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subject to credit approval see store or ashley.com for details [Music] [Music] welcome to True crab garage Wherever You
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Are whatever you are doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who is loaded like a
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freight train and flying like an airplane here is the captain loaded more like bloated it's good to be seen and
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good to see you thanks for listening thanks for tell a [Music] friend this week we are very happy to be
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featuring tiger chainsaw arms get ready for this powerful Belgian triple American IPA hybrid spicy flavor and
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Aroma with citrusy hops and a Gold Medal winner to boot this won a gold medal at
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off the Record if you're not listening to it you aren't nasty and you're not our best friends in the whole entire
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world cuz that's the only way you can be our best friends is if you listen to off
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the Record and Colonel that's enough of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's
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talk some true [Music] crime [Music] [Music] this week in the garage we have another
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missing person's case these types of cases are so incredibly heartbreaking for those of us not
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connected to the missing person or their loved ones these cases are usually a real heads
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scratcher often there may be a series of bizarre events or behaviors leading up to the poof moment and then they are
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gone we are left to try to make some sense out of these bizarre events and or behaviors as we try to crawl Inside the
00:04:01
Mind of the missing person and sort it all out for those closest and especially the
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parents of the missing these cases on an emotional level can be the most difficult to deal with because there is
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nothing in the way of any form of closure for the loved ones they are left to deal with the endless torture of not
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knowing a parent can grieve the physical loss of their child just as it would be
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with the murder case the loved one is physically gone but in a missing case they are left
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with the added confusion of just what am I grieving should I be mourning the loss
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of my child or should I be furious with them for leaving for us the unknown and the Mysteries are intriguing and at
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times can be exciting but for the loved ones it's confusing painful and unacceptable
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Nico Lei is our missing person he was 18 years old when he and a friend drove off
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in a vehicle that neither of them owned leaving Nico's small Hometown the friend turned up later in
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Michigan and Nico was seen in Tennessee from there he vanished did this young man who was in trouble with the law and
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buding heads with his family decide to hit the reset button and leave it all behind to start a new
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life it's possible in Nico's case the police certainly thought so but that was until a startling and worrisome find
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turned up five years later that seemed to point to foul play this week we are asking where is Nico Lei this is true
00:05:52
crime garage in 2011 Nico Lei was 18 and living at home with his mom stepdad and siblings
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in Jasper which is in Upstate New York near the Pennsylvania line while technically he was living at home but
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during the events we're going to discuss Nico had actually left his mom's house and was staying with relatives but let's
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back up so we can take in the full view here Nico came from a big family he was the middle son of three boys born to
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Monica button and her ex whose name has not been released the boys were in order
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Joseph known as Joe then Nico then carrian they were close in age and in brotherly bonds much later after their
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parents split Monica remarried and had a little girl who was only 2 years old when her big brother Nico vanished
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Monica also came from a large close-knit family she lived near her sister her brother and her mother her father had
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recently passed away her ex which is Nico's father lived 15 minutes away in Hornell New York the family was in
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constant contact with all members connected via phone and texting Nico was no different although he was 18 he was
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in regular communication with everyone in his extended family and that is something that's interesting and
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something that we need to take note of here all involved say that this dude was in regular contact with not just his
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mother or his brothers or his father but also extended family and any time you're
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talking about a missing person it's important to know and have somewhat of an understanding of the type of
00:08:01
Communicator that they are yeah I wouldn't consider Nico to be a loner by any stretch of the imagination he seemed
00:08:08
to be I'd say uh Family Guy yes he's he's often described as family oriented however as we go through these events
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we're going to see that he's starting to get into some trouble maybe running around with the wrong crowd at some
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point right so he's regarded as a very outdoorsy type when he was young he liked to play pretend Navy Seals outside
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and then he got into bow hunting he was also a super sports kid who loves soccer
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baseball and wrestling especially wrestling he won a national championship at the young age of seven and then
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helped his high school to win two sectional championships this before a neck injury his sophomore year which
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ended his wrestling career if you see pictures of Nico and we'll post them on our social media pages
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Facebook Instagram all that stuff at True Crime garage you're going to see that he is a fit boy and in regard to
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this injury it was something captain from my understanding that the doctors said hey this is just too dangerous for
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you to continue with all this activity and this was rather devastating news to Nico this was a sport that he loved that
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he excelled at and he was no longer going to be able to participate in and some people in his family point that
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this is possibly being the beginning the Genesis of what is ultimately a downward
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spiral for n which is ultimately a downward spiral for Nico well you've probably heard of people having some
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kind of head injury that makes them almost switch personalities and I I almost feel like
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this head and neck injury area could could have caused Nico to kind of shift almost in personalities some have said
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that Nico was the kind of kid who had SW wagger some called him Brash we know that he was outgoing he was assertive he
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was very self-confident his mother his mother said that she always worried her son would get into trouble not because
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he was a bad kid but because he had sort of an Untouchable attitude that could come across as arrogant and cocky he was
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the kind of dude that always spoke his mind whether people like to hear it or not and he didn't like to back down from
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people now despite this Nico had a ton of friends and seem to know lots of people but
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Monica did her best to keep her boys on something of a tight leash as a result she says that Nico was family oriented
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and spent a lot of time at his own house his grandmother's house and his uncle's
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house which is outside of Addison New York and at the homes of other various relatives so this again showing how
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connected he is to this extended family but Nico definitely also hung out with a
00:11:00
friend Network that was on the periphery and some of these kids were less than desirable companions as far as Monica
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his mother was concerned when they argued about this Nico yelled at her saying that he could pick his own
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friends that she's not going to pick his friends another part of his personality
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though Captain was Nico was always kind of the dude that bucked at anyone in a position of authority over him and
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remember what I was saying a couple episodes ago don't just tell me three great things about the kid oh he lit up
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a room that's not always going to help in a situation when we're trying to find an individual that's missing and what
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his mother said to us about Nico is he was a demanding child that he always had some kind of drama going on in his life
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and that he was also mouthy and cocky but one of those kids kids where he wouldn't be mouthy and
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cocky unless there was another person in the situation that was trying to be mouthy and cocky he was going to then
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show you hey you think you're mouthy and cocky I'm going to I'm going to show you
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up I'm going to be even mouthier and cockier than you are well and as we said there's a bit of a shift a big shift in
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Nico's life after he's forced out of wrestling and now he's hanging out with a rough crowd he quit playing baseball
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he was going through a lot man his best friend had been killed in a car crash and his grandfather who he was very
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close with had passed away around this time too so well not to cut you off but was the quitting of baseball due to the
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neck injury CU I couldn't I couldn't find that but it seems like if you have a severe enough neck injury that you
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can't wrestle you're probably not able to play other sports it's weird because we've seen this with uh with athletes
00:12:59
that that we follow in college or NFL from my understanding he could physically continue to russle but the
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doctors are saying it's too dangerous you know in baseball a much different sport it sounds to me like the the
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injury was not really the purpose of him quitting baseball it sounds to me like maybe he was losing interest that that
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wrestling was the passion maybe he played these other sports just because you know sometimes people will play to
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stay in shape or because of a certain crowd that they're hanging out with but him losing the wrestling thing his
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friend his best friend dying in this car crash and then his grandfather passing away like that's a
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lot to to deal with at that young of an age you know she's he's just a sophomore
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in in high school well in this case I think is very one it's fascinating to me because he seems to be on a path and
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then like you said there's this Dark Cloud over him there's bad stuff going on in his life there's a lot to take on
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not to mention that you're becoming an adult and that's hard enough but there's all these
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missteps but I'm glad look I also think as much as his family has been willing to talk with individuals to try to shed
00:14:23
some light on this case to find some answers I think there's probably some stuff one that they didn't didn't know
00:14:29
about some even darker stuff that was going on that they didn't know about or they knew about it and they're just not
00:14:37
willing to talk publicly about that well and all of this stuff is leading up to some changes in Nico's hanging out with
00:14:45
people that his mother didn't love they all kind of agreed that after his sophomore year that Nico needed a change
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so it wouldn't hurt him to get away from this crowd he was in and it sounded like
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mom and son needed a little space between them as well so it was arranged for Nico to spend part of the summer
00:15:05
after his sophomore year with his mother's sister-in-law Nico's Aunt who lived in Franklin Tennessee and
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this is important because Tennessee New York and also Michigan and Ohio believe it or not are all part of this story so
00:15:22
we got multiple States involved in this disappearance and the Tennessee part starts here this is him going to live
00:15:32
with his aunt and attend school in Tennessee it it started off as just the summer but then he seemed to really like
00:15:40
it there and all of the parties agreed that he would stay and attend school the local high school there for his junior
00:15:47
year the general reports are that it all the transition all went well at first Nico was great with his young cousins
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and was a lifeguard at their pool but before too long Nico bulked at the rules imposed by his in-laws and started
00:16:04
rebelling and had outbursts of anger at them very normal teenager stuff really there came a point where he didn't come
00:16:12
home one night and didn't call even though he had had a curfew he skipped school the next day as well so after
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failing to find him on their own and not being able to reach him on his cell phone his relatives they called the
00:16:27
police and the police found Nico in a hot tub at a friend's house and from my understanding Captain the way that this
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goes down in Franklin Tennessee is because he wasn't returning their calls because he didn't attend school because
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he didn't come home that night Nico was considered a runaway and considered truant from
00:16:50
school in that jurisdiction this required Nico to go to juvie which I mean seems a bit extreme but that was
00:16:58
the case well hold up hey for a second right because like you said yeah arguing with your ant or arguing with your
00:17:08
parental figure that's not out of the norm that's normal teenage Behavior what's not
00:17:17
normal is there's something going on in your life that we're sending you at of State for the
00:17:25
summer and then we're going to then continue to keep you out of state I mean and we're talking about a
00:17:32
distance from New York to Tennessee that's a distance we're going to keep you there so then you could attend
00:17:38
school and instantly you're not attending school and now like like you said I think it's extreme because once
00:17:46
you get in the system whether it's juvenile or as an adult it's hard to get out of the system yeah Nico was placed
00:17:53
in a program for teens with anger issues and according to his mother Monica he's
00:17:58
diagnosed with some kind of defiant disorder which I had never heard of before but he's prescribed medication
00:18:04
for this which he refus to take so this leads us to February of 2010 this is when his mother Monica gets a phone call
00:18:14
from Nico who said that I'm at the airport come pick me up so he had used his in-law's credit card without
00:18:23
anyone's permission he left school he got on a plane and he flew home nobody knows this until he's calling from the
00:18:29
airport for a ride home right so he tells his mom hey I'm done with the in-laws I'm done with their rules and
00:18:36
now he's going to try to settle back into his hometown and he's going to reenroll in high school there in his
00:18:43
hometown this to finish up the rest of his junior year let's fast forward just a moment to current day because we're
00:18:50
looking back on this and in hindsight monac wonders his mother wonders if something happened with something in
00:18:57
Tennessee that for precipitated a swift departure by Nico if there was something
00:19:02
that went down that she's never been made aware of interesting to me because I think this is her pointing out that
00:19:09
this activity him just coming back without any type of permission seems a little out of character like I said I
00:19:14
think the injury to the neck probably has something to do with all this but I could also see a situation where he gets
00:19:23
in trouble right away and he thinks well maybe if I go home it's a clean start yeah and the problems though get worse
00:19:31
once he gets back so Nico gets back and now he's getting into fights and the police were occasionally required to
00:19:39
deal with him he even spent some time in jail this after being arrested for what
00:19:44
was labeled a burglary now Monica his mother says Nico was arrested after throwing a brick through a convenience
00:19:53
store window and was charged with burglary I get it throw a brick maybe he did he go in and steal something I've
00:20:00
never heard or read that part of the story all I've ever seen is that he threw a brick through a
00:20:06
window so some vandalism you know you don't want your kids to do this but again not a huge deal to me this is just
00:20:14
a very poor choice made by a kid at the end of the day not a major crime but Nico being
00:20:21
17 he was charged as a youthful offender and then I was shocked to hear that Nico
00:20:28
ended up serving 8 months in jail for this and even though he was under the age of 18 at that time it sounds to me
00:20:37
like he served so he's sentenced to serve a year in lockup right and this was not at a juvenile facility this was
00:20:46
at stuben County jail and from my understanding the terminology down there a County Jail
00:20:55
year is eight months of being locked up and again even though he's he's charged as I don't understand these terms you
00:21:03
charge him as a youthful offender but he serves at a non-juvenile facility it doesn't make a whole lot of
00:21:10
sense to me but again he he got in trouble you do the crime you do the time again let's go through this slowly he's
00:21:16
getting into trouble so we send him off to Tennessee he seems to do well over the summer but then doesn't go to
00:21:23
class he is Mark Trent he is hanging out with some kids in a hot tub I find that
00:21:30
to be strange and then maybe something happens and he heads back to New York hey guys I'm here and then he's hanging
00:21:38
out with a bunch of bunch of Knuckleheads and they break this they're basic they basically destroy property I
00:21:48
don't understand why that is considered a robbery but from what from my understanding of it right right
00:21:56
burglary from my understanding of it he was offered 5 years probation and basically the prosecutor and and and
00:22:05
Nico and everybody involved is going look how much trouble he's got into in just the last 6 months he's not going to
00:22:11
handle this probation period well so go to jail do the eight months which we consider a year do do that and just move
00:22:23
on with your life which again I think this is a bad decision it's weird I I don't know what's strange
00:22:31
about hot tubbing but yeah the the way that I've understand this story to be is that his mother and Nico wanted to fight
00:22:39
this burglary charge because that's not what he did according to Nico he threw he vandalized the place he threw a brick
00:22:47
through a a glass window you're exactly right they they're offered 5 years probation the defense attorney and
00:22:55
Nico's mother and Nico I think I think Nico wanted to fight it no matter what but the mom in the defense attorney are
00:23:01
like yeah he's probably not staying out of trouble for 5 years straight let's let's serve this eight months and and
00:23:09
and get it over with this so he's going to be locked up with W with what should have been his senior year at high school
00:23:16
so this means he's not going to graduate from high school but he does earn his GED while he's in jail and then he was
00:23:23
released in May of 2011 well I think well of their issues is that he has a lot of problems with
00:23:30
authority figures so if he spends this eight months basically in lockdown as an adult he's
00:23:39
going to get his GED he's going to be done with that and then he can move on with the rest of his life and he doesn't
00:23:44
go he doesn't have to go back to high school and to deal with the authority figures there yeah when he comes back
00:23:51
home everybody says that he seemed to be happy but he's he's also breaking the household rules
00:23:58
at some point him and his mom are not seeing eye to eye he decides he's going to go stay with his dad for a little
00:24:04
while that seems to be working out great but again he's he's a dude that's not going to fall in line with the rules and
00:24:12
it sounds to me like this guy a needs to grow up B probably should be out living
00:24:19
on his own and figuring out a way to afford it because he he clearly wants to live by his own set of rules not by
00:24:25
Mom's rules or Not by Dad's well and you could learn some type of respect there's
00:24:30
a lot of people that go live out on their own when they're young 18 19 years old and they realize it's difficult and
00:24:38
then they move back home and they show their parents a level of respect but again and I hate to keep bringing this
00:24:45
up but I feel like this neck head injury could be part of the reason that he's now hanging out with these these
00:24:54
Knuckleheads and and thinking he can just run the world on his own possibly yeah I think it has
00:25:00
a lot to do with him being 16 or 17 years old at the time so this is going to take us to August of 2011 this is a
00:25:08
major Point here in our timeline this is when Nico gets a phone call from the local police asking him to come down to
00:25:15
the police station his mother of course is furious that we have another police incident on our hands she drops him off
00:25:24
keep in mind pay attention as we go through these events that are leading up to his disappearance he needed a ride
00:25:30
from the airport he needs a ride to the police station Nico doesn't drive okay that that's something of importance here
00:25:38
so his mother drives him to the police station and then Nico calls her and says he's very upset and he tells his mom hey
00:25:47
I'm being charged with rape this is a very strange story but it makes a lot of sense at the end of the day as as far as
00:25:54
I'm concerned what happened was there's this 14-year-old girl who reported the names of several boys that she had had
00:26:04
intercourse with Nico was one of these boys there were no allegations of any type of forcible intercourse against
00:26:13
Nico but because of the girl's age 14 she's a minor she certainly wasn't able to consent as far as that jurisdiction
00:26:24
is concerned she wasn't certain of the date that she slept with Nico but gave a few different dates and at least one of
00:26:35
those dates puts Nico at the age of 18 right they would have a onag again off again physical
00:26:42
relationship which started with Nico being a minor yes and from the way that I understand it and I don't want to get
00:26:49
into numbers here but the way that it's reported she had had an onag off again relationship with several other
00:26:58
boys as well and or young men as far as the law is concerned and they were going
00:27:04
to be charged with Nico wasn't the only person facing some type of charge so others face things like reckless
00:27:11
endangerment endangering the welfare of a minor and so on so there Nico is not the only person that's being rounded up
00:27:19
by the police because of this situation with this young girl some kids making some bad decisions irresponsible
00:27:25
decisions I think when people bring up this story it's a statutory rape charge and they say well the the physical
00:27:33
relationship started with he was a minor well even if it started when he was 17 she would have been 13 I I think that's
00:27:41
a bad decision I think that's too big of a age Gap I understand that they're both
00:27:46
minors but that's I I don't know not not something that I would recommend to you
00:27:55
know my children or don't know that she was 13 when the relationship started because we have to keep in mind he's
00:28:02
only been in town for 4 months right at at this point so yeah but no it's not a good idea 14 to 17 almost 18 anyway but
00:28:13
I think one thing we need to point out for the listeners and and look I'm not the person that gets to decide who did
00:28:18
what or we are not the moral police right and I'm not saying that Nico did nothing wrong here but I think what we
00:28:25
need to point out is something maybe we need to underline it a little bit there's no there's no allegation of
00:28:33
forcible sex or anything like that here there's it's not this girl running to the police saying this guy raped me no
00:28:42
this is this situation actually plays out a lot more than most people would want to hear it's this is actually
00:28:50
incredibly common talk to your local police officer or if you if you know a a woman or a man on the force
00:28:57
ask them this question and you would be surprised how often they get phone calls
00:29:02
about this situation or that they are looking into some situation what typically happens is a father finds out
00:29:11
that his daughter is sexually active right then finds out that she might be a freshman and some of the a boy or two
00:29:18
might be a senior in high school and oh he's 17 or 18 and she's 15 oh we're going to press charges you
00:29:28
know that's typically the way that this thing plays out this is what it sounds like to me is this situation but not to
00:29:35
we don't want to linger on this situation too long but it's important to bring it up because if Nico did in fact
00:29:42
decide to take off for whatever reason this could be part of it right he is being accused of being technically a
00:29:51
rapist right so of course he's going to be devastated he's he's mortified because his name is going to to appear
00:29:57
in the local paper he's going to have to register as a sex offender if he's found
00:30:02
guilty of these charges this dramatically changes his life and we have to remember too that he just spent
00:30:10
eight months in jail well and I don't want to come to his defense too much because again shouldn't be hanging out
00:30:17
with underage girls even if you're 17 don't hang out with a 14-year-old but the information that I
00:30:24
have says that he he he told his mom and and the police look I slept with her but
00:30:30
I did not know that she was 14 and I found one statement from in one report here that says that the the girl looked
00:30:40
it quote the girl looked way older and that's not Nico saying that that is another report from other people from
00:30:48
people that weren't charged with anything so I don't know what that means but when I hear somebody else say that
00:30:54
the girl looked way older and he's telling mom and the police like yeah I I know what you're accusing me of yes I
00:31:03
did have a relationship with her I did not know that she was 14 but ignorance there's no room for ignorance in the law
00:31:10
like we were talking about earlier he's gone through a rough time but some of that is stuff out of
00:31:18
his his control his his grandfather pass in way but some of it is in his control
00:31:24
and he's at a time period where he's making his situation worse by making bad [Music]
00:31:42
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all right we are back cheers mates cheers to you Colonel cheers to you Captain when we left off we talked about
00:34:10
this rape charge and this was a situation that Nico was devastated about but he wasn't running and hiding from it
00:34:20
as far as I can see they have a lawyer that is hired by the family and Nico and his lawyer made three court appearances
00:34:28
over the summer to fight these charges against him so now we're at September 2011 and Nico's next court date his next
00:34:39
court appearance was scheduled for October 15th right the following month as said
00:34:46
Nico is horrified and embarrassed by this rape charge his his mom says that socially
00:34:54
yes he does kind of go into hiding hunkering down down at her house and refusing to go out for a while she told
00:35:00
him look dude you got to get out out you got to get a job or you can't stay here
00:35:05
much longer this leads to an argument Nico storms out of the house on foot and somehow got to her mother's house
00:35:15
remember he's close with his extended family his grandmother lives outside of Addison his mom Monica to this day
00:35:23
doesn't really know how he got to Grandma's house because again and he doesn't drive it's conceivable that he
00:35:29
walked there but doesn't seem to be likely this is a tough situation because I I find when you have a a kid
00:35:38
especially 16 17 18 years old look we can argue about when you become an adult but I think his maturity
00:35:46
level here is pretty pretty low I always feel bad for it's like if a kid got straight A's and
00:35:55
decided that he was going to take a year off before going to college to travel and do some self-discovery people would
00:36:03
be okay with that you get in these situations where a kid is you know spend some time in juvie doesn't graduate gets
00:36:11
a GED and people are so they they almost push them too hard to try to correct the
00:36:19
wrongs right away go get a job stand on your own two feet you know and sometimes
00:36:25
these kids just need some time does that make any sense that's that's my rant I'm
00:36:30
scking to it I agree 100% in the eyes of the law and the government you're an adult at 18 but to me I've always look
00:36:40
when I was 18 I was not a man I I I know that when I was 19 not a man I I consider an adult a woman or man or what
00:36:48
have you to be somebody that that takes care of their responsibilities and behaves accordingly and
00:36:57
we don't all do that at the same age we don't all do that at 17 we don't all do that at 21 unfortunately I'm sure a lot
00:37:03
of us know somebody in their 30s or 40s that is that are still not doing that sometimes in their 50s and
00:37:10
60s some of you might have a podcast with that person but uh yeah thanks a lot I was talking about myself no okay
00:37:19
I'm but I think everybody out there understands this now what we have here Captain is we need to point out that the
00:37:27
town where he's staying so he kind of spends a decent amount of time bouncing back and forth from several different
00:37:37
extended relatives homes but they also own a rustic cabin and he's staying at the cabin on and off so his comings and
00:37:47
goings and who he's staying with are a little bit gray here but that's not very important to our story what what is
00:37:54
important to our story is the area where he staying is the area where his mother
00:37:59
grew up and she owns a hair salon and her hair salon is in this area now you go to the barber shop you go to the
00:38:08
salon people are talking there's a lot of chitchat so Mom is hearing from locals be it relatives or friends at the
00:38:19
salon what Nico is up to that's key here now this takes us to Tuesday September 27th
00:38:27
when mom sees Nico at a family Barbecue everybody has a great time Nico's totally normal everybody's having a
00:38:34
wonderful time mom gets to see son that's on a Tuesday but by Friday Nico was gone yeah Mia so Monica last saw her
00:38:43
son at his aunt Rachel's house for a family Barbecue on Tuesday night he spent the night there then on Thursday
00:38:50
September 29th he babysat his uncle Zach's daughter while while Zach and his girlfriend were at work and after
00:39:01
babysitting that night he goes out Nico goes out so Nico is the last seen by his
00:39:06
family when he shows up at his uncle Zach's house in Addison New York this is around 2 p.m. on Friday September 30th
00:39:14
but he's not alone he's with a guy named Robbie Knight Robbie is two years older than
00:39:21
Nico the two told Zach his uncle that they were heading to Buffalo to go camping with some girls that they had
00:39:28
met online since it was late September and it was getting chilly out Zack calls Monica that evening around 900 P pm and
00:39:36
says hey Nico was here getting some stuff and he and this Robbie Knight kid are going
00:39:43
camping so Monica says this was very odd to her because not necessarily that Nico would
00:39:52
go camping we mentioned that he was an outdoorsy type but that he was hanging out with with this Robbie so Robbie is
00:39:59
Robert better known as Robbie Nicholas Neil Knight III that's a lot of names for one person yeah he was a classmate
00:40:08
and friend of Nico's older brother Joe Monica didn't let Joe go to Robbie's house when Joe was in high school and
00:40:17
she didn't let Robbie come to her house either because Robby had a reputation and his house I guess was known as a
00:40:24
teen party house a party spot for teenagers Robbie's parents lived in Michigan he was living at his
00:40:33
grandparents house in Jasper New York I guess he had like the run of the house as far as his grandparents were
00:40:41
concerned and he so he's allowed to have all these other kids over and it turns into a party house Monica was aware of
00:40:47
this so Nico's older brother Joe not allowed to hang out with Robbie so Monica what she's saying Captain is not
00:40:55
surprised about the camping thing but surprised that she would hang that he would be hanging out with this Robbie
00:41:01
guy well I'm going to say something that that is my gut feeling my gut feeling too is it's a
00:41:09
little odd that he's going to go camping with these girls because he does have this lingering charge this statutory
00:41:17
rape charge that he's going to be facing and like like you said this can really disrupt his whole life uh he is is very
00:41:27
concerned about having to be a registered sex offender for the rest of his life I mean that that would be
00:41:34
devastating for anybody so I I I do think that's a little strange as well Monica she tries calling her son trying
00:41:42
trying to get a hold of Nico he's not answering her calls so she texts him saying hey look I know you are at my
00:41:49
house today because your the door to your room is left open and your shoes are gone what else did you take from my
00:41:56
house and Nico responds clothes duh Monica again she's trying to get in touch with her son phone call or
00:42:06
text but by the time he finally responds via text it's now like 11:00 p.m. at night so Monica is going to go to bed
00:42:15
but what she doesn't realize at this time this would be the last exchange that she would have with her son so the
00:42:21
next day without hearing from her son Monica was left to wonder how Robbie and her son Nico were going to get to
00:42:31
Buffalo because again Nico didn't drive he didn't have a car meanwhile Monica didn't know this but Nico and Robbie
00:42:40
drove out of Addison in a gold 2004 GMC Canyon extended cab pickup truck with New York plates Zach her brother
00:42:53
Monica's brother said that he saw the truck when the boy stopped at to his place around 2: p.m. on that Friday the
00:42:58
day before right and Nico tells his uncle that Robbie borrowed this truck from Robbie's
00:43:06
grandfather Zach says Robbie's driving the truck when he saw them so he didn't question anything he he didn't know
00:43:12
Robbie didn't know Robbie's situation but the super weird thing here is the truck was recently stolen from a
00:43:21
driveway from a home on stuan Street in Addison so the two dudes Robbie and Nico
00:43:29
are in this stolen truck so the GMC Canyon that the the truck has Tak it on a very important role in this case for
00:43:36
reasons we will certainly get into but what would what do we know about missing person cases it's hard to find a person
00:43:44
sometimes it's like a needle and a Hy stack what's easier to find for law enforcement Vehicles a vehicle law
00:43:51
enforcement love when a vehicle is involved in any type of inv investigation that they have going on
00:43:57
because they can track vehicles vehicles are much easier to find and then we know
00:44:03
a lot about the vehicle it's reported stolen we already gave a description of it the New York plate on the truck was
00:44:11
egy 7316 these two guys Nico and Robbie are driving around in the stolen truck and
00:44:18
that appears to be the method that they're going to use to get to Buffalo well wasn't this vehicle also stolen
00:44:26
close to where the hair salon is that Monica owns well yes that's part of the whole story here so on Saturday the
00:44:34
first at this time Nico is believed to have gone camping right Monica believes her son and Robbie went off camping they
00:44:43
don't know about the stolen truck yet what happens is Monica goes to work she's working in Addison where her
00:44:51
mother and her brother Zach both live where as you pointed out the same place where the vehicle was stolen from Nico
00:44:59
had been staying in the cabin and bouncing around in that area for some time leading up to the vehicle being
00:45:05
stolen so while she's at work that day she's doing a customer's hair someone mentioned a truck that was stolen the
00:45:12
previous day Monica ends up saying that she's hearing about this truck and immediately this is where motherly
00:45:22
Instinct this is where gut checks in and and tells you something is not great here the spidey sense goes off she gets
00:45:31
a Sinking Feeling she reads a description of the truck and then she calls her brother and asks what type of
00:45:38
vehicle the boys were driving and the description that her brother gives her is exactly that of the truck that was
00:45:46
reported stolen so now she's freaking out and she wants to get a hold of her son but she
00:45:52
can't she ends up obtaining a phone number for Robbie night's grandparents house she calls them and this is when
00:45:59
Robbie's grandmother tells her that she had dropped Robby off at Monica's family
00:46:06
cabin a week earlier so this is shocking to Monica too so this means that Robbie
00:46:11
had been staying at her family's property without anyone's knowledge and because Nico was bouncing around from
00:46:18
house to house this also means that Robbie may have been staying there even without
00:46:24
Nico on occasion that week yeah overall it's just a bad situation of course Monica asked the grandmother hey was
00:46:32
Robbie allowed to take your husband's truck and of course the answer is no my husband does we don't own a truck right
00:46:41
so that's further confirmation that her son and his Now new friend Robbie are they have something to do with this
00:46:51
stolen truck what's even more strange though is the grandmother tells Monica that when she dropped Robbie off to stay
00:46:59
at that cabin a week earlier he says to her before getting out of the vehicle I'm giving you your life back which of
00:47:08
course to you and I sounds like goodbye I'm I'm leaving town or I've I've been a problem for you
00:47:15
Grandma uh thanks for the ride here but I'm giving you your life back yeah suicide or starting my life over
00:47:23
somewhere else maybe this kid you know he's two years older than Nico so he's about 20 at the time maybe he thinks
00:47:30
that they're going to live in this cabin well here's something I can't find and maybe you found this information
00:47:39
statutory rape charges we talked about that there was other other boys involved was Robbie one of the other
00:47:47
boys I I don't have a list of the names of the others that were charged but my suspicion is no
00:47:56
because I think that if that were the case it would be it would have been talked about yes it would be talked
00:48:02
about because Robbie is talked about a lot in this story a lot uh in The Disappearance of Nico my thought was
00:48:10
that possibly that they're both facing the same charge and they both didn't want to deal with it both thought they
00:48:16
were going to have to be registered sex offenders and hey let's just go off to my grandma's cabin and we'll both start
00:48:24
all all over but we don't have to start all over by ourselves we can start all over together but not a good not a good
00:48:32
start when you steal a vehicle well and from my understanding like the keys were
00:48:38
in this truck and they they probably went around either Robbie by himself or Nico by himself or the two of them
00:48:47
together went around checking door handles and found some cars unlocked and found this one with the keys still in it
00:48:54
and decided to take it there's there's a whole bunch of questions here right when
00:48:59
we look at the stolen truck and the stolen truck is one of the most important parts of the story the most
00:49:04
important parts is one where the hell is Nico two why is Nico and Robbie hanging
00:49:10
out and what are they up to together and why this stolen vehicle right because we
00:49:15
know that they tell Zack Uncle Zack hey we're going to Buffalo to meet these girls that we met online we're going to
00:49:23
go camping with them that sounds very normal me but what we have to question here is do they steal the truck in order
00:49:30
to get the Buffalo or did they decide to get out of town because they stole the truck
00:49:37
chicken or the egg so Monica what she ends up doing is she calls the police and this is for two reasons one
00:49:48
she's eager to find her son but she also wants to do the right thing so she reports hey this truck that was reported
00:49:56
stolen I have reason to believe that my son who is missing that we're trying to get in touch with that won't call us
00:50:02
back that he and one of his friends Robbie are involved in the stolen truck and maybe if you guys find the truck
00:50:11
you'll find my son right because like what we've said so much easier to find a vehicle than just to find a just a per a
00:50:19
missing person but at this point you're more worried about his safety we we'll deal what the charge is of him stealing
00:50:27
a vehicle I I couldn't imagine what she is going through and what the rest of his family's going through they're going
00:50:34
this this is just he's not acting like we think he should right and he's doing things that we don't think he
00:50:42
should be doing and we and we don't know why and we don't know why he's hanging out with this person at this
00:50:50
point you have to be very concerned you have to be scared you're very concerned and but I want to give some kudos to
00:50:57
Monica to Nico's mother because her thinking in this moment to me is incredibly levelheaded I think that the
00:51:06
most good citizen most good responsible parents out there would all agree I would rather my child be safe and face
00:51:17
the consequences and I know what where they are rather than uh I'm not going to report that that he might have stolen
00:51:25
this vehicle I'm not going to I'm not going to tip off the police that maybe my son's up to no good yeah I I agree
00:51:32
with you I think she's doing the right thing so what happens here Captain is now that we get the police involved and
00:51:39
again they're they're going to start getting some hits on this truck and so they have her come down to the police
00:51:47
department this is a couple days later they say hey we need you to review some footage that we found and we need you to
00:51:55
tell us if it's Nico in the footage or not so they have grainy surveillance photos that were taken the morning of
00:52:02
September 30th and in these photos it's Nico and Robbie on security camera at a 24-hour
00:52:11
Wegman's in Rochester New York this is at 400 a.m in the morning and then they're on another camera footage at a
00:52:20
truck stop in canona I think is how you say it New York so is reviewing this this footage or the photos with police
00:52:29
officers and she says that is certainly I I'm I'm certain that that is my son that are in both of these images so the
00:52:37
investigators tell Monica that the boys purchased chips and energy drinks it really looks like that was just a pit
00:52:43
stop at both of these stops they're purchasing these items through a stolen stolen credit card right that I don't
00:52:51
know I think I think there was a credit card I could be wrong but I think think there was a credit card that's attached
00:52:56
to this vehicle so not only did they know that they had this they stole this vehicle but there was a credit card or
00:53:04
something like that in the truck that they're using that would make a lot of sense for the reasons that they were
00:53:11
able to find this footage so quickly because these are places that are not you know they're out of town both both
00:53:21
these places are out of town and so then they use Nico phone records police determined that Nico and Robbie drove to
00:53:30
Rochester First which is about a 45 minute drive from where Nico's family lives then they drove back to the Jasper
00:53:38
Addison area where he's from and then on to kenona which is 45 minutes away and then they drove around Nico's Hometown
00:53:47
area as well then they go right across the border remember they're close to the Pennsylvania line they go right across
00:53:52
the border into Pennsylvania and and they're driving around there this is all before showing up at his uncle's house
00:53:59
at 2:00 a.m. at 2 in the afternoon on that you know the last time that he's Nico's ever seen by a family member well
00:54:07
and this is a truck too so this is costing a lot of money and gas well what's amazing to me here Captain is
00:54:14
it's all of this travel and driving around in Addison as well it it's like they stole the truck and then drove
00:54:22
nonstop and then they get to the uncle's house all of this driving around in a stolen
00:54:27
truck is to me is practically begging to get arrested right this is going to lead
00:54:32
us to October 1st Nico's mother Monica does not know this but on Saturday October 1st Robbie turns up at his
00:54:43
father's house in ramulus Michigan this is 420 miles from Addison New York Robbie's father finds him asleep this
00:54:53
after returning home from work work at 11:00 a.m. Robbie's girlfriend later reported
00:54:59
that Robbie had arrived in Romulus between 6 and 10 a.m. that day Robbie told his family that Nico dropped him
00:55:08
off and then Nico left but Robbie's grandmother later told Monica that Robbie told him that Nico had held a gun
00:55:17
to his head and demanded that Robbie hand over his phone his cash which was only
00:55:23
$7 and his clothes Monica says she never knew her son to have any guns so she finds this to be
00:55:33
weird Robbie's phone was on his grandfather's plant and the family promptly shuts off service to this
00:55:43
phone because if he did Rob Robbie if Nico did Rob him of his phone then he would be in possession of his phone
00:55:52
Monica finds this out and now she trying to find Nico so she's like well cool I will I will call the stolen
00:56:01
phone but that's not going to work because as soon as they are told that Nico steals this phone which we we need
00:56:09
to be clear here this is all alleged activity like this is Robbie saying this we have no one to confirm that any of
00:56:16
this stuff actually happened what we do know is Robbie does not seem to be in possession of his phone and it's shut
00:56:23
off before Monica can use it as a means of getting a hold of her son but we have nobody no eyewitness that
00:56:31
saw ni in Michigan right correct other than Robbie saying that Nico had dropped him off and
00:56:40
left and it's hard there's a there's a part of you I think that wants to believe Robbie but
00:56:50
at the same time he with Nico stole somebody's truck and drove around in it and like I
00:57:01
said from my information they were using a stolen credit card so they have no problem stealing stuff from people if
00:57:08
you have no problem with stealing stuff from people you probably have no problem
00:57:12
with lying to cover your ass on some things exactly and this All Leads up to n his grandmother again who he was
00:57:29
extremely close with she calls Nico's phone around 5:00 p.m. on the 1 of the month Nico actually answers the phone
00:57:38
which he had not done in more than 24 hours of his mom calling him and trying to get a hold of him right he tells
00:57:46
Grandma I can't talk right now and I'll call you back Nico never calls back which is incredibly out of character is
00:57:55
what everybody says but keep in mind I I don't know how out of character it is in
00:57:59
the moment he's not answering mom's calls but the this brief interaction with Nico this is the last interaction
00:58:08
that anyone in Nico's family would have with him after that the phone was shut off what an interesting case make sure
00:58:27
you tell your friends make sure you share on social media and join us back here in the garage tomorrow until then
00:58:35
be good be kind and don't [Music] litter is it possible to predict the unpredictable could surgeons use a
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