Teen Cowgirl Murdered by her 'Big Brother'?

Hello and welcome to Outlaw Podcast. I'm Eleanor Neal and in today's episode, we're in Nevada in 2020, where the body of a missing 16-year-old girl has been found in the desert. She was last seen getting into a pick-up truck with a mysterious cowboy from out of town that she had supposedly met on Snapchat. And it was exactly that, Snapchat, and it's Snap Maps location feature that helped the police to solve the murder of teen rodeo queen Brittany Ulacchi. Shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, Hello. 2025 really has been the year of the cowboy. The boots and hats are in, chapel-roan and Sabrina are releasing country music. Cowboy Carter has been top in the charts, but in Spring Creek, Nevada. The rodeo lifestyle isn't just a trendy aesthetic. It's been that way of life, well, practically forever. Spring Creek is a cowgirl's dream. It's a small, small town out in the middle of the desert, just filled with ranches and rodeos and horses and pick-up trucks. There's only about 21,000 people living there, so it's a tight-knit community. It's the kind of place where you'll find three generations of ranches all living next door to each other. Your grandma probably went to school with your neighbors, grandma. We live down the road from practically everyone you've ever met. It's that kind of town. But before I introduce you to one particular Spring Creek family, I do want to warn you that this episode will cover a lot of sensitive topics, including bullying, rape and murder. So as always, viewer discretion is advised. The cowgirl at the centre of today's case is a beautiful 16-year-old girl named Brittany. Well, she was actually born Gabrielle Lynn Yulaki, but she went by Brittany. I couldn't find any information on the origin of that name swap. Unfortunately, for some reason, I always get so interested in those relatively insignificant little details when I'm knee-deep in the research, but nothing really came up. So maybe it's just as simple as she just preferred Brittany, and she wanted to be called Brittany. And everyone did call her that, practically all her life, so that's what we're going to call her today. Brittany's family was originally from Colorado. She was born there on June 4, 2003 to parents Jim and Alicia. And then the following year, Brittany would be joined by a younger brother named James. And when you have a sibling so close in age, they become like a built-in best friend, and also sometimes like a built-in mortal enemy. Luckily, Brittany and James got on really well. In fact, the whole Yulaki family was super close. And I guess that's not very common. They were a very happy little family. In 2010, when Brittany was seven years old, her whole family moved to Spring Creek, Nevada. Nevada? I have an American friend who every time I've said the word "nevada," she's been like, "You can't pronounce it like that in the video." Nevada. Anyway, Spring Creek, Nevada, the town that would soon turn her into the cowgirl that she was destined to be. Spring Creek had a booming gold mining industry, and her dad had just secured a well-paying job in Spring Creek. Plus, it seemed like the perfect place to raise two kids. There was so much land for them to go out and play in and be free. And thanks to Spring Creek, Brittany was able to try every outdoorsy activity that took her fancy. The things that she loved the most were helping out with ranch livestock. I mean, she literally learned to drive herds of cattle on horseback by the age of nine. But possibly what she loved even more than ranching, Brittany adored horse riding. She'd disappear for hours at a time, just galloping across the open fields, just her and her horse. She felt so free out there, like a true wild cowgirl. This life really suited Brittany because she'd always been super independent. She just loved to do her own thing whenever she wanted to do it. But the dream life didn't quite last forever. At some point, Brittany's parents separated. It seemed like quite an amicable split from what we could gather. Her parents remained civil. They co-apparented the kids. There was no big drama. But having your family completely dismantled as a child is never going to be easy. Brittany and her brother James continued to live with their father in the house that they already lived in while their mother Alicia got her own place, only a few streets away. So she was going to still be really close and really in the kids' lives. Honestly, it seems like the split really did go as well as it possibly could. Both parents continued to show up for their children and Brittany remained just as close as she'd always been with both of her parents, but especially with her dad. She really was a daddy's girl. She was like a mini version of him if he liked something Brittany liked it to. If he did something Brittany wanted to do it to, he was so proud of the young woman that she was growing up to be. It wasn't always an easy ride for Brittany. Around her mid-teenage years, she became the victim of bullying among the girls in her school. And anyone that's been bullied knows just how much that fucks with your mental state. On a number of levels, it goes way beyond just what's being said or done to you. It makes you anxious to go out and be social and put yourself out there. It erodes your self-esteem. It makes you perceive the world in a more negative light like everyone's out to get you. And so the decision was made to pull Brittany out of school and start homeschooling instead when she was around 16 years old. She also got a job at a local ranch around this time to help out with the livestock and the chores. And I'm sure you can imagine she was thriving in that environment. She was in her element. This job really suited Brittany not only because she loved the outdoors, but she had such a caring nature. Whether it was humans or pets or livestock, Brittany wanted to love and care for every living thing. She loved that this job literally paid her for spending time with animals all day in the outdoors. But ultimately, she knew that after she finished high school, the world was her oyster. It was time to think about the other possibilities that this life had to offer outside of her little ranching community. She was torn between two completely different career paths. She liked the idea of joining the Navy and maybe even doing mental health, counseling within the Navy for the sailors, or she liked the idea of being a special effects makeup artist. Brittany was a girl with range. What can I say? As a woman or as a teenage girl like Brittany, there's this pressure to fit into a box and to stay there. Like you're either the sporty one or the academic one or the creative one or the, I don't know, the ranch girl or the makeup artist, but she said, I don't want to just be one thing. Brittany didn't care about fitting neatly into a specific box. She was always just herself. She was creative, rugged and glamorous. She could round up cattle in the morning and serve a look in the evening. By all accounts, Brittany was just a normal teenager living that small town country life. But by March 2020, nothing in that small town would ever be the same again. Our case begins on Sunday 8th March 2020. Brittany's dad was headed to band practice because he actually played in a heavy metal band. Love that. But on this particular Sunday, Brittany accompanied him since she didn't have much else to do. She was just kind of sat there listening to the music, snapchatting her friends. And after a while, she told her dad that she was going to head off. The friend Bryce was coming to pick her up and she was just going to go and hang out with him for a bit. Bryce Dickie was a friend that she had had for a while. Like a good few years at this point. I assumed that he went to her high school since there was only one high school in Spring Creek. But I couldn't say that for sure. What we do know is that the two of them had met at the rodeo many, many years prior. He joined the junior rodeo circuit when he was about 13 years old. Brittany would have been 11 when they met. She was two years younger than him. So at the time of this case, when he picked her up from band practice, he was 18 and she was 16. They'd been best friends for quite some time. He was always hanging out at the Yulaki house and so Brittany's parents were familiar with him. In fact, they really liked Bryce. He seemed like the perfect guy friend for your daughter. He was respectful. He was trustworthy. He could protect her if needed. He was sensible. He always made sure that she got home safe. Just an all round good guy. Brittany thought of him as the protective older brother that she never had. And her parents almost saw him as a bonus kid since he was like always round at their house. So Bryce comes to pick Brittany up from band practice on March 8th. He pulled up outside in his blue Chevy at about 3.30 pm and as Brittany ran over to go and hop in the passenger side, she called back to her dad, playfully telling him, "I'll beat you home" suggesting that she won't be out late and then the two of them drove off. Her dad finished up band practice a few hours later and headed home for about 7.30 pm. But when he got in, he realized that Brittany wasn't home yet. I mean, 7.30 isn't exactly late, especially for a free spirited cowgirl like Brittany. But her dad thought it was a bit odd that she hadn't even texted him to let him know that she would be out later than expected. But her phone was going straight to voicemail. Which was weird. That meant that her phone was off. He rang Britney's mom. Alicia instead an asked if she'd seen or heard from her, but she hadn't. So at this point, her dad's trying not to panic. He believed that there has to be an explanation for this, but he couldn't deny that it was weird for her to switch her phone off completely. I mean, teenage girls can be rubbish with picking up their phones. I know that I was, still am, but if that was the case, it would still ring through to her phone. But Britney's phone was completely shut off for it to go straight to voicemail and to not even ring once. I guess there was the possibility that her phone had just run out of charge, but still, she's a 16-year-old kid who is uncontactable, and that was really worrying for her father. He was asking around everyone that knew Britney, and of course one of those questioned was her little brother James, who later admitted that he actually tried to cover for Britney a little bit at first. He assumed that she had snuck out to a party and that she was probably underage drinking and getting carried away, and maybe that's why she wasn't picking up her phone. Maybe that's why she'd let her phone run out of charge or something. So his brotherly instinct kicked in to avoid her getting in trouble with her parents. It's quite a universal sibling code, isn't it? Just cover first and then ask questions later. He genuinely had no idea where she was, but he did secretly text Bryce asking what was going on and where they were, where was Brit. What time was he gonna have her home? Their dad's starting to worry now, but Bryce texts him back saying that he wasn't with Britney anymore. It had actually been a little while since he dropped her off at the high school to meet someone else, so he didn't actually know where she was currently. So James is like, okay, you dropped her off at the high school. First of all, why? Because it's literally a Sunday. Second of all, who was she going to meet at the high school? Bryce actually said that he didn't really know. It was some guy that Brit kept calling my new friend, so Bryce literally didn't even know this guy's name. The only information that Bryce could give was that it was a tall white guy in a cowboy hat. So that now is it down nicely, doesn't it? In a ranch town as well. So Bryce didn't get a great look at the guy, but he did see the pickup truck that this guy was driving, which he said was a green Ford F-150 with stickers in the back window. Other than that though, he had no more information that he could give. He didn't even know how Brit knew this guy. I mean, Bryce claims to be this protective older brother figure for Britney. Yet he dropped her off all alone with a complete stranger. I mean, that's one thing in itself, but the fact that he didn't even ask any questions, who is this guy that you're meeting? What's his name? How do you know him? Is he safe? I don't know. Once Bryce realised that everyone else was panicking, he did say that it seemed a little bit sketchy now that he thinks about it. And Britney's family are like, "Okay, so why the hell did you leave it with him then?" Let me clarify though, people weren't blaming Bryce or trying to make him feel guilty for leaving Brit with this guy, especially because Bryce did seem pretty torn up about her going missing and him being the last person to see her. I have to say, it does seem like Bryce was doing everything that he could to help. He was snapchatting everyone discussing what he'd seen. He was even supposedly setting up a search party. And at least now, everyone had some information to go off. They began asking around town if anyone had seen a green Ford F-150. But weirdly, nobody in the whole town knew of anyone that drove this specific type of car in that colour. None of Britney's friends did. Not even friends of friends. So where the hell did this mystery cowboy come from? How did Britney know him if no one else did? For the rest of Sunday and even into Monday morning, her family is panicking and still asking around. Britney's phone was still going straight through to voicemail despite them trying and trying for hours. She hadn't been active on social media either since 5.30 the previous evening, so literally no one had heard from her. Something was definitely wrong. When the sun rose around 6am, her family called the sheriff and the official investigation into Britney's whereabouts would begin. A deputy arrives at Britney's mother's house to speak with her and her son, James. They're shown Bryce Dickey's snapchat messages describing the truck, which is practically their only lead at this stage. Police ask more questions about Bryce Dickey since he was the last person confirmed to have spent time with Britney. And he'd actually mentioned something quite important since she went missing. According to him, Britney had been messaging some guy on snapchat recently. His name was JT. Her best friend. And his name was Bryce, right? It was a very new thing, just some flirty little text converse, but no one had actually met JT in person before, so maybe that could be our guy. The sheriff asked Bryce to meet up with him at the school where he had last seen Britney and there they went back over all of the details together. Fair warning, because we are going to try and insert some of the body cam footage again, but Bryce does not stop hawk to us, spitting on the ground throughout this whole conversation. It's such an "ick." Maybe it's more common over there, but over here, "stop spitting on the ground." But anyway, Bryce said that Britney asked to be dropped off outside the school in the school parking lot. They said goodbye, then she got out of his blue Chevy and walked over to a green pickup truck in the parking lot. He said by this point, he'd already begun driving out of the car park, but in the last minute, he turned around, or maybe he looked in his mirror, and he saw Brit and some guy standing outside this green pickup truck. He said that's why his description of the actual guy is so vague, because he was so far away that he literally couldn't make out anything else, other than the fact that he was a white guy in a cowboy hat. But the officer couldn't shake that there was something off about Bryce Dickey's story. "I'm sure that you didn't drive around for three and a half hours, that's always the gas." "No, I drove around the interior of the house. That seems really odd. You just drive aimlessly around." "That's what I do almost every day." "I just think it's kind of odd. I think you know more than what you tell him." "I'm being answered." At one point during this meeting, Bryce starts to show the officer his phone, his texts and his snapchats with Brittany, especially from that night, where he's saying, "Where are you? Are you okay?" Answer the phone. He's referring to her as "little sis" in the messages. As they often did with each other, they had that sort of close, they're like siblings, kind of, friendship. He went on to tell the officer that Brittany didn't really have many friends. He was probably the closest and most loyal friend that she had. In fact, his exact words were, "She kind of made a reputation for herself because a lot of people around here don't like Brittany." I assume he's referring to the bullying that she experienced. Not much is really clear when it comes to that. Bryce said that she was getting into a lot of fights. But after this meeting with Bryce, I think it's safe to say that police had their suspicions. But with no leads to go off, especially when it comes to the mysterious cowboy, police decided that the best cost of action was to try to locate Brittany's phone. And I'm not sure how they did it. I guess police have their ways. My cat has sat in front of the light. Come over here. Anyways, police have their ways. But they managed to ping Brittany's phone and get a GPS signal. It was about five miles east of Spring Creek High School where she was last seen. So the Sheriff Department got down there immediately and started searching the area along with Brits family, her friends and practically the whole town. People were driving around, scanning the sides of the roads, the deserts, checking the wilderness. Of course, they were mainly looking for Brittany, but all anyone could talk about was this green pickup truck. If they found that, they would find their guy and then they'd find Brittany. Her mum, Alicia, had made flyers that were handed out all over the county with Brittany's picture, her description, the description of the truck and a tip line had even been created to gather information from potential witnesses. Social media was also flooded with Brittany's concern friends and family sharing the case, but still 24 hours into this massive search party. There were absolutely no signs of Brittany Yulaki. Everyone had been out searching on foot and they were honestly quite frustrated, feeling like something had to be missing. So Brittany's friends reached out to Bryce Dickey on Snapchat asking him for more details about Brittany's last day in town. Like I said, Bryce was seemingly torn up about Brittany's disappearance and he explained to her friends how guilty he felt for leaving her with a stranger that night. One of his messages read, "I have a lot of regrets that I can't take back and that's on me, but I hope you guys don't blame me. If so, then you have the writer." And everyone gathered to support Bryce at this time because everyone felt like he wasn't worth suspecting. Since he seemed genuine, he had been friends with Brittany for years after all. Why would he have something to do with her disappearance?" And so they comforted him. They told him that this wasn't his fault and that he can't blame himself. They believed that he cared about Brittany just as much as they did, which makes everything that happened next even harder. 36 hours Britney disappeared. On the evening of March 10th, her mum Alicia received a horrifying text from an unknown number. They claimed that they had her daughter and they were demanding $25,000 or harm would come to Britney. They said, "I am being nice enough because I don't want to hurt your daughter. I am a fugitive, human trafficker, drug trafficker. It won't be good if I ask my dogs to rape her. Just do what I have said." They also told Britney's mum that they had given her some sort of drug, presumably to sedate her, but she hadn't reacted well. They said, "Now she is getting more and more sick and nobody should blame me if it gets worse." Alicia was struck with a mixture of pure terror at the idea of her daughter being held hostage and drugged and threatened. But now there was a slight hope that this could actually be how they get her back. And that was what propelled her. She got in contact with the police to give them this update and they told her not to respond to the ransom text. They would try to trace the phone number themselves to get a location or an identity, but it could make the situation worse if Alicia was to respond. So she didn't say anything. She didn't text back even though she wanted to more than anything because they could have her daughter. And then in the morning she woke up and there were even more threatening text messages and she knew that she just couldn't wait any longer. She needed to protect her baby. And so she headed down to the sheriff's office so that he could see the text for himself. They're saying things like, "You're taking too long and if you think you want to choose a few dollars over her life, then it's really fine. It doesn't show you love her and you want her back." Now the detectives are doing everything they can to trace the kidnappers number because if this is real and if she's actually being held hostage, held for ransom and drugged, this would be the key to getting her back. Tragically, no one knew at this point that it was already too late that tracing that mobile number would not bring Britney back home. In fact, 18 miles away from Spring Creek, a few locals had gone out searching for her and they had just called in to say that they had found something. And it was exactly what everyone had been dreading. It was Monday morning. A couple of guys had been out driving some desert roads in a place called Bernabéis in when they spotted something dark red on the side of the road. They pulled over for a closer look and to their horror, they realized that it was blood and close by led a large blue top. It didn't look good and so they called for some detectives who were searching nearby to come and check out the scene. "We're outside the human head to me. It looks like a chest cavity at the door. We walked over here on this side. I'm pretty sure that's the drag mark there." As two officers approached the blue top, they noticed a human hand peeking out and on the ground beside it was a keychain with Britney's name on it and they knew that they had found her. Britney Yulackey was only 16 years old and on the brink of starting a new chapter in her life after high school but someone had brutally ripped that away from her. They had left her body on the side of the road alone, far away from her family, her friends and the horses that she loved. Her mother was notified back at the police station and this is probably one of the most harrowing gut-wrenching things I have ever seen and heard in my life. I genuinely felt pain in my car watching this poor mother be told that her baby is gone forever. "I need to pass out. I need to get some help." Alicia practically passes out. The detective has to grab her and lower her to the ground safely while she's wailing, yelling, "No, please, someone help me." The whole time the detective is just crouching to the ground holding her while she's wailing and screaming. He says that he still thinks about the sound of her helpless cries. It's one of the things that has stuck with him the most in all of his time being a detective. The news at this point had also reached Brittany's friends who were all reeling from such a sudden loss. Her best friend, her pseudo big brother, Bryce Dickie, posted on Facebook. Yesterday we all received news that made us hit the floor. Around eight in the morning we all started meeting up at my house to grieve and to mourn Brittany's life which was taken far too soon. That day I had tears of pain and joy. I wish she could have seen the amount of us that came together to honor you, sis. We love you so much. Just know you won't ever be forgotten. Meanwhile forensic teams had been called out to the crime scene on the desert road and it was only now that the true horror of Brittany's final moments were realised. Her body was found totally violated. She was laying face down all the clothing from her bottom half was pulled down to her ankles and she had been sexually assaulted. There was so much blood covering not only her body but the dirt around the crime scene. There were marks on the ground that suggested that Brittany's body had been dragged around while she bled and the source of all of that blood was a stab to her neck that had severed her carotid artery. Later on when her body was transported for an autopsy her cause of death was recorded to be a combination of this stab wound to her neck and the blood loss but also strangulation. On initial searches of the crime scene officers spotted a pair of white wired headphones dangling from a bush and as they went over to recover them and take them in for evidence they spotted something else too. Deeper inside the bush was a used condom and its wrapper was also found at the crime scene it had blown a little bit further away but they had a lot of pieces to the puzzle here. So I mean this used condom would have literally had the killer's DNA. All they had to do was match it to a suspect and they would have found Brittany's murderer. Further searches beyond the immediate crime scene revealed even more evidence. Brittany's own mobile phone was found about half a mile down the road. It had been bashed in using another object. Her killer had intentionally destroyed it before discarding it trying to cover their tracks. To me this suggests that her killer probably knew Brittany well enough that she had been texting or calling them before her murder. And so with that police decided to take a second look at the men in Brittany's life. By now the police had determined that the ransom text that Brittany's mother Alicia received was likely a hoax. They couldn't say that for sure mind since they literally never managed to track it down fully. I know that frustrated me as well but detectives theorised that it was a dummy number that is literally made for burn-a-fans and it seems like it was probably just some sick and twisted individual trying to extort money from a desperate mother who was worried sick for her daughter's safety. It's so fucked up but this is why the police tend to make tip lines to put on missing persons posters and the like so that families own personal phone numbers aren't out there for people to take advantage of like that. Right now in the investigation police were intrigued to know more about that mysterious cowboy that she'd been seen leaving with and this guy JT that Brittany was snapchatting and were they the same guy we don't know at this point. Her brother had been asking around everyone their age if they knew of anyone called JT and one of his mates actually got back to him saying that he knew a JT who drove a green pickup truck so detectives grabbed this lead and they look at this man as quickly as possible only to find out that JT is seemingly quite a popular name out in Elko County. This JT did exist and he did in fact drive a green pickup truck but he wasn't the guy that they were looking for. He didn't know Brittany, he'd never met Brittany. He was quickly ruled out by detectives, it was just a coincidence and so detectives were frustrated with this dead and lead but they went back to their most recent theory that Brittany knew her attacker well enough to be texting them or calling them around the time of her death and they did actually have another suspect. This guy was someone much closer to Brittany, someone she knew, someone she trusted, her ex-boyfriend who treated her like crap honestly and still held hard feelings for her after the relationship. While they were together he had apparently been really toxic, he was intense and pushy with Brittany especially when it came to sexual stuff and losing their virginity, he really wanted the two of them to take that next step but Brittany just wasn't ready yet and despite her telling him this time and time again he continued to push her until he eventually broke up with it because she wasn't given him what he wanted. I think she must have been around 15 at that point and we don't actually know how well this guy was but poor Brittany, anyway after After they broke up, Britney stayed good friends with this guy's younger sister, and she would still hang out with her quite a bit. But a few months before Britney's death, she was out with her ex's little sister, the two of them had been driving when they actually got into a car accident. From what I could tell, it wasn't majorly serious, the girls were fine, thank god there were no serious injuries. Her ex completely lost it with Britney for, I guess, putting his little sister in danger. Her friends said that he started saying things to Britney like, "I wish you died in that car accident, go kill yourself, you're a waste of space, you're nothing." Literally what the fuck? He was so snappy and bitchy with her for a while, and one night the two of them were arguing on the phone, and James being the loyal little brother that he was, he sat in the room with Britney while she was on the phone to him, and he heard every word of the argument. He remembers Britney's ex saying something along the lines of, "I can't wait until they find you raped and murdered in the desert." Three months later, Britney was found dead in the exact way that he had threatened, so naturally he became their main suspect. They brought him in for questioning, but it turned out that he actually had an alibi, and it checked out. He was at work at the time that Britney went missing, and there was CCTV that proved that he was there, but he couldn't have done it. So that left police right back at Square One. It wasn't JT, it wasn't her ex. By now they'd also run the DNA from the used condom on the criminal database, and there were no known matches. They still had no idea who had done this, and it was really starting to terrify people, because this is Spring Creek, a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Young girls aren't just found murdered on the side of the road, when everyone knows everyone, like it has to be one of your neighbours. It's the kind of place where girls grow up riding horses and waving to their neighbours on the way to school. Britney was one of those girls. She was happiest when she was out on her horse, mud on her boots, riding for hours, with no one else around. That was her freedom, her peace, and it was stolen from her. While researching this case, we wanted to find a charity that would honour Britney's love for horses, and we came across a fabulous charity called the Equus Foundation. I hope that's how you pronounce it, but they are dedicated to the dual mission of rescuing horses in need, but also strengthening the bond between horses and their humans that need them, just as much as the horses need their owner. It's all about making sure that horses are safe and protected and treated with the dignity that they deserve, and then supporting programmes that use riding to empower and heal humans. Horses give so much to us, and when that bond is nurtured properly, it can change lives, physically, emotionally, socially. It changed Britney's, and the Equus Foundation also help at-risk and retired horses move safely into the next chapter of their lives, without fear of abuse or neglect or worse, and they work to create more opportunities for people, regardless of ability or background to connect with horses in meaningful ways. We've popped the link to the Equus Foundation in the description if you would like to learn more or support what they do every donation counts, whether it's big or small. It's changing lives in ways that you couldn't even imagine. Sir, the detectives go back to the drawing board at this point, and they think about how to trace that green pickup truck, potentially through CCTV cameras surrounding the school. They discovered that a petrol station down the road had caught so much security footage of the roads on the day that Britney disappeared. There was only one road that the pickup truck could have taken to get in or out of the school car park, so police were sure that they would have a lead by the end of the day. Of course, this footage will show a green pickup truck, but I think you can tell by the way that I'm saying it, as they went through this footage, there was no green pickup truck at all, but weirdly enough, they did spot Bryce Dickey's blue Chevy driving straight past the high school, not going into the parking lot like he'd said. In fact, he kept driving in the direction of where Britney's body would be found days later. So police have caught Bryce Dickey in a lie. That doesn't look good. He was already in the back of everyone's mind since he was the last person to have seen and spoken to Britney. Of course, people were trying not to be suspicious of him because he seemed so genuine, but now it seemed totally different. Detectives immediately called Bryce down to the station, under the guys that they would be doing a regular routine phone data collection or something. I don't know. It was only a half-truth anywhere. They mainly wanted to get him down there to get his DNA. Remember, they literally had a used condom from the crime scene that could only have the killers DNA inside it. They were desperate to try and find a match because that would practically mean case closed. They did scour through Bryce Dickey's phone and in one of the most Gen Z moves possible, it was actually his Snapchat location that gave him away. It tracked his G.O. location every time he opened the app and Bryce Dickey had loaded up Snapchat at the exact spot out in the desert where Britney U-Lucky's body was discovered. Not only that, but the two of them took selfies out there together, which were found saved to Britney's own Snapchat memories. It's heartbreaking to see her in those pictures knowing that she would be brutally murdered about a hundred feet away from where she was stood smiling and goofing around using the filters as she had done every day. Then, Bryce Dickey's Snapchat location gives him away once again. An hour after the two of them had taken those selfies together and Britney had saved them to her memories, Bryce was tracked, driving back to Spring Creek. And Britney's dead body was later found, like I say, a few days later in the exact spot whether two of them had been. The walls were closing in on Bryce Dickey, but at this point in time he had no idea. He was called into the station in quite an inconspicuous way and the detectives were acting as impartial as ever. At this point you're not even really a suspect, okay? Is there any reason whatsoever it did? They would find your DNA on her or in her. No, not that I'm saying it's maybe like a hair or something on her jacket. There would be nothing else. So no session relationship was no? So when they asked him to give over a DNA swab, he just did it. He voluntarily gave over his DNA. I mean, you can tell at this point that he knows the jig is up. As soon as the officer leaves the room, Bryce Dickey actually looks straight at the security camera in the corner of the room with the most defeated look in his eyes. The DNA was expedited to get the quickest result possible. And what do you know? Bryce Dickey was a match to the DNA found at the crime scene. To the DNA found under Britney's fingernails, to the DNA found inside the used condom. It was her best friend all along. It was this guy that claimed to be a protective older brother figure to her. He had led her on. He had tricked her. He had murdered her. But at this point, detectives don't let on to Bryce that they know just yet. They call him in for one more final interview. And they already knew at this point in time that they were going to arrest him. He wasn't going to leave the police station a free man that day. But they just wanted to wait it out and see if he would slip up or confess. The detectives ask Bryce what he would say to Britney right now if he could. And he said, "Easy, I love you." The detectives says, "Well, what would be the second thing that you'd say to her then?" Bryce said, "That I'm sorry." Because I kind of blame myself for all this. Even though the detective asks for clarification on what he meant about blaming himself. And Bryce says, "I mean, I know I didn't know it was going to happen, but I mean, I'm the last one that saw her before she's dead." And I mean, her mum even made me promise that I wouldn't blame myself. But I still have a lot of regrets and a lot of stuff I wish I would have done differently that day. Once again, he has asked about his potential physical/intimate relationship with Britney U Lackey. And Bryce denies that there ever was one. And that they don't see each other like that. Bear in mind, when I play you this next snippet, detectives have already found his seamen DNA on the same condom that had Britney's DNA on the outside. Britney and I have never had relationship or had been intimate in the way. And is there any way that your DNA could be associated with this case? Well, I'm kind of confused about a couple of things. You gave a DNA example, right? Yes. We found a condom and we have Britney's DNA and we have your DNA and we have a condom. That can't be. It is. I've never had sex with Britney. I swear. It's a point to me how a condom has your DNA on the inside and her DNA on the outside. The detectives pointed out that Bryce Dickey has a pattern of lying to them. And they have proof, but despite that, he tries one more time to cover up for himself. The story that he has sworn to be true time and time again is now changing because it had to explain the condom. All of a sudden, Bryce starts talking about how Brittany got all flirty that day out of nowhere. He insists that he thought it was weird, because I mean he's told detectives hundreds of times at this point that he thinks of her as a sibling. But he tells the police that the two of them kissed and she proceeded to ask him if he wanted a blur job. He said that it almost didn't even feel real, presumably because he never had expected things to get sexual with Brittany. But he says that he accepted the blur job, which was performed with a condom on, but that was the full extent of what happened. He said to the police. Bear in mind, while Bryce claimed Brittany got all sexually charged and came onto him out of nowhere that day, that is the same girl who broke up with her ex-boyfriend or was broken up with by her ex-boyfriend not long before this, because she wasn't ready to do sexual stuff yet. It just doesn't sound like Brittany to have offered that up to him, I don't know. He gets into more detail with the police. He points to a map, the exact stretch of road where they quote "had sex", which is what Bryce keeps calling it interestingly enough. I know that oral sex is sex, it's a sex act. But when Bryce first said to the police that he and Brittany had sex while referring to just a blur job, he hesitated as soon as he said it and was a bit like, "Oh, we didn't have sex sex, almost like he'd accidentally slipped or something." But the officer did reassure him, like, "Yeah, you could just say that you had sex, like oral sex is sex, sure." So Bryce continued to call it having sex for the rest of the interview. I don't know, maybe if I hadn't seen the footage, then I wouldn't have thought that much of it, but it's almost like I could feel his nervousness. Like he'd said the words "had sex" and was like, "Fuck, I've just given that up." "We're Brittany and I had. " I don't know if there's that count as sex, I think it's sexual acts. So that is we're Brittany and I had sex. But even now, Bryce tries to insist that even though he has admitted that he and Brittany had "had sex", he insists that he still didn't kill her. He still is sticking to this story that he dropped her off with some random cowboy with a green pickup truck. Stop trying to make the random cowboy with a green pickup truck happen. He's being like, even though I've lied to you about most other things officer, I swear I still dropped her off with some random guy. Like, it's embarrassing to see him keep trying to save his own ass like this. He's even still acting like he regrets dropping her off with this random guy, still insinuating that someone else is the one who hurt her. As police dig and dig and dig, Bryce ends up changing his story right in front of their eyes. After saying that he had never met the mysterious cowboy before and he had no idea who it was, Bryce suddenly admits that he has met this guy once before and now he actually knew his full name. This is something he'd never mentioned before. I mean, I'm not gonna say the poor kid's full name in this video because shock, it wasn't true. Bryce is just trying to dobbin some random cowboy kid from the town like an actual kid in their in Spring Creek who had nothing to do with this whole entire case. But detectives respond to this revelation like, okay, so you've known who killed Brittany this whole entire time and you've been purposefully keeping it from us. And Bryce is tying himself in knots and it's not looking good for him. Clearly, this story wasn't working and so once again, he switches it up. Now he says that after the oral sex, Brittany got back in his truck but they both began arguing and they felt like they had ruined this really strong friendship between him. And he said that while they were driving, he said something that had upset Brittany and so she literally hopped out of his truck, hopped out of his blue Chevy, sorry, at a stop sign and stormed off. And then something awful must have happened to her after that. Towards the end of the questioning, after Bryce had fucked around so much, the detective asks him if he was in his case as the detective trying to solve this case, what would he think about it all? And Bryce says that I'm lying about everything. Well, I'm glad someone said it. And Bryce actually followed up with, I'm smart enough to know what you guys are thinking. Oh, are you a big man? Yeah, he knew just as well as the detectives that he was done for, that he was guilty. There's no covering this up now. On the 19th of March, 11 days after she went missing, Bryce Dickey was charged with Brittany Yulucky's murder alongside sexual assault with a deadly weapon. Now that an arrest had been made, the town of Spring Creek was informed that the killer that they had been looking for all along was the victim's own best friend, the boy that she had seen as a big brother. It came as a shock to everyone, obviously apart from the police, because everyone had seen him acting worried sick for days. When they found out one of Brits best friends messaged him on Snapchat saying, "You are a serious piece of shit. We were all there for you, cried with you, and all you did was players like a fucking puppet master. All I can say is don't ever dare to show your face in this town ever again." This is the same boy that had coordinated searches, wrote sorrowful Facebook posts, had a fucking sticker on the back of his own Chevy that said just this for Brittany never forgotten, but no one was more shocked than Brittany's own family. The boy that they had treated like another child, they had invited him into their home, made him feel welcome, and he has repaired them by raping and murdering their 16 year old daughter. Two years later, almost exactly to the day that the incident took place on the 9th of March 2022, Bryce Dickey was sent to trial for the murder of Brittany Lackie. The evidence was overwhelming. CCTV of his truck, the Snapchat location data that put him at the scene of the crime, let's not forget his DNA was found in the discarded condom at the crime scene. But despite it all, Bryce actually pled not guilty. Like, what? Whose advice was that on fire your legal team, Jesus? Throughout the 9-day trial, Bryce's ex-girlfriend was actually called up to the stand to testify, basically to tell the court what kind of boy Bryce was, especially when it comes to intimate relationships and sex. She said that Bryce Dickey had "choked her without consent while they were having otherwise consensual sex on four separate occasions." It didn't matter how many times she explained to him that she didn't like it and it made her feel uncomfortable, he would try it again and he wouldn't ask first. It was even more fucked up because the last and most violent time that Dickey choked her happened to be on the night of a candle lit vigil in Brittany's honor. What the fuck? That's something that I actually haven't mentioned that much is that Bryce Dickey actually had a girlfriend this whole entire time. Could you imagine being a teenager and your boyfriend gets locked up for raping, murdering another girl? But this ex-girlfriend's testimony was actually almost thrown out of court. Basically, before she had taken the stand, she'd gone to sit in the courtroom and watched about five minutes of another witness's testimony. Now, this is not allowed for witnesses to hear each other's testimonies and I actually didn't know this until research in this case, but I guess it's probably common sense when you actually think about it. It's called the exclusionary rule. Witnesses can't be in the courtroom before they've testified because hearing other people's testimony could influence what they say. It's basically so that witnesses aren't consciously or otherwise changing their story to match or to contradict other evidence. It basically helps to give someone a fair trial. But even though Bryce's ex-girlfriend didn't even know that that rule was a thing, it almost fucked up her part of the trial. In the end, everything was actually fine and she was allowed to take the stand. The bailiff backed her up, especially because she'd only heard five minutes of a detective talking about the weather conditions on the dead that Britney's body was found, wasn't actually going to influence anything that she said. But, of course, Bryce's team jumped on it and asked for her entire testimony to be excluded or for the whole trial to be declared a mistrial. I mean, that's a bit of an overreaction. And the judge thought the same thing. The trial would go on as planned. And in the end, the jury found Bryce Dickey guilty of first-degree murder and sexual assault with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole only after 46 years. He was 20 years old upon sentencing, which means he won't be out until he's at least in his 60s, if ever. After all, covering up a murder and lying to everyone for as long as he did, doesn't really make a good case from to ever be released from prison and integrate into society. Bryce didn't accept this verdict and appealed pretty much straight to the court. away, mostly on the basis that his ex-ass testimony was unfaith since the exclusionary rule blah blah blah blah blah. Oh, and he also tried to argue in his appeal that there wasn't enough evidence to convict him of sexual assault. Sorry? Like your DNA was everywhere you moron. Sorry, I got really heated then, but obviously this appeal was denied. It makes me laugh when criminals try to appeal their charges on the basis of like absolutely noff in. Do they think it's like trying to ask for a remark on an exam? If so, it's coming back the exact same grade because nothing has changed. Bryce is still guilty as hell, there's so much evidence. After everything that they went through, Britney's family finally got justice. It wasn't the ending that anyone wanted, but it was justice and it meant that they could finally start to heal. Britney's ashes were scattered in a meadow that she used to ride through on her beloved horse, a place where she felt happiest, most at peace and completely free. Britney was bold, adventurous, and always true to herself. People found her authenticity and her honesty inspiring. She was such a free spirit, and that's exactly how everyone who knew her will always remember her. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Outlaw Podcast. If you're watching this episode on YouTube don't forget to subscribe, leave us a like and leave us a comment so that we can continue the conversation down below. If you're listening on a podcast platform please rate us five stars. Again, leave us a comment, I love reading the comments on the podcast platforms, and I will see you in the next episode. Bye!