00:00:00
hey weirdos I'm Ash and I'm Elena and this is morbid baby [Music] this is morbid I made it like it's
00:00:27
molded baby this is molded baby yeah like Tiana yeah you just sounded actually just like Tiana did I she's my
00:00:35
girl or a princess oh my God I'm like my favorite princess oh my God she was also
00:00:40
the sweetest one that we met in um what's that place Disney World you can say my body rejects it but we met
00:00:49
her and she was so sweet and she called everybody Suga I didn't get to meet her because I wasn't with you
00:00:54
guys at that point I think John like John was like Starstruck with Tiana I mean I would be sorry completely
00:01:00
straight up we're like that's is that Tiana she's right there oh my God it's Tiana
00:01:06
I mean she's a great Disney she is she's underrated as [ __ ] I feel like she might
00:01:13
be a humble opinion she won't be soon because Disney got rid of Splash Mountain and they're doing like a whole
00:01:18
Princess and the Frog themed ride it's about [ __ ] time when did that movie come out I know you know what it's about
00:01:24
time I didn't realize how how long that movie had come out because at that point
00:01:28
I had like I wasn't watching Disney movies religiously anymore yeah and now it's like if I ever really was but now
00:01:34
you are though and now I am I think I'm 2009. I thought it was it's about time it's about time you give Tiana her do
00:01:43
and Prince Naveen underrated prince in my opinion did it just get hot in here yeah it did and it was Prince Naveen
00:01:50
he's a really hot fictional character okay I don't know how I feel about making that statement out loud but here
00:01:55
I am my girls love Prince Naveen I know he's their guy he is yeah I think he's probably like out of all the princes I
00:02:02
would say He's the hottest I'm telling you it literally underrated criminally in all facets is another movie those
00:02:08
characters the songs the soundtrack songs slaps never did I ever think that we would have this conversation on this
00:02:15
podcast no I did not it was everything I don't know how we got here but I'm glad
00:02:19
we did I said it's small but baby oh yeah and it was very good and then you did like Tiana arms and everything yeah
00:02:25
it was crazy it's it's really uplifting right now it is we we need it we know yeah we sure do what the world needs now
00:02:38
please please I just started crying please everybody's like what the [ __ ] is wrong with you
00:02:45
nothing we just create nothing also I'd like to clarify I feel like a lot of people thought that Drew and I broke up
00:02:50
and that's like not what we're talking about right now we are alive and thriving okay oh hell yeah I just wanted
00:02:56
to put that out there because we just sounded very stressed and I didn't want people to start speculating further no
00:03:01
everything everything's honestly it's just one of those weeks I think Mercury just came out of retrograde a shadow
00:03:07
period yeah we were feeling a weird way we we turned the room around we changed positions and now we're feeling much
00:03:14
better we're kind of like at a chat set now it's pretty good we were you know why we were feeling that way like the
00:03:19
way that we were not only Mercury was in retrograde and now it's in a shadow period I don't know if the moon is still
00:03:25
in cancer but as of yesterday it was and that gets you in your ma [ __ ] feels but then we're entering Gemini season
00:03:34
the best season so everybody's feeling like the best season debatable we could do this all day
00:03:41
so everybody's feeling like a [ __ ] so you know what be your best [ __ ] self and I hope everybody watched the
00:03:59
Vanderpump Rules reunion oh [ __ ] how did we not open up with that I know I mean
00:04:05
guys I don't know what to say about it I'm gonna go to time out it was when when James said nah it's not hitting for
00:04:14
me it's not hidden for me I didn't even listen it's sang James and Lala's friendship forever oh oh four all day
00:04:23
every day ever I'm very excited about episode two and three um and I hope that you guys are too yeah
00:04:30
just one more quick thing Lala on her podcast which everybody should go listen to It's called give them Lala [ __ ]
00:04:35
love it um and she said that she texted her producer about the first part of the
00:04:41
reunion and was like holy [ __ ] like this was incredible it like yeah I love it
00:04:45
and the producer was like oh you think this is good it doesn't even stand up next to part two and three don't even
00:04:52
tell me that I already did I think I told you twice because I'm pretty sure I told you because I'm gonna wish time
00:04:58
away I mean me too oh y'all we are but yeah so we we Tiana do we disneyed which was
00:05:06
crazy we Vander pumped and now we're gonna morbid and we zodiac too oh we did we did we covered all the astrologies
00:05:12
not you know we zodiac astrology so now we're gonna morbid yeah we're six minutes in I think so like perfect we're
00:05:18
good I like it here we are I'm gonna bring you down because this is a really really sad case a really tragic case a
00:05:25
really gnarly case oh good and I feel like this case may it makes the most sense to start in the middle which I
00:05:32
used to do a lot and I haven't done that in a while oh I love that so I'm excited
00:05:35
too let's go I'm gonna start in the middle we're gonna work our way back to sort of the beginning and then obviously
00:05:40
we will cover the downfall of the monster of the case at the end but I'm not gonna like Give It Away who it is
00:05:47
just yet don't worry don't give it away I won't don't you [ __ ] dare I said I [ __ ] wouldn't all right I'll Trust
00:05:52
you well that's good we should always test that we should always trust each other always trust always I don't really
00:05:58
know what happened there anyways so bring it down so everything happened just one day after Christmas oh yeah
00:06:07
that's upsetting yup and it was December 26th obviously the year was 1997. and police and fire were called to the home
00:06:14
of Nick and Don Hackney in uh Bremerton Washington so when they got to this house it was
00:06:21
absolutely engulfed in flames oh but as far as the investigators knew the house was empty
00:06:28
that unfortunately changed when they were able to make their way inside and they were immediately hit with the smell
00:06:33
of burnt flesh oh no yes and somebody thought you know maybe it was like one of the dogs that got stuck
00:06:40
inside but as the firefighter searched through the first floor of the home they weren't finding the source and then when
00:06:47
they reached the Hackney's bedroom they unfortunately did and they found 28 year
00:06:52
old Don Hackney badly badly burned like beyond recognition 28 years old just laying in her bed her laying in her in
00:07:01
her husband's bed and her husband Nick had left early that morning for a hunting trip with his friends so
00:07:06
obviously he was okay and this was what he was going to come home to oh so the fire had started well after Nick went
00:07:12
out for the day and the Hackney's neighbors Tim and Amy Pitts they were the ones to call the fire in and how
00:07:19
they noticed it was Tim's co-worker Jeff Richardson was his name that guy usually
00:07:24
picked him up for work in the morning so he was the first one to see the fire and
00:07:28
he called it in or he didn't call it in he started banging on the Pit's door to wake them up and like screaming like
00:07:33
call 9-1-1 okay so Amy the wife called 9-1-1 and Tim and Jeff ran over to the Hackney's home to see if they could help
00:07:41
anyone who was still inside oh no Jeff was able to kick the door open but by that point the fire had already spread
00:07:48
to the first floor and the room was filled with not only Flames but like super thick black smoke
00:07:55
it was obviously Beyond dangerous but Jeff tried to make his way into the living room just wanting to help anybody
00:08:03
that was inside yeah I kept trying kept trying but the flames and the smoke kept
00:08:07
pushing him back it was obvious he wasn't going to be able to get inside without getting physically hurt himself
00:08:13
so at that point there was literally nothing they could do except wait for First Responders to get there so they
00:08:18
just stood on the lawn and watched the House burn oh that's awful I can't imagine like you see that in a movie and
00:08:26
you're like oh my God like I can't imagine oh that's awful so Nick Hackney pulled up to his house this chaotic or
00:08:33
what was left of his house this chaotic scene a little after 10 in the morning and he was met at the steps of the home
00:08:39
by chief deputy coroner Jane Jeremy I believe how you say it in a coroner walking up to you yes so she steered
00:08:47
Nick away from the house luckily and back towards her truck and she explained what had happened and he was like oh my
00:08:53
God Don and I spent Christmas together with our family earlier like yesterday but she wasn't feeling very well she had
00:09:00
a gnarly head cold so she took Benadryl to go to sleep and he said that he had woken up around
00:09:06
2 A.M or excuse me she had woken up around 2 A.M to take another dose and she wondered out loud whether she had no
00:09:12
tolerance for it because she didn't take that medicine very often so she's like oh my God like this I'm kind of feeling
00:09:18
this so that's that was his explanation to the coroner the day before how and how
00:09:23
she would sleep through and how she would sleep through it so it made sense to the corner yeah because the position
00:09:28
of Don's body on the bed suggested she hadn't even tried to get up to escape the fire oh wow which at first was
00:09:35
baffling to investigators they were like yeah nobody would just sleep through a roaring fire like that
00:09:41
but if Don wasn't used to taking Benadryl it was possible that it had a strong effect on her and it kept her
00:09:47
sleeping entirely while the fire occurred some strong Benadryl oh it is yeah so as far as anybody as anybody
00:09:55
could tell Nick Hackney was completely devastated and he started leaning closely on the members of his and Dawn's
00:10:01
Church while he grieved he and Don had been married about seven years at that point and they'd been together even
00:10:06
longer from when they were dating so this was going to be a process for him to get over yeah but before we get into
00:10:13
that whole process and what it looks like I want to tell you more about Dawn more about Nick and more about their
00:10:18
life that they had made together okay so Dawn Marie was born December 5th 1969 in
00:10:24
Seattle Washington to parents Donald and Diana Donald worked in a shipyard which
00:10:28
I think is really [ __ ] cool that is cool and Diana Diana was a homemaker and Don was their first child and she
00:10:36
would eventually be the oldest of four kids and their only daughter she had her brothers excuse me she and her brothers
00:10:42
Dennis Darren and Derek they were all raised in Bremerton Washington okay so she had lived there her entire life
00:10:49
now their childhood was not always the easiest Don's Mom Diana struggled a lot with anxiety and from the sounds of it
00:10:58
probably depression too oh okay she was really going through it and she by her own admission quote required more love
00:11:04
than she could get from her husband Donald oh so I think it was one of those things where they were very like they
00:11:10
were religious people so I think they stayed together even though they weren't necessarily the happiest together yeah
00:11:16
that makes sense and for that reason Diana would sometimes look outside of her own marriage for love and affection
00:11:24
or to put it less lightly she was stepping out on Donald uh-oh so in 1980 when Don was 11 Diana actually left the
00:11:32
family and moved in with a man that she was having an affair with I'm gonna stay over here quiet yeah me
00:11:40
too no it also turned out that she was pregnant and this man was the father oh yep so she had her son Darren with him
00:11:48
but eventually things fell apart with whoever that guy was and she ended up returning home to the family with her
00:11:53
new son and they all just kind of made it work together wow so obviously things were um
00:12:01
tense yeah the least I mean you just left your whole family and then you just come back with a baby I'm like oops
00:12:08
sorry I'm back here's your brother so things were tense when she came home and the kids could feel the tension in
00:12:14
the air so in response to all the tension at home Don really leaned into making her mom happy and she became just
00:12:21
determined to achieve achieve achieve I don't want to call her an overachiever because I feel like that's that's like a
00:12:27
weird label like you're an overachiever it makes it sound like a bad thing well people give it a negative connotation
00:12:33
yeah because people do it when you're like working too hard they're like oh you're such an overachiever and it's
00:12:37
like okay it's like a cheating okay yeah it's like achieving all right it just feels yucky to call somebody that so I'm
00:12:44
not going to call her an overachiever I would really just say that she decided to be the light that she thought her mom
00:12:49
needed and worked really hard at it I like that so in grade school what she did to do this she became a champion
00:12:54
speller which eventually led her to participating in the Scripps National Spelling Bee which would later lead to a
00:13:01
visit to the White House where she got to meet then President Ronald Reagan wow I know no wow wow oh I mean spelling
00:13:11
yeah spelling right exactly now so all throughout her school year she kept that same tenacity worked super hard at
00:13:17
everything she did and it would actually lead her to becoming Bremerton Christian
00:13:21
Schools valedictorian in 1988. get it girl no After High School Don enrolled at Northwest College of the Assemblies
00:13:29
of God which is informally known as Northwest Bible College damn like even the people there call it that that's a
00:13:36
mouthful it is that I think that's why they shortened it to Northwest Bible College it's just the Bible the Bible
00:13:41
and it was at College the Bible College where she met Nick Hackney just like Don
00:13:47
he was also born and raised in Washington uh he was just raised about like a half an hour from Bremerton in
00:13:52
the coastal city of Poulsbo I think is how you say it I love it I like I looked it up so yeah I looked it up I looked it
00:14:01
up still I just like trailed off there that's it now so he grew up there and while Don's family had their issues it
00:14:09
seems like they were able to keep the home life somewhat stable at Don's house okay that wasn't necessarily the case
00:14:16
for Nick's family uh the author of Twisted Faith which is a really good source on this book and
00:14:21
actually I was looking at another book and then I saw that book advertised and that's how I found this case it's a good
00:14:27
name it is Twisted Faith yeah I like that and it's by author Greg Olsen he's an incredible writer so definitely read
00:14:34
that book but anyways I digress he put it that Nick came from a troubled family okay Nick's father Dan he worked really
00:14:43
long hours as a mechanic and when he was home he wasn't really emotionally there
00:14:48
he was very distant from his children and it seems his wife cool yeah and Nick's mom Sarah Sandra excuse me did
00:14:57
her best to support the family she ran a daycare out of the home and she would take in foster kids when she could but
00:15:03
it didn't seem like she thought too much about the fact that her children were already looking for more themselves and
00:15:10
other children just kept coming into the house yeah she's spreading herself too thin she is and I mean for like a great
00:15:16
cause yeah is amazing take take care of these kids that are already here first yes make
00:15:22
sure their cup is full I agree so that's the thing their home life became even more chaotic with all these other kids
00:15:28
running around and this is really sad later in life Nick would tell his friends he always felt like his mom
00:15:33
preferred his brothers and his sisters and he said sometimes even the foster kids to him like even his foster
00:15:39
brothers and sisters oh and he said looking back on the situation I don't think she ever loved me actually I think
00:15:46
she hated me oh my god really that's awful and I'm like I don't know why why why you thought she hated you yeah like
00:15:54
what would make you think that exactly that's troubling it is so obviously we don't know if she actually truly hated
00:16:00
Nick or not but what we do know is that she did unfortunately also suffer from long bouts of depression that left her
00:16:07
really repressed and also emotionally unavailable so these kids didn't really have an emotionally available parent
00:16:13
that's tough and when she wasn't feeling that way her time was spent managing the
00:16:19
chaos and the needs of all these children in the house so she didn't have a lot of time left for Nick and because
00:16:24
of that he ended up spending a lot of time alone yeah and eventually while he was alone he turned to the Bible and
00:16:31
kind of like found peace and Harmony in that and it was then that he developed an interest in Christianity okay
00:16:38
according to Nick quote it was God's calling that gave him strength and shaped every bit of his character wow
00:16:44
so yeah Nick found a new confidence through his dedication to religion and all throughout his teen years it seemed
00:16:51
actually like his self-esteem was really improving but unfortunately that didn't always
00:16:56
endear him to other people huh yes when he and Don first met at Northwest Bible College Don's friends and roommates
00:17:03
thought it was really odd that she would have any interest in Nick some of her friends thought he was pushy he was like
00:17:10
too self-assured like almost came off cocky oh and others called him a loser a guy who tried too hard and was clueless
00:17:18
about it damn which that's not very nice but you know so they also started to notice a change
00:17:24
in Dawn whenever Nick was around before Nick Don was super confident super self-reliant always working hard
00:17:31
accomplishing accomplishing like I said and just like looking for her next goal that she was gonna Crush yeah but around
00:17:38
Nick she kind of seemed to mute all of those parts of herself she was reserved she was shy and she started looking to
00:17:45
him when it came time to make a decision for anything oh no and that's never a good thing no like you don't want your
00:17:51
partner to mute the best parts of you you want your partner to bring out the best parts in you yeah and make you feel
00:17:57
comfortable I remember one of my best friends had this significant other who was always like annoyed by their like
00:18:05
outgoing personality and would like kind of like mute them down yeah like be like
00:18:09
you're being annoying right and it always bothered me because I was like no like that's one of the best parts about
00:18:15
this person yeah whether you think it's annoying or not that's like who they are
00:18:19
and if you think it's annoying you're not meant to be like you know if you if your love is conditional in that way
00:18:25
that like only if you tamper yourself down a little bit then you don't love that person exactly and and spoiler
00:18:32
alert they did not say together they didn't work out yeah and also I feel like it honestly just always comes from
00:18:37
a place of jealousy yeah when somebody's trying to stifle like those parts of you
00:18:42
like your outgoingness your ability to make a decision it's something they don't have right that they wish they
00:18:48
could do so they want to take that control over you and not let you do it either love should not be conditional
00:18:53
never but after two years at Northwest Bible College Don she got her associate degree
00:18:59
and in 1990 Nick did end up proposing to her um The Proposal actually sounds adorable
00:19:06
it was over Oreo cookies and milk on Alki Beach okay that's really cute yeah like give me oreo so I know it's real
00:19:12
hell yes they got married on April 20th 1991 and they ended up moving back to Bremerton where Don had grown up okay
00:19:19
now she started work as a loan officer at a credit union and Nick started pursuing a job as a youth pastor at
00:19:27
Christ Community Church which was on uh yes Bainbridge Island okay and that's a small island Community right across the
00:19:34
bay from Seattle I love these little islands with like a Spooky Little Church on it like midnight
00:19:40
mass oh It's a Spooky Little trick chart right yeah this spooky like it that just
00:19:45
gave me like midnight mass Vibes a little bit like I don't know anything about midnight because you have to watch
00:19:50
that show I know I'm late to midnight mass and I just like we just finished it like uh like in the beginning of the
00:19:56
year sometime John and I know we finished it I was super late on the midnight mass train but like and it
00:20:02
sucks to be late on something like that because you're like guys midnight and everybody's like yeah I've watched that
00:20:08
like years ago what the [ __ ] like you're they're just like you're just doing that
00:20:12
now I'm like but it's so good can I talk to someone you need to find somebody who
00:20:15
well I haven't seen it you need to watch it I was like you need to find someone who has why don't you go look I should
00:20:21
go take a poll in the streets for someone that's never seen one is willing to watch that girl you would like it
00:20:28
I'll watch it I have to finish succession first you do and then I also the offshoot I just really want to um
00:20:34
watch Yellow Jackets too me too okay great well so there's that but this gave me like Spooky Little Church like
00:20:39
midnight mass Vibes and if it's anything like midnight mass it did not end well for anybody well you're great at
00:20:45
foreshadowing what are you an author tinyural.com so to her friends Don seemed happy
00:20:52
enough but a lot of them were still worried about her and how easily she was deferring decision-making processes to
00:20:58
Nick yeah even when his decisions went against her own preferences and seemed to make her uncomfortable e like that's
00:21:04
not good no it's one thing if you're just like oh I mean I'm super indecisive so I'll be like Drew what do you think
00:21:09
like oh yeah do we finalize it like this but when you're done comfortable deferring all and when you're
00:21:16
uncomfortable with the outcome of the situation then it sounds like you could have made your own decision yeah you
00:21:21
knew where your heart was leading you yeah that's not good and it makes me sad that she felt like she had to do that to
00:21:27
me yeah like she couldn't make her own choices or something you know would go awry right and I think part of that and
00:21:34
I think author Greg Olsen also points this out the reason why Don was submitting to her husband was because
00:21:39
she believed in quote the fundamentalist edict that's submitting to her husband's
00:21:43
Authority was God's plan and the greatest gift a woman could give him that sucks a lot I
00:21:53
personally I think that success if the greatest gift a woman can give a man is uh to submit to submit to their wishes I
00:22:01
will never give a man the greatest gift but you know what or a woman it's all it's all consensual man if you decide
00:22:07
that that is something that you can send to and you enjoy doing then go off queens and kings go right off personally
00:22:16
that just sounds like [ __ ] awful to me yeah I I'm not a teacher I'm not good at that I'm not good at that as well I'm
00:22:24
not good at that but Nick had dreamed of becoming a youth pastor and he specifically wanted to work at Christ
00:22:29
Community Church because of his connection to his own former youth pastor who was Bob also known as PB
00:22:36
Smith he sounds like a really cool guy I'll put it out there good he sounds like he was like a nice gentleman that's
00:22:42
great and he still worked at the church all right he had been in charge of the church since the late 1980s but by the
00:22:48
time Nick arrived on the island and and was hoping to kind of like link up with PB and become this youth pastor PB
00:22:54
already had a partner that he was leading the church with okay Robert I think it's Bailey Robert Bailey it could
00:23:01
be Billy I couldn't figure it out and I looked it up she did I was there for it thank you yeah so Robert I'm just going
00:23:08
to call him either Robert or Pastor Robert for the rest of this so I don't piss anyone off but Robert he was this
00:23:14
like charismatic very animated man he was in his early 40s he'd been raised in a wealthy family and he kind of seemed
00:23:23
to like he would start these like really big projects and like have like this big
00:23:28
picture in mind but then it would all kind of fizzle out and he had just left a job working for the Galloping Gourmet
00:23:35
television program wow I'm just gonna urge you to look further into that it's wild but to most and especially to get
00:23:43
my Google machine Galloping Gourmet television program type in Robert b-i-l-y so to most and especially to Nick though
00:23:51
he seemed like an odd fit for church leadership okay okay PB Smith he took more and he's the nice gentleman he took
00:23:59
more of a friendly but still conservative approach to church leadership where Pastor Robert was um
00:24:05
very strict and extreme okay according to Greg Olsen quote Roberts seemed to try his best but neither sympathy nor
00:24:13
empathy appeared to be in his web repertoire wow so that's something you don't want in the pastor I would think
00:24:20
something I don't want him like anyone yeah I would like to hang out with people that have sympathy and empathy
00:24:24
and they're repertoire also repertoire is a really fun word filter in your mouth yeah now even though that was his
00:24:31
approach um and on top of that he actually had no theological training oh even though of
00:24:37
all of those factors the church board still voted to promote him to Pastor okay I don't understand how any of that
00:24:45
works but interesting but all right but okay go off so his new position seemed to go to his head almost immediately PB
00:24:55
sermons they usually related to the more like traditional subject matter of the Bible and his whole message was just
00:25:01
about forming a strong relationship with God and your community those were like his main goals yeah
00:25:06
but Roberts they were really theatrical his sermons okay he Incorporated very different elements of belief systems
00:25:14
that were like on the fringes of Christianity like not really there and he also this was like the main thing
00:25:21
that he did that I was like oh he set up a new Deliverance counseling program that was put into place to help the
00:25:28
congregants quote unquote build a stronger relationship with God but to me it sounded more like setting up Scare
00:25:35
Tactics oh I don't love that yeah so these sessions again according to Olson were intense dramatic and stepped in
00:25:42
fear and shame with Robert and PB praying and screaming at demons to exit The Afflicted church members okay PB had
00:25:51
never done that before Oh so this is all new this is all new these these church members had never had demons screamed
00:25:58
out of them oh no but they would ask the congregants all kinds of personal questions in these counseling sessions
00:26:05
about their marriages their sex lives like they wanted to get any kind of deep deep dark secret out of them I hate that
00:26:13
and they would also focus on of course how wrong it was to be gay how shameful it was to have an abortion and those
00:26:20
kind of things yeah that we personally don't agree with so Greg Olsen goes a bit further into
00:26:28
his book this this whole peer piece of this in his book and I would really recommend reading that section at the
00:26:35
very least because holy [ __ ] the things that they were doing during these counseling sessions are [ __ ] oh I hate
00:26:42
that and it's not even like the actions like I think the actions of like I don't
00:26:46
like the idea of exorcisms personally but it was more like the topic of conversation and like they just seem to
00:26:52
be trying to shame people into submission I think that's the like that's the vibe I'm getting and that's
00:26:58
why I don't like it like that's why I said boo it just sounds like this is really steeped like you said in like
00:27:03
shame fear yeah but like almost bullying absolutely in some way you know like this doesn't sound fun no and it it
00:27:10
wasn't what Christ Community Church was before yeah that's the thing because it sounds like it was like a you know
00:27:15
regular Church yeah that people seemed happy with before this and this oh by the way I meant to mention it it's a
00:27:21
very small church it's compromised of only like a hundred families oh really yeah so yeah these are people that are
00:27:27
that are used to something and like yeah they have this community community and family and then all of a sudden this guy
00:27:33
walks in and kind of like disrupts all of that yeah I don't like that I feel like a lot of people were probably on
00:27:37
edge yeah so that was the environment that Nick Hackney entered into when he finally managed to get an offer to join
00:27:44
that congregation oh boy as youth pastor he achieved his dream of becoming youth
00:27:49
pastor but uh it was different it was different these days different and that's the thing he saw PB as like again
00:27:56
this charismatic War man somebody he really looked up to but then he walked on the scene and realized that this guy
00:28:03
had been completely pushed to the side by Pastor Robert and Pastor Robert was domineering and dominating the entire
00:28:10
conversation of the church and the other thing was not only had Pastor Robert risen up the ranks quickly
00:28:17
but he had completely changed the entire church along the way like that sucks so by the mid 90s poster Robert had
00:28:25
convinced the congregation that he had a direct relationship with God and was one
00:28:30
of his apostles like he could get messages from God and then convey those messages is I'm this is an
00:28:38
actual question I have isn't that exactly what a co-leader does yes okay absolutely okay so but the thing was and
00:28:46
he he essentially was a co-leader yeah I'm just gonna go ahead and say that that's my opinion yeah well that's
00:28:51
literally isn't that what a cult leader does they say they have some kind of connection to a very direct connection
00:28:56
to a higher power yes and that's how they get everybody to do their bidding yes honestly the beginning of all of
00:29:03
this kind of reminds me of the Holy Rollers case that we did I think we did it with Rachel O'Brien on her podcast
00:29:09
yeah I was that really does remind me that it's it's spooky but yeah so he was like I have direct messages from the big
00:29:17
guy to tell you and that makes my word more valuable than PB Smith's or anybody on the church boards because they're not
00:29:24
talking to God directly now most members at the church they fully believed him I think because they
00:29:31
either believed fully in their faith or because they were scared into believing him yeah and there were also some
00:29:37
members in this congregation that said they were starting to receive messages and prophecies from God or they had all
00:29:43
along and just realized it yeah but those who didn't believe Pastor Robert were definitely scared into silence when
00:29:51
one of these people spoke out and called him a false Apostle uh-oh so that man who was brave enough to say that is it
00:29:59
Apostle or apostle [Music] um I don't really know did you say an apostle or Apostle it's Apostle it's
00:30:08
Apostle all right sorry I didn't get it later it's Apostle So This Man Called him a fake Apostle there
00:30:16
you go it's losing all meaning at this point it sure is but that man and his entire family were excommuted from the
00:30:22
excommunicated excuse me from the church in a 10-page letter that was actually written by PB Smith and circulated
00:30:30
throughout the entire congregation damn so this family they made an example out of them yeah so Robert was free to and
00:30:39
continued to take the church in a more conservative Direction at this point and now he was insisting that they should be
00:30:45
homeschooling their children eating healthier diets oh don't tell people what to do with their kids don't in
00:30:51
their bodies or their bodies so yeah he wanted them to not only do all of that but also start dressing more modestly
00:30:57
this is becoming a call to everybody absolutely Jesus now since it was well known that Nick and PB were close Robert
00:31:05
didn't really have much interest in Nick when he first joined the church he figured Nick would probably just be kind
00:31:11
of an extension of PB and not worth his time or somebody to push out yeah so it kind of came as a surprise to the pastor
00:31:18
when Nick approached him and asked Robert to take him under his wing like Nick said to Robert will you take me
00:31:25
under your wing huh he apparently said I'm working with PB and we never do anything I don't want his culture to
00:31:31
affect me and cause me to become like him you don't want to be a charismatic warm
00:31:36
man a charismatic man a charismatic War man yeah what the hell what if you look at this guy do you want to be like him
00:31:44
like I mean cult leader power yeah so even though he'd been close with PB for years
00:31:49
Nick clearly identified Robert as the stronger of the two and that's why he wanted to align himself with him he
00:31:56
wanted to align himself with the guy he thought was going to come out on top oh that never works out man it doesn't
00:32:01
unfortunately Robert did kind of seem to come out on top but that's upsetting didn't work out for Nick but similarly
00:32:07
Robert saw Nick as a tool to help him achieve his goal of outstanding PB and just taking over the church once and for
00:32:14
all as senior pastor which I didn't realize that there was even levels of pastors I didn't either I knew they were
00:32:20
like that's interesting yeah I knew there was like youth pastors I thought that was like just because they were
00:32:25
like kids me too yeah but anyways by early 1997 Nick and Dawn had gotten really sick of moving around they were
00:32:32
moving around a lot and obviously the inevitable cost that comes along with that they were in like the little side
00:32:38
business of flip flipping properties but Don was also getting tired of that she just wanted to move into a home where
00:32:45
they could build the life together yeah and not have to like fix up a ton of [ __ ] absolutely so when Nick found yet
00:32:50
another Fixer-Upper for sale in East Bremerton Don just reluctantly agreed that it was time for them to become
00:32:56
homeowners they were going to buy this house fix it up flip it but not sell it okay but she didn't want to do that but
00:33:03
she agreed because it's what Nick wanted oh a yet another house to fix defaults yeah right but the thing was she and
00:33:11
Nick spent the better part of the winter in early spring remodeling but by the spring of 1997 the cost of renovating
00:33:18
and the second mortgage that they had taken out on the house put them very deeply into debt oh oh which is not good
00:33:26
not a good place to be not a good place to be tensions Run High tensions were running very high inside of the house
00:33:32
but the congruence of the church thought that Nick and Don just had the perfect marriage they saw them as this loving
00:33:38
couple they saw that Dawn seemed to be willing to do whatever it took to support Nick's dreams and she was she
00:33:44
absolutely was sounds like it it she worked really hard to always support Nick but the renovation and the
00:33:51
spiraling debt was really starting to put a strain on their marriage and it went deeper than probably anybody could
00:33:57
have imagined now one afternoon Don meant for Don meant met I kept saying Men Don met for lunch with her friend
00:34:04
Eunice Eunice had also fallen on hard times recently so she moved back in with her parents and she was one of Don's
00:34:11
friends that wasn't really so fond of Nick but she was still surprised when Don confided in her saying if Nick and I
00:34:18
end up splitting two I would never ever want to live with my parents so don or Eunice is like oh she's even mentioning
00:34:25
the fact that like they could split yeah like even putting that out there as a possibility like that's a big [ __ ]
00:34:31
deal yeah so she laughed it off just like casually and was like well if that ever happens you can live with me like
00:34:36
don't worry about it she was half joking but Don apparently applied a replied okay that might happen oh yeah
00:34:44
I'd be like do you want to talk do you want to do something to say I think it was like a very like passing yeah
00:34:51
exchange but at the very least it suggested that Don was thinking of a world where Nick wasn't a part of her
00:34:58
world anymore and it was significant enough that Eunice remembered it years and years after had passed so Don and
00:35:06
Nick's marital issues they didn't only boil down to the renovation and the debt coming just from that it was more Nick's
00:35:13
Reckless spending and irresponsibility with money in general like not just with the house but with everything if the
00:35:19
church needed something he would volunteer to buy it if a congregant needed money he would lend it to them
00:35:24
without any expectation that they paid the money back which is like very kind sure absolutely like but not when you're
00:35:31
when you can't when you have a family like you you also have to have a responsibility to them you gotta put
00:35:37
your oxygen mask on first exactly you know yeah so by 1997 he had started also funneling money into his latest dream
00:35:45
project which was a Christian Youth Camp he really really wanted to go all in for
00:35:51
this and he actually even started eyeing some property in Jefferson County he thought it was going to be perfect for
00:35:57
the camp in fact he thought that this was the camp that God wanted for him and his feeling was only solidified
00:36:05
further when Sandy glass another member of the congregation who claimed to have very frequent Visions from God himself
00:36:13
she claimed that her latest and most prominent Vision was that of a new church on a property just like the one
00:36:21
Nick had seen for his Youth Camp interesting oh she said she saw this new church prospering under Nick's
00:36:28
leadership and of course with her own support she would be more than willing to help and support my goodness yay look
00:36:36
at that my Guy Greg Olsen he notes that notably absent from the vision was any mention of Sandy's husband Jimmy and
00:36:43
Nick's wife Dawn I was wondering that much yeah no they weren't enough like is dawn in there God said forget about that
00:36:48
no he said no way so Sandy glass just to tell you a little bit more about her she
00:36:53
came from a difficult background she had really gone through her fair share of tragedy she was only in her 20s at this
00:36:59
point and her first serious boyfriend had died from an unspecified disease oh her father had been killed in a
00:37:06
construction accident oh and her brother was struggling with addiction which was
00:37:10
causing a lot of stress and heartbreak for their family oh she's going through it and she's only in her 20s oh geez so
00:37:18
I can understand why she turned to God for sure oh absolutely I can understand why a lot of people people do yeah
00:37:25
absolutely and that's all I'll say about that yeah exactly now she didn't she wouldn't let those things become excuses
00:37:30
and I think or I yeah she did her best to be a strong source of support for her kids and her husband Jimmy but by 1997
00:37:38
things with Jimmy hadn't been going well for a while and money was tight because they were a single income
00:37:44
household only relying on Jimmy salary as a carpenter because Sandy was staying home with the kids yeah but she also was
00:37:53
very Reckless with money like Nick and couldn't stop spending money that they didn't even have oh no so obviously that
00:37:59
led to a lot of fights between her and Jimmy where Jimmy would just yell and lose his temper or completely distance
00:38:06
himself from the situation and go to the bar for hours and hours and hours no and
00:38:10
they have kids yeah so he's either there and like they're fighting or he's not there at all yeah
00:38:15
it's sad yeah now like a lot of the other couples at Christ Community Church Sandy and Jimmy decided to turn to the
00:38:23
church for help with their marriage with the Deliverance Counseling in their case
00:38:27
that meant turning to Nick Hackney and again the Deliverance counseling program to which I say big [ __ ] yikes and
00:38:35
Jimmy's parents also said big [ __ ] yikes oh really James and Mary glass they were like I don't know about this
00:38:40
they thought that Sandy and Jimmy's decision to turn to the church for help seemed rash and they also wondered if
00:38:48
Nick had the experience or even the qualifications to help their son yeah and they especially started to worry
00:38:54
when Nick seemed to take a very very defined interest in Sandy instead of Sandy and Jimmy as a couple uh-oh and
00:39:04
his interest and special attention also wasn't just happening within the walls of Sandy and Jimmy's counseling sessions
00:39:09
he was calling Sandy at all hours of the day especially during like family gatherings and events that she would
00:39:16
have even if she was the Ho or the host she would walk away and excuse herself and be on the phone with Nick for like
00:39:22
way too long just privately [ __ ] it was weird that's inappropriate it is and Jimmy's parents James and Mary they
00:39:30
weren't the first members of the congregation to notice that Nick seemed to pay not only special attention to
00:39:36
Sandy but just to the women in the congregation in general oh Nick actually when Nick took over the
00:39:44
counseling program a couple years before there were multiple people that complained about them about him and how
00:39:50
he was interested in things that they considered to be very very private one woman actually went to Pastor Robert
00:39:57
about Nick and said all he wants to do is talk about sex and for that reason she didn't want to go to the church for
00:40:04
counseling anymore she was like I'm at the point where like I want to look outside of the church for counseling
00:40:09
because this [ __ ] that you have running it is disgusting ew can you imagine like what a pig what a pig
00:40:16
absolutely no I just feel so bad for anybody that had to go through the counseling process with him because it's
00:40:23
like you're at a low Point already in your life or you're struggling at the very least and you're turning to a place
00:40:30
where you you believe in and this guy just ruins all that for you and this guy is like being really inappropriate and
00:40:37
gross like exactly what a low feeling that must be right like it must take you even lower yeah he just preyed upon
00:40:44
people now Pastor Robert's wife Pamela she was yet another person who noticed how Nick was treating the women and she
00:40:50
was starting to get really ticked off and troubled by it so she actually took Nick aside herself and she was like I
00:40:56
want to have a conversation with you about this counseling program and she was like you are too eager to involve
00:41:01
yourself in people's marital issues and especially their sexual problems and you
00:41:06
need to knock it off well I'm glad somebody was like you creep yeah and I love that it was a woman yeah she was
00:41:12
like yeah Pamela cut the [ __ ] she literally told him and this is a quote this is marital abuse you need to focus
00:41:17
on dawn like your wife yeah you need to comfort her and Don needs to know that she's number one in your life good for
00:41:24
her so she was like hey why don't you focus on your own [ __ ] family yeah stop being weird so Nick surprisingly
00:41:29
not one to welcome criticism just brush the conversation off and forgot about it
00:41:34
Pamela was the first woman to openly criticize him but she probably wouldn't be the last
00:41:40
other people at the church were being quiet about their opinions but they also felt like Pamela did and like James and
00:41:47
Mary glass did it was clear to them that Nick did not give a [ __ ] about Don's feelings at all and they thought it was
00:41:52
really gross how he threw himself headfirst into private issues but at the same time they trusted PB who was still
00:42:00
with the church and Pastor Robert I don't know if they trusted him but I think they just didn't want to pick any
00:42:06
fights with him yeah and they assumed that Nick wouldn't be in charge of this program if he couldn't be trusted
00:42:12
so the church had almost been completely transformed by the fall of 1997 and in late August Pastor Robert had officially
00:42:21
pushed PB out oh no as the senior pastor and it was a decision that was actually
00:42:26
backed by the church board oh no so now that he wasn't in charge of the church PB and his wife just headed off to
00:42:33
Africa to do some Mission work I mean good for PB and his wife I love it I think they were like this has gotten
00:42:38
really weird and we need to get as far away from this as possible well they were probably like we're gonna go do
00:42:43
what we are like preaching yeah and we're gonna go help people exactly we're gonna go do what we believe in you can
00:42:50
continue doing like your version of this but we're gonna do what we were setting
00:42:54
out to do except for them yeah I agree but back at the church the Deliverance counseling sessions they were starting
00:43:01
to become routine and they were getting stranger and stranger and stranger Nick was relishing in this newfound power and
00:43:09
Pastor Robert was too busy to give a [ __ ] ew he's busy becoming a cult leader the sad thing about telling this story
00:43:16
is that because she passed away when she was so young and because if she had spoken out against anything it would
00:43:21
have caused it caused a huge uproar we don't know how Don felt about all the changes going on in the church and
00:43:27
that's sad yeah and not even only just the changes going on in the church but the changes going on in her husband yeah
00:43:34
her marriage like we don't know how she felt about it because once she passed away so young and also because I don't
00:43:40
think she was allowed to say it yeah she didn't feel comfortable exactly that's sad it is by all accounts she was smart
00:43:47
gorgeous self-reliant and she definitely would have had an opinion about what was
00:43:51
going on in her home in the church but like I said earlier maybe she wouldn't have said it out loud be because she
00:43:58
took the conservative church doctrine very seriously she always believed that the wife should
00:44:03
be subservient to the husband so even if she suspected that Nick was cheating on
00:44:07
her or being inappropriate at the very least it's not that likely that she would have confronted him because that's
00:44:13
part of the whole thing it's like deal with it yep quietly quietly and with a smile on your face
00:44:20
so you know she may have been staying tight-lipped about her suspicions but by the end of the year more and more people
00:44:25
in the congregation were starting to notice that Nick was really going for it with the inappropriate behavior and
00:44:33
especially they were noticing that he was spending a lot of time with Sandy glass in particular so more and more
00:44:40
people were going to Pastor Robert to say like we're concerned about this we don't like this the counseling sessions
00:44:46
are getting weirder and weirder but he didn't care yeah as long as Nick wasn't planning to take over power of the
00:44:52
church you could do whatever they wanted so toward the later half of 1997 the cons the concerns were becoming so
00:45:00
frequent that even Pastor Robert couldn't push them off he tried his best but they started they were coming in
00:45:05
probably daily at this point when Pastor Robert is doing anything besides leading
00:45:09
a cult you know that it got intense you know it's real yeah exactly but instead of pulling Nick aside he pulled Sandy
00:45:17
aside and he was like hey your relationship with Nick is inappropriate and you should focus on your husband
00:45:22
Jimmy because your relationship is already [ __ ] up so I'm I'm sorry can we talk to the church leader no it's
00:45:29
Santa's fault what are you talking about obviously she's a woman of course it's her fault
00:45:34
Sandy didn't receive this well nor would I not well received not well received me
00:45:40
either now she maintained that she believed that God wanted her and Nick to be together oh literally said that and
00:45:46
in a letter to Pastor Robert she said the Judgment I feel from you makes it hard for me to believe that you accept
00:45:51
my giftings at all talking about her Visions or that you have any confidence in my ability to hear God and use this
00:45:58
help to help anyone oh boy yeah so like essentially what she was saying is God wants me and Nick to
00:46:05
be together and if you don't believe that then you don't believe in me and [ __ ] everybody else
00:46:11
yeah yeah this is a wild story it's it's truly crazy now outside of the church Sandy and Nick
00:46:20
were barely hiding their Affair and it was taking a toll on literally everybody around them yeah and this is really sad
00:46:27
I just want to let you know this is going to bum you out big time one day one of Sandy and Jimmy's kids went to
00:46:32
their dad upset and crying and told him mom and Nick told us that after you die Nick's going to be our new dad
00:46:41
that is [ __ ] up in a way that I can't even describe can you shame imagine them
00:46:49
shame on them shame on them because it wasn't like Nick told us this it was no it was the moment like that's [ __ ]
00:46:57
visiting [ __ ] yeah and not shame on them that hurts my heart so badly that that
00:47:03
kid was probably terrified of their dad Yeah that poor confused little child like who says that to a kid like that's
00:47:08
[ __ ] up it's so weird ugh it's it's beyond these two are gross but Jimmy refused to entertain the idea that Sandy
00:47:16
was cheating on him even still at this point when the affair was so public that even his kids were coming to him with it
00:47:23
so the tension in the glass family was growing and growing and growing and it was dangerously close to a Breaking
00:47:30
Point like dangerously close and by Thanksgiving the cracks were beginning to show even in Dawn who as we
00:47:37
know usually put a brief Face Forward yeah she told two other women in the congregation things are not so good
00:47:43
right now I'm overwhelmed by everything our finances are a mess but mostly I'm worried about Nick I don't think I make
00:47:48
him happy he's never home he's gone all the time I don't even know if he wants me anymore oh that's so sad and what's
00:47:56
sadder is she was trying everything she could do to make him happy she was trying to lose weight which she did not
00:48:01
need to do she was beautiful she was just doing anything she could think of that's so sad it is so the woman in the
00:48:09
congregation they tried to reassure her and they were like whatever is causing problems between you and Nick is not
00:48:15
your fault like yeah and I'm I'm happy that somebody told her that yeah not like yeah like try this diet because you
00:48:22
know some people will do that absolutely and it sounds like you know there were people around her who could have said
00:48:27
that so I'm glad that she had people who were like no like you don't need to change all anything about yourself if he
00:48:34
doesn't love right crazy and that's the thing I like do doing research for this I watched a couple shows about it and
00:48:41
all of the people that in Don's life like absolutely loved her she had friends that were her friends in high
00:48:47
school that she was still friends with ugh like and like friends in like grade school that she was still friends with
00:48:53
that spoke her Praises so you know that's a good person of course so but the thing was people could still tell
00:48:59
there was something deeper and more complicated that was upsetting Don yeah and she told them my life isn't what I
00:49:06
would what I thought it would be and then she went on to explain that there were major and irreconcilable
00:49:11
differences between she and Nick's long-term plans oh geez and at the Forefront of that was that she
00:49:18
desperately wanted to be a mother she wanted to have kids so bad and Nick did not want children oh which I think we
00:49:26
talked about that a couple weeks ago like just so [ __ ] sad if you find yourself in that situation yeah that you
00:49:33
weren't that you didn't talk about it beforehand or right were honest with each other beforehand and now you're
00:49:38
married and you're and two totally different camps that way and she feels stuck and when you want
00:49:45
kids yeah it is a feeling and a need that you simply cannot ignore like you just can't like yeah when John and I
00:49:55
decided we wanted kids it was a desperation oh I remember kids like when it was when it was hard when it took a
00:50:04
long time and we had to go through the fertility treatments it was devastating of course it the thought of not being
00:50:10
able to was devastating so I can't imagine what she was going through I'm not even at the place right now where
00:50:16
like we're taught like we're talking about it obviously but like I'm not at the place where we're like ready to make
00:50:20
that happen but one of my biggest fears is like not being able to yeah it's it's
00:50:24
hard honestly because of seeing what you guys went through yeah it was gut-wrenching it is it's really really
00:50:30
off so knowing she desperately wanted kids and he was just like no no that's got wrenching into me I'm sure it wasn't
00:50:38
even a conversation it was just like he said when that was the end of it oh that's awful so sad
00:50:44
now strangely all of the chaos actually seemed to be affecting Nick too by December he seemed absolutely exhausted
00:50:51
to everyone who knew him which was a big change because normally outwardly he was
00:50:56
very enthusiastic and like excited about church and being weird in Deliverance counseling yeah but there were a few
00:51:04
women in the congregation in particular who seemed to be demanding his time more
00:51:09
and more other than Sandy and then there was still Sandy whose messages from God
00:51:14
were growing more demanding she was urging Nick that he needed to take action toward that dream of the Youth
00:51:21
Camp oh yeah and as Christmas got closer it seemed like there was something big that was going to shift and it was going
00:51:29
to be Nick who shifted it so don woke up on Christmas morning to find that like I said she was sick with
00:51:36
a cold remember I said that at the beginning yeah she'd been fighting a cold the previous day and when she woke
00:51:40
up on Christmas it was even worse she like didn't even want to go out but she always showed up for everybody in her
00:51:47
life so she and Nick took the ferry to the mainland that morning and they spent the day with her parents and her
00:51:53
brothers later that night they actually dropped by to see PB Smith's family um they played board games and Nick made
00:52:00
plans with pb's daughter Lindsay and two other friends to go hunting the next morning okay now when Don and Nick said
00:52:07
good night their friends had no idea that would be the last time they would see Don obviously because she died in a
00:52:14
tragic fire so the next morning December 26 Lindsay Smith and her husband Phil met Nick to go hunting Just Before Dawn
00:52:21
um at the Hood Canal Bridge in Jefferson County they spent a couple hours in the
00:52:26
woods but they never fired a single shot there was nothing to hunt to which I say
00:52:30
ha but around 9 A.M they decided they were going to call it a day because like nothing was going on yeah so they drove
00:52:37
into town to have breakfast at a local Diner and as they were eating breakfast Nick suddenly jumped up like out of
00:52:42
nowhere and was like Don and I still haven't had time to open our Christmas presents and then he asked for the check
00:52:48
and quickly headed home oh now the time stamp on the credit card receipt showed that it was 9 30 in the morning when
00:52:54
that happened so Nick would have made it home a little after 10. okay you know as
00:52:58
we know he did show up a little after 10 to his home completely engulfed in flames and heard the news that his wife
00:53:05
Don had been killed in a fire now as far as fire investigators could tell the blaze had been actually mostly confined
00:53:12
to the bedroom at first which now was like a burned out shell of what it had been
00:53:17
and the cause of the fire appeared to be a faulty space heater which escalated quickly due to quote the abundance of
00:53:25
newspapers and wrapping paper and a collection of mini propane containers near the headboard on one side of the
00:53:31
bed um okay are we looking at that as the origin point so Nick Carson accident okay so Nick explained to the
00:53:46
investigators that he and Don had opened their Christmas gifts the night before uh-huh
00:53:51
do you remember when earlier he just said they had him yeah yep no they did and since John wasn't feeling well they
00:53:57
just headed right to bed instead of cleaning up all the wrapping paper and they were like okay totally what about
00:54:03
the propane tanks well that I'm like did you get propane tanks for Christmas yes
00:54:08
oh that's literally the okay yes okay he told the investigators that they had actually been a gift to him from dawn
00:54:14
because they were still using space heaters to heat the home throughout the renovation
00:54:20
okay now overall the death seemed to be an accident it was truly a tragic one but unfortunately in the winter months a
00:54:29
very familiar accident a faulty space heater poof you're up in Flames okay so once the scene had been cleared Pastor
00:54:36
Robert showed up oh good he was like I'm here to help yeah things weren't chaotic
00:54:41
enough let's bring this guy in he showed up and you know he wanted to try to provide support and comfort to Nick and
00:54:47
when Nick told Robert what had happened that Don had passed away Robert immediately suggested that they try to
00:54:52
raise her from the dead with the power of prayer shut the [ __ ] up I'm sorry that you can believe whatever you want
00:55:00
to believe but they suggested they try to raise her from the dead with the power of Prayer
00:55:06
that I mean that like literally can't happen so like that's really [ __ ] up to do to someone of course it is to
00:55:11
place that kind of Hope in there okay but he had been doing that back at church his sermons at the church had
00:55:18
recently come to include the belief that certain people those of the truest faith
00:55:24
had the power to resurrect somebody from the dead okay or the truest of Faith had
00:55:30
the power to resurrect themselves okay and uh to him it seemed like there was no better time to put that practice than
00:55:36
with somebody from his own congregation yeah I was like let's go but the mention of Resurrection seemed
00:55:43
to alarm Nick he jumped up from the truck bed where they were sitting in and insisted that
00:55:49
nobody should try to pray over Don's remains he insisted to Pastor Robert and told him she's been so badly burned
00:55:56
she'd be in terrible pain it would be awful okay which is a belief system that people are
00:56:04
holding here that this could happen that is a very reasonable thing to say yeah and something that I can absolutely go
00:56:12
oh yep I get it for sure like that sound that would be terrible like just thinking about that
00:56:19
is [ __ ] terrible so I mean I would think that like if you can resurrect from the dead like that's crazy in a
00:56:25
miracle in itself so like maybe if you got that ability you would just like come back like not in the way that you
00:56:31
would die you don't know that's a possibility that I can understand like I don't want her to be in pain or like
00:56:37
horribly disfigured or yeah okay totally so even though their relationship had gone all gotten off to a rocky start
00:56:45
Robert always knew Nick to be among the most faithful in the church so the fact that he refused to even try to raise
00:56:52
Dawn from the dead it struck Robert as strange you just went hmm so instead Nick asked Robert if he could inform
00:57:00
Don's family of the deaf which Robert also thought was strange he was like you want me to go tell them and Nick was
00:57:07
like yeah I do I just can't bring myself to do it yeah and he was like okay no problem
00:57:13
so the news made its way through the church congregation very quickly and a lot of the congregants were absolutely
00:57:21
shocked by this nobody expected Don to pass away in a house fire like yeah why would you ever
00:57:26
so they formed a prayer chain to pray for don'sol which that's nice yeah and but at the same time not everybody was
00:57:34
so quick to accept this explanation of what had happened Sandy's mother-in-law Mary glass had a lot of insight into the
00:57:43
tensions at church not only with just like her daughter-in-law and that whole side of the marriage but she she seemed
00:57:49
to have eyes on everything in the church okay she knew what was up and she suspected that Don's death was not an
00:57:55
accident oh look at her she did not think so and she told her husband she was like I don't think it's an accident
00:58:01
like I don't know if we should go talk to somebody about this but he said if Nick really had something to do with
00:58:08
the fire the police will certainly discover that in their investigation and we need to keep our noses out of this as
00:58:14
far as he was concerned it was best that they stay as far away from this investigation as possible okay okay
00:58:21
um but Mary was quickly proven wrong just days later the fire and Dawn's death were ruled accidental and the
00:58:29
Bremerton Police handed the investigation off to Safeco Insurance Company who had already received Nick's
00:58:35
request to process Don's life insurance claim huh which he was struggling with money so sure yeah no uh
00:58:43
some people were like okay yeah her death was an accident and you know Nick is just a victim of cruel circumstances
00:58:50
so the church Community held a celebrations of life event as a funeral for Don and they invited family and
00:58:56
friends to tell stories and just celebrate Don's life while they grieved her death
00:59:01
Nick ended up giving a 45-minute eulogy and some people were like how is HE capable of being so clear so soon after
00:59:10
his wife tragically died yeah to give a 45-minute eulogy but then on the other side of things people were like
00:59:17
absolutely touched by it and thought it was beautiful to say and then there was probably that whole and also the fact
00:59:22
that he's a pastor he's a pastor this is what he does yeah turn to God and tragedy exactly so with the house
00:59:29
destroyed by the fire Nick moved in with the Smith family actually he moved into their daughter Lindsay's
00:59:35
old bedroom and around that time some people started noticing how strangely hot and cold he was when it came to the
00:59:42
subject of Dawn's death at times he seemed like he was like almost performatively grief-stricken and
00:59:49
then there were other times where it seemed like he couldn't be bothered to even think about Dawn okay now one day
00:59:54
when Lindsay came back to the house to get some of her things she found a photo collage of dawn that she'd made for Nick
01:00:00
and I probably for the funeral and she found it stuffed into the back of her bedroom closet and she was like At first
01:00:07
she was like that's weird and obviously like Nick must have been the one to stuff it back there but then she said to
01:00:13
herself it must have been really hard for him to look at that every day okay Fair yeah so in the weeks and months
01:00:20
that followed it's just Nick's way of grieving was a constant answer to a myriad of bizarre callous and rude
01:00:28
behaviors back he snubbed his neighbors he kept having inappropriate relationships with young
01:00:34
women from the church and he seemed to be using his widower status to try to make other people feel bad for him hmm
01:00:41
yeah I don't like it I don't either just months after Don's death he started confiding in several women from the
01:00:48
church including pb's daughter Lindsay oh the one married to his friend Phil oh yeah uh-huh but rather than see his
01:00:58
behavior as extremely inappropriate all of these women seemed honored that a leader of the church had chosen them to
01:01:05
trust with his most inner thoughts his innermost thoughts so some people they made sure to keep their relationship
01:01:12
platonic and just you know be a shoulder to lean on uh and others welcomed his sexual
01:01:18
Advantage advances excuse me and they were sure that it was what God wanted for them okay
01:01:24
this is going to blow your [ __ ] mind Nick was able to manipulate Dawn's own mother into thinking he was a suffering
01:01:34
Widow and they too slept together not long after Don's death Dawn's mother had sex with her husband had after she
01:01:47
died relations with her husband after she died that's [ __ ] up I was I I don't like I'm shocked right
01:01:59
now and I already knew that obviously when I I was reading it in the book and I was like oh my God and for those that
01:02:09
are going to read a twisted Faith just know that it it's a little graphic in that scene oh my so I'm gonna move on
01:02:17
now oh boy please do just kept on abusing his power and taking advantage of his conversation he's a [ __ ]
01:02:24
filthy animal yeah he kept taking advantage of his congregation for a few more years but it got to the point where
01:02:31
the complaints were too numerous for the church board to ignore because now people were not they were going over uh
01:02:38
[ __ ] Robert's head there to the board and being like what are you gonna do about this glad that you guys were
01:02:43
taking it seriously so they couldn't ignore it at this point he wasn't just carrying on affairs with a few women
01:02:49
that would have been bad enough but there were some cases where he was clearly just leading women on and taking
01:02:54
advantage of them I'm so confused by this yeah so these women obviously they felt completely
01:03:01
betrayed and victimized and they weren't gonna let things go yeah so finally in the spring of 2001 they had a church
01:03:07
board meeting about the issue and it was decided that Nick needed to leave Christ
01:03:11
Community Church damn finally not only like did he get like demoted he had to leave yeah
01:03:18
now some congregants called for forgiveness but a majority seemed happy to see him go and they were happy
01:03:25
because the tension and the drama that he had caused for years they they were like okay maybe this will finally come
01:03:31
to a close mm-hmm so being kicked out of the church that he devoted almost a decade of his life to was a big blow to
01:03:38
Nick but it was just the beginning of his troubles oh because on April 10 2001 Sandy glass and her lawyer sat down with
01:03:49
the County district attorney and Sandy was presented with a document offering her immunity from prosecution in
01:03:56
exchange for her testifying in court to something that she'd been keeping to herself since the end of December 1997.
01:04:03
shut up Don's death was not an accident it was a [ __ ] murder [ __ ] Nick she had been murdered according to Sandy
01:04:11
Nick called her on the morning of December 26th and all he said this cryptic [ __ ] [ __ ] of a loser
01:04:19
said I did it before the call was interrupted by another incoming call what so Sandy put Nick on hold to answer
01:04:28
the other call which was actually somebody from the church calling to say to tell her what had happened to John so
01:04:33
Sandy was like oh my God and she went back to her phone call with Nick and she was like what are you talking about and
01:04:39
all he would say to her was it's done what it's done so maybe she was too scared or maybe she
01:04:48
didn't want to know but Sandy allegedly didn't ask Nick for further clarification until a few weeks later
01:04:55
and when she finally asked him what he meant according to Sandy Nick told her that on the morning of the fire this is
01:05:01
terrible and graphic he had given down a large overdose of Benadryl and then covered her face with a plastic
01:05:09
bag to smother her oh my God according to Nick the Benadryl had been enough to mostly immobilize her but she was still
01:05:16
awake and quote could see him through the plastic bag and what he was doing oh she literally watched her husband
01:05:25
kill her through the plastic bag through a plastic bag in their bedroom oh in their home
01:05:33
that's horrific so once he was sure that she was dead he scattered old newspaper
01:05:37
and wrapping paper around the room and under her body and placed the propane tanks by the bed
01:05:46
and set the heater up in a way that it would cause a fire and Destroy any evidence of a crime or so he thought oh
01:05:53
my God the story seemed too bizarre to be true to investigators and parts of it didn't seem to make any sense but it did
01:06:01
explain some of the more unusual aspects of the case like why Don wasn't even slightly roused by the region of fire
01:06:08
around him she was already dead why there was no soot or carbon monoxide in her lungs
01:06:14
I'm sorry we ignored that to begin with we didn't ignore it no but we came up with a very [ __ ] weird bizarre reason
01:06:22
for why that happened or why in one of the photos of Don's corpse taken immediately after the fire was
01:06:29
extinguished why you could see paper lying underneath her body I don't know how anybody didn't question that
01:06:38
wow I think some people looked the other way because this was a pastor I mean this is wildly watched wild the fire
01:06:48
marshal at the time said he never forgot about this case all throughout the years
01:06:53
he was like I didn't think it was an accident but he there was it wasn't up to him yeah
01:06:58
so when the prosecutor asked why Sandy hadn't come forward with all this information before now all she could say
01:07:05
was that she was too afraid she'd lose her kids if the police thought she was involved which I understand but wow and
01:07:12
then at the same time she also had been thoroughly manipulated by Nick to think that their relationship was what God
01:07:18
wanted for them and it was only after she learned that he was stepping out on her too with other women in the church
01:07:25
that she realized she was being used damn she realized the relationship was not what God wanted and then she
01:07:33
realized that if this relationship wasn't what God wanted that meant that God hadn't pre-ordained Dawn's death it
01:07:41
was murder oh no the story was wild yeah this is wild Reckless I can't believe that this just like came to be yeah I
01:07:50
never would have heard of this otherwise no I was just looking at another book on
01:07:55
Amazon this one came up and I saw the the a whole description and I was like what the [ __ ] this is wild wild so this
01:08:03
yeah it was enough for investigators to reopen the case and look into what Sandy
01:08:08
alleged yeah so they Revisited the evidence that had been collected in the initial investigation and they spoke to
01:08:14
most of the witnesses and members of the church that they had spoken to before and in talking to those folks they
01:08:21
learned all about the other women that Nick had been having affairs with oh no and investigators also reviewed the
01:08:27
original autopsy results with the forensic pathologist who not only discovered that Don had toxic levels of
01:08:34
Benadryl in her system oh oops she had five times the normal dosage in her system [ __ ] but that's why he said she
01:08:42
didn't think she had tolerance for it and she just kept taking of course yep he was trying to set it all up but there
01:08:48
were also signs of her having been dead before the fire started like I said though soot in her lungs in the original
01:08:54
autopsy it was noted that there was no carbon monoxide in her lungs and once blood work was done there was no carbon
01:09:02
monoxide in the blood and obviously like you were just saying that was something that did stick out to
01:09:08
the forensic pathologist initially because carbon monoxide always attaches itself to red blood cells in a case like
01:09:14
this and if a person is breathing while a fire rages around them they will sure as [ __ ] have some [ __ ] soot in there
01:09:22
absolutely but this pathologist was working under a preconceived idea that the fire was accidental and this was a
01:09:31
pastor's wife there couldn't be there couldn't be murder involved here no way that's that's wild so that's looking the
01:09:38
other way of course it is like there's no to put that along to with them being like it is weird that she didn't move at
01:09:47
all while being burned alive like Benadryl you're telling me Benadryl makes it so you don't feel your flesh
01:09:55
burning like I'm sorry she would have moved a little and I maybe it was because it was five times the amount but
01:10:01
even still it doesn't paralyze you it doesn't kill all the nerves in your body you're gonna feel it yeah and your
01:10:08
body's gonna move a little bit you're gonna at least attempt to move or shift and for them to take that and also take
01:10:15
that along with the fact she didn't have sit in her lungs and along with the fact
01:10:19
that there was propane tanks there it's like and to not look at that and go we should take a little more of a look at
01:10:25
this and just go yep accident that's wild well they decided to take a look into other stuff they decided to take a
01:10:32
a real big look into why there wouldn't be any soot or carbon monoxide in the blood yeah they went really hard in
01:10:40
proving why that is all not weird at all no they literally instead of looking the
01:10:45
other way and going well that's weird what they did was they kept researching for some reason why this case would be
01:10:53
different and they found their reason in a medical journal that's no no so the article that supported the pathologist's
01:11:00
belief that this was still accidental pointed to something called a laryngospasm laryngospasm
01:11:07
essentially in a flash fire like the one at the Hackney's house apparently it is
01:11:12
possible for the larynx to suddenly close off and the airway is sealed because of the high heat it is very very
01:11:21
incredibly rare but possible okay but now that Sandy had offered up what she knew and it sounded like Nick had killed
01:11:29
Don before setting the fire and considering all of this newly found evidence the prosecutor's office felt
01:11:35
like there was enough to move forward and so a warrant for Nick's arrest was issued good and the pathologist changed
01:11:43
the cause of death because of this lady saying all of this and being like yeah I
01:11:48
know he did it like I know that this happened he admitted it to me and then you put it along with all that stuff
01:11:53
it's like okay I know rare things can happen that laryngeal laryngeal spasm or whatever
01:11:59
that can happen and if there wasn't other things involved I'd be like wow yeah like rare cases that happens right
01:12:05
when you put it next to somebody he killed her first come on right and how specific it was
01:12:12
yeah and like there's like newspaper and wrapping paper under her body yeah when
01:12:18
he just told his friends that morning that they hadn't opened Christmas gifts yet and then immediately got to the
01:12:23
house fire and was like oh we opened Christmas gifts last night and I we haven't even cleaned up and it was
01:12:28
propane tanks yeah wild I I think she actually might have got him propane tanks for the for Christmas because I
01:12:36
didn't see anything about him purchasing those beforehand oh yeah so I think that
01:12:39
might have actually maybe been a gift but I don't know but maybe it was just like um they might have he might have
01:12:43
already had them yeah so so yeah so yeah on the afternoon of September 12 2001 detectives did arrest
01:12:51
Nick in the parking lot of a Kinkos for the murder of his wife he immediately insisted that he had absolutely nothing
01:12:58
to do with Dawn's death and this was all a conspiracy being carried out against him by the members of Christ Community
01:13:04
Church particularly Pastor Robert he insisted to the investigators you have no idea what these people are capable of
01:13:14
wow but regardless of his denial Nick was booked on a charge of first-degree murder the next day and his bail was set
01:13:21
at 750 000 bye-bye so the news of his arrest came as a shock to a lot of people in Bremerton and to some people I
01:13:30
guess at his former congregation but I think others were like yeah I saw that coming yeah so for a little stretch
01:13:35
there at least he was a well-respected youth pastor and a leader in his community and now people were portraying
01:13:42
him as a manipulative philandering murderer like stark contrast there and one of the more unsavory facts
01:13:49
released in the media just after his arrest was after collecting the insurance payout from Dawn's policy
01:13:57
Nick couldn't even be [ __ ] bothered to purchase a headstone for his wife's grave shut the [ __ ] up he took out her
01:14:05
entire life insurance policy and got all of that money and it wasn't much but still it would have been enough to pay
01:14:12
for a [ __ ] headstone anything anything a marker wow it was literally like a taped piece of paper to the area
01:14:19
that tells you something of course it does piece of [ __ ] [ __ ] and instead of spending the money on what he should
01:14:26
have the headstone he quote took several women shopping for new clothes yeah [ __ ]
01:14:32
this guy so hard so hard now just for the comfort of everybody's mind like all of us in this room and all
01:14:41
of us out there in the world luckily a victim's right or rights organization did end up paying for a headstone for
01:14:47
Dawn so she has one that's amazing which like the fact that a victim's [ __ ] rights organization had to do that thank
01:14:53
goodness they exist yeah what about anybody else that loved her Jesus [ __ ] Christ
01:14:58
so some of Nick's former congregants from the Poulsbo offshoot of Christ Community Church so it's like a sister
01:15:05
church I guess yeah they showed up at the hearing to support him and his lawyer tried to suggest that their
01:15:12
showing up was evidence of Nick's reliability oh yeah absolutely because he was hoping to get him released on
01:15:17
personal recognizance um when I first read that I was like wow wow so personal recognizance according
01:15:25
to Google is a release without the requirement of posting of bail based on a written Promise by the defendant to
01:15:31
appear in court when required to do so it's the honor System of Baal ah you're on trial or you're about to be
01:15:38
for the murder of your wife this isn't a game of Monopoly there's no get out of jail free card or like I promise I'll
01:15:44
come back like hey just just sit on your palm and shake my hand and tell me you're gonna be here tomorrow Scout's
01:15:51
honest absolutely like you're you're literally sitting in this room because we think you
01:15:56
burned your wife in a [ __ ] house fire after suffocating her with a plastic bag
01:16:02
and you just think that you're gonna after drop out of here after drugging her yes thank you there was also that
01:16:07
make sure you include that so um obviously the judge was unmoved thank goodness and he only reduced the bond to
01:16:14
five hundred thousand dollars which nobody was going to be able to pay to get him out so on September 17th Nick
01:16:20
went before a judge where he pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder he also again claimed that this entire
01:16:27
thing was a plot against him by the former Church led by Pastor Robert and he also claimed are you ready that
01:16:34
Pastor Robert had placed a curse on him and the reach of his diabolical influence was just so much deeper than
01:16:41
the police or anybody could possibly comprehend you have no idea I have been cursed I
01:16:48
have no idea he is correct about that oh I have no I have no idea how you really
01:16:55
thought in a court of law you could look up at the judge and say you couldn't possibly comprehend how diabolical this
01:17:03
pastor is he cursed me couldn't possibly possibly comprehend sir this is a court
01:17:09
is what the judge said this is a Wendy's this is this is better than a Wendy's not surprisingly the judge was not
01:17:16
interested in talks of curses or conspiracies and he said okay trial date November 7th see you there [ __ ]
01:17:22
probably a little more eloquently probably now while Nick was in jail awaiting his trial the Kitsap County
01:17:28
prosecutor's office was obviously building their case against him in early October Deputy prosecutor Neil Watcher
01:17:35
or watched her excuse me announced that they were considering changing the original charges to aggravated first
01:17:42
degree murder which meant that Nick could face life in prison without the possibility of parole now the change in
01:17:48
charges was because of the arson of it all the prosecutor's office was considering it and considering it an
01:17:55
aggravating factor and that charge also meant that if he were guilty Nick would have been eligible for the death penalty
01:18:03
damn but prosecutor Russ houg I think it is I shared the press that they weren't
01:18:08
going to go for the death penalty now as part of the apar goodbye as part of their investigation Jesus Christ I
01:18:16
keep saying Jesus Christ through that and it's very ironic because I know I don't know if I usually say that I was
01:18:20
gonna say because I don't even think you usually no but it's just coming to me in
01:18:23
the moment happening it's a it's a vision but the prosecutor started collecting testimony from the women that
01:18:28
Nick was having affairs with at the time three of those women were willing to give testimony but one of them named
01:18:34
Nicole was now engaged to Nick shut up they had gotten engaged shut up and she was refusing to cooperate Nick
01:18:44
and Nicole actually were planning to get married and then moved to Tennessee at the time that he was yeah I bet they
01:18:49
were like they were already planning it when he was arrested but they were planning to move to Tennessee so the
01:18:55
Prosecutors office was like uh no no don't reduce his [ __ ] bail yeah and they also had to get a court order to
01:19:02
compel her testimony and they were like yeah like he's gonna run away to Tennessee and complicate
01:19:08
this whole case further do not let him out and luckily at the final bail here uh Hearing in late October the judge
01:19:15
agreed with them and the bail was left at 500 thank goodness and he said killing of a wife is one of the most
01:19:20
serious crimes in our system of justice yeah you're not just gonna be able to go
01:19:25
away for that no so fall turned over to Winter and Nick's trial date kept getting pushed back for
01:19:32
like different reasons the prosecutors and the defense team were arguing over what was going to be admissible what
01:19:37
wasn't but the gist is that the defense didn't want most of the Affairs to be discussed because they they claimed that
01:19:43
they didn't start until after Don had died which that's not true it had like we can create a timeline
01:19:49
so they were like they can't be used as a motive what's the point in talking about it shut up it's like a character
01:19:55
like maybe and then relating to Sandy and Nick's whole affair they couldn't argue that it was going on while Dawn
01:20:02
was still alive like it absolutely was so they just argued that her testimony was questionable because she was a woman
01:20:08
scorned oh yeah okay so the prosecution obviously fought both of those claims and they said even if the Affairs hadn't
01:20:15
started until after Dawn's death Nick was still counseling all of these women at the time yeah one of which was the
01:20:21
teenage daughter of his own Mentor PB Smith Lindsey Smith and their argument was that Nick was laying the groundwork
01:20:29
for sex through these counseling sessions and he murdered Don to quote unquote free himself up for this ew it's
01:20:37
so gross so the judge Superior Court Judge Anna Laurie decided with Excuse me sided with the prosecution and noted
01:20:45
that Nick quote had romantic attachments in the form of flirting hugs physical contact act in intimate conversations
01:20:51
with several women prior to the death and these relationships were sexually consummated once he was freed of the
01:20:57
confines of the confines of his marriage wow yeah so a few more delays uh after a
01:21:05
few more delays Nick finally went on actual trial on November 4th 2002 and his opening statement the deputy
01:21:12
prosecutor Neil watched her told the jury in the early morning hours of December 26 1997 Nick had drugged his
01:21:20
wife with a toxic dose of Benadryl placed a plastic bag over her head and suffocated her until she had died then
01:21:27
to cover up the murder he scattered and arranged a large number of flammable items around the room precariously close
01:21:34
to a faulty space heater wow which he turned on and then left for a previously planned hunting trip with his friends
01:21:41
which he was fully intending to use as his Alibi damn and they argued obviously again that he did all of this to free
01:21:48
himself up to have relationships with all the these other women and not only that but because he had put himself and
01:21:55
Dawn in a [ __ ] ton of debt from his church activities and the home renovation so he hoped to cash in on the
01:22:01
life insurance policy to remedy all those financial troubles okay Alice it's so messed and they also
01:22:10
said in their opening statements how he couldn't even use that money to buy a headstone for his wife
01:22:15
and how he spent a lot of it on women he was having affairs with yeah now Mark yellowish the defense attorney
01:22:21
there claimed of course that quote the initial investigation was right it was an accidental flash fire like the
01:22:28
medical examiner said it was wow so he tried to obviously put doubt in the minds of the jury telling them that
01:22:37
the prosecutor's office had to suggest otherwise was one jealous witness that's all they had to oh okay to point away
01:22:45
from this yeah obviously it's ridiculous absolutely ridiculous so the prosecution called all four women
01:22:53
that Nick was having affairs with around the time of Dawn's death to testify and
01:22:58
it was through these women that the jury learned about the heavy influence that the church had on their lives and they
01:23:03
also heard all about the visions and direct messages people claim to have from God that played a role in Don's
01:23:09
death yeah and how Nick used those Visions as messages for justification and manipulation
01:23:16
Lindsay there uh formerly Lindsey Smith she was married now but she told the jury about how she had met Nick through
01:23:22
her father PB and how she'd been groomed by Nick as a teenager oh just after Don
01:23:28
died they did engage in a sexual relationship and that happened until she actually finally left the area about a
01:23:36
year later oh man and the prosecution also introduced into evidence a large number of sexually explicit emails
01:23:45
between Nick and Lindsay that contained quote a mix of protestations of Love fantasies about sexual contact yet to
01:23:52
come and attempts to explain to one another how God could allow what they were doing
01:23:58
wow I can't like can you hear the blink blink I cannot so some of the more important testimony came from the
01:24:07
pathologist Dr Emmanuel lacina who had performed the original autopsy on Dawn now like we know his original report
01:24:15
concluded quote a spasm in the woman's larynx when a flash fire engulfed in her bedroom must be the explanation for
01:24:21
absence of soot in her lungs or common carbon monoxide in her blood that's a quote but when he was informed by the
01:24:28
police that they suspected Don had been murdered he changed the results of the autopsy when he learned about more of
01:24:34
the details yeah meaning the change was purely on the circumstances not new evidence so that was a little tricky uh
01:24:44
I was gonna say that can get a little hairy it got a little hairy because the defense obviously used this to their
01:24:49
advantage yeah and they said well would you change your results if it turned out
01:24:53
that Sandy's story was proven false yeah would you like flip it back and he said
01:24:57
yes I would so the defense pushed even further and they said does having a bag over one's
01:25:03
head like would that cause a violent reaction but this backfired when the doctor noted that absolutely it would
01:25:11
cause a violent reaction kind of question is that but only if a person is fully conscious and at the time of her
01:25:17
death Don had been drugged to the point of sluggishness which meant that she couldn't put up a fight exactly so I
01:25:23
think what they were trying to do there is say like well if he put a bag over her head why didn't she fight back and
01:25:28
he was like uh because she had five times the normal dose of Benadryl in her system and was immobilized he had
01:25:34
drugged her first idiots they did everything they possibly could the defense to undermine the state's
01:25:40
evidence against their client but it was Sandy glass that the defense attorney pushed the hardest the case against Nick
01:25:48
obviously rested a lot on Sandy's statement to the police that Nick had confessed to her so they were determined
01:25:54
to frame her as this jealous ex-lover who wanted Revenge Revenge when she found out about all these other women of
01:26:01
course they pointed to the fact that Sandy never warned anybody about Nick before going to the police which is true
01:26:08
and the fact that she waited years before reporting about a murder yeah so the defense attorney asked her you never
01:26:15
warned your good friend Annette and didn't you have any fear of him yourself and Annette was one of the women he was
01:26:21
having an affair with so that's the crazier thing a lot of the women that he was having affairs with were friends I
01:26:28
know that's wild and like if you read uh Twisted faith it goes a lot more into their relationships with one another
01:26:34
yeah and I think what got Sandy to the point of being like this is wrong and I can't believe I've been going along with
01:26:41
it for this week and this is so messy it is but so so he said you know you never
01:26:46
warned anybody and you weren't scared yourself so obviously suggesting she was lying yeah now finally he got at what he
01:26:53
had been implying all along and he said by accusing Mr Hackney of murder haven't
01:26:57
you changed your role in the relationship as a victim that you were manipulated by a murderer so he's like
01:27:03
you're just trying to rewrite history here eek trying to point to the fact that she herself was involved in this
01:27:09
affair and could have been involved in this murder and now it's like oh no no I'm the victim and I I want to believe
01:27:17
that Sandy didn't know about the murder I also want to believe so that's what I'll believe yeah but anyway the trial
01:27:24
lasted nearly two months until finally on December 26th 2002 which was super Eerie because it
01:27:33
was five years to the day since John had been discovered the jury retired for deliberation they deliberated for less
01:27:40
than a day and ended up siding with the prosecution and found Nick Hackney guilty of aggravated first-degree murder
01:27:47
in his statement to the Press prosecutor Neil watched her said we're extremely gratified by the verdict and we are
01:27:53
happy they could reach the only Common Sense verdict here yeah now on February 7 2003 Nick Hackney returned to Superior
01:28:01
Court where he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility for parole damn and after the sentence was
01:28:09
passed Nick obviously was allowed to make a statement and he did the whole eye medicine I loved my wife I did bad
01:28:16
things but I'm a good man and he told the courtroom which included Don's parents and family I didn't murder Don
01:28:23
there are a lot of things that I regret that I wish I could take back and undo I'm sorry for the pain of going through
01:28:29
this trial and losing your daughter Don was kind and beautiful and true she deserved better than me I loved her with
01:28:36
all my heart no the [ __ ] you didn't I'm gonna call [ __ ] on you you don't place a plastic bag after drugging your
01:28:44
wife over her head and then light your entire house on fire when you love that person yeah you don't no it can confirm
01:28:52
that and uh Dawn's father was absolutely pissed that that was his statement yeah
01:28:59
and he jumped up and yelled at Nick then why didn't you even buy a headstone for
01:29:03
her good and then her brother Derek was equally pissed and added you don't know when to give up and like they were just
01:29:09
like yelling at him the judge was about to call the room back into the into order but they both just left I'm glad
01:29:15
they were both like you're [ __ ] worthless see you never and I think the fact I like I think they should be able
01:29:22
to respond to that statement because that's an absurd statement it is and I'm glad that they got to yeah now
01:29:29
unfortunately any uh Comfort found in Nick's conviction was a little bit undermined in the spring of 20 uh 2007.
01:29:37
when the state supreme court sided with him on an appeal that nixed his mandatory life sentence which then sent
01:29:45
him back to court for re-sentencing essentially what Nick's team argued was that the jury was not properly
01:29:51
instructed on the aggravating Factor thing because Dawn was already dead since Nick
01:29:59
had suffocated her the fire happened after the murder and technically they were arguing it wasn't an aggravated
01:30:06
Factor during the course of murder because she was already dead it's I don't know how you find that loophole
01:30:15
so yeah sometimes these little loopholes are like really but it worked with the appeal he was still convicted of murder
01:30:23
but because it wasn't technically aggravated murder the life sentence was thrown out and he was re-sentenced to 26
01:30:30
years in prison I love that they were like it wasn't aggravated murder because he didn't burn her alive he just did
01:30:37
that he just put a bag over her head after drugging her so that's not really aggravated no it's just that's just
01:30:42
murder yeah it's just straight up oh okay so that means he could get out within like the next several years
01:30:48
that's awesome and that is the tragic wow of the murder of a beautiful beautiful soul I know like if you look
01:30:58
up pictures of her she just seems like such a sweet kind I'm like you are better than everyone in this story yeah
01:31:05
except your friend Eunice and like a few of the supporting people of everyone yeah she is better than all
01:31:13
of these you deserved a lot better she did and the fact that life didn't give it to her pisses me off yeah that sucks
01:31:19
it does it was a really tragic case to research but again I really really recommend that book Twisted faith I was
01:31:25
it it's a [ __ ] page Turner yeah it sounds wild yeah and you can get it on the Kindle if you want if you if you
01:31:31
like to do that you can get it on the Kindle everybody get it on the Kindle you can get a hard copy it's available
01:31:36
it's available you can just read it yeah it's available I'll link it in the show
01:31:39
notes oh my God that story cuckoo nuts bananas and just senseless and so sad and like
01:31:47
ridiculous like the the visions and all that yeah it's just too much there's a lot yeah it is that's what it is it's
01:31:54
too much so we need to go have a palette cleanser yeah for real all right well guys we love you we hope
01:32:01
you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird that any of this just go hugs them on and touch
01:32:09
grass yes do all that [Music] foreign [Music]