Cold Case Files - Love Triangle

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

When a San Diego man is found in a burnt vehicle, investigators first job is to identify the body. After David Stevens is identified, the question of who killed him presents an even greater hurdle. Progressive: Progressive.com  ZocDoc: Check out Zocdoc.com/CCF and download the Zocdoc app for free! 

From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. It's December 23rd, 1998. In the small hours of the morning, an explosion is heard in San Diego. 911 emergency. Yeah, we just heard a huge boom, like a gas explosion or a car blew up or something. San Diego's fire department responds to the 911 call in the single vehicle blazing away along La Jolla Scenic Drive.

While a journalist rolls tape, the flames are doused, smoke begins to clear, and the charred remains of a human body first become visible in the passenger seat of the car. Fire Inspector Mike Merican is called in to investigate. The vehicle was located on the side of the road underneath some heavy brush and foliage, and it was basically totally destroyed by the fire. Appeared to have been a convertible,

and the whole top of the vehicle was burned. The intensity of the fire tells Merican he is looking at a possible case of arson. Trace evidence of an accelerant, most likely gasoline. Heightened suspicions, someone torched the car with a body inside. Merican gets on the phone to his boss and then to San Diego Homicide.

Detective John Taft takes one look at the scene and agrees with Merican's assessment. There was no body damage to the car. It wasn't like he spun out of control and rolled it and crashed and burned. That didn't happen. The car was in good shape, other than the arson fire. So we immediately thought that it was foul play. San Diego's Homicide Team 3 gets to work. Top priority, find out the name of the corpse in the front seat.

Plates on the back of the car are issued out of Kansas, and check out to a David Stevens. Current address, Pacific Beach, San Diego. Detectives head over to Stevens' listed address and find no one at home. While they try to track down Stephen's whereabouts, the corpse is pried out of the front seat of his car and taken to the county morgue. An autopsy on the victim is conducted the following morning.

Evidence tells the medical examiner that John Doe was dead long before his body was consumed by fire. The autopsy, or post-mortem as it's called, determined that the decedent in this case had suffered two rounds to the skull, two bullet wounds, and that was the cause of death. Charring makes it difficult to lift prints from the victim's fingers. Instead, Dr. Sperber focuses on something

far more resistant to fire, the corpse's teeth. The teeth are the most durable structures, and most people have dental records. Not everybody has fingerprint records, but just about everybody has dental records. Sperber begins charting the teeth. Meanwhile, detectives track down David Stevens' family in Nebraska. None of them know where David is. They do, however, know where his dentist lives. So what we did is we then tracked down family members and then told them,

hey, you know, it's one of those delicate things. We don't know for sure, but there's a good chance that, you know, David may have been murdered and we need dental records. Two days later, Sperber compares Stephen's dental charts to x-rays from the burnt corpse. I did receive the x-rays through the San Diego Police Department. I was 100% sure, based on the comparison of these films, that it was the same individual. And that that was Mr. Stevens. Dr. Sperber confirms 38-year-old David Stevens

was shot twice in the head and then set on fire. The questions for detectives, who was David Stevens and who wanted him dead? San Diego Homicide works the interior of David Stevens' apartment looking for any clues as to his killer. First thing that struck me was that for a single guy, he was very neat. Everything was in its place. The second thing that struck me is that the bed was obviously unmade. It certainly appeared that it had been recently slept in, and it just seemed out of place to me.

Scattered throughout the apartment are other signs, fresh signs, that David Stevens' last night on earth was perhaps not spent alone. As I made my way into the bedroom, I found a discarded wrapper for a condom in the wastebasket, as well as a tube of KY jelly. There was also two glasses on that same nightstand, one of which had lipstick on it. In the bathroom, I found strands of black hair. They were long and straight, appeared to be a female's hair. In the bedroom, Joe Cristanziani finds two sets of fingerprints plastered on the mirrored headboard over Stephen's bed. What struck me as unusual about these fingerprints were two things.

A, it was almost ten fingers, as in two hands. It had two sets of hands. One was obviously larger than the other, which would indicate a man and perhaps a woman's fingerprints. We were real confident. It was very obvious that someone recently had sex in that apartment. Detectives collect physical evidence focusing on the smaller set of prints and the long black hairs, both signs of a woman. One who most likely had sex with Stevens shortly before his murder and one who may know what happened to him. All detectives have to do now is find her. In order to do that,

they must find out all they can about their victim. When was the last time he was seen alive compared to when he was found? Who was his friends? Who was his co-workers? What kind of person was he? Detective Teft discovers that Stevens was a Midwest farm boy new to California and the quintessential nice guy. Everyone liked David. He was a good worker. He worked hard. Everyone had nice things to say about him. What about women, detectives ask? A recent girlfriend, or even better, an angry ex? Nothing, Stephen's friends reply. He had a little term for himself. He was called himself a California virgin. He had not come to California and hooked up with anybody since he'd been in California for about a year. Modesty aside, the mirror above Stephen's headboard tells

a slightly different story about his social life. The suspected woman's prints are run through state and national databanks, but fail to garner a match. Whoever this woman might be, she doesn't appear to have a criminal record and remains a mystery. Our theory was that he obviously met someone at an evening with him, and now he's been found dead at four o'clock in the morning. So we suspected that it had to do something with some kind of jealousy or some kind of sexual activity, what we thought may have been the bottom of it. As a busy mom, my day is full of decisions. Decisions like, should I include peas with dinner, knowing I'll be cleaning at least half of them off the floor, or just skip peas altogether?

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Prince and David's house tell police a woman might be behind his demise. That theory takes a hit when friends describe him as a self-professed California virgin. Then detectives come across a videotape. And evidence that Stevens might have made some headway in the romance department. David Stevens made this tape shortly after arriving in California at a dating service called The Perfect Match. Carl Withrow owns the service. I originally met David. He came in to interview for a membership.

And he and I sat down and we started talking about hiring him to work as opposed to just being a member. Withrow tells police he hired Stevens to work at The Perfect Match, and the two of them became fast friends, with Stevens taking an apartment in the same building. Withthrow claims he talked to Stevens just hours before he was found dead. He wanted to know if I needed anything from the grocery store, if he could stop and get me anything. I mean, that's just the kind of guy he was. And I told him I really didn't need anything, but I'd see him when he came home because I'd hear him every night when he would come home. And I ended up falling asleep on the couch watching television. I never heard him.

Detectives press Withrow as to where Stevens might have gone that night. The best Withrow can come up with is a place he and Stevens would frequent. There was a little topless bar right next door called Dancer's. And we would go there two or three times a week. And that was the only place that I could think of that he would have met someone. Detective John Taft visits the club and circulates Stephen's picture.

A lot of them knew the guy. He was a regular customer. They were upset about it. All the employees were always made available to us. Many of the employees came down, provided DNA samples, fingerprints, whatever we wanted. Fingerprints from the dancers are compared to those found in David Stevens' bedroom. None of them match.

With no viable leads on the mystery woman, Detective J.R. Young decides to take a different approach and opens up the victim's personal address book. An entry he had in his day organizer, which he had a smiley face and there was a name associated with it. I learned that that had not been followed up on, so I contacted the person whose phone number that was, and it turned out to be one of the dancers that we had not yet talked to.

Young interviews the dancer. She tells him that she and Stevens were casual friends. He submits her prints for comparison. Again, no match. Four months after David Stevens was pulled from his car, his case is dropped into the cold files, where it remains for two years, until detectives decide to play a long shot. On January 28, 2001, the Baltimore Ravens prepare to play the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXXV. With a huge television audience, San Diego Homicide decides to run a Crimestoppers spot, flashing David Stevens' picture and

requesting help. The next day, an anonymous female calls in. There was an individual at a party, Super Bowl party, with several other people. And when that was shown, this woman goes, uh, that person that was involved in that killing is a friend of mine. And she then telephoned the police and said, you should go talk to this person. She knows something about your killing. The caller identifies a possible suspect, and it happens to be the same stripper who, just two years before, had said she and David Stevens were friends. Her DNA and her fingerprints didn't match,

so physically we couldn't put her at the crime scene. Even without physical evidence, detectives believe the call might be more than coincidence. For the next six months, they work the strip club angle. Month after month, they continue to come up empty. Until one day in November of 2001, when another call reaches the homicide team. I was actually sitting at my desk in the homicide office when the secretary got the call. He says, I have a friend who's an eyewitness to a murder and she needs to talk to somebody.

So she transfers the call to me. I speak briefly with the friend, who in turn puts Nee on the phone. Nee is Nee Norn, a woman who claims she has information about the murder of David Stevens. I didn't press her on the phone and ask her if we could come up and talk with her. And she said yes, of course. And then John and I went up and spoke with her up at our business. Norn tells police David Stevens was her supervisor at the Perfect Match, as well as her lover, and that she knows the name of the man who killed Stevens. Detectives stop the interview and ask Nien Noren to accompany them back to the police

station. As videotape rolls, police sit down with the woman they hope holds the key to a murder. Nien Noren tells police three years earlier, at the age of 18, she began a workplace flirtation with David Stevens. The relationship was complicated, however, by Nhi's boyfriend at the time, a 34-year-old married man named Ron Barker. She was seeing him on the side and she was becoming kind of dissatisfied with him. And David was expressing an interest in that. According to Norn, she and Stevens made plans to go on their first date. It's just like a normal day. Everybody's looking towards Christmas.

Was David working that day? Yeah. He was working that day when we spoke to each other about going to the movie. Then I go, well, I don't want Ron to find out. Why were you so worried about what Ron knew? Well, Ron would probably hurt me. Despite her fears, Nhi decides to go out with David Stevens. At 10 p.m., Norn claims she drove to Stevens' apartment in Pacific Beach, where the two became intimate. Then we just laid on the bed, got comfortable.

Then he's like, do you want a massage? I'll do one thing, then I'll do another. Did you guys have sex that night? Yes. According to Norn, she left Stephen's apartment at 3 a.m. and drove home, only to find Ron Barker waiting in a jealous rage. Nien Norn tells Barker a version of what happened that night. To cover her infidelity, however,

she tells Barker the sex was not consensual. I slept with my boss. He got mad. He just told me to get out of the car. Told me it's over. Then I was like begging him, please don't do this, you know. Then I tried to tell him that that David forced himself upon me.

And did you ever tell him that David raped you? Yes, I told him he raped me. You used the word rape? Yes. And what happened was, is basically she related to us, is that she met with David, had sex with him that night, and then Ron found out about it, and then Ron Barker killed him. Nienorn tells police she was present when Barker shot and killed Stevens, but could do

nothing to stop him. That she was as much a victim of Ron Barker's rage as David Stevens. She's implicating Barker as the person who's the jealous boyfriend who actually kills Stevens and burns up his car. And I said, are you willing to phone him and talk about this while we record it? Because now it's no longer her word, it'll be their words. And so she was willing to do that. While cold case detectives monitor the phone calls, Nienorn gets on the phone with her boyfriend.

And there, Nienorn's tale of murder takes a sudden twist. I didn't kill him, you did. You bring him to me, Nien. I do it for him, you did. You bring him to me, I do it for you, you ask me to do it. Cold Case Files is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Let's face it, sometimes multitasking can be overwhelming, like when your favorite podcast is playing, and the person next to you is talking, and your car fan is blasting, all while you're trying to find the perfect parking spot. But then again, sometimes multitasking is easy, like quoting with Progressive Insurance.

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rates. Quote at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. 1998, two days before Christmas, David Stevens is pulled from his burning car with two bullets in his skull. Three years later, the case is cold when San Diego Homicide gets a call. A co-worker of Stevens named Nhi Norn claims she had sex with Stevens in his apartment on the night he died. Problem is, Norn had an angry boyfriend waiting at home named Ron Barker. To cover her tracks, Norn told Ron Barker Stevens forced himself on her. Then, according to Norn, Barker grabbed a gun, headed over to

Stevens' apartment, and shot him. Detectives ask Norn to get on the phone with Barker and get the story on tape. The calls do not exactly go as Nee Norn planned. Barker acknowledges his role in the shooting, but treats Norn less as a victim and more as an accomplice. I didn't kill him, you did. You bring him to me, Nee. I do it for you, Nee. You asked me to do it. On the phone calls, he readily admits to being the shooter, but he's telling her, you're the bait, you're the one that lured him to me, you're the one that wanted him killed.

So he makes a lot of statements like that where, especially the ones, you wanted him killed just as bad as I did, certainly takes away from the unwitting accomplice thing. Detectives suspect Nienorn might be the brains behind the plan to kill David Stevens, but are not yet ready to charge her. Instead, they prepare to go after the other part of the murder puzzle, Nhi's boyfriend and the suspected shooter, Ron Barker. The 34-year-old makes it easy for them. Thinking he is beating Nhi Norn to the police,

Barker turns himself in. Is your anger to bring her down because you just pissed off at her? Was she involved in this? She is involved. She is the reason why I'm doing this. Barker tells a story similar to that of his former mistress, except in his version, Nienorn is the Black Widow, pulling Ron Barker's strings and orchestrating David Stevens' demise. She got me involved with this, and I still have nothing to do for her. Okay. So you feel betrayed by her? Exactly. So basically she betrayed me, and all of a sudden she decided to just walk out on me.

After a while, the thing I did for her, I just had enough. And she's playing a game with me too much. So I just tired her of playing a game with me, so I decided, you know, I'm going to go down and take you down with me. Detectives have two suspects, each pointing a finger at the other. Ron Barker, however, has a bit more credibility as he readily admits to being the shooter, while Nhi Nguyen claims to be entirely innocent. Cold case detectives push Barker for details on the Stevens shooting. So what was his plan? How did this plan come about?

I mean, she goes to his house and has sex with him, and then what happens after that? He says he died home and her car broke down the freeway. According to Barker, Stevens drives Nienorn to where he thinks her car has broken down. Barker follows behind. When Barker flashes his lights, Nienorn tells Stevens it is her brother, there to help with the car. Stevens suspects nothing and Barker gets into the back seat. He then reaches over and shoots Stevens twice in the head. They set up this pretty elaborate plan on how to get him out of his apartment,

get him into a remote area, and then put your arm around his neck and shoot him in the back of the head. Barker goes on to explain that he set the victim's car on fire hoping to destroy evidence of the shooting. Barker even has the burns to prove it. That's the reason why I got burned. That's the scar. Oh yeah. You got burned in the fire? Yeah. So ever since then, it just kept quiet about it.

No one had evidence to find out why it happened. According to Barker, he and Norn swore each other to secrecy and kept things quiet for three years until the relationship fell apart. Detectives charge Ron Barker with murder in the first degree. The next day, they arrest Nhi Norn and charge her with the exact same thing. Barker and Noren will be tried separately for the same homicide, each providing evidence that seems sure to hang the other. In January of 2003, Ron Barker represents himself in a San Diego courtroom. He questions witnesses

and asserts his taped confession was coerced. The jury, however, doesn't buy it. After deliberating just two hours, they find Barker guilty of first-degree murder. He is sentenced to life in prison. Five days later, Nien Norn's trial begins, and the jury will have a decision to make. Is the 21-year-old an innocent bystander in David Stevens' death, or is she far more complex?

A girl older than her years who put the gun in Ron Barker's hand and then set him up with police to take the fall. Assistant DA Chandra Karl believes the latter to be closer to the truth. In my view, the person who set this all in motion was Nienorn. I think absolutely she was more culpable. Even though she never touched the gun and she never pulled the trigger, she was the person who set the events in motion. Barker doesn't know who Stevens is. Barker doesn't know who Stevens is. Barker doesn't know where he lives.

So clearly she has to be the catalyst to get this going. I mean, she could have very easily went up inside the apartment, said to Stevens, hey, look, I told a lie to my boyfriend. He's out there with a gun right now, and he's going to kill you. Let's get the police out here and let's solve this. On January 27, 2003, Nee Norn is also found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life. For police and prosecutors who worked the case, there was but one reason to seek justice. His name was David Stevens.

David Stevens was an innocent victim. He had no chance. He was a lamb to slaughter. From all accounts he was a pretty decent guy, did everything right, probably would have been an excellent boyfriend for a lot of people, and his only crime was he met a girl and went home with her. And you know I just I don't think anybody should be killed for that. Cold Case Files is hosted by Marissa Pinson, produced by Jeff DeRay,

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