Speaker 1: The School of Humans to be honest with views.
Speaker 2: It happened so fast, and I mean I just woke
Speaker 2: up to him banging in my house saying that he
Speaker 2: just got shot. And the hell, my whole.
Speaker 1: Porch just covered in blood right now, I mean, he
Speaker 1: was just covered in blood.
Speaker 3: On July thirtieth, twenty twenty, in Stark County, Indiana, a
Speaker 3: nine to one to one call came from North County
Speaker 3: Road ten to twenty five East just before three thirty am.
Speaker 3: The caller had worked late that night. He had gotten
Speaker 3: home and climbed into bed when he said that he
Speaker 3: and his fiancee were woken up by someone pounding on
Speaker 3: their door. The man was twenty seven year old Nicholas Rudd.
Speaker 3: Nick said that he had been shot, but neither the
Speaker 3: caller nor his fiancee had hurt any gunshots. What the
Speaker 3: caller didn't know was that Nick had not been shot.
Speaker 3: He had been attacked with a hammer and stabbed in
Speaker 3: the neck. He was bleeding to death on their door step,
Speaker 3: and the killer was still outside.
Speaker 4: 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 is no such thing
Speaker 3: as a small town where murder never happens. I have
Speaker 3: received hundreds of messages from people all around the country
Speaker 3: asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them,
Speaker 3: their families, and their communities. If you have a case
Speaker 3: you'd like me and my team to look into, you
Speaker 3: can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder
Speaker 3: line at six seven eight seven four four six one
Speaker 3: four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six
Speaker 3: one four five, or you can send us a message
Speaker 3: on Instagram at Helen Gonepod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line.
Speaker 3: So the caller refused to let Nick inside the house. Understandably,
Speaker 3: they wanted to help, but they were also afraid and
Speaker 3: wanted to assess the situation first, so they called nine
Speaker 3: one one, but by the time nine one one got there,
Speaker 3: Nick was gone. Nick ran to another neighbor's house. Now
Speaker 3: by this time Nick was bleeding to death. When he
Speaker 3: got to another neighbor's home, he collapsed. The neighbor ran
Speaker 3: out into her porch and tried to help him, while
Speaker 3: also calling nine one one and putting towels over Nick's wounds.
Speaker 3: While she tried to render first aid. She told the
Speaker 3: dispatcher that she was talking to Nick. The dispatcher asked
Speaker 3: the caller to keep talking to him, to ask who
Speaker 3: shot him?
Speaker 1: Okay? Can he answer you?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 6: Okay?
Speaker 5: Who shot.
Speaker 7: He says he can't breathe.
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 4: Did he say who shot him?
Speaker 2: Honey?
Speaker 1: That's I need to know, he said, She said, a
Speaker 1: bald guy.
Speaker 4: It's very hard to hear.
Speaker 3: Nick is gasping for air, but the caller was able
Speaker 3: to get him to say that his name was Nicholas,
Speaker 3: and Nick said a bald guy had shot him. He
Speaker 3: died before the paramedics arrived. Police rushed to the scene
Speaker 3: and quickly realized that Nick had not been shot. He
Speaker 3: had actually been stabbed. He had defensive wounds on his
Speaker 3: right arm and a fatal stab wound to his neck.
Speaker 3: After that s woon, he would have bled out in minutes.
Speaker 3: But who would want to kill Nick?
Speaker 4: And why?
Speaker 3: Nick was twenty seven years old, and though we had
Speaker 3: a troubled past and became involved with drugs in high school,
Speaker 3: he had seemed to be trying to get to a
Speaker 3: better place. He grew up in North Judson, Indiana. It's
Speaker 3: suburban with a population of about twelve hundred, and like
Speaker 3: any small town, it's somewhere where everyone seems to know
Speaker 3: each other, but it's also a place that has had
Speaker 3: its share of property crimes, drugs, and violence. We talked
Speaker 3: to Nick's friend Cliff Gosh.
Speaker 1: I met Nick in fifth or fourth grade. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think he just came back from moved back from Georgia.
Speaker 2: And we met. We got along pretty much right away, and.
Speaker 1: We were friends for probably the good part of like
Speaker 1: ten years, probably best friends all the way through high school.
Speaker 1: We were pretty much inseparable, everything from like playing guitar
Speaker 1: and chasing girls, you know, going to party. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just the high school kids. I think we were
Speaker 1: safe havings for each other for a lot of things
Speaker 1: in high school. I know, he had like a really
Speaker 1: crappy upbringing, and.
Speaker 2: You know, he would come to stay and me with
Speaker 2: me and my dad for like a week at a time,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: So we were super close, and then we had a
Speaker 1: bit of a falling out because he was doing bad stuff.
Speaker 3: Cliff said that during high school, Nick got into drugs,
Speaker 3: beginning with marijuana and then eventually methamphetamines. Nick also got
Speaker 3: involved in crime, and Cliff believed some of those early
Speaker 3: decisions changed Nick's life Eventually, Cliff said that Nick stole
Speaker 3: Cliff's father's identity, which led to Nick being arrested and
Speaker 3: convicted of forgery in twenty eleven. According to court records,
Speaker 3: he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was pretty much out of our relationship. I
Speaker 1: didn't talk to him, So we didn't talk for like
Speaker 1: six years.
Speaker 3: Nick had been in a relation relationship with the mother
Speaker 3: of his daughter, and when he got out, the relationship
Speaker 3: ended acrimoniously after a custody battle. Nick's family said that
Speaker 3: he no longer saw his daughter. Then he got married
Speaker 3: to Destiny in twenty fourteen. His family said that she
Speaker 3: was a very good influence on Nick. They had two
Speaker 3: sons together, and for a while life was good.
Speaker 4: It looked like.
Speaker 3: His life had started to turn around. Cliff said that
Speaker 3: he actually ran into Nick just a few days before
Speaker 3: he died.
Speaker 1: It's it was difficult because we had you done so
Speaker 1: much for each other. I know, like he's made bad
Speaker 1: decisions or whatever, but like I always wanted to be
Speaker 1: his friend, to be there for him.
Speaker 2: So when I seen him, he was like, hey, man,
Speaker 2: like you know, you know I'm doing good.
Speaker 1: We should hang out, play some guitar, and I kind
Speaker 1: of just say, you know, I don't know, it's still
Speaker 1: kind of I was almost there, but not lay there,
Speaker 1: and it's a little I get hold of them.
Speaker 3: So that was after them, But those times didn't last.
Speaker 3: A few months before he died, Nick and his wife Destiny, separated.
Speaker 3: Since he was no longer living at home, he started
Speaker 3: staying on and off with friends, including a guy named
Speaker 3: Brandon Combs. On the night he was killed, Nick was
Speaker 3: hanging out about half a mile away with his sister Stephanie. Stephanie,
Speaker 3: by the way, knew Brandon from way back. Also, like
Speaker 3: I said, it's a small town. Nick was planning on
Speaker 3: going back to Brandon's. At this point, he'd been staying
Speaker 3: at Brandon's for a few weeks. Stephanie said that she
Speaker 3: was texting back and forth with Brandon to ask when
Speaker 3: he would be home, and that finally, I think around
Speaker 3: three am, Brandon texted back to say that he was
Speaker 3: there at his house. So Stephanie drove Nick there. When
Speaker 3: they got there, she went in Brandon's house with Nick.
Speaker 6: And so when we went down there, I was out
Speaker 6: of milk at the house, so I got.
Speaker 2: Some milk from Brandon and I just made sure.
Speaker 6: I told him to make sure Nicholas got to say,
Speaker 6: you know, he needed to get to sleep, not to
Speaker 6: little leave or go with anybody. And he was I mean,
Speaker 6: he acted normal to me. But like I said, I
Speaker 6: was using at the time. But as far as I
Speaker 6: can remember, Brandon act was perfectly normal. The only weird
Speaker 6: thing is get a huge TV in his room, and
Speaker 6: that's where that him and Nicholas were at, and he
Speaker 6: had all of his degree cameras put up on the
Speaker 6: you know, they were pulled up so you could see
Speaker 6: every angle of the house.
Speaker 3: Stephanie left minutes later, and then a few minutes after that,
Speaker 3: the killer approached the house with a hammer in one
Speaker 3: hand and a spearlike object in the other. Police quickly
Speaker 3: figured out the killer kicked the door of Brandon's house down.
Speaker 3: Brandon and Nick ran out the back. Nick was carrying
Speaker 3: the hammer when he left the house, so obviously he
Speaker 3: fought his killer, and then the killer continued to chase
Speaker 3: him to the neighbor's house. That's where he was stabbed
Speaker 3: in the neck, which ended up being the fatal wound.
Speaker 3: He also had a defensive wound on his upper right arm,
Speaker 3: which he probably sustained while fighting for his life. Brandon's
Speaker 3: house in the neighbor's houses quickly became crime scenes. After
Speaker 3: police checked security cameras, they found that Brandon's house did
Speaker 3: have a camera outside the front door. Unfortunately, there was
Speaker 3: no footage of the fatal attack, but there was footage
Speaker 3: of the killer.
Speaker 4: Lieutenant Calea.
Speaker 3: Miller described the footage and said, quote, just before that
Speaker 3: nine to one one call was made, there was a
Speaker 3: male suspect seen kicking in the door of the home
Speaker 3: and it appears that the suspect is armed with a
Speaker 3: hammer and bladed object. He gains entry, we see Nick
Speaker 3: run out. He is being chased running toward the house
Speaker 3: where they called nine one one end quote. This footage
Speaker 3: has not been shown to the public, but Nick's mother, Michelle,
Speaker 3: and sister Stephanie were allowed to view it at the
Speaker 3: police station.
Speaker 2: So you see Nick running out of the house.
Speaker 7: Nick runs off the porch and he runs into the
Speaker 7: grass that you can't see him because he run into
Speaker 7: the house next door. It is a thirty or forty
Speaker 7: five seconds time before this guy comes out of the
Speaker 7: house after Nick, a good thirty to forty five seconds,
Speaker 7: and Nick when he comes out before this guy. He's
Speaker 7: got the hammer whatever it is, in his hand. I'm
Speaker 7: sure he fought with the guy. You more or less
Speaker 7: see the time of the image in the light itself.
Speaker 7: Walking along the road is Brandon's house. From the porch
Speaker 7: to the road was not even thirty forty feet something
Speaker 7: like that, so Nick, of course the guy was looking
Speaker 7: for Nick.
Speaker 2: Nick was hiding.
Speaker 3: Michelle talked to local media and the police. Eventually the
Speaker 3: police did release an image to the public. They gave
Speaker 3: it crime stoppers and hope that someone might see something
Speaker 3: something that would be able to help solve the case.
Speaker 3: The photograph was taken on night vision and for red camera,
Speaker 3: so it's very blown out. Everything looks white, but it
Speaker 3: appears as though the killer was wearing a dark colored
Speaker 3: possibly a black suit and hoodie. And just thinking back
Speaker 3: to what Nick said about a bald man shooting him,
Speaker 3: the killer may have been bald, but in the image,
Speaker 3: he also looked as if he could have been wearing
Speaker 3: something that covered his hair, possibly a ball of clava,
Speaker 3: and it looks like he may even have a mask
Speaker 3: covering his face. It's just really hard to tell due
Speaker 3: to the lighting. He also seemed to have on some
Speaker 3: sort of protective goggles. By the way, I'm saying he
Speaker 3: because the police have described the suspect as male, obviously
Speaker 3: we don't know for sure. It does appear to be
Speaker 3: a male, but that's really all we know. Because the
Speaker 3: killer was in disguise, we also know he was carrying
Speaker 3: a hammer in one hand and something else in the other.
Speaker 3: We talked to the detective in charge the investigation, who
Speaker 3: confirmed that the killer was holding a homemade weapon of
Speaker 3: some kind, some type of spear attached to what appeared
Speaker 3: to be a cattle prod.
Speaker 4: Stephanie is very.
Speaker 3: Open about the fact that at the time her brother died,
Speaker 3: she was a heroin dealer, and she revealed that Nick
Speaker 3: had also recently begun using heroin. His drug usage was
Speaker 3: one of the reasons he and his wife, Destiny separated.
Speaker 3: But besides Stephanie and Nick, Stephanie said almost no one
Speaker 3: else knew that he was using heroin. Along with the
Speaker 3: footage from the first caller's front door, police also found
Speaker 3: video of the front of Brandon's house taken from a
Speaker 3: doorbell camera. Again, they have not made this footage public,
Speaker 3: but Michelle and Stephanie have seen it, and they described
Speaker 3: what they saw to us. The footage shows stephanielling up
Speaker 3: to Brandon's at around three fifteen am, and then Nick
Speaker 3: getting out of the car. They both went inside the
Speaker 3: house for a few minutes. Then the video shows Stephanie
Speaker 3: going back to her car alone and her vehicle leaving.
Speaker 3: Then just minutes later, the killer approaches the door. But
Speaker 3: we don't know where the killer came from. Did he
Speaker 3: drive there, did he park somewhere or with someone else
Speaker 3: driving a getaway car. Nick's family finds the timing suspicious.
Speaker 3: They wonder how did the killer know to come to
Speaker 3: Brandon's house right after Stephanie left. Stephanie said that due
Speaker 3: to her drug dealing, she changed vehicles frequently. She said
Speaker 3: that only a few people knew what kind of car
Speaker 3: she would be in that night. Was this a coincidence
Speaker 3: or they wonder could it have been some kind of setup?
Speaker 3: In that video, right before the killer arrived, Michelle said
Speaker 3: she could see a car passing Brandon's house. She wondered,
Speaker 3: could this be the killer?
Speaker 7: This car drives by really and you can't it's black
Speaker 7: and white. You can't see the car. You see the lights,
Speaker 7: you see the headlights, So it passes the house and
Speaker 7: it probably goes down from just what we gather because.
Speaker 2: Of the guy walking up to the back porch.
Speaker 7: He probably goes down and then somebody gets out whatever,
Speaker 7: and then there's a little side road, and so within
Speaker 7: a few minutes you see this guy walking up to
Speaker 7: the deck.
Speaker 2: Brandon had like patio doors.
Speaker 7: They were glassed, which is what is another strange thing
Speaker 7: to me, That you're in the back and not facing
Speaker 7: the road. You're in the back of the house. He
Speaker 7: wanted to break in, Right, there's your patio doors. You're
Speaker 7: looking through them. Then the guy looks heard of the camera.
Speaker 3: In the video, the killer approaches the house and then
Speaker 3: kicks the door down and walks inside. About forty five
Speaker 3: seconds later, by Michelle and Stephanie's descriptions, you can see
Speaker 3: Brandon coming around from the back of the house. He
Speaker 3: apparently crawled out of a window and Nick followed him.
Speaker 3: After they got out of the house, the video shows
Speaker 3: them taking off in separate directions. Nick ran toward the
Speaker 3: first caller's house and Brandon, well, it's not clear where
Speaker 3: he goes.
Speaker 4: Police found him the next day.
Speaker 7: They didn't find him until like three or four o'clock
Speaker 7: that next afternoon.
Speaker 4: Oh where did he go.
Speaker 7: He supposedly fell asleep at a ditch bank, that's what
Speaker 7: he said. When they finally found him, he told a
Speaker 7: story that he climbed out the window, which is a coward,
Speaker 7: and he said that Nick was behind him, because when
Speaker 7: the guy comes up to the porch and kicks the
Speaker 7: door down, So when the guy goes to the back
Speaker 7: then you don't see him. But then he comes up
Speaker 7: to the front porch, of course, and he kicks the
Speaker 7: door for five or six times at least. Yes, he
Speaker 7: takes his leg and he's kicking this door.
Speaker 3: A lot of rumors were flying around after Nick's death,
Speaker 3: but everyone seemed to agree on one thing. They believed
Speaker 3: that the killing had been a hit, that someone went
Speaker 3: there that night because they were targeting someone at that house,
Speaker 3: probably nicko commenting on these rumors on social media, and
Speaker 3: there were even comments about potential suspects on Nick's obituary,
Speaker 3: asking about two people whose names we keep hearing. We
Speaker 3: will call them Jay and h their first initials because
Speaker 3: they have not been arrested or charged with anything. In fact,
Speaker 3: no one has been arrested or charged at all in
Speaker 3: connection with Nick Rudd's murder. Jay was Michelle's cousin, Stephanie,
Speaker 3: said that she believed Nick had been spending time with
Speaker 3: Jay's girlfriend. Jay was much older in his fifties, while
Speaker 3: his girlfriend was closer to Nick's. Ah H was a
Speaker 3: younger friend of Jay's, so there is a rumor that
Speaker 3: Nick may have been involved in a love triangle with Jay.
Speaker 4: But another mode of.
Speaker 3: People mentioned was drugs, that Nick might owe money to
Speaker 3: someone for drugs. In fact, Michelle said that one of
Speaker 3: the last texts that Nick sent her involved a drug
Speaker 3: debt to Jay.
Speaker 7: And one of the texts that he had sent Nick
Speaker 7: one probably the last text that he sent Nick was
Speaker 7: you know about if he get paid, He's get a killing.
Speaker 3: So drug debts do seem like they could be a
Speaker 3: possible motive, but something police told Nick's family made them
Speaker 3: believe money was not the motive.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: The police recovered nick wallet from his body and it
Speaker 3: had five hundred dollars in it, So if money was
Speaker 3: the motive, surely the killers would have taken that cash.
Speaker 3: And in talking to local sources, we have not so
Speaker 3: far found any evidence of a big drug debt. It
Speaker 3: appears that the debt that Nick o Jay was around
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars, which doesn't
Speaker 3: seem on the surface like an amount that would cause
Speaker 3: someone to take the risk to kill.
Speaker 4: After Nick Rudd was.
Speaker 3: Murdered, rumors were flying about possible people of interest, people
Speaker 3: who supposedly had recent conflicts with Nick. But there were
Speaker 3: more and more rumors flying around, one involving a love triangle.
Speaker 3: So might there have been another reason why Jay would
Speaker 3: have wanted to hurt Nick. As rumors were flying around
Speaker 3: Stark County, Indiana, online commenters and Nick's family started suspecting
Speaker 3: a couple of different motives involving Jay. One that was
Speaker 3: seeming less and less likely was money. The other was
Speaker 3: a love triangle. Stephanie said that Jay had a girlfriend
Speaker 3: and that Nick was in some way involved with this woman.
Speaker 3: If this is true, it could have made Jay or
Speaker 3: someone who knew Jay angry. Jay is apparently older, in
Speaker 3: his fifties, but people who have seen the photo and
Speaker 3: no Jay have told us that Jay has a very
Speaker 3: distinctive look, and everyone who has seen the photos agreed
Speaker 3: the killer looks like a much younger man and also
Speaker 3: just does not seem to match Jay's description. So Nick's
Speaker 3: family wonders if Jay could have possibly hired someone to
Speaker 3: target Nick. One theory discussed was that Jay and ten
Speaker 3: for his hip man to just beat Nick up or
Speaker 3: scare him, but then Nick surprised the killer by grabbing
Speaker 3: the hammer and fighting back. I want to back up
Speaker 3: a bit and talk about some misconceptions about hit men,
Speaker 3: or to be less sexist, I could say hired assassins,
Speaker 3: but just know when I say hit man, I mean
Speaker 3: hit man and hit women when we see movies. Normally,
Speaker 3: these assassins are glamorous James Vond style figures like villain
Speaker 3: l and Killing Eve, or professionals who are quirky like
Speaker 3: John Cusack and Gross point blank.
Speaker 4: But the reality is very different.
Speaker 3: And as someone who handles a lot of fraud cases
Speaker 3: from my other podcast, Red Collar, I know that most
Speaker 3: hit men are not like that normally. Very often they're
Speaker 3: low level gangsters who carry out hits for very little money,
Speaker 3: a lot of four and five figure amounts, and they
Speaker 3: tend to make a lot of mistakes because when you
Speaker 3: hire hit man, you get what you pay for. Also,
Speaker 3: a lot of times people who want to kill someone
Speaker 3: will hire one of these low rent hit men, and
Speaker 3: to do that they go to their circle of friends.
Speaker 3: Now this means there is more loyalty there, but it's
Speaker 3: also big problem because there is a connection between the
Speaker 3: person who hired the assassin and the assassin. They are friends,
Speaker 3: they hang out together, and if one of them gets
Speaker 3: busted by the police, likely sold the other one. There
Speaker 3: was a study in twenty fourteen by Birmingham City University
Speaker 3: in the UK. The professor who ran the study told
Speaker 3: NBC News quote, these images are Hollywood eyes. The hit
Speaker 3: man seems like quite an attractive image that people are
Speaker 3: responding to. They are professional, very confident, hyper masculine.
Speaker 4: End quote. He goes on to explain that that's a
Speaker 4: total myth.
Speaker 3: The professor said, these hits are not taking place in
Speaker 3: internationally glamorous locations like casinos. They're happening while people are
Speaker 3: out walking their dogs or coming home from the grocery store.
Speaker 3: He said, quote, the hits were not in the underworld.
Speaker 3: They were in the overworld, and usually with passers by
Speaker 3: as witnesses looking on in abject horror.
Speaker 4: End quote.
Speaker 3: He had some other interesting statistics that I'll share just
Speaker 3: because I am actually fascinated by this stuff. He said,
Speaker 3: Tuesday is the most common day of the week for
Speaker 3: a hit. March, May and July are the most common months,
Speaker 3: and the average cost of killing someone is just over
Speaker 3: twenty five thousand dollars. The highest payout he saw was
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars, but this was
Speaker 3: back in twenty fourteen, so it might.
Speaker 4: Have gone up since then.
Speaker 3: I do find the dark part of myself wondering, as
Speaker 3: someone who studies this stuff, if hit man are affected
Speaker 3: by inflation. The study broke hitman down into four types.
Speaker 3: Type one they called the novice. This is the inexperienced
Speaker 3: killer like someone's high school cousin, or the very young
Speaker 3: gang members send out in a hit because he's probably
Speaker 3: too young to be prosecuted, at least that's what the
Speaker 3: other members believe. The second type is called the diletant.
Speaker 3: This is the type of hit man who doesn't really
Speaker 3: want to go through with a hit. When I think
Speaker 3: of the diletant type, I think of the Robert Marshall
Speaker 3: case is a great example of this. This guy was
Speaker 3: living in Tom's River, New Jersey. He wanted to kill
Speaker 3: his wife Maria because he was living way beyond his
Speaker 3: means and having an affair. He couldn't afford to divorce Maria,
Speaker 3: so we hired a hit man from Louisiana. But the
Speaker 3: hit man, for a long time just kept taking Robert
Speaker 3: Marshall's money and blowing him off. Because it turned out
Speaker 3: he actually had a lot of sympathy for Robert Marshall's wife.
Speaker 3: He didn't really want to kill her, but in the
Speaker 3: end he had taken so much money that he basically
Speaker 3: felt he had to go.
Speaker 4: Through with it.
Speaker 3: But because he didn't want to do it himself, he
Speaker 3: brought another accomplice in, which is part of the reason
Speaker 3: he ended up getting caught. The third type of hit
Speaker 3: man they call the journeyman. They explained it in the
Speaker 3: news story as a hit man like John Travolta and
Speaker 3: Samuel L. Jackson's characters in pulp fiction. This is the calm,
Speaker 3: cool and collected hit man. Then there's probably the rarest
Speaker 3: type the group of criminologists conducting the study called the Master.
Speaker 3: According to NBC, these guys are hard to study because
Speaker 3: when they do carry out a hit, it looks like
Speaker 3: an accident or something random, so most of the time
Speaker 3: they're floating around out there not getting caught. They mostly
Speaker 3: have military backgrounds and her weapons experts.
Speaker 4: As I said, a lot of people who have.
Speaker 3: Looked at Nick Rudd's case agrees that this was some
Speaker 3: kind of targeted hit. As we know, Nick was separated
Speaker 3: from his wife in the months before his murder. He
Speaker 3: had been staying with his friend Brandon. According to Nick's sister, Stephanie,
Speaker 3: both Nick and Brandon were involved in drugs during this time.
Speaker 3: So there are a few possibilities here. One that the
Speaker 3: killer was targeting Brandon or maybe just trying to steal
Speaker 3: drugs from him, and that Nick coming there was something
Speaker 3: the killer hadn't counted on, or this could have been
Speaker 3: some kind of a setup. Brandon had security cameras in
Speaker 3: his back bedroom. Stephanie has wondered why he didn't see
Speaker 3: the killer circling the house. By the way, the police
Speaker 3: also questioned Stephanie extensively. She was very forthcoming about this.
Speaker 3: She believes they questioned her due to the fact that
Speaker 3: she dropped Nick off and because she was a drug
Speaker 3: user and dealer. Also, after police found Brandon the next day,
Speaker 3: remember he'd allegedly slept outside, he was taken into custody
Speaker 3: in question, but Brandon was never charged with anything connected
Speaker 3: to next death, and then the case seemed to stall.
Speaker 3: Michelle talked about her frustrations with the police during this time.
Speaker 3: She believed that they had written this off as just
Speaker 3: another drug murder.
Speaker 7: Stark County is very small. There's three towns in a
Speaker 7: val Stark County in Indiana. There's North Judson where I live, Knox,
Speaker 7: which is where that happened at, and then there's Orban Davis.
Speaker 2: It's all small, very very small.
Speaker 7: Nothing even the three counties, the three areas combined still
Speaker 7: wouldn't make up a small city to you. Probably, so
Speaker 7: everybody knows everything, like especially you know how that is
Speaker 7: in small town talk and talk and gossip. We've heard
Speaker 7: so many different stories. I couldn't even and I wish
Speaker 7: looking back, and of course I wasn't even in my
Speaker 7: right mind, I wrote I would have wrote down everything,
Speaker 7: but I didn't didn't even know the importance of that,
Speaker 7: because I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of things. And
Speaker 7: some of the things was repetitive, you know. And so
Speaker 7: two of the detectives that Stark County, it's out of Knox,
Speaker 7: the Stark County Sheriff's department, well, they had like probably
Speaker 7: three detectives on the case, right away.
Speaker 2: It was just like Barney Fife. I'm not even kidding, Uh,
Speaker 2: it was it was a joke.
Speaker 7: They had really probably never investigated a homicide before and
Speaker 7: they were thrown into it.
Speaker 3: But recently police agreed to let Stephanie and Michelle rewatch
Speaker 3: the video of the night that Nick was murdered. Stephanie
Speaker 3: and Michelle said since they had been talking to this podcast,
Speaker 3: they felt that the police were being more responsive to them.
Speaker 5: You've been involved with the podcast. They've been getting a
Speaker 5: lot more phone calls, which you know, obviously some of
Speaker 5: those are crap, you know, but yeah, yeah, but there's
Speaker 5: more people, you know, people are talking again. He did
Speaker 5: inform us that he had gotten a tip that day.
Speaker 5: Of course, he didn't say what it was or who
Speaker 5: it was, but he did say that they had had
Speaker 5: a call.
Speaker 3: Stephanie told us that when she and her mother rewatched
Speaker 3: the video, they found themselves focusing on details that they
Speaker 3: had not noticed before. And again, these are details that
Speaker 3: have never been made public.
Speaker 5: I did notice, and I told the detectives. I thought
Speaker 5: it was just kind of funny saying it. But in
Speaker 5: the one clip of the guy walking around back, he
Speaker 5: bends over at some point in time. I don't know
Speaker 5: if he dropped something, but he could tell when he
Speaker 5: bent over, like his clothing stretched around it, and you
Speaker 5: could see that he was a little sicker on the hips.
Speaker 5: And so then he walked around and I got to
Speaker 5: watch the video footage that they showed us. It was
Speaker 5: not the original footage that I got to see. It
Speaker 5: was from up. It was up closer, and it was
Speaker 5: at a different direction. The camera the one camera that
Speaker 5: they showed us the footage on, and it was in color,
Speaker 5: and we got to see. I know it's hard to watch,
Speaker 5: but it was Nick running out and then it takes
Speaker 5: a while and then the guy runs out after him.
Speaker 3: Stephanie said the way the person in the video walked
Speaker 3: reminded her of someone. We won't use their name here
Speaker 3: because it's not someone police, to our knowledge, have ever
Speaker 3: mentioned in their investigation at all, and we're not sure
Speaker 3: if they've ever even interviewed this person. Stephanie also said
Speaker 3: she noticed something else when she rewatched the video, the
Speaker 3: fact that the killer walked around to the back of
Speaker 3: the house with the glass patio and made a point
Speaker 3: to come back to the front door to gain entry
Speaker 3: to the house.
Speaker 5: A year prior to all this happening, probably a little
Speaker 5: over year, the couse rated Brandon's house to arrest him
Speaker 5: and literally tried to kick the door in, and eventually
Speaker 5: they had to knock on the door ass be let
Speaker 5: in so they could do this raid because they couldn't.
Speaker 2: Get into the house.
Speaker 5: Brendan had reinforced his door so instead of just you
Speaker 5: know when you put a new door knob on your door,
Speaker 5: instead of those little screws that come in the pack
Speaker 5: that's only like an inch or too long. Yeah, he
Speaker 5: put in like seven eight inch nails like screws through
Speaker 5: the side of the house. So it was reinforced really good. Yeah,
Speaker 5: the guy when he walks up, which I thought was
Speaker 5: kind of and it could have been just a coincidence
Speaker 5: that he did it, but when he walks up, he
Speaker 5: kicked the door in. Before he even kicked the door,
Speaker 5: and he goes to turn the handle like it's like
Speaker 5: he's it's like, I need it to be unlocked. Yeah
Speaker 5: that I know, I locked the door when I walked out,
Speaker 5: so maybe maybe it was opposed to be unlocked, you know.
Speaker 3: Chief Detective David Combs from the Stark County Sheriff's Office
Speaker 3: emailed us and said that h J and Brandon have
Speaker 3: all been interviewed several times. He said, quote, currently, I'm
Speaker 3: not comfortable saying that anyone has been ruled out. As
Speaker 3: of right now, there has not been any suspect DNA identified.
Speaker 3: I've revisited the crime scene and reviewed crime scene photographs
Speaker 3: end quote. There are still a lot of questions in
Speaker 3: this case, like was Nick the target that night, and
Speaker 3: if so, who wanted him dead, who set him up?
Speaker 3: And whin who is the bald guy? Was that a
Speaker 3: crucial clue or just something random? He blurted out. The
Speaker 3: killer may have been wearing a mask or a balaklava.
Speaker 3: That could either mean that Nick somehow fought the guy
Speaker 3: and got the balaklava off or pulled the mask down,
Speaker 3: or that he mistook the smooth surface for a bald head.
Speaker 3: Or it could have just been something random. He blurted out.
Speaker 3: At that point, he was dying and he could have
Speaker 3: been confused. He was wrong about being shot. Then again,
Speaker 3: he did know his own name. He seemed to be
Speaker 3: trying to get a message across I just wish we
Speaker 3: could figure out what that message is. Michelle said that
Speaker 3: one thing that puzzles her is that Nick knew everyone
Speaker 3: who has been named as a potential person of interest.
Speaker 3: So if he recognized his killer, why why wouldn't he
Speaker 3: name them when he was asked who it was?
Speaker 7: Nick knew of them. So I really think the bald
Speaker 7: thing has very little. It's irrelevant because I think that
Speaker 7: in his mind he thought that they were bald.
Speaker 2: But here's another thing that I thought.
Speaker 7: And here's another theory of mine, because the guy, like
Speaker 7: I said, the guy was thirty to forty five seconds later.
Speaker 7: You know, Nick had that much time to run from him,
Speaker 7: and we ran out of the house. So I don't
Speaker 7: know if Nick pulled the mask off of him when
Speaker 7: they were fighting, and it took him a few seconds
Speaker 7: to kind of re situate, put the masks on, put
Speaker 7: the hat on, and their run out.
Speaker 2: That's just the theory of mine.
Speaker 4: There didn't seem to be much other evidence.
Speaker 3: Michelle said that some evidence had been sent for DNA
Speaker 3: testing in South Bend, Indiana, which does have more facilities,
Speaker 3: but she said detectives there have told her so far
Speaker 3: they have not found any matches other than the video footage,
Speaker 3: which is a public The best piece of evidence that
Speaker 3: we have.
Speaker 4: Is that photo.
Speaker 3: I really believe someone out there knows something something that
Speaker 3: could help lead to an arrest. One thing we've heard
Speaker 3: is that h J's friend worked at a fertilizer plant,
Speaker 3: and that apparently people who work at fertilizer plants do
Speaker 3: wear outfits similar to the one on camera. I've also
Speaker 3: heard it could be someone who works in farming or.
Speaker 4: Works with seeds. In this community, there is a.
Speaker 3: Lot of farming, so I know that we have to
Speaker 3: cast a wide net, but we have to start with
Speaker 3: the crime scene. In what we know, someone out there
Speaker 3: might recognize some detail, maybe the writing on the jacket
Speaker 3: or the type of coat, which to me looks a
Speaker 3: little like a rain slicker. The tiniest detail could crack
Speaker 3: this case, and Nick and his family and his children
Speaker 3: deserve that. We'll post that image on our instagram at
Speaker 3: helen gonpot. Crime Stoppers has announced a reward of twenty
Speaker 3: five hundred dollars. You can be totally anonymous with them.
Speaker 3: If the tip leads to the solving of the case
Speaker 3: or an arrest, you're eligible to collect that money. You
Speaker 3: can also contact crime Stoppers at five four eight two
Speaker 3: eight eight stop, or you can call the Star County
Speaker 3: Sheriff's Office at five seven four, seven, seven two three
Speaker 3: seven seven to one. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen
Speaker 3: Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production
Speaker 3: of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and
Speaker 3: narrated by me Katherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts.
Speaker 3: Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance. Noah
Speaker 3: camer mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is
Speaker 3: by Ben Salek, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr,
Speaker 3: and L. C.
Speaker 4: Crowley.
Speaker 3: Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the
Speaker 3: iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 4: If you are interested in seeing.
Speaker 3: Documents and materials from the case, you can follow the
Speaker 3: show on Instagram at Helen Gonpott. If you have a
Speaker 3: 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 five that six seven eight seven four four
Speaker 3: six one four five.
Speaker 4: School of Humans