00:00:07
[Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you foreign garage wherever you are whatever you're
00:00:43
doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who
00:00:48
is loaded like a freight train and flying like an airplane here is the captain loaded more like below did
00:00:54
that's good to be seen and good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend
00:01:04
this week we are very happy to be featuring tiger chainsaw arms get ready for this powerful Belgian triple
00:01:12
American IPA hybrid spicy flavor and Aroma with citrusy hops and a Gold Medal winner to boot this one a gold medal at
00:01:22
the 2016 Alabama craft beer Championship ABV 12 so enjoy responsibly garage rate
00:01:29
four at a five bottle caps what a delicious treat yeah b-we double r-u-n beer on thank you all for supporting the
00:01:39
garage and donating to the Beer fund you can do so at truecrime garage.com and while you're there
00:01:47
sign up for our bonus show called off the Record if you're not listening to it you aren't
00:01:52
nasty and you're not our best friends in the whole entire world because that's the only way you can be
00:01:58
our best friends is if you listen to off the Record and Colonel that's enough of the
00:02:02
business all right everybody gather round grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime
00:02:09
[Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] this week in the garage we have another missing person's case
00:02:46
these types of cases are so incredibly heartbreaking for those of us not connected to the
00:02:52
missing person or their loved ones these cases are usually a real head scratcher
00:02:58
often there may be a series of bizarre events or behaviors leading up to the poof moment
00:03:04
and then they are gone we are left to try to make some sense out of these bizarre events and or
00:03:10
behaviors as we try to crawl Inside the Mind of the missing person and sort it all out
00:03:18
for those closest and especially the parents of the missing these cases on an emotional level
00:03:24
can be the most difficult to deal with because there is nothing in the way of any form of closure for the loved ones
00:03:33
they are left to deal with the endless torture of not knowing a parent can grieve the physical loss of
00:03:40
their child just as it would be with a murder case the loved one is physically gone
00:03:48
but in a missing case they are left with the added confusion of just what am I grieving
00:03:55
should I be mourning the loss of my child or should I be furious with them for leaving
00:04:01
for us the unknown and the Mysteries are intriguing and at times can be exciting
00:04:06
but for the loved ones it's confusing painful and unacceptable Nico Lisi is our missing person he was
00:04:15
18 years old when he and a friend drove off in a vehicle that neither of them owned leaving Nico's small hometown
00:04:25
a friend turned up later in Michigan and Nico was seen in Tennessee from there he vanished
00:04:32
did this young man who was in trouble with the law and butting heads with his family
00:04:37
decide to hit the reset button and leave it all behind to start a new life it's possible
00:04:45
in Nico's case the police certainly thought so but that was until a startling and
00:04:51
worrisome find turned up five years later it seemed to point to Foul Play this week
00:04:59
we are asking where is nicolese this is true crime garage in 2011 Nico Lisi was 18 and living at
00:05:28
home with his mom stepdad and siblings in Jasper which is an Upstate New York near the Pennsylvania line well
00:05:36
technically he was living at home but during the events we're going to discuss Nico had actually left his mom's house
00:05:43
and was staying with relatives but let's back up so we can take in the full view
00:05:48
here Nico came from a big family he was the middle son of three boys born to Monica button and her ex whose name has
00:05:57
not been released the boys were in order Joseph known as Joe then Nico then Kerrigan they were close in age and in
00:06:06
brotherly bonds much later after their parents split Monica remarried and had a little girl who was only two years old
00:06:15
when her big brother Nico vanished Monica also came from a large close-knit family
00:06:21
she lived near her sister her brother and her mother her father had recently passed away her
00:06:28
ex which is Nico's father lived 15 minutes away in Hornell New York the family was in constant contact with all
00:06:37
members connected via phone and texting Nico was no different although he was 18
00:06:42
he was in regular communication with everyone in his extended family and that is something that's interesting and
00:06:50
something that we need to take note of here all involved say that this dude was in regular contact with not just his
00:07:00
mother or his brothers or his father but also extended family and anytime you're
00:07:06
talking about a missing person it's important to know and have somewhat of an understanding of the type of
00:07:14
Communicator that they are yeah I wouldn't consider Nico to be a loner by any stretch of the imagination he seemed
00:07:21
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
00:07:31
we're going to see that he's starting to get into some trouble maybe running around with the wrong crowd at some
00:07:37
point right so he's regarded as a very outdoorsy type when he was young he liked to play pretend Navy Seals outside
00:07:45
and then he got into bow hunting he was also a super sports kid who loved soccer
00:07:51
baseball and wrestling especially wrestling he won a national championship at the young age of seven and then
00:07:58
helped his high school to win two sectional championships this before a neck injury his sophomore year which
00:08:06
ended his wrestling career if you see pictures of Nico and we'll post them on our social media Pages Facebook
00:08:12
Instagram all that stuff at True Crime garage you're going to see that he is a fit boy
00:08:18
and in regard to this injury it was something captain from my understanding that the doctor said hey
00:08:24
this is just too dangerous for you to continue with all this activity and this was rather devastating news to Nico
00:08:33
this was a sport that he loved that he excelled at and he was no longer going to be able to participate in and some
00:08:40
people in his family point to this as possibly being the beginning the Genesis of what is ultimately a downward spiral
00:08:49
for Nick which is ultimately a downward spiral for Nico well you've probably heard of people having some kind of head
00:08:55
injury that makes them almost switch personalities and I I almost feel like this head and neck injury area could
00:09:04
could have caused Nico to kind of shift almost in personalities some have said that Nico was the kind of kid who had
00:09:11
Swagger some called him brash we know that he was outgoing he was assertive he was very self-confident his mother his
00:09:19
mother said that she always worried her son would get into trouble not because he was a bad kid but because he had sort
00:09:26
of an Untouchable attitude that could come across as arrogant and cocky he was the kind of dude that always spoke his
00:09:33
mind whether people like to hear it or not and he didn't like to back down from people now despite this Nico had a ton
00:09:41
of friends and seemed to know lots of people but Monica did her best to keep her boys on something of a tight leash
00:09:49
as a result she says that Nico was family oriented and spent a lot of time at his own house his grandmother's house
00:09:58
and his uncle's house which is outside of Addison New York and at the homes of other various relatives so this again
00:10:05
showing how connected he is to this extended family but Nico definitely also hung out with
00:10:13
a friend Network that was on the periphery and some of these kids were less than desirable companions as far as
00:10:21
Monica his mother was concerned when they argued about this Nico yelled at her saying that he could pick his own
00:10:29
friends that she's not going to pick his friends another part of his personality
00:10:33
though Captain was Nico was always kind of the dude that bucked at anyone in a position of authority over him and
00:10:41
remember what I was saying a couple episodes ago don't just tell me three great things about the kid oh he lit up
00:10:48
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
00:10:56
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
00:11:05
and that he was also mouthy and cocky but one of those kids where he wouldn't be mouthing and cocky unless
00:11:14
there was another person in the situation that was trying to be mouthy and cocky he was going to then show you
00:11:20
hey you think you're mouthy and cocky I'm going to I'm going to show you up I'm going to be even mouthier and
00:11:28
cockier than you are well and as we said there's a bit of a shift a big shift in
00:11:33
Nico's life after he's forced out of wrestling and now he's hanging out with a rough crowd he quit playing baseball
00:11:41
he was going through a lot man his best friend had been killed in a car crash and his grandfather who he was very
00:11:48
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
00:11:56
neck injury because I couldn't I couldn't find that but it seems like if you have a severe enough neck injury
00:12:03
that you can't wrestle you're probably not able to play other sports it's weird because we've seen this with with
00:12:11
athletes that that we follow in college or NFL from my understanding he could physically continue to wrestle but the
00:12:20
doctors are saying it's too dangerous you know in baseball a much different sport it sounds to me like the the
00:12:27
injury was not really the purpose of him quitting baseball it sounds to me like maybe he was losing
00:12:34
interest that that wrestling was the passion maybe he played these other sports just because you know sometimes
00:12:40
people will play them to stay in shape or because of a certain crowd that they're hanging out with but him losing
00:12:46
the wrestling thing his friend his best friend dying in this car crash and then his grandfather passing away like that's
00:12:53
a lot to to deal with at that young of an age you know she's he's just a sophomore in
00:13:01
in high school well in this case I think it's very one it's fascinating to me because he seems to be on a path
00:13:09
and 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
00:13:17
not to mention that you're becoming an adult and that's hard enough but there's all
00:13:24
these missteps but I'm glad look I also think as much as his family has been willing to talk with individuals to try
00:13:34
to shed some light on this case to find some answers I think there's probably some stuff one
00:13:41
that they didn't know about some even darker stuff that was going on that they didn't know about
00:13:47
or they knew about it and they're just not willing to talk publicly about that well and all of this stuff is leading up
00:13:54
to some changes in Nico's hanging out with people that his mother didn't love they all kind of agreed that after his
00:14:02
sophomore year that Nico needed a change so it wouldn't hurt him to get away from
00:14:07
this crowd he was in and it sounded like mom and son needed a little space between them as well so it was arranged
00:14:15
for Nico to spend part of the summer after his sophomore year with his mother's sister-in-law Nico's Aunt
00:14:24
who lived in Franklin Tennessee and this is important because Tennessee New York
00:14:29
and also Michigan and Ohio believe it or not are all part of this story so we got
00:14:36
multiple States involved in this disappearance and the Tennessee part starts here this is
00:14:43
him going to live with his aunt and attend school in Tennessee it started off as just the summer but then he
00:14:52
seemed to really like it there and all of the parties agreed that he would stay and attend school
00:14:58
the local high school there for his junior year the general reports are that it all the transition all went well at
00:15:06
first Nico was great with his young cousins and was a lifeguard at their pool but before too long Nico balked at
00:15:14
the rules imposed by his in-laws and started rebelling and had outbursts of anger at them very normal teenager stuff
00:15:22
really there came a point where he didn't come home one night and didn't call even though he had had a curfew he
00:15:30
skipped school the next day as well so after failing to find him on their own and not being able to reach him on
00:15:37
his cell phone his relatives they called the police and the police found Nico in a hot tub at a
00:15:44
friend's house and from my understanding Captain the way that this goes down in Franklin Tennessee is because he wasn't
00:15:51
returning their calls because he didn't attend school because he didn't come home that night Nico was considered a
00:15:58
runaway and considered truant from school in that jurisdiction this required Nico to
00:16:07
go to juvie which I mean seems a bit extreme but that was the case well hold up hey for a second right because
00:16:16
like you said yeah arguing with your aunt or arguing with your parental figure that's not out of the dorm that's normal
00:16:27
teenage Behavior what's not normal is there something going on in your life that we're sending you out of state for
00:16:37
the summer and then we're going to then continue to keep you out of state I mean and we're talking about a
00:16:45
distance from New York to Tennessee that's the distance we're going to keep you there so then
00:16:50
you could attend school and instantly you're not attending school and now like like you said I
00:16:57
think it's extreme because once you get in the system whether it's juvenile or as an adult it's hard to get out of the
00:17:05
system yeah Nico was placed in a program for teens with anger issues and according to his mother Monica he's
00:17:11
diagnosed with some kind of defiant disorder which I had never heard of before but he's prescribed medication
00:17:17
for this which he refused to take so this leads us to February of 2010. this is when his mother Monica gets a
00:17:26
phone call from Nico who said that I'm at the airport come pick me up so he had used his in-laws credit card
00:17:35
without anyone's permission he left school he got on a plane and he flew home nobody knows this until he's
00:17:41
calling from the airport for a ride home right so he tells his mom hey I'm done with the in-laws I'm done with their
00:17:48
rules and now he's going to try to settle back into his hometown and he's going to re-enroll in high school there
00:17:55
in his hometown this to finish up the rest of his junior year let's fast forward just a moment to current day
00:18:02
because we're looking back on this and in hindsight Monica wonders his mother wonders if something happened with
00:18:09
something in Tennessee that precipitated a swift departure by Nico if there was something that went down that she's
00:18:16
never been made aware of interesting to me because I think this is her pointing out that
00:18:21
this activity him just coming back without any type of permission seems a little out of character like I said I
00:18:27
think the injury to the neck probably has something to do with all this but I could also see a situation where he gets
00:18:36
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
00:18:44
once he gets back so Nico gets back and now he's getting into fights and the police were occasionally required to
00:18:51
deal with him he even spent some time in jail this after being arrested for what was
00:18:57
labeled a burglary now Monica his mother says Nico was arrested after throwing a
00:19:04
brick through a convenience store window and was charged with burglary I get it throw a brick maybe did he go in and
00:19:11
steal something I've never heard or read that part of the story all I've ever seen is that he
00:19:17
threw a brick through a window so some vandalism you know you don't want your kids to do this but again not
00:19:25
a huge deal to me this is just a very poor choice made by a kid at the end of the day not a major crime but Nico being
00:19:33
17 he was charged as a youthful offender and then I was shocked to hear that Nico
00:19:41
ended up serving eight months in jail for this and even though he was under the age of 18 at that time
00:19:49
it sounds to me like he served so he's sentenced to serve a year in lock up right and this was not at a
00:19:57
juvenile facility this was at Steuben County Jail and from my understanding the terminology down there a County Jail
00:20:07
year is eight months of being locked up and again even though he's he's charged his
00:20:14
I don't understand these terms you charge him as a youthful offender but he serves at a non-juvenile facility and it
00:20:22
doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me but again he he got in trouble you do the crime you do the time again let's go
00:20:28
through this so he's getting into trouble so we send him off to Tennessee he seems to do well over the summer but
00:20:35
then doesn't go to class he is Mark Truitt he is hanging out with some kids in the hot tub I find that to
00:20:43
be strange and then maybe something happens and he heads back to New York hey guys I'm here
00:20:50
and then he's hanging out with a bunch of a bunch of knuckleheads and they break this they're basically
00:20:57
they basically destroy property I don't understand why that is considered a robbery but from
00:21:04
what from my understanding of it right right burglary from my understanding of it he was
00:21:12
offered five years probation and basically the prosecutor and and Nico and everybody involved is going look how
00:21:20
much trouble he's got into in just the last six months he's not going to handle this probation period Well
00:21:27
so go to jail do the eight months which we consider a year do do that and just move on with your life which again
00:21:38
I think this is a bad decision it's weird I I don't know what's strange about hot tubbing but yeah the the way
00:21:47
that I've understand this story to be is that his mother and Nico wanted to fight
00:21:52
this burglary charge because that's not what he did according to Nico he threw he vandalized the place he threw a brick
00:22:00
through a glass window you're exactly right they they're offered five years probation the defense attorney and
00:22:08
Nico's mother and Nico I I think Nico wanted to fight it no matter what but the mom in the defense attorney are like
00:22:14
yeah he's probably not staying out of trouble for five years straight let's let's serve this eight months and
00:22:22
and get it over with this so he's going to be locked up with with what should have been his senior year at High School
00:22:29
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
00:22:36
released in May of 2011. well I think one of their issues is that he has a lot of problems with
00:22:43
authority figures so if he spends this eight months basically in lockdown as an adult he's going to
00:22:52
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 go he
00:22:58
doesn't have to go back to high school and to deal with the authority figures there yeah when he comes back home
00:23:05
everybody says that he seemed to be happy but he's he's also breaking the household rules
00:23:11
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
00:23:17
while that seems to be working out great but again he's he's a dude that's not going
00:23:23
to fall in line with the rules and it sounds to me like this guy a needs to grow up B probably should be
00:23:31
out living on his own and figuring out a way to afford it because he he clearly wants to live by his own set of rules
00:23:38
not by Mom's rules or Not by dads well and you could learn some type of respect there's a lot of people that go live out
00:23:45
on their own when they're young 18 19 years old and they realize it's difficult and then they move back home
00:23:52
and they show their parents level of respect but again and I hate to keep bringing
00:23:58
this up but I feel like this neck head injury could be part of the reason that he's now hanging out with these
00:24:06
these Knuckleheads and and thinking he can just run the world on his own possibly yeah I think it has a lot to do
00:24:13
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 major Point
00:24:22
here in our timeline this is when Nico gets a phone call from the local police asking him to come down to the police
00:24:29
station his mother of course is furious that we have another police incident on our
00:24:34
hands she drops him off keep in mind pay attention as we go through these events
00:24:40
that are leading up to his disappearance he needed a ride from the airport he needs a ride to the police station Nico
00:24:47
doesn't drive okay that that's something of importance here so his mother drives
00:24:52
him to the police station and then Nico calls her and says he's very upset and he tells his mom hey I'm
00:25:00
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
00:25:07
I'm concerned what happened was there's this 14 year old girl who reported the names of
00:25:13
several boys that she had had intercourse with Nico was one of these boys there were no allegations of any type of
00:25:24
forcible intercourse against Nico but because of the girl's age 14 she's a minor she certainly wasn't able to
00:25:34
consent as far as that jurisdiction is concerned she wasn't certain of the date that she slept with Nico
00:25:43
but gave a few different dates and at least one of those dates puts Nico at the age of 18. right they would have a
00:25:52
on-again off-again physical relationship which started with Nico being a miner yes and from the way that I understand
00:26:01
it and I don't want to get into numbers here but the way that it's reported she had had an on-again off-again
00:26:08
relationship with several other boys as well and or young men as far as the law is concerned
00:26:16
and they were going to be charged with Nico wasn't the only person facing some type of charge so others face things
00:26:22
like reckless endangerment endangering the welfare of a minor and so on so the the Nico's not the only person that's
00:26:30
being rounded up by the police because of the situation with this young girl some kids
00:26:36
making some bad decisions irresponsible decisions I think when people bring up this story it's a statutory rape charge
00:26:43
and they say well the the physical relationship started with he was a minor well even if it started when he was 17
00:26:50
she would have been 13 I I think that's a bad decision I think that's too big of an age Gap I
00:26:58
understand that they're both minors but that's I I don't know not not something that I would
00:27:06
recommend to you know my children or I don't know that she was 13 when the relationship started because we have to
00:27:14
keep in mind he's only been in town for four months right at this point so yeah but no it's not a good idea 14 to 17
00:27:23
almost 18 anyway but I think one thing we need to point out for the listeners and and look I'm not the person that
00:27:29
gets to decide who did what or we are not the moral police right and I'm not saying that Nico did nothing wrong here
00:27:37
but I think what we need to point out is something maybe we need to underline it
00:27:43
a little bit there's no there's no allegation of forcible sex or anything like that here there's it's not this
00:27:51
girl running to the police saying this guy raped me no this is this situation actually plays out a lot more than most
00:28:00
people would want to hear it's this is actually incredibly common talk to your local police officer or if you if you
00:28:08
know a a woman or a man on the force ask them this question and you would be surprised how often they get phone calls
00:28:15
about this situation or that they are looking into some situation what typically happens
00:28:21
is a father finds out that his daughter is sexually active right then finds out that she might be a freshman and some of
00:28:30
the a boy or two might be a senior in high school and oh he's 17 or 18 and she's 15.
00:28:38
oh we're going to press charges you know that's typically the way that this thing
00:28:43
plays out this is what it sounds like to me is this situation but not to we don't
00:28:49
want to linger on this situation too long but it's important to bring it up because if Nico did in fact decide to
00:28:56
take off for whatever reason this could be part of it right he is being accused of being technically a rapist so of
00:29:06
course he's going to be devastated he's he's mortified because his name is going
00:29:10
to appear in the local paper he's going to have to register as a sex offender if
00:29:14
he's found guilty of these charges this dramatically changes his life and we have to remember too that he just spent
00:29:22
eight months in jail well and I don't want to come to his defense too much because again
00:29:29
shouldn't be hanging out with underage girls even if you're 17 don't hang out with a 14 year old but the information
00:29:36
that I have says that he he told his mom and the police look I slept with her but
00:29:43
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
00:29:53
it quote the girl looked way older and that's not Nico saying that that is another report from other people from
00:30:01
people that weren't charged with anything so I don't know what that means but when I hear somebody else say that
00:30:07
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
00:30:16
did have a relationship with her I did not know that she was 14. but ignorance there's no room for
00:30:22
ignorance in the law like we were talking about earlier he's gone through a rough time
00:30:28
but some of that is stuff out of his control his his grandfather passing away but some of it is in his control and
00:30:37
he's at a time period where he's making his situation worse by making bad decisions
00:30:48
foreign [Music] all right we are back cheers mates cheers to you colonel cheers to you
00:31:24
Captain when we left off we talked about this rape charge and this was a situation that Nico was
00:31:32
devastated about but he wasn't running and hiding from it as far as I can see they have a lawyer that is hired by the
00:31:40
family and Nico and his lawyer made three court appearances over the summer to fight these charges against him so
00:31:49
now we're at September 2011 and Nico's next court date his next court appearance was scheduled for
00:31:57
October 15th right the following month as said Nico is horrified and embarrassed by this rape charge his
00:32:07
his mom says that socially yes he does kind of go into hiding hunkering down at her house and refusing to go out for a
00:32:15
while she told him look dude you got to get out out you got to get a job or you can't stay here much longer
00:32:24
this leads to an argument Nico storms out of the house on foot and somehow got to her mother's house remember he's
00:32:32
close with his extended family his grandmother lives outside of Addison his mom Monica to this day doesn't really
00:32:40
know how he got to Grandma's house because again he doesn't drive it's conceivable that he walked there but
00:32:47
doesn't seem to be likely this is a tough situation because I I find when you have a kid especially 16 17 18 years
00:32:57
old look we can argue about when you become an adult but I think his maturity level
00:33:03
here is pretty pretty low I always feel bad for it's like if a kid got straight A's and decided
00:33:12
that he was going to take a year off before going to college to travel and do some self-discovery people would be okay
00:33:20
with that you get in these situations where a kid is you know spend some time in juvie
00:33:26
doesn't graduate gets a GED and people are so they they almost push them too hard to
00:33:34
try to correct the wrongs right away go get a job stand on your own two feet you
00:33:40
know and sometimes these kids just need some time does that make any sense that's that's my rants I agree 100 in
00:33:49
the eyes of the law and the government you're an adult at 18. but to me I've always look when I was 18 I was not a
00:33:58
man I I know that when I was 19 not a man I I consider an adult a woman or man or what have you to be somebody that
00:34:06
that takes care of their responsibilities and behaves accordingly and we don't all do
00:34:14
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 of us know
00:34:20
somebody in their 30s or 40s that is that are still not doing that sometimes in their 50s and 60s
00:34:28
some of you might have a podcast with that person but uh yeah thanks a lot I was talking about myself no okay I'm but
00:34:36
I think everybody out there understands this now what we have here Captain is we
00:34:42
need to point out that the town where he's staying so he kind of spends a decent amount of time bouncing back
00:34:50
and forth from several different extended relatives homes but they also own a rustic cabin
00:34:59
and he's staying at the cabin on and off so his comings and goings and who he's staying with are a little bit gray here
00:35:06
but that's not very important to our story what what is important to our story is the area where he's staying is
00:35:14
the area where his mother grew up and she owns a hair salon and her hair salon is in this area now
00:35:22
you go to the barber shop you go to the salon people are talking there's a lot of chit chat so Mom is hearing from
00:35:31
locals be it relatives or friends at the salon what Nico is up to that's key here now
00:35:39
this takes us to Tuesday September 27th when mom sees Nico at a family Barbecue everybody has a great time Nico's
00:35:48
totally normal everybody's having a wonderful time mom gets to see son that's on a Tuesday but by Friday Nico
00:35:56
was gone yeah M.I.A so Monica last saw her son at his aunt Rachel's house for a family Barbecue on Tuesday night he
00:36:04
spent the night there then on Thursday September 29th he babysat his uncle Zach's daughter while Zach and his
00:36:13
girlfriend were at work and after babysitting that night he goes out Nico goes out so
00:36:21
Nico is last seen by his family when he shows up at his uncle Zach's house in Addison New York this is around 2 p.m on
00:36:29
Friday September 30th but he's not alone he's with a guy named Robbie Knight Robbie is two years older than Nico the
00:36:38
two told Zach his uncle that they were heading to Buffalo to go camping with some girls that they had met online
00:36:46
since it was late September and it was getting chilly out Zach calls Monica that evening around 9pm and
00:36:53
says hey Nico was here getting some stuff and he and this Robbie Knight kid are going camping
00:37:01
so Monica says this was very odd to her because not necessarily that Nico would go
00:37:08
camping we mentioned that he was an outdoorsy type but that he was hanging out with this Robbie so Robbie is Robert
00:37:15
better known as Robbie Nicholas Neil Knight III that's a lot of names for one person you know he was a classmate and
00:37:24
friend of Nico's older brother Joe Monica didn't let Joe go to Robbie's house when Joe was in high school and
00:37:33
she didn't let Robbie come to her house either because Robbie had a reputation in his house I guess was known as a teen
00:37:41
party house a party spot for teenagers Robbie's parents lived in Michigan he was living at his grandparents house
00:37:51
in Jasper New York I guess he had like the run of the house as far as his grandparents
00:37:57
were concerned and so he's allowed to have all these other kids over and it turns into a party house Monica was
00:38:03
aware of this so Niko's older brother Joe not allowed to hang out with Robbie so
00:38:09
Monica what she's saying Captain is not surprised about the camping thing but surprised that she would hang out that
00:38:16
he would be hanging out with this Robbie guy well I'm going to say something that
00:38:21
that is my gut feeling my gut feeling too is it's a little odd that he's going to go camping with these
00:38:28
girls because he does have this lingering charge this statutory rape charge that he's going to be facing and
00:38:37
like like you said this can really disrupt his whole life uh he is very concerned about having to be a
00:38:46
registered sex offender for the rest of his life I mean that that would be devastating for anybody so I I do think
00:38:53
that's a little strange as well Monica she tries calling her son trying trying to get a hold of Nico he's not answering
00:39:00
her calls so she texts him saying hey look I know you were at my house today because your the door to your room is
00:39:09
left open and your shoes are gone what else did you take from my house and Nico responds clothes duh
00:39:17
Monica again she's trying to get in touch with her son phone call or text but by the time he finally responds via
00:39:26
text it's now like 11 p.m at night so Monica is going to go to bed but what she doesn't realize at this time this
00:39:34
would be the last exchange that she would have with her son so the next day without hearing from her son Monica
00:39:42
was left to wonder how Robbie and her son Nico were going to get to Buffalo because again Nico didn't drive he
00:39:50
didn't have a car meanwhile Monica didn't know this but Nico and Robbie drove out of Addison in
00:39:59
a gold 2004 GMC Canyon extended cab pickup truck with New York plates Zach her brother Monica's brother said that he
00:40:11
saw the truck when the boy stopped at his place around 2PM on that Friday the day before right and Nico tells his
00:40:17
uncle that Robbie borrowed this truck from Robbie's grandfather Zach says Robbie's driving the truck
00:40:25
when he saw them so he didn't question anything he he didn't know Robbie didn't know Robbie's situation
00:40:31
but the super weird thing here is the truck was recently stolen from a driveway from a home on Steuben Street and
00:40:40
Addison so the two dudes Robbie and Nico are in this stolen truck so the GMC Canyon that
00:40:49
the the truck has taken on a very important role in this case for reasons we will certainly get into but what
00:40:55
would what do we know about missing person cases it's hard to find a person sometimes it's like a needle and a
00:41:02
haystack what's easier to find for law enforcement Vehicles what vehicles law enforcement love when a vehicle was
00:41:09
involved in any type of investigation that they have going on because they can track vehicles they
00:41:16
vehicles are much easier to find and then we know a lot about the vehicle it's reported stolen we already gave a
00:41:22
description of it the New York plate on the truck was egy7316 these two guys Nico and Robbie
00:41:32
are driving around in the stolen truck and that appears to be the method that they're going to use to get to Buffalo
00:41:38
well it wasn't this vehicle also stolen pretty close to where the hair salon is that Monica owns well yes that's part of
00:41:48
the whole store here so on Saturday the first at this time Nico is believed to have gone camping
00:41:56
right Monica believes her son and Robbie went off camping they don't know about the stolen truck yet what happens is
00:42:03
Monica goes to work she's working in Addison where her mother and her brother Zach both live where as you pointed out
00:42:12
the same place where the vehicle was stolen from Nico had been staying in the cabin and
00:42:17
bouncing around in that area for some time leading up to the vehicle being stolen so while she's at work that day
00:42:24
she's doing a customer's hair someone mentioned a truck that was stolen the previous day
00:42:29
Monica ends up saying that she's hearing about this truck and immediately this is where motherly
00:42:38
Instinct this is where gut checks in and and tells you something is not great here the spidey sense goes off she
00:42:47
gets a Sinking Feeling she reads a description of the truck and then she calls her brother and asks what type of
00:42:55
vehicle the boys were driving and the description that her brother gives her is exactly that of the truck
00:43:02
that was reported stolen so now she's freaking out and she wants to get a hold of her son but she can't
00:43:09
she ends up obtaining a phone number for Robbie Knight's grandparents house she calls them and this is when Robbie's
00:43:16
grandmother tells her that she had dropped Robbie off at Monica's family cabin a week earlier so this is
00:43:24
shocking to Monica too so this means that Robbie had been staying at her family's property without anyone's
00:43:31
knowledge and because Nico was bouncing around from house to house this also means that Robbie may have been staying
00:43:39
there even without Nico on occasion that week yeah overall it's just a bad situation of course Monica
00:43:47
asked the grandmother hey was Robbie allowed to take your husband's truck and of course the answer is no my husband
00:43:56
does we don't own a truck so that's further confirmation that her son and his Now new friend Robbie are
00:44:06
they have something to do with this stolen truck what's even more strange though is the grandmother tells Monica
00:44:12
that when she dropped Robbie off to stay at that cabin a week earlier he says to
00:44:18
her before getting out of the vehicle I'm giving you your life back which of course to you and I
00:44:27
sounds like goodbye I'm I'm leaving town or I've I've been a problem for you Grandma uh thanks for the ride here but
00:44:34
I'm giving you your life back yeah suicide or started my life over somewhere else maybe this kid you know
00:44:42
he's two years older than Nico so he's about 20 at the time maybe he thinks that they're going to live in this cabin
00:44:48
well here's something I can't find and maybe you found this information statutory rape charges
00:44:57
we talked about that there was other other boys involved was Robbie one of the other boys
00:45:04
I don't have a list of the names of the others that were charged but my suspicion is no because I think that if
00:45:14
that were the case it would have been talked about yes it would be talked about because Robbie is
00:45:20
talked about a lot in this story a lot in The Disappearance of Nico my thought was that possibly that they're both
00:45:28
facing the same charge and they both didn't want to deal with it both thought they were going to have to be registered
00:45:34
sex offenders and hey let's just go off to my grandma's cabin and we'll both start all over but we don't have to
00:45:42
start all over by ourselves we can start all over together but not a good not a good start when you steal a vehicle well
00:45:51
and from my understanding like the keys were in this truck and they they probably went around
00:45:59
either Robbie by himself or Nico by himself or the two of them together went around checking door handles and
00:46:07
found some cars unlocked and found this one with the keys still in it and decided to
00:46:12
take it there's there's a whole bunch of questions here right when we look at the
00:46:16
stolen truck and the stolen truck is one of the most important parts of this story the most important parts is one
00:46:21
where the hell is Nico two why is Nico and Robbie hanging out and what are they up to together and why this stolen
00:46:30
vehicle right because we know that they tell Zach Uncle Zach hey we're going to Buffalo to meet these girls that we met
00:46:38
online we're going to go camping with them that sounds very normal to me but what we have to question here is do they
00:46:45
steal the truck in order to get the buffalo or did they decide to get out of town
00:46:52
because they stole the truck the chicken or the egg so Monica what she ends up doing is she calls
00:47:00
the police and this is for two reasons one she's eager to find her son but she also wants to do the right thing
00:47:09
so she reports hey this truck that was reported stolen I have reason to believe that my son who
00:47:16
is missing that we're trying to get in touch with that won't call us back that he and one of his friends Robbie
00:47:23
are involved in the stolen truck and maybe if you guys find the truck you'll find my son right because like what
00:47:30
we've said so much easier to find a vehicle than just to find a uh just a per a missing person but at this point
00:47:38
you're more worried about his safety we'll we'll deal with the charges of him stealing a vehicle I I couldn't imagine
00:47:46
what she is going through and what the rest of his family's going through they're going this this is just he's not
00:47:51
acting like we think he should right and he's doing things that we don't think he should be doing and we
00:48:00
and we don't know why and we don't know why he's hanging out with this person at
00:48:05
this point you have to be very concerned you have to be scared you're very concerned and but I want to give some
00:48:12
kudos to Monica to Nico's mother because her thinking in this moment to me is incredibly
00:48:20
level-headed I think that the most good citizen most good responsible parents out there would all agree I would rather
00:48:30
my child be safe and face the consequences and I know where they are rather than uh I'm not going to report
00:48:39
that that he might have stolen this vehicle I'm not gonna I'm not gonna tip off the police that maybe my son's up to
00:48:47
no good yeah I I agree with you I think she's doing the right thing so what happens here Captain is now that we get
00:48:54
the police involved and again they're they're going to start getting some hits on this truck
00:48:59
and so they have her come down to the Police Department this is a couple days later they say hey we need you to review
00:49:08
some footage that we found and we need you to tell us if it's Nico in the footage or not so they have grainy
00:49:16
surveillance photos that were taken the morning of September 30th and in these photos
00:49:22
it's Nico and Robbie on security camera at a 24-hour Wegmans in Rochester New York this is at 4 a.m
00:49:31
in the morning and then they're on another camera footage at a truck stop in kenona I
00:49:38
think is how you say it New York so Monica's reviewing this this footage or the photos with police officers and she
00:49:46
says that is certainly I'm I'm certain that that is my son that are in both of these images so the investigators tell
00:49:55
Monica that the boys purchase chips and energy drinks it really looks like it was just a pit stop at both of these
00:50:01
stops they're purchasing these items through a stolen stolen credit card right that I don't know I think I think
00:50:09
there was a credit card I could be wrong but I think there was a credit card that's attached to this vehicle
00:50:14
so not only do they know that they had this they stole this vehicle but there was a credit card or something like that
00:50:22
in the truck that they're using that would make a lot of sense for the reasons that they were able to find this
00:50:30
footage so quickly because these are places that are not you know they're out of town both these
00:50:38
places are out of town and so then they use Nico's phone records police determined that Nico and Robbie
00:50:45
drove to Rochester First which is about a 45 minute drive from where Nico's family lives then they
00:50:53
drove back to the Jasper Addison area where he's from and then on to canona which is 45 minutes away and then they
00:51:01
drove around Nico's Hometown area as well then they go right across the border remember they're close to the
00:51:07
Pennsylvania line they go right across the border into Pennsylvania and they're driving around there this is
00:51:13
all before showing up at his uncle's house at 2 A.M at two in the afternoon on that you know the last time that he's
00:51:21
Nico's ever seen by a family member well and this is a truck too so this has costing a lot of money in gas well
00:51:28
what's amazing to me here Captain is it's all of this travel and driving around in Addison as well it's like they
00:51:36
stole the truck and then drove Non-Stop and then they get to the uncle's house all of this driving around in a stolen
00:51:43
truck is to me is practically begging to get arrested right this is going to lead
00:51:49
us to October 1st Nico's mother Monica does not know this but on Saturday October 1st Robbie turns
00:51:59
up at his father's house in Romulus Michigan this is 420 miles from Addison New York
00:52:06
Robbie's father finds him asleep this after returning home from work at 11 A.M Robbie's girlfriend later reported that
00:52:16
Robbie had arrived in Romulus between 6 and 10 a.m that day Robbie told his family that Nico dropped
00:52:25
him off and then Nico left but Robbie's grandmother later told Monica that Robbie told him that Nico
00:52:32
had held a gun to his head and demanded that Robbie hand over his phone his cash which was only seven dollars
00:52:40
and his clothing Monica says she never knew her son to have any guns so she finds this to be
00:52:49
weird Robbie's phone was on his grandfather's plan and the family promptly shuts off
00:52:57
service to this phone because if he did Rob Robbie if Nico did Rob him of his phone then he would be in
00:53:07
possession of his phone Monica finds this out and now she's trying to find Nico so she's like well cool I will I
00:53:16
will call the stolen phone but that's not going to work because as soon as they are told that Nico steals
00:53:24
this phone which we we need to be clear here this is all a legend activity like this
00:53:29
is Robbie saying this we have no one to confirm that any of this stuff actually happened what we do know is Robbie does
00:53:36
not seem to be in possession of his phone and it's shut off before Monica can use it
00:53:41
as a means of getting a hold of her son but we have nobody no eyewitness that saw
00:53:48
Nico in Michigan right correct other than Robbie saying that Nico had dropped him off and left
00:53:57
and it's hard there's a there's a part of you I think that wants to believe Robbie but at the
00:54:07
same time he with Nico stole somebody's truck and drove around in it and like I said
00:54:17
from my information they were using a stolen credit card so they have no problem stealing stuff
00:54:23
from people if you have no problem with stealing stuff from people you probably have no
00:54:28
problem with lying to cover your ass on some things exactly and this All Leads up to
00:54:40
Nico his grandmother again who he was extremely close with she calls Nico's phone around 5 PM on the first of the
00:54:51
month Nico actually answers the phone which he had not done in more than 24 hours of his mom calling
00:54:59
him and trying to get a hold of him right he tells Grandma I can't talk right now and I'll call you back Nico
00:55:06
never calls back which is incredibly out of character is what everybody says but keep in mind I don't
00:55:14
know how out of character it is in the moment he's not answering mom's calls but the this brief interaction
00:55:21
with Nico this is the last interaction that anyone in Nico's family would have with him after that the phone was shut
00:55:30
off what an interesting case make sure you tell your friends make sure you share on
00:55:46
social media and join us back here in the garage tomorrow until then be good be kind and don't litter
00:55:59
foreign [Music]