Anatomy of Murder - Home Invasion (Heidi Firkus)

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Police are called to a couple’s home after they report an active break in. The wife lay dead and her husband shot. An unlikely motive leads police to the killer. View source material and photos for this episode at anatomyofmurder.com/home-invasionCan’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod /audiochuckllc

What's the problem? We're in a shot. We broke into a house. I've been shot. Wait, you've been shot? Yes, please. Okay, stay on the phone with me, okay? I told her parents that first day, I said, I can't promise you anything except that I will push to closure in this case, whether it is identifying, charging, and prosecuting a suspect, or saying to

you, unfortunately, without someone coming forward and saying, I did this, we're going to need to close this case. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasiga Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. In April of 2010, a young husband and wife had gone about that classic Saturday night ritual of takeout and a movie. Their house was located in a residential neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was a quiet night in the couple's home. They were asleep before midnight. Just seven hours later, one of them was dead.

The mystery of what shattered the silence of a peaceful Sunday morning would haunt investigators for a decade and leave a community forever divided. Heidi and Nicholas Furcus met at church when they were still in high school. According to friends, the two had markedly different personalities. While Nicholas was more steadfast and the bra friends, the two had markedly different personalities. While Nicholas was more steadfast and the brainy of the two, Heidi was known as the life of the party. They had been married for about five years. They got married when Heidi was 20. Everyone described them as having a very good marriage and being very committed to each other. That's the voice of Sergeant Nicole,

who also goes by Nikki Sipes of the St. Paul Police Department. She was off that weekend of April 24th, 2010, but is intimately familiar with the events of that Sunday. Around 6 a.m., the Minnesota State Emergency Dispatch received a phone call from Heidi. Here's a portion of that call. State Patrol 911. Someone's trying to break into my house. What city are you in? St. Paul? I'm in St. Paul. She sounds, I call it lightly panicked. She's not screaming. She's able to

articulate what she's saying. However, she sounds nervous and scared. Suddenly, Heidi screams and the phone call abruptly ends. Someone's trying west. Somebody's trying to break in our house. Okay, what phone number are you calling from? Well, I don't know where she went there. About a minute later, her husband Nicholas called 911 and yelled that both he and Heidi had been shot. The emergency operator stayed on the phone with him as police and paramedics rushed to the couple's home. Dispatch tried to get as much information as they could while Nicholas was still on the line. Is the person that shot you still there?

No, no, no, no. Okay, take a deep breath and listen to me. Do you remember what he was wearing? Ow, ow. Do you remember what he was wearing? No. My wife is, she's dead. I need to hurry now.

Okay, we're going to get you up out there right now. Go ahead. You said your wife is shot she's dead. I need to hurry now. We're going to get you up out there right now. Go ahead. You said your wife is shot also? Yeah. She's not moving. She's not breathing. When police arrive, they notice the front door is cracked open and inside the foyer, a shotgun and a few spent shotgun shells. Nearby in the kitchen, Nicholas is on the ground holding his wife, Heidi. He's screaming, he's been shot. They have to actually carry him back through the kitchen,

into their dining room, and out through their living room. Otherwise, they would have had to go over Heidi's body. Heidi was face down and had a gunshot wound to her back. There was a great deal of blood loss that actually went through the kitchen floor into the basement. It was fairly apparent to first responders that she was beyond saving. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Police spoke with Nicholas as he was being treated in the ambulance. The officers on scene are trying to elicit some information from him

about what has happened and who might be responsible. And, you know, at first he's saying that there might have been two intruders, but he can't give a description of them. Heidi's parents, who had been in church at the time, quickly got word of the break-in and shooting. They rushed to the hospital. So they actually went to the hospital, believing initially that Heidi was

there receiving treatment and of course finding out during their time at the hospital that she had not even been able to be treated at the hospital due to her injuries. Back at the crime scene, officers were working the block, canvassing, knocking on doors, trying to locate witnesses, and also looking for the shooter. Immediately, the responding officers and the investigators were attempting to locate witnesses. You know, they were going door to door. Did you hear anything? Did you see anything? Since it was Sunday morning, many people were home,

but the conversations that the police were having with neighbors didn't lead them very far. Really, the reports they got were either that no one heard anything or maybe a report of like a car driving through the alley. But there was nothing significant other than one neighbor next door. And that person said he was woken up by a noise in the early morning. The neighbor had stated that he had heard, you know, loud voices. He didn't know if it was arguing, but loud voices. And he thought he heard somebody say no.

He also thought that he heard someone say, you shot her and you shot me. The yells were enough to make him get up and glance out the window towards the Furcus home. When he didn't see anyone outside, he went back to sleep. With no other major clues or leads, police re-approached Nicholas. He did agree to come down to the station and speak with them. He's been released from the hospital. He's on crutches. He's got a shotgun wound to his upper thigh, but he is mobile.

He voluntarily came to the police department to speak to investigators. Here's part of the audio from that conversation. What we're going to try and do here, Nick, is I'm just going to try and you know, I know this is a very traumatic situation, okay, and I'm just going to try and ease into it, okay? Nicholas walked police through his weekend. That Saturday,

Heidi met up with a friend while Nicholas stayed home and played on his computer. In the evening, the couple ordered food delivery and watched the movie Avatar before going to sleep. Around 6 a.m., Nicholas woke up and was thirsty. So I got up and went and got a glass of water from the bathroom. Okay, so you woke up about 6 a.m.

So you're up around 6 a.m., go to the bathroom, get some water. Yep, go back to sleep, but just kind of fitfully sleep for 10 or 15 minutes. And I hear our, I heard the screen door open. He then hears what sounds like somebody jiggling the front door. He wakes up Heidi. I said, hey, somebody's filling with our map and trying to get into our house. Let's let's get your shoes on and let's go out to the garage. Let's get out of here.

Okay. Why go to the garage? Because that's where our car is. And we just wanted, we didn't want to be in the house if somebody was trying to get in the house. Okay. At that point, he grabbed a shotgun from the closet and loaded it with two shells.

The couple decided to head towards the garage where they could run away from the closet and loaded it with two shells. The couple decided to head towards the garage where they could run away from the intruder. As they started down the stairs, Heidi dials 911. At the front door, Heidi then grabs her wallet off the table and turns towards the kitchen. As soon as she grabs it, the door opens. Okay. And so I have a gun and I left. Yep. And so I try to shut the door shut, but it gets forced open. And the guy that was there, I think he saw it. Yeah.

I think he grabbed the barrel and went down towards the trigger or more towards the top. He described a struggle between himself and the alleged burglar in which they were both maintaining a grip on the shotgun. He believed his finger slipped into the trigger guard and the gun went off. Nicholas said he thought that shot hit Heidi. And then the gun goes off? Mm-hmm. Okay. And it goes off down? Yeah, I mean, I know it hit Heidi. I then the gun goes off? Mm-hmm. Okay. And it goes off down?

Yeah, I mean, I know it hit Heidi. I just, I know it did. Okay. I know it did. I don't know where it hit her, but I know it hit her. Did it hit her in the chest, the back? She was running away, so it definitely hit her in the back. It hit her in the back.

Yeah. The intruder, he said, was wearing a hoodie that covered most of his face, and he was also wearing gloves. Nicholas's version of events started to raise questions with the detective in the room. The first one was why the couple would have come downstairs to confront an intruder in the first place. For us, this makes zero sense.

Nicholas Ferkus did not have any sort of law enforcement or military training where he was taught to engage in conflict. Why would you leave the safety of a place where you have a weapon and a little security and then go towards the problem? There seemed to be more to the story. We've spoken before about the high rate of homicides related to intimate partner violence. The most recent numbers say that almost 50% of female homicides and 10% of of homicides related to intimate partner violence. The most recent numbers say that almost 50% of female homicides and 10% of male homicides are due to intimate partner violence.

Knowing this, the investigators started to shift focus from Nicholas's account of the events to his relationship with Heidi. He's getting the impression that there's a little bit more to the story and he gently probes into, you know, I think the common questions you have to ask people. Is there a problem in your relationship? Are you having issues with anyone that would be out to harm you? How long have you been married for? For four and a half years. You guys have any problems or anything like that? Just the normal stuff, like, you know, stresses about finances, quality time,

vacations, all that stuff. But I would say we're still best friends. And then the questions become, are there any financial problems? And at that point, Nicholas drops kind of a bombshell on the whole story, in my opinion. What Nicholas says next shifts the focus of the entire investigation and just may lead them one step closer to finding Heidi's Killer. Just a few hours after Heidi Furcus was killed, police asked her husband Nicholas about the couple's finances.

He seemed to be forthright with his answer. You guys aren't behind in the bills or anything? We are behind in the bills, which is a little stressful. In fact, we were planning on moving tomorrow. Moving where? Well, we hadn't figured that out yet we were and and this is a hard it's a hard place for us we were foreclosing on our house okay we have to be out by monday the foreclosure and imminent move was a shock to investigators it was extremely odd that heidi would be killed the day before they were to

be evicted. And besides that, there was no sign, not at all, of a move at the Furcus home. If you look at the crime scene photos, every piece of clothing is hanging in the closet. It's in a drawer. There isn't a suitcase pulled out. There isn't a laundry basket stacked with clothing. Everything in that house, you know, to DVDs, to books for sure if you're moving. But again, Nicholas and Heidi were young. I certainly have heard about it, but people just kind of get up and figure it out at the last moment. And these two, they're still in their 20s. Maybe they really were just in over their heads and thinking they could wing it. You know, what do you think about that, at least as a possibility, Scott? I do think it's a possibility, although I must admit, just learning how the crime occurred and his behavior leading up to the shooting, a couple of things are really rubbing me the wrong way.

So while I would think in general terms, people who are just winging it and moving the next morning, it's possible. But combining that with other things, Anasika, it's troubling what's developing here. And then it took about 90 minutes into the interview before Nicholas then asked about his wife. I just want to know the final answer on Heidi. And I want to know, I just want to know if you found anything yet as far as the guys that did this. Well, there's a couple parts of my job that I really hate. This is one of them. She had made it.

I figured that. I mean... Furcus trails off. It had taken him 90 minutes to even ask if his wife had made it. And then his response back to investigators was, quote, I figured the whole exchange between Furcus and the investigators was for them, and obviously for me, a really big red

flag. And Furcus quickly became the investigation's main person of interest. So investigators got to work trying to corroborate Fergus's story, and part of that would be approaching the couple's families to ask about this home foreclosure. The families were completely surprised. They knew nothing about it. They never went to either family and said, hey, we're in trouble. We're young. We've made a mistake. I mean, at that time, they were not the only couple suffering through housing issues. Heidi's family was particularly tight-knit, and they were certain Heidi would have never kept that kind of news to herself.

But did that really even make sense? That even thought that she would be planning a move and not tell her family. They did not believe there was any way that their daughter could be facing this kind of upheaval in her life and that she would show no signs of it, that she would not talk to them about it. They felt that she would have most likely come to them for help and long before the day they had to move. Investigators also went back to the Furcus home to try and recreate the scenario that Nicholas had described. One person stayed in the bedroom while another went outside and physically jiggled the doorknob like the intruder had supposedly done.

But the officer in the bedroom heard nothing. It raised more questions about Furcus's version of events. And at that moment, investigators had more questions than answers. So they continued to press on. As they did, at least in some ways, life was continuing to move forward. Five days after the shooting, Heidi was laid to rest. A short time later, Nicholas Furcus moved out of the home they had shared. Police also learned while the couple were close, when Heidi was still alive,

she and Nicholas had been part of an extremely tight-knit group of friends. This couple, I think, was best defined by their adult friendships. They had a very close group of friends. There were three other couples, and the eight of them had a nickname for themselves, and it was The Core. And they spent the majority of their time with their friends. But after Heidi's murder, the group became divided into two camps, those that believed Nicholas Ferkus' account of what happened and those that didn't. The divide affected the couple's families as well. If you just heard the story on the Merritt, you knew there was something wrong with it.

If you were someone that was acquainted with Nick and Heidi, you know, it was going to go one of two ways, really. That really divided the family. Nicholas never had a relationship with Heidi's family after that. Once the media got a hold of the story, the divide spread to the community at large. It was such an odd case in that we had this victim who was at home with the person she should be safest with and yet lost her life. So I think that the general public had an interest in this case as well. For Furcus, at least, life continued. Only a few months after the murder, he got to know another young woman named Rachel, who was the sister of one of Heidi's best friends. She was also going

through a hard time having recently left an abusive relationship, the sister of one of Heidi's best friends. She was also going through a hard time having recently left an abusive relationship. The two of them first connected in their grief. Throughout that summer, after Heidi's death, Nick and Rachel developed a very close friendship and perhaps an emotional relationship. Within a year of them dating, Ferkus proposed. The couple married and started a family. Years passed and eventually Furcus became the father of three young children. He seemed to rebuild his life and didn't speak often about Heidi. Not to his new wife and not to investigators still working the case.

In the nine years that had elapsed, Mr. Furcus never contacted our department, either personally nor through his legal team, to ask what progress had been made into his wife's death. For the St. Paul Police Department, however, Heidi's death remained front of mind. Heidi's case in the nine years previous had never been closed. It had never been designated as a cold case and was still an open, active investigation. In 2019, Sergeant Nikki Sipes took over the investigation.

It had a reputation at the time for being the longest open case in the department. She was determined to remedy that and change it quickly. One of the first things Nikki did was meet with Heidi's family. It was important to her that they knew how invested she was in the case. I told her parents that first day, I said, I can't promise you anything except that I will push to closure in this case, whether it is identifying, charging and prosecuting a suspect or saying to you, unfortunately, without someone coming forward and saying I did this, we're going to need to close this case. I felt the family really, after nine years, deserved that sort of closure one way or the other. You know, Anastasia, there's always the question that looms for a family of a homicide victim or when a case starts to stall, which is, will this really ever get solved? And are the people responsible for solving it really working as hard as they can?

And I think it really comes down to how good the communication is between investigators and the family, giving them the opportunity, even as you know, with a quick phone call, updating them and letting them know that the wheels of justice are still turning. And that's exactly what Nikki did. She began the process of digging into victimology, taking the time to learn exactly who Heidi was. I sat down with Heidi's parents and just had them tell me about Heidi. Tell me who she was to you. Tell me what her life was like. Tell me what your relationship with her was like.

The conversations helped Nikki put a face to the victim. It also solidified the direction she planned to take the investigation because Nikki wasn't buying Nicholas's story that the couple had planned to move out the very next day and that Heidi knew about this imminent foreclosure. It was very enlightening to me. It was rewarding to me. But it also cemented to me that her family feeling like there's no way she would have gone through this and not reached out to us.

I truly believed that after spending time with them. Although an arrest had never been made, Nikki was certain that the suspect in Heidi's murder had already been identified. I knew at that point it was just going to be a matter of examining all of the evidence and pulling everything together to say that while it's hard to prove a negative, it's a great story to make something out, right? And it's very hard, we know this in law enforcement, to prove that something didn't happen. But I just knew there was work that needed to be done, but that it was all there. It just had to be put together. But before Nikki could dive into the case, she got word of a

new development. It had nothing to do with Heidi and everything to do with Fergus's new wife. While she was working, Sergeant Nikki Sipes got word that Nicholas Fergus and his second wife, Rachel, were divorcing after many years together. Nikki immediately wanted to talk to her and see what information she had. I didn't know what their relationship was like. I didn't know if perhaps he had talked to her and told her something that would even point to someone else. Like, did he give her information that we never obtained? Rachel was open to speaking with Nikki. She told her that she and Furcus had separated

after she had randomly found a foreclosure warning letter at their home. She had no idea that they had been in that type of financial trouble. We understand from his ex-wife that he had repeated a lot of the financial habits with her. She had ultimately found out that their house was in danger of being foreclosed on because he wasn't paying their property taxes. The situation had struck Rachel as being oddly similar to the one Heidi was in before her death. Rachel took the dramatic step of confronting her ex-husband and secretly recording that conversation. She told him that his lying about their finances made her feel like he was lying about other things as well.

It was a clear insinuation to Heidi's murder. Furcus didn't respond. The moment was telling. Nikki knew she was on the right track. She just needed to keep digging. Before doing anything, I read all of the reports. I looked at all the photos. I looked at so much paperwork as related to the foreclosure and eviction process of the house. And this was not something that was in my wheelhouse. Financial crimes is not my specialty. So I had to learn a

lot and I had some really good people that helped school me along the way. She also made sure to keep Heidi's family updated on the investigation. I updated them as frequently as I could with, hey, we're working on some examinations of things. We're talking to people. I stayed in touch with them. I let them know that we were moving forward in the investigation. The FBI stepped in and helped Nikki compose a financial timeline of Furcus' life. She saw that the couple's purchase of their home in 2007 put a major strain on their finances. By 2010, the Furcuses were deep in debt. Their mortgage hadn't been paid in

22 months. As Nikki went through all of the financial paperwork, it was apparent that one thing was missing. Heidi's signature. Nikki found out about an eviction hearing that took place on March 8th, 2010, less than two months before the murder. Lawyers from the hearing confirmed what she already suspected. Heidi had not been present. Heidi never signed anything. She never went to any court hearings. She was never spoken to by anyone regarding the foreclosure and then subsequent eviction.

For Nikki, all of this pointed to a diabolical motive that Ferkus would have had for killing his wife. As the investigation went on, it became obvious that Heidi did not know their house had been foreclosed. That was really what I believe was the motive, is that he had not told his wife that this was happening and that he was down to the wire.

And so he needed an explanation for why he wasn't going to live in that house anymore. And I think that Heidi's death was his reason. Nikki and the prosecutor decided they now had enough for an arrest. So Nikki wrote out her findings in a detailed probable cause affidavit. And basically a probable cause affidavit is just another way to ensure that we are charging people based on enough evidence. You hear often talking about grand jury presentations. Well, this is another way of doing something similar. It's basically a post-arrest

summary of the evidence and the circumstances of the arrest that's written by the police officer or the detective and then given to a judge to review. Knowing how long this case had gone unsolved, it was especially important for her to lay out every facet of the investigation. There was some rhyme and reason to why it was so detailed. And it was kind of because there were so many people that we believed did not actually know what had happened, that we felt it was important for people to understand that more so than we normally do in a criminal complaint. She started by painting the picture of Furcus as a man incapable of owning up to his mistakes.

I believe he was very narcissistic and did not want anyone to know he had failed. I mean, this woman was described as being devoted to him, and I think he could not bear to tell her what he had done to them financially. During her research, one term that came up over and over again was financial domestic abuse. That's when one partner uses finances to gain power in a relationship and control of the other partner. They may do this through limiting a person's access to money, but it also could be done more subtly, like concealing information about one's finances.

I believe this is actually a case of financial domestic abuse. She was completely unaware of their finances and what had happened. And my belief is that he thought when she died, he could tell people, I can't live in the home that my darling wife died in. And that was how he thought he was going to walk out of that house without anybody understanding why he truly had to leave it. The district attorney agreed with Nikki's assessment. On May 19th, 11 years after Heidi had been killed,

Furcus was charged with second-degree murder. A grand jury later added first-degree murder to those charges. One of the first things Nikki thought about when it came time to arrest Furcus was his children. He was actually taken into custody at his home quite early in the morning by our SWAT team, trying to do everything we could to minimize any danger to the public, and doing it also in coordination with a time when we knew his children would not be there. That was very important to us to keep his children from having to be traumatized by this arrest. More than a decade had passed since Heidi's murder, which made notifying her family all the more special.

Obviously, I called them upon the arrest to let them know that he was in custody. They are just really wonderful people who want nothing more than to have justice for their daughter and for the loss of her life. It's such a young age, especially. I think the fact that they finally were moving towards justice for Heidi was just so important to them and so, so long in the coming. On January 27th, 2023, the trial against Nicholas Furcus for his wife Heidi's murder began. The prosecution's case was built on a mountain of financial documents and reports that had taken months for investigators to fully grasp. But at trial, would they be able to clearly translate Nikki's hard work for a jury?

Or would Heidi's killer forever remain on the loose? Before the trial against Nicholas Ferkus began, a judge ruled that Rachel's recordings of her ex-husband could not be admitted. She also wasn't allowed to testify. And really what that means, because you might be shaking your head like, why not? It's so relevant. And it is, but it also goes to this argument called propensity. That the argument from the defense would be like, well, wait a second. If he did this then, years later, they're going to convict him, saying, of course, it's the same.

And the judge is saying, look, it's too similar. So he has to be convicted for what happened to Heidi based on what happened in this case alone. And while there are legal exceptions, that would be getting too deep in the weeds, at least for here for now. But that's basically why that evidence didn't get to the jury. Even without Rachel's testimony, the case against Furcus was substantial. There were the financial issues and the home foreclosure that Nikki had spent so much time laying out. But there was also evidence presented from the home itself, starting with the front door. It did not have a broken deadbolt mechanism, nor any like splitting damage to the wood,

nothing that appeared physical force had been used on the door. According to Fergus, the intruder had burst through the door and immediately gone for his gun. Fergus described a wrestle over the weapon that happened in the foyer, which was a very small room. During the lead-up to trial, Nikki had wanted the prosecution to see it firsthand. Attorneys, when I finally got them physically inside that foyer, were shocked at the size of it because it seems bigger in the photos.

The prosecution decided to build a replica of the foyer to demonstrate its size. They also showed something you could see from the crime scene photographs. The area by the front door was also tidy. There was a table with candlesticks, a water bottle, and other items, and nothing had been knocked over. And then you look at the struggle that he had, this dynamic encounter that he describes with the suspect in this small area. Yet there is nothing to indicate any sort of struggle occurred, let alone a life or death struggle with a long gun between two adult males. Amongst all the statements that Nicholas Furcus was making about what happened that night, there was also a question about the timing of who went down the stairs first.

Listen. All right. So you're going first down the stairs or is she behind you or is she in front of you or what? She's in front because I'm kind of trying to move her along quickly. Yeah. And then I'm right behind her. You know, I just want to take a quick sidestep here about the crime scene because there's so much to get into about how Furcus described the crime scene and how the crime occurred. It's his behavior leading up to the stairs, to which could be potential danger of

somebody breaking into their home while they, the husband, are carrying a weapon, a shotgun. Now, does that make any sense? I mean, look, there is, of course, the person who's going to be so fearful of themselves that they will put someone else in front of them just to protect themselves. But one, rare, and you hope that's not you in that situation. But again, like you said, Scott, when you put that with the other evidence, it just doesn't seem to make sense that in that scenario, if he is going to go down to confront the intruder or intruders, that he would be the same person who would put his wife in front of him in direct harm's way.

I think you're right. It makes no sense. And then, of course, there's the fingerprints and the DNA to throw into the equation. The only fingerprint they were ever able to identify was from Nicholas, and there was no unknown DNA that was recovered from the crime scene. Ferkus had said that the intruder was wearing gloves, but like the rest of his story, it sounded too convenient to be true. And, you know, Scott, as you're listening to these things, it almost just seems that he's almost like checking off the boxes down the list about, okay, this seems odd. Here's my explanation. This might seem odd. Here's my explanation. Like life doesn't, it's not always two plus two equals four in the way that he's saying, like it's too many things that he is

having to explain the oddities. I'll say this. There is a feeling as an investigator that when you get all of the answers you're getting, especially when it deals directly with physical evidence, and it's coming back to you in a small, neat little package, no one is that perfect. There's always a chink in the armor, always something about a story that doesn't line up perfectly. So it is your job to find out and either corroborate it or pull it apart and confront the person who believes that you may be on board with what they're telling you. It's just too much of a neat package. There was a lot that he said that certainly raised suspicions along the way. So then what did actually happen that Sunday morning?

Nikki Sipes has spent a lot of time thinking about that question. I believe that Heidi was in bed, that Nicholas was downstairs, and that he yelled upstairs and woke her up, and that she grabbed her cell phone and came down the stairs making that 911 call. If you listen to the 911 call, she says, I and me and not we. State Patrol 911. Someone trying to break into my house. What city are you in? St. Paul? I'm in St. Paul. I think she came down the stairs. I think she rounded the corner from the staircase in front of the front door into the kitchen and that Nicholas stepped out of the living room and shot her from behind. Ballistic evidence seemed to support this theory as well. Heidi's gunshot wound was aligned with Furcus's shoulder height,

making it plausible that he was the one that shot her. As for Furcus's gunshot wound to his leg, based on the angle of the bullet and the blood spatter on the door, it was indeed possible that it was self-inflicted. At his trial, Furcus did not take the stand. After 11 days of a trial, the jury began their deliberations. The legal team may have been nervous, but Nikki felt confident that the evidence of his guilt was clear and that justice would finally be served. I believe that Heidi did not know that she was not going to have a place to live the next day. And I felt that when the jurors heard that in proximity with all of the information that showed there was nobody else in that house, that they would convict him on that.

It took only five hours to come back with a verdict, guilty of both premeditated and intentional murder. Nicholas Verkus was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. The case was finally closed. I actually have a picture of myself the day the boss let me erase Heidi's name off the board. That was a great day. But even with the case officially closed, there is one thought that remains with Nikki even now. What I hope is that she never saw it coming and had no realization that the person that was supposed to love and protect her was the person that ultimately killed her. Over a decade passed since Heidi's young life was so cruelly cut short. And during that time, the did he or didn't he question

had been the dominant narrative. But when Fergus was let out of the courtroom, something changed. Heidi's mom said this that same day that I thought was a perfect way to describe the case. And it was that Nicholas had driven the narrative about what happened to Heidi for 13 years. And on that day, Heidi's truth got to come out. Nikki looks back on the case with humility. People say to me, oh God, I'm so proud of you for solving this. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This case solved itself.

I just got it charged. I mean, we knew who did it. It was just getting to the finish line. She sees the role that everyone played in helping to secure justice for Heidi. There was her family who never gave up on finding their daughter's killer. The detective whose interview with Furcus

revealed a whole new side to the story. And the FBI who helped translate complicated financial data. And there was Rachel, Furcus's second wife. Through the tragedy of Heidi's death, Rachel has a relationship with her family now. Because even though she didn't testify in court, the information that she provided us with really helped us push forward. In hearing what happened to her, we were able to say to ourselves, we are truly on the right track. Homicide investigations are about uncovering the truth, but they're also about giving a voice to the voiceless, like in the case of Heidi.

I would say that I was just driven by a need to speak for her. You know, she wasn't here to tell her truth. To me, the victim part of it is so important. The connections that you make. I mean, I still maintain relationships with Heidi's family, with Rachel. They're all very important, dear people to me who always will be. And I'm blessed to be in their orbit. Justice is never simple. Fergus' three children will now grow up without a father due to the terrible decisions he made. Heidi's family got the verdict they were hoping for, but it won't bring back Heidi. We can only hope that despite all of this, everyone involved in the case can find a little bit of peace. From the moment police arrived at the home of Nicholas and Heidi Furcus, those responding

officers were walking into the perfect crime scene. Or was it? A dramatic 911 call leads officers to their first victim, A desperate husband shot trying to save his wife from an armed burglar. Pry marks on the doorframe showing some type of forced entry. The husband even providing a description to a police artist.

The perfect sketch. Or was it too perfect? I've posted that sketch on my Instagram at Weinberger Media for you to see. That sketch, according to police, didn't generate a single lead. And investigators say they know why. That person didn't exist. As the evidence began to disassemble this murderous ruse, what did come into focus was

how Heidi, who cared for and loved her family and was loved by so many others, was murdered because her husband was desperate and ashamed about their financial issues, fearing he would be exposed as a complete failure. Until death do us part is a phrase often used as a part of marriage vows. Nicholas Ferkas acted on that phrase in the most selfish, cowardly, and cruelest of ways. Heidi was the opposite of that. She was an artist, an avid churchgoer, and a devoted wife, daughter, and friend. Her goodness will be what is remembered and that will forever live on in the minds and hearts of the many people that loved her.

Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Tracy Levy. Researched by Kate Cooper. Edited by Ali Sirwa, Megan Hayward, and Philjean Grande. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?