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Download the Amazon Music app today. A seven-year-old boy cowered in the closet of his family's suburban home in Florida.
He was buried beneath jackets and sports gear, listening to screams coming from down the hall.
When they stopped, the silence that followed was far worse.
Then, heavy footsteps approached, and a shadow passed beneath the door.
The boy braced for the door to burst open, thinking he was about to be found.
But the shadow just moved on. The boy held his breath until he heard the front door to his house open and shut.
All the boy wanted to do was stay where he was.
But his mother and his brother were in danger.
So he swallowed his fear, pushed through all the coats, and stepped out.
The house was silent and still. No broken furniture, no blood.
At least, until he reached the bedroom. There was a figure on the bed, and the sight was too much to process for the seven-year-old.
And so he just immediately looked away. His gaze fell on a phone lying on the blood-soaked sheet, its screen still glowing.
Then a voice rose from the phone's speakers.
Someone was still on the line. 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, please change the follow button's keyboard settings to another language so their typing makes no sense.
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Service is not available in all states. Nikki Halpin couldn't believe how well things were going.
On January 8, 2004, the 32-year-old single mother was at a pizzeria in Safety Harbor, Florida, enjoying a night out with her boyfriend Chris and her sons, 7-year-old Drew and 9-year-old Max.
Nikki had only been seeing Chris for a few months, and he hadn't had much interaction with her boys yet.
But so far tonight, he was nailing it, chatting easily with Drew about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and also making sure to include Max, too.
When Nikki heard Max start to giggle over something Chris had said, Nikki suddenly felt the spark of happiness.
She liked Chris, but until tonight, she really hadn't been convinced that their relationship had long-term potential.
They'd met online, gone on a few dates, and it had been fine.
Not exciting, but fine. but maybe that was okay.
Chris was about her age, and he was an engineer with his life together.
He checked the boxes, and maybe that was all she needed, somebody who was solid, simple, and stable who could make her boys laugh.
I mean, that kind of relationship would certainly be a big change for Nikki.
Her ex-husband, Donald, had been the opposite of Chris.
He was an imposing prison guard and former boxer, built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and was almost twice her age.
They met when Nikki was just 22 and Donald was 41.
Her family had thought he was too old for her, but she had fallen in love with his rugged good looks and charm.
But then life got complicated. Their eldest child, Max, was born with health issues, and the endless hospital bills and stress really strained their marriage.
Donald started drinking more, their fights got worse and worse, and after nearly a decade together, it was just over.
They separated in 2001 and finalized the divorce two years later.
But for Nikki, she had actually been relieved.
She had her freedom back. And so pretty quickly, she had struck up another relationship with a young, fit HVAC repairman named Dan Welch.
Dan had seemed really exciting and charming, and for a while, Nikki had been convinced he was the one.
But Dan didn't work out. He really just wanted to have fun, not get married.
And so Nikki had ultimately dumped him. After Dan, Nikki had gone on plenty more dates, but Chris was really the first guy in a long time who felt like he could actually be something real.
After dinner, Nikki and her sons drove Chris back home and dropped him off around 9.30 p.m.
Less than 15 minutes later, they pulled into their own driveway, where the sight of the new house they'd just recently moved into made Nikki smile.
It was much bigger and nicer than anywhere she'd lived with Donald, and the city of Safety Harbor felt exactly how she'd hoped.
Quiet, warm, and safe. The perfect place to raise her kids.
They went inside and immediately the boys kicked off their shoes and headed in opposite directions.
Drew went to the living room to finish his homework while Max ran straight to his bedroom and powered on his video game console.
As for Nikki, she walked down the hall to her office and she turned on the family computer.
The instant messenger app was still open from earlier and she glanced at the text window and she saw there was a new message from Chris.
It said, how'd you get home so fast? Nikki frowned, not sure why he would ask that, but when her eyes moved up the chat window, she saw that a message had been sent from her account at 9.33 p.m. while she was still out driving.
The message contained only two letters, HB.
Now, keep in mind, this was 2004, so the instant messenger app could not have been on Nikki's phone.
It could only be accessed from her computer, which meant that that message could have only been sent from right here, this physical location, by somebody other than her.
Nikki, who now had goosebumps all over her body, just stared at the screen and then typed back to Chris, I didn't write that.
Nikki grabbed her home phone and called Chris, and when he answered and she explained what was going on, he sounded confused and worried about her.
Nikki asked him to please stay on the line while she looked around her house.
There could be an intruder. And so while clutching the phone and doing her best to stay calm, Nikki began going from room to room, checking to make sure they were empty.
All the while, the only sound that filled the house were the beeps and chimes of Max's video game.
At some point, after checking one of these rooms, Nikki went back into the hallway and was going towards the next room to check.
However, before she got there, she heard something and turned around.
And when she did, she froze. 15 minutes later, at approximately 9.50 p.m., Deputy Brad Ferguson of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office was out on patrol when a dispatcher's voice came over the radio.
A man had just called 911 in a panic. He said that he'd been on the phone with his girlfriend when she suddenly started screaming.
The girlfriend's name was Nikki, and she was home with her two sons at 12 Clearview Drive in Safety Harbor.
Deputy Ferguson switched on a siren and floored it towards the address.
When he arrived, he knocked hard on the door.
And to his surprise, a middle-aged man answered, looking very confused.
Deputy Ferguson asked if someone named Nikki lived there.
And the man said yes. The man called out Nikki's name, and a minute later, a teenage girl appeared.
But to Ferguson, something just didn't feel right.
Nothing about this scene matched the urgency or the information in that 911 call.
Deputy Ferguson radioed dispatch and quickly realized there'd been a mistake.
He was at the wrong house. The caller had given the wrong address.
And it was just pure coincidence that there happened to be a Nicky there, too.
The real location was 15 Clearview Drive, literally next door.
This mistake meant Deputy Ferguson had lost precious minutes.
He raced 30 feet over to the correct house.
And the man from the wrong house followed right behind because he knew Nicky Halpin's family.
They were neighbors. The lights were on inside of Nikki's home, but when they knocked, no one answered.
The neighbors started shouting for Nikki and Drew and Max, and eventually two faces appeared in the window next to the front door.
It was the boys, but there was no sign of Nikki.
The boys recognized their neighbor and opened the door.
Deputy Ferguson immediately noticed blood spatter on Max's T-shirt.
When he asked where their mother was, Drew pointed down the hall.
Ferguson walked into the house and headed in the direction the boy had pointed.
And moments later, he stepped into the bedroom, and there was Nikki.
She lay motionless on the bed. The blankets around her were soaked with blood, and there were deep wounds on the left side of her head.
It was instantly clear this was a crime scene.
Ferguson realized the attacker could still be inside, so he shouted for Nikki's neighbor to take the boys back to his home and lock the doors.
After that, he radioed for backup and began clearing the house on his own.
Gun drawn, he went room by room, closet by closet, until he was sure that whoever had done this was already gone.
It frustrated Deputy Ferguson to think that the time he'd wasted going to the wrong house might have made all the difference.
It might have given Nikki's attacker the chance to slip away.
Minutes later, an ambulance arrived, followed by a fleet of police cars.
Nikki was actually still breathing, but barely.
So paramedics airlifted her to a trauma center, fighting to keep her alive the whole way.
Meanwhile, the evidence retrieval crew got to work processing the crime scene.
The house was littered with toys and sports equipment, which made searching for fingerprints or DNA even more time-consuming than usual, so the team knew they were in for a long night.
Shortly after midnight, two detectives arrived to take over the investigation for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
Their names were Ed Judy and Robert Snipes, and they were both seasoned investigators with over a decade of experience under their belts.
Judy and Snipes spoke to the officers processing the scene, who told them that as of right now, Nikki was still clinging to life at the hospital.
But based on what they'd seen, the chances she'd survive were slim.
Whoever had attacked her appeared to have hit her in the head and upper body over and over again with something very heavy and blunt.
But so far, the evidence retrieval crew had not found whatever that weapon was.
In fact, they hadn't found much of anything.
There was no evidence of a break-in or signs that anything had been stolen.
But Detective Judy was not surprised. The viciousness of the attack did not feel like a robbery, and he was already beginning to suspect that the motive might be personal.
After checking out the crime scene, Judy and Snipes left the house and headed next door to speak with Drew and Max, who were still with the neighbor.
They tried to talk to the nine-year-old, Max, but he was completely unresponsive.
Nikki's neighbor explained that Max had medical issues and rarely spoke, and now he may be traumatized too, and so that left seven-year-old Drew.
The detectives sat Drew down in the kitchen, and as gently as they could, they asked him to tell them what he saw.
There was a long silence and at first the detectives weren't sure the boy would even answer them.
But then he started talking. Drew told the detectives that he had been in the living room doing math problems when he heard his mother scream.
He looked up and he saw her running down the hall and there was this large man in dark clothes with a black mask on carrying something long and shiny, maybe a metal baseball bat.
He said his mother screamed for him to go hide and then she disappeared into the bedroom and the masked man followed her inside.
Drew was so scared he couldn't move, but he followed his mother's instructions and he hid until he heard the attacker leave.
At that point, he snuck out of his hiding place and ran into the bedroom, where he found his mother, unconscious, and his brother Max cowering behind the bed.
Drew took Max's hand and led him to the bathroom, where the brothers hid until they heard their neighbor's voice calling them from outside.
When Drew finished telling this story, the detectives realized that the boys' ordeal was far worse than anyone realized.
Max, the nine-year-old, had actually been in the bedroom with his mother while she was being attacked.
By this point, it was nearing 2 a.m., and the boys were obviously exhausted.
But Detective Judy had one more question.
He asked Drew if he recognized the attacker.
Now, Judy didn't expect much of an answer out of Drew, since the man had worn a mask.
But to his surprise, Drew nodded and said yes.
The boy looked right at Judy and said, "...it was the man who knocks on the windows."
On the drive back to the station, Detective Judy and Snipes talked over everything they'd learned, starting with Drew's final comment about the man who knocks on the windows.
They had asked Drew what he meant, but the boy had not been able to explain beyond that.
The detectives weren't sure if the man who knocks on the windows was a real clue or a garbled story from a deeply traumatized child, but whichever it was, they couldn't make sense of it right now.
So they agreed to log the statement and come back to it later.
For now, they decided to focus on the information from Drew that did sound reliable.
And that was that the intruder was a man.
This fact lined up both with their suspicions and with their training, which told them that whenever a woman is attacked, the culprit is usually an intimate partner.
And so, in the detective's eyes, all the men in Nikki's life were now potential suspects.
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When the detectives got back to the station, Nikki's boyfriend, Chris, was waiting in an interview room to give a statement.
Chris had been at his house talking to Nikki over the phone when he actually heard the attack.
He was the one who actually made the 911 call.
Logistically, it seemed hard to imagine how he could have done those two things if he had committed the attack himself.
But at this point, Judy and Snipes weren't actually ruling anyone out.
They knew Chris could have hired a hitman, for example, and there were a couple elements of Chris' story that raised questions.
For example, they wanted to know why Chris gave dispatch the wrong address.
The mix-up cost valuable time that possibly allowed Nikki's attacker to escape.
And they also wanted to know, when Chris heard his girlfriend being attacked, why didn't he try to go to her house to check on her himself?
He could have called 911 on the way from his cell phone.
So the detective sat down across from Chris and got right into it.
Their first question, about the wrong address, Chris answered easily.
He said he had been in a panic and simply mixed up the numbers.
But the second question, about why he didn't do more to help Nikki or at least go check on her, seemed to trip Chris up.
And he kind of stumbled through a pretty confusing explanation.
He said he had considered going to her house when he heard her scream on the phone, but he didn't because he was afraid that someone was waiting outside his own door and would attack him too if he tried to leave.
To Judy and Snipes, this answer just seemed weird.
There was no reason for Chris to think he would be targeted in some kind of coordinated two-pronged attack, and he hadn't mentioned it to the 911 dispatcher at all.
It sounded like a pretty outlandish excuse.
And so by the end of the interview, both Judy and Snipes were more skeptical of Chris than they had been when they walked in.
But they still couldn't figure out a way for him to have been present for the attack while he was also home talking to Nikki on his landline phone.
So despite having a few misgivings, they thanked Chris for his time and let him go.
As soon as Chris was gone, Snipes called the hospital for an update on Nikki's status.
It was now 3 a.m., six hours after the attack.
Snipes was not expecting good news, so it came as a relief when the doctors told him that no, Nikki is actually still alive.
Her vitals were stable, and it was looking more likely that she'd survive the night.
Still, her doctors stressed that her condition was dire.
After getting off the phone, Snipes shared the news with his partner, and then they got to work on their next task, contacting Nikki's family to fill them in and see if they knew anything useful.
Unfortunately, a quick search told them that Nikki's parents and siblings were 1300 miles away in Massachusetts, and this kind of news was just too serious to deliver over the phone.
So they called up the nearest precinct and arranged for a local officer to drive out to her parents' place and talk to them in person.
That local officer knocked on Nikki's parents' home right as the sun was coming up.
Nikki's mother answered, looking confused and tired.
When the officer told her about the attack on her daughter, she gasped and began crying.
The officer reached out a hand, offering her support, but the mother gathered herself quickly, then looked up through her tears and told the officer she could guess who had done this.
Nikki's ex-husband, Donald. To explain this, Nikki's mother told a story that stretched back a decade to 1994, in the early days of Nikki and Donald's marriage.
That November, their oldest son Max was born with life-threatening complications.
A buildup of fluid in his skull put too much pressure on his brain, and he only narrowly survived.
Over the next few years, Max endured dozens of brain surgeries.
And during one of those surgeries, a nurse accidentally gave him the wrong medication, and it nearly killed him.
Nikki and Donald sued the hospital over the incident, kicking off a drawn-out and very expensive legal battle that created a lot of financial pressure on the family.
These new money problems, along with Max's ongoing health issues, led to constant stress in their household, which eventually contributed to the collapse of Nikki and Donald's marriage.
And then soon after their divorce was finalized, the hospital finally settled in the case, granting Max a trust fund of $1.5 million.
And in the legal wrangling that followed, Nikki had become sole custodian of that fund, and Donald was shut out completely.
He would never see a dime. This is why Nikki's mom thought Donald might have attacked her daughter.
She believed that he simply harbored a grudge over the money.
Detectives Judy and Snipes were already on their way to Donald's place when the Massachusetts officer who visited Nikki's mom called them to tell them about Donald's potential million-dollar motive.
Now, Judy and Snipes already considered Donald a suspect simply because he was Nikki's ex-husband, but this new information shot him right to the top of their suspect list.
They found Donald at home in his bachelor pad apartment, sitting down to coffee and the morning newspaper.
When they told him that Nicky had been attacked last night and was in critical condition at the hospital, Donald looked at them in shock and then demanded to know where his kids were.
The detectives calmly explained that the boys were perfectly safe, but they currently were in the custody of social services.
They couldn't be released to Donald until the detectives were confident that he wasn't involved in the attack.
Now, Judy and Snipes watched as Donald processed the fact that they were treating him like a suspect.
He seemed surprised, and in a tight voice, he told them to come in and ask whatever they wanted.
Inside, as Judy and Snipes launched into their questions, it quickly became clear that the divorce was a very sensitive topic for Donald, but not just because of that trust.
He did say he did not think Nikki was managing the fun properly, but beyond that, he told the detectives that actually, he was still in love with Nikki.
But this admission really only made Donald even more attractive as a suspect.
Maybe, the detectives thought, he was jealous that Nikki was dating other people.
So they asked Donald if he would come back to the station for a polygraph test, and he said yes.
Detectives Judy and Snipes were hoping to use this polygraph test to press Donald about whether he really still loved Nikki or if his love had turned to anger.
They wanted to try to catch him in a lie, But as soon as they got the machine up and running, Donald started passing question after question without so much as a blip.
The detectives started to wonder if maybe they and Nikki's family had misjudged Donald.
But then it happened. Judy asked Donald if he knew who hurt Nikki.
Donald said no, and the machine registered a sharp rise in his heartbeat.
This signified a possible lie. Snipes felt a rush of exhilaration, but he didn't mention anything about it until the test was done.
When it was done, he confronted Donald about the question he'd failed.
Donald took a long time to respond. And when he finally did, he said that he hadn't lied.
He really didn't know who hurt Nikki. But if he was being totally transparent, he did suspect someone.
He hadn't said anything until now because he didn't want to point fingers without any evidence.
But if the detectives really wanted to know his opinion, Donald thought they should look into Dan Welch, the young, fit HVAC repairman Nikki dated after their separation.
To both Judy and Snipes, Donald's accusation against Dan Welch just seemed like a desperate attempt to divert attention away from him.
But then Donald explained why he suspected Dan, and it was surprisingly convincing.
Donald said that Nikki actually used to vent to him all the time about Dan.
At first, she'd been really into their relationship, but when she began talking about marriage, Dan apparently wasn't interested, so Nikki had dumped him.
But after she dumped him, Donald said that Nikki had told him it was like a switch had flipped.
Dan was devastated. He refused to accept that it was over and kept calling Nikki and begging her to take him back for months afterward.
Eventually, Nikki turned to Donald for advice, and he told her to take out a restraining order.
When Judy and Snipes finished their interview with Donald, they still weren't convinced he was innocent.
However, they now had a second suspect, Dan Welch.
The first thing Judy and Snipes did as they began digging into Dan was to search for that restraining order that Donald apparently had told Nikki to file.
But there wasn't one. Not only had Nikki not taken out a restraining order against Dan, but nobody had.
In fact, Dan had no criminal record of any kind.
And the more Judy and Snipes thought about it, the more they realized that what Donald told them about Dan just didn't add up.
Dan Welch had gotten himself dumped for not wanting to marry Nikki, while Donald fully admitted that he himself was still in love with her.
And that was quite a motive. But before they could make any final judgments, they needed to talk to Dan.
But that interview would have to wait. It was now late in the afternoon on the day after Nikki's attack.
Detectives Judy and Snipes had been up for more than 24 hours working this case, and they were fading fast.
Before they spoke to any more suspects, they needed to get some sleep.
The pair reconvened the next morning at the station, and the first thing they did was call the hospital to check on Nikki.
And unfortunately, the news was bad. She had spent 36 hours on life support, she was unconscious, and showing no signs of brain activity.
It was unlikely she was ever going to recover.
This put the detectives in a somber mood as they headed out to talk to Nikki's ex-boyfriend, Dan.
Dan lived in Clearwater, just a few miles away from Nikki's home in Safety Harbor.
Judy and Snipes wanted to catch him off guard, so they didn't call ahead before they knocked on his door.
When Dan answered, the detectives studied his face as they told him they were here to speak about Nikki.
They deliberately did not tell him why, because they wanted to see if the mention of Nikki made him nervous or angry or emotional in any way.
But Dan just stared at them like he couldn't understand what they were saying.
In fact, he was acting like he didn't even know who Nikki was.
So when Dan just continued to look confused, the detectives repeated themselves, this time using Nikki's full name.
And that's when a look of recognition passed over Dan's face.
He quickly waved them inside and said he'd been confused because he always called Nikki Nicole.
Dan said he had heard about the attack on the radio and had been expecting a visit.
As they walked to his living room, Dan kept saying how he was happy to help the investigation, but to the detectives, he seemed almost too eager.
Dan's upbeat demeanor felt forced, and Judy and Snipes could sense anxiety just beneath the surface.
They had barely sat down when Dan had already offered to provide DNA samples and invited the detectives to search his apartment for evidence.
The detectives told Dan that, yes, they would love to do both of those things, but first, they just wanted to talk.
They told him that they had heard his breakup with Nikki might have gotten a bit ugly, and so they wanted to hear his side of the story.
If there was any truth to Donald's accusations about Dan harassing Nikki following the breakup, the detectives thought this question might trigger some sort of reaction.
But Dan just sort of shrugged it off. He said he had gotten over Nicole a long time ago, and he was now seeing somebody else.
Dan also had an alibi for the night of the attack.
He said he had spent the evening working out with a buddy and then went home around 10 p.m., and then he called his girlfriend.
Dan pulled up contact information for both of those people and gave it to Judy and Snipes.
At this point, the detectives weren't sure what to think of Dan.
They figured his alibi would check out, otherwise Dan would not have volunteered it.
So maybe Dan's anxiety they were sensing was just regular anxiety.
I mean, plenty of totally innocent people get nervous around cops and often kind of over-explain themselves like Dan was doing.
It didn't necessarily mean he was hiding something.
But just to be safe, Judy asked Dan if he'd be willing to come to the station to take a polygraph.
And like Judy expected, Dan said yes. Hey listeners, big news for true crime lovers.
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When they got back to the station, they set Dan up in a private room and hooked him up to the polygraph machine.
Dan said he was ready, so Judy began asking questions, with Snipes watching the monitor for signs of emotional distress.
And pretty much right away, Snipes saw the needle spike.
That meant Dan was hiding something. According to the machine, he was lying.
But as Judy asked another question, and another, and another, something weird began to happen.
Every question, even baseline questions about what day of the week it was, the machine would mark Dan's response as a possible lie.
And with these kinds of results, it was hard to know if Dan was actually lying or if he was just so anxious that basically anything he said was setting off the machine.
The detectives both knew that even in the best cases, polygraph tests are not perfect.
The fact that Dan was failing so badly definitely raised their suspicions of him, but it wasn't a reason to hold or charge him.
So after asking him the remainder of the questions, which Dan basically failed entirely, they had no choice but to let him go.
That evening, Judy and Snipes talked through the case, weighing their potential suspects. they had now spoken to the last three men in Nicky's life.
First, there was Chris, Nicky's current boyfriend.
His explanation about not rushing to help Nicky because he thought he might be in danger, because there was somebody outside his door, still struck them as extremely weird.
But the fact that he had called 911 as the attack was ongoing made it hard to see him as the culprit.
They still hadn't ruled him out completely, but he was, admittedly, less suspicious than their other two suspects.
Next, there was Donald, Nikki's ex-husband.
And of all three suspects, he had the strongest motive, since with Nikki out of the way, he would not only get custody of their kids, but also control of a million-dollar trust.
And the fact that he had pointed the finger at Dan, Nikki's ex-boyfriend, was also suspicious, especially since there was no criminal record of the problems Donald had told them about.
That, on its own, was almost enough to convince them that Donald was their guy, he was guilty. except that their third suspect, Dan, the ex-boyfriend, had failed every question on his polygraph test.
All in all, the detectives agreed that it was still too early to draw any firm conclusions.
Just two days had passed since the attack, and so far, the investigation had been moving at a breakneck pace.
Judy and Snipes felt good about how much they'd learned already, but didn't want to miss an important clue by rushing things.
They would continue interviewing Nikki's family and friends, while keeping a particularly close eye on Dan and Donald.
Those two they were the most suspicious of, and they figured if one of them was guilty, hopefully they would slip up and do something to give themselves away.
The next day was January 11th. Three days had passed since the attack, and incredibly, Nikki was still clinging to life.
However, that morning, her doctors told her family that she would never wake up.
So, Nikki's family said their final goodbyes at the hospital, then doctors turned off the machines that were keeping her alive.
Nikki died shortly afterwards. And so that meant that Judy and Snipes were now officially dealing with a homicide case.
Also, Nikki's death started a ticking clock on the custody of her sons.
Drew and Max were still in social services because Judy and Snipes considered their father, Donald, a suspect.
But that couldn't continue indefinitely.
If the detectives didn't charge Donald soon, the boys would be released into his care and Donald would take control of Max's million-dollar trust.
Over the next few days, Judy and Snipes continued interviewing Nikki's friends and colleagues, but they didn't come up with much new information.
The only interesting tidbit came from a friend of Nikki, and it didn't help the detectives narrow things down at all.
This friend said she thought the killer could be Chris, who was Nikki's most recent boyfriend and the one who had called 911 during the attack.
This friend said that Chris was jealous and the couple argued all the time.
And so all this left Judy and Snipes in a tough spot.
They had lots of suspicions, but no hard evidence against anyone.
A week passed, then another with no significant new leads, and the detectives started to worry that their case was about to go cold.
On February 16th, just over a month after Nikki's death, an office assistant at the sheriff's department was transcribing audio files from the case as part of the standard bookkeeping process.
The case was approaching a dead end, and she was responsible for filing everything away properly.
This assistant had already processed the dozens of hours of police interviews with Donald, Dan, and Chris, and she was nearly done.
The last file on her list was the actual 911 call Chris had made on the night of the attack, January 8th.
The assistant didn't expect it to take long, but when she put on her headphones and hit play, she heard something on this call that made her jump out of her chair.
She had to stop and rewind the tape, going back to the start over and over again just to make sure she wasn't hearing things.
The audio was garbled and it was hard to tell what was actually going on, but after a few listens, she was sure it was not her imagination.
The sound she had heard was definitely there, just buried under multiple layers of distortion.
So the assistant dashed down the hall to Detective Judy's office and played the file for him and Snipes.
At first, the detectives couldn't understand what she was so excited about.
But then the assistant adjusted the levels a bit and played the call again.
This time, through the crackly static, Judy and Snipes heard what she was talking about.
Just like that, they knew exactly who killed Nikki Halpert.
Based on the evidence collected at the crime scene, interviews conducted throughout the investigation, and the recording of the 911 call, the following is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Nikki Halpin on the night of January 8, 2004.
The house at 15 Clearview Drive, Safety Harbor, was silent and empty when, at approximately 9.30 p.m., the killer rode up on a bike.
They stashed their bike out of view beside the garage and then looked around quickly to make sure nobody was walking past.
Then, satisfied they were alone, the killer lifted the garage door up maybe a foot or so and rolled underneath.
Once the killer was inside, they began to rifle through their backpack.
They pulled out a mask and put it on. Then they took out a heavy silver flashlight, so large that at a glance, it almost looked like a metal baseball bat.
Then, with the flashlight in hand, the killer walked from the garage into the house itself.
Within moments, the killer was creeping through the quiet house down the hall, headed to Nikki's office, where they switched on the computer.
When the screen lit up, the instant messenger app was already open, and Nikki's conversation with Chris was visible on the screen.
Just then, the icon beside Chris's handle changed colors, indicating that he was now online.
The killer thought for a moment and then hit a couple of keys at random and hit enter.
A few seconds later, a response came through from Chris.
How'd you get home so fast? You must have run every red light.
As the killer read that, they smiled. Now they knew Nikki was on her way home.
Killer switched off the computer screen and walked into a different room and hid.
A few minutes later, the killer heard the front door open, followed by the sounds of Drew and Max running happily into the house.
The killer stayed where they were, thinking Nikki would soon pass by.
But the wait took longer than they expected.
And so as the minutes ticked by, the killer grew impatient.
And so eventually, they poked their head out of the room where they were hiding, and right then, they heard Nikki talking to someone in the hall.
It sounded like she was on the phone, and she was saying something about an intruder in the house.
With a sudden pang of horror, the killer realized their mistake.
Nikki must have gone into her office. She had seen the message and realized someone had sent it from her computer when she was still gone.
There was no more time to wait. The killer sprinted into the hall where Nikki turned around, saw them and screamed.
The sound filled the killer with a blinding rage and they shouted right back at her, Nicole, calm down.
But Nikki didn't calm down. She turned and ran.
And as she passed by the living room, she shouted for Drew to hide and then continued into the bedroom to try to help Max hide.
But the killer chased after her and grabbed her and threw her onto the bed.
She screamed and tried to fight them off, but the killer swung that heavy flashlight as hard as they could into her head and her shoulders and her neck over and over until she stopped moving.
The killer completely ignored Max, the nine-year-old who was right next to the bed, cowering, who had just watched this happen to his mother.
The killer simply turned, dashed out of the room, taking the bloody flashlight with them.
However, what the killer failed to notice was the phone lying on the bed beside Nikki's limp body.
The line was still open, and on the other end, Chris was listening over speakerphone while he spoke to the police on his cell phone.
And so with Chris's phone so close together, the audio from Nikki's room was picked up and recorded along the 911 call.
It was very faint and heavily degraded, but with a little effort, the phrase, Nicole, calm down, could be heard in the background.
And this was the phrase that blew the investigation wide open.
When the sheriff's department assistant had heard those words, she instantly recognized the killer's voice, since she'd just transcribed hours of interrogation videos with them.
But it wasn't just the voice that gave the killer away.
One word caught on that tape sealed the killer's fate.
Every single person in her life called her Nikki.
Every person except for one. Only Nikki's ex-boyfriend, Dan Welch, the HVAC guy, called her Nicole.
It was his voice on the recording. His voice saying, Nicole, calm down, right before he struck her with the flashlight in front of her own kids.
It would turn out that Nikki's ex-husband, Donald, had been telling the truth when he said Dan was harassing Nikki.
Ever since their breakup, Dan had been stalking Nikki, showing up at her house without warning and pounding on the windows while shouting for her to come out and talk.
And this fact likely explains the strange way Nikki's son, Drew, had described his mother's killer.
To a child, Dan was the man who knocks on the windows.
Dan was indicted in January of 2006 and eventually pled guilty to second-degree murder.
He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and will be eligible for parole in 2028.
A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
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Hey listeners, Mr. Ballin here. What if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories happening right now are all connected to what might be the biggest crime of our generation?
You know I'm always on the hunt for the most chilling and perplexing tales out there.
Well, I've discovered a new podcast that uncovers real-world mysteries unfolding right now. much like how another Ballin' Studios podcast, redacted Declassified Mysteries, brings hidden government secrets to light.
And it's called Lawless Planet. Host Zach Goldbaum reveals how shocking tales of murder, cover-ups, and mysterious deaths are all part of something bigger. the systematic destruction of our planet.
From activists who vanish in the Amazon to whistleblowers uncovering billion-dollar environmental crimes, these aren't just stories about the environment.
They're real-life thrillers about people caught between powerful forces willing to kill to keep their secrets buried.
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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