Paul:  Hey, Small Town Fam, this is Paul Holes. Make sure you subscribe to The Briefing Room with Detectives Dan and Dave. Season 2 is out now. Subscribe now and thanks.

[music]

Jay:  Just then, the male approaches her with a pocket knife. He grabs her. He pulls her into his vehicle and then speeds away from the area. While he’s driving, he holds her down and puts her head down towards the seat and won’t let her get up while he’s still holding the knife.

Yeardley:  I’m Yeardley.

Zibby:  I’m Zibby and we’re fascinated by true crime.

Yeardley:  So, we invited our friends, Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby:  To sit down with us and share their most interesting cases.

Dan:  I am Dan.

Dave:  And I’m Dave. We’re identical twins and we’re detectives in small town USA.

Dan:  Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse. 

Dave:  Dan investigates violent crimes. And together we’ve worked on hundreds of cases including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex abuse, and child abuse.

Dan:  Names, places, and certain details including relationships have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families.

Dave:  Whilewe realize that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we hope you’ll join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved out of respect for what they’ve been through. Thank you.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Yeardley:  Today on Small Town Dicks, we have one of the usual suspects. We have Detective Dan.

Dan:  Great to be here.

Yeardley:  And Detective Dave is off fighting crime in Small Town USA. But we got this. We got it. Today, we are so thrilled to welcome a new guest, Detective Jay.

Jay: I’m ecstatic to be here. Thank you.

[laughter]

Yeardley:  We’re so thrilled to have you. So, Jay, tell us how this case came to you.

Jay:  In 2016, I was contacted by a now retired Detective Patrick. He had been following up on an attempted rape of a woman named Tabitha. He had asked me to come along with him while we contacted the mother of the victim at her residence. We had recently received a DNA hit on the potential suspect in the case. While at the kitchen table, Detective Patrick informed me and the mother of the victim that I was now the primary. To this point, I had no idea. I thought I was just going along to help him. He was set to retire in a couple months.

Yeardley:  He’d already left the building, essentially.

Jay:  He had a bit of senioritis.

[laughter]

Yeardley:  That’s funny. Okay. Going back to Tabitha’s mother’s kitchen. You’re there following up on what had happened to Tabitha six months prior. How old was Tabitha.

Jay:  At the time of this, she is 19.

Zibby:  And was she living with her mom at that same house that you guys were at.

Jay:  She was. And when went to talk to her and her mother to give the update, she was overcome with emotion due to surviving this incident and did not want to see us at the time. She stayed in the back bedroom.

Zibby:  And what had happened to Tabitha?

Jay:  Well, I went through all the reports, and I found that at about 11:45 PM in early November of 2015, Tabitha was walking home from a friend’s house about a mile and a half away. She was walking down a street that’s adjacent to a major thoroughfare in our town, and she saw a vehicle drive past her. She described it as a white four door car. She didn’t know the make, model, or anything about it. She continued walking home. She turned in the corner, and in the middle of the sidewalk in front of her, she saw a tall male with short blonde hair, short facial hair, light eyes, wearing a black-hooded sweatshirt and jeans and a black ski mask. The male said hi to her, and she said, hi back. She immediately sensed danger and went directly across the street to the opposite side.

 At that time, it’s November, it’s cold out, and there were not a lot of people out in this part of town. When she crosses the street quickly, the male also crosses and then gets behind her and asks her, “Are you lonely?”

Yeardley:  Oh God.

Zibby:  No.

Jay: Tabitha was immediately scared again and said to him, get the fuck away from me. As she tried to walk past the male, he pushed her from behind, and she fell to her knees. And then he shoved her face into the dirt. Tabitha said, she was afraid that the male was going to rape or kill her. Male proceeded to strike her about the face and head and covered her mouth with his hand. Tabitha started to fight back and began to scratch and scream and hit the male as he forced her into a more secluded area.

Yeardley:  Was he much bigger than she was?

Jay:  Yeah, I think she’s about 5’6” and he’s well over 6 foot.

Yeardley:  Oh dear. Okay.

Jay:  The male then got behind her and then wrapped his legs around her to further secure her, and he said to her, “I’ll let you go if you give me a blowjob and deep throat me.”

Yeardley:  Ugh. That’s so vile.

Jay:  The male pulled her beanie over her eyes so she couldn’t see and then took the mask that he had had and also put that around her face. Then he asked her if she had a husband or a boyfriend, and she said that she wasn’t married and didn’t have a boyfriend, but she had a crush.

Zibby:  That’s such a specific answer.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Jay:  Yes. He asked her where she lived. She said she lived just around the corner, and she was about one block away from her street.

Yeardley:  Why would she tell him where she lives?

Jay:  I think she was trying to say that, “Hey, I’m right home. Somebody could be close. You never know,” in a way to get him to stop. And then he asked her if she lived alone, and she said, “No, I live with my mom and sister.” The male then asked her, “Do you want me to take you there so I can rape your mom and sister?”

Yeardley:  Oh, my God. There’s so much conversation in this incident, I’m quite surprised.

Jay:  It’s unusual, I would say. But I think, this plays into this male’s fantasies.

Dan:  I’m sure it’s happening so fast. This exchange is occurring within seconds.

Zibby and Yeardley:  Right.

Jay:  Yes. Then the male told Tabitha he wanted her ID, and she said it was in her purse. Then at that point, she started to take the opportunity to fight the male off again. She tried to break free from his grasp and began scratching at his eyes and mouth. While he was grabbing her clothing and attempting to control her, he is holding on to her shirt, and as she’s squirming away, she pulls out of her shirt and she runs down the street towards her house with just her bra on. As Tabitha’s running away, the male says, I’ll give your stuff back if you come back.

Zibby:  No.

Yeardley:  What?

Jay:  And she didn’t know which way the male left. She didn’t look back. She just ran three or four blocks to her house. And she contacted her mom and her sister inside the house, and they immediately called 911. The patrol officers responded and Tabitha was taken to the hospital for a sexual assault investigation. She had sustained many injuries during this. She had a large amount of scratches on her body, bloody swollen lip, bumps to her head, and bruises throughout her body. Also, the patrol officer noted that her nails were broken off and jagged.

Zibby:  How traumatizing?

Yeardley:  Oh, I can’t imagine.

Jay: Yeah. Simultaneously that the police officers went back to the scene and there they found Tabitha’s purse, her sweatshirt, and a shirt. And the shirt was half removed from the sweatshirt as if it had been taken off at the same time. Also, near right where the clothing was discovered, was the black mask that the male had been wearing.

Zibby:  Aha. Yes.

Dan:  That was a mistake.

Zibby:  On his part.

Dan:  Yes.

Jay:  Yes

Zibby:  Yeah. But a win for you guys.

Jay:  Yes. When I read that in the reports, I was very excited because I knew that this was going to hopefully lead us down the path of figuring out who this person was. So, the nail clippings, the finger swabs, and the mask were all sent out for DNA analysis. Unfortunately, this is a constant problem we have to deal with, is that it takes months.

Zibby:  Takes forever.

Yeardley:  That’s what we’ve heard. We could never believe it.

Jay:  It’s constant frustration for me and many other detectives.

Zibby:  I mean, we’ve heard this, and we know that there’s a massive backlog at the DNA lab, but in a case like this one, where the likelihood of him striking again right away is really high, can’t the DNA samples get prioritized?

Dan:  Well, in our state, we’ve got one DNA lab, so you’ve got the whole state sending all their stuff to one place. All these other jurisdictions who have their case like that saying, why can’t you do this for us?

Zibby:  There are too many rapists.

Jay:  Yeah. Even in a homicide case. And I had one recently where “The rush,” took about a month and a half.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Zibby:  Jeez.

Dan:  That’s a really quick return.

Yeardley:  Really?

Dan:  Yeah.

Zibby:  Wow. Okay, so nobody knows who this guy is yet. DNA evidence has been sent off to the lab, and in the interim, you’ve been assigned the primary on this case, which was, what, about six months after the incident occurred, right?

Jay:  Exactly. About a week after I was thrown into the mix of this case, I got an email from the lab, and they said the DNA profile belonged to Nick.

Yeardley:  So you got someone. Someone who’s already in the system, obviously.

Jay:  Yes. The fact that his profile is on file with the state indicates that there’s been some previous criminal activity. So, my job is to find out who Nick is at this point and what kind of criminal history he has. And when I start doing my research, I find a case from Dan’s agency that went back to 1989. So, as I begin to research this case, I read through all the handwritten reports, and I find that in 1989, police were dispatched to a report of a rape.

Yeardley:  So, now you’re looking at a rape report from 27 years earlier that involves this guy, Nick, and who was the victim in 1989.

Jay:  So, Stacey reported she had been visiting a friend and walked home. She made it about eight blocks when a male drove past her and offered her a ride. And she said no and continued to walk. She made it about four blocks towards a bar in Danstown. She saw a male inside of a phone booth, and she said it was the same male that had just offered her ride. This is back when phone booths existed. And she saw his car was just parked a little bit away from the phone booth. She sensed danger, as this was twice now the male had come into her path we’ll say. She cut through the parking lot and tried to get a license plate off the vehicle, but it was too dirty. She deviated from her intended path and cut through a parking lot of a bar.

 Just then, the male gets back into his vehicle and drives past her. As she begins to run to the corner of another building, she sees his car parked unoccupied, and she’s really got her hackles up. She’s concerned that something’s going on. Well, just then, the male approaches her with a pocketknife out.

Yeardley:  Oh. It’s terrifying.

Jay:  He grabs her. He pulls her into his vehicle and then speeds away from the area.

Zibby:  I can’t-

Yeardley:  Oh, no.

Zibby:  -take it. And how old was Stacey.

Jay:  At the time, Stacey was 17 years old. While he’s driving, he holds her down and puts her head down towards a seat and won’t let her get up while he’s still holding the knife. She convinces him to put the knife away and he does. He tells her that he had just got out of jail after spending a year there for assaulting a male. Claims that the male raped his wife, and police didn’t do anything about it. As I find out later, that’s not in any way what happened. But he tells Stacey that he emigrated from France when he was 14 years old.

Zibby:  He’s quite the conversationalist.

Yeardley:  Yes.

Jay:  He has a penchant for the gab. He then drives her to a dirt road that led down to the river. And this is about 3 miles from where he had picked her up. And then by the river he begins to engage her in conversation and then rapes her.

Yeardley:  Oh, God.

Jay:  Following the rape, Stacey tells the male her name, and he reciprocates and says, “My name’s Nick.”

Yeardley:  Why does she tell him her name, I wonder?

Jay:  I think she was petrified about what was coming next.

Yeardley:  Right.

Jay:  He had already raped her. She had seen his face. She had been in his car and I’m sure she was concerned that he might kill her.

Dan:  She’s trying to humanize herself.

Zibby:  She sounds pretty savvy.

Jay:  I think she’d had a bit of life experience, even for 17 that made her street smart.

Yeardley:  I see.

Jay:  After he tells her his name is Nick.

Zibby:  His real name.

Jay:  His real name. Nick writes his phone number on an ad from a local grocery store-

Zibby:  Stop it.

Yeardley:  Wait. What?

Jay:  –which also has his address because it’s a mailer from the grocery store. So not only is his name in there, and then he writes his phone number. In addition, he writes times that she should call him when his girlfriend is not at the house, when she’s working.

Zibby:  Stop.

Yeardley:  This is unbelievable.

Zibby:  So, he’s just looking for a second long-term relationship or what?

Jay:  Bingo,I think he is looking for another sexual encounter with her so that he can continue his fantasy.

Dan:  And he thinks that his way of taking her, so to speak, turned her on.

Jay:  Yes. Well, as we find out later, Nick tries to justify this. He says, “Well, I shouldn’t have kidnapped her. I shouldn’t have done with the knife.” But the sex was consensual.

Zibby:  No.

Yeardley:  Ugh.

Jay:  So, he is on a different plane than a lot of people we deal with. So, following the rape, Stacey didn’t want Nick to know where she lived, so she asked him to drop her off at the place where he had abducted her. And he does that. He drives her back to where this occurred. And I think she did a great job of humanizing herself. And this is what may have saved her life.

Dan:  And he probably thinks for sure she’s going to call me. She’ll probably call me in a couple of days and everything is all good.

Yeardley:  Because she got back in my car and we’re pals now.

Dan:  Yeah.

Jay:  Bingo. So, when she gets back to the bar where she was abducted, she walks to her house and calls the police.

Zibby:  And I’m guessing the police start with the phone number and address Nick left with Stacey.

Jay:  Yes. They go to the conveniently provided address by Nick. Upon arriving there, they see a 1979 Ford Granada, four door, brown in color. And this matches the description provided by Stacey. The officer knocks on the door and Nick answers. The officer begins to talk about the case with Nick. Nick said he had been in the vehicle about 30 minutes before, but was with his girlfriend and her roommate the entire night. But the story unravels very quickly. And the other officer who arrives goes and talks to the girlfriend and said, “Yeah, well, weren’t together the whole night, most of the night.” So, his story doesn’t check out with his girlfriend. The officer asks him about the mail with his phone number, his name that was given to Stacey. And he says, “No, that wasn’t me. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t do that.”

Yeardley:  Even though his address is on the envelope?

Jay:  Yes.

Yeardley:  This is so dumb. [laughs]

Jay:  Then he confronts him about that. Then the story begins to change. Nick says that, “Well, yeah, I went to this diner, and I met with a couple women, and I provided her my name and phone number.” Then the woman said she was upset because Nick came onto her, and then she somehow gave him a hug after he came onto her. And then they went their separate ways.

Zibby:  Why would he include the hug part? How does that help him?

Jay:  This is the most extreme form of minimizing he’s doing here. Well, I had contacted her, we hugged, not knowing what she’s really told the police and so forth.

Zibby:  Yeah.

Jay:  And then the officer asks if the woman had ever gotten into his car, and he says no, but she stood outside of his car. Then the story changes again. Nick now says he gave the woman a ride and dropped her off, and then gives the same location where the abduction occurred.

Zibby:  God, he sounds like he was just flapping to craft a plausible story and failing miserably at it.

Dan:  And that’s pretty typical of the people that we deal with, especially when they know that our bullshit meter is spiking. The story will grow in very tiny little increments. They’re basically gauging us. They’re trying to measure how much we actually know because they don’t want to give too much, but they have to be able to explain it to some degree.

Jay:  So, his story is shifting. Nick says that they drove to an area near the river and began fooling around. He says he had consensual sex and she enjoyed it. This is another example of himself aggrandizing and trying to claim his prowess with women is a running theme.

Yeardley:  But he’s also attempting to turn this into a he said. she said situation.

Jay:  Yes, but the officer told Nick he wanted to talk to him more about the case at the police station, ask if he would go willingly. Nick agreed to go. Prior to providing Nick a ride to the station, the officer did a great thing for the case and a great thing for his safety. He asked him if he had any weapons on him. And then Nick said, I have a knife. The knife was inside his coat pocket, and it was described as a folding buck knife. If you remember back, Stacey was taken at knife point.

Yeardley:  Aha, see.

Zibby:  That corroborates Stacey’s account and makes it harder for Nick to turn it into a he said, she said situation.

Yeardley:  Do you think that Stacey was his first victim? He seems not very organized.

Jay:  He’s a very disorganized offender and that continues through this entire case. But I think for him, that’s what he wants. This isn’t a planned thing. It’s the spur of the moment. I want to do this now. It’s the thrill of not having a plan and attacking.

[Break 1]

Yeardley:  It’s impossible to think that from 1989 to 2016, he doesn’t just have a ton of other victims.

Jay:  Yeah, I have suspicions that there’s other victims out there. And one of the things we did is look through all the old cases involving stranger attempted abductions or sexual assaults. And it’s not to say that we didn’t find the case. We just couldn’t find enough to go forward with any other cases. There’s plenty of questions we still have about Nick’s activities, but they may never be answered.

Yeardley:  Indeed.

Zibby:  But was he at least charged and sentenced for raping Stacey?

Jay:  Yes. He didn’t take this to trial. He just pled guilty outright and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Zibby:  40?

Jay:  40. So, sentencing at the time was different, and you would get, I believe it’s the maximum for the crime, but then parole would be a factor, so you would spend as much time in as the department of corrections and the parole board felt was necessary, and then you would be released. So, Nick served 14 years of his 40-year sentence.

Zibby:  Wow.

Yeardley:  That’s not much of a 40-year sentence.

Dan:  Especially for the act that he committed, because that’s pretty frightening, the stranger rapes.

Jay:  Right. And I think that’s what a lot of standards of sexual assault prevention are based upon. It’s the stranger rape and they don’t happen that often, but when they do, they’re really bad.

Zibby:  And they seem to me the most terrifying in a certain sense, because a stranger rape is so out of the blue, it feels impulsive. If you can’t help yourself, that you’re going to go after a stranger and get what you want despite the number of unknowns that come with a stranger rape, that to me means you can’t help yourself.

Dan:  How do you rehabilitate that behavior?

Zibby:  Yeah, mm-hmm.

Dan:  It’s impossible. You can’t.

Jay:  Exactly.

Yeardley:  So, there were 14 years in there where he couldn’t offend even if he wanted to.

Jay:  Right. But he was released from prison in 2003. 2003, officers from my agency were dispatched to a report of a street robbery that occurred downtown.

Yeardley:  Seriously?

Zibby:  Just straight out the gates?

Jay:  Yeah. He gets out in 2003. This occurs in December of 2003. He’s on parole at this time, which doesn’t appear to be working. A new victim, Alice, reported that while she was walking to her work, she heard a noise behind her and then saw a male running towards her. The male was wearing dark clothing, knit cap, a white dust mask, hooded sweatshirt, and jeans.

Yeardley:  What’s a dust mask?

Jay:  It’s like if you’re going to paint or do sanding.

Yeardley:  Looks like a surgeon’s mask.

Jay:  Yes.

Yeardley:  Yes.

Jay:  The male tackled Alice into a landscaped area near her business. She fought back, began kicking and yelling.

Yeardley:  Go, Alice.

Jay:  He then forced his fist into her mouth and told her he wouldn’t let her leave unless she stopped screaming. The male took her purse, then began to rub her vagina through her undergarments.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Jay:  Alice described the male as very calm but forceful. He continued to fondle her vagina for a few moments until he stood up and ran away. At that point, a good Samaritan had heard the encounter and the screaming and came over to help. Our suspect climbed into his vehicle, which was parked not far away from where he attacked Alice. The problem for our suspect is this parking lot is a one way in, one way out only. So, what does he have to do? He has to drive right past the good Samaritan and Alice.

Zibby:  Come on.

Yeardley:  Unbelievable.

Jay:  As observant folks, they happen to take the time to note his license plate.

[laughter]

Zibby:  Ideal.

Jay:  And the license plate is registered to an address about 3 miles away. When the officers arrive at that residence, they find the vehicles in the driveway. The vehicle was wet, the windows were fogged up, and there were fresh tire tracks in the driveway. And the hood of the vehicle was warm. All indications that the vehicle had just been driven. One of the officers saw a black stocking cap in between the two seats near the gear shift.

Yeardley:  He is so sloppy. He’s not a man of detail, is he?

Jay:  No. No.

Dan:  I’ll tell you what. Fortunately, this guy’s the fucking worst rapist ever. Because he’s very dangerous.

Yeardley:  Right.

Dan:  He’d be really, really dangerous if he had any skill and aptitude for this.

Jay:  There’s a great thing for bad criminals sometimes makes things a lot easier for us, but it doesn’t diminish the severity and the brutality inflicts on people. The patrol officer that arrived saw a male through the garage. The light was on in the garage. It’s dark outside. And the male was wearing a dark-hooded sweatshirt about 35 to 40 years old. He had short, wavy brown hair and a mustache, and the male saw him rifling through a dark colored bag. The male looked out the window and squinted his eyes and then made eye contact with the officer, ran to the light switch, turned it off, then ran inside the house. [Zibby laughs] The officers forced entry through the front door of the residence, and they confronted a female and Nick.

Zibby and Yeardley:  Of course.

Jay:  Nick was taken to the police station. Detectives arrive and begin to interview Nick about this case. He doesn’t say much. He tells them that he had been in prison for 14 years, and he didn’t really have much to say about the matter. When they confronted Nick about the sexual assault portion of the robbery, he denied the sexual assault allegation. He was later transported to jail shortly thereafter, I think it was only two months, he pled guilty to sex abuse, robbery, and coercion charges and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Yeardley:  Why does he change his story?

Dan:  Well, his lawyer is probably looking at him and saying-

Yeardley:  You’re screwed.

Dan:  -you’re screwed, you have zero chance here.

Zibby:  So, he struck in 1989, went to prison for 14 years. He struck again in 2003, just a few months out of prison, gets sentenced to another 10 years. And now it was Tabitha. You’re looking at this guy for his third attempted rape that you know of.

Jay:  Yes, exactly. So, I have now a great case. I’ve got two sources of Nick’s DNA from the mask and from the fingers of the victim.

Yeardley:  So, please tell me that you now get to go after this guy.

Jay:  I go to his house with another detective and an officer and try and contact him. I find out that he’s living in a halfway house for convicts and is still on parole for his previous offense. His roommate tells me that he works for local towing company and he should be working right now. So, we drive out to the tow yard and the whole time I’m thinking, this guy attacks women at night when they’re by their self, and he is working as a tow truck driver-

Zibby:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  Ahh.

Jay:  -where you’re going to be going to assist people-

Yeardley:  Right.

Jay:  -late at night. I go to his work. I find Nick in the tow yard, and he’s arrested. I have the patrol officer take him to the police station, and he’s placed in an interview room.

Zibby:  Is he shocked when he’s arrested at work?

Jay:  Oh, very much so.

Yeardley:  He is.

Jay:  His mind is spinning. What did I do? Is this a parole violation? Is this something else?

Zibby:  Because so much time had gone by since his attempt to rape Tabitha. How long had it been?

Jay:  It’s a year and a week.

Zibby:  So, he thought he’d gotten away with it.

Jay:  He thought he’d gotten away, and this was so far in his mind that he never thought it would come around to bite him. So, when we get to the police station, I start to talk to him about the case. I asked Nick if he knows Tabitha. He says, “No, I don’t know her. Don’t know anything about her.” I show him a photo of her. He doesn’t recognize her. He tells me that at the time of this, he was living at the halfway house, mind you, which is on that same thoroughfare about 2 miles south of where this incident occurred.

Yeardley:  Right.

Jay:  And the shortest route is to get on there and just drive north. And then you come to where the assault occurred. I asked him what kind of vehicle he drove. And he said, “Oh, I had a white Nissan car and there was two doors.” Okay, all right, that makes sense. And I asked him if he ever owned a black mask. And he said, “Oh, yeah, I did own one. It was about a year ago, in December. I noticed it was missing.” He says he bought the mask for $1 as part of an online promotion and described the mask as a stretchy material with a skull on the front. Then I showed him a photo of the mask and asked if this is what the mask looked like. And he said, “Yeah, it looks something like that.”

 Then we get to the DNA. I showed him the lab report showing his DNA was on that mask and under her fingernails and in her hands. And he immediately, “I want to talk to a lawyer, I’m done.”

Yeardley:  So no more talking. What do you do with him then?

Jay:  He was lodged at the jail. He was lodged on kidnapping, attempted sodomy, sex abuse, and assault charges. One of the things when he was getting lodged, he told me that he wanted to get his girlfriend’s number out of his phone so he could call her. So, I took note of that.

Yeardley:  Is that his one phone call?

Jay:  He can make as many phone calls as he has money for in the jail.

Yeardley:  Oh, I see. Okay.

Zibby:  Because don’t you kind of like it because you can listen in on his calls?

Jay:  Yeah. Oh, I liked it a lot.

Zibby:  Yeah.

[laughter]

Jay:  So, we learned quite a bit about Nick and his case from Nick and the people he spoke with-

Yeardley:  From the jail.

Jay:  -while in jail.

Yeardley:  Fabulous.

Jay:  So, I took the number that he wanted to contact his girlfriend, and I called her. She is somebody that he met shortly after getting out of prison the second time. And she’s very religious. Nick, during the end of his second stint in prison, found that he was a born-again Christian. So, she thinks that everybody gets a second chance.

Dan:  He’s redeemable.

Zibby:  And what’s her name?

Jay:  Sarah. And I asked her, “Hey, do you have any photos from Nick around the time that this incident happened?” Maybe just family photos. And she says, “Well, yeah, I have a bunch.” Oh, great. Can you just email them to me? Sure. So, she does, and I ask Sarah if Nick had ever owned a mask. And she says, “Oh, yeah, I remember that he bought this mask online for a dollar as part of some promotional process.” I’m like, “Oh, okay.” And she’s like, “This couldn’t have happened. There’s no way. He didn’t do this. I know he’s had a bad past, but no, he’s converted. He’s legit now.” So, she thinks that all this information she’s going to provide me is going to exonerate him because she truly believes he didn’t do this. I gave her a snapshot of what occurred. Well, then next day or so, she sends me this photo.

Yeardley:  Ah.

Zibby:  Stop it. You guys can’t see this, but it’s a picture. It’s so disturbing on a number of levels.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God. He’s not wearing a shirt.

Zibby:  Right. It’s a photo of a topless man wearing a black skull mask around his head.

Jay:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  Oh, boy.

Jay:  He looks very creepy in this. So, I really think that Sarah has more information about Nick and his activities around the time of this assault. And I don’t think she’s holding back on me. I just don’t think she knows what she knows. So about two months after he’s arrested, I’m at my desk and I get a call from Sarah, and she tells me that she found something and sends me a message. I open this, and it’s a photo of a selfie that shows Nick as much as I can zoom in on my phone to look at this. Nick has scratches all over his face. So, I dropped what I was doing. I told her, “Hey, can I come over?” She said, “Sure.” Great. I grabbed another detective and went to her house. She had a tablet, laptop computer, and she showed it to me. And the photo was taken about 18 hours after the assault occurred with Tabitha.

Zibby:  Wow. We get to see this photo. Listeners, we’ll do our best to describe it aloud. And this is a selfie he took.

Jay:  This is a selfie he took. And we know that was taken in Sarah’s apartment because in the background of the picture, there’s a painting on the wall that is the same painting that was in her living room when she showed me this photo. But as you can see in this, there’s a distinct horseshoe-shaped scratch near his lower jaw area. And there’s multiple scratches near his eyes and next to his nose.

Yeardley:  He looks pretty grumpy. He looks a little nonplussed with this situation in his selfie.

Dan:  He looks like he got in a fight with a wolverine.

Zibby:  He’s not what I imagine him at all.

Jay:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  He has a goatee, but his mustache reminds me of Hitler.

Zibby:  He looks like Hollywood’s version of a stereotypical truck driver.

Dan:  So, he got, like a starter mullet?

Zibby:  Yeah, he has got a starter mullet. And he looks gruff and grumpy.

Jay:  I think that’s a very accurate description.

Yeardley:  Is Sarah not disturbed by the fact that his offense is that of a predatory sex offender?

Jay:  Ithink that she’s come to terms that was the old Nick for the previous two assaults and just doesn’t believe up until this point that he was the person responsible for the assault on Tabitha. She’s in denial.

Yeardley:  Is she starting to get a clue though? She finds these photographs with scratches on his face, the mask. Is she starting to put the pieces together or is she still saying, well, it’s just a coincidence?

Jay:  No, I think this was the nail in that coffin.

[Break 2]

Zibby:  While you’re building a very strong case against Nick for the attack on Tabitha, he’s lawyered up. So, I’m assuming he and his team are busy creating some kind of defense, right? But did he even have one?

Yeardley:  Right, because how do you explain those scratches on your face that appeared right around the time that Tabitha was attacked?

Jay:  Well, contention later from the defense was that, “Well, this photo was wrong. This wasn’t taken on that date. This is from another incident.” And Nick said that, “Oh, no, I got injured at work. Part of a trailer fell down and hit me in the face. That’s why I had those scratch marks on my face.” So, always being curious and wanting to call BS on a story that’s BS, I found another photo of Nick when he was at work. And we know this because this photo was also geotagged to his work. He does have a mark on his forehead where there’s some grime and dirt, where it looked like an undercarriage of a trailer fell on his face. So, each point he comes up with these stories, then we’re able to controvert what he’s saying.

Yeardley:  Mm-hmm.

Jay:  Now, we only learned about this potential defense theory because he was on the phone telling his friends about it.

Yeardley:  It’s unbelievable. It’s like a gift

Zibby:  He has to be the least savvy criminal we’ve heard about on this show yet.

Yeardley:  It’s true.

Jay:  Right? So, as we keep going, I end up writing multiple search warrants based upon the information I got from the jail tapes. And we keep getting closer and closer to trial. About a month before our trials start, in July of 2017, Sarah comes to the police station with a gem. So, Sarah had written Nick off and began to go through some stuff that he had stored at her place. He had previously allowed her to photocopy his paperwork. Nick had held the sex offender group at Sarah’s house. So, all the other sex offenders that he was going through treatment with, they would come over and they would do their projects and work on their homework assignments.

Yeardley:  I’m sorry, I just want to be clear. Nick would host group sex offender rehab nights at Sarah’s house.

Jay:  Right.

Yeardley:  Okay. And they have homework assignments.

Jay:  Yeah, the homework assignments, he’s supposed to write his thoughts out about what turns him on. One of the things that he listed in his own handwriting was that a woman walking down the street alone would turn him on sexually.

Yeardley: : Oh.

Zibby:  Ah, geez.

Jay:  So, we find this treasure trove of self-reporting that Nick had done about his sexual behavior, and we brought this in front of the judge, and we said, “Well, we think we should be able to bring this into the trial.” The defense attorney said, “No, you shouldn’t.” This has nothing to do with this case and a few other arguments. And judge is like, “No, this is totally relevant. This goes to his motive for this crime, what turns him on, and how. This is absolutely relevant.”

Dan:  And it fits his pattern of behavior.

Jay:  Exactly. One of the things that we also tried to get into the case was because this crime with Tabitha matched the crime with Stacey and Alice in the same modus operandi. So, we brought that in, we presented all our evidence to the judge, and we said, we think we should be able to bring in the past victims to testify about how their crimes were the same or very similar to the crime with Tabitha. We won that.

Zibby:  Yes.

Jay:  So, I had to track Stacey and Alice down, and they both came down and testified during the trial. They were, for lack of a better phrase, beaten up quite bad by the defense attorney. And both of them left the courtroom crying.

Dan:  And that’s a tricky strategy also, because sometimes that can really turn a jury off if you’re going to attack victims like that.

Jay:  Yes.

Zibby:  Were Stacey and Alice reticent to testify, or were they eager to help put him away again? Because presumably Nick would be in the courtroom, so they’d have to face him again as well.

Jay:  Alice, who still lives locally, was very interested in doing it. Stacey, who lives ways away from this town, was a little bit more apprehensive about it. It took a long time to finally track her down, but she agreed to come once we issued her a subpoena.

Yeardley:  And if Stacey and Alice’s cases had already convicted Nick, what could the defense attorney in Tabitha’s case possibly do or say to come down hard on them?

Jay:  He wanted to exploit some of the inconsistencies that occurred in their stories versus the current assault. So, he would try and say that these aren’t similar at all. These are totally different events and unrelated. This doesn’t match this pattern. And he would attack them going down the line of all these similarities and trying to exploit the difference in the similarities between the two cases.

Dan:  Smoke and mirrors.

Jay:  Yeah. He is attacking their memory and their credibility to further his clients wishes not to go back to prison.

Yeardley:  It’s disgusting.

Jay:  Yeah. Also, Tabitha wasn’t able to identify him. She stated in trial that they were basically face to face, and she wasn’t able to identify him. That doesn’t bother me a bit, because she’s being attacked by some savage animal, and how is she supposed to remember exactly what he looks like?

Yeardley:  Mm-hmm.

Zibby:  Yeah.

Jay:  She’s under stress. She’s in fear for her life, and she’s trying to get the hell out of there while he’s trying to keep her there.

Yeardley:  Also, there was a really long period of time between the attack and when you were actually able to identify him based on the DNA, and that’s a lot of months. And you’re right. Stress and time, and you don’t want to identify the wrong person and ruin their life.

Dan:  So, there’s that. And the other factor that we encounter with photo lineups is when you’re standing and looking at somebody in the same room as you, a live person, their stature, the way they hold themselves, that is different. And when you’re looking at a photo lineup, you’re looking at a DMV photo of somebody, and things are different.

Yeardley:  There’s no nuance.

Dan:  There’s no nuance. You can’t tell how tall they are. They’re wearing different clothing, likely. So, it is difficult.

Zibby:  I don’t know, man. It just seems so dumb to take it to trial when he so clearly did it. Doesn’t that make his potential outcome worse if he’s found guilty?

Jay:  Nick does not want to go back to prison. He is looking at a life sentence. This is his third strike sex offense. So, from his perspective, why not take it to trial?

Yeardley:  Nothing to lose, right?

Jay:  He can either plead guilty and spend the rest of his life in prison, or he can attempt to fight it and maybe not. Now he approached the prosecutor with an offer of 10 years. “I didn’t do this, but I’ll plead guilty, and you can sentence me to 10 years. Just take that life sentence off the table.” Prosecutor said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and we went to trial.

Yeardley:  How long was the trial? And did he testify also?

Jay:  Yes, he did. And the trial lasted for, it was a one-week trial, so four days basically. He testified. He provided his statements. He was grilled on his inconsistencies in his story and how the photos show where he was at. He tried to say that injury to his face was caused at work, and he tried to spin it as much as he could. Sarah testified for us and provided the information that she had found all this. Nick accused her of lying. She wasn’t. Her story was consistent throughout the entire case. The only thing that changed was Nick’s story.

Zibby:  What was he like on the stand?

Jay:  He was like a deer in the headlights. He was very nervous, and he was able to compose himself, but he seemed very unsure about what he was trying to tell them. I think he’s a kind of guy who expects that just because he says something, people are going to believe it. And when you have 12 jurors sitting there, they don’t buy what he’s saying. I think that didn’t settle well with him.

Yeardley:  Did they ask him about his sexual journal, about the stuff that turns him on? How do you answer to that?

Jay:  He said that was part of a homework assignment and it was all relating to the very first offense with Stacey. He said it had no bearing on this case. He was required to write that through his treatment and that was then, that’s not me now.

Yeardley:  So, he admits assaulting Stacey, even though the defense attorney really took her to task and made her cry.

Jay:  One thing that he said, “Well, I pled guilty to the last two cases because I did them, but I’m pleading not guilty to this because I didn’t do it.” Even today, he still maintains that he didn’t do this case.

Yeardley:  Really?

Zibby:  So, what did the jury decide?

Jay:  So, the jury was out for 15 minutes, which is about enough time for 12 people to go to the bathroom and then pick a foreperson for the jury. They came right back in and we’re done.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Jay:  Nick was sentenced to two life terms, one for the attempted sodomy where he told Tabitha he wanted her to deep throat him and give him a blowjob, and for the sex abuse, forcefully grabbing her breast. And also, he was sentenced to 15 years, I believe, for the kidnapping and I think a year for the assault because her injuries didn’t rise to the level of a felony level assault. It was a misdemeanor.

Dan:  Did you get any pushback from the defense attorney on the kidnapping charge?

Jay:  Yes, we did. So, the statute and case law defines that you must be moved a significant distance or they must attempt to conceal the victim in a secluded location. Now, because he dragged her up this short hill behind the blackberries where she would not likely be found, the judge found in our favor that he was attempting to conceal her in a location where she wouldn’t likely be found. So, we did win that argument.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Dan:  Something we’ve encountered before is in domestic violence cases, for instance, you’ll have a husband who grabs his wife by her hair and drags her into the next room. He forced her to move throughout the building, and we charged with kidnapping and defense attorneys were kicking and screaming to fight that.

Yeardley:  Would you often win that though?

Dan:  Not always, and it’s not always appropriate, but in a case-by-case basis, that might be a very appropriate charge.

Zibby:  In general, how were Alice, Stacey, and Tabitha throughout this trial? Did they form any bond with one another, do you think?

Jay:  They all did a fantastic job. All three of them did an excellent job on the stand. They took the punches from the defense as best as anyone could. Stacey and Alice being the historical victims, they didn’t really want to know each other. I offered, “Hey, do you want to meet each other?” And they’re like, “No.” I think that they didn’t want to share this bond with somebody else, that they too had been the victim of Nick. Tabitha never met either of them that I’m aware of. And she was extremely emotional on the stand, and she suffered long-term consequences as a result of the attack that Nick did to her. And despite doing a great job, it was very evident this was carrying a heavy burden on her, even two years after the event.

Yeardley:  Yeah. Are you still in touch with the victims?

Jay:  Nope. Some cases I do, some cases I don’t. I think in this case, this was such an emotional event for all three people that I didn’t want to be the constant reminder to them that even though we’re able to get Nick and put him away, so he’ll never do this again to anybody else, I don’t want to keep bringing this up each time they see me or talk to me. “Oh, hey. Yeah, that’s a detective that was involved investigating my sexual assault.”

Yeardley:  Right.

Zibby:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  What about Sarah or any other family of Nick’s? Do they stay in touch with him?

Jay:  Nick’s family has disowned him because of his third sex offense. They won’t call him, they won’t send him letters, and nobody wants anything to do with him because they warned him, as I found out later, that if this happens again, they’re just going totally write him off, and it sounds like they’ve done that.

Zibby:  I get the feeling, just in the way that you’ve told us about this case. There’s great satisfaction for you in being able to put someone like Nick away. But what is it like for you personally to encounter these types of crimes and criminals? Like, where does that sit in you.

Jay:  Personally, I don’t let this affect me. I sort of compartmentalize it. It’s something that happened, it’s shitty, but I can’t do anything about what happened. I can only try and prevent something else, and I can only do the best job I can to investigate this. Before I became a detective, I thought I’d have a hard time dealing with a lot of the emotional side and the horrible things that happen. But I found that I just don’t have a problem. Work is work. I’m hired to investigate this crime, and I can do a good job of just keeping it in a box and go back to the box when I have to and step out of it when I don’t need to.

Zibby:  When you go home at the end of the day, do you talk about work?

Jay:  I do. And for me, this isn’t so much work or just a job. I love this shit. I love investigating these cases.

Zibby:  Why is that?

Jay:  Because it’s a puzzle that you just can’t look on the back of the page and find the answer to.

Yeardley:  What did you think of his two-life sentence, sentence?

Jay:  I thought it is exactly appropriate for his situation. He deserves that time, and I think it’s about protecting the community so that he cannot do this again. The prosecutor in this case had an excellent statement when they were doing sentencing. He said before this court “he is a societal menace” and that’s exactly what Nick is. If he wasn’t in prison, he’d be out doing this again.

Yeardley:  Wow. Thank you, Jay, so much.

Zibby:  Yeah.

Jay:  Absolutely. Pleasure to be here.

Yeardley:  Small Town Dicks is produced by Zibby Allen and Yeardley Smith and coproduced by Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby:  This episode was edited by Soren Begin, Yeardley Smith, and Zibby Allen.

Yeardley:  Music for the show was composed by John Forest. Our associate producer is Erin Gaynor and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.

Zibby:  If you like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the show, head on over to smalltowndicks.com and become our pal on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from our Small Town Fam, so hit us up.

Yeardley:  Yeah. And also, we have a YouTube channel where you can see trailers for past and forthcoming episodes and we are part of Stitcher Premium now.

Zibby: [ That’s right. If you choose to subscribe, you’ll be supporting our podcast. That way we can keep going to small towns across the country and bringing you the finest in rare true crime cases, told, as always, by the detectives who investigated them. Thanks for listening, Small Town Fam.

Yeardley:  Nobody’s better than you.

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