Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in
Speaker 2: an effort to raise public awareness invite witnesses to come
Speaker 2: forward and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated
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Speaker 2: point to the challenges of verifying facts inherent in cold cases.
Speaker 2: We remind listeners that everyone has presumed innocent until proven
Speaker 2: guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast
Speaker 2: is intended to state or imply that anyone who has
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: Sometime after ten pm on April twenty first, two thousand
Speaker 3: and six, twenty one year old college student Nina Ingram
Speaker 3: was brutally murdered inside her apartment, Unit number one at
Speaker 3: the Law Quad Complex in Fayettvile, Arkansas. The cause of
Speaker 3: death was ligature strangulation, and the Arkansas State Crime Lab
Speaker 3: ruled the death a homicide. Despite the fact that detectives
Speaker 3: interviewed dozens of Nina's friends, co workers, and her significant other,
Speaker 3: they had no viable suspects for years. One big question
Speaker 3: was how did Nina's killer get access to her apartment.
Speaker 1: One of the theories that police.
Speaker 3: Had early on was that Nina's killer rushed her at
Speaker 3: her apartment door and pushed her inside when she put
Speaker 3: her key into the door, which could explain why none
Speaker 3: of the neighbors who police spoke to reported hearing screams
Speaker 3: on the night of April twenty first. But Nina's door
Speaker 3: was locked from the inside, her keys, purse, and all
Speaker 3: of her belongings, including her cell phone, were with her,
Speaker 3: and there was no sign of forced entry. She was
Speaker 3: violently strangled, which must have taken several minutes, and yet
Speaker 3: there was no sign of anything taken from.
Speaker 1: Her residence or of sexual assault.
Speaker 3: So if Nina's killer did force their way in, that
Speaker 3: would mean that they either locked the door behind them
Speaker 3: or locked the door from the inside and then went
Speaker 3: out another way, probably through the unlocked front window. But
Speaker 3: if they did that, that would mean that they carefully
Speaker 3: replaced the screen and pulled the window down to the
Speaker 3: exact same spot where it was opened before. The Fayetteville
Speaker 3: Police Department considered this a cold case, one of the
Speaker 3: only unsolved cases since the nineteen seventies, but then in
Speaker 3: twenty twelve, they arrested and charged twenty six year old
Speaker 3: Rico Tavarius Cone with Nina's murder, but the case against
Speaker 3: Rico Cone was not as solid as it appeared to
Speaker 3: be on the surface. He spent over three years behind bars,
Speaker 3: and then the case against him was dismissed.
Speaker 1: Three years later.
Speaker 3: In twenty eighteen, Rico filed a civil lawsuit against the
Speaker 3: Fayetteville Police Department, detectives, and employees at the Arkansas State
Speaker 3: Crime Lab, who he alleged violated his civil rights. The
Speaker 3: allegations made in Rico Cohne's lawsuit are obviously only one
Speaker 3: side of this story, but it is a completely different
Speaker 3: story than the one that has been put out, at
Speaker 3: least so far, by the fate of a police department.
Speaker 3: The lawsuit claims that there were several people of interests
Speaker 3: who police interviewed over the years, people who were, according
Speaker 3: to the lawsuit, potential suspects. The lawsuit alleges that these
Speaker 3: potential suspects were overlooked. This case is still unsolved. The
Speaker 3: person who murdered Nina Ingram has never been arrested or charged,
Speaker 3: so this person is still out there and we have
Speaker 3: access to part of this case file through a Foyer request.
Speaker 3: Could the clues to the killer's identity be in this
Speaker 3: case file?
Speaker 1: I'm Catherine Townsend.
Speaker 3: Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast,
Speaker 3: Helen Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as
Speaker 3: a small town where.
Speaker 1: Murder never happens.
Speaker 3: I have received hundreds of messages from people all around
Speaker 3: the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's
Speaker 3: affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have
Speaker 3: a case you'd like me and my team to look into,
Speaker 3: you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
Speaker 3: Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six
Speaker 3: one four or five. That's six seven eight seven four
Speaker 3: four six one four or five, or you can send
Speaker 3: us a message on Instagram at Helen Gonepod. This is
Speaker 3: Helen Gone Murder Line. Rico's lawsuit, and again this claim
Speaker 3: is just one side of the story, alleged that multiple
Speaker 3: and credible direct reports and evidence had been submitted to
Speaker 3: the Fayetful Police Department and other law enforcement agencies over
Speaker 3: the years, but the lawsuit alleges that detectives ignored this evidence. Instead,
Speaker 3: they laser focused on Rico and quote missed multiple opportunities
Speaker 3: to investigate and perhaps actually solve this unsolved crime end quote,
Speaker 3: So they were chasing what the lawsuit called a wrongful
Speaker 3: and unconstitutional conviction against Rico. The lawsuit alleges that the
Speaker 3: arrest warrant was obtained under fraudulent pretenses because the police
Speaker 3: claimed they had three independent witnesses, but in fact, the
Speaker 3: lawsuit pointed out all they had was a single person,
Speaker 3: Randy Applewhite, because the second person Brenda case was a
Speaker 3: friend of Randy's and she was repeating what Randy told her. Now,
Speaker 3: the arrest warrant claimed that there was a third person,
Speaker 3: an ex girlfriend of Rigo's named Kathleen Slaughter. The warrant
Speaker 3: stated that Kathleen had shared intimate details about Nina's homicide
Speaker 3: with detectives, but the lawsuit said.
Speaker 1: That information was incorrect.
Speaker 3: The lawsuit says that this third person was quote never
Speaker 3: specifically or sufficiently identified, and never existed at all, conclusory,
Speaker 3: at best, fabricated at worse end quote. These are serious allegations. Basically,
Speaker 3: the lawsuit claimed that the police attempted to get an
Speaker 3: arrest warrant, but the prosecuting attorney would not grant that
Speaker 3: warrant because the evidence was insufficient. So the lawsuit stated
Speaker 3: that after that police went back to the prosecuting attorney
Speaker 3: with essentially exactly the same evidence, but now there were
Speaker 3: three people instead of just one, and this time the
Speaker 3: warrant was granted. Rico's attorney, Tony Pirani, claimed that on Wednesday,
Speaker 3: January TEWOD twenty fourteen, he and the rest of the
Speaker 3: defense team met with Detective Carlton, the lead detective on
Speaker 3: this case, Detective Brooks, and the prosecuting attorney and his
Speaker 3: chief deputy at the Fayeteville Police Department. They were there
Speaker 3: to review the physical evidence still in the police department's possession.
Speaker 3: Their purpose there was to figure out the current status
Speaker 3: of all DNA testing, to figure out what had been tested,
Speaker 3: what the results were, and what the communication was between
Speaker 3: the Fayetful Police Department and the Arkansas State Crime Lab
Speaker 3: regarding this case. Two days later, Rico's attorneys had another
Speaker 3: meeting with personnel at the Arkansas State Crime Lab. Now,
Speaker 3: the lawsuit states that during this meeting they realized there
Speaker 3: were irregularities in the testing and procedures in this case.
Speaker 3: They said some pieces of evidence in Nina's case had
Speaker 3: not been properly labeled or tested, and that safeguards had
Speaker 3: been failed in regards to DNA tape lifts that were
Speaker 3: done from Nina's clothing. On April twenty six, twenty twelve,
Speaker 3: Officer Carlton called Brenda Case later labeled Confidential Informant IE
Speaker 3: in the search warrant documents, She told defendant Carlton that
Speaker 3: her friend Randy Applewhite had a detailed account of the
Speaker 3: Nina Ingram homicide allegedly from Rico Cone.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Rico Cone allegedly told Randy that he was at the
Speaker 3: Law Couad apartments to buy marijuana, that he saw Nina
Speaker 3: in the parking lot, and that he hit on her,
Speaker 3: and that Nina turned him down. Brenda Kay said that
Speaker 3: Randy told her Rico came back later and went to
Speaker 3: Nina's apartment, using the excuse that he needed to borrow something.
Speaker 3: He knocked on the door, Nina opened the door and
Speaker 3: then tried to shut it, but it failed to close
Speaker 3: all the way, and at that point Rico entered Nina's
Speaker 3: apartment and strangled her to death. So Randy Applewhite became
Speaker 3: Confidential Informant number two. But Rico's lawsuit claims that Randy's
Speaker 3: story did change over time, and that the second time
Speaker 3: that Detective Carlton spoke to Randy, on May first, twenty twelve, quote,
Speaker 3: she had already significantly changed her own reported timeline, substantially
Speaker 3: altering her earlier story, which should have given an early
Speaker 3: clue that something was amiss end quote. The lawsuit also
Speaker 3: alleges that Detective Carlton helped Randy apple White financially, that
Speaker 3: he encouraged her to contact crime stoppers so she could
Speaker 3: collect the cash reward if she continued to cooperate, which
Speaker 3: she did, and the lawsuit claimed that Detective Carlton, in
Speaker 3: what they called a highly unusual move, destroyed his own
Speaker 3: investigative field notes. Rico's defense attorneys were preparing for his trial,
Speaker 3: so they contacted Randy apple White, and on December seventeenth,
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen, according to the lawsuit, when Rico's legal team
Speaker 3: spoke to Randy, she told them she did not believe
Speaker 3: that Rico was guilty of the murder. The civil lawsuit
Speaker 3: also claimed that Randy said she was quote no longer
Speaker 3: certain exactly what, if anything, she recalled Rico, ever having
Speaker 3: said regarding any alleged involvement in the Ingram homicide, and
Speaker 3: that she wanted no part in a criminal prosecution which
Speaker 3: could potentially see Rico convicted of capital murder and sentenced
Speaker 3: to death end quote. The lawsuit alleges that on several
Speaker 3: occasions that Detective Carlton gave Randy apple White money, including
Speaker 3: thirty five dollars in gas money on May third, twenty twelve,
Speaker 3: and also a hotel room that he booked for her
Speaker 3: and her children for two nights at the Clarion Inn
Speaker 3: for one hundred and twenty four dollars and fifty eight cents. Now,
Speaker 3: this apparently happened after Detective Carlton got a call from
Speaker 3: Randy apple White alleging that Rico had assaulted her. After
Speaker 3: that incident, they did DNA testing on Randy's shirt and
Speaker 3: they found no match to Rico Cone. During this time,
Speaker 3: detectives were doing a deep dive into Rico Cone's history
Speaker 3: and his employment record. They were conducting follow up calls
Speaker 3: and visits with current and former residents of the Law
Speaker 3: Quad apartments.
Speaker 1: While this was going on.
Speaker 3: On May fourteenth, twenty twelve, Rico Cone got wind of
Speaker 3: the police investigation against him, and that's when, according to
Speaker 3: his attorney, He decided to voluntarily talk to police because,
Speaker 3: according to the civil lawsuit, Rico wanted to be cleared.
Speaker 3: At this interview, police gave Rico a doctor pepper to
Speaker 3: drink after he said he was thirsty. Then Detective Carlton
Speaker 3: told Rico that they had taken a DNA sample from
Speaker 3: that doctor Pepper camp and that they had matched the
Speaker 3: DNA on it to a DNA sample taken from the
Speaker 3: crime scene, meaning the detective told Rico that Rico had
Speaker 3: been inside Nina Ingram's apartment. This, however, was not true.
Speaker 3: I want to point out by the way that we
Speaker 3: can't know the inner workings of Detective Carlton's mind at
Speaker 3: this point, but it is not illegal for detectives to
Speaker 3: light to suspects. Often it's encouraged. I've actually taken the
Speaker 3: read Interrogation seminar as part of my private investigator training.
Speaker 3: That's the same one the police take, and in that
Speaker 3: seminar they actually teach you how to lie. But Rico
Speaker 3: Cone's civil lawsuit alleges that the police didn't stop there.
Speaker 3: The lawsuit alleges that not only was the case against
Speaker 3: Rico Cone weaked to nonexistent, but that the judge who
Speaker 3: issued the search warrant, and the public were actually being misled.
Speaker 3: They were being told that Rico Cone was the only
Speaker 3: Bible suspect, But in fact, as we got into last week,
Speaker 3: Rico Cone was not the only man questioned, and there's
Speaker 3: nothing about Rico Cone in the case by up to
Speaker 3: the year two thousand and eight, at least nothing that's
Speaker 3: been publicly released via FOI request. I could not find
Speaker 3: any mention of Rigo Cone in the pieces of the
Speaker 3: case file that we were given, though again we can't
Speaker 3: be sure that we have every document because much later
Speaker 3: after the case against Rigo Cone was dismissed, Rico Cone's
Speaker 3: entire criminal case was sealed by a judge. There is
Speaker 3: no mention of Rico Cone's name in connection with the
Speaker 3: Nina Ingram case anywhere in the Arkansas court system. After that,
Speaker 3: Nina's case went cold again. And while of course we
Speaker 3: can't know for sure what was happening behind the scenes
Speaker 3: of the investigation, publicly, the statements made by police appeared
Speaker 3: to indicate they believed they did have the right person,
Speaker 3: but they did not have enough evidence to prosecute Rigo Cone.
Speaker 3: They had one year to refile charges, but they never did,
Speaker 3: which means Nina's killer was.
Speaker 1: Still out there.
Speaker 3: One of the things that police were trying to figure
Speaker 3: out early on was was this a random attack or
Speaker 3: someone whom Nina knew, because even though everyone they talked
Speaker 3: to said Nina was this super nice person and they
Speaker 3: couldn't imagine anyone would want to hurt her, the fact
Speaker 3: is someone did brutally strangle her, and her cell phone
Speaker 3: was in her pocket, She had no defensive wounds on
Speaker 3: her hands, and she was not sexually assaulted. Also, her
Speaker 3: purse was found near her body with money inside it,
Speaker 3: and nothing obvious was taken from her apartment, so, at
Speaker 3: least on the surface, the motive did not appear to
Speaker 3: be robbery or sexual assault. And I keep coming back
Speaker 3: to the locked door because I believe it could.
Speaker 1: Be a crucial clue.
Speaker 3: When Nina's brother, Noah and his roommate Chad got to
Speaker 3: her apartment the day her body was found, the door
Speaker 3: was double locked. Her brother had to crawl in through
Speaker 3: an open window next to the door, then he unlocked
Speaker 3: the regular.
Speaker 1: Lock and the dead bowl.
Speaker 3: So if the killer left through the door, how did
Speaker 3: they lock it behind themselves?
Speaker 1: Police asked several people about.
Speaker 3: Nina's keys, including Nina's boyfriend, Josh Stewart.
Speaker 1: We talked to Josh.
Speaker 3: He said that he met Nina in March of two
Speaker 3: thousand and five when they started working at the same Walmart.
Speaker 3: They started dating later that summer.
Speaker 4: There's a new store that's being open and Rogers Arkansas.
Speaker 4: We were helping you get that store set up and
Speaker 4: so met her at that time, but we didn't start
Speaker 4: dating more over the summer. By midsummer May of late summer,
Speaker 4: say I was bye. We started dating, So we didn't
Speaker 4: date for very long. At the most seven eight months
Speaker 4: we were seeing each other exclusively. You know, we have
Speaker 4: started talking about getting the place together because we spend
Speaker 4: our time together. Anyway, She spent a lot of time
Speaker 4: at my apartment changedly move along grade.
Speaker 3: Josh said that he did not have a key to
Speaker 3: her apartment, and even though she had a key to
Speaker 3: his place, and even though they regularly switch vehicles, He
Speaker 3: said they did this because he had to commute for work.
Speaker 3: He worried that his older truck wouldn't make it all
Speaker 3: the way to Bentonville, so on the days he had
Speaker 3: to make that drive, Nina would lend him her two
Speaker 3: thousand and two Toyota Corolla.
Speaker 1: Josh told detectives he.
Speaker 3: Had not actually been inside Nina's apartment for a couple
Speaker 3: of months. Their routine was she would get off work,
Speaker 3: usually shower, and then come to his place to hang out.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they would go out when she came to his place.
Speaker 3: Sometimes she would stay over there. Sometimes she would go
Speaker 3: back home, but he pretty much never stayed at her place.
Speaker 3: He also told detectives that Nina often felt he would
Speaker 3: get angry with her if she didn't stay over. In
Speaker 3: two thousand and six, Josh told detectives that his relationship
Speaker 3: with Nina had been going great. He said Nina planned
Speaker 3: to move in with him when her lease was up.
Speaker 3: He said she was easy going and they got along
Speaker 3: super well, that they came from similar hard working family backgrounds,
Speaker 3: and that they had shared values. They were both working
Speaker 3: their way through college. He said, I was going to
Speaker 3: marry that girl. He cried as he told detectives quote,
Speaker 3: it's the best relationship that I've ever had. Police asked
Speaker 3: about the keys several times. Josh clarified that his truck
Speaker 3: keys were on a removable ring, so when they swapped vehicles.
Speaker 3: He said he would take the truck keys on their
Speaker 3: little silver ring and give them to Nina and vice versa,
Speaker 3: so that allowed them to swap vehicle keys without swapping
Speaker 3: the entire key ring. Police also asked Josh if Nina
Speaker 3: had noticed anything at work or at home if there
Speaker 3: was anyone who would want to hurt her. Josh said
Speaker 3: not at work, but he said Nina had told him
Speaker 3: about some guys at her apartment complex who were cat
Speaker 3: calling her. He told detectives this happened five days before
Speaker 3: Nina's murder on Easter Sunday, April sixteenth, two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: While Josh said he hadn't been inside Nina's apartment in months,
Speaker 3: he said he had waited for Nina in the parking
Speaker 3: lot of her complex on Easter Sunday, April sixteenth, two
Speaker 3: thousand and six. He said on that day, both he
Speaker 3: and Nina had the day off. He said they hung
Speaker 3: out together and went to Walmart to buy some stuff.
Speaker 3: After that, they swung by her apartment complex so she
Speaker 3: could run inside and change before they went out to eat.
Speaker 3: Josh said that while he was waiting for Nina in
Speaker 3: the law Quad parking lot, he noticed two or three
Speaker 3: young men, who he had described a police as young
Speaker 3: male kids aged fourteen to fifteen years old, and at
Speaker 3: least one of them driving a truck. He said that
Speaker 3: Nina had told him on that day that one of
Speaker 3: these guys had been cat calling her and called her
Speaker 3: a bitch, and that he had considered confronting them but didn't.
Speaker 4: She guys just said something to me, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 4: whe they say, she's whether he was hollering at me
Speaker 4: and trying to get come talk to them, and I
Speaker 4: just ignored them. And she's kind of shaken up by
Speaker 4: that enough to mention it to me, and I, well,
Speaker 4: do we need the same thing? And she was like, well,
Speaker 4: now they drove off, so it was from like a vehicle.
Speaker 4: She just kind of shook it off, and you know,
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's not that big deal. Let's just
Speaker 4: move on. That's the only time that I recall her
Speaker 4: being uncomfortable about anybody in the complex.
Speaker 3: Later, Rico's defense team talked to Josh as well. He
Speaker 3: told them that the mental image he had in his
Speaker 3: head from that day was that it could have been
Speaker 3: a couple of white guys and that they were definitely
Speaker 3: younger than him.
Speaker 1: And Nina.
Speaker 3: Another former law squad resident named Catherine Austin, who lived
Speaker 3: in apartment number eighty two, told police on April seventeenth,
Speaker 3: two thousand and seven, that around the time of the murder,
Speaker 3: there were four men. She described them as clean cut,
Speaker 3: white males hanging around in that parking lot in a
Speaker 3: white four door pickup truck. Catherine said two of these
Speaker 3: guys came up to her apartment door and asked her
Speaker 3: what her name was. She said that this made her
Speaker 3: very uncomfortable because they invaded her personal space.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 3: According to the lawsuit, there were several potential people of
Speaker 3: interests who the suit claimed should have been thoroughly investigated.
Speaker 3: The lawsuit alleges that the lead detective, Scott Carlton, when
Speaker 3: he took over the investigation, very quickly became totally focused
Speaker 3: on Rico Cone, and that Detective Carlton was quote exhibiting
Speaker 3: clear signs of cognitive bias, repeatedly assisted Josh in matching
Speaker 3: up his answers with his prior statements by telling him
Speaker 3: what an excellent job he was doing and even providing
Speaker 3: him with a transcript of his prior statement with highlighted portions,
Speaker 3: and it was only after that happened that Josh then
Speaker 3: changed his statement back to having been present in the
Speaker 3: parking lot end quote. The lawsuit alleged there was really
Speaker 3: no evidence, physical or otherwise against Rico Cone, but there
Speaker 3: were pieces of evidence that could have pointed to other
Speaker 3: people of interest.
Speaker 1: There was the text message. Josh told police.
Speaker 3: That Nina had communicated with someone online prior to leaving
Speaker 3: his residence. On April twenty first, two thousand and six,
Speaker 3: detective found a text message on Nina's cell phone from
Speaker 3: a contact listed as Joey. The message read quote I
Speaker 3: see be careful, be one hundred percent see ya end quote.
Speaker 3: But that person Joey was never identified in the case file.
Speaker 3: So who was Joey? Was he the last.
Speaker 1: Person who Nina messaged? What did he mean by be careful?
Speaker 3: Was this just a random occurrence or could it be
Speaker 3: a clue. Several potential pieces of evidence were sent to
Speaker 3: the Arkansas State Crime Lab, including Nina's clothes that she
Speaker 3: was wearing, plus other items of clothing including jeans, towels,
Speaker 3: and socks, the dead bolt and doorknob from the front door,
Speaker 3: a small black elastic cord with a white button that
Speaker 3: was found under the bed, Nina's betting, and the black
Speaker 3: leather belt that was found in the kitchen trash can.
Speaker 3: They also found other items, including a Valentine's card that
Speaker 3: was from Josh and a poem that Nina had written
Speaker 3: to her mom. The lawsuit mentions the fact that the
Speaker 3: DNA evidence collection procedures were much less advanced in two
Speaker 3: thousand and six than they are today. The training of
Speaker 3: law enforcement and the procedures at the Arkansas State Crime
Speaker 3: Lab were also not what they are today. This would
Speaker 3: become a crucial component of Rico's lawsuit.
Speaker 1: Another question that we had when.
Speaker 3: Reviewing this case file were who were the men whom
Speaker 3: Nina was seen talking to at her apartment complex in
Speaker 3: the days before her death. Detectives talked to a neighbor
Speaker 3: of Nina's who said she saw Nina sitting on a
Speaker 3: bench in her apartment building on April twentieth, two thousand
Speaker 3: and six, the day before she was murdered. Nina was
Speaker 3: talking to a white male described as having slightly bigger
Speaker 3: than medium builled, with blondish brown hair and a pasty
Speaker 3: white complexion, approximately five foot eight to five foot ten
Speaker 3: inches tall. The neighbor told police she had seen Nina
Speaker 3: come home with a similar looking mail on multiple prior
Speaker 3: occasions after dark. Now remember, Nina's boyfriend, Josh, told police
Speaker 3: that he had not been inside Nina's apartment in months. However,
Speaker 3: he did say he had been in the parking lot
Speaker 3: a few days before her murder. This neighbor also said
Speaker 3: that she saw Nina that same week with another different
Speaker 3: white male with lighter brown hair and a medium build
Speaker 3: between five foot ten and five foot eleven inches tall,
Speaker 3: that the two of them had walked together to Nina's apartment,
Speaker 3: standing very close with the white male than following Nina
Speaker 3: into the apartment. This could have been Nina's brother or
Speaker 3: another friend, but this information, to our knowledge, was never
Speaker 3: followed up on in the police file. Another question we
Speaker 3: had was could someone have been stalking Nina. Police did
Speaker 3: talk to a friend of Nina's named Samantha Stevens. She
Speaker 3: said Nina had told her in the past that someone
Speaker 3: had been stalking her at her apartment and following her around,
Speaker 3: but there are no more details about this in the
Speaker 3: case file, including when they had this conversation and how
Speaker 3: recently it happened.
Speaker 1: It just as in the.
Speaker 3: Past, the Fayetteville police department asked the FBI to get
Speaker 3: involved with Nina's case, and they did. In March of
Speaker 3: two thousand and seven, Detective John Gentry of the Faetful
Speaker 3: Police Department worked with a crime analyst named Tom Dover
Speaker 3: of the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI as part
Speaker 3: of the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program or VISCAP. They prepared
Speaker 3: and generated a criminal investigative analysis of the Nini Ingram homicide,
Speaker 3: including a very detailed profile of potential suspects. So ViCAP
Speaker 3: has a few different functions. One of them is the
Speaker 3: one that most of us have seen in the movies
Speaker 3: where the FBI criminal profiler comes in. They have a
Speaker 3: big marker board with a bunch of unsolved homicides on it.
Speaker 3: They analyze major violent crimes and can link cases based
Speaker 3: on behavioral and geographical similarities. Basically, they find patterns, but
Speaker 3: ViCAP also looks at individual cases and from the information
Speaker 3: in the case file. By examining the crime scene, they
Speaker 3: can give a profile of the unsub short for unknown
Speaker 3: subject or unidentified subject. This is meant to help local
Speaker 3: law enforcement narrow down their search. On April sixteenth, two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven, the FBI gave the profile that they
Speaker 3: produced to the FFUL Police Department. The VISCAP profile was
Speaker 3: pretty much the opposite of ricocone. The VISCAT profile stated
Speaker 3: that Nina's killer was likely a Caucasian male, familiar and
Speaker 3: comfortable in the area, and that they were likely living
Speaker 3: in or near Fayette, Arkansas. In terms of the man
Speaker 3: being Caucasian, that would track with the initial interviews, not
Speaker 3: one single person mentioned a person of color as hanging
Speaker 3: around the apartment building. So, in addition to believing that
Speaker 3: the killer was local and not a transient, the VISCAP
Speaker 3: profile stated that they believed the evidence suggested that the
Speaker 3: killer knew Nina and may have had an intimate relationship
Speaker 3: with her, and that they were familiar with her schedule. Again,
Speaker 3: this is the opposite of ricocone. He was a stranger
Speaker 3: to Nina. To the witness Randy Applewhite story, Rico only
Speaker 3: saw her briefly and attacked her because he just happened
Speaker 3: to see her coming home. The FBI stated that Nina's killer,
Speaker 3: according to the profile they provided quote, knew his or
Speaker 3: her proximity to her would not cause her alarm end quote,
Speaker 3: So they believed that Nina's killer was someone who if
Speaker 3: she saw them in line at Taco Bell or hanging
Speaker 3: out at Walmart, or maybe even in her apartment complex,
Speaker 3: maybe would not be immediately freaked out and shut the
Speaker 3: door in their face. The VISCAT profile suggested that Nina
Speaker 3: and the offender may have gotten into some kind of
Speaker 3: a conflict in the past, but they believed that it
Speaker 3: was likely that the offender had been nice to her
Speaker 3: in the run up to the killing. So the FBI
Speaker 3: seemed to think that this murder was something the killer
Speaker 3: had planned out fairly carefully. And this next part of
Speaker 3: the FBI's report is interesting. Quoted in court documents, it read,
Speaker 3: quote offender may have been excessively nice to the victim
Speaker 3: in the time preceding the homicide, in hopes this behavior
Speaker 3: would deflect law enforcement's attention away from him after the homicide.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 3: The final note was that the offender may have executed
Speaker 3: a well constructed plan in committing the homicide, so the
Speaker 3: profiler believed this was not a random attack, and finally,
Speaker 3: the profiler believed the offender was likely satisfied that the
Speaker 3: victim is dead. The VISCAT profile also stated that the
Speaker 3: offender was quote likely monitoring this case through the media,
Speaker 3: and may have already been contacted by law enforcement regarding
Speaker 3: the incident.
Speaker 1: So they were looking for someone.
Speaker 3: Who knew Nina, who maybe had been rejected by her,
Speaker 3: who was potentially inserting themselves into her case to help
Speaker 3: law enforcement, and who may be monitoring the case through
Speaker 3: the media.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: The lawsuit stated that none of those details matched Rico Cone,
Speaker 3: but almost all of them matched the person that the
Speaker 3: lawsuit called person of interest A Josh and another person
Speaker 3: the person they called person of interest B. Based on
Speaker 3: the FBI's assessment of Nina's case, Rico Cone did not
Speaker 3: fit the profile of her killer. The lawsuit alleged that
Speaker 3: the lead detective, Scott Carlton, and his colleagues were quote
Speaker 3: seeking solely to obtain a conviction and close out a
Speaker 3: politically difficult case, without regard to where the facts or
Speaker 3: evidence may lead end quote. The lawsuit also accused the
Speaker 3: lead detective and his colleagues of conspiring with the Arkansas
Speaker 3: State Crime Lab to hide or manipulate evidence and intentionally
Speaker 3: and deliberately misleading both the Office of the Prosecutor Attorney
Speaker 3: and the general public about the relative strengths and weaknesses
Speaker 3: of what the lawsuit called an improper, illegitimate, and unconstitutional case.
Speaker 3: The lawsuit mentioned someone else who they called person of
Speaker 3: interest B. Now, this person is not named in the lawsuit,
Speaker 3: but by comparing the civil lawsuit to the part of
Speaker 3: the case file that we have access to, this person
Speaker 3: appears to match the description of a man named Jarvis Harper.
Speaker 3: Jarvis was someone who first came up in the case
Speaker 3: file in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: On August fifth, two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: Officers from the Fayetable Police Department went to a residence
Speaker 3: where a woman was requesting help to obtain an order
Speaker 3: of protection.
Speaker 1: The woman's name was Nicki Perry.
Speaker 3: She wanted the restraining order against her boyfriend, twenty nine
Speaker 3: year old Jarvis Harper. She told officers that she and
Speaker 3: Jarvis had been living together for about five years. She
Speaker 3: said that he was a quote controlling individual who monitors
Speaker 3: her every move end quote. She said Jarvis had a
Speaker 3: camera inside the house. She said he installed it there
Speaker 3: to track her. She claimed that it recorded twenty four
Speaker 3: hours a day. She said she was afraid of turning
Speaker 3: the camera off because Jarvis allegedly had a bad temper.
Speaker 3: Nicki also said Jarvis had done something to the back door,
Speaker 3: basically disabled it so she couldn't get out of the
Speaker 3: apartment the back way, meaning Nicki told officers that she
Speaker 3: would always have to go through the front door to
Speaker 3: leave the apartment. Jarvis, also, according to Nicki, asked her
Speaker 3: to change her name and start going by the name
Speaker 3: Lindsey Knight, which she said she agreed to do. The
Speaker 3: latest incident that led to her calling the police had
Speaker 3: actually started three days before. She said that on that day,
Speaker 3: on April second, two thousand and eight, that Jarvis had
Speaker 3: tied her hands together with black drawstring cords that he
Speaker 3: took out of a pair of athletic shorts. Nicki said
Speaker 3: that he left her tied up for half the day,
Speaker 3: starting at around two pm. She said, while she was
Speaker 3: tied up, Jarvis sat on top of her and held
Speaker 3: his Bretta nine milimi a pistol to her head, demanding
Speaker 3: to know the truth about her activity. Apparently he believed
Speaker 3: she had been lying to him. Nikki said that she
Speaker 3: complied because she was terrified. She said she had been
Speaker 3: too afraid to call the police. On the police report,
Speaker 3: it noted detectives took away the drawstring cords from the
Speaker 3: athletic shorts as evidence. But there was something else at
Speaker 3: that residence. In the living room, Jarvis had a framed
Speaker 3: photo of Nina Ingram. It was the same photo that
Speaker 3: had been passed out to Walmart employees after Nina died,
Speaker 3: and in fact, Jarvis worked with Nina at the Sixth
Speaker 3: Street Walmart. But Jarvis, apparently, according to the lawsuit, didn't
Speaker 3: actually get the photo that way. In fact, Rico's lawsuit
Speaker 3: claims that Jarvis wanted a way to remember Nina, so
Speaker 3: he went and tracked down the photo from another employee.
Speaker 3: The lawsuit claimed Jarvis was not aware that the framed
Speaker 3: photograph of Nina Ingram that he had on his wall
Speaker 3: was the same one they handed out at Walmart. Police
Speaker 3: later questioned Nikki about this photo. Nicki said when she
Speaker 3: had asked about the photo of Nina, Jarvis told her
Speaker 3: the photo was there because Nina was a friend of his,
Speaker 3: and also he was good friends with her boyfriend, Josh.
Speaker 3: Jarvis told her that he had worked with Nina at
Speaker 3: Walmart and that he quote was pretty sure he knows
Speaker 3: who did it, meaning knows who killed Nina, but that
Speaker 3: it could not be proven. So we have a person
Speaker 3: with a definite connection to Nina Ingram, someone who worked
Speaker 3: with her and her boyfriend, who was accused of choking
Speaker 3: his girlfriend with the cord of his athletic shorts, and
Speaker 3: who allegedly exhibited violent behavior. We know that, according to
Speaker 3: the autopsy report, Nina was strangled with an object that
Speaker 3: was between one sixteenth of an inch and one eighth
Speaker 3: of an inch wide, and that the murder weapon was
Speaker 3: never found. In addition to the photographs of Nina on
Speaker 3: the wall, Jarvis also had photographs of other women in
Speaker 3: a filing cabinet next to his computer. Nicki told police
Speaker 3: Jarvist told her one of the women was a missing person,
Speaker 3: but did not give her any more details about that woman,
Speaker 3: about the case, or where or when the woman supposedly
Speaker 3: went missing. Nicki told police she didn't remember a lot
Speaker 3: of details about the files she saw inside Jarvis's office,
Speaker 3: other than the fact that she said the name McMillan
Speaker 3: was written on the bottom front of one of those photos.
Speaker 3: Nicki said that again, besides Nina, who she had specifically
Speaker 3: asked about, she did not know who any of these
Speaker 3: other women were. Police also talked to Nicki's mother, Susie
Speaker 3: Susie told detectives that Jarvis was a martial arts expert,
Speaker 3: that he had various martial arts weapons and guns and
Speaker 3: ninja items in the home, and that he was quote
Speaker 3: as self proclaimed ninja and black belt end quote. Jarvis
Speaker 3: confirmed to police that he did practice martial arts. Police
Speaker 3: searched the bedroom and remove some items, including a black
Speaker 3: scheme mask. Next week, We're going to hear more from
Speaker 3: Nina's boyfriend at the time, Josh, about his relationship with Dina,
Speaker 3: his relationship with Jarvis, and his theories on the case.
Speaker 3: We're also going to try to figure out who the
Speaker 3: other women were on Jarvis's wall. I'm Katherine Townsend. This
Speaker 3: is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is
Speaker 3: a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's
Speaker 3: written and narrated by me Katherine Townsend and produced by
Speaker 3: Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research
Speaker 3: assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah camer mixed
Speaker 3: and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Salep.
Speaker 3: Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and LC Crowley.
Speaker 3: Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the
Speaker 3: iHeart True Crime Plus.
Speaker 1: Channel on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 3: If you were interested in seeing documents and materials from
Speaker 3: the case, you can follow the show on Instagram.
Speaker 1: At ellen gonpot.
Speaker 3: If you have a case you'd like me and my
Speaker 3: team to look into, you can reach out to a
Speaker 3: at our Hellngong Murder Line at six seven eight seven
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Speaker 3: seven four four six one four five.
Speaker 1: School of Humans