Hey weirdos, I'm Alayna.
I'm Ash.
And this is Morbid!
It is.
It's morbid, y'all.
And it always will be.
Always and forever.
Forever and ever.
What's up, brother?
I'm really excited because this weekend is when all the haunted houses start opening.
Is it this weekend?
It's like when they're starting to trickle open now.
Should we go to one?
Fuck yeah, we should.
Oh my god.
Hell yeah.
Oh my god.
I need a haunted house in my soul.
My soul is a haunted house right now.
Yeah.
I think my soul, my soul is like pretty full for sure.
But like just today is a rough day.
Yeah.
And my soul is barren today.
Yeah.
And it wishes it had, it wishes it was filled with spirits.
Yeah.
And it can be.
My spirit would love to be haunted.
So we should go this weekend.
So we should get that shit going.
Yes.
Let's do it.
We really should.
Also like that just made me think of when you got upset that I had invited, like the spirit of a ghost.
Oh, and then it reminded you of the TikTok videos?
And it reminded me of the TikTok videos because I got to shout this girl out.
I love this girl.
She is so fucking funny.
And I need her to know that she makes me laugh when I need to laugh.
Immensely.
And I appreciate that about her so much.
She also has my mannerisms down.
Yeah, it's actually like shocking.
To a T. Yeah.
So on TikTok.
TikTok.
Her at is Nicole Kreitz writes.
And it's Nicole Kreitz C-R-I-T-E-S.
Nicole Kreitz writes.
Kreitz writes.
And she is so funny.
So fucking funny.
I love her.
I almost said her channel.
I love her channel.
I'm 100.
Like and subscribe.
Well, it goes into the next thing we're talking about.
Oh, yeah, it does a little bit.
Go like and subscribe to her TikTok.
Like and smash that like button.
Smash that follow.
But yeah, her TikTok is really funny and she's just great.
So follow her, like blow her shit up because she's great.
She does like, she'll take audio from Old Morbid and rewatch her episodes and Scream actually.
And she'll just kind of like lip sync to them, but she's so fucking good at them.
And she also makes me remember some of the funnier things that have happened.
And I appreciate that.
I know because she goes back to like the very early days of Morbid sometimes.
And I'm like, oh my God, we are funny.
I'm like oh, look at that.
Like lol, that was funny.
I also think it's weird.
I feel like my voice has changed like throughout the years, because I was 21, 22 when we started this.
I'm like damn, does your voice change within that time period?
Yeah, we're like whole different people.
It's crazy.
I mean I very much, am a very different gal than when we started.
I mean, As we all should be.
Yeah.
You just keep growing, babe.
Growth.
But we also, like, you know, just a little, maybe that was like a little tease that we just said.
Smash that like button.
Smash that like button.
Like and subscribe.
Speaking of.
Channel.
All that shit.
We have a pretty fun collab.
That's coming out on Monday.
Yeah, I mean this Monday because we're caught up, babe.
So I mean this Monday.
It's going to be fun.
I think you guys are going to dig it.
We had a fucking blast with it.
And I don't want to give too much away.
Yeah yeah yeah, it's a collab.
You'll hear it, you'll see it.
It's a lengthy collab, that's what.
That's all you need to know.
It's great, it's great, it was so fun, it's so much fun, and it's not the only one of its kind.
Nope, it's not, and that's all i have to say about that.
It's a lengthy collab, for sure it is.
I need this baha blast to hit.
Today was a.
Let me tell you, today was a day that required a baha blast.
Yeah sometimes like, just people be people and you know, dear god, they should.
None of you no, of course, not literally none of you.
Yeah, you guys are, you guys are great, you guys rule.
Uh, it's just like other people though, other people that come from us, then.
Yeah, i think it's just one of those.
I'm re-watching um housewives of new jersey right now, and all i can think is theresa's tagline when she goes if you're not about the namaste, get the hell away.
Honestly, that's the vibe we need to take on in our own lives.
Frankly, if you're not about the namaste, stay the hell away.
Really get the hell away.
I forget exactly what it is, but she's so funny.
Oh, did I tell you guys that I got to go see Danny go?
Not what I thought you were going to say.
I thought you were going to bring up Marcus.
Oh, probably going to bring up Marcus too.
Breaking news.
Just for my parents out there and teachers.
And.
And TTs.
And TTs.
My kids love Danny Go.
I'm sure many of your kids also love Danny Go or kids in your life.
We got to go see him live because he came to Boston with the kids.
Hell yeah.
We had a fucking blast and they were so sweet.
My youngest loves Gerald.
Who doesn't?
And was so excited to see him.
So like Gerald, shout out to you for like making her day.
Yeah.
But, like, Danny Go Crew was so sweet.
And the show was so great.
If you're thinking of taking your kids, I highly recommend it.
She FaceTimed me for part of it.
I did.
And I was living.
For Gimme That Garbage.
Gimme that garbage, garbage.
Hit it.
Because it's a banger.
Gonna take out the trash.
It just goes so hard.
It was great.
My kids dance.
We danced the entire time.
I was exhausted at the end of it.
I bet.
I would have had a blast.
I would have lost my mind.
Oh, yeah.
It was amazing.
I would have gone so hard.
That was really great.
And Marcus.
And Marcus.
Just as a final note before we get into this, have any of you followed Marcus the Worm on TikTok?
I'm going to remove South Carolina.
I literally don't know how to explain this and I need you to just look it up.
I'm irritated.
I am mildly irritated.
I was irritated.
Quite irritated.
That tells you everything you need to know.
But he's brought us great joy.
Yeah.
Sorry, South Carolina.
He did, in fact, remove you.
He did, in fact, remove you.
But you need to understand, he was irritated.
He was irritated.
Okay.
You've got to look it up on TikTok, everybody.
Just go look.
Pause this right now.
If you're driving, pull over.
Yeah.
Be late to work for Marcus's sake.
And I gotta know if you guys think it's as funny as I think because it made me cry laughing.
Yeah.
I think it's very funny.
Like I lol hard at it.
You raffle.
It feeds my soul.
You raffle.
I do.
Roll on the floor laughing, crying.
And I think you can like look it up on YouTube and stuff too.
So if you don't have TikTok, it's okay.
Just look it up on YouTube.
Marcus is everywhere.
It's Marcus the Worm.
You'll know him when you see him.
You sure certainly will.
And that's all I can say about that.
All right.
Okay.
Well, I think that's enough bid nasty.
If you can even consider Marcus bid nasty, which you can.
Of course.
Write him off on your taxes.
Just kidding.
You'll get in trouble for that.
You will.
Just kidding.
That's a federal offense.
Friend of the pod, Nikki.
Yeah, Nikki asked that we cover her mother's case and we said yes.
Abso-fucking-lutely we will, Nikki.
Truly.
And honestly, Nikki's amazing.
We're going to be talking about her mother's case.
Yeah, her mother, Stephanie.
Today.
And we'll make sure we're like linking to all of Nikki's stuff in the show notes, because Nikki also has a podcast.
It's called Poppy Killed Mommy.
And it's P-A-P-I.
Poppy.
Where she talks all about her mother and her mother's case and her quest to get justice and to get answers about her mother's case.
She's been, like, just... She's, like, as far as daughters go... Ultimate.
Like, A+.
The daughter.
She is elite.
She is not a daughter.
She is the daughter.
Because she has worked tirelessly to get her mom's case just talked about, just get it looked at again like, just get her mom's like memory and the facts about this case out to as many years as she possibly can.
And she's doing an amazing job at it.
She really is and any parent would be really proud of having a child like that.
So, like props to nikki.
Props to nikki also props to other friend of the pod, sarah turner, attorney who's been helping nikki.
Sarah Turney is a badass.
I'm sure you guys know that.
And if you don't, now you know.
While Nikki is the daughter, not a daughter, Sarah is the advocate sister slash all of the above.
Yeah, truly.
So if you haven't like right off the bat...
Make sure you go follow.
I mean Nikki's on TikTok a lot where she's like getting you know.
She posts a lot about this and about like, her journey going through all this on TikTok.
And it's Nikki Wassilition, or Nicole Wassilition.
Her name on there is Nikki, N-I-K-K-I.
But again, we're going to link it so you can just...
Just go click on all that.
And make sure you follow her podcast and also make sure you follow Sarah Turney and Sarah Turney's podcast, Voices for Justice, because those are two family of true crime run pods that definitely deserve to be blown up.
Yeah.
All the listens in the world.
And they're like great people.
All right.
So, with all that being said, let's get into the unfortunate events of you know what really did take place here.
So a little past 130 am on July 9th 1993, an emergency call came into the 911 dispatch center in I think it's Yavapai County, from a man named Russell Peterson.
He was requesting an ambulance for his girlfriend, Stephanie Wassilishan.
So he told the dispatcher that he and Stephanie had gotten into a fight.
Somehow that fight had ended with her being shot and she was now bleeding heavily.
Which, how does a fight end that way?
It should never end that way.
It should never end that way.
Officers from the Sedona Police Department were immediately dispatched, obviously to the couple's residence on Coffee Pot Drive.
Which I just feel like nothing bad should ever happen on a street named Coffee Pot Drive.
Absolutely not.
So sad.
That should be like, you know, a cozy, a cozy place.
The coziest of all.
Where nothing bad happens.
Yeah, exactly.
It's very Stars Hollow-esque.
It is.
That's immediately what I thought of.
Yeah.
So they arrived at the residence about five minutes later.
They let themselves in through the front door and announced themselves, of course.
And Russell came from what they later learned was the couple's bedroom.
He stuck his head out.
He was still actually on the phone with the 911 dispatcher at the time.
And immediately officers saw that his hands were covered in what appeared to be blood.
Oh, boy.
So now that they were at the scene, he hung up with the dispatcher and led them back into the bedroom, where they found Stephanie's body on the floor with a quote large caliber gunshot wound to her throat.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
As far as the officers could tell at that point, Stephanie was dead, likely from the gunshot wound obviously, and the loss of blood which had now pooled around the right side of her head.
But more concerning was that, in addition to the presence of Russell Peterson, there was also a small child in the room just sitting on the bed.
And she looked at this will break your heart.
It's fucking terrible.
She looked up at the officers and told them that's my mommy.
Oh my god.
Now, luckily they got her out of there and they got russell into the next room and they started going through everything in the living room.
He explained that that was his four-year-old daughter that he shared with stephanie.
He said he didn't four years old and she saw her mother in that state.
Oh that, just that shatters my soul.
You could be two years old and you would never get that image out of your head.
Like that poor girl.
No child should ever have to see that.
And just because at the top of this, we kind of told you a little bit about the case.
This is not Nikki.
This is Nikki's little sister.
Oh.
So he said, Russell said he didn't think that she saw what had happened, like saw the shooting, but obviously she saw the aftermath.
Yeah.
And he said he probably she probably saw him do CPR on Stephanie.
So he was telling them I tried CPR I did this and she was here for that.
So back in the bedroom, Officer Scott Brooks kind of just started to survey the scene.
He saw that Stephanie was lying in the northern end of the room, just beside the bed.
And she was just dressed in a green nightshirt and red underwear, just like she was going to get into bed soon.
You know, just PJs.
On the floor nearby, he saw a .44 caliber Magnum revolver.
There was blood evidence on the wall and the table just above Stephanie's head.
And also a bullet embedded in the wall with, this is awful, what appeared to be hair attached to it.
Oh, God.
Oh, God.
He explained that he and Stephanie weren't married, but they'd been living together for about four years and they did have one child together.
And there was another daughter in the home, Nikki.
Nikki is Stephanie's daughter from a previous relationship.
And he said that Nikki was sleeping when the shooting occurred.
According to Russell, he'd been working for most of that night and when he came home later he could tell that Stephanie had been drinking and had spent more than two hours on the phone with her ex-boyfriend, who was the father of her other daughter, Nikki.
And this is Russell saying this.
This is Russell saying this, by the way, yeah.
Thank you for clarifying that.
He said that there had been some tension between the two of them in recent weeks.
And he said that stemmed from the fact that he was invited into a culinary program in Ithaca in New York.
So it was like a ways away.
And not only did he plan to go, but he had already bought the plane ticket and was leaving the following day.
Well, damn.
So he kind of like decided this on his own and didn't.
I think from the sounds of it, Stephanie kind of was like, yeah, what about your family here?
Can you include me in this decision?
Yeah.
So at some point their argument started getting heated and he said stephanie left the room, went into the bedroom and came back a few minutes later holding the 44 magnum that russell's father had given him.
So russell said he was sitting on the couch at the time and that stephanie raised the gun in his direction, fired a single round which struck the wall next to his head, and then said that she was going to blow his head off.
Now remember, this is him talking about.
Yes, this is from his point of view, because obviously stephanie cannot say her point of view exactly.
However, rather than firing a second shot, he uh she walked back down the hallway toward their bedroom and russell started following behind her.
According to him, when they reached the bedroom, they started struggling over the gun just inside of the bedroom door and that caused the gun to go off.
That's when stephanie was shot.
After the shooting, he said he called 911 immediately.
They instructed him to start chest compressions until officers could arrive, and that's just what he did.
So that night he was taken into custody obviously, and the two children were removed from the home and placed in temporary foster care until they could figure out a suitable guardian, which is just.
It's such a sad scene to think about.
What a horrifyingly traumatizing event from beginning to end for those two girls.
Like.
Not only did the younger child see her mother in that state, she obviously wondered what had happened here.
And then 10-year-old Nikki gets woken up and told that now this is her reality.
Yeah, like, this is your life now.
Like, this is what you have to deal with.
And now you're placed in a home where, like, you don't know these people.
Yeah. awful like your whole life got turned upside down in one instant while you slept in which it's like you're she was 10 you're 10 years old 10 and 4 you should go to sleep every night without a fucking care in the world and not no worries and you should wake up the next morning without a care in the world and it's like it kills me when this kind of stuff happens because you just get thrust into adulthood when something like that happens to you and it's just so you become an adult that 10 years old yeah or like you know like the adult problems get put on you at that age i also like whenever it's like and obviously um this is like technically an unsolved case correct because they haven't decided they haven't officially decided that there's faults or what had actually happened uh just putting that out there which is why i think everybody can kind of gather at the top of why nikki has a podcast yes So she, you know, she can better explain that, I'm sure.
And but and obviously I'm just speaking from, like you know, what I'm hearing here is whenever, like I hear a gun goes off during an argument, a lot of times like you're just like, explain to me the gun mechanics of that, because you know, like you've shot a gun right, i have i've never shot a gun you have to, like pull the trigger.
I mean my, i haven't shot a lot of guns and it's like, but from when?
What i actually did?
It takes a lot of, i mean, pressure to shoot a gun, like right, and i think i'm i'm just confused like how this happens, like how you're struggling and somehow you, somebody's finger goes on the trigger right, you know, like that's because you have to get your finger into the trigger.
You know, although there can happen well, not only that, but like guns can misfire right, like if you drop it, or something like yeah, i'm sure like that's.
I don't know enough about guns to say definitively like no, this could not happen, or yes, this could happen, but like we've seen it happen both ways, it just i think it always is more me being like How does a gun go off by accident?
You know, like I always question it at least, like just need to see like the mechanics of it.
Yeah, it's true.
But again, I'm not saying that happened or didn't happen here.
I'm just, I'm just questioning.
Just questioning.
Well, here's the thing.
To the crime scene technicians.
The evidence seemed to kind of match the description of the events that Russell Peterson described.
Okay.
And remember, we're at the very beginning here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In the living room there was a glass of beer on a side table and a glass of wine on a coffee table, indicating that drinking had happened that night, which is by both of them, which is pretty regular in an American home.
In the living room wall, just to the right of the front door, they discovered a bullet and a bullet jacket lodged in the wall, which did support Russell's claim that Stephanie had fired one round at him before they went back in the bedroom.
And the evidence collected from the bedroom also seemed to support Russell's description of that night.
But again, he was still in custody.
So the next morning, he placed a call to his boss at, I think it's Pietro's restaurant.
And his boss was Peter Korn.
And he asked Peter to come down to the station.
Peter came down.
After talking to Russell for a short time, he agreed to take temporary custody of the children.
Oh, wow.
Which is very sweet.
I hope he was a good guy.
I don't know anything about him.
I hope he was.
But then he left the station.
About an hour later, though, Peter Korn called the station and asked to speak to Chief Bob Irish.
And that was the first of two calls between Korn and Irish that morning.
Now, according to Peter Korn, he knew both Stephanie and Russell very well because they both worked for him at the restaurant.
He confirmed Russell's statement to the police about Stephanie having been in distress in recent weeks about.
You know Russell probably going away, Russell leaving.
And he said, yeah, she was very particularly upset about that.
Yeah, which I can understand that.
Yeah, it was going to be a 10 day seminar in New York.
And it sounds like it was, you know, not exactly like you know.
From the sounds of it it sounds like it was not exactly decided on together or discussed in a way where she felt like she had a lot of say in it.
Exactly.
And that's hard when you have a family. yeah and just to clarify like they live in arizona new york is across the country yeah long way away that's 10 days by yourself that's 10 days trying to figure out how you go to work and the children are taken care of like yeah who knows who was around to support the kids exactly that's a lot like that's yeah so during the calls peter also revealed some important information about uh stephanie and russell's relationship basically that it was always somewhat strained okay In an interview with another co-worker, Catherine Dindler, investigators learned that Stephanie had a really difficult childhood.
And this is awful.
She had been abused in many ways by her mother and her stepfather.
I'll never understand this.
Yeah.
It's like, why?
Like, why?
Why a kid?
That's what I don't get.
I'm glad it doesn't make sense to me, but it will never make sense to me that I'm like why are you picking on a kid?
It's broken people who have never taken the time to heal themselves.
No.
And it's like and then they just pick on the end.
It's like a kid nine times out of 10 you created.
Well, that's the thing.
It's like that's your flesh and blood right there.
You most people in their lifetime are going to have to heal from something.
And you should do that before you have children.
You absolutely should.
If it's you know.
If you need to do it while you have kids, by all means like at least you're doing it.
Make a valiant effort.
But you got to heal yourself when kids enter the picture.
Because you can't heal yourself by inflicting the same kind of terror on your children that you possibly went through.
That's where generational trauma comes in.
Yeah.
And trust me, it sucks.
You should be like your parents should.
You should be your kid's safe place.
Yeah.
A hundred percent of the time.
A hundred percent of the time.
And to not be your kid's safe place.
And again, we're talking about like Stephanie's childhood here.
Like that's fucked up.
And look and it's like, and you're going to put them like in a situation where they're going out into the world disadvantaged because they never had that safe place.
So they're going to have to work to figure out one, how to be that safe place for someone else.
And what that even is.
Which she sounds like she figured out how to be that safe place for her kids.
She sure fucking did.
But she's also going to have to find that safe place in other people.
And sometimes that's where the problem comes.
Oh, my God.
So true.
Because you end up going and finding it.
You don't find it.
You find it.
You find somebody that's like your parents who treats you terribly.
It's so... I'm not saying that's...
100.
What happened here?
I'm just saying you know it happens.
Yeah, it's so sad that that's most often the case when you look for your safe space in somebody else, like there are obviously times where you you do find your safe space in somebody and you could be that lucky, but for sure it's it's.
It doesn't happen often yeah, and that's the thing.
It's really sad, because you again you disadvantage them to picking another safe place.
Yeah, exactly out in life.
Well so, according to this coworker, Catherine Dindler, Stephanie said that her previous relationship with the father of her oldest daughter Nikki, had also been physically and emotionally abusive.
So it does seem like she looked for that safe space and unfortunately she got preyed upon again.
Yeah, she looked for a safe space and she looked to the only thing she was used to, which was somebody treating her poorly.
Yeah.
And that sucks.
It's a cycle.
Yeah.
Because, according to Stephanie's sister Kathleen, Stephanie confided in her that Russell had also been physically abusive to her.
Again, I'm not stating that as a fact.
I'm just saying that that came up in a conversation that Stephanie's sister had with somebody.
So who we were able to speak to, as I'm sure you know at this point, was Stephanie's daughter Nikki.
And that's when we really got a closer look into who Stephanie was and what she meant to her family, specifically her two daughters.
And why I can so confidently say that Stephanie figured out how to be that safe space for her kids.
100,000, a gajillion percent.
This will bring you to tears.
And these are Nikki's words.
I'm reading directly from what she wrote us.
Nikki said i had my mother in my life for only 10 years while investigating her cold case murder.
After 28 years, that's when i finally discovered who my mother was as a person.
But let's start out with what i remember.
My mother was a 10, an absolute model.
Gorgeous, beautiful inside and out.
She, she's gorge.
Nikki is spitting truths here because her mom was a hard 10.
We saw a picture of her and i was like that woman is, She's gorgeous.
And she just radiates.
I feel like people like that are kind inside because it radiates out of them.
I was going to say the outside was definitely showing what was on the inside.
Nikki said she took great pride in her appearance and grew her hair out all the way down her back.
That's one of the things I will always remember is her gorgeous long hair and how much care she took in her upkeep.
My mother enjoyed holidays.
She would dress up and decorate the home for the big holidays and the little.
She lived for the small moments and she really did live for the moments with her children.
My mom was a hands-on mom.
She enjoyed.
She enjoyed dressing up her girls and taking family photos every christmas.
She was proud of the family that she created.
My mom would keep up with the trends of the 90s and i remember her buying my clothes to match sabrina the teenage witch because hell yeah and i love, because she just thought melissa joan hart was the cutest and she wanted her daughter to look the same.
For her to choose Sabrina the Teenage Witch as like, I'm going to dress my girls like that.
I'm like oh, that's my girl, right there.
I think we share a kindred spirit.
Oh, yeah, immediately we're like, Stephanie.
Nikki said, I remember my mom encouraged me to read.
She would buy me the newest R.L.
Stine, Goosebumps, or Fear Street.
I would come home from school and a new book would be on my bed encouraging me to learn.
My mom loved family gatherings at Grandma B's.
Lots of memories in that house.
I took out the address.
I remember one time we were swimming and my mom's friend yelled over Stacy, what's your favorite color?
By the way, people called Stephanie Stacy too, like a nickname.
So she said, Stacy, what's your favorite color?
Nikki said she took a drag off her cigarette and responded very coolly green because it's the color of weed and money.
I don't know if green was actually my mom's favorite color, but I know that when I was five years old, I heard her say that.
And 35 years later, I still remember my mom's answer, as she took that drug on that cigarette and answered back green.
What a badass.
I think that's just hilarious.
That's just such a funny way to answer.
And like just like such a 90s cool girl moment, you know?
Yeah.
She said, growing up, I knew that my mom had a hard life.
So when she was an adult, all she wanted was to create a family of her own.
I get that.
Mm-hmm, which is just awful.
She sounds like such a cool, like the goosebumps of it all the rl set leaving the book on the bed when she would come home best, like that kind of shit.
You do that.
I'm like i wish that i didn't have that.
Like i love that.
That's such like it's those little yeah and and obviously look, it's those little things you do for your kids that they remember Leaving a book on their bed for when they get home.
Like something so simple like that means like that has shaped Nikki's entire life.
Like those are the main memories that she has of her mom.
And obviously because her mom was taken from her at such a young age.
But those little things have an impact.
Because I vividly remember And it's always going to be like very vivid.
I can smell them kind of memories.
My mom would leave little decorations for holidays like on my bed.
Yeah.
Like so for Halloween, if she went to HomeGoods while I was at school, she would pick me up a couple of things and leave them on my bed so I could decorate my room.
So cute.
And I can like literally smell like the environment when I walked in and saw those.
It's like that kind of like really fresh memory.
And I think that's what Nikki's talking about with that like green comment.
Yep.
That you can just like, those are the kind of memories that you literally can like touch.
They're like imprinted on you.
Yeah.
And she would leave beanie babies on the front porch when I would come off the bus.
I love that.
Yeah.
And it's like those kind of things your kids will never forget.
Those, oh yeah, and they're little.
When i was in high school i was in high school when i moved in with my grandparents and my grandpa every valentine's day would leave me a mug on the counter from like a really good candy store and put all this yummy candy in it.
Yeah, every single valentine's day he'd get one for like halloween, like all the fun holidays.
He'd give me something little like that and it's like those are truly the things that last.
Yeah, They're little, but they're huge.
And I just remember, like you were just saying, like walking home, walking into the kitchen, I can literally smell like what was cooking for dinner.
And just being like, aw.
Yep.
Like, you thought of me.
Like, oh, man.
So back to the case.
While investigators were conducting obviously, a large number of interviews with friends and family, just trying to get the bigger picture of who Stephanie was, that we now have, thanks to Nikki.
And, of course, how she ended up shot in her own bedroom.
Yeah.
The county medical examiner, Dr. Philip Keene, performed the autopsy on Stephanie.
Now, obviously, he determined that the cause of death was the gunshot wound to Stephanie's neck.
But he had some questions when it came to Russell Peterson's description of the incident.
Because in his opinion, it was not entirely supported by the evidence.
Interesting.
So remember, in his statement to the police, Russell said that the gun had been in Stephanie's left hand when it went off.
This was supported by the presence of gunpowder residue on her left hand, but by all accounts, Stephanie was right-handed, so it wouldn't have made sense for her to hold the gun in her non-dominant hand.
Oh yeah, you're right.
Like that, it could happen, but...
You know, it'd be weird.
And beyond that, in order to inflict the kind of contact wound that she got in her neck, she would have had to have been holding the gun at a very awkward angle, which would have been like unnatural under the circumstances.
Yeah, her arm wouldn't have really been able to move that way.
Well that, and that's where the the questions of like, when a gun goes off like that, come into play where like, you need to like lay out exactly what would have needed to happen for that injury to happen.
Yeah, and sometimes you're like so in his summary, dr keen wrote the character of the wound is such that it is a contact wound, which is awful, damn.
And he said, and the presence of gunpowder residue on the left hand is more consistent with the deposition in a defensive posture than with any self-inflicted injury, whether intentional or otherwise.
Oh.
So as a result of his findings, he did list the death as a homicide.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Very interesting that the gunpowder on the hand, because I didn't even think of that, that it could be a defense thing.
Yeah.
Like that it was a contact thing.
Like that's wild.
It is interesting.
Yeah.
So, based on the evidence initially presented and the statements collected from those who knew the couple, the case you know initially seemed to be pretty straightforward.
It was tragic, but at the end of the day, pretty routine.
Now the coroner's report was definitely a catalyst to a lot of questions, because now that indicated that there was way more to this story.
And now this death is a homicide.
But that wasn't the only thing complicating what investigators thought was going to be an open-shut case.
Not long after Stephanie's death, Detective Walt Spokes sat down with the couple's younger daughter to find out if she had seen anything that evening, because remember she was awake when they got from the room.
And they just wanted to see if she could add anything of value to the narrative.
And throughout the interview he did his best to avoid leading questions, of course, just really stuck to broad questions about what she remembered.
And he asked her, what happened at home tonight?
And she just looked at him and said, my mother died.
My dad killed her.
That wrecks me.
Yeah.
That must have wrecked those like to hear a little, sweet little baby who has been through hell say that to you.
I don't know how you, I don't know how you recover from that.
And just like obviously your job is a part of your life, but then you just go back to your personal life and have to just like, carry that.
Like, that's heavy.
Like, damn.
That's heavy.
Yeah.
The interview with Stephanie and Russell's daughter.
It's pretty brief but there are certain revelations made during that discussion that would be pretty significant going forward.
The most important being that, after she heard the commotion in her parents' bedroom, she went to see what was happening, and not only did she see her mom lying on the floor, while Russell appeared to be retrieving the gun from the closet, It wasn't out yet.
Oh.
But...
That meant that, directly after the shooting took place, Russell not only handled the weapon, but also appeared to have moved it from where it had fallen from Stephanie's hand.
Oh.
Yeah.
Interesting.
And again, this is from the discussion with Nikki's younger sister.
Exactly.
So, given the new information in the coroner's report, Detective Spokes sat down with Russell for another interview and was like whoa, lots of new information here.
And that's when he changed his story in some very significant ways.
Oh.
When he was initially interviewed immediately after the shooting, he told investigators, like we said, Stephanie had argued.
They struggled with the gun.
It went off.
Stephanie was killed.
But now, all of a sudden, he claimed that, to the best of his recollection, Stephanie fired the gun at him while he was on the couch, then went into the bedroom.
He followed her, and when he reached the bedroom, he arrived just in time to witness Stephanie fall to the floor after she shot herself.
What?
Yeah.
Which she would have had to have done with her left hand, which is... At a very unnatural angle.
At a very unnatural angle.
Yeah.
In the neck?
Yep.
Like right on the neck.
Okay.
So the previous explanation of an accidental shooting during a struggle would have accounted for the presence of gunpowder on his hands.
But if Stephanie shot herself, like he was now claiming?
They asked him how did he get gunpowder on his hands?
Yeah.
Because now you're removing yourself from even holding the gun at all.
Yeah.
And they said, for that matter, why did their daughter tell police that she saw him taking the gun to the closet?
Yeah.
When did that happen throughout the evening?
Yeah.
For the most part his second interview matched the contents of his initial statements.
He claimed he got home from work.
He found Stephanie drunk, agitated.
Their conversation was calm, things got heated and he said he did his best not to become angry.
He told detectives I don't have the buttons that you can push to maybe want to put me into that mode.
Which is like, babe, everybody has buttons.
Yeah, everybody has a button, but like not to be pushed into a mode of handling a gun.
Yeah.
And then eventually, things escalated to where Stephanie got the gun fired a shot at him, and then that's where his story changes again.
According to him, after the shot was fired he fell over on the couch and it took him a few seconds to collect himself.
And that's when Stephanie went into the bedroom.
He said, I go through the hall and the door is three quarters of the way closed.
I know I told you guys of this confrontation, of this struggle and I'm not excluding that maybe it did or did not happen.
And that's the point of darkness for me.
So now it's maybe did happen, maybe didn't happen?
And now you don't remember anything?
It's when people claim the blackout happens that I'm like, uh-oh.
And it's like, so that's your third story now.
Yeah.
And now we're including a complete blackout.
A blackout.
Yeah.
Which, like, if you can't account for that time, that's not good.
Like, uh-oh.
Essentially, he was recanting his previous statement now, that they had struggled over the gun.
And now, apparently, the one where he immediately walked in and found Stephanie lying on the floor.
And now that we were just left with this blackout and he said he didn't regain uh, full consciousness until he saw her fall to the floor, he said i don't know what happened.
I may know it'll come to me.
I never i don't think i ever put my hands on her.
So it's like now you don't know what happened and how did you just black out?
Like now you're like, you just like went unconscious And it's like okay, I'm playing devil's advocate here, for sure.
Yeah.
Traumatic events can make you blackout, but you already definitively told one story.
And then you said, actually, that's wrong.
And then you definitively told another story where you remembered everything.
And now all of a sudden you don't remember?
If you blacked out, you've got to say that from the jump.
That's the thing.
No matter what, whether like whatever outcome actually happened here or whatever process happened here, you're not making yourself look good here.
No.
By changing the story up a hundred times.
The second you start changing your story is the second that people get their haunches up.
People are suspicious.
So he claimed that after he regained his composure in the bedroom, he saw the gun on the floor and his instinct was to pick it up and to move it out of the way.
So he grabbed it, he put it back in its leather holster and placed it on the shelf in the closet.
But then he said, something clicked off in my mind that said, no, you can't do that, Russell.
Meaning he realized he shouldn't move the weapon.
He went over to the closet and he took it out again and put it back on the floor where he'd gotten it from.
And he said that's when their daughter appeared at the bedroom door.
So now that accounted for her seeing her father move the gun back out.
So now we're accounting for a story that we know the daughter told.
Which again, if that is what happened, why wouldn't you just say that?
Initially.
From the jump.
Right.
Just say like yeah, and there was this moment where I went to put it back and I was like, oh shit, that could look suspicious.
So I took it back out and I think my daughter appeared there.
Like, why wouldn't you just say that story?
Why is that suddenly coming to you now?
You got to just say things initially.
You got to just say the story.
When you're in a situation like this, obviously like people get scared.
So many things can be true, but no matter what, it looks us when you start changing your story.
Yeah.
So throughout the course of the interview, Detective Spokes did his best to push Russell for any additional information, especially by pointing out the contradictions between his story and what they now knew from the evidence.
For example.
Now the coroner's ruling indicated that the death was a homicide, but Dr Keene was very careful to point out the angle of the entry and exit wounds and the contact burns made it very unlikely to have been a suicide.
So he's sitting there, the detective spokes is sitting there telling Russell like okay, so now your story is that Stephanie shot herself, but the autopsy is not showing us that.
That's the thing.
The autopsy isn't going to lie.
And they reenacted the shooting, and the facts of what the findings were in the autopsy were verified.
Lied.
Yeah.
It confirmed.
It would have been very very, extremely difficult, if not completely impossible, for Stephanie to have bent her arm in the position that she had to have to shoot herself that way.
Autopsies don't lie.
That is just, you cannot fuck with an autopsy.
That is just that they're going to tell you what happened there or what didn't happen.
That's the thing and it's like not only that but then they went to the trouble of reenacting it.
In the work of reenacting it and it confirmed the findings.
Yeah.
That's like a double down.
And that it's like it's next to impossible for it to have happened, like for her to bend her arm that way.
Mm-hmm.
Like, come on, man.
My haunches are immediately up.
Like, I'm immediately like, what?
And now it's now it's completely removed you out of the situation.
And then you find out you can't be completely removed because you have gunpowder on your hands and somebody saw you with a gun.
Yeah.
Like, hello?
So detective spokes in the interview room explained to Russell that he was pretty much losing all credibility, especially because now he had changed his story like four or five times at this point.
That's not great.
And to make matters worse, while he was initially pretty cooperative and forthcoming, after about a week or so he stopped returning investigators' phone calls and just seemed to be avoiding detectives because they couldn't continue to hold him after a certain point.
So he did get let go.
Of course.
But then he kept getting called in for interviews, but then he just eventually stopped participating in them.
Damn.
So eventually, Spokes and his partner presented Russell with what they believed to have happened that night.
Yeah.
Which was more or less the original version of events.
They said, sure.
I think a fight escalated to a struggle over the gun.
And during that fight, Stephanie was shot.
Detective Spokes said, I'm trying to give you an opportunity to respond and to help us.
I mean, if this was an accident, we just want to prove it was an accident.
But at that point Russell was immovable and just continued to say nope.
Stephanie shot herself and I blacked out during it.
No.
I don't believe that.
That's the story that makes the least amount of sense.
And the story that the forensic evidence and the autopsy proved wrong.
Right.
So it's like you can't keep hanging on to that one.
And they're literally sitting here being like we'll give you the initial story that you gave us back.
We're giving you the opportunity to just tell us this was an accident.
If it was an accident, tell us.
It's an accident.
And we'll move from there.
But don't change your story.
But to take yourself completely out of it now when the forensics is telling us you were in it?
Come on.
And don't get like shoddy and start avoiding people.
Yeah.
Investigators in the law are like, hello?
Not good.
So, based on the number of times that his story had changed and the various pieces of contradictory evidence, detective spokes and the other investigators felt pretty strongly that Russell Peters was not being entirely forthcoming about what happened on the night of Stephanie's death.
But they didn't have any evidence or eyewitness testimony to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he wasn't being truthful.
Yeah.
It was just only that it would have been awkward, given the evidence, and close to impossible, but not impossible.
Yeah, of course.
And unfortunately, the only witness that they did have who saw anything that night, aside from Russell, obviously was a small child who, in addition to experiencing a considerable trauma, like is a child.
I mean, she's three or four years old.
That's like she's so little.
You know, like and and again, she's been through so much drama and and you don't want to keep dragging her through this trauma, you don't want to keep dragging her through it.
She's a child, so she can't be your only witness that you can throw on the stand because unfortunately, a jury isn't going to put a man away for life or for a considerable amount of time based on a three-year-old yeah, and that's just a four-year-old's word.
You know fortunate reality.
So they didn't believe what Russell was telling them, but they couldn't prove that he wasn't.
So they were at a standstill.
And the months that followed, new information and leads just started to dry up, because I mean, there's only one person involved here.
You're not really going to get any tips or leads.
Yeah.
And there just wasn't enough evidence for the prosecutor to bring the case to a grand jury.
So everything just petered out and the investigation was shelved, so that detectives, could you know, focus on more urgent matters.
Yeah.
But in the years since Stephanie's death, her family has never, ever lost hope, and they still want to get justice for her.
They still continue to push Sedona law enforcement to resolve the case.
In the summer of 2020, almost a full 27 years since Stephanie's death, her sister Wendy met with Sergeant Michael Dominguez from the Sedona Police Department to talk about the case.
Wendy restated her strong belief that Russell was definitely responsible for Stephanie's murder and was like hey, can you just continue this investigation please?
Yeah, can we not just like let this go?
Yeah, like can we take this off the shelves?
Which I think this is Arizona, correct, Sedona?
Yeah.
This is also where Sarah Turney's sister, Alyssa, her case is ongoing.
Yep.
So it's just like an interesting.
But got shelved at a certain point.
And then she was told just put enough pressure on, you know, like just never stop talking about it.
Never stop talking about it.
Always like make the public aware, get the word out.
So that's exactly what we're doing here and what Nikki's trying to do.
And what everybody else in Stephanie's family was trying to do and is trying to do.
So Wendy was urging the department to continue the investigation, and Sergeant Dominguez explained that they would continue to pursue the case to the best of their abilities, but suggested that they might be able to make more progress if the family could aid them in the investigation, which is what Sarah was also told.
Yeah.
Specifically, he spoke with Stephanie and Russell's daughter and asked her to cooperate with them on a confrontation call, and she agreed.
Wow.
A confrontation call?
And to be able to agree to that?
Yeah.
Damn.
Yeah.
Like that's so scary.
I can't imagine being involved in something like that.
Like that takes some badassery.
But as of July 20th 2020, there doesn't appear to have been any additional contact between the Sedona police and the family.
And it's kind of unclear whether that confrontation call took place or not.
Interesting.
So around that time that Dominguez was communicating with Wendy Wassilishan, he also spoke to the press about his taking another look at the case.
He told a reporter from the Sedona Red Rocks News.
The children were in bed sleeping in other rooms when the incident occurred.
Not true, necessarily.
The autopsy report from the medical examiner at the time called it a homicide.
But with the advances in technology and criminology in the year since Stephanie was killed, both the investigators and the family hoped that maybe they could make some progress here.
So he said, can I tell you it's a homicide with 100% certainty?
No.
But based on the evidence I see, there's more to the story than that of a suicide.
Yeah, it just doesn't read that way at all.
Yeah, so he was on board to continue this.
But within just a few weeks of restarting their investigation, the note of optimism seemed to leave his voice.
At the time that Stephanie was killed, a lot of focus was put on her having held the gun in her non-dominant hand, which would have been pretty counterintuitive under the circumstances.
Yeah.
But he said and this is a quote he said the family has over focused on the fact that she was right handed and she could have only done this with her right hand.
But it's like, I think I would over... Why?
It's not over-focusing.
It's just a big... It changed everything.
Yeah.
That's when... You have a dominant hand.
Well, and that's when investigators went to him and said like, hey, here's what's in the report.
And that's when the story started changing.
So I don't think that's over-focusing.
I think that's... I think that opened up a little bit.
Yeah, exactly.
I think them focusing on that at all made him change his story a little bit, it seems.
Yeah.
Because they brought it up and the story changed.
So it's like...
It was good that it was brought up.
That's the thing.
If the coroner's report is like the initial reason that caused doubt and it caused him to change his story, I get pretty fucking hung up on that too.
Well, and also it's like, don't say that they're over-focusing on it.
You have a dominant hand and you do things with that dominant hand.
And if you're trying to kill yourself, you're not going to want to fuck it up by using your non-dominant hand.
I mean, that's just, that's a very forgive the word i have to say, but morbid thing to say.
But it's true yeah, it's just.
That doesn't make sense, and you do have to think about the logics involved here, you're right.
And to say they're over focused on it no, i think it just is a piece of the puzzle.
That makes sense exactly.
Well, he said, and he did say it seemed unlikely that anybody, like you just said, would take the time to switch hands before shooting themselves.
But at the same time he said it wasn't out of the realm of possibility.
Okay, and i can agree with that.
Yeah, So he took the original coroner's report to a new medical examiner to get a second opinion.
And the second opinion turned out to be inconclusive, which is infuriating, infuriating.
And also like I don't know that this is the case, but it's like I don't think that one medical examiner is going to want to step on the toes of another one.
Yeah.
It's also like, I wish you could be brought to several.
Yeah yeah right, have them all kind of like brain trust it exactly, even have them all, like a few of them, work together to figure out, because when you have a few of those great minds together you could probably you could come up with a better way to do it.
Well, dominguez said about the medical examiner.
He said he told me that based on what he had in front of him, he was not able to make an assessment in terms of manner manner being suicide or homicide or unknown.
I think that was a fair assessment and i trust dr nine because he's been doing autopsies for a very long time.
But I think it also holds weight that he couldn't make a decision.
That's the thing.
Somebody who's been doing autopsies for many, many years can't really conclusively come up with what happened.
And that's big.
Yeah.
And can't say that that was a suicide.
Yeah.
And that tells you something.
Right.
So obviously there's challenges here, but the good thing is that Sergeant Dominguez restated his intention to pursue the investigation as far as it would take him, but he was pretty careful to avoid making any promises.
Basically, he echoed what the original investigators felt.
They really couldn't prove anything from a legal standpoint, and there just wasn't enough evidence.
Yeah.
And despite his best efforts, the renewed interest in the case didn't come up with any new leads.
There was just nothing to go off of.
And within a short time, he found himself at another dead end.
So infuriating.
So just they feel like there's nowhere left to go.
But that is where the family steps in.
And it's always where the family steps in.
It always is.
And usually moves things along.
So in the years since the second investigation just stalled out, Stephanie's family have just been working tirelessly to keep her memory alive and achieve any kind of justice for her case.
In 2022, they worked with the local Fox affiliate in Phoenix to produce a two-part news story on the case, which obviously celebrated Stephanie's life, but also highlighted a lot of the unresolved questions in the case.
And, like we said most recently, Stephanie's daughter Nikki, has started a multi-part podcast, Poppy Killed Mommy, where she's exploring the case from her perspective.
Which I think is a very important perspective.
Yes.
And we urge you, urge you, urge you to go listen to that. yeah we gave you the story here we gave you the the cold hard facts you need to hear it from her her mouth that's you gotta like she was there she was part of you know she knows stephanie she knows russell she knows all of this and like you said you gotta hear it from her mouth so to end this on nikki's voice before you go check out her podcast again it's poppy killed mommy here's what she told us in relation to the investigation now and what she hopes moving forward She said,
I know that I carry her rage and her anger.
I'm mad for the life that was taken from her and her children.
I feel like I've become her warrior in my 40s and my midlife.
I'm finally looking back at my childhood and seeing my mother in such a different light.
I know that my mom's case has made me obsessed for some kind of justice.
The influence that she has given me is to never give up and I never intend to.
I've contacted the police and they're telling me it's been too long.
I've contacted wrongful death attorneys and they're telling me the statute of limitation has expired.
I'm not even sure what justice looks like anymore, but I will not stop until there is some kind of accountability.
Thank you for taking the time to listen to the daughter of a miracle woman.
Damn.
Which just gives you chills.
I'm telling you guys, go listen to Nikki.
She's going to do it.
She'll blow you away.
She's going to do it.
There's going to be some kind of justice here.
And she reminds me very much of like her and Sarah have that same like determination.
They have that same like just badassery that they're like, I'm just not going to stop.
And it's like just getting something, some kind of justice.
When you love somebody that much and they make such an impact on your life, being your mom, your sister, your friend, no matter who it is, you will fight to the death for them.
Yeah.
You know, it's so true.
It's really true.
And honestly, like definitely support Nikki here just to get answers.
That's all she's looking for.
She's looking for answers.
And it's like we always say a cold case is never cold.
That's why when they say like it's been too long and it's like, no, it hasn't.
Look at the boy in the box was solved.
Yeah.
The Somerton man.
The Somerton man was solved.
Years and years and years and years.
They figured there's so many cases that have been solved later.
The Golden State Killer.
Yeah.
The Golden State Killer.
I mean, they thought they solved Jack the Ripper.
They didn't, but they're still trying.
Don't get her started.
So there's that.
Don't get me started on that.
But they're still trying and you don't give up.
I have full hope and I hope that Nikki does too.
I think she's going to get this shit done.
Yeah.
And also because we know you guys can crank out the signatures on a petition if you do see fit, which I think you will hear.
There is a petition on changeorg.
It is a demand of a complete homicide investigation for the murder of Stephanie Marie Wassolition.
We're going to put the link in our show notes.
We'll put it on social media.
It has 12,000 signatures right now.
And Nikki was the one who made it.
Yeah, Nikki made this.
So...
Go sign that for Nikki.
Share the word.
Spread the word.
Support her podcast.
Support the Change.org petition.
And let's crack open this cold case.
Let's do it.
Let's find out what happened here.
All right, guys.
So we hope that you blow this case wide open.
We're all going to.
And of course, we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird.
But not so weird that you don't go check out Poppy Killed Mommy by our girl Nikki.
Nikki and sign that petition.
You guys are so good at petitions.
Thank you.
