Talking Dateline: The Man Who Loved Christmas

September 23, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In a small town in southern Indiana, a man named Harold Allen—known to everyone as "Peanut"—died suddenly after a brief illness. The cause was ruled cardiac arrest, natural causes. Nine months later, his widow Marcia got a security alert on her phone in the middle of the night. Two men were inside her house. She recognized one of them: a friend of her adult daughter Ashley. When police arrived, that burglar, Steven White, did something unexpected. Instead of confessing to a simple break-in, he told officers that Marcia and Ashley had poisoned Harold with a root beer float. The cat cams—cameras Marcia had installed to watch her cats while she was away—had caught the burglars on video. But what they really caught was the unraveling of a murder plot that might otherwise have gone undiscovered forever.

The man who wanted a family

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What you'll learn

1 Talking Dateline: The Man Who Loved Christmas — Timestamped Outline
2 (01:07) **Introduction and Episode Overview** - Blaine Alexander welcomes producers Alison Orr and Kim Crowitz to discuss "The Man Who Loved Christmas"
3 (02:05) **Who Was Harold "Peanut" Allen** - The producers describe the victim and his close-knit family
4 (03:36) **The Allen Family Bond** - Producers share emotional details about Harold's relationship with his brothers
5 (05:06) **Harold's Search for Love** - The family's heartbreaking awareness of Harold's vulnerability in relationships
6 (07:05) **How Harold Met Marsha** - The unusual circumstances of their meeting at a high school reunion
7 (08:24) **Early Family Suspicions** - The Allen family's growing unease about Marsha

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Blayne Alexander sits down with Dateline senior producer Allison Orr and producer Kim Krawitz to discuss their latest episode, “The Man Who Loved Christmas.” As police investigated a burglary at the Indiana home of Marsha Allen, they were surprised to uncover a much bigger crime: murder. One of the burglars told investigators that Marsha’s husband, Harold, who had supposedly died of natural causes nine months earlier, had actually been poisoned by his wife and stepdaughter using a root beer float laced with ethylene glycol. Blayne, Allison, and Kim discuss the devastating impact on Harold’s tight-knit family. They also share a podcast-exclusive clip from the body cam footage of burglar Steven White’s conversation with police and talk about his unique gift of gab. Later, Blayne is joined by Dateline assistant producer Jess Koernig to answer questions from social media.

Have a question for Talking Dateline? Send us a DM @DatelineNBC or leave a voicemail at (212) 413-5252. Your question could be featured in an upcoming episode.

Listen to the full episode of “The Man Who Loved Christmas”: https://swap.fm/l/dl_themanwholovedchristmas

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