of her friends, and that's where that relationship started. So they connected and spent some time
together prior to whenever they really did consider each other exclusive. NARRATOR: His childhood had been very different to hers.
His was a more privileged type of upbringing I would say. His parents lived outside of Atlanta, Georgia--
a much more metropolitan, open, exposed to just about everything. NARRATOR: Even at this young age,
there were hints that Thomas Pate was not a model citizen. He had a basketball scholarship
to a another college initially, but he lost his scholarship, and he had to leave the school.
And that's when he became a student at Harding and eventually met Micah. He was more worldly, and she considered
him tall and handsome. She seemed thoroughly intrigued by Thomas. NARRATOR: Micah and Thomas had met in late 2002.
The following spring, the Rine family formed their first impressions of Thomas. We hosted a Bible study in our home on Wednesday nights
for years. We've done that for years. Micah brought him to our home Bible study I believe
starting in February or March. And that was probably maybe six weeks after they started dating.
So they would be regulars on Wednesday night then. So then it was just a matter of trying to get to know him,
and seeing what he was like, and what comments he would make, how he fit in with the other people that were
involved in home Bible study. Our impression of him he's very down to earth and pretty much what you see is what you get from him.
As he came to home Bible study, he had the right words and knew the Christian lingo, so to speak.
And so he would say some of the right things and do some of the right things. And even asking him to pray at home Bible study,
he would say what I would call, a typical prayer. NARRATOR: In hindsight, like his father
Dennis Rine wonders just how authentic Thomas was on those occasions. It was the game that he was playing.
He knew the right lingo, and the right things to say to try to impress us, but was he really living it?
NARRATOR: Micah's family had misgivings about her new boyfriend. But at first, they stayed neutral.
When they started dating, of course we were paying really close attention. And early on, when we didn't see that it really
appeared to be a good fit, we started paying closer attention. He's OK. Wasn't over the top impressed, but didn't
have any big red flags to start with either. We started expressing some of our concerns,
and the problem with that, though was that we couldn't really put our finger on what it was that we wanted to point
out that was not a good fit. NARRATOR: Even Micah wasn't sure at this stage that Thomas was the right man for her.
There was one incident when they were dating seriously two springs before they got married,
and we were on a ski trip. And it was just Micah and I on the ski lift. And she said, dad, if you notice any red flags with Thomas,
I want you to point those out to me. DENNIS RINE: And I said, Micah, you can rest assured I will.
NARRATOR: Before long, Thomas made admissions about his past that gave the Rines a more concrete
reason to be concerned. He shared that he had made some poor choices during his high school years and even the first year
or so of college. Part of that had to do with a lot of partying, a lot of drinking, some promiscuity,
even dabbling in some drugs. I believe that entered into him losing his basketball scholarship
with the prior college. NARRATOR: Terri and Dennis couldn't understand why Michael
would want to date somebody whose values seemed so removed from hers and theirs.
But Micah also believed in second chances, so when Thomas insisted that he no longer took
drugs or slept around, she and her family wanted to believe him. She says, well, he's changed.
We find out later again that that's not true. NARRATOR: Were enough alarm bells ringing
to stop the couple marrying? Just how bad was the boy in the life of the devout Christian,
Micah Rine? [music playing] Micah Rine was at Harding University studying nursing.
Her subject choice was no surprise to those who knew her. You don't take on that profession
without having a heart for the vulnerable, and for the broken, and the hurting. NARRATOR: Did Thomas Pate come across to Micah as a broken man
who needed fixing? Looking back, Micah's father thinks so. She would stay to try to help him.
And I think she even had a sense of, I may be the only one able to help him. NARRATOR: By this time, they had begun
to see how Michael's relationship with Thomas was changing their beloved daughter.
She was very bubbly, and friendly, and very outgoing to everybody. And then all of a sudden, she was very withdrawn,
she was stressed, she just started having these tendencies that drew her inward rather than being outward.
And she was very much an outward person. Now she was very private, but she was very outward.
Where if they went out, he'd probably say, you know, why aren't you dressing like that person?
Or why do you have to be so picky about your food? You know, things that would make her feel bad about herself.
I can easily see that happening, because I think a little of that may have happened
to him with his father. I believe Micah went into the relationship open, wholehearted, honest, transparent, and vulnerable.
And then this very shining, bright light in our lives, the light just kind of went out.
She didn't want to come around. NARRATOR: But Micah was smitten. In early 2004, a little over a year into their relationship,
Thomas proposed. It was about two years from the time they started dating till the time they got married.
Before Micah and Thomas got married, he asked my dad's hand in blessing. NARRATOR: Dismayed, Mr. And Mrs. Rine tried
gently to change Micah's mind. There was this moment where my sister called me and said,
mom and dad don't want this relationship to continue. When I point out the red flags,
because she was, as Terri said, invested in this relationship and she had been groomed in this manipulative relationship,
she wasn't willing to listen to dad's advice at this point. She was torn, because we are a close family,
and she was drawn to Thomas. NARRATOR: As their daughter's wedding approached, Terri and Denise Rine continued to question her decision.
Just the week prior to her wedding, we were just hanging out, and I said something to her
about the fact that I'm so disappointed that you're not going to have any children.
She loves kiddos. And she said, well, why would I not have children? And I said, well, Thomas has made it real clear
that he does not want to have children and that he has no plans of being a dad. Before I walked her down the aisle,
I said, Micah, it's still not too late. If you want to back out of this, I'll support you 100%.
I want what's best for you. And she just said, no, let's go with it. And so we did.
We just, we walked down the aisle, and the marriage took place. PATIENCE BRANHAM: I believe they both were enamored
with each other at some point. I believe they got married intending to live happily ever after.
After they married, they still lived here for two semesters, almost a whole year.
PATIENCE BRANHAM: And then she had received a nursing job with a clinic in Memphis, and they
moved to Memphis, or rather Bartlett, which is just on the outskirts of Memphis.
NARRATOR: Twice the size of Searcy, Arkansas, and sitting just 13 miles from downtown Memphis,
Bartlett was a big change for Micah Rine Pate. But at first, she seemed to take it in stride.
Micah graduated in 2005 and moved to Memphis shortly after and worked in labor and delivery at Methodist.
And then come about to work with us at MOGA. She was the loveliest soul. NARRATOR: Business manager, Melissa Conklin,
runs a women's health clinic in Bartlett, Tennessee, and she saw Micah blossom as a nurse.
Her co-workers would have said that she was the nurse's nurse. That she was the nurse that you wanted on your side, the one
that you wanted to be there to help you with a patient. [babies crying] She worked at an OB/GYN group here, and they were very close.
They were all women, they're all very close together. NARRATOR: In Micah's personal life, however,
things were not running as smoothly. I think they were a little suspicious of Thomas.
And Micah was becoming less happy, I'll say. They rarely went home, and it got to be less and less.
They started missing some of the holidays which were very important to the Rines.
The thing that I noticed the most was her making excuses for Thomas not wanting to be there.
There was an example with my parents' 50th wedding anniversary and my dad's birthday,
and we had a big celebration. And everybody was excited to come and spend a good weekend together.
Well, Micah came, but she had to make excuses for Thomas not wanting to come and have fun.
CASEY RINE: Thomas was always awkward around our family, but he knew about us giving advice to Micah
and trying to have her think about that a lot more than she did. NARRATOR: On the rare occasions that the Rines did get a visit
from Michael and Thomas, they saw glimpses of his troubled personality. Thomas had a hunting dog.
And he told the hunting dog to stay in the back of the truck. And then Thomas went off to do something
else working on a trailer. Well, the dog was still pretty much a pup. It saw Thomas go over there and work on the trailer.
And then the dog got off the truck and walked towards Thomas. Thomas screams at the dog--
I told you to stay on that truck! And he picked the dog up by the ears and threw it back in the truck.
Extreme anger, extreme violence. NARRATOR: There were hints too that Thomas's behavior towards his wife could also be volatile.
We would talk back and forth at least twice a week on the phone. I'd just ask her how things are going,
and she would hint at, well, Thomas had a good day. We were able to work in the yard today without any issues.
Well, we had a good day today-- we didn't have any arguments or fights. NARRATOR: Looking back, all the signs
were there that Micah had found herself in a controlling relationship. We don't know that he ever hit Micah
physically, but the yelling, and screaming, and belittling-- you're so stupid, why can't you get this right?
And then at the other extreme of saying, oh, you're so sweet, I love you so much.
It wasn't like bruises, and cuts, and scratches, and broken bones, and cigarette burns.
It wasn't that kind of domestic violence. It was the kind of scars in her heart, and her spirit dampened.
And all those things that made her who she was. Many of those were taken away. She was basically wearing herself
down trying to be the perfect wife, employee, and hopefully a mother. The things that we saw in her relationship
were very typical observations that you would see in someone who is trying to manipulate another person.
But at the time, we didn't know that's exactly what it was, because it's so deceptive.
NARRATOR: Micah's friends in Bartlett, Tennessee, had similar concerns about the kind of husband
that Thomas Pate had become. MELISSA CONKLIN: Micah kept us all very at bay. I mean, she was very separate.
She did have a co-worker that she ran with. And she would meet her at Micah's house.
And they would go run. She wasn't allowed inside the house. Micah took call at night and on weekends, and if she did,
then she couldn't sleep in the same bedroom as Thomas. After talking to coworkers, co-employees,
fellow church members, things of that nature, she was struggling with being who she perceived
Thomas wanted her to be. He just belittled her, and I think that his drinking didn't help that, because it would be in those spells that
he would drink, and things would come out of his mouth that it shouldn't. NARRATOR: Thomas had told Micah's family
that his days of drinking to excess were behind him. It wasn't true. Then one day in spring 2009, Michael discovered
alcohol wasn't his only vice. He actually spent the weekend with a young woman in Tunica.
NARRATOR: The family's fears about Thomas Pate appeared to be true. This was a young man who was anything
but the devout Christian, the changed individual, that he had claimed to be. [music playing]
Micah spent Easter 2009 with her parents. Her husband, Thomas, didn't join them.
She had come to our house for a weekend, and he was going hunting is what he said.
NARRATOR: The following week, she was back at work as usual. Now she went home one day and surprised Thomas.
And he said he was sick, so he wasn't going to be working any. So she thought she would go home and fix some soup
during the middle of the day. And when she got there, he was on the phone with somebody
that he seemed to be talking rather intimately to. NARRATOR: Back at the clinic, Micah
couldn't conceal her distress. Thomas's hunting trip Easter weekend had clearly been a sham.
I remember Micah seeing a provider in my office, being totally, totally distraught.
To the point of where I went and got her stuff and helped her out the door, and she went home.
We found it out in investigating for the trial that he actually had met a woman on a flight to Atlanta.
And he was indeed in communication with her and had met her for a weekend at the casinos
in Tunica, Mississippi. NARRATOR: Micah was devastated. But on the 28th of April when she celebrated
her 26th birthday with her family, she didn't tell them about the affair or anything else
that Thomas had been up to. Micah did not confide in us at all about any struggles that she was having in her marriage.
We were even unaware that there had been indiscretions with at least one other woman.
We were unaware of his promiscuity and his attraction to pornography on his computer.
NARRATOR: Micah returned to Bartlett after her birthday determined to make her marriage work.
Two days later, on the 30th of April 2009, her parents were about to go to bed, and the phone rang.
[phone ringing] We got a call that Thursday night, I think it was around 10:00, 10:30.
It was the first call. Thomas said, hey, do you know where Micah is? She's gone out for a run, she hadn't come back.
PATIENCE BRANHAM: She normally would walk her dog and go on runs by herself, because her runs were lengthy--
they would be like six miles. Anywhere from six to 12 miles at a time. Thursday night which was the 30th--
Micah worked late night. It was kind of a dreary, rainy night. That was not uncommon for her to go running.
It was uncommon for her to go running late at night, in the dark, in a rainstorm.
Where could Micah be? Where's Micah? You know, the dog was there, she wasn't there.
And he just didn't know. No, we haven't heard from her, but please, call us and let us know if you hear
anything of what's going on. And so there was at least one other call-- or maybe two, I can't remember-- but on the final call,
it was OK, Thomas, you need to be calling the police and start a search. We packed our stuff and headed to Memphis immediately.
It's about a two hour drive. At that point, when we got to the house, he had already organized a search party,
and they had been at it for several hours. PATIENCE BRANHAM: He'd notified people in the neighborhood--
her friends, her co-workers. Everyone was looking for Micah. Where was Micah? So there's this big search, this big hunt for Micah,
the evening of the 20th. We got to Memphis between 1:00 and 2:00 o'clock in the morning.
And so as soon as we got there, he said, well, she's gone out for a run. So I started running the routes that I
knew that we had been on. Different routes that we had run from her house around Bartlett.
NARRATOR: While her husband searched, Terri tried to work out what could have happened to Micah.
There were too many things that simply didn't make sense. One of the interesting things that Terri discovered early on
was Thomas had put out the trash that day. And in the trash were quite a few bottles of tequila
and I forget what else. And Terri asked him about it. Said, hey, what are all these bottles doing in your trash?
And Thomas said, well, sometimes people come by and just put their trash in my trash.
TERRI RINE: During the night, I ask Thomas-- it just occurred to me-- did y'all have a fight?
Did you have a disagreement, and maybe she's just left and spent the night with a friend or something?
He said, no, they hadn't had a disagreement. Nothing had happened. NARRATOR: A lead detective was also suspicious about Thomas's
version of events. The investigator's name-- Todd Halford. As I walked around the house, instead of Thomas
sitting or talking to anybody or talking to the officer, he actually followed me throughout the house
and made small talk with me while I was looking at different things, explaining things
that I didn't need explanation. Lieutenant Halford checked the weather reports against when
Thomas said she went running, and there were severe storm warnings with lightning and severe rain at that time when
she was supposed to be running. Heavy rain, heavy thunder-- most people don't go jogging in that even if they're training
for a marathon. As we were looking through the house, Micah's purse is still at the house,
Micah's phone is still at the house, her ID is still at the house. I mean, even when you go jogging or go to the gym,
you take your phone with you. NARRATOR: The following morning, 12 hours after Micah supposedly went out running,
Casey Rine arrived in Bartlett to help with the search. I drive to her house. And at her house, there's yellow tape everywhere,
there's police cars everywhere. And it starts to make me even more alarmed. I believe Lieutenant Halford came to the house
about 7:00 o'clock, and that's when he moved us to the police station to continue the investigation there.
CASEY RINE: So I go on to the police station, and the first person I see when I walk in is Thomas.
And I walk in, and we meet in the middle of the lobby, and we hug. And I'm crying, and he's crying, and I'm like,
we're going to find her, it's going to be OK. We're going to find her, it's going to be OK.
And he's telling me, I'm sorry, I don't know where she is. I'm sorry, I don't know where she is.
And that's the last time that I've spoken to Thomas. NARRATOR: In the meantime, word was spreading
of Micah's disappearance. We called husbands, we went and got four-wheelers, side-by-sides.
And we went to the Loosahatchie Bottoms to look for her. NARRATOR: The Loosahatchie Bottoms
is a remote, wooded area about the Loosahatchie River just a few miles from Micah and Thomas's home.
MELISSA CONKLIN: We did that for a few hours and came up with nothing. NARRATOR: Back at the Bartlett Police Department,
investigators were already working on the assumption that Micah had not simply had a fall
will become lost while jogging. The interrogations started at the police station.
One of my first questions for Lieutenant Halford was, why are you taking Thomas to this other place?
He goes, well, typically in these situations, the first person we have to eliminate is the spouse.
And so we're going to question him separately from the family. And I was like, OK.
And of course, the husband is one of the suspects. Almost 75% to 90% of the time that someone ends up dead,
the spouse ends up as a suspect at some point. NARRATOR: In this moment, the Rines
were hit with the likelihood that the daughter's husband had a hand in her disappearance.
That's when our conversation started to move to well, does he know something about it?
So that's when it began to sink in that we've got a problem. When we were interviewing him up here at headquarters--
without the door closed just a regular room, just sitting there talking to him--
any time we would ask him a question that was the least bit pointed, that would maybe position him
to give us an answer he didn't want to give us, he'd start dry heaving. Around noon is when we started to move towards,
I think Thomas knows something where she's at. So as that progressed, we became more and more concerned.
NARRATOR: At the couple's house on Foxfield Trail, Bartlett, police were asking the same question-- had
Thomas Pate harmed his wife? They take computers, they take phone bills, they take the actual phones.
CASEY RINE: The police uncover a lot of different things from multiple bottles of alcohol,
to a history of pornography. All through that search afternoon, more and more doubts
began to arise about, what's going on here? We're not getting the whole story. There's things here that don't add up.
And they start going through more personal items, and it turned out that Micah kept a journal.
The journal was very revealing. This journal was intended to be between Micah and God.
There was one entry in her prayer journal in February before this happened in April,
and she had a whole paragraph that spoke to Thomas's indiscretions and faithfulness.
NARRATOR: Through the journal, cops began to build a picture of the troubled days and weeks
before Micah's disappearance. I think it became clear to her that he was having an affair.
And she may have confronted him with it, and they were beginning to argue. And they were arguing, and I think
it got more and more frequent. NARRATOR: Micah's final journal entry would turn out to be tragically prophetic.
I was one of the last people that saw Micah alive. [music playing] NARRATOR: Presented with evidence of his infidelity,
his drinking, his wife's obvious unhappiness with the state of their marriage, Thomas Pate began to crack.
It became clear that he was more involved in the disappearance and the ultimate demise of Micah
than he was letting on. Under intense questioning, denying that he knew anything
about his wife's whereabouts, Thomas Pate demanded to speak to his father. And he's not telling the Bartlett Police anything
except for her leaving, she's gone jogging, he doesn't know where she is. And the father comes in and just wants him to tell
the police where Micah is. Just tell them where she is. He went from being very aggressive and telling Thomas,
you know, don't lie to me, tell me if you hurt her, tell me where Micah is. He went from that within a matter of minutes
to Thomas confessing. Around 8 o'clock that night, the police pulled me, and my mom, and my dad into the side room.
We found that Thomas had made the statement that he had shot her and left her lying in this low-lying area
that was real muddy and marshy, and during rainy season, it floods. NARRATOR: The area was the Loosahatchie Bottoms,
the very place that Melissa Conklin and Micah's other worried colleagues had searched for much of the day.
Thomas had taken mica there just a few days before. It was her birthday just two days prior to this,
and so we had visited with her on the weekend-- I had-- and said, oh, what did you do?
And she said, well, Thomas found this new place for us to go target shooting, I believe, and run the dogs.
But it's not very far from our house, it's just down the road. NARRATOR: Thomas had told detectives
that on Thursday the 30th of April they had gone out for another target practice session,
but that a terrible accident had occurred. According to Thomas, they would go target shooting out
there, and somehow there was a mistake, and he accidentally shot her in the back of the head.
The fact that he knew that whole time and was lying to us the whole time is so painful.
It's so painful, so painful. But we were just so eaten up with anger, just so mad,
that this man allowed her family to drive in-- her mom, her dad, her brother, her friends--
to spend this time looking for her, hoping to find her, for you to know all along that you had shot her
and left her at the Bottoms with ants and mud. NARRATOR: As Micah's family processed the news,
a police search party set out to recover her body. I personally walked out to where they found her,
and it is way off the road, in the middle of thorns, brambles, mud, leaves, and it looked as if he
had probably carried her there. Probably with the intention of throwing her in the Loosahatchie River.
Typically, if that rain would have continued-- and it did-- her body probably would have washed away had he
not taken us there to get her. MELISSA CONKLIN: Many bodies end up in the Loosahatchie,
unfortunately. But he couldn't make it quite to the river, so he left her there, face down, with a gunshot
hole in the back of her head. And the interesting thing is she's not wearing her shoes,
and she's wearing white socks which are not dirty on the bottom. And this is a muddy, muddy place where
she is full of dried leaves, dead grass, thorns, things of that nature. He will tell you that some extraordinary,
unbelievable that her boots fell off her feet, that's why she had no shoes on. She had all the same clothes that she had on when
she was at my office that day. NARRATOR: It was yet another hint, another piece of evidence, that this may not
have been a terrible accident. On May the 2nd, 2009 Thomas Pate was charged with second degree murder.
The only time I got a true impression of Thomas was when I was cross examining him on the stand
for that bond hearing. NARRATOR: Thomas succeeded in securing bail. As he awaited trial, investigators
set out to prove that Michael's death had been a deliberate act. Firstly, they re-examined Thomas's claim
that Michah had been shot as she wandered into the path of his gun. That would be highly unusual for Micah to do that.
The gunshot wound is in the middle of her back-- the back of her head. It goes through her ball cap.
And it's not quite a contact wound, but it is close. We spent a lot of time at a Christian youth camp,
and one of the things we do at Camp Dakota is target shoot. She was well aware of the safety issues involved
with guns and to not be in front of someone that was with a loaded gun. NARRATOR: Micah had plenty of experience with firearms,
and so did her husband. Thomas was very experienced in firing weapons. He was also experienced at being with other people who
had weapons. He went hunting all the time with his friends. And going through the autopsy, and seeing the crime scene
photos, and looking at the clothing-- which was a ball cap with the hole in the back of it--
and the blood and a little powder burn, the pathologist and ballistics experts believed that the shot had been fired at close range
and with some precision. NARRATOR: To them, this was no stray bullet. Other evidence considered were his actions
after Micah's death. There's no accident when you shoot somebody in the back of the head.
One shot with her own gun, and you don't call anybody? You don't call 9-1-1? That wasn't an accident, that's not an accident.
I think that speaks something to the manipulation in the heart. That's a very telling thing to me that's very difficult for me
to give up. He left Micah out there for over 24 hours-- wild animals, elements, it didn't matter.
And I do think that the evidence from the texting, the leading us on a wild goose chase,
all of those different things led to that this was more than an accident. NARRATOR: To further prove that there was the evidence
the police had found in the couple's home-- signs that their marriage was increasingly troubled.
The officers tracked back through his phone records, and there were many texts with another woman
who was from New Jersey. And then they got into the bills for the credit cards, and that's when they discover that there was a charge--
charges made-- at Tunica, Mississippi. Charges made for actually the slot machines.
He used the credit card to play on the slot machines and to pay for the hotel room that he and this woman from New
Jersey spent the night in. I believe that she caught him in his adulterous exploits.
I believe that she caught him in some lies. And as she realized what was going on,
I don't know that to be true. But in my mind, I believe that was the turning point that led to her death.
NARRATOR: Micah's loved ones waited almost two years for Thomas Pate's trial to begin with mixed emotions.
We wanted to hear what he had to say. We wanted to know why. Early on, he was offered a plea deal of second degree
murder and 15 years, and we asked our friends to pray that he would take that, and he did not.
It was a disappointment to us that he did not take the plea on the front end. He could have saved us all those months of grief.
We wanted to grieve the loss of our daughter. We wanted to get used to this new normal of having a daughter
that was no longer with us. Instead, we had to concentrate on all the stuff that was going
on in Memphis and make trips over there that were very emotionally laden. NARRATOR: On Monday March 7, 2011,
Pate entered an Alford plea. The Alford M says, I'm not confessing to doing this,
but the evidence against me is overwhelming, and so therefore, I wave the white flag.
So there's not a confession. There is part of me that felt some relief that this is over.
And so I say, that is God's way of saying, here's the best blend of justice and mercy.
We get to feel some justice that there's a consequence being paid for what happened to Micah.
NARRATOR: Micah Rine went into her marriage believing in the choice she was making, and her faith gave her comfort
when things began to go wrong. Micah's trust in Thomas was misplaced. Micah was stubborn.
Micah had a very willful personality, and so I do believe that she was trying to make it work.
Even though the marriage was pretty bad, she kept her faithfulness and her love for God.
And that lets us live with hope. There will be a day when I'll see Micah again because of the resurrection of Jesus.
[music playing]

Micah Rine was a good Christian girl, and she thought her husband Thomas Pate was equally devoted to God. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Though wedded couples vow to stay together until death do they part, this new true crime series looks at what happens when a groom or bride causes their beloved's death.

Brief Summary

Micah Rine's disappearance and murder reveal a troubled marriage with Thomas Pate, leading to his arrest and Alford plea.

Key points

The Troubling Relationship. Micah's relationship with Thomas raises concerns among her family and friends.
Signs of Trouble. Micah's family notices red flags in her relationship with Thomas.
A Young Nurse Goes Missing. A young nurse goes for a run and fails to return, sparking a frantic search.
The Search for Micah. As the search for Micah intensifies, questions about her relationship arise.
A Disturbing Discovery. Terri finds bottles of tequila in the trash, raising suspicions about Thomas.
Micah's Disappearance. Micah goes missing after a run during a severe storm, raising immediate concerns.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He had charmed a naive woman.

Narrator describes Thomas's manipulation of Micah.

1:13WatchJun 8, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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