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American Fork killing opens Dateline’s 35th season
Rob Shelton | Lehi Free Press
Police found Matt Restelli’s flip-flops neatly set by the front door of his mother-in-law’s American Fork home on July 12, 2024. Restelli lay face down in the hallway, shot seven times within about a minute of pulling up to the house.
He had driven from Temecula, Calif., believing he would be picking up his wife and children. Instead, his death set off an investigation that would send three members of one family to prison.
On Sept. 25, that investigation reached a national prime-time audience as NBC’s two-hour “Dateline” season premiere, “The Family Plot.”
Correspondent Josh Mankiewicz opened the show by describing American Fork as one of many tidy communities dotting the Utah landscape. Then he took viewers inside one of its homes.
Restelli’s brother-in-law, Kevin Ellis, told police he fired in self-defense after Restelli came at him with a knife. Ellis’ mother, Tracey Grist, backed him up. So did his sister, Restelli’s wife, Kathryn “Kate” Restelli, who told detectives she was terrified of her husband.
American Fork Police Detective Joseph Nordin soon began finding problems with their account.
“We’re a relatively small agency, so homicides are kind of few and far between,” Nordin told Mankiewicz. This was only his third.
The knife sat backward in Restelli’s right hand. But Restelli was left-handed, his mother told investigators, and one bullet had gone straight through his right wrist, which Nordin theorized it would have caused him to drop the knife. Nordin also questioned why Ellis was wearing a holster inside his mother’s house at 10 p.m.
“You can ask any gun owner, any cop, if they wear a holster at 10 o’clock at night and they’re home sitting around with the family, and the answer is no,” Nordin said.
Then came the clock.
Security video from a home across the street caught Restelli’s truck pulling up at 10:06 p.m. A neighbor heard the shots and called 911 at 10:09. Grist didn’t call until 10:15. According to KSL, prosecutors later argued she used those minutes to make sure Restelli was dead and to plant the knife.
Investigators also found an Apple AirTag in Restelli’s truck. Several of Kate’s relatives could track it and had exchanged texts about his location for weeks. KSL reported that relatives watched his progress during the roughly 10-hour drive to Utah, with one text placing him in Orem just five minutes before he reached the house.
Kate’s sister, Taralyn Fischer, told Mankiewicz the tracker was her idea, a way to warn Kate if Restelli followed her to Utah. Fischer has never been charged, and “Dateline” reported no evidence that she took part in the plot.
Restelli’s mother, Diane, described a very different picture of her son that night. He called her about two hours from American Fork, happy to be picking up his family.
“I would know,” she said. “I know my son.”
But some of the most revealing evidence came from Kate herself.
She recorded six phone calls with her husband the day he died. Mankiewicz suggested the case might never have been charged without them. Nordin described the recordings while testifying at Kevin Ellis’ preliminary hearing.
Restelli had wanted Kate to rent a car and drive home. Texts showed that Kate’s mother, Grist, told her no and instructed her to claim a sprained ankle instead.
Kate sent her husband the gate code. On the calls, she repeatedly asked whether he would come inside, assuring him that the front door was always unlocked.
Restelli sounded calm. Cheerful, even.
“I mean, you can hear her just eager for him to come inside,” Nordin said.
For Fischer, who had defended her mother and sister, the calls changed everything.
“It wasn’t until I heard those calls that I knew they lied to me,” she said.
Other evidence deepened investigators’ suspicions. Stephanie Slocombe, an online friend of Kate’s, said Kate told her on FaceTime the day after the shooting that Matt was dead, then added, “It’s okay. I’m happy.”
Grist’s phone also showed searches made less than two weeks before the shooting for Donna Adelson, the Florida grandmother convicted in the murder of her former son-in-law, Dan Markel.
Police arrested Grist and Kate on Oct. 29, 2024. Kate pleaded guilty in 2025 and testified against her brother and mother. She told jurors that she and Grist prepared the house that night by “putting blankets over the couch to avoid blood spatter.”
Fourth District Judge Roger Griffin sentenced Kate to two prison terms of one to 15 years, plus another term of five years to life. “Dateline” reported that she will be eligible for parole in 2036.
The cases against her brother and mother went to trial in 2026.
In January, a jury convicted Ellis of murder and obstruction of justice but acquitted him of conspiracy. In March, he was sentenced to 15 years to life, with additional prison terms to be served one after another.
Grist took the stand in April and denied any plan to kill her son-in-law. She also blamed Fischer for the sprained-ankle idea, which Fischer denies.
“I’ve never heard a mom before try to implicate one of her children,” Mankiewicz said.
The jury deliberated about five hours before convicting Grist, 60, on every count. In June, Griffin called her the “mastermind” and sentenced her to 15 years to life for murder. He ordered the terms on all other counts to be served consecutively and said the court would recommend that she be denied parole.
For the family members left behind, the damage extended far beyond the courtroom.
Kate’s father, Stan Ellis, lost a son-in-law and watched two of his children go to prison.
“He was a son,” he said of Restelli. “He was a son to me.”
Today, Restelli’s brother Mark is raising Matt’s children alongside his own. He had watches engraved in Matt’s memory for each of Matt’s brothers and sons.
The full two-hour “Dateline” episode, “The Family Plot,” is streaming on Peacock.
