[eerie churning]
We have to hand it to the criminal.
A conscious effort was made to conceal this crime
from everyone.
Little did we know how gruesome, how terrifying,
[Paula] I can't even believe that somebody
could do this to a human being.
[Jamie] I don't know if they thought
they were outsmarting us.
You start questioning, is he really here?
outside-the-box thinking.
[Paula] Nick was missing for a year.
was contacted by the Barberton Police Department that is
located just northwest of us.
and they advised that a Nick Stein,
believing that Nicholas Stein was missing
and possibly harmed.
a detective that a 25-year-old boy is gone.
Not that he's ran away.
Not that he's missing because he wants to be.
I'm like, no, you don't understand.
I can show you text messages every day.
I can show you phone calls every day.
Nick was just like my second son.
When my son Gunner got sick with brain cancer,
most children, they just walk away because they fear
Nick kept him laughing, playing video games,
hung out with him like he was just a normal kid.
He never gave up on Gunner, who is still alive today
[Shaun] We learned Nick came from a challenged background
in regards to his family.
That being said, probably resilient,
looking to do more.
[Paula] I kept in touch constantly with him,
in text messages, on social media, the telephone.
Then he struggled with just trying to even find a job
in the area.
to social media, bank accounts, records, phones.
All activity had stopped in regards to Nick Stein
and his personal life.
Nick just disappeared.
But we learned he came to Massillon
Nick told me he wasn't making any money, and he said,
But he believed everything Bryan told him.
So we decide we want to interview Bryan Gentry.
Bryan Gentry was renting a house on 8th Street.
He was a decorated war veteran who fought four tours in
Afghanistan before he was ultimately discharged from
[Jamie] Him and his girlfriend, Kristen Lain,
they decided they wanted to start a tree trimming business
with Nick to cut trees in the summer and to plow snow
best to save gas money, and to save time,
that Nick just move in with them.
[Shaun] The couple had three small children living in
from middle school.
Bryan took charge of the house. He was the ringmaster.
They were very cooperative, invited us in,
answered our questions.
When we first arrived at the location,
everything looked normal.
When interviewed, the occupants of the house
stated that Nick Stein had left on Wednesday, February 1,
and had not been seen since.
They had been the last people that were known to have seen
and his whereabouts.
But Bryan said that one of the reasons why Nick may have
had left the house and was going downtown to
back to Barberton.
We did spend hours looking for video footage from local
residents, business, and ultimately...
...there was no video located.
leads you to question, was he trying to be deceptive
and mislead investigators?
for further interview.
During our interviews, we're looking for potential
You're always looking to get to the truth as fast as you can.
the 8th Street address was not your typical residence.
and left that evening.
Nick to have sex with Kristen,
[Paula] Bryan was well aware of the sex triangle,
[Jamie] Once we found out about this love triangle, we didn't know
[Shaun] We looked back on those first interviews.
And that's why it was imperative that we return
to the residence.
she did state that she was in a relationship with Nick Stein
and also Bryan.
And she said that Nick wanted to have an exclusive
relationship with her, and there was an argument.
an exclusive relationship, and that Nick got upset
and left that evening.
Once we hear this, we started wondering, there is
way more going on here than just a missing person.
When the two guys are sexually active with a single female,
then somebody lets their feelings get involved,
bad things tend to happen.
[Shaun] So during questioning, the occupants invited us into
the home to have a further look.
[Jamie] When we went into the basement,
his injuries in the Army, the VA recommended that
he replace the stairs.
So he took them out,
and they were going to be replaced shortly.
the basement that had a stain.
So I asked Kristen about this stain.
But if something bad did happen to Nick, I thought to myself,
is this evidence?
and send it off to be tested.
After we left that house on 8th Street,
and thought, where's Nick?
I'm going to find Nick one way or another.
Little did we know how horrific this case was going to get.
a 25-year-old male, was possibly missing from
his residence on 8th Street.
After we interviewed the occupants of the house,
We began to think this was a cat and mouse game.
Are these individuals trying to steer you in
sparked interest
About a week later, we get the information back
that it was not human blood, that it was, in fact,
soda that Kristen had spilled on the mattress,
just like she told us.
start over at square one.
If, in fact, Bryan or Kristen
or Carl did do something to Nick Stein, these people went
to great extents to conceal any kind of evidence.
Calling Detective Slutz, he's probably thinking
I'm crazy.
But I was Nick's voice. I was the only voice Nick had.
And then after that, his mother struggled to get on
her feet and make it because she hadn't worked for a few years.
It was just him and his brother.
So I was like Nick's second mom.
I just wouldn't let Detective Slutz stop.
So in the spring, I get a phone call from Nick's brother.
He believes Nick made it back home to Barberton.
[Shaun] And he believes that Nick's mother's boyfriend, Andy,
was somehow involved with the disappearance.
Her boyfriend wouldn't allow it.
He just, he was so jealous of Nick.
When the search was going on for Nick, you would think that
her boyfriend would be out looking.
Well, he never left the house.
And he wouldn't allow Nick's mom to leave the house.
That's what made me more curious that
he might be behind it.
[Jamie] I asked Nick's brother to meet me at
And it had some very disturbing comments.
and it was quoted,
[suspenseful tones]
Nick's brother stated that he believed, based on those
in a wooded area near Nick's mother's home.
And he just said he had a lot going on in his life.
He was a dark person and just put things to paper.
But those writings were unrelated to the incident that
we were investigating.
And they sent out officers to check the area and to look for
any kind of sign that there was a body buried in these woods.
It's months...
...since anybody's heard from Nick.
but more of a possible homicide.
Whoever was responsible, they're trying to
get away with murder.
-[crickets chirping] -[owl hooting]
[Shaun] So at this point, we're coming up on four months
in the investigation.
It's our job to figure out what his involvement was.
We felt like maybe there could be something in those woods in
But you have a lot of ground to cover.
So it was very difficult to certainly find what
you were looking for.
Barberton Police Department sent out officers to
check the area, and they were unable to find anything.
So that's another dead end.
It was emotional when Detective Slutz would call and tell me
push stronger, and never to give up on him.
if she would go around and look in the wooded areas
Nick's shoes, and, um, it never was.
[Justin] So in the law, there's a concept called
corpus delecti, and it means body of the crime.
Ultimately, what that means is you have to have more than
And we just didn't have that.
[Shaun] Then we were made aware that Nick's roommate, Bryan Gentry,
And she was pregnant. Carl Spencer was the father.
Now, there was more than just a love triangle.
Carl Spencer was involved with these individuals as well.
[Justin] Matters of the heart certainly can be
a motive for murder. It's one of the oldest ones.
If not for greed and money,
then love, lust, revenge, or hate.
But at this stage in the case, we knew that there was no proof
that a crime had been committed without a body.
for child neglect.
So she gets arrested, and is in the Stark County jail.
[Shaun] And then a confidential informant contacted me.
This confidential informant was someone that I had worked with
for several months, and he was reliable.
[Jamie] Once Bryan went to prison, Kristen has other people over
to the house to continue to party.
[Shaun] There are certainly moments as an investigator
where you feel that...
...what you've been working on has changed.
The mood has changed.
We knew that we had to go back to that common ground,
and that common ground was 8th Street
[Jamie] We go to the house.
Carl's moved out.
The homeowner is at this house, and we explain to him that
there's an investigation going on, and nobody's heard from
Nick Stein for a year.
As we opened that black box, we found the ashes
of a human body.
So I look at this box, and I think,
whereabouts being the 8th Street residence, when given
the ashes and remains of a human body, at the time,
the obvious question was, who was this?
Where did these come from?
We later found out through Paula Cline that those ashes,
in fact, belonged to Nick Stein's father.
[Paula] Nick's father tragically took his own life
when Nick was 17 years of age.
And from then on, Nick struggled with trying to
find the man that he wanted to grow up to be.
I knew at that point that Nick was
no longer with us, here on Earth.
But I kept saying, "Keep up the fight, never give up."
danced around questions pertaining to Nick.
So I told Detective Dadisman we need to go over and talk to
Kristen at the county jail.
she wanted her three kids back.
Now is your time to help yourself and help us.
The challenge of being a detective is obviously
working with individuals who are trying to deceive you.
They want to take you down that wrong path.
She still would not give specific information.
So after interviewing Kristen, there was certainly a pause
this entire time.
We thought, boy, if he's buried in the backyard,
this is pretty bold.
potentially a body buried in that yard.
Are they going to use just a shovel?
That would take a lot of work and a lot of strength to dig
I thought to myself, well, maybe
they rented an excavator.
and they did dig through their files, and they were able
to locate a receipt.
on February 2nd of 2017 of a Kubota backhoe.
[Shaun] The receipt provided to us by the manager
did, in fact, say Bryan Gentry.
And he then provided us a driver's license.
Our prime suspects in Nick's disappearance clearly become
Carl Spencer and Bryan Gentry.
We arrived at the residence to ultimately start digging in
that backyard.
[dog barks]
[Jamie] It's the first day of February in Northeast Ohio.
It's cold.
and we dig for hours.
And we're not able to find Nick.
Took a lot of wind out of our sails.
I told Detective Dadisman, we need to go back over
and talk to Kristen again.
It was an audio interview at the Stark County Jail.
We show her this picture
"What's this picture of?"
[Shaun] We proceeded to show her the receipt from the rental place.
And we just let all this build up,
so that way, she could tell us her story.
So I take out this piece of notepaper,
of their backyard.
and I slam my pen down.
And I say...
And she looks at me.
After she draws this circle,
in that circle, what's there. And she looks at me,
And it's like darn near in slow motion because of
the excitement that I'm feeling inside.
So she writes the N, she writes the I,
And she makes the K.
And inside I'm thinking,
holy [bleep], she just told us where Nick is.
[Shaun] Kristen Lain circled a location in the backyard
where Nick's body was.
She knows that, hey, we're caught now.
where an odor had rised into the air, and there was a black
Their coroner investigator jumps down and looks in this hole,
and he goes, "There's skeletal remains in there."
We were also able to determine that they encased his body in
cement within that box, which hampered
our investigation the day before with the cadaver dogs.
Being encased in cement,
It was a feeling of great relief that we had found
although we had not confirmed that it was Nick Stein yet.
but we can tell you the remains were taken to
the Stark County Coroner's Office.
For the second day in a row, BCI agents and police
were out here.
They were digging up this backyard, and this morning
a body was found stuffed in a container right in that area
[Jamie] The next day, Detective Dadisman and I went to the autopsy.
Seeing this body folded up, basically,
and encased in this cube of cement,
It was horrifying to see.
I thought to myself...
except for pure evil.
we were able to determine that the remains in that box were
When Detective Slutz called me the morning before they were
I knew that I couldn't be there.
[Jamie] Even though we had closure for the family, we still didn't end
the Marlboro Township area, located east of us,
about 30 minutes.
And detectives located Carl and advised him we had
And then Carl Spencer
[Justin] Ultimately, the three individuals pled guilty as
opposed to having trials for their guilt or innocence.
Kristen Lain pled guilty to abuse of a corpse,
In his connection with his testimony against Bryan,
Carl takes a plea deal and is sentenced to 11 years.
Sometimes in our profession, we have to hand it
to the criminal.
and eight feet below in February.
And Bryan Gentry has a background in landscaping
and heavy machinery.
And he hid Nick in an unwitting neighborhood
in an unwitting town.
He'd made a conscious effort to hide this body in plain sight.
Quite honestly, he may never have been found if but for
[Jamie] Bryan Gentry was very smug.
than detectives were. You know, it motivated me more.
It's like, OK, I'm going to figure this out,
and you're going to prison for it.
They released Nick's body to me.
At one point, there was a little talk from some friends
Nick would not be buried in the ground again.
And I was able to have him cremated.
I set his urn box on my lap
and I cried like a baby.
[man 3] He took my wife, my child.
[man 4] Like some sort of Vegas magic act,
She was located encased in cement
in a remote desert area.
He's thrown her into the mine shaft, too.
[man 6] The come to Jesus moment
is when everything is on the table,
and you really have to wonder what happened.