Episode 466: The Murder of Dawn Hacheney｜Morbid

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Hey, Weirdos, I'm Ash.

And I'm Elena. And this is Morbid Baby.

This is morbid. I made it like, it's morbid, baby.

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Yeah, like Tiana. Yeah.

you just sounded actually just like tiana did i she's my girl you're a princess oh my god i'm like my favorite princess oh my god she's also the sweetest one that we met in um what's that place disney world you can say my body rejects it but we met her and she was so sweet and she called everybody sugar i didn't get to meet her because i wasn't with you guys at that point i think john like john was like starstruck with tiana i mean i would be starstruck like we we straight up we're like that's tiana is that tiana she's right there oh my god it's tiana i mean she's a great disney she is she's underrated

as fuck i feel like she won't be humble opinion she won't be soon because disney got rid of splash mountain and they're doing like a whole princess and the frog themed ride it's about fucking time when did that movie come out i know you know it's about time i didn't realize how how long that movie had come out because at at that point i had like i wasn't watching disney movies religiously anymore yeah i mean now it's like i don't know if i ever really was but now you are though now i am i came out in 2009 i thought it was it's about time guys it's about time you give tiana her due and prince naveen

underrated prince in my opinion did it just get hot in here yeah it did and it was prince naveen he's a really hot fictional character oh yeah i don't know how i feel about making that statement out loud but but here I am.

My girls love Prince Naveen.

I know. He's their guy.

He is. Yeah. I think he's probably like, out of all the princes, I would say he's the hottest. I'm telling you, literally underrated criminally in all facets.

Is that movie, those characters, the songs, the soundtrack.

The songs. Flaps. Never did I ever think that we would have this conversation on this podcast. No, I did not.

I don't know how we got here, but I'm glad we did.

I said, it'smoreofitbaby.

oh yeah and it was very and then you did like tiana arms and everything yeah it was crazy it's it's really uplifting right now it is we we need it you know yeah we sure do what the world is anything to save my life please please i just start crying please everybody's like what the fuck is wrong with you nothing we just created nothing also i'd like to clarify i feel like a a lot of people thought that drew and i broke up and that's like not what we're talking about right now we are alive and thriving okay oh hell yeah i just wanted to put that out there because we just sounded very stressed and i

didn't want people to start speculating further no everything everything's honestly it's just one of those weeks yeah i think mercury just came out of retrograde and we're in a shadow period yeah we were feeling a weird way we we turned the room around yeah we changed positions and now we're feeling much better we're kind of like at a chat set now it's pretty good yeah it's we were you know why we were feeling that way like the way that we were not only mercury was in retrograde and now it's in a shadow period i don't know if the moon is still in cancer but as of yesterday it was and that gets

you in your ma fucking feels but then we're entering gemini season the best season and so everybody's feeling like the best season debatable we could do this all day so everybody's feeling like a bitch see i just proved that and so did i i was like let's go everyone's feeling like a bitch i'm like true correct so you know what be your best bitch self and i hope everybody watched the vanderpump rules reunion oh fuck how did we not open up with that i know i mean guys i don't know know what to say about it i'm gonna get a timeout it was when when james said nah it's not hitting for me it's not hitting

for me i said i didn't even listen it sang james and lala's friendship forever oh all four all day every day ever i'm very excited about episode two and three um and i hope that you guys are too yeah just one more quick thing lala on her podcast which everybody everybody should go listen to it's called give them la la fucking love it um and she said that she texted her producer about the first part of the reunion and was like holy shit like this was incredible like yay i love it and the producer was like oh you think this is good it doesn't even stand up next to part two and three don't even tell

me that i already did i think i told you twice because i'm pretty sure i told you this morning i'm gonna wish time away I mean me too are we all we are but yeah so we we Tiana'd we Disney'd which was crazy we Vanderpumped and now we're gonna Morbid and we Zodiac'd too oh we did we did we covered all the astrologies not you know we Zodiac'd and astrology so now we're gonna Morbid yeah we're six minutes in I think so like perfect we're good I like it here we are I'm gonna bring you down because this This is a really, really sad case, a really tragic case, a really gnarly case.

Oh, good. And I feel like this case, it makes the most sense to start in the middle, which I used to do a lot.

And I haven't done that in a while.

Oh, I love that. So I'm excited to.

Let's go. I'm going to start in the middle.

We're going to work our way back to sort of the beginning.

And then obviously we will cover the downfall of the monster of the case at the end.

But I'm not going to like give it away who it is just yet.

Don't worry. Don't give it away.

I won't. Don't you fucking dare.

I said I fucking wouldn't.

right i'll trust you that's good we should always trust we should always trust each other always trust always i don't really know what happened there anyways so bring it down so everything happened just one day after christmas oh yeah that's upsetting yep and it was december 26 obviously the year was 1997 and police and fire were called to the home of nick and don hackney in Bremerton, Washington.

So when they got to this house, it was absolutely engulfed in flames.

But as far as the investigators knew, the house was empty.

That unfortunately changed when they were able to make their way inside and they were immediately hit with the smell of burnt flesh.

Oh, no. Yes. And somebody thought, you know, maybe it was like one of the dogs that got stuck inside.

But as the firefighter searched through the first floor of the home they weren't finding the source and then when they reached the hackney's bedroom they unfortunately did and they found 28 year old don hackney badly badly burned like beyond recognition 28 years old just laying in her bed her laying in her and her husband's bed and her husband nick had left early that morning for a hunting trip with his friends so obviously he was okay and this was what he was going to come home to oh so the fire had started started well after Nick went out for the day, and the Hackney's neighbors, Tim and Amy

Pitts, they were the ones to call the fire in, and how they noticed it was Tim's co -worker, Jeff Richardson was his name, that guy usually picked Tim up for work in the morning, so he was the first one to see the fire, and he called it in, or he didn't call it in, he started banging on the Pitts' door to wake them up and, like, screaming, like, call 911.

Okay, so Amy, the wife, called 911, and Tim and Jeff ran over to the Hackney's home to see if if they could help anyone who was still inside.

Ugh. Now, Jeff was able to kick the door open, but by that point, the fire had already spread to the first floor and the room was filled with not only flames, but like super thick black smoke.

It was obviously beyond dangerous, but Jeff tried to make his way into the living room, just wanting to help anybody that was inside.

I kept trying, kept trying, but the flames and the smoke kept pushing him back.

it was obvious he wasn't going to be able to get inside without getting physically hurt himself so at that point there was literally nothing they could do except wait for first responders to get there so they just stood on the lawn and watched the house burn oh that's awful I can't imagine like you see that in a movie and you're like oh my god like I can't imagine oh that's awful so Nick Hackney pulled up to his house this chaotic or what was left of his house this this chaotic scene a little after 10 in the morning.

And he was met at the steps of the home by Chief Deputy Coroner Jane Jeremy.

I believe that's how you say it.

And a coroner walking up to you?

Yeah. So she steered Nick away from the house, luckily, and back towards her truck, and she explained what had happened.

And he was like, oh, my God, Dawn and I spent Christmas together with our family earlier, like yesterday, but she wasn't feeling very well.

She had a gnarly head cold, so she took Benadryl to go to sleep.

And he said that he had woken up around 2 a .m. – or excuse me, she had woken up around 2 a .m. to take another dose.

And she wondered out loud whether she had no tolerance for it because she didn't take that medicine very often.

So she was like, oh, my God, like I'm kind of feeling this.

So that was his explanation to the coroner the day before.

And how she would sleep through.

And how she would sleep through it.

So it made sense to the coroner because the position of Dawn's body on the bed suggested she hadn't even tried to get up to escape the fire.

Oh, wow. Which at first was baffling to investigators.

They were like, nobody would just sleep through a roaring fire like that.

But if Dawn wasn't used to taking Benadryl, it was possible that it had a strong effect on her and it kept her sleeping entirely while the fire occurred.

That's some strong Benadryl.

Oh, it is. Yeah. So as far as anybody could tell, Nick Hackney was completely devastated and he started leaning closely on the members of his and Dawn's church while he grieved.

he and Don had been married about seven years at that point and they'd been together even longer from when they were dating so this was going to be a process for him to get over yeah but before we get into that whole process and what it looks like I want to tell you more about Don more about Nick and more about their life that they had made together okay so Don Marie was born December 5th 1969 in Seattle Washington to parents Donald and Diana Donald worked in a shipyard which I think is really fucking cool.

That is cool. And Diana, Diana was a homemaker and Dawn was their first child and she would eventually be the oldest of four kids and their only daughter.

She had her brothers, or excuse me, she and her brothers Dennis, Darren, and Derek, they were all raised in Bremerton, Washington.

Oh okay. So she had lived there her entire life.

Now their childhood was not always the easiest. Dawn's mom Diana struggled a lot with anxiety and from the sounds of it But probably depression too.

Oh, okay. She was really going through it.

And she, by her own admission, quote, required more love than she could get from her husband Donald.

Oh. So I think it was one of those things where they were very, like they were religious people.

So I think they stayed together even though they weren't necessarily the happiest together.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And for that reason, Diana would sometimes look outside of her own marriage for love and affection.

Or to put it less lightly, she was stepping out on Donald.

uh -oh so in 1980 when dawn was 11 diana actually left the family and moved in with a man that she was having an affair with i'm gonna stay over here quiet yeah me too now it also turned out that she was pregnant and this man was the father oh yep so she had her son darren with him but eventually things fell apart with whoever that guy was and she ended up returning home to the a family with her new son and they all just kind of made it work together wow so obviously things were um tense yeah at least i mean you just left your whole family and then you just come back with a baby like oops sorry

i'm back here's your brother so things were tense when she came home and the kids could feel the tension in the air so in response to all the tension at home don Dawn really leaned into making her mom happy and she became just determined to achieve, achieve, achieve.

I don't want to call her an overachiever because I feel like that's that's like a weird label.

Like you're an overachiever.

It makes it sound like a bad thing.

Well, people give it a negative connotation.

Yeah, exactly. Because people do it when you're like working too hard. They're like, oh, you're such an overachiever.

And it's like, OK. It's like I just like achieving, OK?

Yeah. I just like achieving.

All right. It just feels yucky to call somebody that.

So I'm not going to call her an overachiever.

I would really just say that she decided to be the light that she thought her mom needed and worked really hard at it.

I like that. So in grade school, what she did to do that, she became a champion speller, which eventually led her to participating in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which would later lead to a visit to the White House where she got to meet then President Ronald Reagan.

Wow. I know. Wow. Wow.

I mean, spelling. Yeah, spelling, right?

Exactly. Exactly. Now, so all throughout her school year, she kept that same tenacity, worked super hard at everything she did.

And it would actually lead her to becoming Bremerton Christian Schools valedictorian in 1988.

Get it, girl. Now, after high school, Dawn enrolled at Northwest College of the Assemblies of God, which is informally known as Northwest Bible College.

Damn. Like even the people there call it that.

That's a mouthful. It is.

I think that's why they shortened it to Northwest Bible College.

Yeah, it's just the Bible.

The Bible. Bible. And it was at college, the Bible college where she met Nick Hackney.

Just like Don, he was also born and raised in Washington.

He was just raised about like a half an hour from Bremerton in the coastal city of Poulsbo, I think is how you say it.

I love it. I looked it up.

So I looked it up. I looked it up.

So I just like trailed off there.

That's it. Now. So he grew up there.

And while Don's family had their issues, it seems like they were able to keep the home life somewhat stable at that Don's house okay that wasn't necessarily the case for Nick's family the author of twisted faith which is a really good source on this book and actually I was looking at another book and then I saw that book advertised and that's how I found this case it's a good name it is twisted faith yeah I like that and it's by author Greg Olson he's an incredible writer so definitely read that book but anyways I digress he put it that Nick came It came from a troubled family.

Nick's father, Dan, he worked really long hours as a mechanic.

And when he was home, he wasn't really emotionally there.

He was very distant from his children and it seems his wife.

Cool. Yeah. And Nick's mom, Sandra, did her best to support the family.

She ran a daycare out of the home and she would take in foster kids when she could.

But it didn't seem like she thought too much about the fact that her children were already looking for more themselves, and other children just kept coming into the house.

Yeah, she's spreading herself too thin.

She is, and I mean, for, like, a great cause, coming in foster kids is amazing.

Take care of these kids that are already here first. Yes.

Make sure their cup is full.

I agree. So that's the thing.

Their home life became even more chaotic with all these other kids running around, and this is really sad.

sad later in life nick would tell his friends he always felt like his mom preferred his brothers and his sisters and he said sometimes even the foster kids to him like even his foster brothers and sisters oh and he said looking back on the situation i don't think she ever loved me actually i think she hated me oh my god really that's awful and i'm like i don't know why why why you thought she hated you like what would make you think that exactly that's troubling it is so So obviously we don't know if she actually truly hated Nick or not.

But what we do know is that she did unfortunately also suffer from long bouts of depression that left her really repressed and also emotionally unavailable.

So these kids didn't really have an emotionally available parent.

That's tough. And when she wasn't feeling that way, her time was spent managing the chaos and the needs of all these children in the house.

So she didn't have a lot of time left for Nick.

And because of that, he ended up spending a lot of time alone.

Yeah. And eventually, while he was alone, he turned to the Bible and kind of like found peace and harmony in that.

And it was then that he developed an interest in Christianity.

According to Nick, quote, it was God's calling that gave him strength and shaped every bit of his character.

So yeah, Nick found a new confidence through his dedication to religion.

And all throughout his teen years, it seemed actually like his self -esteem was really improving.

proving but unfortunately that didn't always endear him to other people huh yes when he and don first met at northwest bible college don's friends and roommates thought it was really odd that she would have any interest in nick some of her friends thought he was pushy he was like too self -assured like almost came off cocky oh and others called him a loser a guy who tried too hard and was clueless about it damn which that's not very nice but you know so they also started to notice a change in dawn whenever nick was around before nick dawn was super confident super self -reliant always working hard

accomplishing accomplishing like i said and just like looking for her next goal that she was gonna crush yeah but around nick she kind of seemed to mute all of those parts of herself she was reserved she was shy and she started looking to him when it it came time to make a decision for anything.

Oh no. And that's never a good thing.

No. Like you don't want your partner to mute the best parts of you.

You want your partner to bring out the best parts in you and make you feel comfortable.

I remember one of my best friends had this significant other who was always like annoyed by their like outgoing personality and kind of like mute them down.

Like be like, you're being annoying.

Right. And it always bothered me me because I was like no like that's one of the best parts about this person yeah whether you think it's annoying or not that's like who they are and if you think it's annoying you're not meant to be together you know if your love is conditional in that way that like only if you tamper yourself down a little bit then you don't love that person exactly and and spoiler alert they did not stay together they didn't work out yeah and also I feel like it honestly just always comes from a place of jealousy yeah when somebody's trying to stifle like those parts of you

like Like your outgoingness, your ability to make a decision.

It's something they don't have. Right.

That they wish they could do.

So they want to take that control over you and not let you do it either.

Love should not be conditional.

Neither. But after two years at Northwest Bible College, Dawn, she got her associate degree.

And in 1990, Nick did end up proposing to her.

Oh. The proposal actually sounds adorable.

It was over Oreo cookies and milk on Alki Beach. Okay, that's really cute.

you. Yeah, like give me Oreos so I know it's real.

Hell yes. They got married on April 20th, 1991, and they ended up moving back to Bremerton, where Dawn had grown up.

Okay. Now, she started work as a loan officer at a credit union, and Nick started pursuing a job as a youth pastor at Christ Community Church, which was on Bainbridge Island, and that's a small island community right across the bay from Seattle.

I love these little islands with like a spooky little church on it like midnight mass oh it's a spooky little church all right yeah this is spooky like it that just gave me like midnight mass vibes a little bit like i don't know anything about midnight you have to watch that show i know i'm late to midnight mass and i just like we just finished it like um like in the beginning of the year sometime john and i i didn't know you finished it i was super late on the midnight mass train but like and it sucks to be late on something like that because you're like guys you want to talk and everybody's

like yeah i watched that like years ago what the fuck like you're just like you're just doing that now i'm like but it's so good can i talk to someone you need to find somebody who well i haven't seen it you need to watch it i was like you need to find someone who hasn't seen it go look go take a poll in the streets for someone that's never seen one is willing to watch that girl you would like it I'll watch it.

I have to finish Succession first. You do.

And then I also, off -shoot, I just really want to watch Yellow Jackets, too.

Me, too. Okay, great.

We'll start that together.

But there's that. But this gave me, like, spooky little church, like, Midnight Mass vibes.

And if it's anything like Midnight Mass, it did not end well for anybody.

Well, you're great at foreshadowing.

What are you, an author?

tinyurl .com slash the butcher in the room.

So to her friends, Dawn seemed happy enough, but a lot of them were still worried about her and how easily she was deferring decision -making processes to nick yeah even when his decisions went against her own preferences and seemed to make her uncomfortable e like that's not good no it's one thing if you're just like i mean i'm super indecisive so i'll be like drew what do you think like oh yeah do we finalize it like this but when you're uncomfortable deferring all and when you're uncomfortable with the outcome of the situation then it sounds like you could have made your own decision yeah you

knew where your heart was leading you yeah that's not good and it makes me sad that she felt like she had to do that to me yeah like she couldn't make her own choices or something you know would go awry right and i think part of that and i think author greg olsen also points this out the reason why dawn was submitting to her husband was because she believed in quote the fundamentalist edict that submitting to her husband's authority was god's plan and the greatest gift a woman could give him that sucks a lot i also like believe whatever you want to believe but i personally i think that sucks ass

if the greatest gift a woman can give a man is to submit to their wishes i will never give a man the greatest gift but you know what or a woman it's all it's all consensual man if you decide that that is something that you consent to and you enjoy doing go go off then go off queens and and kings go right off.

Personally, that just sounds like fucking awful to me.

Yeah. I'm not a good, I'm not good at that.

I'm not good at that as well.

I'm not good at that.

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but nick had dreamed of becoming a youth pastor and he specifically wanted to work at christ community church because of his connection to his own former youth pastor who was bob also known as pb smith he sounds like a really cool guy i'll put it out there good he sounds like he was like a nice gentleman that's great and he still worked at the church all right he he had been in charge of the church since the late 1980s.

But by the time Nick arrived on the island and was hoping to kind of like link up with PB and become this youth pastor, PB already had a partner that he was leading the church with.

Robert, I think it's Biley, Robert Biley.

It could be Billy. I couldn't figure it out.

And I looked it up.

She did. I was there for it.

Thank you. So Robert, I'm just going to call him either Robert or Pastor Robert for the rest of this so I I don't piss anyone off.

But Robert, he was this like charismatic, very animated man.

He was in his early 40s.

He'd been raised in a wealthy family.

And he kind of seemed to like, he would start these like really big projects and like have like this big picture in mind, but then it would all kind of fizzle out.

And he had just left a job working for the Galloping Gourmet television program.

Wow. I'm just going to urge you to look further into that.

It's wild. but to most and especially to get my google machine galloping gourmet television program type in robert b -i -l -y so to most and especially to nick though he seemed like an odd fit for church leadership okay okay okay pb smith he took more and he's the nice gentleman he took more of a friendly but still conservative approach to church leadership where pastor robert was um very strict and extreme.

Okay. According to Greg Olson, quote, Roberts seemed to try his best, but neither sympathy nor empathy appeared to be in his repertoire.

Wow. So that's something you don't want in a pastor, I would think.

Something I don't want in like anyone.

Yeah. I would like to hang out with people that have sympathy and empathy and their repertoire.

Also, repertoire is a really fun word. Feels good in your mouth.

Yeah. Now, even though that was his approach and on top of that he actually had no theological training oh even though of all of those factors the church board still voted to promote him to pastor okay i don't understand how any of that works but interesting but all right but okay go off so his new position seemed to go to his head almost immediately pb sermons they usually related to the more like traditional subject matter of the bible and his whole message was just about forming a strong relationship with god and your community those were like his main goals yeah but roberts they were really

theatrical his sermons okay he incorporated very different elements of belief systems that were like on the fringes of christianity like not really there and he also this was like the main thing that he did that i was like oh he set up a new deliverance counseling program that was put into place to help the congregants quote unquote build a stronger relationship with god but to me it sounded more like setting up scare tactics oh i don't love that yeah so these sessions again according to olsen were intense dramatic and stepped in fear and shame with robert and pb praying and screaming at demons

to exit the afflicted church members okay pb had never done that before oh so Oh, so this is all new.

This is all new. These church members had never had demons screamed out of them.

Oh, no. But they would ask the congregants all kinds of personal questions in these counseling sessions about their marriages, their sex lives.

Like they wanted to get any kind of deep, deep, dark secret out of them.

I hate that. And they would also focus on, of course, how wrong it was to be gay, how shameful it was to have an abortion, those kind of things.

Yeah. that we personally don't agree with yeah boo so Greg Olson goes a bit further into his book this this whole period piece of this in his book and I would really recommend reading that section at the very least because holy shit the things that they were doing during these counseling sessions are fucked oh I hate that and it's not even like the actions like I think the actions of like I don't like the idea of exorcisms personally but it was more like the topic of conversation and like they just seem to be trying to shame people into submission i think that's the like that's the vibe i'm getting

and that's why i don't like it like that's why i said boo it just sounds like this is really steeped like you said in like shame fear yeah but like almost bullying absolutely some way you know like this doesn't sound fun no and it it wasn't what christ community church was before yeah that's the thing because it sounds like it was like a you know regular church yeah that people seemed happy with before this and this oh by the way i meant to mention it it's a very small church it's compromised of only like a hundred families oh really yeah so yeah these are people that are that are used to something

and they have a sense of community and family and then all of a sudden this guy walks in and kind of like disrupts all of that yeah i don't like that i feel like a lot of people were probably on edge yeah so that was the environment that nick hackney entered into when he finally managed to get an offer to join that congregation as youth pastor.

He achieved his dream of becoming youth pastor, but it was different.

It was different these days.

It was different. And that's the thing.

He saw PB as like, again, this charismatic, warm man, somebody he really looked up to, but then he walked on the scene and realized that this guy had been completely pushed to the side by Pastor Robert and Pastor Robert was domineering and dominating the entire conversation of the church and the other thing was not only had pastor robert risen up the ranks quickly but he had completely changed the entire church along the way like that sucks so by the mid -90s pastor robert had convinced the congregation that he had a direct relationship with god and was one of his apostles like he could get messages

from god and then convey those messages is this is an actual question i have isn't that exactly what a cult leader does yes okay absolutely okay so but the thing was and he he essentially was a cult leader i'm just gonna go ahead and say that that's my opinion yeah well that's literally isn't that what a cult leader does they say they have some kind of connection to a very direct connection to a higher power yes and that's how they get everybody to do their bidding yes honestly the beginning of all of this kind of reminds me of the holy rollers case that we did I think we did it with Rachel O

'Brien on her podcast yeah I was that really does remind me of that it's it's spooky but yeah so he was like I have direct messages from the big guy to tell you and that makes my word more valuable than P .B.

Smith's or anybody on the church boards because they're not talking to God directly now most members at the church they fully believed him I think because they either believed fully in their faith or or because they were scared into believing him.

And there were also some members in this congregation that said they were starting to receive messages and prophecies from God, or they had all along and just realized it.

Yeah. But those who didn't believe Pastor Robert were definitely scared into silence when one of these people spoke out and called him a false apostle.

Uh -oh. So that man who was brave enough to say that.

Is it apostle or apostle?

apostle? Um, I don't really know.

Do you say an apostle or apostle?

It's a apostle. All right.

Sorry. No, I'm glad that you said it.

Get it later. It's a apostle.

So this man called him a fake apostle.

There you go. It's losing all meaning at this point.

It sure is. But that man and his entire family were excommunicated from the church, excommunicated, excuse me, from the church in a 10 -page letter that was actually written by P .B.

Smith and circulated throughout the entire congregation.

So this family, they made an example out of them.

Yeah. So Robert was free to and continued to take the church in a more conservative direction at this point.

And now he was insisting that they should be homeschooling their children, eating healthier diets.

Oh, don't tell people what want to do with their kids.

Don't ever want to do with their kids or their bodies.

So yeah, he wanted them to not only do all of that, but also start dressing more modestly.

This is becoming a cult, everybody.

It absolutely is. Jesus.

Now, since it was well known that Nick and PB were close, Robert didn't really have much interest in Nick when he first joined the church. He figured Nick would probably just be kind of an extension of PB and not worth his time or somebody to push out.

Yeah. So it kind of came as a surprise to the pastor semester when Nick approached him and asked Robert to take him under his wing.

Like, Nick said to Robert, will you take me under your wing?

He apparently said, I'm working with PB and we never do anything.

I don't want his culture to affect me and cause me to become like him.

You don't want to be a charismatic warm man?

A charismatic man? A charismatic warm man?

Yeah, what the hell?

Like, what? It's like, you look at this guy, do you want to be like him?

Like, I mean, cult leader.

Power. Yeah. Yeah. So even though he'd been close with PB for years, Nick clearly identified Robert as the stronger of the two.

And that's why he wanted to align himself with him.

He wanted to align himself with the guy he thought was going to come out on top.

Oh, that never works out, man.

It doesn't. Unfortunately, Robert did kind of seem to come out on top, but that's upsetting.

Didn't work out for Nick.

But similarly, Robert saw Nick as a tool to help him achieve his goal of outstaying PB CB and just taking over the church once and for all as senior pastor, which I didn't realize that there was even levels of pastors.

I didn't either. I knew there were like youth.

That's interesting.

Yeah. I knew there was like youth pastors for like the kids.

But I thought that was like just because they were like kids.

Me too. Yeah. But anyways, by early 1997, Nick and Don had gotten really sick of moving around.

They were moving around a lot.

And obviously the inevitable cost that comes along with that.

they were in like the little side business of flipping flipping properties but Don was also getting tired of that she just wanted to move into a home where they could build a life together and not have to like fix up a ton of shit absolutely so when Nick found yet another fixer -upper for sale in East Bremerton Don just reluctantly agreed that it was time for them to become homeowners they were gonna buy this house fix it up flip it but not sell it okay but she She didn't want to do that, but she agreed because it's what Nick wanted.

Aw. A yet another house to fix.

Just defaults, yeah.

Right. But the thing was, she and Nick spent the better part of the winter and early spring remodeling, but by the spring of 1997, the cost of renovating and the second mortgage that they had taken out on the house put them very deeply into debt.

Uh -oh. Which is not good.

Not a good place to be.

Tensions run high. I tensions were running very high inside of the house, but the congregants of the church thought that Nick and Don just had the perfect marriage.

They saw them as this loving couple.

They saw that Don seemed to be willing to do whatever it took to support Nick's dreams. And she was.

She absolutely was.

It sounds like it. She worked really hard to always support Nick, but the renovation and the spiraling debt was really starting to put a strain on their marriage.

And it went deeper than probably anybody could have imagined.

now one afternoon dawn met for dawn meant met i kept saying meant meant dawn met for lunch with her friend eunice eunice had also fallen on hard times recently so she moved back in with her parents and she was one of dawn's friends that wasn't really so fond of nick but she was still surprised when dawn confided in her saying if nick and i end up splitting too i would never ever want to live with my parents so donna or eunice is like oh she's even mentioning the fact that like they could split yeah like even putting that out there as a possibility like that's a big fucking deal yeah so she laughed

it off just like casually and was like well if that ever happens you can live with me like don't worry about it she was half joking but don apparently applied replied okay that might happen oh yeah i'd be like do you want to talk do you want to say i think it was like a very like passing yeah exchange but at the very least it suggested that dawn was thinking of a world where nick wasn't a part of her world anymore yeah and it was significant enough that eunice remembered it years and years after dawn had passed so dawn and nick's marital issues they didn't only boil down to the renovation and the debt

coming just from that it was more nick's reckless spending and irresponsibility with money in general like not just with the house but with everything if the church needed something he would volunteer to to buy it if a congregant needed money he would lend it to them without any expectation that they pay the money back which is like very kind sure absolutely like but not when you're when you can't when you have a family like you also have to have a responsibility to them you gotta put your oxygen mask on first exactly you know yeah so by 1997 he had started also funneling money into his latest

dream project, which was a Christian youth camp.

He really, really wanted to go all in for this, and he actually even started eyeing some property in Jefferson County.

He thought it was going to be perfect for the camp.

In fact, he thought that this was the camp that God wanted for him.

And his feeling was only solidified further when Sandy Glass, another member of the congregation congregation who claimed to have very frequent visions from God himself, she claimed that her latest and most prominent vision was that of a new church on a property just like the one Nick had seen for his youth camp.

Interesting. Yep. She said she saw this new church prospering under Nick's leadership.

Oh. And of course, with her own support, she would be more than willing to help and support my goodness yay look at that my guy greg olsen he notes that notably absent from the vision was any mention of sandy's husband jimmy and nick's wife dawn i was wondering that myself no they weren't in there i was like is dawn in there god said forget about that no he said no way so sandy glass just to tell you a little bit more about her she came from a difficult background she had really gone through her fair share of tragedy she was only in her 20s at this point and her first serious boyfriend had died

from an unspecified disease.

Her father had been killed in a construction accident and her brother was struggling with addiction, which was causing a lot of stress and heartbreak for their family.

Oh, she's going through it.

She's only in her 20s at this point?

Only in her 20s. Oh, jeez.

So I can understand why she turned to God for sure.

Oh, absolutely. I can understand why a lot of people do.

Yeah, absolutely. That's all I'll say about that.

Yeah, exactly. Now, she wouldn't let those things become excuses, and I think she did her best to be a strong source of support for her kids and her husband, Jimmy.

But by 1997, things with Jimmy hadn't been going well for a while, and money was tight because they were a single income household only relying on Jimmy's salary as a carpenter because Sandy was staying home with the kids.

yeah but she also was very reckless with money like nick and couldn't stop spending money that they didn't even have oh no so obviously that led to a lot of fights between her and jimmy where jimmy would just yell and lose his temper or completely distance himself from the situation and go to the bar for hours and hours and hours oh no and they have kids yeah so he's either there and like they're fighting or he's not there at all yeah it's sad yeah now like a lot of the other their couples at christ community church sandy and jimmy decided to turn to the church for help with their marriage with the deliverance

counseling in their case that meant turning to nick hackney and again the deliverance counseling program to which i say big fucking yikes oh and jimmy's parents also said big fucking yikes oh really james and mary glass they were like i don't know about this they thought that sandy and jimmy's decision to turn to the church for help seemed rash and they also wondered if nick had the experience or even the qualifications to help their son yeah and they especially started to worry when nick seemed to take a very very defined interest in sandy instead of sandy and jimmy as a couple oh and his interest

in special attention also wasn't just happening within the walls of sandy and jimmy's counseling sessions He was calling Sandy at all hours of the day, especially during, like, family gatherings and events that she would have. Even if she was the host, she would walk away and excuse herself and be on the phone with Nick for, like, way too long, just privately.

What the fuck? It was weird. Yeah, that's inappropriate.

It is. And Jimmy's parents, James and Mary, they weren't the first members of the congregation to notice that Nick seemed to pay not only special attention to Sandy, but just to the women in the congregation in general oh nick actually when nick took over the counseling program a couple years before there were multiple people that complained about them about him and how he was interested in things that they considered to be very very private one woman actually went to pastor robert about nick and said all he wants to do is talk about sex and for that reason she didn't want to go to the church

for counseling anymore she was like Like, I'm at the point where, like, I want to look outside of the church for counseling because this asshole that you have running it is disgusting.

Ew, can you imagine?

Like, what a pig. What a pig, absolutely.

Ew. I just feel so bad for anybody that had to go through the counseling process with him because it's like you're at a low point already in your life or you're struggling at the very least and you're turning to a place where you believe in and this guy just ruins all that for you.

and this guy is like being really inappropriate and gross exactly what a low feeling that must be right like it must take you even lower yeah he just preyed upon people now pastor robert's wife pamela she was yet another person who noticed how nick was treating the women and she was starting to get really ticked off and troubled by it so she actually took nick aside herself and she was like i want to have a conversation with you about this counseling program and she was like you are are too eager to involve yourself in people's marital issues and especially their sexual problems. And you need

to knock it off. Well, I'm glad somebody was like, you creep.

Yeah. And I love that it was a woman.

Yeah. She was like, cut the shit.

She literally told him, and this is a quote, this is marital abuse.

You need to focus on Dawn, like your wife.

You need to comfort her.

And Dawn needs to know that she's number one in your life.

Good for her. So she was like, hey, why don't you focus on your own fucking family?

Yeah. Stop being weird. So Nick, surprisingly, not one to welcome criticism, just brushed the conversation off and forgot about it.

Pamela was the first woman to openly criticize him, but she probably wouldn't be the last. Other people at the church were being quiet about their opinions, but they also felt like Pamela did and like James and Mary Glass did.

It was clear to them that Nick did not give a shit about Dawn's feelings at all, and they thought it was really gross how he threw himself headfirst into private issues but at the same time they trusted pb who was still with the church and pastor robert i don't know if they trusted him but i think they just didn't want to pick any fights with him yeah and they assumed that nick wouldn't be in charge of this program if he couldn't be trusted so the church had almost been completely transformed by the fall of 1997 and in late august pastor robert had officially pushed pb out oh no as the senior pastor and And it

was a decision that was actually backed by the church board. Oh, no. So now that he wasn't in charge of the church, P .B.

and his wife just headed off to Africa to do some mission work.

I mean, good for P .B.

and his wife. I love it.

I think they were like, this has gotten really weird and we need to get as far away from this as possible.

Well, they were probably like, we're going to go do what we are like preaching.

Yeah. And we're going to go help people.

Exactly. We're going to go do what we believe in.

You can continue doing like your version of this, but we're going to do what we were setting out to do.

Exactly. Yeah, I agree.

But back at the church, the deliverance counseling sessions, they were starting to become routine and they were getting stranger and stranger and stranger.

Nick was relishing in this newfound power and Pastor Robert was too busy to give a fuck.

Too busy becoming a cult leader.

The sad thing about telling this story is that because she passed away when she was so young and because if she had spoken out against anything it would have caused caused a huge uproar.

We don't know how Don felt about all the changes going on in the church. And that's sad.

Yeah and not even only just the changes going on in the church but the changes going on in her husband.

Yeah her marriage. Like we don't know how she felt about it because one she passed away so young and also because I don't think she was allowed to say it.

Yeah she she didn't feel comfortable.

Exactly. That's sad.

It is. By all accounts, she was smart, gorgeous, self -reliant, and she definitely would have had an opinion about what was going on in her home in the church. But like I said earlier, maybe she wouldn't have said it out loud because she took the conservative church doctrine very seriously.

She always believed that the wife should be subservient to the husband.

So even if she suspected that Nick was cheating on her or or being inappropriate at the very least, it's not that likely that she would have confronted him.

Because as part of the whole thing, it's like, deal with it.

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serve. So, you know, she may have been staying tight -lipped about her suspicions, but by the end of the year, more and more people in the congregation were starting to notice that Nick was really going for it with the inappropriate behavior.

And especially, they were noticing that he was spending a lot of time with Sandy Glass in particular.

So more and more people were going to pastor robert to say like we're concerned about this we don't like this the counseling sessions are getting weirder and weirder but he didn't care yeah as long as nick wasn't planning to take over power of the church it didn't do whatever i wanted so toward the later half of 1997 the concerns were becoming so frequent that even pastor robert couldn't push them off he tried his best but they started they were coming in probably daily at this point when When Pastor Robert is doing anything besides leading a cult, you know that it got intense.

You know it's real.

Yeah, exactly. But instead of pulling Nick aside, he pulled Sandy aside.

And he was like, hey, your relationship with Nick is inappropriate.

And you should focus on your husband, Jimmy, because your relationship is already fucked up.

I'm sorry. Can we talk to the church leader?

No, it's Sandy's fault.

What are you talking about?

She's a woman. Of course, it's her fault.

so sandy didn't receive this well and nor nor would i not well received not well received me either now she maintained that she believed that god wanted her and nick to be together oh literally said that and in a letter to pastor robert she said the judgment i feel from you makes it hard for me to believe that you accept my giftings at all talking about her visions or that you have any confidence in my ability to hear god and use this help to help anyone one oh boy yeah so like essentially what she was saying is god wants me and nick to be together and if you don't believe that then you don't

believe in me and fuck everybody else yeah yeah this is a wild story it's truly crazy now outside of the church sandy and nick were barely hiding their affair and it was taking a toll on literally everybody around them yeah and this is really really sad.

I just want to let you know this is gonna bum you out big time.

One day, one of Sandy and Jimmy's kids went to their dad, upset and crying, and told him, mom and Nick told us that after you die, Nick's going to be our new dad.

That is fucked up in a way that I can't even describe.

Can you shame on them?

Shame on them. Shame on them.

Because it wasn't like Nick told told us this it was no it was their mom and their also told us like that's fucked fizzy fizzy fuck yeah and not shame on them that hurts my heart so badly that that kid was probably terrified of their dad yeah they're poor confused little child like who says that to a kid like that's fucked up it's so weird oh it's it's beyond these two are gross but jimmy refused to entertain the idea that sandy was cheating on him even still at this point when the affair was so public that even his His kids were coming to him with it.

So the tension in the Glass family was growing and growing and growing and it was dangerously close to a breaking point.

Like, dangerously close.

And by Thanksgiving, the cracks were beginning to show even in Dawn, who as we know, usually put a brave face forward. She told two other women in the congregation, things are not so good right now.

I'm overwhelmed by everything.

Our finances are a mess, but mostly I'm worried about Nick.

I don't think I make him happy.

He's never home. He's gone all the time.

I don't even know if he wants me anymore.

Oh, that's so sad. And what's sadder is she was trying everything she could do to make him happy.

She was trying to lose weight, which she did not need to do.

She was beautiful. She was just doing anything she could think of.

That's so sad. It is.

So the woman in the congregation, they tried to reassure her and they were like, whatever is causing problems between you and Nick is not your fault.

And I'm happy that somebody told her that yeah not like yeah like try this diet because you know some people will do that absolutely and it sounds like you know there were people around her who could have said that so i'm glad that she had people who were like no like you don't need to change your fault anything about yourself if he doesn't you're great crazy and that's the thing i like doing research for this i watched a couple shows about it and all of the people that in don's life like absolutely loved her she had friends that were her friends in high school that she was still friends with like

and like friends in like grade school that she was still friends with that spoke her praises so you know that's a good person of course so but the thing was people could still tell there was something deeper and more complicated that was upsetting dawn yeah and she told them my life isn't what i would what i thought it would be and then she went on to explain that there were major major and irreconcilable differences between she and nick's long -term plans oh geez and at the forefront of that was that she desperately wanted to be a mother she wanted to have kids so bad and nick did not want children

oh which i think we talked about that a couple weeks ago like just so fucking sad if you find yourself in that situation yeah that you weren't that you didn't talk about it beforehand or right we're honest with each other beforehand and now you're married and you're in two totally different camps that way and she feels stuck and when you want kids yeah it is a feeling and a need that you simply cannot ignore like you just can't like yeah when John and I decided we wanted kids it was a desperation I remember kids like when it was when it was hard yeah it took a long time and we had to go through

the fertility treatments it was was devastating of course it the thought of not being able to was devastating so i can't imagine what she was going through i'm not even at the place right now we're like we're taught like we're talking about it obviously but like i'm not at the place where we're like ready to make that happen but one of my biggest fears is like not being able to yeah it's it's horrifying honestly because of seeing what you guys went through yeah it was gut -wrenching it is it's really really off so So knowing she desperately wanted kids and he was just like, no, no, that's gut wrenching

to me. I'm sure it wasn't even a conversation.

It was just like he said no and that was the end of it.

Oh, that's awful. So sad.

Now, strangely, all of the chaos actually seemed to be affecting Nick, too.

By December, he seemed absolutely exhausted to everyone who knew him, which was a big change because normally outwardly he was very enthusiastic and like excited about church and being.

weird in deliverance counseling yeah but there were a few women in the congregation in particular who seemed to be demanding his time more and more other than sandy and then there was still sandy whose messages from god were growing more demanding she was urging nick that he needed to take action toward that dream of the youth camp oh yeah and as christmas got closer it seemed like there was something big that was going to shift and it was going to be nick who shifted it so Don woke up on Christmas morning to find that like I said she was sick with a cold remember I said that at the beginning

yeah she'd been fighting a cold the previous day and when she woke up on Christmas it was even worse she like didn't even want to go out but she always showed up for everybody in her life so she and Nick took the ferry to the mainland that morning and they spent the day with her parents and her brothers later that night they actually dropped by to see P .B.

Smith's family. They played board games, and Nick made plans with PB's daughter, Lindsay, and two other friends to go hunting the next morning.

Okay. Now, when Dawn and Nick said goodnight, their friends had no idea that would be the last time they would see Dawn, obviously, because she died in a tragic fire.

So the next morning, December 26th, Lindsay Smith and her husband, Phil, met Nick to go hunting just before dawn at the Hood Canal Bridge in Jefferson County.

County. They spent a couple hours in the woods, but they never fired a single shot.

There was nothing to hunt, to which I say, ha.

But around 9 a .m., they decided they were going to call it a day because like nothing was going on.

Yeah. So they drove into town to have breakfast at a local diner.

And as they were eating breakfast, Nick suddenly jumped up like out of nowhere and was like, Don and I still haven't had time to open our Christmas presents.

And then he asked for the check and quickly headed home.

Oh, now the time stamp on the credit card receipt showed that it It was 9 30 in the morning when that happened so Nick would have made it home a little after 10.

Okay. Now as we know he did show up a little after 10 to his home completely engulfed in flames and heard the news that his wife Dawn had been killed in a fire.

Now as far as fire investigators could tell the blaze had been actually mostly confined to the bedroom at first which now was like a burned out shell of what it had been and the cause of the fire appeared to be a faulty space heater which escalated quickly due to quote the abundance of newspapers and wrapping paper and a collection of mini propane containers near the headboard on one side of the bed um okay are we looking at that as the origin point so nick arson accident okay so nick explained to the investigators that he and Don had opened their Christmas gifts the night before uh -huh do you

remember when earlier he just said they had him yeah yep no they did and since Don wasn't feeling well they just headed right to bed instead of cleaning up all the wrapping paper and they were like okay totally what about the propane tanks like well I'm like did you get propane tanks for Christmas yes oh that's literally the okay yes okay he told the investigators that they had actually been a gift to him from dawn because they were still using space heaters to heat the home throughout the renovation okay now overall the death seemed to be an accident it was truly a tragic one but unfortunately

in the winter months a very familiar accident a faulty space heater poof you're up in flames okay so once the scene had been cleared pastor robert showed up woohoo oh good he was like i'm here to help yeah things weren't chaotic enough let's bring this guy in he showed up and you know he wanted to try to provide support and comfort to nick and when nick told robert what had happened that don had passed away robert immediately suggested that they try to raise her from the dead with the power of prayer shut the fuck up i'm sorry that you can believe whatever you want to believe but they suggested

they try to raise her from the dead with the the power of prayer that i mean that like literally can't happen so like that's really fucked up to do to someone of course it is to place that kind of pope in there okay but he had been doing that back at church his sermons at the church had recently come to include the belief that certain people those of the truest faith had the power to resurrect somebody from the dead okay or the truest of faith had the power to resurrect themselves okay and uh to him it seemed like there was no better time to put that practice than with somebody from his own congregation yeah

he's like let's go but the mention of resurrection seemed to alarm nick he jumped up from the truck bed where they were sitting in and insisted that nobody should try to pray over dawn's remains he insisted to pastor robert and told him she's been so badly burned and she'd be in terrible pain it would be awful okay which if that is a belief system that people are holding here that this could happen that is a very reasonable thing to say yeah and something that i can absolutely go oh yep i get it for sure like that sound that would be terrible like just thinking about that is fucking terrible i

mean i would think that like if you can resurrect from dead like that's crazy and a miracle in itself so like maybe if you got that ability you would just like come back like not in the way that you would die you don't know you don't know it's a possibility then i can understand like i don't want her to be in pain or like horribly disfigured or yeah okay totally so even though their relationship had gone off gotten off to a rocky start robert always knew nick to be among the most faithful in the church so the fact that he refused to even try to raise don from the dead it struck robert as strange

you just went so instead nick asked robert if he could inform don's family of the death which robert also thought was strange he was like you want me to go tell them and nick was like yeah i do i just can't bring myself to do it yeah and he was like okay no problem so the news made its way through the church congregation congregation very quickly and a lot of the congregants were absolutely shocked by this nobody expected don to pass away in a house fire like yeah why would you ever so they formed a prayer chain to pray for don's soul which that's nice yeah and but at the same time not everybody

was so quick to accept this explanation of what had happened sandy's mother -in -law mary glass had a lot of insight into the tensions at church not only with just like her daughter -in -law and that whole side of the marriage but she she seemed to have eyes on everything in the church she knew what was up and she suspected that don's death was not an accident oh look at her did not think so and she told her husband she was like i don't think it's an accident like i don't know if we should go talk to somebody about this but he said if nick really had something to do with the fire the police will certainly

discover that in their investigation and we need to keep our noses out of this as far as he was concerned it was best that they stay as far away from this investigation as possible okay okay um but mary was quickly proven wrong just days later the fire and don's death were ruled accidental and the bremerton police handed the investigation off to safeco insurance company who had already received nick's request to process don's life insurance claim huh which he was struggling with money so sure yeah no uh some people were like okay yeah her death was an accident and you know nick is just a victim

of cruel circumstances so the church community held a celebrations of life event as a funeral for don and they invited family and friends to tell stories and just celebrate don's life while they grieved her death nick ended up giving a 45 minute eulogy and some people were like how is he capable of being so clear so soon after his wife tragically died yeah to give a 45 minute eulogy but then on the other side of things people were like absolutely touched by it and thought it was beautiful i was gonna say and then there was probably that whole and also the fact that he's a pastor he's a pastor that's

This is what he does.

Yeah, like turn to God in tragedy.

Exactly. So with the house destroyed by the fire, Nick moved in with the Smith family, actually.

He moved into their daughter Lindsay's old bedroom.

And around that time, some people started noticing how strangely hot and cold he was when it came to the subject of Dawn's death.

At times he seemed like he was like almost performatively grief stricken.

And then there were other times where it seemed like he couldn't be bothered to even think about Dawn.

now one day when Lindsay came back to the house to get some of her things she found a photo collage of Dawn that she'd made for Nick and probably for the funeral and she found it stuffed into the back of her bedroom closet and she was like at first she was like that's weird and obviously like Nick must have been the one to stuff it back there but then she said to herself it must have been really hard for him to look at that every day okay fair yeah so in the weeks and months that followed it's just nick's way of grieving was a constant answer to a myriad of bizarre callous and rude behaviors by nick

he snubbed his neighbors he kept having inappropriate relationships with young women from the church and he seemed to be using his widower status to try to make other people feel bad for him yeah i don't like it i don't either just months after don's death he started confiding in several women from the church including pb's daughter lindsey oh the one married to his friend phil oh yeah uh -huh but rather than see his behavior as extremely inappropriate all of these women seemed honored that a leader of the church had chosen them to trust with his most inner thoughts his innermost thoughts so some

people they made sure to keep their relationship platonic and just you know be a shoulder to lean on uh and others welcomed his sexual advantage advances excuse me and they were sure that it was what god wanted for them okay this is going to blow your fucking mind nick was able to manipulate don's own mother into thinking he was a suffering widow and they two slept together not long after don's death death dawn's mother had sex with her husband had sexual relations with her husband after she died that's fucked up I was I don't need like I'm shocked right now and I already knew that obviously when I

I was reading it in the book and I was like oh my god and for those that are going to read a twisted faith just know that it's a little graphic in that scene oh my so i'm gonna move on now oh boy please do just kept on abusing his power and taking advantage of his congregation he's a fucking filthy animal yeah he kept taking advantage of his congregation for a few more years but it got to the point where the complaints were too numerous for the church board to ignore because now people were not they were going over uh fucking robert's head there to the board and being like what are you going to

do about this glad that you guys were taking it seriously so they couldn't ignore it at this point he wasn't just carrying on affairs with a few women that would have been bad enough but there were some cases where he was clearly just leading women on and taking advantage of them i'm so confused by this yeah so these women obviously they felt completely betrayed and victimized and they weren't gonna let things go yeah so finally in the spring of 2001 they had a church board meeting about the issue and it was decided that nick needed to leave christ community church damn finally not only like did

he get like demoted he had to leave the church now some congregants called for forgiveness but a majority seemed happy to see him go and they were happy because the tension and the drama that he had caused for years they They were like, okay, maybe this will finally come to a close.

So being kicked out of the church that he devoted almost a decade of his life to was a big blow to Nick.

But it was just the beginning of his troubles.

Oh. Because on April 10th, 2001, Sandy Glass and her lawyer sat down with the county district attorney.

and sandy was presented with a document offering her immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testifying in court to something that she'd been keeping to herself since the end of december 1997 shut up don's death was not an accident it was a fucking murder fuck nick she had been murdered according to sandy nick called her on the morning of december 26th and all he said this cryptic motherfucking asshole of a loser said i did it before the call was interrupted by another incoming call what so sandy put nick on hold to answer the other call which was actually somebody from the church calling

to say to tell her what had happened to don so sandy was like oh my god and she went back to her phone call with nick and she was like what are you talking about and all he he would say to her was it's done what it's done so maybe she was too scared or maybe she didn't want to know but sandy allegedly didn't ask nick for further clarification until a few weeks later and when she finally asked him what he meant according to sandy nick told her that on the morning of the fire this is terrible and graphic he had given don a large overdose of benadryl and then covered her face with a plastic bag to

smother her oh my god according to nick the benadryl had been enough to mostly immobilize her but she was still awake and quote could see him through the plastic bag and what he was doing oh she literally watched her husband kill her through a plastic bag through a plastic bag in their bed oh in their home that's horrific so So once he was sure that she was dead, he scattered old newspaper and wrapping paper around the room and under her body and placed the propane tanks by the bed and set the heater up in a way that it would cause a fire and destroy any evidence of a crime or so he thought.

Oh my god. The story seemed too bizarre to be true to investigators and parts of it didn't seem to make any sense.

But it did explain some of the more unusual aspects of the case like why Dawn wasn't even slightly roused by the raging fire around her.

She was already dead.

Why there was no soot or carbon monoxide in her lungs.

I'm sorry, we ignored that to begin with?

We didn't ignore it, no, but we came up with a very fucking weird, bizarre reason for why that happened.

Or why in one of the photos of Dawn's corpse taken immediately after the fire was extinguished, why you could see paper lying underneath her body.

I don't know how anybody didn't question that.

Wow. I think some people looked the other way because this was a pastor.

I mean, this is wildly botched.

Wild. The fire marshal at the time said he never forgot about this case all throughout the years.

He was like, I didn't think it was an accident.

Oh, my God. But it wasn't up to him to decide.

So when the prosecutor asked why Sandy hadn't come forward with all this information before now, all she could say was that she was too afraid she'd lose her kids if the police thought she was involved, which I understand, but wow.

And then at the same time, she also had been thoroughly manipulated by Nick to think that their relationship was what God wanted for them, and it was only after she learned that he was stepping out on her too with other women in the church that she realized she was being used damn she realized the relationship was not what god wanted and then she realized that if this relationship wasn't what god wanted that meant that god hadn't preordained don's death it was murder oh no the story was wild yeah this is This is wild.

Reckless. I can't believe that this just like came to me.

Yeah. I never would have heard of this otherwise.

No. I was just looking at another book on Amazon.

This one came up, suggested.

Happened to pop up.

And I saw the whole description and I was like, what the fuck?

This is wild. Wild.

So this, yeah. It was enough for investigators to reopen the case and look into what Sandy alleged.

Yeah. So they revisited the evidence that had been collected in the initial investigation and And they spoke to most of the witnesses and members at the church that they had spoken to before.

And in talking to those folks, they learned all about the other women that Nick had been having affairs with.

Oh, no. And investigators also reviewed the original autopsy results with the forensic pathologist, who not only discovered that Dawn had toxic levels of Benadryl in her system.

Oh, oops. She had five times the normal dosage in her system.

Holy shit. Shit. But that's why he said she didn't think she had tolerance for it and she just kept taking it.

Of course. Yep. He was trying to set it all up.

But there were also signs of her having been dead before the fire started.

Like I said, no soot in her lungs.

In the original autopsy, it was noted that there was no carbon monoxide in her lungs.

And once blood work was done, there was no carbon monoxide in the blood.

And obviously, like you were just saying, that was something that did stick out to the forensic pathologist initially because carbon monoxide always attaches itself to red blood cells in a case like this and if a person is breathing while a fire rages around them they will sure as shit have some fucking soot in their lungs but this pathologist was working under a preconceived idea that the fire was accidental and this was a pastor's wife there couldn't be there couldn't be murder involved here no way that's that's wild so that's looking the other way of course it is like there's no to put that along

too with them being like it is weird that she didn't move at all while being burned alive like benadryl you're telling me benadryl makes it so you don't feel your flesh burning like i'm sorry she would have moved a little and i maybe it was because it was five times the amount but even still it doesn't paralyze you it doesn't kill all the nerves in your body you're gonna feel it yeah and your body's gonna move a little bit you're gonna at least attempt to move or shift and for them to take that and also take that along with the fact she didn't have sit in their lungs and along with the fact that there

was propane tanks it's like and to not look at that and go we should take a little more of a look at this and just go yep accident.

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Well, they decided to take a look into other stuff.

They decided to take a real big look look into why there wouldn't be any carbon monoxide in the blood.

Yeah, they went really hard in proving why that is all not weird at all.

No, they literally did.

Instead of looking the other way and going, well, that's weird. What they did was they kept researching for some reason why this case would be different and they found their reason in a medical journal.

That's, no, no. So the article that supported the pathologist's belief that this was still accidental pointed pointed to something called a laryngospasm, laryngospasm.

Essentially, in a flash fire like the one at the Hackney's house, apparently it is possible for the larynx to suddenly close off, and the airway is sealed because of the high heat.

It is very, very incredibly rare, but possible.

But now that Sandy had offered up what she knew, and it sounded like Nick had killed Dawn before setting the fire, and considering all of this newly found evidence the prosecutor's office felt like there was enough to move forward and so a warrant for nick's arrest was issued good and the pathologist changed the cause of death because of this lady saying all of this and being like yeah i know he did it like i know that this happened he admitted it to me and then you put it along with all that stuff it's like okay i know rare things can happen that laryngeal laryngeal spasm or whatever it is i'm

trying to say that that can happen and if there wasn't other things involved i'd be like wow yeah like rare cases that happens right when you put it next to somebody saying no he killed her first come on right and how specific it was yeah and like there's like newspaper and wrapping paper under her body yeah when he just told his friends that morning that they hadn't opened christmas gifts yet and then immediately got to the house fire and was like oh we opened christmas gifts last night and we haven't even cleaned up and it was propane tanks yeah wild i i think she actually might have got him

propane tanks for the for christmas because i didn't see anything about him purchasing those beforehand oh yeah so i think that might have actually maybe been a gift but i don't know but maybe it was just like a they might have he might have already had them yeah so so yeah so yeah on the afternoon of september 12th 2001 detectives did arrest nick in the the parking lot of a Kinko's for the murder of his wife.

He immediately insisted that he had absolutely nothing to do with Don's death, and this was all a conspiracy being carried out against him by the members of Christ Community Church, particularly Pastor Robert.

He insisted to the investigators, you have no idea what these people are capable of.

Wow. But regardless of his denial, Nick was booked on a charge of first degree murder the next day, and his bail was was set at $750 ,000.

Bye -bye. So the news of his arrest came as a shock to a lot of people in Bremerton and to some people, I guess, at his former congregation.

But I think others were like, yeah, I saw that coming.

Yeah. So for a little stretch there, at least, he was a well -respected youth pastor and a leader in his community.

And now people were portraying him as a manipulative, philandering murderer.

Like stark contrast there.

And one of the more unsavory facts released in the media just after his arrest was after collecting the insurance payout from don's policy nick couldn't even be fucking bothered to purchase a headstone for his wife's grave shut the fuck up he took out her entire life insurance policy and got all of that money and it wasn't much but still it would have been enough to pay for a fucking headstone anything anything anything a marker wow it was literally like a taped piece of paper to the area that tells you something of course it does piece of fucking shit and instead of spending the money on what he

should have the headstone he quote took several women shopping for new clothes yeah fuck this guy so hard so hard now just for the comfort of everybody's mind like all of us in this room and all of us out there in the world.

Luckily, a victim's rights organization did end up paying for a headstone for Don, so she has one.

That's amazing. Which, like, the fact that a victim's fucking rights organization had to do that, thank goodness they exist. Yeah.

What about anybody else that loved her?

Yeah. Jesus fucking Christ. So some of Nick's former congregants from the Paul's Bow offshoot of Christ Community Church, so it's like a sister Mr. Church, I guess.

I don't know. They showed up at the hearing to support him and his lawyer tried to suggest that their showing up was evidence of Nick's reliability.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Because he was hoping to get him released on personal recognizance.

When I first read that, I was like, what?

So personal recognizance, according to Google, is a release without the requirement of a posting of bail based on a written promise by the defendant to appear in court when required to do so it's the honor system of bail uh you're on trial or you're about to be for the murder of your wife this isn't a game of monopoly there's no get out of jail free carter like i promise i'll come back like hey just spit on your palm and shake my hand and tell me you're gonna be here tomorrow scouts on it yeah absolutely like you're you're literally sitting in this room because we think you burned your wife in a fucking

house fire after suffocating her with a plastic bag and you just think that you're gonna after drug out of here after drugging her yes thank you there was also that make sure you include that so um obviously the judge was unmoved to say the least thank goodness and he only reduced the bond to five hundred thousand dollars which nobody was going to be able to pay to get him out so on September 17th Nick went before a judge where he pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder he also again claimed that this This entire thing was a plot against him by the former church led by Pastor Robert.

And he also claimed, are you ready, that Pastor Robert had placed a curse on him and the reach of his diabolical influence was just so much deeper than the police or anybody could possibly comprehend.

You have no idea. I have been cursed.

I have no idea. He is correct about that.

Oh, I have no idea.

I have no idea. How?

you really thought in a court of law you could look up at the judge and say you couldn't possibly comprehend how diabolical this pastor is he cursed me couldn't possibly sir possibly comprehend sir this is a court is what the judge said this is a wendy's this is this is better than a wendy's not surprisingly the judge was not interested in talks of curses or conspiracies and he said okay trial date november 7th see you there asshole probably a a little more eloquently probably now while nick was in jail awaiting his trial uh the kitsap county prosecutor's office was obviously building their case

against him in early october deputy prosecutor neil watcher or watchter excuse me announced that they were considering changing the original charges to aggravated first degree murder which meant that nick could face life in prison without the possibility of parole damn now the change in charges was because of the arson of it all The prosecutor's office was considering it an aggravating factor.

And that charge also meant that if he were guilty, Nick would have been eligible for the death penalty.

But prosecutor Russ Haug, I think it is, assured the press that they weren't going to go for the death penalty.

Now as part of their investigation, Jesus Christ, I keep saying Jesus Christ through that and it's very ironic.

I know. I don't know if I usually say that.

I was going to say because I don't even think you usually.

No, but it's just coming to me in the moment.

It's happening. It's a vision.

But the prosecutor started collecting testimony from the women that Nick was having affairs with at the time.

Three of those women were willing to give testimony, but one of them, named Nicole, was now engaged to Nick.

Shut up. They had gotten engaged.

Shut up. And she was refusing to cooperate.

Nick and Nicole actually were planning to get married and then move to Tennessee at the time that he was arrested.

Yeah, I bet they were.

like they were already planning it when he was arrested but they were planning to move to tennessee so the prosecutor's office was like uh no don't reduce his fucking bail yeah and they also had to get a court order to compel her testimony and they were like yeah like he's gonna run away to tennessee and complicate this whole case further do not let him out and luckily at the final bail hearing in late october the judge agreed with them and the bail was left at 500 000 and he said killing of a wife is one of the most serious crimes in our system of justice yeah you're not just going to be able

to go away for that no so fall turned over to winter and nick's trial date kept getting pushback for like different reasons the prosecutors and the defense team were arguing over what was going to be admissible what wasn't but the gist is that the defense didn't want most of the affairs to be discussed because they they claimed that they didn't start until after don had died which that's not true and like we can create a timeline so they were like they can't be used as a motive what's the point in talking about it shut up it's like a character like maybe and then relating to sandy and nick's whole

affair they couldn't argue that it was going on while don was still alive like it absolutely was so they just argued that her testimony was questionable because she was a woman scorned Oh, yeah.

Okay. So the prosecution obviously fought both of those claims. And they said, even if the affairs hadn't started until after Don's death, Nick was still counseling all of these women at the time.

Yeah. One of which was the teenage daughter of his own mentor, P .B.

Smith, Lindsay Smith.

And their argument was that Nick was laying the groundwork for sex through these counseling sessions.

And he murdered Don to, quote unquote, free himself up for this.

ew it's so gross so the judge superior court judge anna laurie decided with excuse me sided with the prosecution and noted that nick quote had romantic attachments in the form of flirting hugs physical contact and intimate conversations with several women prior to the death and these relationships were sexually consummated once he was freed of the confines of confines of his marriage wow yeah so a few more delays uh after a few more delays nick finally went on actual trial on november 4th 2002 in his opening statement the deputy prosecutor neil watched her told the jury in the early morning hours

of december 26 1997 nick had drugged his wife with a toxic dose of benadryl placed a plastic bag over her head and suffocated her until she had died then to cover To cover up the murder, he scattered and arranged a large number of flammable items around the room, precariously close to a faulty space heater.

Wow. Which he turned on and then left for a previously planned hunting trip with his friends, which he was fully intending to use as his alibi.

Damn. And they argued, obviously, again, that he did all of this to free himself up to have relationships with all these other women.

And not only that, but because he had put himself and Dawn in a shit ton of debt from his church activities and the home renovation, so he hoped to cash in on the life insurance policy to remedy all those financial troubles.

This is so callous.

It's so messed. And they also said in their opening statements how he couldn't even use that money to buy a headstone for his wife and how he spent a lot of it on women he was having affairs with.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, Mark Yellish, the defense attorney there, claimed, of course, that, quote, the initial investigation was right.

It was an accidental flash fire, like the medical examiner said it was.

Wow. Sure. So he tried to obviously put doubt in the minds of the jury, telling them that the prosecutor's office had to suggest otherwise was one jealous witness.

That's all they had to.

Oh, OK. To point away from this.

yeah obviously it's ridiculous absolutely ridiculous so the prosecution called all four women that nick was having affairs with around the time of don's death to testify and it was through these women that the jury learned about the heavy influence that the church had on their lives and they also heard all about the visions and direct messages people claimed to have from god that played a role in don's death yeah and how nick used those visions as messages for for justification and manipulation.

Lindsay there, formerly Lindsay Smith, she was married now, but she told the jury about how she had met Nick through her father, PB, and how she'd been groomed by Nick as a teenager.

Oh. Just after Don died, they did engage in a sexual relationship and that happened until she actually finally left the area about a year later.

Oh man. And the prosecution also introduced into evidence a large number of sexually explicit emails between nick and lindsey that contained quote a mix of protestations of love fantasies about sexual contact yet to come and attempts to explain to one another how god could allow what they were doing wow i can't like can you hear the blink blink i cannot so some of the more important testimony came from the pathologist dr emmanuel Emanuel Lucina, who had performed the original autopsy on Don.

Now, like we know, his original report concluded, quote, a spasm in the woman's larynx when a flash fire engulfed in her bedroom must be the explanation for absence of soot in her lungs or carbon monoxide in her blood.

That's a quote. But when he was informed by the police that they suspected Don had been murdered, he changed the results of the autopsy when he learned about more of the details.

scales yeah meaning the change was purely on the circumstances not new evidence so that was a little tricky ah i was gonna say that can get a little hairy it got a little hairy because the defense obviously used this to their advantage yeah and they said well would you change your results if it turned out that sandy's story was proven false yeah would you like flip it back and he said yes i would so the defense pushed even further and they said does having a bag over one's head like would that cause a violent reaction but this backfired when the doctor noted that absolutely it would cause a violent

reaction what kind of question is that but only if a person is fully conscious and at the time of her death dawn had been drugged to the point of sluggishness which meant that she couldn't put up a fight exactly so i think what they were trying to do there is say like well if he put a bag over her head why didn't she fight back and he was like uh because she had five times the normal dose of Benadryl in her system and was immobilized.

He had drugged her first. Idiots.

They did everything they possibly could, the defense, to undermine the state's evidence against their client, but it was Sandy Glass that the defense attorney pushed the hardest. The case against Nick obviously rested a lot on Sandy's statement to the police that Nick had confessed to her, so they were determined to frame her as this jealous ex -lover who Who wanted revenge when she found out about all these other women.

Of course. They pointed to the fact that Sandy never warned anybody about Nick before going to the police, which is true.

And the fact that she waited years before reporting about a murder.

Yeah. So the defense attorney asked her, you never warned your good friend Annette and didn't you have any fear of him yourself?

And Annette was one of the women he was having an affair with.

So that's the crazier thing.

a lot of the women that he was having affairs with were friends i know that's wild and like if you read uh twisted faith it goes a lot more into their relationships with one another yeah and i think what got sandy to the point of being like this is wrong and i can't believe i've been going along with it for this man this is so messy it is but so so he said you know you never warned anybody and you weren't scared yourself so obviously suggesting she was lying yeah now Now, finally, he got at what he had been implying all along, and he said, By accusing Mr. Hackney of murder, haven't you changed

your role in the relationship as a victim that you were manipulated by a murderer?

So he's like, you're just trying to rewrite history here.

Eek. Trying to point to the fact that she herself was involved in this affair and could have been involved in this murder.

And now it's like, oh, no, no, no, I'm the victim.

And I want to believe that Sandy didn't know about the murder.

I also want to believe that.

So that's what I'll believe for now.

But anyway, the trial lasted nearly two months until finally, on December 26, 2002, which was super eerie because it was five years to the day since Dawn had been discovered, the jury retired for deliberation.

They deliberated for less than a day and ended up siding with the prosecution and found Nick Hackney guilty of aggravated first -degree murder.

murder in his statement to the press prosecutor neil watchter said we are extremely gratified by the verdict and we are happy they could reach the only common sense verdict here yeah now on february 7 2003 nick hackney returned to superior court where he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility for parole damn and after the sentence was passed nick obviously was allowed to make a statement and he did the whole i'm innocent i loved my wife i did Did bad things, but I'm a good man.

And he told the courtroom, which included Don's parents and family, I didn't murder Don.

There are a lot of things that I regret that I wish I could take back and undo.

I'm sorry for the pain of going through this trial and losing your daughter.

Don was kind and beautiful and true.

She deserved better than me.

I loved her with all my heart.

No, the fuck you didn't.

I'm going to call bullshit on that.

You don't place a plastic bag after drugging your wife over her head and then light your entire house on fire when you love that person.

Yeah you don't know I can confirm that.

And Don's father was absolutely pissed that that was his statement.

Yeah. And he jumped up and yelled at Nick then why didn't you even buy a headstone for her.

Good. And then her brother Derek was equally pissed and added you don't know when to give up and like they were just like yelling at him the judge was about to call the room back into the into order but they both just left i'm glad they were both like you're fucking worthless see you later see you never and i think the fact i like i think they should be able to respond to that statement because that's an absurd statement it is and i'm glad that they got to yeah now unfortunately any uh comfort found in nick's conviction was a little bit undermined in the spring of 20 2007 when the state supreme

court sided with him on an appeal that nixed his mandatory life sentence which then sent him back to court for re -sentencing essentially what nick's team argued was that the jury was not properly instructed on the aggregate aggravating factor thing because dawn was already dead since nick had suffocated her the fire happened after the murder and technically they were arguing it wasn't an aggravated factor during the course of murder because she was already dead it's i don't know how you find that loophole and yeah sometimes these little loopholes are like really but it worked with the appeal he

was still convicted of murder but because it wasn't technically aggravated murder the life sentence was thrown out and he was resentenced to 26 years in prison i love that they were like it wasn't aggravated murder because he didn't burn her alive he just did that he just put a bag over her head after drugging her so that's not really aggravated no it's just that's just murder yeah it's just straight up murder just murder oh okay so that means he could get out within like the next several years that's awesome and that is the tragic case of the murder of a beautiful beautiful soul i know like if you

look at pictures of her she just seems like such a sweet kind i'm like beautiful soul you are better than everyone in this story yeah except your friend eunice and like a few of the supporting people everyone yeah she is better than all of these you deserved a lot better she did and the fact that life didn't give it to her pisses me off yeah that sucks it does it was a really tragic case to research but again i really really recommend that book twisted faith i was it's a fucking page turner yeah it sounds wild yeah and you can get it on the kindle if you want if you if you like to do that you

can get it on the kindle everybody get it on the kindle you can get a hard copy it's available it's available you can just read it yeah it's available i'll link it in the show notes oh my god that story cuckoo nuts bananas and just senseless and so sad and like ridiculous like the the visions and all that yeah it's just It's just too much. There's a lot.

It really is. Yeah, it is.

That's what it is. It's too much. So, we need to go have a palate cleanser, I think.

Yeah, for real. Yeah.

All right. Well, guys, we love you.

We hope you keep listening.

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[던 해크니 살인 사건: 광신적인 종교와 비극적 배신]-[Episode 466: The Murder of Dawn Hacheney]

📋 Summary

던 해크니 살인 사건: 믿음이라는 이름의 비극

왜곡된 신앙과 권력의 남용

결혼 생활의 파탄과 범행의 동기

살인의 전말과 은폐 시도

심판과 그 이후

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript