After months of delay, the tragic murder of 16 year old Micaela “Mickie” Costanzo by Kody Patten and Toni Fratto will be featured on the NBC news magazine “Dateline” on January 4, 2013.
Producers from the program have already conducted interviews the Costanzo family as well as the Pattens and the Frattos it is unknown whether either Kody Patten or Toni Fratto were interviewed for the program.
Costanzo was killed by the Wendover teens in March 2011. Both are now serving life sentences in the Nevada prison system.
It will be the first time the story will be covered by a major national network although the story along with interviews of Mickie’s mother Celia Costanzo and Toni Fratto’s mother Cassie as well as a jail house interview with Toni Fratto were featured on the syndicated talk show ‘Anderson’ starring CNN anchor Anderson Cooper earlier this year.
The program was originally set to run in early November, then postponed to December.
Given the horrific events in Connecticut last week Dateline producers may feature Kody Patten’s violent and disruptive behavior from his elementary school days to his high school years.
Just as mass murderer Adam Lanza showed signs of mental illness years if not decades before last weeks events in Newton, Patten was not an alter boy who suddenly went bad.
At least from the time he was 10 years old Kody Patten was considered a monster by almost everyone who had to deal with him with the exception of his parents.
“He was just an awful kid,” said one of his elementary school teachers who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “He attacked other students, used vulgar and obscene language. I couldn’t turn my back on him couldn’t even let him sit with the rest of the class. But the worst thing was that when you tried to discipline him his father Kip would come and threaten to sue the school. Kip would argue every single point of Kody’s infractions. Finally instead of suspending him for one thing a wrote out a list. I think the longest was 14 separate major infractions in one week.”
The younger Patten’s behavior was so out of control that he was taken out of the classroom by the time he was in 6th grade and by the time he was in junior high school, teachers actively sought to have him expelled.
“A number of Kody’s teachers, myself included, argued regularly that he be expelled to protect students. The administration seemed intimidated by his parents,” wrote one of his Junior High School teacher’s on the Advocate’s web page www.coyote-tv.com.
When contacted that teacher who spoke on the condition of anonymity provided a litany of the younger Patten’s more egregious and memorable offenses.
“This was junior high, pre-teenagers, I never thought I would ever push for the expulsion of so young a kid but he was unbelievable,” the teacher said. “Like I said in my post, his parents mostly his dad Kip fought for him tooth and nail. I am all for dad’s sticking by their sons but it’s a father’s job to raise a good man not a murderer.”
It is unknown whether the Patten’s sought any kind of psychiatric help for their son however the Advocate was able to confirm that at least by the time the younger Patten was a senior and perhaps much earlier he had been labeled with a learning disability.
“That is a major part of the problem,” said a highly placed administrator. “The way the state and federal law is written now it is extremely difficult if not impossible to expel a student if the parent vigorously opposes the process especially if the student is labeled learning disabled.”
The Elko County handbook on student discipline bears out that assessment in black and white. Students with ‘learning disabilities’ not only cannot be expelled but also cannot be suspended for more than ten days in any given school year and according to other school administrators not connected with the Elko District getting such a diagnosis is all too easy.
“It doesn’t take much,” said John Karas Director of the online high school the Beacon Academy. “Once they get the label and their parents still support them the only way to get them out is if they commit a felony and end up in jail.”
Patten came very close to that scenario about four months before the murder of Mickie Costanzo when he attacked his girlfriend/ accomplice Toni Fratto on school property and on video tape.
Dateline NBC, or Dateline, is a U.S. weekly television news magazine broadcast by NBC. It was previously NBC’s flagship news magazine, but now focuses mainly on true crime stories. It airs Friday at 10 p.m. Eastern Time and after football season on Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern Time.
While Mickie Costanzo’s murder has been mostly ignored by the national television media it has been covered thoroughly locally and on regional television in both Reno, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City almost from the moment the girl was reported missing.
In addition to the local media the story has also been picked up by most national newspapers and in the blogosphere primarily by politically liberal ones such as the Huffington Post and smaller evangelical Christian ones as well as the foreign Press primarily in the United Kingdom and Australia.
The common denominator in almost all of the non-local coverage is Fratto’s and to a lesser extent Patten’s membership in the LDS Church.
In Great Britain and in Australia and other parts of the English speaking world Fratto is invariably referred to as the ‘Mormon Teen Killer’ either in headlines or the lead paragraph.
Patten is now a resident of the infamous Ely State Prison, called by inmates “The Graveyard”.
According to former and present inmates Ely Max earned its name due to what they call the larger than normal number of deaths at the facility than other prisons.
“Ely State Prison is a place of death, stagnation, misery, pain, loneliness and indeterminate lock down. If you were to take a walk on one of these depressing tiers back here in “the hole,” you would hear many disembodied voices ring out, yelling in anger and frustration, trying to tell you how bad it is for us in here, in between the isolated confines of steel and stone.” Wrote an inmate under the pseudonym of ‘Coyote’ “…I can see why Ely State Prison is labeled “The Graveyard,” there are so many deaths there. It is a locked down, maximum security prison, all but half of one unit – the workers unit – which is on one side of Unit 8…”
We’re about to enter a foggy cloud of rhetoric, which will serve to delay any acoitn for months while protecting political butts. Lots of competing proposals for doing something, various levels of vagueness and new semantic constructions, serious discussion’, but no acoitn.It would be good if the Democrats could agree on a simple statement and put a stake in the ground’, hold it, and make everyone else react to it. My off-the-top-of-the-head one would be All the troops home by April. Or maybe National Guard units home by Christmas. I don’t know. Get the warmongers to argue why it can’t be done, instead of why, or whether, we should do something. But until the Democrats start banging a drum for a clear pull em out stand, the White House will draw the discussion into a morass of vague blather, where people like Lugar can talk a good game, but do nothing, while our troops keep dying.Sadly, I know that, as a Democrat, I don’t belong to any organized political party.’