BONUS EPISODE: Homicide 360 - 'Where the Truth Lies (Nicole VanderHeyden)'

Today's episode is sponsored by the ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Program as a frequent goer of the dog park. I have seen some scary things happen to the dog park, luckily not to my dog. Although very recently we had our first scare. He ends up stepping on a bee and got stung. But I was absolutely panicked as a first time dog parent who has absolutely infantilized my little puppy dog in a moment like that. You really are thankful that you have your pet insurance. The ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Program offers customizable accident and illness plans. That can fit your budget, your lifestyle, and even your pet's particular quirks. Like if he enjoys stepping on bees and horrifying their parents. Because let's be honest, that bills can add up fast. All we ever do at the dog park is talk about how expensive our dogs are. This will help you in the long run. ASPCA Pet Health Insurance has been around for almost 30 years and has covered over a million pets. 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If you get an ace that draws a lot of media attention and draws a lot of urgency, like, "Hey, we've got this person that was brutally murdered in our community and this doesn't happen." So there was a lot of pressure to get some answers to this. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasega Nikolasi, former New York City homicide prosecutor. And this is homicide 360. What happens when the simplest answer is not the right one? Often in a homicide investigation, the goal is to strip away the wild theories and the remote possibilities and focus on the evidence at hand and the most probable scenario. The result, the very often the killer is exactly who you thought it would be. And that may mean an unfaithful spouse, an abusive partner or someone close to the victim with nefarious motives. But sometimes expectations and the evidence just don't match up. And that can result in false leads, premature arrests and dramatic investigations with unexpected twists and turns. Investigations just like this one. Lieutenant Brian Singer has been a sworn deputy at the Brown County Sheriff's Office outside Green Bay, Wisconsin for over 25 years. 25 and a half to be precise. And as a former member of law enforcement, I can tell you that when you start eyeing a retirement, that half a year is critically important. As it was in the summer of 2016, when Brian was called to a crime scene, located in a small semi-world town called Bellevue, about 15 miles south east of Green Bay. From County Neverland, what is the atmosphere emergency in? It's just about by the corner of Bellevue and is that all we have in order to crystal us. We just found human body laying in some weeds. So the first call we received was actually from a farmer and his grandson and his grandson's friend were out in a field nearby here in the village of Bellevue. And they located what they believed to be was a deceased female in the farm field. Is that male or female? It's just long hair, but I didn't go near it. Deputies from the Brown County Sheriff's Office immediately responded following a gravel path to an area just out of sight off of the main road. Victim was laying face down in a little ditch ravine area in between the field and the road, kind of with her arm underneath her head, completely naked, except for she had a pair of socks, one on each foot that was partially off. And then she had an orange or pink colored bracelet that you would see that you get at like a rock concert or a music venue. Her bruised body showed evidence of serious injuries consistent with a terrible assault. Because she was face down, you couldn't really see the extent of the injuries on her face, but the back injuries were pretty severe with bruising, and then there appeared to be like a shoe print marking on her back, which would be like that hearing bone pattern that you see on the bottom of some athletic shoes. Just from a superficial observation, it appeared that the unidentified woman had been kicked and stomped. But the full extent of her injuries had not yet been revealed, because when they turned the body over, deputies observed multiple lacerations and evidence of blunt force trauma to her face and her head. And on closer look, there was also discoloration around her neck, indicating that she may have been strangled with some kind of ligature, a binding of some sort. Special cause of death would be determined by the medical examiner, but clearly her injuries suggested that her death was intentional and vicious. This was no accident. This was murder. It was pretty apparent that the body had not been there for overly long. The weather conditions weren't overly warm or overly cool, so you wouldn't expect any major decomposition or anything slowed down due to the temperatures. It was pretty evident that it was somewhat recent, like within 24 hours. Which in all likelihood meant that the woman's killer could not have gotten far. But to most effectively start looking for suspects, they had to first identify their victim. Initially, we had no idea who this person was or where they came from or how they got there, because we did not have any similar missing person reports in the area. The woman had no clothes, no wallet or purse, and no ID, so the search for her name would have to start with a meticulous search of the immediate area. We did a large grid search of that area to try and determine if there is any other evidence that we may be missing to see if there is any objects that would have been used to do the blunt force trauma. We were looking for, you know, like large boulders, large rocks, things of that nature that may have some blood on it or may have indication that it was used in the assault. But unfortunately, they didn't find any weapon nor her clothes or anything else that might have helped identify her. They also didn't find anything that indicated that this savage assault had even taken place at that location. There was no other signs of blood, there was no other signs of evidence, and then of course the body itself. The lack of blood around the body, either in the form of pooling or spatter, remember she had multiple lacerations, likely indicated that this was not where the victim was killed. It was more likely that she was killed somewhere else, transported by car, and then her body was dumped in this location out of the site of passing cars. We were able to locate, would appear to be some fresh tire tracks that were in the field area, a short distance away from where the body was located. We had spoke to the farmer, we had spoke to other people that would have access back there, and we were quickly able to determine that that would not have been from one of their vehicles. They only used ATVs and off-road type of vehicles back there, and this was clearly based upon the distance of the wheels and the tread pattern and all that was definitely a passenger vehicle, a small truck that would have made those marks. So already investigators knew that they would be dealing with as many as three potential crime scenes. The spot where the body was discovered, the car or truck that had transported her, and wherever the murder had actually taken place. And they also could conclude that they were dealing with a perpetrator who had made some effort to cover up the crime and get away with murder. And that became part of the suspect profile, but so did the fact that this woman's killer, out of haste or panic or just an unfamiliarity with the actual area, had also failed to do a very good job. The little street or the little gravel road that leads into the field is pretty recognizable from the road. It's about a half mile away from our sheriff's office, actually, on the same street. street. So the person that would have put the body there didn't even realize that they drove right past the Sheriff's Department place, which was either a brazen type of taunt or a really super mistake. But unfortunately, no cameras at the Sheriff's Office or long the stretch of road caught sight of any suspicious vehicles. And in their canvas, police turned up no witnesses from the immediate area. So the naked model of the killer's car was still a mystery. And so was the identity of the victim. Once the medical examiner got there, we were looking for any tattoos or any other marks or indications that we can enter into our local reporting database here to see if we can identify who this person may be. The only clue to her identity, the disturbing evidence that the woman, likely in her early 30s, was also a recent mother who was still breastfeeding in the infant child. We could tell that the person had likely just had a child because of the size and the inflammation of her breasts. But outside of that, we really didn't have a lot. But that would soon change. Detectives were still at the crime scene when the Sheriff's Office now got another call. This one on the non-emergency line. Brown County Public Safety. This is Trees. Yes, how do I go about, I guess, missing person? Want any work for the mercy person? Yeah, who's missing? It's my girlfriend and she does live with me. And she's never done this before. What's her name? Nicole Vanderhiden? A few hours into the investigation, we had received a call in through our 911 center that a subject by the name of Doug Dietri was reporting that his girlfriend, Nicole Vanderhiden, was missing and that she had not come home from their night out the night before. Doug Dietri and 31-year-old Nicole Vanderhiden lived together with their newborn baby in a house not far from the crime scene. He lives in close proximity to where the body was located. And they say close, I mean, within a few miles. And the description that he had given us of her matched exactly what we had in the field. So at that point, we were fairly confident that this was the person that he was reporting missing. Detectives did not immediately disclose that the body of a young woman had been found in the nearby field. She hadn't yet been positively identified, but they also did not treat his call as a simple missing person's report either. They knew it just might be part of a homicide investigation. So we sent a detective to the house to interview him. Whereas normally, obviously, if you have a missing person report or if someone wants to call and someone, you wouldn't see a detective at your door. You'd typically see it as the patrol officer. But obviously, if the victim did turn out to be Doug's missing girlfriend, then he was not just a concerned loved one. He could be a potential suspect. So they wanted to be sure to take advantage of this first contact to gather as much intel as they could. So one of our detectives went over there with a hidden camera, audio video recorder, where they're invited into the house to sit down with him, talk to him, get information, which was beneficial because obviously we knew what he didn't know. So normally, a case like this starts with a uniformed officer responding to a standard missing person's call and to be clear, this wasn't a juvenile and it wasn't an elderly person because that would trigger something like a silver alert. This was an adult of age with no immediate signs of foul play on paper so far. But from the jump investigators felt this one was different. There was an opportunity here to bring in someone with investigative experience early, someone who could read the room, listen, pass the answers, and make real-time judgments about what was being said, and what wasn't. And a detective could document the interview, preserve it, and flag any inconsistencies anesthesia with something that just didn't sit right. And of course, any officer, just like any person, might see things that might be meaningful in a later investigation, right? Is there something that looks like maybe blood or some evidence of a fight, things knocked around, something that would warrant them coming back to take a closer look? But also, I love this idea. If this case ends up ultimately at a trial at some point, so often these photos or videos later become important, there's this innocuous thing in there that means nothing at the time it doesn't look suspect. It isn't an obvious anything, but later when you look at it, when you have all the rest of the pieces in place, now it is sometimes that piece that puts you over the top in front of a jury. So here it is detectives, they're meeting Doug at the door. And at this point, it was the late afternoon, early evening maybe, and detectives first impression of him. Honestly, it wasn't a great one. You could tell he's clearly not feeling the best from the night before, probably hung over and got some cobwebs going on up there, which also strikes detectives as kind of odd. Typically, someone who would call the police to report the mother of your child is missing, you may demonstrate a little more obvious concern, maybe even panic, but this was not so in Doug's case. According to him, he and Nicole, who her friends called Nicky, had hired a babysitter the night before, so they could go out to a local bar with friends and watch some live music. - Well, Doug had stated that this was the first time after the child was born, that they were able to get a sitter and get together and go out. So that was their night out. It was a concert, a band, steel panther, that's pretty popular, and a lot of people like to go out to. So they went out as a big friend group, and then Doug basically explained that towards the end of the show, him and his friend Greg, ended up running into some other people that they knew, and they were gonna stay at the watering hall for a little bit, while the rest of the group, including Nicole, made their way to the next bar, which was the Sardine can. Also, according to Doug, the night sort of got away from him. When he went looking for Nicole, he just couldn't find her. - Doug just kind of explained that the night got away from him and they're drinking, they're having fun, and next thing he knew was midnight, and though like crap, we really better get going to get over to this other Sardine can meet with Nicole and the rest of the group. - When he couldn't find her, he headed home with his buddy Greg, figuring that Nicole would either already be at home waiting or would show up sometime later. - Now Doug was pretty forthcoming with investigators, telling them that Nicole was not happy with him for getting separated, and he had been treated to a barrage of angry texts from her. But those texts had stopped around midnight, timing is important here. So when he got home, he saw that she wasn't there, and he figured perhaps the best thing to do was to just go to bed and sleep it off. - But morning came and he still hadn't heard from Nicole. - Prior to him calling law enforcement, he had been reaching out to all sorts of people to try and find out if they knew what she was. Because times in the past, when there would be arguments that would be disagreements, she would either go to a friend's house or go to a family's house just to kind of cool down or whatever the case may be. I don't think anyone was overly concerned because this was a pattern of when they'd get into arguments and stuff, she'd go stay at a friend's house or whatever, but when it'd be kind of later in the day and no one was able to get ahold of her and her phone was clearly off, that's when all the concerns started, like how you need to call her and is missing. - It all sounded pretty plausible by considering what detectives suspected about Nicole's fate, that delay before calling police, it was starting to sound suspicious. - It was odd because it took so long for him to make that initial phone call. I can't imagine if I had a pregnant girlfriend or that just had my child that I was living with that I was out with the night before that didn't come home that night that I would be able to go to sleep and not really wonder where she, and then the next morning you wake up and there's still a bunch of time that's passing before you make that phone call. - Given Nicole's physical description, including the fact that she was still breastfeeding and she would have likely have had on a pink bracelet from the concert the night before, detectives were pretty confident that the woman they had found in the field was Nicole, but they still had not made that official ID, which meant that they still couldn't tell Doug or anyone else everything they already knew. - We're trying to work still on identifying the body because the way that her head and her face were battered, it was obviously we weren't gonna be showing them a picture of it and saying, hey, is this your girlfriend, is this your daughter, is this your sister? But we were like 99% sure that it was her based upon the totality of everything and the bracelet on her hand that he had verified they had both gotten a night before. - Now the definitive clue to identifying the victim came later that night. - One of the guys from night shift was on his way home and he was driving up the ramp from a county highway which runs near where this was up onto a local interstate and he had saw a pile of clothes scattered around and some other personal items off to the side of the on ramp and put two and two together. It was like, man, I wonder what the odds are that those belonged to this person that was just found with no clothes on. Detectives responded and collected the bloody clothing and were soon able to verify that they did belong to the victim. - Nearby they also found a purse, a cell phone and an ID all belonging to 31 year old Nicole Vanderheiden blood test at the lab would later confirm that ID. - The autopsy revealed that the young mama of three had well over 200 injuries to her body. primarily focused on her head and neck. It also concluded that she had been sexually assaulted and strangled. She had ligature marks around her neck that was a contributing cause of death, and the medical examiner had stated that the injuries to the neck were of the worst they had ever seen as far as how tight the person would have had to pull that cord. Obviously with the sexual assault and the strangulation, this was a brutal and very personal kind of attack. And in most instances, investigators would presume that it has all of the indications of being perpetrated by someone who was full of rage. And this is where I can really go both ways. Sexual assault, control, coupled with brutal violence can absolutely be a stranger, but on the flip side, that overt need to assert dominance is too often also seen in intimate partner violence or also some sort of deep-seated vendetta as well. But when you looked at Nicole, according to those who knew her, she was not someone that had any obvious enemies or whose lifestyle might have been expected to put her in danger. While the information we got from her friends and families at Nicole was a fun, loving, very outgoing person that enjoyed physical activity, enjoying spending time with her family. She had two other children from a previous relationship that she enjoyed spending time with and integrate mom. She was a part-time school teacher at a local green-based school district. She clearly enjoyed kids, enjoyed helping kids, enjoyed being around kids, and from all accounts was a very good family person. So let's establish this. Nicole did have an ex-husband who was the father of her two older children. But according to Brian, their relationship was applicable and they had no history of any conflict. They got along as far as what they needed to to take care of the kids and transfer custody, things like that. There was no issues. Now detectives, like true crime podcast listeners, know that the majority of homicides against women are the result of intimate partner violence. So it was critical to eliminate any potential suspects that were closest to Nicole, and that meant her current boyfriend Doug. So then we just wanted to get into the sheriff's apartment, get a more formalized locked-in statement from him as far as like who they were with, last time he saw her, and then, you know, identifying other witnesses that we need to do, getting contact with right away, that would have been the last people to actually see her. Whether those witnesses would corroborate Doug's version of the night remained to be seen. Another mystery, how Doug would react when police revealed that Nicole was no longer a missing, she had been murdered. In May of 2016, a woman's body was found on the side of the road outside Green Bay, Wisconsin. Nicole Van der Heiden had been stripped, beaten, strangled, and sexually assaulted. And police were prepared to question the man who first reported her missing, her live-in boyfriend, Doug Dietri. Now to his credit, Doug agreed to go to the sheriff's department willingly to give his account of the night before. A night that started with drinking and ended with an exchange of angry texts before he claims he and Nicole got separated and he returned home alone. And Brian mentioned that he could see Doug's whole body language change the second he mentioned that Nicole was dead, which I think is potentially really telling and could go towards this reaction being real. So let me also say, he didn't break down crying, he doesn't respond back with a flurry of questions which you may expect. Like, you know, what do you mean? Where? How? He was almost like he really wasn't surprised. The detective in the room is going to look at those responses and formulate his or her own opinion. My impressions of it was genuine, a genuine response of the news that he had just gotten. I catch myself oftentimes, you know, you learn that people handle shock differently and people handle bad news differently. So I try not to put too much stock into people's initial reaction just because I feel like through the course of my career, it's always different. Like, some people think they're supposed to like start bawling and screaming and crying and banging on the walls. You know, and other people are just kind of like just in shock and they don't know how to react to it. So while he didn't break down, Doug didn't get defensive either. I thought it was appropriate and at the time there was nothing really that stood out to me that it was like, oh, this guy really doesn't seem to care. In fact, Doug was cooperating with police, answering all of their questions and even offering them full access to his phone. We're able to go through his phone, do a phone extraction, to go through text messages, communications. Because obviously that was important to try and help us with our timeline and to help us see the nature of their relationship. Like, with their having problems, what was the background? He acknowledged that, you know, there were some disagreements, some fights like any boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife is going to have. He kind of downplayed the the significance or the the severity of the argument that night and just kind of chalked it up as just kind of like she was drunk and that just kind of how she gets. But there was one text in particular that really caught detectives attention because it seemed to imply that there may have been a history of abuse in their relationship. There was some stuff in a text messages that would indicate that there may have been some abuse going on or some mental control and that she was concerned about his infidelity and the fact that he was, you know, likely cheating on her and that's kind of what caused this argument this night. Infidelity, control, potential abuse, that definitely leans towards circumstantial evidence against a potential murder suspect. But the fact remained that he appeared to be otherwise honest and cooperative which left detectives kind of scratching their heads. Initially a lot of the facts he was giving us were checking out. So it seemed as if he was being truthful. He was being extremely cooperative, allowing us into his house, then coming down here on his own, providing us with his phone, providing us with a DNA sample. So there was a lot of things saying, yeah, this this guy is completely cooperative, no concerns. But then, you know, you back up to some of the other factors like, why did it take so long to call? You didn't really seem to care too much to choose missing that night. There were these issues that we had seen in your phone with some allegations of abuse in the past. There was clearly a fight that night. And those seemingly minor little details, they started to add up and taken together. They started to look a lot like circumstantial evidence that Doug may have had something to do with Nicole's murder. And then also statistically speaking, what does it tell you when someone is murdered? It's someone close to them, an intimate partner. The severity and the types of these injuries would lead you to believe that this was, you know, not some random act that this was anger, that this was something that was taken out on her. You know, obviously as detectives we follow the evidence and follow what we have. And at that point, what we had was a dead body and a boyfriend that delayed calling the sin and has a history of physical abuse to her allegedly, you factor in those things. And yeah, I mean, that's that's where everything is pointing. A deep dive into Doug's criminal background did not do him any favors. So in our records management system, there were a few documented incidences of alleged abuse between him and previous girlfriends. And then also through the course of some of our interviews, we had former girlfriends, former associates that were reporting that there were allegations of violence, which only served to add credibility to Nicole's texts the night she was killed that implied Doug had been abusive in the past. But was he capable of that kind of extreme violence displayed in her fatal assault? It was a question detectives posed to Nicole's family because if anyone was expected to know if she had ever been in any physical danger, it would likely have been her sister with whom she was really close. We had contact with the family right away. We were put into contact with them through Doug. We were communicating with them and getting statements from them and kind of trying to figure out, you know, how was Nicole relaying how she felt about the relationship back to her family. The family confirmed that Nicole and Doug had some issues in their relationship and arguments were not uncommon. But at no point did they suspect she had been in physical danger from him. I mean, everything wasn't perfect. She wasn't necessarily happy all the time. She did feel like she was being isolated and kind of removed from the normal life that she had. I think there were some concerns because she just was isolated and not spending as much time with family, not communicating as much with family. But again, that could be for a lot of different reasons. So there's still a lot of uncertainty about what Doug was capable of. So investigators switched focus to trying to verify his alibi for the night of the murder. Doug provided names of some of their friends that he said could vouch for his whereabouts and his timeline of events, a night that started at a bar called the watering hole. We were able to verify that they were there and then that people left. That was about it. And that Doug's vehicle was in fact like left at that watering hole all night, which was important because we were able to rule that out as a vehicle that would have been associated with this crime at all. While Doug stayed with friends at the watering hole, video cameras captured Nicole entering another bar down the street with a group of friends, details that so far matched with Doug's story. And then the video from the Sardine can, which was the second bar that they had went to, proved beneficial in a lot of ways because we were able to show her movements, her behaviors throughout the night. You know, for a while there, she was dancing, she was fun, she was interacting with people, and then when they move to the outside portion of the bar, you can actually see her on her phone, which were then able to show as when she was trying to reach out to Doug, try to get in contact with him, and he was not responding to her. Video of Nicole on her phone matches up with the timestamps and texts sent to Doug's phone, text demanding that he join her even accusing him of being unfaithful. The cameras weren't the best so you couldn't see exactly what they were typing, but it matched up what their story was. So this was around 11.30 pm, and in the video, Nicole does look visibly upset, which goes a pretty long way establishing that she and Doug were involved in what appeared to be an escalating argument. Based on that video, she looked so upset that she eventually stormed out of the bar, followed shortly after by a friend of hers, named Aaron. She got upset, she got up, she walked out, and then kind of walked to the west away from the bar outside of Cameroon, and then that's Aaron is seeing kind of walking after her and then coming back a short period of time later. Nicole's friend said that he tried to convince her to come back or get a taxi home, but that she refused, and he then went on to report that that was the last time he saw her. Now this all happened on the sidewalk outside of the camera's view, so police were not going to just take Aaron's word for it, but it turned out that several witnesses and the cameras in the bar could vouch for the fact that he returned just a few minutes later, and then rejoined his friends. And we have them on video then getting into an Uber or a taxi after the fact. They actually went to another bar closer to their house and had more drinks, and we were able to verify that. So he was ruled out right away. The cameras at the Sardine can were also able to verify another part of Doug's story, because video showed him and his friend Greg arriving at the bar around 1215 and then staying until after 2 a.m. So many of you may be thinking this and I'm going to ask a review on Asiga. Didn't that still leave a window between when Nicole left the bar and when Doug arrived where both of their locations were unaccounted for it now? Was that enough time to kill Nicole, dump her body and return back to the bar like nothing happened? What do you think? Maybe, except there's this video footage showing that his car never left the parking lot. So if he did assault Nicole in that small window, he would have needed help, at least it seems that way. So thinking about this, the location where Nicole was killed and where her body was left would have to be, you know, in a distance wise, pretty close by. Obviously, one of the things you want to do is try and identify your crime scenes. We knew we had where the body was located. We knew we had where the clothing was located. We treated the house as a crime scene just because that's her residence. Investigators obtained a warrant to search Doug and Nicole's home. So far, there had been no indications that Nicole had ever made it back to the house. But their search did uncover some pretty startling pieces of potential evidence. There's initial search warrant was done at his house where there were some things found that were of interest, not necessarily glaring, but when you add everything together with what we had. So there was like, what appeared to be drag marks of blood in the garage on the floor and the coals of vehicles in the garage inside her vehicle. There was what appeared to be blood drops in the back seat on the backrest and then in the rear hatch area. There was some bloody like paper towels or cleanixes in one of the bathrooms. There was appear to be maybe dried blood or some staining on the floor of the master bedroom. And then there was a shoes in the garage that had a similar hearing bone pattern on the bottom of them that we had observed on Nicole's back. So those are the initial things that we saw at the house. It was not definitive, but if the blood evidence turned out to be Nicole's, it could be proof that the assault had at least started right there at the couple's home. Which also means there might have been witnesses. So detectives started knocking on doors throughout the neighborhood. No, no one heard anything. We canvas. It's a very, very nice subdivision, not a lot of traffic, not a lot going on. So there would be the likelihood that someone would hear something if it was outside. But then one of their neighbors approached detectives saying that he had found something that seemed a little weird. The neighbor across the street kind of kitty corner obviously knew what was going on. Saw the police presence out there, saw the tape. Later on in that day, after we had left, he was cutting his grass and located what he thought was just like an animal kill or something. So he doesn't think anything over that first until he sees some more blood in his grass. He runs over what he describes as like a phone cable or a charging cable. And remember, Nicole had been strangled using some type of ligature. Could this cable have been the murder weapon? And shortly after, the neighbor pointed out an even more disturbing discovery, something he at first mistook for a road kill, a clump of hair and a pool of blood on the concrete curb in front of his house. Pull these were quick to confirm it was human. The theory at that point was that clearly she made it home somehow. And then there was some sort of disturbance or argument or something in the house that then worked its way outside, a kind of envisioned it being they get into this argument. Doug's potentially being abusive to her. She tries running away. He tracks her down across the street and then that's where this incident happens. And then obviously he would have to use a vehicle to transport the body. So her car is right there in the garage, that vehicle would have been used and then drive back home. That was the operating theory at that time. Detectives believe they had found where the murder had taken place. Right in front of the house, Nicole shared with their prime suspect. Not only that, but the timing of it seemed to fit as well. So this is what really, really, really helped us in the case and locked the case down. So we had two joggers in the neighborhood that had come forward and said yeah, we wrote for a run that morning, around 5, 5, 30. And we remember having to jump over this like puddle of blood or puddle of red substance in the road. So now we have a really good timeline of, okay, Doug at home, maybe they're left at like, let's say three o'clock. These guys are out jogging at like five something. So now we're able to narrow that timeline all the way down to like, okay, something happened between let's say three and five. A short time later, police received a call from another neighbor who said her son was driving the same road on the night of the murder. And lo and behold, he's driving home and a) he passes the joggers and b) if you slow the video down and you look real close, you can see the blood and you can see the discoloration of the concrete in that same area that we were reported to. And that locks our timeline and even better. It seemed to answer one of the major questions surrounding Nicole's murder. Did she ever make it home after she was last seen leaving the bar? Now we have verification based on DNA and blood evidence and hair that yes, she did make it home and it was at this time approximately. A time where Doug had already admitted he was also home. An argument, a history of abuse, and now blood evidence at the shared home of the victim and the prime suspect. Detectives decided it was enough to make an arrest. But what'd it be enough to prove the truth behind Nicole's brutal murder? In Brown County, Wisconsin, detectives had collected a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence in the murder of Nicole Vanderhiden that they believed pointed to one thing that she had been killed by her live and boyfriend, Doug. So after that second scene was called in and we started doing that processing, it was at that point that I made the determination at the time with my supervisor that we had a problem cause to make an arrest on Doug. My thought process on it was as well like this is going to be the chance to try and get him to get a confession or to try and provide information like tactically speaking this is going to be our chance. Doug was arrested without incident but not without an unusual reaction. The reaction wasn't what you'd think if you're innocent and you're being handcuffed and told that you murdered your girlfriend. According to Brian, Doug didn't act shocked or angry. He appeared to be more resigned as if he'd been expecting the police to show up at his door any minute. And this just kind of added to that feeling that they had the right guy. So he was arrested, transported to the jail. During the transport to the jail, I had kept the recording device. and I kept replaying him and I had how he kept saying he really wished he could help us, but he couldn't. He was saying that. I'm like, what does that mean? Like, does that mean you can't because your attorney told you to or is it you can't because you just don't know? And up to this point, Doug had been cooperative with investigators. But now that he was under arrest, he was exercising his right to no longer speak to police without his attorney present. With Nicole's suspected killer in custody, Brian shared the news of Doug arrest with Nicole's family. They were in shock. I mean, a lot of them knew that there was problems in their relationship and knew that everything wasn't going perfectly. But obviously, no one envisioned that this was going to lead to a violent death of their daughter or sister loved one. So you would think this resolution would come as a big relief for the tectops and for the family. But there was only one problem. The evidence against Doug was not totally adding up. Shortly after the arrest of Doug, we started getting information bad. None of it was corroborating our thought that it was Doug. First, onboard GPS data obtained from Nicole's car showed that it hadn't been used at all on the night of her death and it proved that that car didn't move the whole weekend. So if Doug's car was still at the bar and Nicole's car wasn't used to transport her body, how did her body get to the farm? And that's a pretty important question. Well, one possibility could be that Doug had help, perhaps from his friend who had driven him home from the bar after their night of drinking. We were very, very, very focused in on Greg because Greg and Doug were very tight and Greg was obviously the last person that we knew that was with Doug. We set up a meeting at a park with him and one of our detectives who had kind of formed a good relationship with him and we wired up our detective and we were really thinking that we may be able to get him to admit to knowing something or flipping up on the story that they had come up with or slipping up on their timeline, anything. But we were never able to do that and we pressed Greg really hard. But Greg was adamant that neither he nor his friend Doug were involved in Nicole's murder, insisting that when Nicole left the water call was the last time either of them had seen her alive. And in fact, even the babysitter would vouch for the fact that the two main came back together and without Nicole. She was there when Doug and Greg got home from the bar, a short time later, babysitter left, never reported seeing Nicole. Okay, but what about all the blood evidence found at Doug and Nicole's home? Well, it turned out that the blood on the garage floor, it wasn't human at all. It likely came from a wild turkey that Doug had butchered in the garage. And then the biggest thing for me was just the lack of DNA on her and on any of the other items we had like the cord. There was no DNA of Doug's at all. There was a small amount of touch DNA that was located on one of her breast areas that was consistent with Doug's but that was likely their child's from breastfeeding because obviously the male DNA would be consistent. And considering the way Nicole was assaulted, the lack of Doug's DNA on her body was pretty compelling evidence that he was not the one who killed her. But there was also some convincing digital evidence as well. One of the issues that we had seen once we kind of got to the point where you're trying to follow the evidence, you're trying to build a case was we recognized that he was wearing this Fitbit device or some sort of tracking device on his wrist at the time that our detective went out there and spoke with him. Detectives knew that if they could secure the data from Doug's Fitbit there might be a good chance that they could track his movements on the night Nicole was killed. So there's a couple different ways that we went about getting the data and getting the information off of the device. You have the device itself that you can write a warrant for to get the extraction off of and then you also have the backup of that which would be where this data is going which would be an app or an application that someone would have on their phone which historically tracks that stuff. So we were able to go with subpoenas and search warrant search warrant for the device and then subpoena for the records from the application itself. The data they retrieved not only matched Doug's version of the night it showed that he was actually sleeping between 2.45 a.m. when he arrived at home and 6.30 a.m. walking only 12 steps in those hours when he got up to feed their baby and that is compelling digital evidence. Considering police had narrowed down the time of the murder to between 3.5 a.m. this new information ruled out the possibility that he could have killed Nicole dumped her body and then returned home during that window. So given this new evidence, Doug was released from custody and detectives had to admit they were wrong all along. Never an easy thing to do for investigators. And that's one of the tough parts about these cases. If you get a case that draws a lot of media attention and draws a lot of like urgency like hey we've got this person that was brutally murdered in our community and this doesn't happen. So there was a lot of pressure to get some answers to this. But there was still a reason to be hopeful because there was still unknown male DNA that was found on both Nicole's body and her clothing. The only consistent we kept getting back was this unknown why profile that the crime lab was like we don't have enough to enter this into codeus. All we have is we can tell you it's why so to mail and be it's not Doug. So start getting us other samples. Then it's like okay who all had contact with her that night. So we went back through all the surveillance video from Sardine Cam. We went back through all the contacts the people that she knew. We went back to her ex-husband. We went back to like some guy she had a shot with at the bar that was like a friend and took all sorts of DNA samples at that time. And that now is just a matter of who's this unknown DNA. And the biggest question is how did she get back to the house. Now I could tell you from experience that collecting DNA and creating viable profiles to compare to possible suspects is not as easy as it sounds and can take some time. And one thing that is often overlooked is having a really solid relationship with the lab. The guy at the crime was just amazing. Like he was so invested in this case and I was in contact with him all the time. Just talking through everything that we had. Just trying to get his input on what we should send in. And that lab worked tirelessly testing everything from Nicole's discarded clothing to her recovered purse to her wallet. But only partial samples of touch DNA were recovered. Not enough to get a viable match with any known profile from Kodas. But finally in August of 2016 they got a hit. And sure enough they had enough touch DNA for one of the socks to enter into Kodas. So then it was I think like the next day that we actually got the official notification with this guy George Birch from the state of Virginia. George Birch had a criminal record at his DNA was in the known offenders DNA database. But his connection to Nicole or even Wisconsin that was still unknown. We had saw that he had quite a lengthy criminal history from the East Coast. There was a homicide case from like 98 I believe it was in the state of Virginia where he was ultimately acquitted. So the first thing I did was plug his name in and see if like hopefully have a contact with him recently. And sure enough Green Bay Police Department had had a contact with him just after this homicide. It was like in June and it was a motor vehicle hit and run crash that they investigated where he was a suspect. And in the course of the investigation into that hit and run Birch had actually surrendered his phone to try and prove he wasn't involved a decision that would prove to pay dividends for Brian's homicide investigation. So he does a consent phone download and then within that phone download we obviously had his phone number then we also found his Gmail address that was associated to that phone and that was the key right there. Investigators now had a record of Birch's entire internet search history for the days immediately surrounding Nicole's murder. So the search history was basically limited to pornography and this case and the rest of Doug and the follow-up of the investigation. All the news stories like the local news channels of all the coverage he was googling like you know Doug Gucci, Nicole Vanderhide, Murderside, homicide, following the developments of that and the porn. That was it. Not only that but detectives were able to use his phone records to pinpoint his movements as well. Those records place Birch on the night of the murder at a bar called Richard Cranium which is just down the road from the Sardine Karen where Nicole was last seen. But even more disturbing, the data then put him outside Nicole and Doug's house from about 3am until 315. Then at the farm where Nicole's body was found just before 4am and then at the spot where her clothing was later recovered about 405. Now at this point there was a little doubt that this had to be their guy and given his violent history and loose ties to Wisconsin, they knew they had to get him in custody as soon as possible. We had gotten information of where he was working. He was working for a guy on the side kind of doing plastering and drywall. We knew who he was living with. We knew who was picking him up. We sat on it for a while. We had a couple days just to see his pattern of movement. So the plan was to set up on the house early in the morning and get them on a traffic stop a short distance away from the house after he left. That plan hit a snag when Birch suddenly changes routine on the day of the plan to rest and he left his residence before dawn, but Brian and his team were ready. So we had a scramble everyone, but he was pulled over traffic stop, taken into custody, no incident at all. On September 7th, 2016, the Musclebound Birch who stood six foot seven and covered in tattoos was brought in for questioning and by all accounts he was playing it very cool. Super polite, not aggressive, no signs of any issue. I mean, luckily because he powered over to copy me. Now as you'll recall, this wasn't Birch's first time being a defendant in a murder case. Now that case resulted in an acquittal, but it did make clear he had familiarity with the system. And when arrested for Nicole's homicide, he exercised his rights and refused to answer any questions, but the evidence against him from his DNA found on Nicole's sock to the digital evidence putting him at the crime scene, while that was overwhelming. Birch was arrested in charge with first degree intentional homicide. His trial would begin on February 19th, 2018, a trial in which prosecutors anticipated he would attempt to prove his innocence by trying to prove that Doug was the actual killer. And in Wisconsin, that's more often than not done by what's called like the Denny defense. It's based on a case state V. Denny, which just basically means that a defendant is allowed to introduce evidence of a third party having committed the crime, but to use that defense will the defendant has to demonstrate some sort of legitimate connection between the third party and the crime, so you're basically not allowed to just make irrelevant accusations with nothing behind it. So the judge basically said, yeah, okay, you can you can do the Denny defense, you can point the finger back at Doug, but you need to have evidence in order to do that. So the only way for him to do that was his testimony, because that's the only evidence that he had that that's what happened. So he was basically forced to take the stand if they were to allow that Denny defense. So by pointing the finger at Doug, the defense was attempting to use brown county detectives own work against them, circumstantial evidence that at one time they thought was enough to have Doug arrested. The trial was unique because you shouldn't have to, but we did, we had to basically prove Doug's innocence and prove his guilt at the same time. We did a good job all around and we did a good job against Doug, so we knew that they're gonna use this stuff against us, but every single thing that we had thought we had on Doug was explained. On the stand, Birch claimed that he did, in fact, meet Nicole, and after some type of flirting, he had offered her a ride home. And on that ride, he claimed it ended in a consensual sexual encounter in the front seat of his car. But then according to Birch, they were suddenly and violently interrupted when somebody approached the car and hid him on the head of the gun, knocked him unconscious, and then when he woke up, he claimed that he was forced at gunpoint to help Doug transport and dispose of Nicole's body. He wasn't nervous, he was adamant, and I mean, he is clearly a pathological liar that had himself convinced that this is what happened, and I'm gonna tell my story and it is what it is. But in the end, the jury just didn't buy, especially when the prosecution laid out exactly how they believed the events on the night of May 20th, 2016, really went down. Clearly Nicole was at the Sardine can with some friends to walk off into the night as I call it. At some point, she ended up at a bar called Richard Craniums. Her phone was dead, she did not have the ability to call anyone or text anyone. George Birch was a known regular at Richard Craniums. Everyone at the bar knew him, they knew that he hung out there, they also knew that he liked his women, that he was a smooth talker. He met her somehow, whether it's inside or outside, offered her a ride home and gave her that ride home. A few minutes later, Birch pulled up in front of Nicole's house where he must have made unwanted sexual advances, advances that quickly turned violent. She fought back, he didn't like that, and he took it to the extreme, sexually assaulted her, and she tried getting away, she's a fighter, everyone that we talked to said that she's would never be one to shy away from somebody she would fight for herself. Broken fingernails indicated that Nicole fought for her life, but ultimately she was overpowered. It escalated when went outside the vehicle, at which point he curbed stomped her head into the side of the road and murdered her. Loaded her up into his truck and drove her to where her body was found, and then drove off and discarded the clothes on the highway on his way home. Birch's Google dashboard data placed him near every key location. The bar, Nicole's home, the field where her body was dumped, and this site where her clothing had been discarded and then recovered. There's no indication at all that Nicole knew George or that there's any interaction between them at all before this. A night of partying with friends and then an argument with her boyfriend, then a phone gun dead had led Nicole being alone and vulnerable, and a man with a violent pass took the opportunity to prey on her and do the unthinkable. This is one of those cases of don't get in the car with strangers. We say it a million times, and especially with someone that may be intoxicated, a female in particular, you know, getting into a vehicle with someone you don't know and not making a notification to anyone that you are going with this person. It happens very rarely, thankfully, but it's another reminder of just making sure that people know where you're at. George Birch was ultimately found guilty of first degree intentional homicide on March 1, of 2018, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Doug Dietree no longer lives in Bellevue since the murder investigation that almost cost him his freedom. I got asked a few times, you feel bad, if you had to do all over again, just doing any different, and that's a tough question, because clearly, you know, you feel bad about a guy sitting in jail for two weeks or 10 days, or whatever it was, but at the end of the day, the system worked. So what really stays with me is how many different directions this early investigation could have gone, how easy it would have been to lock onto a story, a simple theory, and never let that go. Late night, people drinking an argument, a boyfriend, all the usual ingredients that can push an investigation in a certain direction, if you're really not that careful. But this case reinforces the fact why as an investigator, you have to slow things down, you have to listen, document, and then check what people are saying against what the actual evidence shows. And in this case, the evidence didn't come from one dramatic moment. It came from all the quiet stuff, phones, movement, timing, little details that themselves don't have opinions. It is also a reminder about those early decisions and why they matter, who shows up, what questions are asked, and whether you preserve those first conversations, that could change everything. Because once a narrative sets in, it's really hard to unwind, and the truth doesn't care what felt right in the moment. It only cares as Anisega has always said, is what can be proven. There's a lot to unpack in this case. Nicole lost her life on a night that should have been full of fun in a moment to relax in those difficult, exhausting early days of parenting. Her live and boyfriend and father of her infant went to jail because he seemed to fit the part and there were multiple circumstances that seemed to lead down that path. Police ultimately realized their conclusions had been wrong. For Doug or anyone, even a day accused for someone who is innocent is one too many. But, to the credit of investigators and the system here, they realized the truth and then quickly set out to write the wrong. Doug was released undoubtedly scarred by the accusations, but in the end here, Nicole did receive justice. The man who brutally attacked her and then murdered her was identified, charged and convicted. The criminal justice system is a system run by people, and you know I'm a firm believer that they usually get it right, but yes, they do sometimes get it wrong. The big dividing line for me is that if they get it wrong and don't care, or if they set out for a frame or engage in some sort of purposeful bad policing, and that in no way seemed to be what happened here. And the transparency Brian and his team demonstrated by writing the wrong as soon as they realized it, and even talking about it here, that says a lot to me. But let's leave off on Nicole, the young woman, the teacher, the mom to three. Those three who now live forever without her, murder takes a life and forever impacts and sometimes even destroys many more. We hope Nicole's children have found solace in each other. and in the memory of their mom and the knowledge of how much she loved them, that nothing and no one can ever take away. Tune in next week for another new episode of Homicide 360. Homicide 360 is created and produced by 4SETI Media and Wineburger Media. Supervising producer is Walker LeMonde, managing editor is Kate Mack, Sabrina Saraje, is production manager, edited by Ali Sierwa and Phil Jean Grande, original theme music by Train Anderson. This episode was researched by Jessica Lauren.