15. Defeated

Hello, hi there, my name is Nikki. I'm the daughter of a murdered woman. Welcome back to another episode of Poppy Killed Mommy, what's become my personal diary or seeking justice and accountability on my mother's 1993 domestic violence homicide. This is the episode I can't seem to finish. I have spent gosh 10 days trying to write this episode on what has happened in the last 30 days and I just can't seem to finish it. So I am in here slightly unscripted. It is 925 on Monday, March 9th and I'm going to treat this like a vlog. If you follow me on TikTok, then you already know that mostly every day I start a vlog before I go to work and I talk to the camera and I tell you what I'm doing and what's going on. I'm literally how I'm going to treat this episode. Otherwise, I am never going to get through it. It's been torturous. I figured I can read you the first couple pages that I have written and then I'll literally like just pick up candidly where I left off and tell you what the fuck has happened. So since I talked to you last, remember we were talking a bunch about Stephanie Harlow in her YouTube channel. So I am so happy to announce that that has dropped if you don't know that already. In early February, we're going to start my scripted remarks now. So here we go. In early February, Stephanie Harlow turned her attention to the heart of my mother's murder, the interrogations of Russell Peterson. On February 11th, 2026, Stephanie released part one of a two hour long analysis that left no stone unturn. And then just two days later, she dropped part two, a staggering two and a half hour deep dive that expanded on everything from the first part, exploring evidence timelines and the psychological patterns in painstaking detail. In total, Stephanie delivered four and a half hours of thorough, uncompromising examination. And in that time, she covered nearly everything anyone could one know about my mother's case and then some listening to it was overwhelming. But in a way, it was also necessary. It felt like watching someone finally shine a light into the darkest corners of a story that has haunted my life since I was 10 years old. My dad, someone who's usually very hard to get involved in things like this actually managed to watch both parts of Stephanie special. And one thing that actually surprised me was how much of the audio Stephanie actually included. And last I checked, which was right now, over 172,000 people have already heard part one and heard his lies for themselves. As I went through the comments, I was honestly shocked. I mean, I wasn't shocked, but then I was shocked by the amount of comments that were the same. And they were over and over again, people were saying the same things. They couldn't stand his voice. They could hear the lies. And they were disturbed by the way the police handled things and by the interview with my sister. Thousands of comments poured in. Last I checked, there was over a thousand comments on each video. So it's almost 3,000 comments because it's like 1.3, 1.0 something. So we're just going to round up. That's like 3,000 comments and reading them was shocking in the best way. The overwhelming majority of listeners feel exactly the same way my family has felt all these years. And for a moment, it gave me a lot of hope. And then it faded. Everything always fades. Everything's very short lived. I had requested an updated case file back in November of 2025. But I did not receive what they are calling the complete file until February 17. So we're up to February 17 in the timeline. And included in that case file for the first time where the crime scene photos. So that's what we're going to touch on right now. I had been told that my mother's body would be redacted in the images. And at first, the idea upset me like I was thinking, why are you taking that for me? She's my mom. If I want to see it, if I finally waited 32 years and have the balls to look, I want to see it. And then they took that for me. I was actually very grateful. I felt unexpectedly grateful. And what I imagined like a solid black shape covering her was not what appeared at all. Instead, there were these colors almost psychedelic, like a tie dye blur. It's difficult to describe and it's difficult to understand what you're even supposed to be looking at. You can clearly see my mother's legs, though, beautiful, sculpted her feet almost pointed. And then suddenly everything dissolves into this abstract mass of color. It's deeply surreal. I was surprised by how limited the documentation was. They photographed the bedroom, the living room, and a few areas of the kitchen, but not the bathroom that feels like a missed opportunity. Years later, I also learned that the laundry room was never photographed either. And I asked this or I state this because I had heard through the grapevine that he had confessed to a XY that in the minutes before he called 911 and after he murdered my mom, he took a shower, started laundry and made phone calls. I mean, yes, I know that is hearsay. Yes, I have told the Sedona Police Department this. No, they never investigated it because it's hearsay. Seeing the house exactly as it was that night was actually shockingly unfamiliar to me. A lot of things I didn't remember like the color of the carpet being pooped brown and the great big beams and I didn't like I was looking at the house through like new eyes. But then there was so much that I remembered and it was so vivid. It was flashbacks and it was reality hitting me all at once. And yet despite studying the images, I don't see a story in them. Nothing connects and nothing explains. I keep looking, trying to understand what they're telling me, but I'm searching for a story that doesn't exist. We received the data file dump about 10 days before the long awaited meeting with the Yavapai County's attorney's office. A meeting I had been waiting months for. I had been pressuring the county attorney since August of 2025 after the podcast launched and began charting. I got the confidence and I started emailing them consistently. Around the same time, it appears that the Yavapai County attorney requested an additional investigation in the Sedona Police Department complied and they followed through with what they described as further investigative steps. From what I can tell, they waited until this investigation or so called investigation was complete before they finally agreed to meet with me. On December 31st, I received a call confirming that they would move forward the meeting. I wanted to schedule it as quickly as possible because I had a strong feeling that the outcome would not be resolution, but rather explanation or excuses. My aunt, however, wanted to wait until the last possible moment to give us time to prepare. The date ended up being February 27th and that's where we are in the timeline. I had requested the case file and my aunt had 10 days to review it. I prepared a list of questions and that morning, my aunt and my cousin picked me up at 11 a.m. I felt physically ill. I remember sitting in the studio and feeling like really sick. I wasn't sure if it was the anxiety or the coffee or the mixture of two, but I remember feeling sick to my stomach and not wanting to do anything, especially this because I fully anticipated how upset this meeting would make me. My aunt and my cousin picked me up and we drove to Yavapai County in Prescott. The meeting with the county attorney was scheduled for 130 p.m. and that's literally the end of my prepared remarks. It took what? 10 minutes to read you that? That as far as I've gotten in 10 days of trying to write this because I'm just, I get so frustrated at this part of the story that I cannot articulate in words. I cannot put it down in words. Right now, I get so mad, I'm yelling, I'm so frustrated, so I figured I would just come in here and off the cuff tell you, tell you about this meeting. My aunt has been knocking on the door of the Yavapai County attorney's office for decades. They've ignored her or pushed her off to the Sedona Police Department for decades and me walking into this case and this fight four or five years ago now, I'm losing track. I just knew that media pressure was the only thing I could do in order to apply pressure through the Yavapai County attorney to make them look at my mom's case again, to make them take it serious. So to give them credit, they did look at the case file. Okay. The supplement reports, so we got the updated case file and the supplement report does state that they investigated the 136 phone call, which comes back to somebody that wasn't Russell Peterson's father. I mean, that's just ridiculous in itself. It clearly states in the case file that that is the point of contact for that man, but so that was a dead end until I have phone books that can prove that that was the number that Russell Peterson had in 1993. So if you have a Phoenix phone book from 1993, by all means send that my way. Something else they did examine, which actually took until December 8 or something, they examined the weapon. They actually pulled it out of evidence. They examined it. They looked at it to see if it was a double or a single action. Why, since they were pulling it out of evidence, couldn't they push it through and maybe dust it for prints or maybe run it through? I don't know, advances in ballistics technology in the last 30 years has been astronomical. What they couldn't find, you know, fingerprints were inconclusive. I think that was the reason why they were canceling more whatever. Why can't they do more? I don't know, but they examined it. They pulled it out. They looked at it. They put it back. That's pretty much where it ends. They're, they're, they're, they're investigating, their investigation ends in December. They just don't, they don't have anything else. They say that they can go on. So my aunt and my sister, we are, excuse me. So my aunt and my cousin and I, we all walk in there and we are sitting with the deputy chief Bill Hughes and two other people's. I don't know. They're an investigator and I don't know. I don't know. I don't know who I was sitting with. So this is how frazzled I get when normally I would have all of this information written down and be able to walk you through it cohesively. I get so flustered at this point of the story and I'm jumping around. So we walk in there. Let's just start there and he calm down. We walk in there. We sit down. They introduce themselves. We sit down and I can see we're on camera and a big old wall is a great big TV screen. There we are. And I'm like, Oh, great. I'm glad they're documenting this. I wish I could have a copy of this. Anyway, I let my aunt talk because you could see how upset I get and it's really not beneficial for me to get this emotional, right? They don't want to deal with emotional. They want transactional. So my aunt, she had already, and this is what the part of the story to that I had no idea until just recently that my aunt had actually gotten the county attorney on Dennis McGrane and this guy, this cheap deputy county attorney guy Bill Hughes on the horn in like a conference call in 2023. So she got their attention in 2023. She asked for them to look at certain areas and that she would back off on calling the zone of police department, the Avified County Attorney if they looked into it. She never heard back from these people. I didn't know that until recently. So I was really, since she had already communicated with these people in the room, I honestly didn't think it was beneficial for me to speak. So I let my aunt facilitate this meeting. And she went in pleading our case and basically the second that the cheap deputy county attorney, we were still, we had just sat down actually. We weren't standing. We had just sat down. And that we, it was a moment of silence in my aunt like addresses the fact that we're nervous. You know, nervous. And then we're just sitting there. My aunt's gathering her words. And the county attorney says, how can we help you today? I knew from right then that the meeting was over before it started. They had no interest in moving forward. This was just a meeting to appease the family. They didn't even have any excuses. I fully expected excuses. 10 minutes into the meeting, they were done with their explanations and my aunt just kept trying to plead our case. And every time she would state something about the original investigation or the lack of the original investigation, he would point it back at, you know, that's a question for the Sedona Police Department. You know, the Sedona Police Department doesn't work for us or we don't work for the Sedona Police Department. It was always rounded back to the Sedona Police Department. And when we had a meeting with the Sedona Police Department in 2023, every time we were talking with them, the Sedona Police Department kept pointing it back at, well, it's the Yavupai County attorney. Well, we don't make charging decisions. It's the Yavupai County attorney. And it's just a joke how each organization points the fingers back at each other. So 10 minutes into the meeting, if there were just, it was just, we're going in circles. He's saying the same thing. My aunt's trying to, you know, get them to have a little compassion. And it's just going nowhere. And finally, I said, I've heard what I've needed to hear. They don't care. They don't plan on moving forward. And finally, my aunt goes, she looks at each one of them and she goes, what would you do if this was your daughter, your mother, your sister? And the county attorney said, we, you would need a confrontation call or a confession. We're back to the confession again. They want the family to be the investigators. They want this case to solve itself. It's just, it's ridiculous that it's gotten back to this. It's honestly, it's made me feel extremely defeated, which is why I can't seem to write this episode. I feel like everything I've worked for for the last four years, the media pressure getting to where we are today had absolutely zero effect. Zero. So now I'm starting over and I don't even know what to do from here. I, I, okay, I do know that this man has confessed his crimes to other people, but it's hearsay. But what if we can get these people that he's confessed his crimes to, you know, to wear a wire, to do a confrontation call, you know, what if, what if there's so much pressure on him that at one point he just wants to to get it out in the open and confess his crimes, which is such an unlikely scenario, because both my dad and my aunt don't think he's ever going to confess. If he was going to confess by now, he probably would have but I know there's other people that he's confessed to. What can I do? What is there to be done? I can have him worried for the rest of his life that everybody he talks to has a wire. So that's where we're at there. What do we do? How do I move forward with this? I just have one word for you. And I think I'm going to title this episode defeated because that's how defeated I feel. One thing that I want to touch on before I move on, I've got a little list like of topics that I want to go over with you, but before I move on, I don't want to dwell on the Yavapai County meeting anymore. I told you what happened. They told us it's a confession or a confrontation call we're moving on, right? Going back to the crime scene photos from my home on the night of the murder. I just, I've got them pulled up right here and I want to tell you my honest thoughts on several of them. First of all, the house seems so much darker than what I remember. Dark wood, like dark carpet, like I was saying, and the first photos that come up are of the outside of where the gun shot from the living room has come through. So they've got markers on the front porch for the gun casing and they've got markers up by showing how big it is and how much of the wood it's taken out. And I'm seeing my front entryway and it's just, it's so surreal and I see the garage that was my bedroom. And then about 11 photos down is the first photo of the living room and it's a fucking, it is a blast from the past. My first impression, seeing the photos on the wall, seeing my mom's big framed posters, the plants that I remember that she loved to care for, they're everywhere. And then another thing I remember is the blanket on the couch. There was always a sheet on the couch. The big orange curtains, that big photo, the big picture window that my mom liked to look out. I don't remember the curtains being orange. They are an ugly orange. And it's just so 80s still because it's 1993. The 90s really hadn't hit. My mom's decor is still so 80s. And there's the telescope by the front door that my mom had gotten me the Christmas before because I love space and astronomy. And the TV is still on. The TV is on where she had been watching whatever channel she had been watching when he came home. Literally in these crime scene photos, the candle that my mom lit on top of the TV is still burning. And this is the next morning. They're taking some of these photos the next morning because I see sunlight now through the big picture window. Gosh, okay. So another thing that just rocks me is behind the front door. There you walk in. There's like a little dividing wall. And behind that wall, I always remember this. It was the play nook. My mom had set up a play area and a reading area. There's a chair with a 101 Dalmatians blanket on it. I love that movie. And there is the pictures of us on the wall of my little sister and I are our class photos and our Easter photos. And right here, there's a shelf and you could see a farm and you could see all the books. And you could just see what care my mom took to create this little reading corner for her kids. And it just for me, it shows I'm sorry, I'm tearing up. For me, it just shows how much my mom loved her children. So those were the first photos that like really choked me up and we haven't even gotten to the ones of my dead mother yet. I laugh because I'm nervous and I'm upset and these these photos just rock me. So moving on, there are more photos of the little there's close-ups of the little reading nook here. And moving on from the reading nook, again, they go back to the front TV area. They're taking more photos. They're taking photos of the front door. I mean, they really photographed the living room and then we got to the first photo of the bedroom. Okay, so the first photo of the bedroom that I'm seeing is of the TV. And you see the mark in the wall. So that's obviously the bullet, the kill shot went through. Oh, wow. And then I looked down and there's my dead mom. Oh my god. The first thing I saw was the TV and then he looked down and you see them. The what I was talking about, it's just a blitz, just a colors. It's just a mix of colors. You could see her leg. That's the only thing that I can clearly see. But you could see where they put a couple evidence markers, 1213 and 14 where there's bullet casings and where the bullet kill shot went into the wall. So then it goes back out to the living room. Surprisingly, back out to the living room where they've got evidence marker 5, 6 and 7. Clearly they're marking the shell casings. It looks like they're marking the ash tray. I'm not really sure why there's an evidence marker next to the ash tray. I'm not really sure. There is an evidence marker 8 in the hallway hanging from photos. Wendy and I were like, what does that mean? Probably a blood smear right there. That's what that is. And then this next photo is taken from the hallway. and it's looking into the room and you can clearly see my dead mother, her foot, her arm, and they've blobbed out her torso with evidence marker 9/11/12/13/14, clearly visible. Evidence marker 9, I believe, is marking the gun in the holster that he staged and placed right next to her hand. Yeah, evidence marker, no, that's 11, evidence marker 11, okay, this is a clearer picture and it's from the side of the bed and you could see the gun in the holster and what's blobbed out so that would clearly be my mom's head. You could see evidence markers and shell casings, they're taking measurements and other guys got a measurement going here. This next picture, it's everything's off the wall in the bedroom and they have removed the drywall as evidence. These are hard to look at. Okay, so the next picture is the front room where they've removed the drywall for the gun. There's the bullet right there, but then it goes back to a picture right here where it's the kill shot and you could see the slug, it's a big slug in the wall. So this is the shot before they remove the drywall and you could see my you can literally see I might release this photo because you could see my mom's hairs attached to the slug that went through her neck and killed her and it's stuck in the wall next to a journey. My mom loved journey, a journey, a frame journey and next to photos of me and my mom that they redacted, they blurred our face. Oh god, this is so weird. Okay, so I might actually release that photo. I don't know why, but I feel like I should release some of these. Okay, next shot is the the gun. They're opening the gun and they're showing, I don't know, bullets in there, I guess. I don't know what I'm looking at. Oh gosh, the next photo is a close-up of my mom's head, which they've clearly, they've they've blobbed out, but I could see her hair, I could see the blood and her green night shirt, which is turned red. Okay, more photos of the bullet casing on the TV stand, another photo of the wall, another close-up of my mom's head. Just very redacted and I couldn't be more grateful. We're going back to the front door. They went back to the front of the house where they're showing us the outside of the home and it's kind of like they're going through all the photos again. Oh, okay, so now we've gotten to the kitchen, which I always wish they had taken photos of the laundry room too, but in the kitchen, evidence marker 18 right here is of the stove and there's like a mat at the stove and they put evidence marker 18 there and Wendy and I are like, what is that? And blowing it up, it's because there's blood on the kitchen mat. He was running around the kitchen and blood was getting everywhere, so they'd put evidence markers. So there's an evidence marker 17 at the sink. And this picture really gets me. This is the bar counter in the kitchen. Evidence marker 15 is marking a blood smear. And why this picture gets to me is because on the bar counter, you can clearly see like it's a kid's flag canvas, like something that you would color. It's white, but it has, you know, a design on it kind of looks like a circle sun and you could see my crayons and my markers, well, mine are my sisters and you could see that we had been coloring on that either that night or days before. And my mom was really in, I remember this vividly, my mom was so into arts and crafts and doing like hands-on stuff like this with us. There was always some kind of craft. And you could see that this was the craft of that night. It's just so heartbreaking to see the evidence that my mom loved and cared for her kids and she would never pick up a gun and try anything that Russell Bennett Peterson said that she tried with her children in the home. Anyway, that that is evidence marker 15 if I hadn't already told you that. And the next photo is a close-up of the blood smear and of our little children's flag and you could see our coloring. And these might be pictures that I really is just to show you how much my mom cared about her kids and was so hands-on with her children. And more photos were scrolling through more photos of the blood smear, blood smear. Um, just more photos of the kitchen. Oh, we're getting to my mom again. Okay, so it looks like they flipped over her body now. I don't know. It's a different angle of her, but it's her upper torso. They've only blurred out her head so I can clearly see her chest. I could see all the blood. It's quite distressing. I'm just going to scroll through these. Okay, and this is the next photo that really upsets me. I don't know why, but for some reason this is the photo that touches home the most. Um, they have now flipped her body over where she is now on her chest. I honestly don't know if this is a, it has to be because they photograph the scene. So this is, they're flipping her over and you can see like blood pulling in her legs. You can, I think what really upsets me is that um, you can see her red panties and her tushy. What really upsets me is why didn't they pull down her night shirt? I don't know why are they photographing her this way. It feels so dehumanizing. I don't like it. Maybe it's, it's probably, it's for a reason. I know, but as a family member looking at your mother in this position in such a dehumanizing way where they could, you know, clearly pull her night shirt over her, her rear and um, give her some dignity and so you don't see her red panties. I think that's the photo that really pisses me off the most probably because oh, here's another one close up of all the blood hammering just. That's a lot of blood, guys, um, by her head. A lot of blood. Another one of a close up of my mom hurt. They didn't redact her arm so I can see her arm and all the blood. So this would be her right hand. Wow, there's a lot of blood on her right hand. So that must mean that she put her hand up. So another one of her on the ground, a lot of evidence markers, another one of the wall. Oh, here they took, um, they actually took a photo of the outside to the inside of the bathroom. Wow, there was carpet in the bathroom. Oh, how horrifying. Oh wow, and on the wall right here, you can see my artwork and the ribbons that I had won. Another one of my mom's dead redacted body and here's another one of her legs. Um, I don't know what I'm looking at here that says a photo of a wall and indentation in a wall. I guess that's by, I don't know what that is. Actually, it's a great question. Another one of her on the ground. Oh, wow, they've got a lot of, this is before they put evidence markers down. A lot of photos of my dead mom on the ground. And that's the end. Oh, thank God. Okay, so we got to my reactions. I wanted to go through that with you. That was rough. Um, I, I, I, I have a feeling I will be releasing some of these photos and, um, not, not the horrifying ones by all means, but, um, some of the photos that just show the house and just show my mom how much she cared. I think I will release circling back to what do I do now? I'm open to suggestions. I know I was supposed to be starting season two. I am big time stalled on doing other people's cases. Pretty much because I'm really traumatized with my, my own ongoing case. And two, because I had someone reach out to me like a couple of weeks ago, asking me for help on like an active like elder abuse case, and I couldn't help them. And I don't know how to help people on their on go, you know, active cases. I don't even know what I'm doing. And I just, I don't think I, I can mentally handle doing other people's cases until there's some kind of resolution on mine. So I have stalled season two until at least after CrimeCon May 2026. And that brings us to the next topic. Crime Con May Las Vegas Caesars Palace 2026. It's like 80 something days away. I'm very much not prepared, but I am very excited to announce that I am going. I signed my contract with CrimeCon yesterday. It gets better because not only am I on creators row again with a booth for Poppy Killed Mommy. But when Stephanie Harlow was releasing that two-part series in February, she had asked me if I was going to be a CrimeCon. And I was like, I don't know. I thought she was just asking me to make small talk to be honest with you. But then she asked if I would be the live show with her. And Derek Levasser for Crime Weekly in an auditorium at CrimeCon. This next go around. Holy fuck. So I listened to Crime Weekly the whole way to Denver for the last CrimeCon with Melissa. When we got there, I was too nervous to leave my booth. But I really wish I had gotten her chance to meet Stephanie Harlow and Derek Levasser. Melissa left. She went to go get a shirt signed by Derek. And she did leave our booth to go and watch the live show last year. And oh my gosh, I wish I had gone, but I didn't want to meet, I didn't want to miss a chance to meet anybody. But this year, I'm going to be on stage promoting Poppy Killed Mommy and mom's case to everybody at CrimeCon, which will open so many more doors that I mean, it's given me a, it's the only thing I have to hang on to right now. It's the only thing that's not making me spiral out of control. and freak out is the notion and the fact and the knowledge that in 80 something days, maybe more doors will open from this opportunity. I do have other good news. I'm trying to end this episode on like, a good, good note, not just like Nikki is utterly and hopelessly defeated right now, which is kind of the way I feel. But um, I did have that interview with A&E. You remember, Mikey making a true primer. He had mentioned me in his A&E article, or he mentioned my mom, and that opened the door to for me to email A&E. This is A&E digital like crime and investigation. Um, and they got back to me. They agreed to interview me and guess what? We did that last Friday on, uh, like, what was it? I don't even know the date. I think it was the six just a couple days ago. I sat in the studio and I talked to an A&E writer and she asked me, uh, you know, list of questions. It was like a 20 minute interview. She said that the article will be out on A&E next month. This is a big deal because this isn't A&E production studio, but it could be. This is how A&E gauges stuff. They start with stories like this. And if there's a lot of traction, a lot of sharing, a lot of comments, a lot of interest, a lot of clicks, then they might pick up my mom's case and push it to the A&E studio side. So trust me, when the article comes out, I'll do a whole episode reading the article. I'll link it so that you guys can read it, push it. Unfortunately, there's nothing printed. I might have to print out a printed version so that we can frame it and hang it in the studio to add to my first front page article that was released in January. So crime con Las Vegas, Caesar Palace, here we come. I'm definitely taking more than just Melissa this year, who's my co-host, but I'm also taking my dear friend Stacy, who basically produced this whole studio with all of this equipment. She told me I should have no stress and I can't think her enough for that because that's all my life is stress. So I will be in Vegas and Dickie Bertie and I did extend an invitation to my aunt and to my cousin. And most of you don't know this, but my cousin, who is my aunt's daughter, who was born, I don't know, five, six, seven, eight years after my mom was murdered. My aunt named her Stephanie Wasillition. So there is a current Stephanie Wasillition walking this planet. That was my aunt's way of honoring her sister and she has continued to do so for the last 30, almost 33 years. We fight, we keep up the battle and we keep up hope where we go insane. Hope that maybe there will be some kind of justice or accountability with my mom's domestic violence homicide. This isn't the end. I just don't know where I'm going from here. If you have any suggestions, feel free to reach out at [email protected]. Nikki is utterly and epically defeated at the moment, but I really thank you guys for listening.