- My daughter told my wife that she was going out
to a Halloween party with her friends.
- But that next day, nobody had seen her.
Nobody had heard from her.
- Her friends told us that she didn't ever show up
to the Halloween party.
- The police were getting leads left and right,
people saying, hey, we saw her here.
Hey, we saw her there.
- Also, there were lots of rumors
that she'd gotten involved with a guy named Spider.
- The detectives heard that she could possibly
be buried on his property.
- But they kept hitting dead end after dead end.
- And then a young woman comes to the police department
and wants to talk to the detectives.
- How in the hell can you do something like that?
- It's one of the most disturbing cases
I've been a part of due to the premeditation.
- I've never seen such a thought-out, planned murder
in my career as a prosecutor.
[suspenseful music]
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Bend, Oregon, is basically an outdoor paradise.
Violent crime is low compared to a lot of places.
It's a really safe place.
But every city has its dark side.
[soft dramatic music]
- On November 1st, 2004, I was 12 years old.
That night, I was home. My mom was home.
My oldest sister, Nicole, was home.
- My daughter, Nicole, was 21 years old.
She had lots of friends, and she told my wife
that she was going out to a Halloween party
with her friends,
and she'd be back later on.
- I was actually a senior in high school at the time.
And around here, it's normal for people
to have Halloween parties on November 1st,
especially adults.
They want to be able to go out after
handing out candy on Halloween.
Nikki never said exactly whose house it was
when she talked about the Halloween party.
On November 2nd, that next day,
Nikki still wasn't home,
but Nikki would leave literally
for, like, days at a time.
She'd find some friends, and they'd be like,
yeah, just come stay here.
- Nicole always wanted to check out other areas.
And so we just figured she was going to go on out
and do her thing for a while, and then Nicole's
gonna show up one day just out of the blue.
- She was 21.
Like, oh, I'm an adult. I can do what I want.
- But we noticed her purse was there.
Her wallet was there.
All of her personal effects were at the house.
She didn't take them with her, which found that kind of odd.
- Within a few days,
things kind of started looking weird
because she would have called.
- On November 7th, Nicole's mother, Robin,
contacted the Bend Police Department
and wanted to report her daughter as a missing person.
Nicole had been gone six days at that time.
Her mother last saw her on November 1st at 7:30.
She was picked up by a vehicle that drove her to the party.
But Robin did not see the car,
and she didn't know who picked her up.
- Robin let police know
that Nicole had been wearing a black pants,
white tennis shoes, and a maroon polo shirt
that had actually been issued to her dad,
and it had the word "Bend" inscribed on it
because her dad was a bus driver at the time.
- We'd called her friends that we knew
that she would probably go stay with,
but nobody had seen her. Nobody had heard from her.
- We made up flyers.
We posted them everywhere,
all the cities around Central Oregon,
hundreds of flyers out.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Nicole's mom also let police know
that Nicole had a large group of friends
that were kind of Gothic dressing
and would like to hang out in the downtown Bend area.
- One of those people said that she knew
there was a Halloween party on November 1st,
and it was hosted at a house that was
being rented by Loren Bowers.
- Loren Bowers was a friend of Nikki's from around town
who she actually had dated,
but they were just friends at that time.
Loren also was a friend of the family.
He'd come over for dinner.
Loren would come over to, like, help my dad
move something, fix something.
So that party at Loren's is possibly
where Nikki was going on November 1st.
- Police went and talked to Loren Bowers.
He did indicate that he had been
really good friends with Nicole and Nicole's family.
- Also present at the house was Loren's girlfriend,
and the other roommate was Craig Whiting.
- They all knew Nicole and were friends with Nicole.
But all of them said that she hadn't
been to the Halloween party.
♪ ♪
- We knew Craig Whiting through Loren.
Because at, one point, he actually
lived with us for about six months
because he didn't have a permanent residence,
and we gave him one.
- At the time, Craig didn't have much money,
and my parents were trying to help him
get his life in order.
- Detectives back then wanted to get a statement
from each person at the house
and people that were at the party.
- We knew that Loren had a criminal history,
and he had been in prison before,
but we didn't have any type of evidence
that would give automatic grounds
for a search of his residence.
- Also Loren and everyone else in the house
that lived with him was cooperating with police,
and there was nothing indicating
they would be linked to Nicole being missing.
- We have a young woman who's 21 years old
who gets into a vehicle voluntarily,
and then she doesn't return.
Maybe there was a different Halloween party,
but detectives don't have a lot of information to go on,
so they talk to Nicole's family
to try to create somewhat of a picture
of who Nicole was as a person
to help this investigation.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- We were a really close family.
Like there's no ifs, ands, or buts about that.
♪ ♪
Nikki still lived at home, and she was the oldest.
She'd helped me get ready for dances,
and we'd just like, dance around, have fun.
And my mom and Nikki, their personalities
were a lot alike as well--
very loud, outgoing personalities.
But Nikki's completely daddy's girl.
- She was kind of a tomboy.
She liked to go hunting and fishing with me,
go out cutting firewood.
Well, I got out of the Marine Corps in 1987,
and she was actually getting ready to join the Marine Corps
herself and then get the schooling to be--
she wanted to be a marine biologist.
That was her dream in life, working with dolphins.
She even had a tattoo on her shoulder of a dolphin.
And she loved children.
Back then, Nicole was a babysitter,
so that's what she did for a living.
- Me and my sister, Nicole, were best friends.
It was like the oldest and youngest.
But as she was getting older,
she started hanging out with probably not the best
ideal people to be around.
- Nicole had several boyfriends.
I didn't really know them individually
because she got over 18.
Pretty much do what she wanted to.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Talking with the parents and the family,
the detectives find out that Nicole recently
broke up with a boyfriend
about a week or so before this Halloween party.
- In my eyes, he was not a good person.
They hadn't dated super long, but Nicole had even told us
he had gotten physical with her before
and argued with her a lot.
And from what I understand, he had been in and out of jail,
so he had a really bad history.
- Hearing that this relationship was toxic,
obviously, that is somebody that the detectives
wanted to contact, because sometimes
relationships can end poorly.
- When somebody goes missing after a breakup like that,
you never know.
So it was definitely a thought that he could
have done something to Nikki.
- Nicole's ex-boyfriend
seems dubious because, conveniently,
they just broke up,
and he doesn't know where she is.
- And then we heard that a body had been found.
- It was a female that fit generally
the description of Nicole.
- The main suspect is talking, and I thought,
oh, my gosh, is he going to spill it?
- They had planned on killing her because
she was doing the right thing.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Anytime there's a missing persons case,
police are naturally gonna look to the people
who are closest to the missing person.
And so in Nicole's case, she had had a boyfriend,
and they had broken up not very long
before she went missing.
- The detectives contacted the ex-boyfriend,
brought him in for questioning, and with some phone calls,
they could corroborate his whereabouts
on November 1st.
- Then he tells police that
he has no idea where Nicole was.
This is still seeming dubious to the police,
so they ask him to do a polygraph.
- He passed the polygraph.
And so detectives pretty much ruled him out
as a suspect at that point.
- One of the challenges in this case was
detectives were receiving a lot of information
from local residents about locations
on where Nicole had been seen.
- There was a news report about it
on our local television station,
so people thought they saw Nicole on a bus.
They saw her downtown.
- But all of them were dead ends.
So all we could do is just put up more flyers
and just continue to look.
- I hold my emotions in better than most people,
but we never gave up hope that she was out there somewhere.
I never stopped looking.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Our detectives continue to work on following up leads,
and a few months after the initial missing persons report,
there were lots of new rumors going around amongst
kind of the friends and people that hung out
in the Drake Park area, known as the Park Rats.
- The Park Rats were young adults that were drug users.
Nicole was a young 21-year-old.
She's trying to navigate her way through this world,
and she, like many other people,
made some poor decisions along the way
and kind of got caught up in a group of people
that were probably not the best for her.
- The Park Rats said that Nicole had gotten involved
with a guy named Devin, who we actually knew
had a street name of Spider.
- Spider was kind of like the leader of the pack,
the leader of the group down in Drake Park.
And he was a known troublemaker.
He scared people, so to speak.
That's why some people thought that they were a gang.
And from what I understand, Nicole had actually
gone out with him at one time.
Of course, I didn't like it at all.
- Spider actually went to school
with my sister for a while.
He did have a really bumpy past.
He is one of those who had been in and out of jail.
- We were told at one time that Spider and his group
were into, like, satanic-type rituals
and that they tried to get Nicole involved in that.
- So it was definitely a thought that he
could have been part of Nikki's disappearance.
- Then somebody with a lead called the police department
saying that Nicole could possibly
be buried on his property,
and they didn't want Spider to be able to have
the time to move the body.
So they contacted the National Guard
and were trying to get a radar unit
that flies over and detects ground disturbances
using ground-penetrating radar.
But the National Guard determined that the trees
were so dense that their technology would not
help us in this investigation.
- Detectives were able to contact Spider
and get him to come down to the Bend Police Department
for an interview.
Spider was cooperative, and he said if he knew
where she was, he would tell her parents
'cause he could tell how distraught and upset
her parents were since she had gone missing.
He did recount the last time he had seen her
was at a Halloween party. Confusing.
Not the same Halloween party that happened
on November 1st with Loren Bowers and that crowd,
but a true Halloween party on Halloween.
He described how her and some of their other friends
actually went trick-or-treating for a while,
and then they came back and all fell asleep.
The next day, November 1st, somewhere later in the day,
around noon, Spider said that he took Nicole back
to her house, dropped her off, and then left.
Detectives talked to other friends
and were able to verify Spider's story
but still we're concerned he may have something
to do with Nicole's disappearance,
so they asked him if he'd be willing to take
a polygraph test, and he said he would do so.
They asked him, was he involved
in Nicole's disappearance?
Did he know where Nicole currently was?
Did he cause Nicole's death?
And he passed all of those questions.
So the detectives at that time felt pretty confident
that they could rule out Spider as being part
of Nicole's disappearance.
- By this point in the investigation,
detectives had already sent out subpoenas
for Nicole's cell phone,
her credit cards, her debit cards.
If a person were alive, they would normally
be using these things, but there was nothing.
Her mother recognized she's been hanging around
some really bad people, and there was something
in Robin that felt that something bad
had happened to her daughter.
Mother's intuition? I don't know.
- And detectives just kept hitting
dead end after dead end.
- They didn't know what happened.
[soft dramatic music]
A few months after that, a body had been found
closer to the Portland metropolitan area.
- It was a female
that fit generally the description of Nicole.
- I thought Nicole was out there still alive,
but we got a call saying that they found a girl's body
about the same age and body style
and all that stuff, and I couldn't believe it.
Nicole was gone.
So the one thing I asked him, I said,
well, look on her left shoulder.
If she's got a tattoo of a dolphin
on her left shoulder, that might be her.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
- And my parents got the message from the detectives
here in Bend that, in Portland,
a body had been found that matched Nicole's description.
It was kind of like a gut shot.
The last thing you want to hear is your person's been killed.
- Portland is only a three-hour drive from Bend,
so this was a strong lead.
- Also, at one point before
she went missing, Nicole had left,
went to Portland.
And so my parents were thinking maybe she had gone up again.
And this was Nicole.
- It was just excruciating waiting
to find out if this body that was found is my sister.
- But the detectives at that time
found out ultimately, it wasn't her
because it didn't have the same very unique
dolphin tattoo that Nicole had.
- It was a relief, period, because there's still hope
that she's still out there.
OK, what next?
[crows cawing]
- As this case moved on through the months following,
the detectives continued to track down leads.
But at some point, they don't really have
a lot of updates to give.
And as an investigator, that's really frustrating.
It can also be discouraging.
- Well, I always had the thought in my head
that Nicole was gonna show up.
I mean, driving around Bend in my bus, and all day long,
every person I saw that resembled her,
I looked, and I had to make sure that it wasn't her.
- We still thought, she'll come home,
even if it's ten years from now.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- The way our department works is that, every three years,
we rotate our detectives.
So in January of 2007, we have a new rotation,
and I was promoted and given the Nicole Hutchings
missing person case, leading our investigation.
And I didn't have much.
I had a lot of police reports that were chasing dead ends
that never materialized.
♪ ♪
But having fresh eyes on this case,
you go in there with, like, this renewed energy of like,
I'm gonna solve this.
- First with our new detectives,
a lot of us were tasked with sending out letters and faxes
to different jails, different hospitals,
running credit checks.
But at this point,
nobody had heard anything from Nicole
in about two years.
- Next, I started to look into all the prior reports,
trying to determine was there anything that we'd missed.
And I noticed we had a couple early-on suspects
and planned to re-interview them.
- So as we were developing our plan
to speak with this group of suspicious people,
a young woman named Shannon comes
to the Bend Police Department into the lobby
and wants to talk to the detectives.
- She said that her boyfriend killed Nicole Hutchings.
[suspenseful music]
Her boyfriend...
is Loren Bowers.
♪ ♪
- As soon as Shannon comes in,
that revives this entire investigation.
It changed everything.
- Shannon told us she couldn't live
with herself anymore because of the information she had
and that her heart was just broken
for what had happened to Nicole,
and I believed her.
- This is a huge break in the case.
Shannon, who had been interviewed
during the first investigation,
indicated that she and Loren Bowers had been
together for several years. They have a son together.
And she starts to tell us really good details
about the Halloween party at Loren Bowers' house
on November 1st, 2004.
- So Loren's friend, Craig Whiting,
was involved as well.
For all of us, it was pretty shocking
because both of them initially had been interviewed
as well as Shannon
and were cooperative with the investigation.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
- A lady named Shannon comes into the police department.
Shannon's boyfriend is Loren Bowers.
And Shannon says Loren and Craig Whiting
killed Nicole Hutchings.
She was obviously very scared of Loren,
and we wanted to protect her,
and we're trying to be compassionate
as now she was gonna become one of our key witnesses.
Shannon decided that she just wanted to take
her and her son and start a new life away from Loren.
This is kind of what motivated her
to come to the police department.
[suspenseful music]
- After all these years of frustration
and all these dead ends,
now we have something to work on.
What we have are a lot of corroborating statements,
which are good.
But what we don't have is a body.
- While police may arrest on probable cause,
that's a much different standard
than proving beyond a reasonable doubt
that somebody murdered Nicole.
A really good way to think about a no-body homicide
is let's say you have a situation
where somebody hears what they think
is violence in a home,
and maybe there's a weapon or something where you say,
hey, we don't have a body, but somebody was either
seriously injured or killed here.
We didn't have that.
- Without the body, we needed a confession.
Without the confession, we were not
going to be successful in this prosecution.
[tense music]
- So we asked Shannon if she would be willing
to wear a wire with Loren Bowers,
and we could have them meet in maybe
a public area, like a park.
And she said she would be willing to do that.
- Weeks later, Loren and Shannon,
they're having a child visitation.
And while the child was playing,
she would try to get information out
of Loren's mouth about the murder
so that we could prosecute this successfully.
- We had myself and other detectives
close by as a protection detail
if things, you know, did go sideways.
- Then we saw Loren approach Shannon.
And they start talking.
[dramatic music]
- When the district attorney, Wells Ashby, heard
"I got rid of her," we looked at each other
and goes, "We've got enough."
Let's bring them back to the station
to do a complete interrogation.
- A few days later, the plan was to pick up
both Craig and Loren simultaneously
so they didn't have an opportunity
to call the other person and tip somebody off.
- On March 12th, 2007, we were able to watch
Loren and watch Craig early that morning
and have our patrol units conduct a traffic stop.
They're on opposite sides of town.
During those traffic stops,
we have detectives randomly show up and say,
hey, we're part of the cold case.
We know you were initially contacted
and interviewed on the Nicole Hutchings
missing persons case.
Would you be willing to come down to the police department
and answer some more questions?
And both Loren Bowers and Craig Whiting
voluntarily agreed to come down to
the police department, and then one of the detectives
had the great idea to have them pass each other in the hallway.
- When a co-defendant sees another co-defendant,
it's gonna make that person think,
is that other guy talking? Maybe I should start talking.
And if you talk first, maybe you get the best deal.
- When they saw each other, Loren Bowers' face
literally just dropped like, oh, my God.
- So we're either gonna really break this thing open,
or these two are gonna ask for an attorney
and we're moving ahead with a no-body homicide.
- We started our interview with Loren Bowers.
He didn't know we had the body wire from Shannon,
and we wanted to lock him into a statement
about what happened to Nicole.
- We had Loren's previous statement
where he confessed on the wire, and now we have him lying.
Loren begins crying 'cause he knows
in the other interview room, Craig is going to be talking.
- It was most of our detectives' belief
that Craig Whiting would be the one to ultimately
break first and tell us the truth.
That's because he didn't really have
much of a criminal history.
- The detective asked some fairly basic questions.
- And then the detectives started really
moving up tempo with the questions.
- You could tell that Craig Whiting
was getting nervous, and we just saw him take
this huge breath. Just...
[breathes deeply]
And I thought, oh, my gosh,
is he gonna finally describe his role
and Loren's role in Nicole Hutchings' murder?
[tense music]
- Our detective was interviewing Craig Whiting,
trying to get the truth about his
and Loren Bowers' involvement in Nicole's death
and hopefully break this case wide open.
- It was shocking because within the first five minutes
of the interview, Craig starts a confession.
- Craig explained that Nicole, when she was serving
as a nanny, one of the children had disclosed
to her that Loren had abused her
and touched her in a criminal way.
Nicole confronted Loren about that,
and Loren denied that.
- And ultimately her having that knowledge
and her indicating that she was gonna come forward
to authorities, that is what caused Loren
to want to kill her so she couldn't ruin his life.
- That's a substantial motive.
So Loren creates a fake party.
Even though Nicole confronted Loren
about sexually abusing a minor,
she accepted the invitation and was trusting enough
to go to that party that night
because Craig and her other friends will be there.
- Craig said that Loren made Nicole a drink,
and it was rum and Coke laced with Vicodin.
Nicole consumed it, became very, very intoxicated,
to the point where she passed out.
- Craig said they placed her in a truck,
left the party, and went out into
the Deschutes National Forest.
- At first, Craig didn't describe himself being
involved in striking Nicole,
but the detectives pressed on, and Craig Whiting eventually
said, I struck her first. I delivered the first blows.
- And then he said Loren continued
beating her until Nicole went unconscious,
and she's dead.
- Craig said they marked the grave with a burnt log.
That way, if they ever needed to come back and move the body,
they would know where to find it.
- Craig was truly remorseful, but it's really hard
to understand why Craig Whiting would go along with this plan.
- He didn't ask you to move a couch.
He asked you to kill somebody. Sorry don't count, bro.
- Hearing everything that Craig's saying--
Craig and Loren had dug the grave.
They had planned the party to lure Nicole out of the home.
And then let's spike her drink so she gets
impaired to the extent that she can't resist,
that she doesn't know what's going on.
They had thought of everything.
The evidence supporting premeditation
for murdering Nicole is staggering.
- After talking to Craig, the senior detective went back
to continue interviewing Loren, said, hey,
Craig's kind of told us what happened,
but he tries to blame everybody else at the party.
- And so this is the classic hey, I didn't do it,
but if I did, I did less than the other guy.
That's nothing new in our line of work.
- So the murder weapon was a tire buddy.
And the end of it has a metal ring,
and truck drivers use it to hit tires to make sure
there's air in the tire.
- Watching this was amazing.
Now we have both Loren and Craig finally saying,
we were both involved in Nicole Hutchings' murder.
- During the interviews, other Bend police detectives
served a search warrant for where Loren currently lives,
the house of where the Halloween party took place,
and also for the other suspect, Craig Whiting's residence.
- The residence where the party had taken place
had been vacant now for about a year or so,
but in the pellet stove, we were able to find
remnants of a shirt.
Nicole's father was a bus driver,
and they were issued shirts.
And when her mother last saw her on November 1st,
Nicole was wearing one of her dad's shirts.
We took it to the Oregon crime lab,
and they determined that it was the same fabric
from the same color lot.
Also outside, we were able to find an area
where they tried to burn something.
We did not recover the actual tire buddy,
the murder weapon, but we found the same type
of ring that would be on a tire buddy.
- I've never seen such a thought-out,
premeditated, planned murder in my career as a prosecutor.
- In fall of 2004, Nicole confronted Loren
about sexually abusing a minor.
- She also threatened to contact
DHS and the authorities.
- So Loren convinced Craig to help him kill Nicole
because that was the only way Loren could
avoid going back to prison.
- Loren planned a Halloween party,
which was a complete sham, to isolate Nicole.
- The night before the party, Loren and Craig
drove to an isolated area outside the town
and dug a hole.
- The next night at the Halloween party,
they spiked Nicole's drink with Vicodin.
She would become unconscious, and they could get her out
of the house without any resistance.
Craig and Loren drove her out of town
back to the site in the woods where they had
dug the hole the night before.
- They hit her over the head with the tire buddy,
take her clothes off of her, push her into the hole,
and then fill it with dirt.
And then Loren takes a partially-burnt log
and places it over the grave
so that he has a marker for future reference.
- The men returned to the party
and burned the clothes, which were clearly evidence.
- Loren instructed Craig and everyone else who had been
at the party to tell investigators
that Nicole had not been at the party.
So on March 12th, 2007, Loren Bowers and Craig Whiting
were both arrested for the murder of Nicole Hutchings.
- Now we need a body.
- It was very important to being able
to best prove the case, but more important than that,
we wanted to tell her parents that we'd arrested
the two of them and then bring Nicole home
so her family could have their proper closure
and proper burial.
Loren and Craig had both admitted to burying her
out on the Deschutes National Forest property,
and they gave us the general area.
- But they had been drinking that night,
and they didn't know exactly where the body was.
I mean, there's nothing out there but trees and mud.
- It would be trying to find a needle in a haystack.
[tense music]
- Loren and Craig had both admitted to being involved
in Nicole's death, and we were able to get them
to agree to take us out and find
where her body was buried.
- They were very vague about where the body was,
and the Deschutes National Forest out there is vast.
And it's a very, very desolate area.
- Loren took us out of town about 20 minutes to an area.
He was pretty confident
it was the correct general area.
- We went down all these different roads.
We were out there for ten hours with nothing,
and it was really deflating.
[dramatic music]
Then Loren was eventually able to isolate
the specific area where Nicole was buried.
We quarantined it off. We brought cadaver dogs in.
- The cadaver dogs alerted on a burnt log.
- Craig had told us that when they buried Nicole,
Loren had placed a partially-burnt log
over the grave as a marker.
- A specialist from the crime lab
begins to slowly dig that area because we don't want
to lose evidence if we find the body.
- As the technician is digging down further,
she ends up striking what she believes is a skull.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
The burial was 7 feet down,
so it was beyond the frost line,
and it was beyond the bug line.
So there was no deterioration on the body.
Nicole had a dolphin tattoo on the back of her shoulder,
and you could clearly see that there was
a dolphin on the body.
We knew that we had Nicole.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- The medical examiner was able to let us know
that she had some severe skull fractures.
- Nicole's cause of death was determined
to be blunt force trauma.
- Everything matched Loren and Craig's statements
about using that tire buddy.
So that was the last piece of evidence we needed
to bring the whole story together.
- Having found Nicole's body,
we're able to communicate with the family.
Your daughter was murdered.
We're moving forward with this case.
- Like 10:15 at night,
we're all getting ready for bed.
They're knocking at the door, and I opened the door.
I'm looking at the police chief and the chaplain.
And they said, we got some news for you.
We found Nicole. She is deceased.
My wife, she turned around
and just lost it, totally lost it.
She wasn't missing anymore.
♪ ♪
- I just fell to the floor. All hope was shattered.
And it's not just somebody who passed away.
They were taken.
- When they told me who it was that they had in custody,
I had to ask them to repeat it a couple of times
because I did not want to believe it was Craig
and Loren because they were so involved
in her last few years of life.
Craig lived with us for six months.
Loren had been in our house on numerous--
he had dinner with us.
- They helped us look for her.
How in the hell can you do something like that?
- We were told that they had planned
all this out ahead of time.
We want to know why.
The police chief told us that Nicole was babysitting
this girl who went to Nicole and explained
that Loren was touching her.
Nicole went into action
right away and confronted Loren,
and because he didn't want to go back to prison,
he turned around and killed my daughter.
And we were told that Craig Whiting did it
because he just wanted to help out a brother
or help out a friend.
Unbelievable. I was numb.
- Loren Bowers and Craig Whiting both ultimately
pled guilty to aggravated murder and kidnapping.
They received a true life sentence,
meaning they would never have a possibility for parole,
so they will both spend the rest of their lives in prison.
- Of the hundreds, probably thousands of cases
that I've prosecuted in my life,
there's nothing like this case.
And I just don't think I'll see another case
or investigation like this. I hope I don't.
- It's a big void with Nicole not being here.
She would be 42 years old right now.
- I want everyone to know my sister
got killed because she was doing
the thing that every human being should be doing.
- My sister was trying to save a little girl
who was being hurt, and her life was taken for it.
If that does not signify somebody being a hero,
I don't know what does.