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Anita Knutson Was Brutally Stabbed to Death at Home · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, I want you to close your eyes for a second.
• 0:02
  Imagine a landscape that just doesn't end. Okay, I'm talking
• 0:06
  about that big sky country, rolling planes, horizons that stretch
• 0:11
  out so far you can almost see the curvature of
• 0:13
  the earth. It's early June, the air is warm, the
• 0:17
  sun is hanging high, and everything just feels open.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: It sounds idyllic, and in many ways it is. We're
• 0:24
  picturing the peace Garden state North Dakota.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Specifically, we are in Mino. Now, if you've never been there,
• 0:30
  you might picture a tiny outpost, but Mino is a
• 0:33
  hub in two thousand and seven, it's a community of
• 0:35
  about thirty five thousand to forty thousand people. It's that
• 0:39
  specific size where it's big enough to have a university
• 0:41
  in a mall, but small enough that anonymity is basically
• 0:45
  a myth exactly.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: It's the kind of place where the social fabric is
• 0:49
  very tight. Neighbors know your parents, They probably went to
• 0:52
  school with your grandparents. There's an implicit contract of safety there.
• 0:55
  People leave doors unlocked, not because they're careless, but because
• 0:58
  they trust the zip code.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: It feels safe until suddenly it isn't. Because we are
• 1:04
  taking you back to a specific weekend in June two
• 1:07
  thousand and seven where that sense of safety didn't just crack,
• 1:11
  it was absolutely shattered. We are diving into a case
• 1:15
  today that didn't just shock this community, it haunted it.
• 1:19
  It hung over the city of Mino like a low,
• 1:22
  dark storm cloud for nearly two decades. We're talking about
• 1:26
  the murder of Anita Knutson.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: In this case, it really defies the standard true crime
• 1:31
  narrative we're used to analyzing. Usually, you have a crime,
• 1:34
  a frantic investigation, maybe a lull, and then a resolution.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Right and neat little bow at the end.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But this story, it's a roller coaster. It went
• 1:41
  ice cold, then it flared up with a massive, high
• 1:43
  profile arrest fifteen years later in twenty twenty two, and
• 1:46
  it culminated in a dramatic trial just last year in
• 1:49
  twenty twenty five.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: And that is exactly why we are talking about it today,
• 1:53
  because as of right now, February twenty twenty six, the
• 1:56
  dust has settled, the gabbls of banged, the media trucks
• 1:58
  of left grand forks, and we are staring at a
• 2:00
  blank page again.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: A blank page. That's a good way to put it.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: The case is officially unsolved. Again, we aren't just looking
• 2:07
  at history here, We're looking at a legal conclusion that
• 2:10
  happened less than a year ago and left everyone asking
• 2:13
  what now.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: That is the central question. How does a case with
• 2:16
  this much attention, this much scrutiny, and even a full
• 2:19
  criminal trial end up back at square one? It forces
• 2:23
  us to look at the mechanics of justice and where
• 2:27
  they might fail.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: So here's our mission for this deep dive. We are
• 2:31
  going to unpack that. Why. We aren't just going to
• 2:34
  recount the scary details that we have to touch on them,
• 2:36
  of course, We're going to look at the collision of
• 2:38
  forensic limitations, what the science could and couldn't tell us,
• 2:41
  and the absolute chaos of the environment in Mino. We're
• 2:44
  talking about catastrophic floods and massive oil booms that literally
• 2:49
  changed the landscape while this investigation was trying to breathe.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: And we also need to examine the incredibly high burden
• 2:55
  of proof in the American legal system. It's a key
• 2:57
  piece of this puzzle.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we have a massive stack of sources for this.
• 3:02
  We're pulling from the original police case files, the trial
• 3:06
  transcripts from the twenty twenty five proceedings, the extensive coverage
• 3:09
  from Dateline NBC's Murder and Minot, and the investigations led
• 3:13
  by the.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Team at Cole Justice a really comprehensive set of materials
• 3:17
  to work from.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: So let's get into it. Let's go back to two
• 3:19
  thousand and seven. Before we talk about the crime, we
• 3:22
  need to know who we lost. Who was Anita Nutson.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: To understand the magnitude of the tragedy, you really have
• 3:28
  to understand the potential that was extinguished. Anita was eighteen
• 3:32
  years old, just.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: A kid, really just starting out.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: She was adopted by Gordon and Sharon Nutson and raised
• 3:39
  in the towns of Butte in Velva, North Dakota.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I looked up Velva on a map. It is small.
• 3:44
  We're talking a population of a few hundred people. That's
• 3:46
  the definition of tight knit. That's everyone knows what you
• 3:49
  bought at the grocery store. Is small.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: You can't hide in Velva. And by all accounts, Anita
• 3:53
  was the archetype of the girl next door universally loved.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: That's what you hear over and over again in the sources.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was outgoing, compassionate, and deeply rooted in her faith.
• 4:05
  She had an older sister and a younger brother, Daniel.
• 4:08
  The family was described as very close, the kind of
• 4:11
  family that did everything together, supported every event.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: She wasn't aimless either. She had a very specific plan.
• 4:17
  She was a successful high school student, and she had
• 4:20
  this dream of going into elementary education.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: She wanted to be a teacher.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she wanted to work with kids.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Which really speaks to our character. She was nurturing. She
• 4:28
  was just starting her life, and that brings us to
• 4:31
  the critical transition point. In two thousand and six, after
• 4:34
  graduating high school, she moves to Minono to attend Mino
• 4:37
  State University.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Now, to you or me, moving to a town of
• 4:42
  forty thousand might seem like a lateral move or even
• 4:45
  a small move depending on where you're from.
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  Speaker 2: But coming from Velva, Oh, this was the big city.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: This was her first taste of real independence.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: It's a critical vulnerability point. We see this often in
• 4:55
  sociology and criminology, that transition period. Leaving the safety net
• 5:00
  of the p rental home, moving into an apartment with
• 5:02
  people you don't know, intimately.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Strangers basically yeah right.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: It exposes young people to risks they haven't had to
• 5:09
  navigate before. It's that friction between wanting to be an
• 5:13
  adult and still being a teenager. You're navigating rent bills,
• 5:18
  social dynamics, and safety all at once.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: She moved into an apartment at twenty four to twenty
• 5:22
  fourth Street, sw Apartment five. It was a modest, two
• 5:26
  bedroom place, and she wasn't living alone. She had a roommate,
• 5:29
  nicol Rice.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Right, And it's important to clarify the dynamic here. They
• 5:33
  weren't childhood best friends who dreamed of living together.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: No, this wasn't a sitcom setup, No, not at all.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: They met through connections, essentially housing listings. They were living
• 5:43
  together out of necessity and circumstance, not a deep, lifelong bond.
• 5:47
  They were eighteen and nineteen years old, just trying to
• 5:50
  figure out adulthood. Paying bills, going to.
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  Speaker 1: Class a very common arrangent.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Very common, but it puts two people with very different
• 5:56
  habits in a very small box.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: But despite the move, Anita didn't cut the cord with
• 6:01
  her family. And this is a detail that really sticks
• 6:04
  with me because it becomes the catalyst for the discovery.
• 6:07
  She was constantly in touch with her parents.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Daily, sometimes multiple times a.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Day, which is actually the first clue that something was wrong.
• 6:14
  It wasn't that she went missing for weeks. It was
• 6:16
  a single weekend June second and third, two thousand and seven.
• 6:20
  Her parents are calling, texting, no answer, and that.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: Change in pattern is what triggered the alarm. In some cases,
• 6:27
  families might wait a few days, thinking, oh, she's busy,
• 6:30
  she's partying, she's studying.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: For finals stage, she'll call back.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: But because Anita's baseline was constant communication, the silence was
• 6:38
  deafening immediately. It's what we call a break in routine,
• 6:41
  and in missing persons cases, it's usually the biggest red flag.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: So on Monday, June fourth, her dad, Gordon, can't take
• 6:48
  it anymore. He gets in the car and drives to
• 6:50
  the apartment.
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  Speaker 2: I can't even imagine that drive, the dread building. With
• 6:54
  every mile marker, you're praying you're wrong, praying she just
• 6:56
  lost her phone charger, or she's asleep.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: You're hoping for any normal explanation, any explanation, but the
• 7:02
  worst one. He gets to the apartment, the maintenance worker
• 7:04
  helps him get access and he finds her. She's in
• 7:08
  her bedroom, face down on the bed.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: It was a scene of absolute horror, but we need
• 7:13
  to put our forensic hats on and look at this
• 7:15
  clearly to understand what happened.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's break it down.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Anita had been stabbed twice, one wound to the lung
• 7:22
  and one fatal wound to the heart. The medical examiner
• 7:25
  determined the cause of death was exanguination.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Let's cause on that term exanguination. That means severe.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Blood loss right, correct, It's the medical term for bleeding out.
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  It implies that the heart continued to pump for a
• 7:37
  short time after the injury, pushing blood out of the
• 7:40
  body until the system failed. It's a brutal, intimate way
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  to die.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: But there was something else about the wounds, right, not
• 7:47
  just the fatal ones. This is where the profile of
• 7:49
  the killer starts to form.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Correct. There were superficial insized wounds on her neck.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, so insized wounds like cuts, not.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Stabs exactly, think of a sharp edge being drawn across
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  the skin, not plunged in. These weren't deep enough to
• 8:04
  be fatal. They were something else.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: What does that tell you? Behaviorally?
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: It tells us a lot about the psychology of the attacker.
• 8:11
  These weren't frenzy wounds. Initially, a frenzy attack is usually
• 8:15
  chaotic stabs all over the hands, arms.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Chests, total loss of control, yes, But.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: A knife to the throat that is a control mechanism.
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  It suggests the killer was close, intimately close. They used
• 8:28
  the knife to intimidate her, to control her movement or
• 8:31
  her voice before delivering the fatal blows.
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  Speaker 1: So this wasn't a fight from across the room that escalated.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: No, this was up close, personal and terrifyingly controlled. It
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  implies the victim was aware of the threat before the
• 8:44
  fatal blow was struck.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: That's a chilling thought, it is.
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  Speaker 2: It changes the entire dynamic of the crime.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Speaking of the knife, they found it, didn't they?
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: They did? It was left right there in the bedroom,
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  a fury sitting bowl knife. It's a fixed blade knife
• 8:57
  about four point twenty five inches long, usually for hunting
• 9:00
  or utility.
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  Speaker 1: So it's not a kitchen knife.
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  Speaker 2: No, it's a specific type of knife. And finding it
• 9:05
  at the scene, you'd think, okay, murder weapon found, case, closed,
• 9:08
  dust for prints, run the DNA, let's go home.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: You would think that's the CSI expectation, But reality is
• 9:15
  rarely that cooperative.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: Rarely, there were no usable fingerprints on the knife. Nothing
• 9:19
  that could identify the killer wiped clean most likely, so
• 9:23
  a dead.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: End on the weapon itself. That is frustrating. But here's
• 9:27
  where it gets really weird. The apartment itself. M h.
• 9:30
  If someone breaks in to kill you or to rob
• 9:33
  you and it goes wrong, you expect chaos, broken glass,
• 9:38
  overturned drawers, missing jewelry, a TV ripped.
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  Speaker 2: Off the wall exactly. You expect signs of a struggle
• 9:44
  or signs of theft. But the apartment was relatively undisturbed.
• 9:48
  No valuables were missing, no drawers were dumped out, her purse.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Wasn't emptied, nothing was taken.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Nothing. However, there was one piece of physical evidence that
• 9:56
  pointed to an intruder, the window screen in the bedroom.
• 10:00
  It had been cut.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, so someone cut the screen to get in. That
• 10:03
  sounds like a classic break in, that's the first thing
• 10:04
  you'd think.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: That was the initial thought, But when investigators looked closer,
• 10:08
  the physics of it didn't add up. The cut was precise,
• 10:12
  almost neat.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: What do you mean neat?
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Well, often in a real forced entry, a screen is
• 10:18
  torn or ripped in a hurry. This was a clean slice.
• 10:21
  And remember nothing was stolen, right if an intruder cuts
• 10:24
  the screen to get in. Usually they're there to steal something,
• 10:27
  or if they are there to commit violence, the scene
• 10:30
  usually reflects a struggle or a hunt. Here you have
• 10:33
  a cut screen, but a relatively tidy apartment.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: So the police start thinking, maybe the screen wasn't cut
• 10:39
  to get in, Maybe it was cut to make it
• 10:41
  look like someone got in precisely.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: This brings us to the theory of staging. Staging is
• 10:47
  when the offender alters the crime scene to mislead the investigation.
• 10:51
  It's a form of psychological.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Camouflage, like leaving a calling card that points in the
• 10:55
  wrong direction.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If you kill someone you know, say a roommate
• 10:59
  or a partner, you are the prime suspect, so you
• 11:02
  need to make it look like a stranger did it.
• 11:04
  Cutting a screen is a classic, almost cliche way to
• 11:07
  suggest a burglary gone wrong.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: But the lie has to be consistent, and this one wasn't.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: The lack of burglary evidence the untouched valuables contradicted the
• 11:15
  cut screen. It was a lie that didn't quite hold up.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: So investigators are standing in this apartment. They have a
• 11:21
  dead young woman, a knife with no prints, a cut
• 11:24
  screen that looks fake and no robbery. The immediately pivot
• 11:28
  away from the random drifter theory.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: They do. They focused on the inner circle because the
• 11:33
  violence was personal and the scene looked manipulated.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Which is that's just standard procedure, right, You start with
• 11:40
  the people closest to the victim.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: It is. This is known as tunnel vision in some critiques,
• 11:45
  but in the moment, it's standard deductive reasoning. You look
• 11:48
  at the people with access, you look at the people
• 11:50
  with keys, and.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: The person with the most access was the roommate Nickel Rice.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Naturally, she lived there, she had a key. Her name
• 11:58
  is at the top of the list. But here is
• 12:00
  the problem. Nichol wasn't there.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: That weekend, right, she had an alibi, she.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Had a story. At least, she was reportedly visiting family
• 12:08
  and friends. She wasn't in the apartment when the body
• 12:10
  was found.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: And she cooperated, right, at least at first she did.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: She gave statements, she provided a timeline. She didn't lawyer
• 12:17
  up and stay silent immediately, which is what you sometimes
• 12:21
  see and critically, and I cannot stress this enough. There
• 12:25
  was no forensic link, no foreign DNA on anita that
• 12:29
  matched Nickel no bloody footprints leading to Nichol's car, no
• 12:33
  blood on Nichol's clothes, nothing.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: So the police are stuck. They have a suspicion, maybe
• 12:39
  based on the lack of forced entry and the weird screen,
• 12:42
  but they have zero.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Proof, zero physical proof, just a gut feeling that something
• 12:46
  isn't right, and a gut feeling doesn't get you a conviction.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: And then the world kind of falls apart around them.
• 12:53
  The investigation stalls, but not for the usual reasons.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: This is a crucial part of the story that often
• 12:58
  gets overlooked. We tend to think of police departments as
• 13:02
  these isolated machines that just work on cases until they
• 13:05
  are assauld.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that they exist in a vacuum, but they don't.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: They are part of the ecosystem. And Mino's ecosystem went
• 13:11
  through absolute hell.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: We're talking about the twenty eleven Sourus River flood.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: A catastrophic event, historic levels, thousands of people displaced, the
• 13:19
  river crested at record high's, swamping neighborhoods.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: This wasn't just a little flooding. This was biblical.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: It was The police department wasn't just investigating crimes anymore.
• 13:28
  They were managing a natural disaster. They were doing search
• 13:31
  and rescue, traffic control for mass evacuations, protecting property from looting.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: And what happens to a cold case file in that kind.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Of chaos, It gets pushed to the back burner. When
• 13:42
  a flood hits, a cold case file from four years
• 13:44
  ago inevitably gets put in a box. Maybe literally. It's
• 13:48
  not malice, it's a matter of immediate survival.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs applied to a city. You
• 13:53
  can't investigate a cold murder when the police station itself
• 13:56
  might be threatened, or when half the town is underwater.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and case files evidence, all of that can be
• 14:02
  compromised or lost in the chaos of moving headquarters or
• 14:05
  dealing with damage.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: And just as the water receded, the people came, or
• 14:09
  rather the oil boom came.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: The Backen oil boom. From about twenty eight to twenty fourteen,
• 14:14
  the population surged.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: So this is right on the heels of the murder.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, the boom was starting just after, and it really
• 14:20
  ramped up. Transient workers flooded into North Dakota for high
• 14:24
  paying oil jobs. This was the modern gold rush.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I remember reading about this the man camps, housing shortages,
• 14:31
  crime rates spiking because you have thousands of young men
• 14:33
  with money and nothing to do in the middle of
• 14:36
  nowhere exactly.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: The police force was overwhelmed. They were dealing with bar fights,
• 14:40
  drug trafficking, domestic disputes, traffic accidents. The sheer volume of
• 14:46
  active burning fires meant that the embers of the Anita
• 14:49
  nuts In case were left to cool.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: So it's not just that they didn't have time. The
• 14:53
  entire nature of crime in the city changed.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: It did. The complexity exploded overnight, so it wasn't necessarily
• 15:00
  in competence. It was a bandwidth issue. The department simply
• 15:04
  didn't have the hours in the day. The case file
• 15:06
  was buried not just by time, but by the chaos
• 15:09
  of a city doubling in complexity.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: But there were people who wouldn't let it cool. Gordon
• 15:13
  and Sharon Nutson.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: They were relentless, and you have to admire that tenacity.
• 15:17
  They held annual memorials, they kept talking to the press.
• 15:20
  They made sure Anita's face was still on the news.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: They became advocates for their own daughter's case.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: They did they knew that if they stopped pushing, if
• 15:28
  they stopped calling, the file would stay in a box.
• 15:30
  They were the engine keeping this alive.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: So we have this long stretch of silence from two
• 15:34
  thousand and seven to twenty twenty two, fifteen years. The
• 15:38
  case is cold, Minoa's changed, the oil boom is coming gone,
• 15:42
  the flood waters are gone. And then a TV show
• 15:45
  comes to town.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Cold Justice. It's a popular show on the Oxygen Network.
• 15:50
  Kelly Siegler a former prosecutor and Steve Spingola, a retired detective, and.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Their whole thing is tackling these kinds of cases. Right.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, they take on unsolved cases, bringing fresh and importantly
• 16:01
  fresh resources to local departments that might be underfunded or overworked.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: And in twenty twenty two they picked Anita's case. What
• 16:08
  did they find that everyone else missed? Or was it
• 16:10
  just about looking at the same things differently?
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: It was a bit of both, but primarily since the
• 16:15
  physical evidence, the DNA the prince had yielded nothing for
• 16:18
  fifteen years, they shifted the focus to behavioral and circumstantial evidence.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: So they stopped looking for a smoking gun and started
• 16:26
  looking for a smoking story.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it. They started building
• 16:29
  a narrative not based on who held the knife, as
• 16:32
  proven by science, but who had the motive as proven
• 16:36
  by psychology and witness statements, And.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: They circle back to the roommate, Nickel Rice.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: They developed what we can call the toxic roommate theory.
• 16:44
  They dug into the relationship between Anita and Nicol in
• 16:47
  the months leading up.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: To the murder, and it wasn't pretty right, It.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Wasn't uncommon for that age, but it was tense. They
• 16:53
  reinterviewed friends and acquaintances. They heard stories about arguments over chores,
• 16:58
  noise complaints, person space issues.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: The classic roommate drama.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, but there was a specific dispute over an alarm
• 17:06
  clock that apparently caused a significant amount of friction. It
• 17:09
  sounds trivial, but in a small shared space, those little
• 17:13
  things confessed her.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have to play devil's advocate here. Yeah, I've
• 17:17
  had roommates, I've fought about dirty dishes, I've thought about
• 17:20
  loud music. I haven't murdered anyone, right, it seems like
• 17:23
  a huge leap from turn off your alarm to stabbed
• 17:26
  in the heart.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: That is a very valid point, and it is exactly
• 17:29
  what the defense would later argue. But the prosecution and
• 17:32
  the Coal Justice team believed this was an escalation of
• 17:35
  domestic rage, that it wasn't just annoyance, it was a
• 17:38
  simmering hatred that boiled over.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: So the theory is that this one final argument pushed
• 17:44
  her over the edge.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: That's the narrative. But they needed more than just they
• 17:48
  didn't get along. You can't convict on dirty dishes.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: And that's where the witness statements come in. This is
• 17:53
  the smoking gun they tried to present.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Specifically, testimony regarding statements Nickel allegedly made. The most damaging
• 18:01
  came from Nicholl's own aunt, Brenda.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Glyn's her own aunt.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's powerful for a jury. What does she say?
• 18:09
  Nichol said? Two things stood out. First, that Nichol had
• 18:12
  allegedly said Anita deserved to die. Whoa a chilling statement
• 18:16
  in no matter of context. But the second one was
• 18:18
  more specific and potentially more evidentiary. Brenda claimed that Nichol
• 18:22
  described Anita looking so peaceful after she died.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Why is that significant? Peaceful sounds like a nice thing
• 18:28
  to say at a funeral.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Context is everything? According to the witness, Nicole made this
• 18:33
  comment before details of the body were public, or perhaps
• 18:37
  even before she had officially seen the body with police, so.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: It's privileged information.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly if she saw Anita looking peaceful, it implies she
• 18:46
  saw her immediately after deaths, before rigor mortis, before the decomposition,
• 18:51
  before the chaos of the police investigation. It suggests she
• 18:55
  had an image of the body in her mind that
• 18:57
  only the killer or someone present at the moment of
• 18:59
  death would have.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: That feels huge, That feels like the peace they were
• 19:03
  missing for fifteen years.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: It's what investigators call guilty knowledge, information that only the
• 19:08
  perpetrator would know.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: So between she deserved to die and she looked peaceful,
• 19:13
  the police felt they had enough.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: It was enough for probable cause. On March sixteenth, twenty
• 19:18
  twenty two, based on this accumulation of circumstantial details and
• 19:21
  these witness statements, Nikol Rice was arrested.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: And this is fifteen years later.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Fifteen years later, she was in her mid thirties, by
• 19:28
  then living a completely different life. She was charged with
• 19:30
  felony murder.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: I remember seeing the news. It was massive arrest in
• 19:34
  two thousand and seven and no murder. It felt like
• 19:38
  closure was finally happening, The puzzle was solved.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: It felt that way to the public and certainly to
• 19:43
  the Nutson family. But we have to remember an arrest
• 19:47
  is not a conviction, and the road to the trial
• 19:50
  was long. It wasn't until March twenty twenty five that
• 19:52
  the trial actually began.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: They moved the trial right a change of venue.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, two Grand Forks. This is common in high profile
• 20:00
  cases in small communities. Everyone in Munno had an opinion
• 20:04
  to ensure a fair jury, a jury that hadn't made
• 20:07
  up their minds based on rumors or local news from
• 20:09
  fifteen years ago, they moved it to a different jurisdiction.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: So we were in Grand Forks March twenty twenty five.
• 20:16
  The courtroom is packed. The stakes are incredibly high. You
• 20:19
  have a woman who has been living her life for
• 20:21
  eighteen years now facing life in prison.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: And you have family who has been waiting eighteen years
• 20:25
  for an answer. The tension must have been unbelievable.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: The prosecution's case was heavy on the narrative we just discussed.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: They built their entire case on it motive.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: The deteriorating relationship, the alarm clock fight, opportunity, she had,
• 20:40
  the key, she lived there, and the statements she deserved
• 20:44
  to die. They painted a picture of a girl who
• 20:46
  snapped under pressure.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: It's a story, a compelling story, but is it proof.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: But the defense they had a pretty powerful weapon too,
• 20:55
  or rather a lack of.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: One, the void, the physical void. The uns hammered this
• 21:00
  home relentlessly. There was no DNA linking nickel to the knife,
• 21:04
  no blood in her car, no blood on her clothes.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: It's just not there.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: It's not there, and the absence of evidence in a
• 21:10
  case like this becomes its own form of evidence.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: I want to go back to the control wounds in
• 21:14
  the stabbing.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Stattings are messy, right, extraordinarily messy when an artery is
• 21:18
  hit or the hardest punctured blood pressure causes spray. It
• 21:22
  is very, very difficult to stab someone to death, especially
• 21:24
  with the struggle indicated by the control wounds on the neck,
• 21:27
  and not get biological material on yourself.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: So the defense is basically asking the jury.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: How exactly how did she do it? The defense argued,
• 21:35
  how could she have done this? Driven away and left
• 21:38
  no trace? Did she float out of the room. Was
• 21:41
  she wearing a full hazmat suit? It starts to defy
• 21:44
  common sense.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: And then there was the window screen. Again, the defense
• 21:48
  had a take on that.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: Too, they did remember the DNA on the screen exactly.
• 21:53
  The DNA found on the window screen belonged to Anita,
• 21:55
  not Rice. While this doesn't clear Rice, it certainly doesn't
• 22:00
  implicate her.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: It doesn't help the prosecution's case at all.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: No, and the defense argued that the cut in the
• 22:05
  screen could have been real. Just because nothing was stolen
• 22:08
  doesn't mean an intruder didn't enter. Maybe they were scared off,
• 22:12
  Maybe their intent was solely violence, not theft.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: They just needed to create a plausible alternative.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: They introduced reasonable doubt. They said, you are guessing it's
• 22:20
  the roommate because the screen looks weird, but you have
• 22:23
  no proof, and here's another way it could have happened.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: And they also talked about memory. Right, This is the
• 22:28
  problem with eighteen year old cases.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: The time delay factor. Trying a case eighteen years later
• 22:34
  is a nightmare for accuracy. Witnesses forget hearing. Memory is
• 22:39
  not a video recorder, it's malleable. The defense would ask,
• 22:43
  did she say she deserved to die? Or did she
• 22:45
  say I hate her? Did she say she looked peaceful
• 22:48
  or did I dream that ten years ago? Context gets lost?
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: The defense argued that the memories of these witnesses had
• 22:54
  been corrupted by time, by gossip, and by the massive
• 22:58
  media coverage. Well, if there's a CSI effect a huge
• 23:01
  factor in modern juries. Juries today watch shows like Cold Justice, ironically,
• 23:06
  and they expect DNA, they expect a biometric match, They
• 23:09
  expect a computer to beep and say guilty.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: They want scientific certainty yes.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: And when the prosecution stands up and says, we think
• 23:16
  she did it because she was mean to her roommate,
• 23:18
  and the defense says there is zero scientific proof she
• 23:21
  was in that room at the time of the murder,
• 23:23
  the jury struggles.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: To convict because the standard isn't probably.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: The standard is beyond a reasonable doubt, and a story,
• 23:30
  no matter how compelling, is often not enough to clear
• 23:32
  that incredibly high bar.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: So the jury gets the case. March twenty six, twenty
• 23:37
  twenty five.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: They deliberated for about five and a half hours, which
• 23:41
  for a murder trial of this magnitude is relatively short.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: That's really short.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: It is usually if a jury is conflicted, they can
• 23:47
  be out for days. Five hours suggest they looked at
• 23:50
  the evidence and found the hole immediately, they weren't agonizing
• 23:53
  over it, and the verdict not guilty, unanimous, just like that,
• 23:58
  after all this time, just like that, the reaction in
• 24:01
  the courtroom was visceral. Nickel Rice's family erupted in jubilation.
• 24:05
  There were reports of outbursts of relief. I can imagine
• 24:09
  on the other side of the aisle, the nutsns sat
• 24:11
  in stunned silence, absolute heartbreak.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: And because of double jeopardy.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: That's it. Under the Fifth Amendment, nickel Rice cannot be
• 24:19
  tried again for this crime, even if a videotape appeared
• 24:23
  tomorrow showing her doing it legally, she is clear of
• 24:26
  the specific charge. That door is closed forever.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: So the one person they ever charged is now legally untouchable. Correct.
• 24:34
  This is where the story gets even heavier. We talk
• 24:36
  about the victim, Anita, but the ripple effects of a
• 24:39
  murder like this, they don't stop, no, they spread. Dateline
• 24:42
  NBC did a special on this murderer mino covering the
• 24:46
  trial and the aftermath, and they talked about the second loss.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: The equittal was devastating for the family. They felt they
• 24:52
  had finally reached the finish line, only to have the
• 24:54
  door slammed in their face. But the tragedy goes deeper.
• 24:58
  We mentioned Anita's younger brother, Dan, Yeah, Daniel struggled immensely
• 25:02
  with the grief of losing his sister, the trauma of
• 25:05
  an unsolved murder, the years of wondering, the media circus.
• 25:09
  It takes a toll that is hard.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: To quantify, a constant uncertainty.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Constant reopening of the wound, and tragically, Daniel eventually took
• 25:16
  his own life.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: That is just heartbreaking. It's a second victim of the
• 25:21
  same crime.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: It highlights that unsolved crimes don't just take one life.
• 25:25
  They act like a slow poison in the family structure.
• 25:27
  The stress, the grief, the lack of closure. It destroys
• 25:30
  the survivors too. The nuts and family didn't just lose Anita,
• 25:34
  they lost the future of their family unit as they
• 25:36
  knew it.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: So here we are. It's February twenty twenty six. The
• 25:39
  trial is over, the verdict is in. Where does that
• 25:42
  leave the case cold?
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: Officially cold Manirpid has stated that the file contends no
• 25:48
  promising alternative suspects. They spent years building a case against Rice.
• 25:53
  They put all their eggs in that basket.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: They went all in on the one theory they did.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: And now that she has been acquitted. They don't have
• 25:59
  a plan. There's no secret suspect waiting in the wings, and.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: The stage scene that cutscreen.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: It remains the biggest puzzle piece that doesn't fit. If
• 26:07
  it wasn't the roommate, as the verdict stands, then who
• 26:11
  staged it? Or was it staged? Was it a clever
• 26:14
  intruder who knew how to make it look like an
• 26:16
  inside job.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Or was it someone else entirely who knew Anita, who
• 26:20
  had a key, who has never been on the radar.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: All of these are possibilities. Now the acquittal throws the
• 26:25
  entire investigation back to square one, But with eighteen years
• 26:28
  of cold trail, it's a paradox.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: At the empty room, someone was there, someone held that knife,
• 26:33
  someone looked her in the eyes, and right now the
• 26:36
  law says we don't know who that is.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: And that brings us back to the initial mission of
• 26:40
  this deep dive. Why is it a mystery? Because forensic
• 26:45
  science in two thousand and seven wasn't what it is today,
• 26:48
  but also because there just wasn't anything defined on that knife,
• 26:51
  right because the environment of mine flood, the boom distracted
• 26:54
  the resources at critical times, and because the American legal
• 26:58
  system requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: And this case is the perfect example of that.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: It is the jury didn't say Nichol was innocent. They
• 27:07
  said the state didn't prove she was guilty. There is
• 27:09
  a massive legal difference, but the result is the same,
• 27:12
  no conviction.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: It's a tragedy of timing, of science, and of circumstances,
• 27:17
  a perfect storm that allowed a killer to walk away.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: It is a young woman with a bright future, a
• 27:22
  compromised crime scene, a delayed investigation, a circumstantial trial, and
• 27:27
  an acquittal. It's the nightmare scenario for justice.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? We've unpacked the details,
• 27:32
  but where does that leave us?
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: It leaves us with an enduring question who was the
• 27:37
  person in the room. If we accept the jury's verdict,
• 27:40
  then there is a killer who walked away in two
• 27:42
  thousand and seven and has never been identified. That person
• 27:45
  has lived free for nearly two decades, and it.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Forces us to think about the concept of justice deferred.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, there is a saying that justice delayed is justice denied.
• 27:57
  In this case, the delayed didn't just deny justice in
• 27:59
  my have made justice impossible. How so fifteen years of memory,
• 28:03
  fade of evidence, degrading of witnesses, dying or moving away.
• 28:07
  By the time the trial happened, the chance for the
• 28:09
  absolute truth might have been lost long before the opening
• 28:12
  arguments began. Maybe the clock just ran out on the truth.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: That is a heavy thought that maybe time is the
• 28:18
  enemy of justice.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: In cold cases, it often is. The trail doesn't just
• 28:21
  get cold, it evaporates.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: We want to leave you with this. When you think
• 28:24
  of this case, don't just think of the cold case file,
• 28:26
  the cut screen or the trial graphics. Think of the Needa,
• 28:30
  the girl from Velva who called her parents every day,
• 28:33
  the student who wanted to teach elementary school. She deserves
• 28:36
  to be remembered for her life, not just the mystery
• 28:40
  of her death.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Well said, she was a person, not a puzzle.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this deep dive. It's a tough one,
• 28:47
  but it's an important one. We'll catch you on the
• 28:49
  next one. Stay curious and stay safe. Goodbye.