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Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. >> And I'm Brit. >> And today, I'm bringing you a special
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episode. If you recognize the name Marilyn Nikki Macau, then you have either been with us since the very
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beginning or you have made it all the way through our podcast archives because Nikki's story was the first one I ever
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told on Crime Junkie back in December of 2017 before we knew what the show would
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become, before the millions of you listening now and long before we had a team of investigative reporters digging
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into these cases. And Nikki's case really shaped the future of what this show would become because I remember you
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have to remember it too. The day after I released this episode, her daughter Payton reached out to me, said that she
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had listened, said she was grateful for the attention, but there was more to the
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story. So I drove up to Richmond, Indiana. I met with her and I held that conversation with me every day for 8
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years. a reminder that even when we had no following, the people who lived these
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stories would be listening to these stories. I never forgot her. I never forgot her mom. And I kept tabs on this
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case the whole time. But not much changed in 8 years. So, I had this idea. Back in 2017, this show was a lot
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different. I mean, it has evolved so much over time that maybe it's hard to notice unless you binge. So, I wanted to
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show you how far we've come to thank you for showing up every week for caring and
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for giving us the resources to grow. And I want to show you how we put those to work. What started out as just me and
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Brett retelling a story that's already been told, like many true crime shows do, it is now a full-fledged
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investigative reporting operation with a team of reporters to bring you neverbeforeheard details on cases you
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thought you knew, like this one. So, little by little over the last year, me and the team have been digging into this
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with fresh eyes. And now, I'm here to bring you the real story of Nicki Macau with never before released information
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that you aren't going to believe. And at the end of this, you'll realize that this case that once had an ending might
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not be so tightly wrapped up as we thought. It's been almost 25 years since Nikki
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Macau went missing and over 8 years since we first told her story. So, let me start by refreshing everyone on what
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we knew back then. On July 22nd, 2001, Nikki and her fianceé Bobby Webster went to church with plans to wrap up their
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wedding invitations together later that day. After the service, Nikki went back to the apartment that she shared with
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Bobby. She changed into some casual clothes like a pink top and biker shorts, loaded up Bobby's GMC with dirty
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clothes, and then drove to the Richmond Coin Laundry on Southeast Street, something that had become kind of like a
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weekly ritual. Just before 2 p.m., a witness saw Nikki inside the laundromat. Then 15 minutes later, security footage
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captured her at the nearby Village Pantry convenience store getting change. I'm assuming for the laundry machines.
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Now, before she left, she looked totally normal. Things seemed fine. But they obviously didn't stay that way because
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just a little while later, we know that Nikki got back in her car and drove this
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short distance to her parents house where she told her mom that she felt uncomfortable. Some guys at the
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laundromat had been bothering her, like wouldn't leave her alone. >> Well, and her mom even offered to finish
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the laundry up at her place. Right. >> Right. Cuz she had a machine at her place, but Nikki didn't. So, she goes
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back and according to the Dayton Daily News at about 300 p.m. someone sees her back at the laundromat, but I don't
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think they're like whoever's seeing her the witness, they're like staying there or have eyes on her for a long time
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because we just have this like brief confirmation that she's there at 3 and then that's it. We don't know when she
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finished or if she left or when she left or if she left alone. We just know that
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as the afternoon wore on, she never made it back to her apartment. didn't return
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to her parents' house to pick up her then nine-year-old daughter, Payton. And by early evening, her family had started
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to worry and they began calling around trying to find her. And with no luck, they end up filing a missing person's
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report with the Richmond police that next morning. And even though she was in the prime of her life with a daughter,
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she was about to get married. Like, I mean, the wedding was just around the corner. She had no history of
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disappearing like this. For some reason, the family said the police didn't initially think that something bad had
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happened. They kind of figured that she would just come home when she was ready.
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>> Well, and if I remember, they actually kind of used the wedding thing against
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her. They thought this was like a case of cold feet. She was like freaking out and kind of just pieced out because of
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that. >> Yeah. I mean, they had nothing else telling them differently. And so, with
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the wedding just weeks away, this whole like runaway bride theory was a convenient narrative,
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>> right? But her family never bought that. And they even told the police about her
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getting harassed, right? >> Oh, yeah. They told police, but there was no hint of a struggle at the
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laundromat. No hard evidence left behind. So, they kind of waited it out a little to see if she turned back up. But
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the more time that passed, the more concerning things got. There was no activity on her bank accounts, no trace
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of the car that she'd been driving. In those first days, it was up to Nikki's family to organize search parties. They
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got dozens of volunteers to comb the wooded areas and the back roads around Richmond, Indiana, and they passed out
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as many flyers as they could. And one of the people helping pass out flyers was,
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of course, Nikki's fianceé, Bobby Webster. But outside of that, he wasn't really participating in any of the
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searches. And probably because he was too busy doing some really eyebrow raising things at a moment when optics
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mattered. According to police accounts, within days of Nikki disappearing, Bobby
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contacted the community college that Nikki was attending to ask about her unused tuition. Like, what would happen
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to it? Could he get a refund? >> Kind of like he's sure she's not going to be going to class anymore.
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>> And he must be pretty sure they're not getting married either because he also
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went to a jeweler and returned Nikki's engagement ring. Even cancelled their reception venue for a refund within a
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week. Now, at the time, his excuse was that he just really needed the money with Nikki being gone and her not
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working >> and his car was missing with her, I guess. Well, >> uh, it was, but that's not like a factor
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in the money thing. Nikki had her own car and he had a key to that, so he'd been using hers.
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>> So, he had a car >> that shouldn't have been like a money factor. Basically, he just needed to
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like pay the bills or whatever. Like, they weren't well off. They're kind of living paycheck to paycheck. So, without
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her paycheck or I mean, again, we're talking days, but he knows her paycheck isn't going to be coming,
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>> right? Does he? He thought money was just going to be tight, but he insisted he was devastated by her disappearance
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and had no idea where she could be. Now, like I said, this is all happening over
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the first few days of Nikki coming up missing. And when police start getting more involved, they look at what Bobby's
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been doing and they become suspicious of his actions, too. So, they ask him to come in and take a polygraph. Now, when
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he does, police say that he failed an important question, one along the lines of, "Did you have anything to do with or
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know anything about Nikki's disappearance?" His response was, "No." But according to the polygraph, it said
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that's a lie. Now, later on, Bobby came out and said that is not what or how they asked him. He said that the way the
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question was phrased was something more like, "Do you feel responsible for her going missing?" and he said like, "Well,
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how would any man not feel partially responsible for not being there when something happens to your fiance, your
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woman?" Now, I can't find where police ever came out and confirm or deny any of this. Was it is it like they said? Is it
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like Bobby said? Is it somewhere in the middle? Which kind of just left everyone
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with a lot of questions about Bobby, but no physical proof tying him to a crime.
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>> Well, and he had an alibi, right? >> Kind of. I mean, that's what I that's what I remember knowing back then. Like,
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right, he after church, he said that he met up with a cousin and his cousin drove them to the Richmond Square Mall
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to get fitted for wedding tuxes. They're together for like an hour and a half or
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so. And then Bobby said that he made a couple of pit stops at people's houses before going home between like 5:30 and
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5:45 where he expected to meet Nikki. They were going to finish up those wedding invites,
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>> but she just never showed. So, yes, he has an alibi. You know, there's a little
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bit of wiggle room in there. And with that, with the quote unquote failed Polly, after he gets talked to by
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police, he kind of just remains in this gray space that investigators like to call person of interest.
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>> Now, while searches continued for Nikki, detectives went back to the laundromat a
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week later to interview regulars. No one saw anything that was suspicious, not even in hindsight. And more importantly,
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no one seemed to know anything about the men who may have been messing with Nikki. By this point, Indiana State
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Police stepped in to help a little by putting up a helicopter to sweep across Richmond, Indiana, and the surrounding
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area. They're hunting for the vehicle she was in, a 1990 black and gray GMC Jimmy. The thinking was, find the car,
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find Nikki, or at least be one step closer to where she is. But week after week, the sky, the ground, it all
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offered nothing. And it turns out that's because the car wasn't in Indiana. You see, Richmond, Indiana, you know, this
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is right on the eastern border of the state, bumping against Ohio. So, it's not uncommon for people who live in
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Richmond to work in Dayton, Ohio, cuz that's the closest big city. Nikki is one of those people. She worked at a
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prison there. Even lived in Dayton before. >> Yeah. And this is all kind of in the
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same bubble for Richmond locals, I think. >> Yes. But jurisdictional lines are pretty
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solid. And so since every indication pointed to Nikki going missing from the laundromat in Indiana,
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>> no one was really paying much attention to Ohio. >> I mean, they could go like talk to
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people in Ohio who knew her and stuff. And I think they did what they could, like getting a hold of her ex, her
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co-workers, her friends, but the focus was definitely not on Dayton. So, this big clue got missed for months from July
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22nd all the way to November 3rd, 2001. That is when someone just happened to stumble upon this vital clue that had
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just been sitting there casually as if it had been waiting to be found all along. The GMC was parked at the Meadows
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of Catalpa Apartments, roughly 45 minutes from Richmond. Now, the reason the vehicle gets spotted is that one of
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the doors was left open, which catches the eye of a Montgomery County Sheriff's deputy. He eventually runs the plates
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and sees that the car was flagged for a missing person's case. So, when Richmond
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PD gets notified and gets out there, they note that the door lock was damaged, the ignition had been tampered
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with, and the stereo was missing. So, someone had gone through the car, but they didn't take everything. Left behind
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in the back seat was a laundry basket with folded clothes. And this changed so much. Nikki's family first thought
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something may have happened to her at the laundromat or like right as she was leaving or coming or going, whatever.
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But this made it seem like maybe she had, you know, finished up there completely, made it to wherever she was
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going on her own. But where that was, Lord only knows. I mean, at least police had a starting point before. Now, all of
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Richmond and Dayton and everywhere in between were in the mix. However, the complex where this vehicle was found had
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to mean something. I mean, first of all, the driver's seat was positioned in a way that fit Nikki's petite frame. So,
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they're thinking, you know, she may have actually driven the car here herself. But more importantly, she knew not just
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this general area well, but this specific complex. She used to live there and her ex, Steven Johnston, still lived
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there when the car was found. There was no way that this was a coincidence. So, Richmond police went
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straight to Steven, who admitted his relationship with Nikki back in the day had been Rocky, but he swore he had no
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idea where she was or what happened to her, and that the first time he'd even seen the GMC there was on the news,
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which I remember being kind of sideeye about this, like having a hard time understanding it. Like, he had to have
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known that everyone was looking for his missing ex, like not just his missing ex, his daughter's mother. And like it's
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the car is in the complex. Like how does no one see this car? How does he not see
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this car? >> Well, I mean it is possible that the car wasn't there the whole time or where it
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was wasn't in an area that like he or everyone passed regularly. I mean, this was a big complex and yes, it's a little
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weird that he didn't see it cuz like I did get a glimpse of some of the footage from Richmond police, like their
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evidence footage that was put on an episode of Disappeared on Investigation Discovery.
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>> And the car is like not hidden by any means, >> but it would almost be weirder to me if
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he had something to do with it and then like left the car in his own complex. >> Oh, totally. And I actually don't think
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he's the most likely culprit. I mean, not to jump the gun on like all your storytelling here, but we know he fully
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cooperated, submitted DNA, passed the polygraph. He was cleared pretty quickly. >> Yeah. Right.
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>> So, the car being there almost feels like a setup, which maybe someone parked
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it in a place where he wouldn't see it for that reason, but it still blows my mind that it was there for months. if it
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was there for months. >> I mean, the only thing we knew regarding the timing in those early days was that
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police believed the car was likely broken into sometime after it was abandoned there, totally unrelated to
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Nikki's disappearance. So, we knew it was there for at least a little bit of time, but nothing more than that in
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those early days, >> but we don't know actually how long, especially cuz they weren't looking in
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Ohio at all. So, if it wasn't Steven who put it there, which we're saying we don't think it was, whoever put it there
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may have been someone who knew that he lived there or at least knew that Nikki used to live there. Maybe they knew
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about her and Steven's rough relationship. That is someone who has to know you pretty well, right? Well, as
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detectives dug into her life in Dayton, one name kept coming up in their interviews. someone who worked with
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Nikki and lived nearby, 34year-old Tommy Swint, who is a corrections officer at the facility where Nikki was employed,
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the Montgomery Education and Pre-release Center. Now, Tommy had a reputation for
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being close to her, maybe too close. Some co-workers, friends, family described his behavior as protective,
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innocent, like a big brother figure, someone she had known for like five plus years. But others called his behavior or
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feelings toward Nikki obsessive. Nikki's sister, Michelle Macauen Luster, said that Tommy had actually even sent
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lingerie to Nikki's bridal shower just weeks before she disappeared, if you remember. She also said that one time
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years before, she walked in on Tommy, pinning Nikki against a chair, and Nikki had her like foot on his chest screaming
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for help. Something that Tommy tried to like laugh off as just playing around. And this is all sus, but kind of like
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with Bobby, it didn't go anywhere. They couldn't prove that he moved the car or did something to Nikki, so he didn't
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stay in the hot seat. And that's really kind of where Nikki's case seemed to stall.
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>> Did they end up getting any physical evidence from the GMC that they could use? Well, early on they never said too
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much publicly, but if they got anything, like when you think about it, if it came
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back to either of the two persons of interest, Tommy or Bobby, I don't think it would have helped much. Like, it's
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Bobb's car in the first place. Like, >> of course, there's going to be like some
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sign of him in the vehicle. And Tommy had been friends with her for five or so years. Like, he could easily write that
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off, too. But they weren't writing him off completely. They had over the years kind of been keeping tabs on him and lo
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and behold in 2007 this dude pops back up on the radar. Not in Nikki's case or even for another
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crime. No, they got word that he was employed as a police officer in Trotwood, Ohio. So Richmond police
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decide that they probably need to phone a friend here. They call up Trotwood PD and they're like, "Hey, don't know if
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this came up in like the interview process, but that guy you just hired, he is a person of interest in one of our
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cases." Like maybe not somebody you want on your squad. >> They agree and basically they forced
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Tommy to resign, but this man did not want to go quietly. He filed a lawsuit against Richmond PD and several
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officials, multiple newspapers along with two reporters alleging defamation. His whole thing is like he says he was
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never informed that he was a suspect or a person of interest in Nikki's case and
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that pretty much everyone from the prison where they all worked had been questioned. So like he just thought that
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was like par for the course. But here's the thing. In stirring this pot, he pushed himself into local headlines. And
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all this renewed attention finally triggered something investigators never saw coming. A new tip.
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>> A new tip, but not in Nikki's case. >> Mm- But there would be a connection. So,
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in late 2007, an informant reached out to Dayton police and said, "You should look at Tommy for something much older.
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The unsolved 1991 murder of Tina Marie Ivory. She was a 33-year-old woman found beaten and strangled wrapped in trash
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bags and a quilt dumped near a road outside Dayton. Now, at first this seems like a long shot, but the crime lab had
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preserved DNA from the scene for nearly two decades. Semen and blood. What they didn't have was a suspect to compare it
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to. >> But now they do. >> Yeah. And they get him using Nikki's case. So he's out here raising hell
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being like, "I didn't know police were even looking at me. I have nothing to do with this case involving Nikki." So
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Richmond PD are like, "Okay, like you know, to help Yeah. to help prove your case. Give us your DNA."
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>> And he does, not knowing that Dayton police are the ones intending to use it.
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So they take his DNA and the lab matches it to the seaman on the clothing Tina Ivory was found in. And the blood
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evidence found on the quilt that she was wrapped in was either consistent with him or like couldn't exclude him
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depending on like what source you're looking at. Now Tina did sex work for a living. So the semen was good evidence
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but not great. >> Like it could be argued away and the blood wasn't a slam dunk either. So they
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needed something to like really nail him. And that's when they re-examined tape used to bind Tina and they
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uncovered a never-before-seen print that was his. So, all of this played out over
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years. You know, this stuff doesn't happen fast. So, it wasn't until early 2010 that a Montgomery County grand jury
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issued an indictment charging Tommy Swint with Tina Ivory's murder. Investigators believe they finally had
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their suspect, not just for Tina's 1991 homicide, but possibly for Nikki's, too.
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But by then, Tommy was living far away from the Midwest. He was down in Phoenix City, Alabama. Now, he had been
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questioned about Tina over the years as they were like doing all that testing. So, when law enforcement from Alabama
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came knocking on February 3rd to arrest him, he must have known why they were there. And before they could make it
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inside, a gunshot rang out. Tommy had taken his own life. He left no confession, no explanation, no answers
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about Tina or about Nikki. But for many people, his actions said more than enough. And that moment became the
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unofficial end of Nikki's story. The obsessed coworker with the violent past no one knew about had finally been
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exposed. End episode. Roll credits. But we've been doing this a long time now together, you and me and the crime
00:20:52
junkies. And I might have bought that ending in 2017 when I was green. But after covering more than 600 cases,
00:20:59
including those in the fan club, and building out a team of investigative reporters, I know an ending like that is
00:21:06
too vague to hang your hat on. After all, we still haven't found Nikki. >> So, I got to wondering with our
00:21:13
resources now, could our team dig up anything that changes this case? Are we looking in the right places? Are we sure
00:21:22
that we landed on the right suspect? When we reached out to Nikki's family to see if they would be interested in us
00:21:27
revisiting her case, I was actually kind of shocked to learn that they themselves
00:21:31
had already been asking those same questions. For them, Tommy's sudden death didn't settle anything. And in the
00:21:38
aftermath, some of them have become far more suspicious of someone else. So, they welcomed our help. And sometimes I
00:21:47
think if you're in the right place at the right time, the universe just lines up perfectly because even though every
00:21:54
records request and interview request was denied by Richmond PD, a trusted source gave us some of the case reports
00:22:03
that shed a whole new light on every detail of this case. Starting at the very beginning,
00:22:13
whenever there's a controversial trial, do you ever wonder, did the jury get it right? I'm Brandy Churchwell, and this
00:22:21
is the 13th Juror podcast, where we break down real court cases and put you in the jury seat.
00:22:27
>> All right, jury courtroom. >> When the gavl falls, the jury's decision may be final, but the debate is far from
00:22:34
over. Listen to 13th Juror wherever you get your podcast. We have a jury find as follows as the
00:22:43
cow. >> In those first few days after Nikki had gone missing, I told you that Nikki's
00:22:51
family was suspicious of Bobby. He was never as helpful as they expected him to be. He wasn't really doing much to help
00:22:58
them look for her. Instead, he was busy returning Nikki's ring, trying to get her tuition money, and cancelling their
00:23:05
wedding. Oh, and watching movies. Or maybe just one movie, but he watched it enough times to be concerning. Nikki's
00:23:16
sister, Michelle, told us that Bobby was practically fixated on this one particular movie, one that she felt was
00:23:23
absurdly inappropriate considering the situation. I don't know if you've seen this one, but it's a movie from 2000
00:23:29
called The Gift. As in the gift with Katie Holmes, the one where she has a jealous fiance who becomes a suspect
00:23:36
after she goes goes missing. >> That's the one. Which, like, can you imagine? You were out there searching
00:23:41
for your missing sister and you walk in on her unhelpful fiance watching The Gift. Michelle said she remembers
00:23:49
standing there just like in shock watching him just like play this same movie, thinking like, why this one? Why
00:23:58
now? Why? I say repeatedly >> over and over. >> And he's not even hiding it, but like
00:24:04
nothing he was doing felt normal or appropriate for the situation. I mean, she told us that his emotions never
00:24:10
seemed to match the moment. One minute he would be sobbing and then the next he seemed totally fine, like he could
00:24:16
switch it on and off. It didn't feel real to her. In 2024, news outlet Dayton 247 Now obtained Bobby's 2001 interview
00:24:25
with Richmond PD. And there is this moment where in my opinion I hear what Michelle is talking about. And I'm
00:24:31
actually going to play a little snippet for everyone here. >> Any thoughts where she could be at all?
00:24:38
>> Nothing at all. I mean, give me >> I don't want to sit and go maybe another guy. I do hope it's another guy. I can
00:24:44
deal with that pain. >> Mhm. >> Pain that I can't deal with is not knowing. I don't know if she's hungry. I
00:24:50
don't know. >> Is she what? >> The settings where just can't eat. I don't know this. And I'm sitting around
00:24:57
trying >> hoping it's another guy. I could deal with that pain. I just don't I'm sick of
00:25:02
everyone going to psychics. >> Oh, they've done that, too. >> It's It's okay until the phone rings at
00:25:07
her sisters. I can't stay at my house. >> It's okay until the phone rings. Then it's like, what is it now? What dead end
00:25:14
are we headed out now? >> Mhm. >> There are a few moments like that where he sounds like he wants to cry, but then
00:25:22
maybe doesn't, though. like I can't tell because it's audio only, but he even tells police he's all cried out because
00:25:27
he's just been crying for 3 days straight before they came to talk to him. Now, Michelle didn't see that in
00:25:32
the first 3 days. And when she tried to press him about the day Nikki went missing, July 22nd, she said that his
00:25:40
answers seemed very surface level. It was like the same basic outline repeated again and again. Church, wedding
00:25:46
errands, back home. But he does get more detailed with police in his interview. He says that after church, he and Nikki
00:25:52
went home. She changed into her casual clothes. She took his car because it was a gas guzzler and unreliable. So, since
00:25:59
she was just going a few miles away to the laundromat, she took his with like a quarter of a tank of gas in it. And he
00:26:05
took her Toyota sedan to go run his errands. He also tells police that he gave her $10 to cover laundry. It
00:26:11
usually costs about six to do the three loads that she was planning. But he also
00:26:15
found two quarters like right before she was leaving. Gave her that, too. He said
00:26:19
that he drove to someone else's house to meet his cousin. Cousin wasn't there, so
00:26:23
he drives to another house. On the way, he passes the laundromat, sees the GMC there. He says this is about 2:15ish.
00:26:31
Now, he ends up finding his cousin, hops into his cousin's car to go to the Richmond Square Mall where they do the
00:26:36
whole Texas thing, and then he says he's at the jewelry store in the mall by like
00:26:40
2:45 or 3:00. And he even tells police like they should have him on surveillance footage at the mall. But
00:26:46
whether police ever verified that and got the footage is TBD. There's nothing saying that they did in what we have. He
00:26:53
says after the jewelry store, they left and he was taken back to his car and by like 3:30 or 3:45 he was passing back by
00:27:01
the laundromat and this time the GMC was gone. So he figured, you know, Nikki's done.
00:27:07
>> Now he stops by a few houses before getting home at around 5:30, maybe 5:45. but he notes that he wasn't really
00:27:14
paying attention to the times and then he just kind of hung out at their apartment waiting for Nikki and watching
00:27:19
any given Sunday on TV. To me, this isn't a super strong alibi, especially if we believe that Nikki left the
00:27:27
laundromat alive and well. She is last seen there by somebody at around like 3:00, remember?
00:27:33
>> Well, and he's literally putting himself right there where she was at 3:30, 3:45.
00:27:39
And that is especially interesting knowing what I found in the case report. There is a witness who apparently places
00:27:46
Bobby at the laundromat with Nikki. This woman tells police that she walked into
00:27:51
Richmond Coin Laundry on the day that Nikki vanished. Now, apparently she was just trying to use the pay phone when
00:27:57
she saw Nikki at the entrance talking to a black man. She didn't know who he was.
00:28:02
Didn't think much of it. Not until investigators circled back to her years later and asked her to review this six
00:28:10
photo lineup. They explained the process, tell her, you know, take your time, but she doesn't need time. She
00:28:16
immediately points to photo number six, Bobby Webster, and she indicates that is
00:28:21
the man I saw talking to Nikki. Now, what can you do with an ID that comes like 4 years later and after your person
00:28:30
of interest has been in the news for this case, right? like probably not a lot. Even though the woman says that she
00:28:35
didn't know who he was, never saw him other than that one time talking to Nikki and then in the photo lineup, but
00:28:42
without corroboration from other witnesses, >> her ID just kind of sits there. >> An explosive claim, if real, left inside
00:28:51
the case report. But now that we know about it, we wondered if there was maybe more strange behavior that Bobby
00:28:57
exhibited after Nikki went missing. Now, up until this point, all we really had were Nikki's family's suspicions, which
00:29:04
like valid, >> but we really wanted to find somebody not in her family who could give us some
00:29:10
kind of outside perspective. And side note, I'm also desperately on the hunt for a TV guide that covers July 22nd,
00:29:18
2001 to see if any given Sunday was playing on TV. You don't know how hard I look for this.
00:29:22
>> You are usually really good at finding old publications. I found one for all the cable channels, but not for like the
00:29:29
basic channels. I am desperate. So, if anyone out there knows, hit me up. But >> what we did find was a woman named Kim,
00:29:39
>> who knew Bobby since childhood and actually ended up having a fling with him about a year after Nikki went
00:29:45
missing. And what Kim said that she witnessed has never sat right with her. Now, Kim went to the same church as
00:29:51
Bobby and Nikki. She had seen them both the morning of July 22nd at service. And
00:29:56
she remembers Bobby practically glowing about the wedding. So like no red flags before. But a few days later after word
00:30:05
about Nikki was out, he showed up at her door and something just felt wrong. She
00:30:10
said that she remembers he was wearing Nikki's engagement ring and wedding band around his neck. Even though Kim swears
00:30:18
that she saw Nikki wearing them on the day that she disappeared, like she was wearing them at church.
00:30:22
>> Are we talking about one of the rings that he returned to the jewelry store or
00:30:26
something else? >> No. Yeah. He ends up returning her engagement ring on the 27th. So, they're
00:30:30
like 5 days between her disappearing and then him returning it. And Bobby's at her door only like days after whatever.
00:30:36
And listen, it was weird to her. There could be a straightforward explanation here. I mean, according to Bobby
00:30:41
himself, in his interview with police, he said that Nikki took her rings off before she would do laundry, and he said
00:30:48
she did that day. And this seems likely because in the case report that we have,
00:30:52
it mentions that Nikki wasn't wearing anything on her left hand from what detectives could tell in the
00:30:57
surveillance footage. But still, Kim couldn't make sense of it because the explanation that Bobby gave her at first
00:31:05
didn't match the one that he gave her later. Like at first he said the rings were too loose, so she was worried about
00:31:10
them like falling off while doing laundry. But then in 2002 he told her that she'd taken them off because she'd
00:31:15
gained weight and they were too tight. >> Which isn't just like a different explanation. It's the opposite,
00:31:21
>> right? And Kim also said that when she offered to help search for Nikki, Bobby
00:31:27
told her not to bother, that it would be a waste of time. And what really spooked
00:31:33
her was when Bobby started saying that Nikki was already dead, talking about her being an angel. And Kim just could
00:31:40
not understand why he would be talking like that, especially when in her opinion, it was early on enough where
00:31:45
there was still every reason to hope that she was going to be coming home. >> So with all her uneasy feelings building
00:31:51
up, eventually when they were seeing each other, Kim did something that I think most people in her position might
00:31:57
not have the nerve to do. She looked square at Bobby and asked him point blank if he killed Nikki. According to
00:32:06
Kim, Bobby didn't answer. He didn't deny it. He didn't defend himself. He just broke down crying. Kim
00:32:16
told us that moment stayed with her for years and deeply disturbed her. She didn't ask him again and they ended
00:32:24
things shortly after this. >> Yeah, >> obviously. And for years, she didn't have much contact with Bobby. But then
00:32:33
one day around early 2021, so not that long ago, >> she gets this phone call from Bobby out
00:32:40
of the blue. >> He's telling her, you know, he's broke, he's out of work, he's unable to get
00:32:45
hired because of his connection to Nikki's case. Like it it's always like followed him. And he begged her to let
00:32:50
him come stay with her. And Kim's like, I don't know. But she agreed to at least
00:32:54
like talk to him. And what followed was a conversation that lasted over eight hours that left her seeing him and the
00:33:02
case very differently. Kim says that during this long call with Bobby, she learned more information about him and
00:33:10
Nikki and their relationship than she had ever been aware of in all the years she'd known him. He claimed that Nikki
00:33:18
and Tommy Swint were lovers. What? And when she asked how he would know that, he told her it was because he'd been
00:33:27
following them, watching them, seeing things that he never confronted Nikki about because he didn't want them to be
00:33:35
true. And Kim couldn't believe what she was hearing. This felt like a man unraveling, like revealing a side of
00:33:43
himself that she had never seen before. Someone jealous enough to stalk the woman he loved. So, by the time Bobby
00:33:50
finished talking, Kim said that she knew one thing for sure. He was not coming into her home. Whatever darkness he was
00:33:58
carrying, she wanted no part of it. Kim said that Bobby kept reaching out, but then seemed to give up after she stopped
00:34:05
responding altogether. And then just a couple of months after that call, Bobby died of a heart attack. Do police know
00:34:14
about this? I mean, I know a heart attack isn't like an expected event, but this feels almost like it feels like a
00:34:21
deathbed confession. I don't know what this was, but like Kim held the weight of it for a few years until she just
00:34:27
couldn't anymore. She told us that it was after listening to Bobby's taped interview that was made public online,
00:34:34
the one that part of the one you heard earlier. >> She said that she heard that and she
00:34:37
felt compelled to come forward. So, she says that she spoke with Richmond detective Mike Wright about her
00:34:43
concerns. >> But now Bobby's dead. So, like, what can they even do? >> Exactly. And listen, Kim is clear. None
00:34:51
of this is proof. This is only her experience. But based on everything she saw and everything Bobby told her, she
00:34:58
could no longer reconcile the longtime friend that she thought she knew with the man on the other side of that line
00:35:04
during their last conversation. And girl, same. Like I'll link out to Bobby's full interview with police, but
00:35:10
I bet what rubbed her the wrong way is what I had a hard time with too in this interview. He's like, "Oh, you know, I
00:35:18
hope there's another guy. I hope like that's the reason. At least she would be okay. I mean, you heard him." But he
00:35:24
says he didn't know about anything. And he mentions Tommy Swinn, but like as one
00:35:29
of her friends in line with a bunch of other people. ever says a word about knowing they were having an affair or
00:35:35
about following them. So, if he knew that while he was sitting in the room with detectives, then he was boldfaced
00:35:42
lying to them. >> Why? But here's the thing. As recently as 2024, Detective Wright told Dine that
00:35:51
Bobby is no longer considered a person of interest in this case. But when we tried asking police that same question
00:35:58
ourselves, if Bobby was officially cleared, how he was eliminated, as of this recording, we have not heard back.
00:36:04
Like when I look at the case report, like depending on who we talked to, depending on who police talked to, the
00:36:10
story of like his relationship with Nikki, it it varies and the files are full of conflicting accounts. I mean,
00:36:17
there's one person at least who believed that Nikki and Tommy were having an affair. Others insisted they were just
00:36:22
close friends. Some say it was all just one-sided with Tommy wanting more and Nikki shutting him down. So, I am going
00:36:29
to get like more into Tommy later, but before him becoming like the foregone conclusion to this case and after they
00:36:37
had looked hard at Bobby, it turns out that there were a lot of people that they looked at in between. It was only
00:36:46
ever Bobby and Tommy. Tommy and Bobby. I thought that was kind of all they had. That's all we got publicly, but that's
00:36:52
never been the full story. And this one is full of winding roads, twisty turns, and more red herrings than one case can
00:37:00
handle. But it's been almost 25 years. And maybe to find Nikki, we have to kind of wade through all of that. Starting
00:37:10
with a totally out of left field allegation that came about 2 years after Nikki disappeared when someone tried to
00:37:18
inject a brand new theory into the case. One so pointed that if it were true would turn the entire investigation on
00:37:27
its head. In November 2003, detectives received something completely unexpected.
00:37:37
an anonymous letter claiming investigators had missed a crucial relationship in Nikki's life. No name
00:37:44
was signed to this letter, just a set of accusations sharp enough to ruin a career or derail an entire
00:37:51
investigation. This letter named the guy presiding over the entire prison, >> like the warden.
00:37:58
>> The warden. And the letter claimed that the two had some sort of secret relationship, that they had argued
00:38:05
before she disappeared, and that there were rumors he didn't want her getting married. And just to make things even
00:38:12
stranger, this letter was signed only with the number 6345789. >> What is that? Like a inmate number, a
00:38:26
badge number, like employee? That's what I thought at first, too. But it probably
00:38:30
is none of the above. The best guess according to the case report is that it's referencing a Wilson Picket soul
00:38:38
song where that number is the title. It's a madeup phone number basically like that you can call when you want
00:38:44
someone to like come over and give you some attention. So, I don't if that's what it is. I don't know if the author
00:38:50
was doing this as a nod to being anonymous or like trying to give some clue that like we're not picking up on
00:38:56
or if this is just like a super weird coincidence and the number actually is something else. I mean there wasn't like
00:39:01
a dash in it like the song title or like a phone number actually would be. So >> could it be something else? Maybe. But
00:39:09
like just look at this as a whole. The whole thing to me feels designed and not like someone trying to help. More like
00:39:17
someone trying to steer the investigation. >> Almost like a diversion. >> Yeah. And the case report states that
00:39:24
investigators followed up on this, but they didn't find anything to support it. But did they? Because we reached out to
00:39:33
the warden and he agreed to answer our questions via text and he was quick to shut down the rumor. And according to
00:39:40
him, he had never heard of this letter. Now, it's unclear to me whether like police had talked to him or not talked
00:39:47
to him, but he was clear that the letter at least like that this had never come up. He was surprised by it, which I was
00:39:54
kind of shocked that he wouldn't have gotten word of something like this. >> But he made it clear that he was not
00:39:59
romantically involved with Nikki, that there were no arguments of any kind, and that in his words, she was an
00:40:06
exceptional employee who earned high marks on her evaluations. Uh, >> this is feeling a little bit like the
00:40:12
car to me. Like I said before, like a misdirection. Something tells me that figuring out who
00:40:18
wrote this letter would be far more telling than who it's implicating. Yeah, I agree. And I know detectives were able
00:40:28
to determine like a couple of things about this letter. Really, just that it was postmarked from Dayton, Ohio. So
00:40:33
like again, we're we're still focused on the Dayton area. That's where the car is
00:40:36
found. And I know they tried to process under the flap area for Prince, but they
00:40:42
didn't get anything. So, all in all, based on what we have, detectives conclude that like this Nikki Warden
00:40:48
rumor, whatever, isn't true. And the report even like notes that the allegations didn't seem credible and
00:40:54
that they even say kind of what we're saying, that this appears to be an attempt to push the investigation in a
00:40:59
different direction. But it's also worth considering too that maybe this was just
00:41:04
a hoax because whoever wrote the letter didn't even spell Nikki's last name correctly.
00:41:11
>> If it was someone connected though, what was going on in the case like right before this letter appeared?
00:41:18
>> I had that same question, right? Like if cuz this this is coming two years later
00:41:23
like what >> it feels like kind of cold. Nothing's happening. >> Things had stalled by that point. And so
00:41:27
I had the exact same thought like what is happening that you're like, "Oh, I need to do something."
00:41:32
>> Yeah. >> I don't have all the files. The only note that I see right before this one
00:41:38
was from like a few weeks before when this body had been found in Owen County, Indiana. Now, it sounds like they were
00:41:47
going to run some tests to make sure that it wasn't Nikki. Obviously, it didn't end up being her,
00:41:52
>> but maybe someone panicked, >> right? But like you would think that someone if it was someone connected to
00:41:58
actually what happened to Nikki, they would know where they put her body and they would know that this one in Owen
00:42:03
County >> wasn't her. >> Yeah, I guess. >> And like Owen County, by the way, is like southwest of Indianapolis. It's a
00:42:11
hike from like this Richmond Dayton area, >> which is on the east side. >> Yeah. Maybe they were just getting word
00:42:16
that a body had been found. I don't know. Or again, this whole thing could just be a red herring. What seemed much
00:42:24
more promising to me were two separate anonymous tips saying that Nikki's remains were in illegal dump sites
00:42:31
closer by. In the first one, the Macauan family got a call claiming that Nikki's
00:42:36
remains could be located at a site near the intersection of State Route 320 and US40 in New Paris, Ohio. Now, the caller
00:42:45
refused to give a name or any additional information. And in the second tip, someone anonymously called the Wayne
00:42:52
County Sheriff's Office, again referencing an illegal dump site over the Ohio state line, possibly even
00:42:59
referring to the same one mentioned in the tip before. Now, this second call, investigators were able to trace to this
00:43:06
Nebraska or the Dayton area. They they had it narrowed down to these kind of like two
00:43:19
names, but they were never able to identify who actually made this call. I got kind of obsessed with this one. So,
00:43:27
our reporters followed this lead and we got in touch with the company owner's son and based on the descriptions he
00:43:34
gave us, one of these guys seemed more likely over the other. We still tracked down both guys, but either way, they
00:43:41
each denied having anything to do with the call, and they said they didn't know Nikki or anything about the case. And we
00:43:48
were even able to like figure out exactly what phone the call would have been made from inside the building. It
00:43:53
was like in this area that was accessible to all employees if they were in town at the time, of course.
00:43:59
>> But with this being so long ago, we couldn't get like 100% confirmation to nail down one person. So, kind of the
00:44:07
way detectives hit a dead end, so did we. And honestly, after detectives hit this same dead end that we did, things
00:44:14
really slowed down with this tip. Those come in in 2006. And as they investigate
00:44:20
into 2007, that's when things with Tommy start heating back up. And so, that's where all the focus ends up going. But
00:44:30
before we circle back to him, I have to tell you about something tucked so far down in the narrative of this report, I
00:44:37
almost missed it. But the second my eyes hit one name in particular, I froze. Like, I couldn't believe what I was
00:44:45
seeing in the case report because this name was one I knew well. So, you see, after they found the GMC in Dayton,
00:44:54
police made a concerted effort to really try to talk to everyone in Dayton who knew Nikki, right? Well, one of the
00:45:00
women they get in touch with tells them that some woman named Kay told her she ran into someone else. I know this is
00:45:06
getting a little convoluted, but this someone else told Kay that they were Nikki's godmother. And this godmother
00:45:14
said that Nikki had just got cold feet. And oh, by the way, Kay has this boyfriend named Jeff Moore. And Jeff
00:45:21
actually just happened to be friends with this disc jockey who was murdered in Ohio the year before Nikki's
00:45:26
disappearance. Her name was Kelly D. Wilson. That stopped me in my tracks because if
00:45:33
anyone's listened to my other podcast, The Deck, they might remember that I covered Kelly's case years ago. And that
00:45:40
case is still unsolved. Now, the next note in the report says that they talked to this Jeff guy who's
00:45:46
like mentioned, and he's like, "Yeah, I worked construction at the apartments where Kelly was killed and we were
00:45:53
friends." And it's that's it. Like that's like the end of the the summary of their conversation. this Kelly, Jeff,
00:45:58
K, none of it sticks. But I was over here freaking the f out because another weird detail I already knew because I
00:46:06
lived in that case is that Kelly's on air disc jockey name was Nikki. And this apartment where Kelly was
00:46:17
killed in 2000 was Meadows of Freaking Catalpa. The same place where Nikki once lived, where her GMC that she was
00:46:27
driving ends up being found. >> Something about these Meadows of Catalpa apartment keeps pulling us back.
00:46:34
>> Everything comes back to these apartments. And guess who frequented those apartments? Tommy Swint.
00:46:42
>> And we're back. Apparently, he used to pick Nikki up from that complex when she
00:46:47
and her ex Steven would be like fighting. This is before Bobby. So, my big question, did Tommy know Kelly?
00:46:56
>> Like, we know he hung around that area, but we can't seem to confirm if Tommy
00:47:00
was in the same circle of friends as Kelly. We tried asking around, but so far we can't find anyone who can say for
00:47:06
sure either way. And are we sure Kelly knew her killer? >> No, not necessarily. And actually, I am
00:47:13
going to put Kelly's deck episode in the Crime Junkie podcast feed for anyone who
00:47:18
wants to hear or you can find it on the deck feed. If you are not familiar with her case, you have to listen. It is
00:47:25
truly wild. But at least in my opinion, it is totally possible that Kelly could have been killed by someone who just saw
00:47:32
an opportunity, someone who may have just been in her apartment complex when she came home late after drinking, after
00:47:39
being at a party. Now, we actually reached out to the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office asking if they have any
00:47:44
DNA in Kelly's case, wondering if they could compare it against Tommy, but they said no. They don't have any unknown DNA
00:47:52
samples from a possible suspect. >> But have they considered him? I mean, Dayton's big, but it's not that big,
00:47:59
right? >> Yeah. I mean, we asked them about a possible connection between Nikki's case
00:48:04
and Kelly's, and we were told they're quote not aware of any connection between those two. End quote. So, they
00:48:10
did look at it. Honestly, I don't know. Like, we couldn't get another follow-up with them. So, it's
00:48:19
not clear to me if they looked deep into this and and that's what's making them say they're not aware of a connection or
00:48:25
if it had just not come up, which would also like result in them saying like, "We're not aware of a connection."
00:48:31
>> That answer kind of works both ways, >> right? But if there is a connection, then in that hypothetical scenario,
00:48:39
we're back where the first episode ended, and Tommy is the most likely culprit for Nikki's case. I mean, did
00:48:47
did the case report convince you of that? Convince me 100%. No. I mean, like to to me, like until we
00:48:57
find Nikki, nothing is 100%. Right. I will say that the case report filled in a lot of the blanks, making it clear why
00:49:05
they were so confident that it was him. And it made it clear to me that we never
00:49:12
got the whole story on Tommy. Because if Tommy Swint had anything to do with whatever happened to Nicki Macau, it is
00:49:21
clear that police theorized he worked with and had help from someone that you have probably never heard of until right
00:49:31
now. It's impossible to talk about the new stuff I learned about Tommy Swind without discussing this other person
00:49:42
because it's all so intertwined. And while this is all new information now, it's been there all along. Actually,
00:49:51
after I released our first episode on Nikki and then met up with her daughter Payton, she told me about this other
00:49:57
person. like not in detail, just kind of like mentioned that there was this other
00:50:01
woman who worked at the prison who was like mixed up with Tommy and if Tommy had answers maybe this woman did too.
00:50:07
And it was that comment that Payton made that had me so sure we never knew the full story. But I didn't have the tools
00:50:14
to dig back then. Well, welcome to 2026. That woman is Darlene Williams. Darlene
00:50:24
is a co-orker and friend of both Tommy and Nikki. They all worked at the prison together. And I really should say she's
00:50:31
a friend of Nikki's, but she's a little more than just that with Tommy. It turns
00:50:36
out the two had been having this longstanding affair, one that was still going on when Nikki went missing. And it
00:50:44
made for a complicated dynamic because no matter which way you slice it, the one thing that's clear about Tommy and
00:50:51
Nikki's relationship is that Tommy seemed to have a thing for Nikki. And Nikki at minimum was keeping Tommy
00:50:59
close. I mean, we saw something in the report that maybe she was even using one of his credit cards, like according to
00:51:03
one of her friends. and she may have at least once been intimate with him based on an account that someone in her family
00:51:10
gave police that is recounted in the case report. So there may have at least been some truth to what Bobby told Kim
00:51:18
like a few years ago. But the question is did Darlene know that? And if she did know about all of this, how did she feel
00:51:28
about it? In an early interview with police, she seems to think that she is the only other woman in Tommy's life.
00:51:34
Like obviously she knows he's married, but like she's the mistress. Now, people describe Darlene and Nikki as friends,
00:51:40
but it seems like something was coming between them right before Nikki went missing. When investigators talked to a
00:51:47
fellow employee, she says that Nikki, Darlene, and Tommy hung out together, but later tells them that Nikki and
00:51:53
Darlene had been fighting before her disappearance, and that Nikki even left work upset the Friday before she went
00:52:00
missing. Now, the case report doesn't explicitly say why, though. doesn't offer any details about this. And when
00:52:07
they go talk to Darlene, Darlene denies to police that there was any kind of fight. But what she can't deny, what I
00:52:14
never knew until recently, is that it's possible that the actual last confirmed time that Nikki was alive wasn't 3:00
00:52:22
when that witness saw her back at the laundromat. It may actually be later than we thought when Nikki called
00:52:30
Darlene. What? So, let me give you the whole scoop on this call because I think it is so important. I don't know how
00:52:38
police initially become aware of this. Nikki does not have a cell phone. She only has a pager, but apparently she had
00:52:44
left that pager in her Toyota that day. There is one note in the case report that this call between her and Darlene
00:52:51
is not on the home phone. So, where did she make that call from? >> I mean, do you think they're just
00:52:58
getting this from Darlene? >> Possibly. I mean, she admits to police in her interviews that Nikki called her,
00:53:03
and apparently she was saying that she called to ask about these like skin, nail, hair vitamins that Nikki wanted to
00:53:09
get before her wedding, and she says that Nikki was going to pick them up that day before the store closed, maybe
00:53:15
from like a CVS. Now, I do think this call happened. This is like one of those things that is stated as fact over and
00:53:21
over in the case report. So, they must have confirmed this somehow, like maybe through Darene's phone records. I know
00:53:28
they subpoenaed her call records for the 21st and the 22nd, but maybe it's not as confirmed as we
00:53:37
thought. Over time, and in different interviews with Darlene, the time of this call changes. I mean, like it in
00:53:45
different statements, it's as early as 3:30 p.m. to as late as 6:00 p.m. Either way, it doesn't seem like police ever
00:53:54
determine where this call is made from, which I think is so important. Wasn't there a witness who was at the
00:54:00
laundromat to use a pay phone and like she saw Yeah. >> So, there's like there's a phone there,
00:54:05
so maybe Nikki used that. >> Yes. But per Bobby's timeline, if we're believing his story, he's driving by the
00:54:13
laundromat at like this exact time, 3:30, >> 3:45. >> Yeah. And her car is not there. So to
00:54:20
me, she's not making the call from the pay phone, which like leaves two options in my mind. One, Nikki made the call
00:54:28
from a pay phone at a gas station. This option half works with the theory that police seem to have. It's clear from the
00:54:37
detectives notes that they don't fully buy Darlene's story about why Nikki called because like in the case report
00:54:44
they call out the fact that there was a CVS like right by the laundromat that was 24 hours so she didn't need to get
00:54:50
anywhere before it closed. >> And when we spoke to a close friend of Nikki's, she told us that the rumor was
00:54:57
Nikki wasn't going to a store to get these. She was going to someone's house to pick these up. possibly a co-worker's
00:55:06
house. Most of her co-workers live near Dayton. The co-orker she is calling about these vitamins lives in Dayton.
00:55:14
And the about 44 mile drive to Dayton was one that Nikki made all the time for work. Like so I don't think she would
00:55:20
think twice about just like going there to pick something up. >> So my thinking is if she's going to make
00:55:27
a longer drive, remember Bobby's car is a gas guzzler. It only had like a quarter of a tank of gas, according to
00:55:36
what he told police in his interview. But I found from the case report that when the car was found, it had half a
00:55:44
tank of gas. So if she drove the car out there, it had to have been filled up. Maybe she called then at a gas station.
00:55:54
>> I mean, this makes a lot of sense actually. >> Maybe. Hold that thought because it's
00:55:58
not a perfect theory. Here's the problem with it. Bobby said the only money she had on her was like $1050, right, that
00:56:05
he had given her >> for the laundry. >> It would cost about six bucks to do the three loads. So that's gives her like
00:56:11
$4.50 left. >> Did I research the price of gas in this area July 2001 and then the size of a
00:56:17
GMC Jimmy tank couldn't be your crime junkie if I didn't. >> So the tank held like 31 gallons. Gas
00:56:25
was anywhere from like 132 to 145 a gallon depending on if she filled up in Indiana or Ohio.
00:56:31
>> I wish. >> I know. Like so cheap. So if it's already a quarter full to get to a half
00:56:38
a tank and this is before she drove and used any more, she needs like $11 worth of gas. And again, this is before she
00:56:46
makes the 40 mile drive in good condition. A 1990 GMC Jimmy gets like average 15 m per gallon on the highway.
00:56:53
So, we know the GMC is in poor condition. Like, best case scenario, let's just cut to the chase. Back of the
00:56:59
napkin math, she had to have put somewhere between like 12 to 16 bucks into the car. She had 450 according to
00:57:06
Bobby, >> right? >> So, did she even have money for that? Maybe. Nikki's sisters, Michelle and
00:57:12
Tammy, told us that she almost always had a wallet on her, but no one seems sure about whether she had it on her
00:57:20
that day at the laundromat. All we know is that there was no wallet reportedly found in the GMC.
00:57:25
>> So Nikki did or didn't have enough money to get on her own. Like we don't know.
00:57:31
>> I don't know. Like >> you just saw me do the math. Like I am desperately looking for answers over
00:57:37
here where I don't know if there are any. Like it shouldn't be this hard to know if she had any of her cards on her.
00:57:43
So I don't know. It's possible she had money or a card that nobody knew about. >> Well, and she could have had Tommy's
00:57:48
card too, right? Like that's in the case file. Well, in the case report, I have like a narrative, right?
00:57:53
>> I don't know if they checked >> her financial reports. I don't know if they checked Tommy's.
00:57:58
>> But if she didn't have money on her, then we're actually back to where we started. And she went somewhere after
00:58:05
the laundromat, maybe even in the Richmond area to call Darlene sometime between 3:30 and 6:00 p.m., depending on
00:58:14
Darlene's different accounts. So, wherever she went, did someone intercept her? and they drove the car and had
00:58:22
money for gas. >> Could Darlene or Tommy have been in Richmond around then? >> According to the case report, no,
00:58:30
because Darlene says she got the call from Nikki while she was at work >> in Dayton,
00:58:35
>> right? And it's kind of insinuated in the reports that she was working her normal second shift that day, which
00:58:41
would have kept her at the prison till later in the evening. >> But Tommy was not at work. He was in
00:58:48
Dayton. says he went to church, went to dinner with his wife, like just as he does every Sunday, never venturing to
00:58:55
Richmond. But when they ask his wife about this, she doesn't seem to remember much about July 22nd. And it's really
00:59:02
the next day that things get really shifty. So, the day after Nikki goes missing, this is now July 23rd, 2001,
00:59:12
both Tommy Swind and Darlene Williams were scheduled to work, but they call out, according to the case report.
00:59:21
Darlene calls out of work at 12:45, which is just an hour and 15 minutes before her shift is supposed to start.
00:59:27
And Tommy Swint's work records show that he didn't put in for the day off until the 24th, so the day after he actually
00:59:34
took it. So, if they weren't at work, what were they doing then? >> Well, in a police interview, Tommy
00:59:40
straight up tells police that he took the day off to go to Richmond to help search for Nikki with Darlene, even
00:59:46
saying they met up with some of Nikki's family. Darlene has the same story when she speaks with detectives.
00:59:53
But when they go back to the family to fact check this, at least according to them, Tommy and Darlene never show up on
01:00:02
the 23rd. And we confirmed this with the family today. They don't remember either
01:00:06
Tommy or Darlene being with their group on that day after she went missing. >> So I ask again, what are they doing
01:00:14
then? >> The milliondoll question, but as far as our records could uncover, one that no
01:00:22
one seems to find an answer to. Though you can see why police spent so much time digging into these two. So, by
01:00:31
early 2002, police were running any and all reports that they could on this couple. They're looking for anything,
01:00:39
and I mean anything. And paying attention to details matters because in doing this, police looked to see if
01:00:47
there were any driving infractions. And like both had some come up, but like none for the dates in question,
01:00:53
whatever. But something did stand out to one of the detectives. It was a speeding
01:00:58
ticket that Tommy got on October 7th, 2001. And he got it near the Ohio Pennsylvania border. Seems totally
01:01:05
unrelated, right? But it sounds like they didn't recognize the car he was in. So they run the plates and it comes back
01:01:12
to an auto leasing company at an address in Dayton. So they pull the address up on Map Quest. Throwback.
01:01:21
And you won't freaking believe it. The auto leasing company is about a mile from where the GMC was found.
01:01:31
>> Where the GMC is found at the Metals of Gatalpa. >> Yep. Now, this looks like a residential
01:01:38
area. So, it's probably weird to them that it's coming back to like a leasing company or whatever, but they got to
01:01:44
know who this belongs to, right? So, Detective Roger Redmond and Detective Mark Connory decide to pay this address
01:01:53
a visit. And listen, I've read a lot of police writeups. They're like dry and clinical. Even 90% of this report that I
01:02:02
have on Nikki was dry and clinical. This section reads like the climax of a movie. They get to this house, they
01:02:12
knock on the door, and this like big dog charges at the window. It sounds like there's maybe even more than one dog.
01:02:18
But finally after knocking and knocking, the door caks open just like a few inches and they can see that there's
01:02:25
like a woman on the other side, but they can't see her. And she's asking, you know, like why are you here? And they're
01:02:30
like, "Well, ma'am, we're investigating a homicide. We'd like to speak with you." And she just shuts them down right
01:02:35
away. So she doesn't want to talk to them. Asking them like again like who are you? She's I don't think she's like
01:02:39
believing them for some reason. So they tell her again like, "Listen, we're detectives. We just want to talk to
01:02:44
you." She again refuses. So Redmond's like, "Look, I'm going to leave my card. You can reach out when you're ready to
01:02:50
talk. You can see like if you need to verify who I am, whatever." They start going back to their car. And as they're
01:02:55
about to get in, >> the woman calls them back. She's like, "Okay, I'll talk to you."
01:03:00
>> So they go back into the house and it's like eerie. All of a sudden, there are
01:03:06
no dogs. And as they walk into the room, which is like very dark, the woman like
01:03:12
walks away from them, and she has them sit in the living room while she goes into the kitchen where they can't see
01:03:19
her very well because it's so dark. And so from the shadows, she's asking them, "What do you want?" And the detective
01:03:27
says, you know, like, "I want to know if you know a man named Tommy Swint." And she says, "Yes."
01:03:33
So they ask her, "Well, do you know this leasing company?" Mhm. And >> she's like, "How do you know about this
01:03:39
leasing company?" And so Redmond explains how he pulled Tommy's speeding ticket. And this is when she got upset,
01:03:46
like, "You're looking at driving records?" And she says this multiple times. "You're looking at driving
01:03:51
records." And he's like, "Yeah, we're looking at everything." And they can see that she's nervous.
01:03:57
She's like rubbing her head like in her hands. And she says, "You know who I am,
01:04:03
Redmond. He really didn't. I mean, he could not see her in the dark. So, he just asks,
01:04:10
"Who are you?" I'm Darling Williams. Now, Redmond had never been to her house before. I He had her address from her
01:04:19
employment records, but everything was like, you know, on paper in those days. He didn't make the connection,
01:04:25
especially when it comes back to a leasing company. >> He also never made the connection that
01:04:31
she lived that close to Meadows of Katalpa. So now they know who she is. Darlene's pretty upset. And so he says
01:04:38
like this is the point where they kind of like end their interview. But it got me wondering what if the GMC was at her
01:04:46
house at some point. I mean, they never were able to determine how long it had been parked at the apartment complex.
01:04:52
From what I can see, witness accounts were kind of all over the place. Some neighbors said that the GMC had only
01:04:58
been there like a couple of weeks. Others said it had been sitting there closer to a couple of months. And there
01:05:03
was one woman who said that she walked past it regularly and she was adamant that it had been parked there for about
01:05:09
3 and 1/2 months. So maybe like the entire time. And there were even a few residents who remembered the SUV coming
01:05:16
and going occasionally. So we know the cars there sometimes not exactly in that same spot, but no one could say what the
01:05:25
person behind the wheel even looked like when it was coming and going. So, what if for at least part of the time it was
01:05:30
there at her house, in her driveway, or in her garage at some point? I don't have enough documentation from police
01:05:37
documents to know how much they dug into her alibi of being at work or when exactly she would have gotten off the
01:05:45
day that Nikki went missing. But the car Nikki's driving is found about a mile from her house. She calls out of work
01:05:53
the very next day. She is the last known person who speaks with Nikki. That is a
01:05:59
lot to ignore. >> But Britt, this is where I started having like heart palpitations.
01:06:06
Darlene is not just Nikki's last known call. In what we have, Redmond also notes this. Tommy Swint had called
01:06:16
Darlene Williams prior to taking his own life. Why her? I wish I could tell you,
01:06:23
but that is literally all we've got. I mean, remember Tina Ivy's murder wasn't Richmond's jurisdiction. So Redmond,
01:06:30
when we're reading these these case reports, he's just getting this information secondhand from Detective
01:06:34
Patty Tacket out of Dayton. But according to the report, she relayed something else to him. Tacket stated
01:06:41
that Swint left a note behind and in this note, he stated he was not responsible for any deaths.
01:06:50
But obviously that's not true. They have his DNA and prints for Tina, >> but all they really have for Nikki are
01:06:57
theories. Now, in one snippet of Redmond's report, he theorizes that Darlene is somehow connected to Nikki's
01:07:05
disappearance. And he believes that she was disposed of into the trash dumpster that was next to where her vehicle was
01:07:13
left. He thinks that the car was driven there by Darlene Williams and she was assisted by Tommy Swint. But after he
01:07:21
writes this, Tacket ends up sharing more information with him that makes him consider an alternate theory. You see,
01:07:29
she had gotten results back from the computer that Tommy had used while in Alabama. and she told Redmond that Tommy
01:07:36
was closely watching the local Richmond newspaper and he was paying close attention to a high school news story
01:07:44
about something that happened at the school near Darlene's house which led her to believe that maybe Nikki's body
01:07:52
is somewhere near Williams's address or Meadows of Katalpa the apartment complex. Now, according to the case
01:07:59
report, Darlene's property isn't searched until 2022, more than 20 years after Nikki
01:08:07
disappeared. Darlene consents to the search and investigators bring in cadaavver dogs trained to detect decades
01:08:13
old remains. Based on K9 results, they dig beneath a flower bed in her backyard. Nothing's found. Later, ground
01:08:22
penetrating radar does flag underground inconsistencies. The dogs are run again.
01:08:27
Investigators dig again. This time focusing on a spot where this like plastic flower pot had been sitting.
01:08:33
Still nothing. No remains. No physical evidence found. But there was another K-9 indication of remains in the area
01:08:44
behind Darene's property. An area with dense underbrush and woods. An extensive lot that Darlene does not own.
01:08:53
immediately adjacent to here we go again Meadows of Katalpa. This area that has been tied to this case for decades and
01:09:02
according to the report an area that an investigator specifically noted warranted further searching based on
01:09:07
this K9 alert now. Again, police have not responded to our request for comment as of this recording. So, I can't tell
01:09:13
you if that search has ever been done. The last thing it seems Detective Redmond ever wrote in his portion of the
01:09:20
narrative was this single haunting line. This case has been suspended until further information surfaces.
01:09:29
It leaves this awful question mark hanging in the air for Nikki and for her loved ones. People who want to know
01:09:35
what's been done since the file we got ends. So far, as of this recording, there has been no official police
01:09:42
response from former or current investigators at Richmond PD. And the same goes for Darlene. We reached out to
01:09:50
her for comment and advised her of the allegations presented in the police case report. We even sent her a certified
01:09:56
letter and her signature confirms that she got it. But as of this recording, we have not heard back from her. So after
01:10:04
all this, those woods around Meadows of Katalpa could still hold the key to everything after all.
01:10:12
>> And and we don't even know if anybody even followed up on it. >> Yeah. And if Nikki's remains are
01:10:19
somewhere in the wooded area near those apartments, the question still remains, who put them there? I get why police
01:10:26
looked so hard at Tommy. And according to the report, detective Patty Tacket told Redmond that Darlene even admitted
01:10:34
to her that in the end she no longer believes Tommy's comments about not being involved in Nikki's disappearance.
01:10:41
And like what about all those things Bobby said to Kim? What if he really was following Nikki in her final days? Two
01:10:50
of the main men in this story have passed away, but I don't think it's too late for answers or too late to find
01:10:57
Nikki's remains. It's been almost 25 years, and it's now or never. 8 years ago, Crime Junkies got to hear from
01:11:06
Payton. She was a new mom back then, and so many things have changed in her life.
01:11:12
But in the search for her mother, it's like she's frozen in time. And like so many loved ones I've spoken to over the
01:11:19
years, it really is just answers she wants now, not vengeance. >> I think I would just like to say what
01:11:26
we've been saying for the last 24 and 1/2 years is we're not going to stop. We're going to continue. We will
01:11:34
continue to put the fire under you until you decide that you want to come forward
01:11:38
and say something and speak your peace. At this point, I'm not looking to see anybody really serve time. I just want
01:11:48
answers. I want to be able to go somewhere and take my daughter so she can at least speak to her grandmother
01:11:54
without looking at a flyer or a t-shirt or, you know, a news article or anything
01:11:59
like that. I would just like to have that piece and really start the grieving process of the loss of my mother. It's
01:12:08
different grieving someone that you don't know you really lost essentially. So I just want them to know that I'm no
01:12:15
matter what come Hell and High Water and as the great Eli Pope from Scandal would
01:12:20
like to say, I am the hell and I am the high water. Um, we're going to get answers.
01:12:27
Maybe you know something. Maybe it's about Bobby Webster's movements the day that Nikki went missing. Or maybe you
01:12:33
know more about Darlene and Tommy's movements. As far as I can tell, Tommy's wife is still alive. And in 2010,
01:12:40
someone identifying themselves as Lisa Swint wrote on Tommy's online obituary that he was her best friend and adoring
01:12:47
husband and that he was a wonderful man and that quote, "Those who knew Tommy also know that truth as well." End
01:12:54
quote. We tried every listed number for Lisa that we could find, but as of this recording, we haven't heard back from
01:13:00
her. Someone knows where Nikki is. And if that's you, please contact the Richmond, Indiana Police Department at
01:13:08
765-9837247. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website,
01:13:15
crimejunkkey.com. And you can follow us on Instagram at crimejunkkeyodcast. >> Be back next week with a brand new
01:13:21
episode.