Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Man Murdered Pregnant Girlfriend and Unborn Daughter: Police

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Ariel Nevills, 30, was seven months pregnant with her first child when police found her dead in her home in Spring Hill, Tennessee on January 20. Police said Nevills boyfriend, Vidol Wegner, called 911 asking that someone check on her but then he later admitted to strangling her. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with one of Nevills' friends and a domestic violence expert in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Download the FREE Upside App at https://upside.app.link/crimefix to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas.Host:Angenette Levy https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guests:Paige DavisAmber Malott https://x.com/WHWempowerCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. An Indiana man is in jail after police said he admitted to killing his pregnant girlfriend, but then claimed she did it to herself. I dive into the disturbing details of the case of Ariel Nevels and talk with one of her friends. I just want everyone to know how great she was. She really was a great person. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. This case involves the murder of a pregnant woman. She was actually from Indiana, but she had moved to Tennessee, and sadly, that is where she was

murdered. Her name is Ariel Nevels. She was 30 years old and seven months pregnant with a baby girl that she planned to name Nova. Ariel's boyfriend, 29-year-old Vidal Wagner, faces two counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony murder in the death of his girlfriend and unborn child. The investigation started on January 20th. It was a holiday. The Robertson County Sheriff's Office asked officers with the Spring Hill Police Department to check on Ariel Nevels after receiving a phone call. They arrived around 6 a.m. Spring Hill Police said officers went to the house and located a 30-year-old woman who had sustained fatal wounds. Ariel Nevels was seven months pregnant with this

child. Oddly enough, police say the person who called 911 and asked deputies to check on Ariel was the man who took her life, her boyfriend. Police brought Vidal Wagner in for questioning, and they said that he admitted to strangling Ariel Nevels. According to court documents, Wagner said that he strangled Nevels two different ways to kill her and their unborn child. He used both hands around the neck and his forearm to complete the task. Wagner did wait until Nevels was deceased to leave the residence. In an exclusive Jailhouse interview with News 2, that's WKRN-TV,

Wagner is asked straight up if he killed Ariel Nevels and his response was incriminating to say the least. Wagner was quoted as saying, No, dude, I didn't. She did it to herself. I told her this is the way. I had a beautiful future set up for us. She wanted to act crazy. She chose this. It didn't have to be this way. Wagner added, I'm protecting my legacy. I'm abiding by the Constitution. I'm not doing anything wrong. There is no way for me to get her to be held accountable for what she's doing. This is pretty unbelievable. Wagner, according to this reporter, is blaming Ariel for wanting to keep their baby, and he said she was being crazy. Wagner is currently being held at the Maury County Jail without bail as he awaits his next court date. Now, Ariel was originally from Indiana, as I mentioned, and she had served in the Illinois Army Reserve. She worked as a union millwright. In fact,

she and Wagner were both millwrights repairing heavy machinery. I spoke with Ariel's friend, Paige Davis, about her. I just want everyone to know how great she was. She really was a great person. She was going to be a great mother. She took care of her siblings and she loved animals, especially her snakes. She, yeah. She had snakes. She did.

She had five pet snakes. Paige Davis said that Ariel Nevels had moved from Indiana to Tennessee in 2023 for a better job and to be closer to her siblings. That's why she moved down there, for a better job, good money. She knew nobody down there, but she wanted to move down there to take care of her siblings and stuff like that. Davis also says Ariel was so excited about becoming a mom. She was very excited, very excited. She did a early gender test as soon as she found out she wanted to know what she was having. She found out it was a girl. So we started, I started saving some girl stuff for my daughter for her. And she was very excited to be a mom. I think that's what she wanted most.

I just want her name out there. I want the legacy of Ariel Nova to go on. I want everyone to know how great she was and how great Nova would have been and how much of a good mom Ariel was gonna be. I wanna take a break from this just incredibly devastating story to tell you about one of our sponsors.

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You can also use Upside at places like Shell, Exxon, Taco Bell, Chipotle, and that's just to name a few. To find out how much you could earn, click the link in the description to download Upside or scan the QR code that's on your screen and use our promo code CRIMEFIX to get an extra 25 cents back on every gallon on your first tank of gas. That's promo code CRIMEFIX for extra cash back. I want to bring in Amber Malott. She is the vice president of programming at Women Helping Women in Cincinnati, Ohio. So Amber, thanks so much for coming on. First of all, just your reaction to reading this story.

I see so many of these awful, disturbing headlines about women who are pregnant and then their partners are accused of murdering them. It's tragic and it's far too common, unfortunately. So I thank you for finding a platform to be able to speak out about the injustice here and, you know, elevate the needs of survivors and their services and the need for services. Why are women, you know, it's a leading cause of death among pregnant women is homicide or, you know, leading manner of death. So why are women at increased risk for homicide while they're pregnant and at the hands of the father of the children or their significant other. Yeah, it's horrible to try to wrap your mind around the dynamics involved in domestic violence.

I think the fundamental aspect of the power and control that's involved in these relationships is really what drives the lethality to be increased at times of pregnancy. Domestic violence perpetrators operate under the ability to control every aspect of their partner's life and increase access to health care or need for attention and increase support from family are all things that perpetrators don't want. So as a person becomes pregnant and wants to acquire these things, then that creates more of a risk for perpetrators to be found out that their behavior is unhealthy or abusive or for appropriate parties to be able to recognize those red flags and intervene appropriately. This case is particularly disturbing.

Vidal Wagner, according to the information that we have obtained from the affidavit, you know, that accompanied the complaint charging him with murder, said that he admitted to strangling Ariel, that he did it two different ways, that he used, I think, his hands. And then another way, I mean, he provided some detail here. And then now he's in an interview with a TV station. He's kind of denying it. So, you know, there are a couple of things I want to talk about here. First of all, the strangulation part of this. I know that I have covered a lot of cases where strangulation, you know, that's a way that many people will kill a significant other.

Absolutely. Yes. Unfortunately, we're trying to work very closely to raise awareness around the lethality involved in that situation and also increase penalties, you know, within the legal and criminal justice system for folks who are battering their intimate partners and applying, you know, tactics such as strangulation, because that is the highest risk and lethality will lead to the most danger ultimately and can have, if the survivor is able to continue living past that violent incident, could have detrimental impacts on their ability to function throughout the rest of their life. And strangulation, a lot of times, I remember I covered a case when I worked in local news in Cincinnati. There was this woman, poor woman who was murdered and, you know, her family was trying to pass a bill regarding strangulation in the Ohio state house, because a lot of times when women die by strangulation at the hands of a partner, it's not the first time that this has happened. A lot of times it's, you know, happened before where they've been strangled by a partner. It's like a precursor almost like this is something that is not uncommon.

I think, again, it's one of those things where as it can be introduced, you know, into a relationship, there can be manipulation on the part of the abuser in that scenario to try to integrate it or reduce some hesitation around it and apply that as almost grooming them in preparation for them to not be able to resist or fight once they decide that they want that to end, you know, in a deadly situation. So, yes, it is definitely an indicator of high lethality and doing lethality assessments as, you know, advocates are coming into contact with survivors and pointing out the concern

if that is something that has occurred to them, is something that has to be done so that survivors themselves can understand, you know, the escalation that can occur from that and where it could end with fatal consequences. You know, this is this man, Wagner, Wiedel Wagner, gave a pretty revealing television interview to a TV station down there in Tennessee. And he apparently was asked straightforward, very directly by this reporter, did you kill her? And he said something to the effect of, what did I do? And took a long pause and said, no, dude, I didn't. She did it to herself. I told her this is the way. I had a beautiful future set up for us.

She wanted to act crazy. She chose this. It didn't have to be this way. And then the reporter follows up and asks, so you were mad that she got pregnant to which he replied, listen, when I started that relationship, I told her if we get pregnant, are we going to do something about it? And she said, yeah, she found out 10 weeks in. She said, I want to keep it.

I'm like, didn't we have that conversation? I'm not doing this. She said, yeah, that is just stunning to me. I was flabbergasted when I read that. I mean, he didn't have to stay. Yeah, he did not know. And I think it's a perfect illustration for the way abusers gaslight and deflect any responsibility off of themselves and project it onto, you know, their victims in these situations. It can happen from, you know, just blaming them for not having, you know, the children dressed, the dinner fixed, you know, blaming them for the consequence of the act of violence that they received from the hands of that abuser. So it really illustrates very, very clearly that even in death, he's still gaslighting and projecting blame onto the victim in this situation instead of, you know, owning the tragic consequences of his actions. Wagner was quoted as saying by the TV reporter that, you know, basically he's protecting his legacy.

I'm abiding by the Constitution. I'm not doing anything wrong. There is no way for me to get her to be held accountable for what she's doing. We had an agreement. Why did she go back on that? I mean, that's just shocking to me. I mean, I can't imagine, you know, if all of this is 100% true, and obviously this guy is innocent until proven guilty. He has rights as anybody else does. I find it hard to believe that this happened just out of the blue in a vacuum. There had to be something leading up to this. If I were a gambling woman, I would say that

this is not the first time that there has been violence present in this relationship. And I just would like to point out that the fact that he has equal amount of responsibility and access to ways to prevent pregnancy if he was that determined to not procreate and protect his legacy in this scenario. Oftentimes, reproductive coercion is a part of intimate partner violence that, you know, many survivors don't realize the shapes and forms that it comes in. Having that conversation at that moment in time, if they did in fact have that conversation, is one thing. I think in certain things that I've seen in this case, he's also indicated that somehow she was at fault or somehow harming herself in this situation. And that, you know, she,

it seemed to me that she was very vital and had folks that she was responsible for, other children. When she decided that, you know, 10 weeks into this pregnancy that she wanted to continue to keep this pregnancy, she had a reason to live. She had a reason to stay alive till seven months of pregnancy. She wanted to, you know, obviously, I'm sure, see a new newborn child brought into this world that she could love and care for. And I think that him probably knowing that seems to be something that would really, really cause him concern that what he had been probably doing to her up until that point was likely to be found out and end with consequences that he would need to endure. Any of this sounds familiar or women just generally speaking, maybe they aren't carrying a child, but any of this sounds eerily familiar. What are your words of advice? My words of advice are familiarize yourself with resources locally or even nationally, wherever you are, that will support you and help you if you have any inclination or intuition that your relationship does not feel

safe, that you don't feel valued, and that you're not feeling protected, you find those resources, seek the confidential supports that they can provide, and feel hopefully empowered by your conversations with them to make choices that will put you and maybe any of your family members in a safer place or show you your value and your worth, that you don't deserve this type of abuse. You don't deserve this behavior. It's not normal. And you can find the help that's out there and not be blamed for it because no one deserves this.

It's just terrible. Amber Malott, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Thank you. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Le, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Thank you. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being here. I'll see you back here next time.