Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today. On a cool spring evening in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a man burst out of a bar and started running down the sidewalk, chasing after a woman who had suddenly stormed outside in the middle of their conversation.
The guy finally caught up to her and grabbed her arm, and she spun around to look at him with a furious expression on her face.
He asked her what was going on, and she slurred her words as she said that she didn't want to talk about it.
The guy asked her to please come back inside, it was dark and she shouldn't be walking alone at night.
But this just seemed to make her even more upset.
She started pounding her fists into the guy's chest and screaming at him to leave her alone.
The man backed up so she would stop hitting him and he asked her again to please just calm down and come back into the bar.
But she still refused and then she turned around and started speedwalking away from him.
The guy didn't know what else to do, so he just turned around himself and went back into the bar alone.
But what he learned the next day would haunt him for years to come.
He wished he had tried one more time to chase that woman down.
But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, on the coldest day of the year, be sure to walk up right behind the follow button and clap them on both ears.
Okay, let's get into today's story. The show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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As 31-year-old Nikki Vander Hayden leaned in close to the bathroom mirror and swiped mascara onto her lashes, she could hear her infant son laughing from the other room.
She leaned back and peeked out of the doorway into her bedroom, where her boyfriend, 34-year-old Doug Dietry, was playing peekaboo with their seven-month-old baby.
Nikki smiled and then plugged in her curling iron.
It had been a long time since she'd gotten dressed up for a big night out.
But it was finally Friday, May 20th, 2016, and Nikki and Doug had tickets to see a rock band play at a bar in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Even though the couple had a baby together, this was actually kind of like their first big night out together.
Nikki had met Doug less than a year and a half before.
At the time, Nikki had just been divorced and she had two young children from her previous marriage.
She wasn't looking for a serious relationship, but Doug was tall and handsome, he worked at his family's very successful home building company, and he even owned his own house.
And so they had gone on a few casual first dates, and just one month after they met, Nikki was pregnant.
The baby was a total surprise, but Doug had been excited to become a father.
He'd invited Nikki and her two children to move into his house, and he took care of all three of them during Nikki's pregnancy.
And now they felt like a very cohesive and loving family of five.
But as much as Nikki loved her kids, she did really need a break sometimes.
For the last seven months, she felt like her life had really been consumed by caring for her children, working as a substitute teacher, and going to the gym to get back into shape.
She and Doug barely got to spend any quality time together, and so she hoped this fun night out to this concert would help them connect.
As Nikki wrapped a section of her long blonde hair around the curling iron, she heard the doorbell ring.
Doug called to her from the bedroom and said he would go get it.
A few moments later, Nikki's friend, Dallas Kennedy, rounded the corner into the bathroom.
Dallas was tall and thin with long blonde hair and a lip ring.
She'd offered to babysit that night so Nikki and Doug could go to this concert.
Dallas asked Nikki where her two other children were, and Nikki said that their dad, her ex-husband, had taken them for the weekend, so Dallas would only have to look after the baby.
Dallas said that made her job much easier, so that was great.
Then Dallas left the bathroom so Doug could show her where to find the diapers and baby bottles and anything else she might need.
Nikki finished doing her hair and then walked to her closet.
As she did, Doug shouted from the other room that their friend and designated driver for the night, Greg, would be there to pick them up in just a minute.
So Nikki quickly chose an outfit, got dressed, grabbed her purse, and rushed out towards the front door.
Dallas was standing near the door with the baby, and as Nikki passed them by, she thanked Dallas again for babysitting, she gave her baby boy a kiss on the top of his head, and then she and Doug headed outside.
Two hours later, at 10 p.m., Nikki sat at a table in a neon-lit sports bar called The Watering Hole, watching a man play a drum solo on stage.
The room was loud and quite packed, but Nikki had still managed to find a table that was big enough to fit her, Doug, Greg, and a few more of Doug's friends that they had met up with.
Everybody was enjoying just chatting loudly over the music, but for Nikki, after spending seven months basically stuck at home with the newborn baby, all she really wanted to do now was just get up and go dance.
Nikki jumped up and skipped over to Doug, who was in the middle of a conversation with Greg, and asked him to dance with her.
At first, Doug seemed reluctant, but he got up, took Nikki's hands, and led her out to the dance floor.
The music was fast with lots of percussion and electric guitar, and so Nikki and Doug jumped around until they were both out of breath.
Then Nikki just stopped and stood still and looked up at Doug with a huge smile on her face.
Their relationship had really been such a whirlwind that they'd never really been able to let loose like this before.
I mean, they barely even dated before Nikki was pregnant.
Doug smiled back at Nikki and said he'd get them both another drink, and so he walked towards the bar.
Nikki stood there for a moment in the middle of the room looking around, and she noticed a couple of guys checking her out.
And for Nikki, who had not felt super attractive since she'd had her third baby, this attention kind of felt good.
But in reality, Nikki was not remotely interested in these random men.
It was just the idea that they liked her that she liked.
When she turned and saw Doug coming back towards her with a beer in each hand, she felt so lucky to have found such a handsome, caring, awesome guy.
After another hour of drinking and dancing, the lights in the bar got brighter and the band left the stage, and Nikki felt disappointed that her big night out was already over.
But then one of Doug's friends, named Angela Delfoss, came up to her and asked if she wanted to go to a dive bar right down the street called the Sardine Can that had this big fake shark head hung on the wall behind the bar.
Nikki laughed and said she definitely wanted to keep the party going.
So she went over to Doug, who was sitting at the table across from Greg, and asked if he wanted to go to the Sardine Can bar.
But Doug said he and Greg needed to finish talking about something, so Nikki should go ahead and they would just catch up with her in a few minutes.
Nikki smiled and said okay, and then she headed out with Angela and the rest of the group.
Once at the sardine can, Nikki got another drink and mingled with Doug's friends.
But as time passed and Doug and Greg did not show up, she started getting kind of mad.
This was supposed to be her and Doug's night out together, so why wasn't he here?
Why was he prioritizing Greg? After waiting now for at least half an hour for Doug, who still had not shown up, Nikki sat down on a bar stool and somewhat angrily called Doug.
But Doug didn't pick up. She texted him, and he didn't reply.
Frustrated, she ended up finishing her drink and ordering another one.
Angela sensed something was wrong with Nikki, so she came over and asked if she was okay.
Nikki tried to temper her emotions, but she'd had a lot to drink and felt like her boyfriend had kind of abandoned her.
She told Angela that Doug wasn't answering his phone, and she said it in a way that conveyed her frustration, and so Angela just said, okay, you know, I'll try calling him myself.
And when Angela called, Doug answered. And this made Nikki so mad.
It was obvious what was going on. Doug was clearly purposefully ignoring Nikki.
He wouldn't answer her phone calls, but he'd picked up Angela's right away.
And for Nikki, the worst part was she just wasn't that surprised.
She'd always felt like Doug had a wandering eye.
They'd even had arguments about it before.
And Nikki had told Doug that when she caught him clearly staring at other women, it made her question their relationship.
And so Nikki just could not ignore the little voice in her head that said Doug was only with her because she'd gotten pregnant and they had a baby together.
And so while Angela was still on the phone with Doug, Nikki sent Doug a very angry text message.
Then she slammed the rest of her drink, stood up, and stormed out of the bar.
She felt someone grab her arm and she spun around to see one of Doug's friends.
He asked her what was going on and told her she should come back inside, but Nikki by this point was so drunk and so emotional and angry that she just started punching the guy's chest and telling him to leave her alone.
The guy looked surprised, but he backed off and returned to the bar.
Now alone on the sidewalk, Nikki considered going back to the watering hole where the concert had been and confronting Doug, but then she ultimately decided against it and instead she went in the opposite direction.
A few minutes later, Nikki walked into a bar called Richard Cranium's.
The place was dark and loud with multiple TVs playing different sports games.
Nikki texted Doug again as she went up to the bar, took a seat, and ordered another drink.
She kept her eyes on her phone for several minutes after sending this text, only looking up to thank the bartender when he brought her her drink.
Finally, when she did not get a response from Doug, she took a deep breath and just put her phone back in her purse.
Nikki looked around, and just like at the first bar, she noticed there were a few random guys sort of checking her out.
For a second, Nikki thought about going up and flirting with someone just to kind of spite Doug.
But then, she saw the front door of this bar open, and she made eye contact with the person who walked inside.
At the same time, across town at Nikki and Doug's house, the babysitter, Dallas Kennedy, was starting to nod off on the couch when she heard the front door unlock.
It was almost 3 a.m., and she actually had not expected her friends to stay out this late, but, you know, she was going along with it.
Doug stumbled into the house alone and obviously was very drunk, and Dallas immediately asked him, you know, where's Nikki?
And Doug just shrugged and mumbled that he didn't know.
Dallas couldn't believe that Doug didn't make sure his girlfriend got home safe.
So Dallas tried calling Nikki, but the call went straight to voicemail.
Even though she felt really angry at Doug, she knew arguing with a drunk guy at three in the morning was not going to get her anywhere, so she gathered up her stuff and she left.
When Dallas climbed into her car to drive home, she couldn't help but feel like something was just not right here.
But she told herself that, you know, she has no idea what really happened here.
You know, maybe Doug and Nikki got in a fight or something.
And, you know, maybe Nikki's phone had died and she wound up crashing at a friend's house.
Who knows? But Dallas was certain that by tomorrow, whenever Nikki got up, she would certainly be in touch.
The next morning, a farmer who lived about two miles away from where Doug and Nikki's house was, went out to his shed to check on some alfalfa seeds.
He put them in water to soak a few hours ago, and now he wanted to see if they were ready to plant.
But as he made his way towards the shed, the farmer saw his grandson and his grandson's friend sprinting towards him, and both boys looked absolutely terrified.
They stopped in front of the shed, breathing heavily, and the farmer's grandson told him there was a dead body in the field. farmer was so taken aback he actually thought the boys might be messing with him.
But he trudged out to the field anyway, and from a distance he saw what he thought was maybe a deer's auburn coat.
However, as he got closer, he realized it was obviously not a deer.
It was a woman whose blonde hair looked red because it was now caked with blood.
The farmer stopped in his tracks. He told the boys to go back home, and then he used his cell phone to call the sheriff's department.
The county sheriff's office was less than a half mile away from the farmer's land, so detectives Brian Slinger and Rick Lopnow got there in minutes.
Slinger was a veteran detective with 18 years of experience, and Lopnow had handled his fair share of homicide cases.
But as they both stood in the field over the body, they both felt a little shocked at the grisly scene.
The victim was a woman who laid face down in the dirt, naked except for her socks.
Her blonde hair was matted with blood, and the outline of a shoe was visible on her back, as if whoever had killed her had also stomped on her.
And just the idea of that really made Detective Slinger's stomach churn.
Slinger and Lopnow put on gloves, and they turned the woman's body over.
Slinger saw bruises all over her body, and he noticed her fingernails were ragged and bloody as well.
To him, this was a telltale sign that this woman had fought against her attacker.
Then, Lopnow pointed to a dark purple mark circling the woman's neck.
Both men agreed that it looked like she'd been strangled.
Slinger could tell that this woman's final moments had been horrible, full of pain and horror.
And even though it was too late to save her life, he promised himself that he would find who did this and bring them to justice.
That afternoon at 4.30 p.m., a dispatcher at the county sheriff's office got a call from Doug Dietry, who explained that he'd gone bar hopping with his girlfriend Nikki the night before and she still had not come home, and so he said he wanted to report her missing.
The dispatcher by this point already knew that a deceased woman had been found in the area that morning, but that information was not public yet.
If the woman in the field was Doug's girlfriend, the dispatcher knew that he would likely be a person of interest in the investigation.
So the dispatcher had to be careful not to reveal any details to Doug.
So the dispatcher simply told Doug that a sheriff's deputy would come by his house at some point today to take his statement in person.
And sure enough, a few minutes later, the deputy arrived outside of Doug's home wearing a body camera.
The deputy knocked on the door, and when Doug answered, it was very obvious to the deputy that Doug was hungover.
He had dark circles under his eyes, and he sort of cringed at the sunlight.
Doug led the deputy into his kitchen where they both sat down.
Doug then repeated his story about going bar hopping the night before with his girlfriend, Nikki.
And then he said at some point he'd lost track of Nikki, maybe just before midnight.
And at that point, the deputy asked why, if Doug had not seen his girlfriend since, you know, midnight the night before, why did he wait until now, 4.30 p.m. the next day to report her missing?
That seems so reckless. Doug sort of hung his head and told the deputy that Nikki had gotten really mad at him last night, and so he figured she just needed some space and would come home eventually, so he hadn't gotten worried until this afternoon when it seemed like, you know, no one had heard from her and she still wasn't home.
The deputy thought this sounded pretty suspicious, but he nodded and asked Doug for a physical description of his girlfriend.
Doug said Nikki had blonde hair and blue eyes, she was about average height, and she worked out a lot, so she had a very athletic build.
The deputy told Doug they would start looking for Nikki immediately.
Then the deputy went outside, got into his car, and called the dispatcher to let them know what Doug had said.
The dispatcher, after hearing this, then called Detective Slinger, who was still out looking for evidence in the farmer's field.
And she described to him Nikki's physical appearance.
And Detective Slinger sounded somber as he said that physical description matched the deceased woman in the field to a tee.
The next day, Sunday, Detective Slinger sat in the county medical examiner's office, drinking cold coffee and waiting for the autopsy results.
He hoped the medical examiner would find some helpful clues because so far, a search of the farmer's field had not turned up anything useful.
Slinger got a phone call from a patrol deputy, and when Slinger answered, the deputy began speaking a mile a minute.
He told Slinger he'd been driving a couple miles away from the field, and right before he was about to merge onto the highway, he noticed something in the grass on the side of the road.
And so kind of on a hunch, he pulled his car over to go look around, and he found multiple articles of blood-stained clothing.
It looked like someone had tossed the clothes out of their car window right before getting onto the freeway.
Slinger's heart raced as he realized this could be their first big break.
He told the deputy he'd be right there, then he called his partner, Detective Lopnow, and told him to join him at the scene.
A few minutes later, Slinger met Lopnow and the deputy on the side of a busy highway on-ramp.
As cars rushed by, the deputy led the detectives through the grass and showed them the bloody clothing, which to this point the deputy had not touched at all.
And so while Lopnow began taking pictures and bagging the clothes as evidence, Slinger began to walk around the area to see if he could find anything else. and before long, he stumbled on a purse.
The detective put on a pair of gloves, then opened the purse up and looked inside.
He saw there was a cell phone inside with a dead battery, and also a photo ID from the Green Bay Public School District for a pretty blonde woman named Nicole Vander Hayden.
Slinger already had a strong feeling that the woman they found in the field was Doug's girlfriend Nikki, but now he knew for sure, it had to be her.
He brought the purse to his partner and Lopnow went ahead and packed it into an evidence bag.
Lopnow said he would bring everything to the sheriff's office to be cataloged and then sent off to the Wisconsin State Crime Lab for analysis.
Meanwhile, Slinger praised the deputy for his sharp eyes and told him what a huge discovery he'd made.
Then Slinger jumped into his car and headed back to the medical examiner's office.
By the time he got there, the autopsy was complete, and the medical examiner sat down with Slinger to discuss what he found.
He told Slinger Nikki had likely died during the early morning of Saturday, May 21st, so just a few hours after Doug claimed he had last seen her.
Nikki had suffered two potentially fatal injuries, blunt force trauma and ligature strangulation.
In other words, whoever killed Nikki had severely beaten her and then used some kind of rope to strangle her.
Either one could have killed her. Nikki had also been sexually assaulted, and defensive wounds on her hands showed that she'd fought against her attacker fiercely.
Detective Slinger shook his head sadly. On the one hand, it was good that the autopsy revealed so much information, but it was horrible to think about how terrifying Nikki's final moments must have been as she slowly lost the fight for her life.
The medical examiner said he'd removed Nikki's socks and he'd also taken swabs from underneath her fingernails, hoping that between the socks and the swabs, that some or all of those items would contain a DNA profile from Nikki's killer.
And he told Slinger he would send all of that to the state crime lab for analysis.
Slinger thanked the medical examiner and headed back to the sheriff's office, where he found Detective Lopnow sitting at his desk looking very frustrated.
Slinger asked him if everything was okay, and Lopnow said he'd just spoken to a representative from the state crime lab, and they were so backed up that they would only be able to accept a few pieces of evidence at a time.
And so not only would the detectives have to pick and choose which items should be examined first, but it could take weeks or even months to get results.
Lopnow couldn't believe that these bureaucratic delays could potentially derail their entire investigation.
Detective Slinger was disappointed too, but he decided to move forward with old-fashioned detective work while they waited for the crime lab analysis.
And that meant talking to literally everybody who'd gone out with Nikki on Friday night.
Most importantly, talking to her boyfriend, Doug.
On Sunday afternoon, the detective sat in an interview room with Doug, listening to his story about what happened on Friday night.
Doug said that he and Nikki had gone to a concert at the watering hole, and then Nikki and a few other friends had gone to a different bar called the Sardine Can at 11 p.m.
Doug explained that he and his friend Greg had stayed behind to finish their conversation and didn't show up to the sardine can until about an hour later, so after midnight.
But by the time Doug got to the sardine can, Nikki was already gone.
His friends told him that she'd left, so he figured she'd gone to a friend's house or something like that.
Doug said that he and his friend Greg had stayed at the sardine can until 2.15 a.m., and then Greg dropped him off at home.
Doug went to bed at 3, woke up at 6.45 to feed his baby, and then slept again until 11 a.m.
After that, he stayed home all day waiting for his girlfriend to come home, and then when she didn't, he finally reported her missing at 4.30 that afternoon.
Hearing Doug's story, Detective Slinger could not understand why Doug was not more worried when his girlfriend suddenly disappeared during their night out.
And that made Slinger very suspicious. After all, Doug's alibi was not exactly airtight.
Based on the medical examiner's findings, it was possible that Nikki was murdered after 3 a.m. on Saturday when Doug claimed to be home asleep by himself minus his baby.
On top of all that, the detective already knew that Doug was not being completely truthful.
Slinger had watched the body cam footage from that deputy who took Doug's missing person statement, and in that video, Doug said that Nikki had gotten really mad at him on Friday night, something Doug was not talking about now in this interview room.
So Slinger pressed him about that. Doug admitted that Nikki had gotten really mad at him on Friday night because he had missed a few of her texts and calls and then he had picked up a call from one of Nikki's friends and Nikki was aware of that and so Nikki obviously thought that Doug was ignoring her but Doug said he really wasn't, it was just a misunderstanding.
Detective Slinger was curious about these calls and text messages from Nikki and so he asked Doug if he'd be willing to let investigators look at his cell phone data and Doug said sure and handed over his phone.
Slinger left Doug alone in the interview room while he went to his office to review the messages.
Starting after 11 p.m. on that Friday night, Nikki sent a string of very angry text messages accusing Doug of lying and cheating on her.
She called him an abuser and said, quote, you hurt me all the time, end quote.
Reading this, the detective realized there must be a lot more going on in Doug and Nikki's relationship than met the eye.
Slinger scrolled through a few more of Doug's text messages, and he saw that Doug had been messaging his mother about wanting to sell his house and end his relationship with Nikki.
Doug told his mom he just was not cut out to be a family man.
Sitting there in his office, staring at Doug's phone, the detective couldn't help but wonder, was Nikki just drunk and upset?
Or was there truth to her accusations about Doug abusing her?
And if Doug felt trapped in this relationship, how far would he go to get out?
But before Detective Slinger could do anything else, he had to go tell Doug that Nikki was actually deceased.
And so he got up, he went back into the interview room, and he just sat down and told Doug flat out that they were no longer looking for Nikki because she had been found and she was deceased.
And Doug immediately broke down, began hyperventilating and crying and sobbing.
He was inconsolable. And Detective Slinger just sat there and let Doug cry for a while.
And then at some point, Detective Slinger got up and he left the room.
Unsure if Doug was the best actor in the world or if this was a genuine reaction.
Regardless, he knew what he had to do next.
Slinger went back to his office and downloaded all the information off of Doug's phone for his records.
And then he began drafting a request for a search warrant to search Doug and Nikki's home.
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Later that day, Detective Slinger and Lopnow and a small team from the sheriff's office met at the big gray house where Doug and Nikki lived, armed with this new search warrant.
They went inside and poured over every inch of the place.
At first, everything seemed very neat and tidy, but then Slinger found a crumpled sweatshirt on the counter in one of the bathrooms.
He picked it up and he noticed a few dark red stains on the front.
Then Lopnow pointed to the bathroom trash can where two wadded up bloody tissues were clearly visible right on top.
The detectives bagged the sweatshirt and tissues as evidence and just as they were about to leave the bathroom, Slinger noticed more drops of blood on the floor, leading to the shower.
The detectives wondered if this might be where Doug came to clean up after he killed his girlfriend, but they couldn't jump to any conclusions quite yet, so they kept looking around and eventually they went out to Doug and Nikki's garage, where they found Nikki's car.
Lopnow peered into the car windows and immediately told Slinger to come look in the back seat.
Even through the tinted windows, Slinger could easily see at least two dark brown stains on the seats which he thought could be dried blood.
He tried to open the door to get a better look, but the car was locked.
Slinger began to walk around the car to try each door to see if they were open, but as soon as he crossed behind the vehicle, he just stopped.
Because right there, on the cement floor, he saw a big, dried bloodstain.
Suddenly, Slinger felt like he could see the crime playing out in his mind.
He imagined Doug, drunk, coming home from the bar, and Nikki, also drunk, getting there a few minutes later, and then Nikki and Doug must have had some kind of fight in the garage, and the detective figured that Dougie killed her right there, where the big bloodstain was.
Then Doug would have put Nikki's body in the backseat of the car, which would explain the bloodstains there, before dumping her body in that field and then disposing of her clothes and purse on the side of the road.
After that, Doug must have come home and cleaned up in the bathroom, where they found the bloody sweatshirt and tissues.
But Slinger knew this theory left one key question unanswered.
How did Nikki get home from the bar? She didn't have her car that night, and the area where she and Doug went bar hopping was more than 12 miles away.
And if Doug was telling the truth about coming home without her, then somebody else must have driven her there.
Just then, the detectives heard someone pounding on the front door.
They went through the house, opened up the door, and saw an older man standing on the porch looking totally freaked out.
He held two pieces of a broken phone charger up in the air.
Slinger asked the man what was going on and he said he'd been mowing his lawn, which was just next door, when his mower had hit something and malfunctioned.
He turned off the mower and flipped it over and wrapped around the blades was this phone charger.
But as he worked the cord out of his lawnmower, he realized there was some sticky red liquid on it that came off onto his hands.
And when he smelled the red liquid, it had that coppery scent of blood.
The neighbor said he knew the police were investigating Nicky's disappearance, and he wondered if maybe this phone charger could be some kind of evidence.
The detectives asked the man to show them exactly where he'd been when the cord stopped his lawnmower, and the neighbor led them to the line right between his yard and Doug and Nicky's yard.
The detectives began looking around in that area, and in the green grass, they noticed there were a few chunks of blonde hair.
Then Lopnow pointed out three medium-sized bloodstains on the curb.
Clearly, Slinger thought, his earlier theory had been wrong.
Nikki had not been murdered in the garage.
She'd been killed right there in the street in the middle of the night.
And Slinger felt sure the killer had used that phone charger to strangle her.
The detectives thanked the neighbor, then they took the phone charger and also the hair in the yard as evidence, and they took pictures and swabs of the bloodstains in the car, garage, and on the curb.
They would ship all of it to the state crime lab for analysis as soon as possible.
But even before those results came back, Detective Slinger felt like they already had probable cause to arrest Doug and at least hold him in jail.
So they got an arrest warrant and officers brought Doug into custody on Monday, May 23rd, just two days after Nikki's murder.
Handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser, Doug cried and wailed and hyperventilated and told officers that they really had all of this wrong.
But Detective Slinger didn't think so. All he had to do now was wait for the crime lab analysis to prove it.
Over the next few weeks, results from the backlogged state crime lab slowly trickled in.
And then in early June, Detective Slinger got a call from an analyst at the lab who said they had just made a huge discovery.
They'd found a partial male DNA profile on Nikki's body and the same partial profile had been found on that phone charger that they all assumed at this point was used to strangle Nikki.
Slinger was ecstatic. He knew a partial profile could not actually be used to definitively link a suspect to a crime, but it was enough evidence to rule suspects out.
He figured if this partial profile matched Doug's DNA, well, that was just one more reason to really feel certain that Doug was guilty.
So the detective got a DNA sample from Doug, who was still being held in the county jail, and they sent it to be compared with this partial profile.
And when Slinger got the results, he was shocked to see that Doug's DNA was actually not a match.
To Detective Slinger, this didn't make any sense.
There was blood all over Doug's house and yard, and yet the DNA analysis showed that a completely different man had grappled with Nikki in the moments leading up to her death.
Slinger walked down the hallway to Lopnow's office and told him about the confusing DNA results.
The detectives talked through the timeline they'd made of Nikki's final hours to see if there was maybe some other man in the mix that they could have missed.
And that's when they realized something they'd glossed over.
On Friday night, when Nikki and her friends went to the second bar, Doug stayed behind at the first bar with one other person, his friend Greg, the designated driver who picked Nikki and Doug up and who was supposed to take them both home.
And so Slinger wondered if maybe Greg could have been Doug's co-conspirator.
Maybe he was the one who drove Nikki home and maybe he helped Doug pull off the crime.
But that was only speculation. Right now, the sheriff's office didn't have any proof.
They did have multiple bloodstains from in and around Doug's house, but they were still waiting for more results from the crime lab to know whose blood it was.
And Lopnow said they couldn't keep holding Doug in jail much longer because Doug's DNA was not on Nikki's body.
Slinger knew his partner was right. Much to his disappointment, Doug was released from jail on June 10th, almost three weeks after Nikki's murder.
Ten more weeks would pass with no breakthroughs, and every day, Detective Slinger felt haunted by the knowledge that a killer was right now walking free.
Then, in August, three months after Nikki's death, the detective got another call from the state crime lab.
They'd found a male DNA profile on one of Nikki's socks, and this profile was complete.
Slinger submitted the profile to the FBI's national DNA database, and right away, he got a match.
Finally, after months of investigation, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who the murderer was.
Based on the DNA results, along with interviews, cell phone records, and security footage, here is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Nikki Vander Hayden in the early morning hours of Saturday, May 21, 2016.
Just after midnight, the killer strode down the sidewalk in downtown Green Bay, then entered a bar called Richard Cranium's.
As soon as he walked in, the killer made eye contact with Nikki, who was sitting on a bar stool across the room.
She looked drunk and sad. The killer approached her, sat down, and asked if she wanted to talk.
They chatted for a while, and as they did, Nikki's mood began to improve.
The killer offered to buy her another drink, but Nikki said no, she'd had more than enough, and she just wanted to go home.
So the killer asked if Nikki wanted a ride, and she nodded her head.
At about 12.30 a.m., the killer helped Nikki stumble out of Richard Cranium's, then opened the door for her to get into the passenger seat of his car.
As they drove away, the killer noticed that Nikki was nodding off.
She looked vulnerable, and the killer saw this as an opportunity.
Instead of taking Nikki home, the killer drove her to his house.
When the car rolled to a stop, Nikki stirred, looked around, and asked what was going on.
The killer put a hand on her leg and asked if she wanted to come inside, and she immediately recoiled and said no way.
She said she didn't even understand why he would ask that because he knew she had a boyfriend.
The killer pulled his hand back and said, okay, that was fine.
But inside, he felt shocked and embarrassed by this rejection.
And so as he turned around and began driving towards Nikki's house, inside he was burning up and getting more and more upset.
And by the time he got to her house, he decided he was not going to take her no for an answer.
He parked outside of Nikki's house and promptly locked all the car doors.
Then he reached across the middle console and literally began pulling off Nikki's clothes.
And she tried to push him away, but he was a lot bigger than she was.
After her clothes were taken off, the killer sexually assaulted Nikki.
After the assault was over, Nikki managed to get the door unlocked and jump out of the car.
The killer realized that if she got away, she would tell people what had just happened.
So the killer jumped out of the driver's seat and grabbed Nikki.
And they fought viciously right on the street beside the curb.
The killer punched Nikki and tore out chunks of her hair, and Nikki clotted her killer so hard that her fingernails broke off.
Eventually, the killer pushed Nikki down in the street and stomped on her back.
As Nikki struggled to get back up, now gravely wounded, the killer ran to his car and grabbed a phone charger.
Then he ran back to Nikki, wrapped the cord around Nikki's neck, and strangled her to death.
The killer stood upright, breathing heavily.
The weight of what he'd just done came crashing down on him, and he looked around, terrified that somebody in the neighborhood had been watching.
But the street was dark and quiet. So the killer lifted Nikki's lifeless body into the backseat of his car, and he drove off.
As he made his way out of Nikki's neighborhood, the killer noticed a big plot of empty farmland right off of a main road.
Without thinking, he pulled over, took Nikki's body out of the back seat, and carried her far enough into the field that nobody would see her from the street.
Then, after dumping her in the field, the killer ran back to his car.
But just as he was about to get on the highway, he realized he'd forgotten something.
Nikki's clothes and purse were still in the car.
So as he was driving, he rolled down the passenger side window and threw the items towards the side of the road before merging onto the freeway.
After that, the killer rolled the window back up and tried to steady his breathing.
He told himself everything would be okay.
Nobody would find out what he did. He repeated this to himself over and over until he believed it.
And then he just continued on with his life as if nothing had happened.
But three months later, in August of 2016, the state crime lab finally found the killer's DNA on one of Nikki's socks.
Detective Slinger entered the profile into the FBI's national database, and he found a very surprising match.
The DNA did not belong to Doug or Doug's friend Greg.
In fact, the DNA didn't belong to anybody that Slinger had even heard of.
The profile matched a man named George Birch.
Police would eventually learn that George was 38 years old, he was 6 foot 7 inches tall, and he had moved to Green Bay from Virginia just two months before Nikki's murder.
Through national law enforcement records, Detective Slinger discovered that George had a long criminal history, including charges for burglary, possession of a concealed weapon by a felon, drunk driving, and grand larceny.
He'd also been investigated by the Green Bay Police Department for potential involvement in a hit and run accident in June of 2016.
As part of their investigation, the Green Bay police accessed all of George's cell phone records, including text messages and internet browsing history.
Slinger discovered that in the days after Nikki's murder, George Googled her case 64 times.
On top of that, GPS data from George's phone gave detectives a map of his movements on the night Nikki was killed.
George entered Richard Cranium's bar just after midnight.
He left at about 12.30 a.m. and then drove to his house, then Nikki's house, then the field where Nikki's body was found, and finally to the road where her clothes and purse were discovered.
The state crime lab eventually found George's DNA all over Nikki's body, on her clothes, and on the phone charger that George used to strangle her.
The evidence against Nikki's boyfriend, Doug, did seem strong, especially all that blood, but the lab analysis showed that it was misleading.
It turned out the bloody sweatshirt and tissues in Doug and Nikki's bathroom belonged to Nikki's sister, who'd had a nosebleed.
The stains in Nikki's car were blood, but the lab determined it came from one of her older kids.
And the big dried puddle in the garage? Well, it wasn't even human blood.
It was actually turkey blood because Doug had gone hunting and killed a turkey.
And so, of course, this turn in the case was not what the detectives had expected.
But the evidence against George was overwhelming.
And so, George was arrested and Doug was fully exonerated.
George Birch was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
George attempted to appeal his conviction in 2021, but it was denied.
After Nikki's murder, Doug would raise the baby boy that he had had with Nikki, and Nikki's ex-husband cared for their two older children.
The Green Bay community also held a fundraiser to collect money for all three kids, who now must grow up without their mother.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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