Scoop: 48 HOURS on CBS - Saturday, October 20, 2012

Scoop: 48 HOURS on CBS - Saturday, October 20, 2012 AN ACTRESS IS DEAD AND HER PREACHER BOYFRIEND PRAYS FOR ANSWERS ON “48 HOURS: THE PREACHER’S PASSION”

Felicia Tang was a beautiful actress chasing Hollywood fame. Her boyfriend, BrIan Randone, was an inspirational preacher and one-time reality show contestant who said she was the girl of his dreams. Then, after a night of passion, Tang was dead.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2009, Randone summoned police because Tang wasn’t breathing. He maintained she overdosed on the drug GHB, which they both took before going to bed. However, police didn’t buy the story, Maureen Maher reports in 48 HOURS: “The Preacher’s Passion,” to be broadcast Oct. 20 at (10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

“As I walked in the bedroom – oh my God – looked like a bomb went off,” Detective Richard Doney tells Maher. “As I walked in the bathroom there was the victim lying on the floor, she was naked, she was laying on her back, her eyes were open, and she was staring straight up.”
Tang’s body was bruised, cut and scraped, Doney tells Maher, which Randone says was the result of convulsions set off by using gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB).

Randone and Tang met in April 2009. He was a born-again Christian, who used his own brand of religious performance art as a way to spread Bible messages. Tang got her start modeling for hot rod magazines and parlayed that into a couple of small parts in big movies such as “Rush Hour 2” and “The Fast and the Furious.” Two months after they met, she was living in Randone’s Los Angeles home.

He told his parents he was going to marry Tang. They never made it to the altar. Instead of exchanging rings, he was fitted for handcuffs by police who charged him with Tang’s murder. Police believed he beat Tang to death. He tells Maher he didn’t do it and it was a rush to judgment by police.

“There’s a proverb that says if you know the truth, the truth will set you free,” Randone tells Maher. “It’s a tragedy, it’s a nightmare.”

Maher and the 48 HOURS team report on Tang and Randone’s shattered dreams in “The Preacher’s Passion,” featuring interviews with Randone, his parents, police investigators, Tang’s friends, and two of the jurors who played a hand in the outcome of the trial that decided Randone’s fate.

48 HOURS: “The Preacher’s Passion” is produced by Chuck Stevenson and Greg Fisher. Sarah Prior is the field producer. Al Briganti is the executive editor. Susan Zirinsky is the senior executive producer.

“The Preacher’s Passion” is part of 48 HOURS’ 25th full season. It’s the third-longest running primetime series and has been the #1 non-sports program on Saturday nights for six consecutive seasons.