NBC's 'Dateline' Puts Spotlight On 1998 Homicide Of Arlington Woman

ARLINGTON, VA — The murder of Arlington resident Andrea Cincotta, who was found strangled and stuffed inside a bedroom closet 25 years ago, will be featured Friday night on a new episode of NBC News' “Dateline.”

For the episode, which will air on NBC at 9 p.m. ET on Friday, “Dateline” interviewed Cincotta’s son, Kevin Cincotta, in his first network television interview on the case.

In a preview of the episode, Cincotta tells “Dateline” that he believed the Arlington County Police Department had “tunnel vision to the exclusion of almost everything else” in its investigation into the case of his mother, who was 52-years-old when she was found strangled to death in her Colonial Village apartment on North Rhodes Street.

The “Dateline” preview notes that police detectives immediately focused on Andrea Cincotta’s “significant other” — her fiancé James Christopher Johnson.

“Dateline” correspondent Josh Mankiewicz says in the episode that Kevin Cincotta thought there should be someone else on the suspect list. “Right away, I said the computer guy,” Cincotta tells “Dateline NBC.”

Finding his mother’s killer became “a quest that would take over his life,” Mankiewicz says in the preview.

Johnson told police he discovered Andrea Cincotta’s body in a bedroom closet early in the morning of Aug. 22, 1998, according to court documents.

Early in the case, Johnson became a suspect in Cincotta’s death. But then the case went cold, with nobody being charged in her death. Police officials eventually reopened the case in 2013 at the urging of Kevin Cincotta.

Last November, Bobby Joe Leonard, “the computer guy,” was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to killing Cincotta.

Based on information provided by Leonard, Arlington County prosecutors alleged Johnson had hired Leonard to kill Cincotta for $5,000. A grand jury indicted Johnson in the murder. But in a 2022 murder trial, a jury found Johnson not guilty.

In March, ABC’s “20/20” news show focused on the same case. In their telling of the case, the producers of “20/20” described the missteps that Johnson and his attorneys claimed that the Arlington County Police Department made investigating the murder in 1998 and that the prosecution made in bringing the case to trial in 2022.

In Friday night’s episode of “Dateline,” Mankiewicz also interviews retired homicide detective Jim Trainum, attorney Manuel Leiva, who represented Johnson at trial, and Chen Ling, the jury foreman in Johnson’s trial.