Crime Weekly - S3 Ep364: Chad Entzel | The House Fire That Was Really a Murder Plot (Part 1)

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

On the evening of December 30, 2019, 42-year-old Chad Entzel headed out to his weekly bowling league in Bismarck, North Dakota. Friends said he was in good spirits, laughing and joking like always, before heading home for what should have been an ordinary night. But over the next several days, Chad stopped answering calls, didn’t show up for work, and seemed to vanish inside his own home - until a 911 call on January 2 reported a fire at the property. When firefighters arrived, they found more than just smoke and flames. Inside the primary bedroom was Chad’s body, a propane heater, and a shotgun. At first glance, it looked like a suicide and accidental fire. But as investigators began examining the scene, a very different story emerged involving missing surveillance footage, a sudden insurance policy, and a secret relationship Chad knew nothing about. Try our coffee! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. https://www.Smalls.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for 60% off your first order and FREE shipping! 2. https://www.TryFum.com - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for a FREE gift with your Journey Pack! 3. https://www.SKIMS.com - Find the perfect gift for everyone on your list! After you place your order, let them know we sent you! 4. https://www.FactorMeals.com/CrimeWeekly50Off - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY50OFF for 50% off your first box and FREE breakfast for one year! 5. https://www.Manscaped.com - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for 15% off your entire order!

This podcast is supported by the Real Real. Meet Christine. She loves shopping. And this? This is the sound of fashion overload. Too many fabulous things, not enough space. So Christine started selling with the Real Real. I've always loved collecting designer pieces.

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When firefighters arrived, they found more than just smoke and flames. Inside the primary bedroom was Chad's body, a propane heater, and a shotgun. At first glance, it looked like a suicide and accidental fire, but as investigators began examining the scene, a very different story emerged, involving missing surveillance foot. a sudden insurance policy and a secret relationship that Chad had known nothing about. So today we're jumping into a new case. Hello everybody, welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek LaVassar. So today we're jumping into a new case. We're going to get this case done in two parts so that we can get everything wrapped up before the Christmas holidays and we're not leaving you on red while we take a week off for Christmas and New Year's.

So we will sort of, you know, have a conclusion before we all say happy holidays and take some time off. But before we dive in to this case, which is a bizarre one, and it is worth talking about, which is why we're doing it, Derek has something to talk to about because we've had everyone asking us, we've got great criminal coffee merch. I'm going to shout ourselves out here. I love our criminal coffee merch. It's creative.

It's awesome. We've got that great coffee bean fingerprint that I just love and it looks so good on everything. But we haven't spent a lot of focus on Crime Weekly merch lately. And so we're now kind of funneling some energy into that. Yes. And we have brought back by a huge and highly requested demand, our peppermint bark coffee, which is amazing. That's probably our most requested coffee flavor. We do it seasonally.

That's the one where everyone's like is it coming back. I love it because when I make a pot in my house, the whole place smells like, you know, peppermint mocha. And who doesn't love the smell of peppermint mocha. But, yeah, so we've got that coming back. As Derek said in Crime Weekly News, it's roasted and ready. Roasted and ready to go out. It's roasted and ready for delivery. Absolutely.

From our home to yours, yes. So that's going to happen. But we also have two new receptacles for this coffee that you will be drinking. We have a travel mug, which Derek's going to show you right now. Yep, we have the travel mug right here. This is something that you guys record. We had a different travel mug. Some of you loved it.

Some of you didn't. This is the more kind of traditional travel mug. It's got a couple upgrades. Little foam, rubbery bottom, really secure lid, glass. So you can see how much you got left. Nice metal, thermal, grippy cup. I don't know what to describe it. This isn't my thing.

Nice little metal grippy thermal moment. But it's super nice. I've been drinking out of it. I took it for a test run. It's amazing. It works good. Then we have my favorite, which is the criminal coffee mug in red. It kind of reminds me of a mug you'd have like very aesthetic. You know,

you're camping. It's snowing. You've got a fire going. You've got some warm beverage steaming in your hands. And it's in this beautiful mug red for the season. And the pattern kind of looks like snow is falling. And I just love it. I think it's great. It's really cool. Ashley loved it as well. I think it's going to be a popular one. We got a limited supply of these because believe it or not, it takes a while for the mugs to get made, especially when they're personalized like this. And there's a little bit more of a design element to them. So we have these in stock right now. This is more of like a Christmasy kind of maroon red. Stephanie said she thinks we should do green as well. Oh, like a dark like evergreen with the red and the green would be beautiful. But yeah.

Yeah, so we have these two really nice. You can over to criminal coffee co.com to pick one of these up or the peppermint bark. This is all going to be limited quantity. So if you want to check it out, you can. And like Stephanie had said as well about Crime Weekly's merch, to be honest, we've kind for being transparent we've been lacking on a little bit we have some new designs we've been working on them and we've had some really cool designs for crime con but we need to do more designs on the website so if you go over to crime weekly podcast dot com right now we have some hooded sweatshirts we have t-shirts we have stickers packs we have hats a lot of the hats you see me wearing all the time so there's stuff on there right now if you want to go copy some crime weekly merch it's

there there's going to be some new merch coming out down the road but um we don't promote crime Weekly as much as we do criminal coffee. I don't know why just organically. It just seems like the criminal coffee stuff comes like comes up more often. But crime weekly podcast.com, plenty of merch over there as well. And more to come. That's my advertisement. I'm done. All right. So let's dive in to today's case. You heard a little bit about it during the teaser. But as always to understand what happened to the end, we have to go back to the beginning. Chad Alan Ensel was born on March 31st, 1977 to his parents, Deb and Ernie, and he grew up in the small town of Holiday, North Dakota, with his sister, Lori. And he was known for being extremely likable and sociable, and he was happiest when he was outside and around people.

So in 1995, Chad graduated from Holiday High School, and he went to work at a furniture manufacturing company while studying drafting at the North Dakota State College of Science. In 1996, he married a daycare employee named Susan, and the two of them built a life together, eventually moving around two hours away to North Dakota's capital, Bismarck. Chad took a job at I-State Center truck parts, selling truck parts, and like he always seemed to do, he made friends easily there. He fit in. People liked him. He was very likable, easygoing, just a guy that, you know, nobody seemed to have any issues with.

So Chad and Susan did not have children together, and that meant that Chad had a lot of free time for the thing he loved the most, his hobbies. He played golf, he shot darts, race stock cars, and bowled in a league. He was especially good at bowling and competed in local, state, and national tournaments, scoring a perfect 300 more than once. His favorite place to bowl was midway lanes, and you could find him there every Monday night. His bowling friend said he was a great sport. He was always one of the first people to congratulate his opponents during tournaments and to hype people up after a poor game. So when Chad wasn't bowling or racing stock cars or doing any of his other hobbies,

he was coaching Little League, which he also absolutely loved doing. He was always doing something. He was constantly busy. If he wasn't working, he was coaching or, you know, taking part in his hobbies. And eventually that became an issue in his marriage. By the early 2010s, Chad and Susan had divorced. She later testified that they split because he spent too much time and money on his hobbies. and not enough with his family, a.k.a. her, right? It seemed like his hobbies always took precedence.

In early 2016, Chad met a woman named Nikki Hines, who had just moved to the area. She was only a few years younger than Chad and had two sons. She also had a criminal history. And when she moved to North Dakota in 2016, she was on probation. So Nikki's record included a fraudulent insurance act in South Dakota in 2012. Two years later, she was arrested in Minnesota as a fugitive from South Dakota justice. She also had a non-sufficient funds check conviction in South Dakota from 2014 and a 2015 conviction in Minnesota for financial transaction fraud. Now you might ask me, did Chad know about this stuff? Yes, it seems he did because he was willing to look past Nikki's criminal history because

I guess they vibed, you know. He's one of those, I can save her. Yeah, like, oh, she was young. You never see that Twitter, the Twitter, like, I can save her. They show like this person, like a woman who's committed like four burglaries, a couple home invasions, a couple of arsons, and all the comments are from like thirsty dudes that are like, I can save her. I can save her.

I don't know if they're thirsty or being funny because it's like, yeah. Some of them are serious, but yeah, I think a lot of them are being funny. It's such a toxic dynamic. And with men, with women, you know, you meet somebody. He's a bad boy. You know, he's had a bad history. He's like, I've cheated on every single girlfriend I've ever been with. And they're like, but not me.

I'm different. He won't do that with me. And then he always does. So Chad looked at Nikki, you know, saw that their dynamic was good. They had, you know, good chemistry, all the things that are important in the short term, I guess, but not so much in the long term. They started dating. So one of Chad's bowling friends, Kent, he said he was happy they were together because Nikki seemed to make Chad happy. They always do in the beginning.

So on May 21st, 2016, Chad and Nikki got married. Now, why did this happen? Once again, he met her in early 2016. They were married by May 21st, 2016. So I understand if you're going to date someone and you're like, maybe they have like a checkered past and you kind of want to like wait and see, have they grown out of this? Will my love heal them? But you got married the same year you met her. you didn't even give it a chance to see if this woman could, you know, keep things together

and be, like, loyal and responsible for even a year, like half a year they were married. And to me, that's always a red flag. Who pushed for the marriage to be happening that fast? If you asked me, probably Nikki. So they get married. I could see both, though. I could see both he's been divorced before, you know. Yeah, wasn't that the one of the reasons you'd not wanted?

do that again? I think it can go either way. I think it can be, on one hand, it's like, I'll never get married again. On the other, they're like, oh, I thought this was my forever person. It didn't work out. I'm getting older. I need to find that person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with sooner than later. And because they've already had one fail, they want to get back on the saddle with someone else as soon as possible and lock them down so that they're not alone. That could be a bigger fear for them. I'm just, I don't know what, what Chad was thinking, but personally I'd be on the other side of the spectrum but you know to each their own that's what I'm saying you already had one fail so you're like let me rush into another one to prove that I can do

this no no even if you want to get married again at least you would say like hey what's the rush let me like give this an extended period of time two three four five years and if this is the same person I met after five years maybe we'll talk about marriage then you know after you've shown me for in the long term that that you can be a stable healthy secure partner for me but what do I know. So, all right. So Chad and Nikki, they're married. They settled in Bismarck with Nikki's sons, who Chad absolutely adored. He kept working at I-State Center truck parts while Nikki worked as an unemployment specialist, and she also ran a catering business called Nikki's Savory Suites. Then in mid-November 2019, Chad and Nikki moved into a home at 4,943rd Avenue

Northeast, which they were renting just outside the Bismarck City limits. Now, this house seemed perfect. It had three bedrooms, and it was 1,500 square feet, which was great for the boys. On top of that, there were 35 acres, that's a lot of land, multiple garages, and a shop building. That was a dream for Chad and all his hobbies. After the move, Chad continued going to Bowling League every Monday and December 30th, 2019 was no different. That evening, he left the house at 5.45 p.m. and drove to Midway Lanes. A friend named Jason said that Chad was in good spirits, like all. always. And when Chad left around 1020, which would be PM, Jason had no idea he would never

see him again. On the morning of December 31st, Nikki called Chad's work to report that he wasn't feeling well and he wouldn't be in that day. So he's not coming in. This is the day after his bowling league. The following day was a holiday, New Year's Day, so Chad didn't have to work. Then on January 2nd, 2020, Chad didn't show up for work and this time no one called him in sick. So This was completely out of character for Chad, who was very reliable. So his coworkers tried calling both Chad and Nikki multiple times. They got no answer from either of them. All right.

So Chad's coworkers were obviously concerned, and they were so concerned that at around 2 p.m., they went to his house over their lunch break. When they did this, they noticed that Chad's truck was in the driveway, but they got no answer at the door. So they contacted police to request a welfare check. An officer did stop by. He looked around the property and didn't observe anything that seemed concerning, so he left the scene. So did Chad's coworkers, but then just over three hours later at approximately 5.20 p.m., Nikki called 911 from the house to report a fire, and we're going to

play that call for you now. 9-1-1-n-19-A address of your emergency. 4,900 north-east. Repeat that address for verification. 4,900-43rd Avenue, northeast. Okay. And is that a house? apartment. It's a house. Can I get your name, please? Nicky Ansel.

I'm sorry, what was that? Nikki Ansel. How do you spare washing, please, Nicky? Yes, Asian General. Okay. Uh, I'm sorry for here, please. And how do you ask? A1-319.

Okay, tell me exactly what happened. I came out here to check my husband My husband sent a text message that he didn't come in today, and I rented three days. And so I'm coming here to check, and I walked in, and I opened the smoke at the door, and I walked in, and the house, it's smoky. I can't get in the door. It's smoky in the house. Okay, so you see smoke?

I can see inside the, and like I watch this is black, and it's just smoking in there, and I can't get in the door. Okay, do you see any flames at all? I don't. Okay. And you were coming here to check on who again? I'm sorry? Check on my husband. I've been out for a few days.

Okay. And he never called and said he didn't come in at all. And I've been trying, I tried calling him, no answer. They tried calling him, no answer. So I said, I was just swamped. They couldn't get away at work today. And I'm coming out now, because I'm off work, and he can't get in the door. And when I close, everything was flat.

Okay. Mickey? Mickey? Mickey. Nicky, Nikki, I need you to calm down for me, okay? Nikki, what's your husband's name? Nikki, what's your husband's name? Yeah.

Okay. All right, one moment. That looks like we had a call earlier at this location. Okay. Okay, I need you to wait outside, Nikki. Are you looking to arrive in a vehicle? I'm in my car. on a vehicle are you in nicky i'm trying to have a little fun are you there alone right now

yes okay are you uh are you parking a safe spot uh you don't remember i almost think i was a drive me i don't know i'm going to be dispatching out help i'm going to put you on hold but don't hang up okay What's that, Nicky? I'm sorry, I didn't understand you. What's going on? I just want to go and stop. Okay, but for everyone's safety, until you meet with deputies,

I want you to wait in your vehicle for your own safety, okay? Can you go to your vehicle? Yeah, I'm going to make far. Okay, and can you just back away from the house for a little while until you meet with the deputy? Okay. All right, I'm going to put you on hold up. I'll be right back with you, okay? Okay. All right. I'll be right back with you.

All right, Nikki, are you there? Okay, we do have help on the way, okay? Just let me know when they're right there with you. Are you in your blue granddad? I have to spend it? I'm in my car. You're in your car? Okay. Yeah. All right. And you're in the driveway right now?

Yeah. Okay. Is there anyone there with you? Oh, no. It just came for work. I just come from work. Okay. All right, we do have lots of help coming on the way. Just let me know if you make changes.

Yeah. No, no. He did the right thing by calling here. So when was the last time you had contact with Chad? Monday? Monday? Okay. Yeah.

Was it, did you have contact with them at this address? Oh, we got on the phone. On the phone? Okay. Okay. Okay. All right, we do have help on the way, just don't know if anything changes. I'm going to go out.

I'm sorry. We do have help on the way. They're going to help you out, okay? You don't, okay? Yeah. Do you see any smoke coming from any windows or anything like that, any cracks or, you know, anything named the house at all? I don't see anything. Okay, okay, but when you were, you were a, what's that?

It smells bad. It smells like smoke, okay. And open the door, I could open the door, but I can open that, going to the house. Okay, all right, yeah, just for your safety, just wait until we get people there. They're on their way now they'll be there, and they can, okay. Yeah. They're going to be ready. They're on their way.

They're coming as safely as they can, okay? They're just a hurry. They're just a few blocks away. I don't know. I'm wondering. I don't know. We're wondering. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh, I think they're not coming. I don't know. I can see something coming. Okay. Okay. Yep, they're on their way.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, my face, as they can. They're almost there. Oh, thank you very, come past. What, that's that? They're going to be there as fast as they can. They're almost there. They're here. The barracks are here.

Okay, do the fire trucks are here now? Okay, do the fire trucks see you right now? Yeah. Okay. If you can safely just go to a fireman there, go and talk to them, okay? All right. All right, thank you. All right.

Bye. Hi. All right, so I want to talk about that call for a few minutes. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Okay, listen, I'm glad that we're talking about this right now because I have a very funny story to share that still cracks me up. So my aunt has this cat named Mr. Whiskers. He is, you know, like cats can be.

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He definitely has standards. I mean, if your name's Mr. Whiskers, you got to have standards. You are a gentleman, and you will accept nothing less. You wear a tuxedo on some occasions? He does. He has a top hat. Oh, my God. Not surprised.

So because we've already had experiences with Smalls and my own picky cat that my mother now has, Rascal, so I sent her a Smalls sampler. And suddenly, this cat is eating like he's at a five-star restaurant. And she called me and said, I don't know what's in this stuff, but he's a new man. Yeah, my sister has two cats. They're basically her children. They love it as well. So it's unapproved.

It's sister approved. And most importantly, it's cat approved. That's a strong combo. Seriously. And honestly, talking about cat food when neither else even has a cat, it should feel weird, but it really doesn't because so many people that we know have cats. Yeah. And they love it.

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Plus, they've partnered with the humane world for animals donating over a million dollars worth of food to help cats in need. And at checkout, you can even donate yourself to flee and tick medications or vaccines, which is amazing. So what are you waiting for? Give your cat the food they deserve for a limited time because you are a crime weekly listener. You're going to get 60% off your first order, which is huge. plus free shipping when you had to smalls.com slash crime weekly one last time that's 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you had to smalls dot com slash crime weekly all right we're back let's talk about the call because when I was listening to it and what

we're hearing is them playing the call in court she's on trial just spoiler alert she shows no emotion while she's listening to this you know she's just making some notes but when I first heard the call, I thought that she went from calling and saying the house is on fire. And then I thought she went in the house and she found him in there. And that's why she started wailing uncontrollably in that extremely discordant, high-pitched manner. But no, she didn't. She just went from kind of being like calm to all of a sudden, like, wailing and being very

upset and saying, like, I want to go in the house. I want to go in the house. And I found that very weird. Like, I want to go inside. I find it strange that she was so calm at the beginning because if I pulled up to my house and there was like smoke coming out of it, I wouldn't call and be like, hi, my name is Nikki. I've been away for a few days. My husband is here.

The house seems to be on fire. You know, can you send someone? It just seems a little like matter of fact about it where if my house is on fire and I pull up, I'm going to call immediately say like my house is on fire, get someone here. I don't know. I'm going to freak out a little bit. But also she does mention, hey, she's been out of the house. She says she's been out of the house.

She's been gone for a few days. She's been out for a few days. And clear to stipulate that. Yep. And then she says she last talked to her husband, Chad, on Monday. And he said, how was he when you saw him or something like that? And she said, oh, we talked on the phone. So now we have her saying, I've been gone for a few days.

And the last time I talked to him was Monday, right? So if we kind of look at the dates and everything, he went bowling every Monday. So December 30th, 2019 was a Monday. She says the last time she talked to him was Monday. But then she calls in on the morning of December 31st, which was a Tuesday, she calls him to work for him and says he's not feeling well. So either she's trying to play it off as they had talked on Monday and he told her he wasn't feeling well. and then she called work for him to tell them that, even though she hasn't been in the house for a few days.

So how would you know that if he hadn't told you that? And how would you know that if you hadn't talked to him on Tuesday? So right away, the storyline and the timeline's kind of not lining up for me. Yeah, and I'm going to say something that might be a little controversial and, you know, everything is controversial. Do it. I love it. I love it when you say controversial things and you're not trying to be careful.

Is it weird that unless you're like deathly ill, that you have your significant other calling your work to put you out of work? I think that's always unless you're like I mean unless you're literally in the hospital unless you're significantly ill and you can't speak for yourself or you're lying to get out of work and you're like call for me because they're going to hear it in my voice but Chad wasn't like that so yeah I think it's a red flag yeah just someone else calling in for you is is a little bit of a red flag and clearly I'm not the only one that thinks that because before the break you had mentioned that yeah she called out for him on the 31st but then he didn't show up for work on the second and and they thought it was weird They were all right. And I'm sure that it wasn't just him not showing up on the second that they thought was weird. I'm sure there were conversations where they were like, Chad's wife, Nikki, called and said he wasn't coming to work. That's a little odd. And then on top of that, he doesn't show up on the second.

And to me, that's why they went over to the house. That's why they went over on their lunch break to see, like, what was going on because they were already, spidey senses were already going off. Like something's not adding up here. The guy doesn't even call in to himself to, to. call out of work and now he's just not showing up at all on the second something's off and she's calling for him on the first right yes or the 31st I'm trying to say yeah no the 31st was a holiday so the 31st she called in for him and then the first was a holiday so he didn't have to go to work and then the next day he doesn't show up and no one calls for him okay pause the audio pause the video

let me know come from me if you'd like are you calling in for your husband or your wife if they're just at home with the belly ache or the flu like if they're in the hospital if they're going through a surgery or something they're recovering from something in a coma makes sense yeah that an accident happens absolutely but then you think that would be part of the call like hey they were in an accident right now he can't call right but even that if it's a plan surgery they would call ahead of time and say hey i'm going to be out of work next week for surgery you know but what do you think am i completely off base on this one do you guys call in for your significant others when they don't feel good? Let me know. Let me know if I'm wrong. I agree with you.

And I'll also say that she says she's been out for a few days. She doesn't say, I haven't been staying here. This is where I've been. I've been out for a few days. Yeah. Distancing herself. Which almost sounds like I went to run an errand like I was out, but I was out for a few days. Yeah. But then she's saying the last time she talked to him was Monday. And that's kind of like more than a few days, I think, because Monday would have been the 30th. and this is the second, and you spoke to him on Monday, you've been out, and I would assume since the 30th, since that's when you spoke to him on the phone, you're saying you haven't been at the home since that time. Now, can I say one quick more thing about the audio, just so because we can bring it back to that, without everything we've just discussed and all the red flags around it, and I've said this before to you, the audio recording, I never put too much weight on it one way or the other because I'm not a voice analysis expert. everyone handles trauma differently

if I'm only looking at the audio recording nothing around it like just on the dispatcher receiving this call I don't have any problems with it I think everyone reacts to different things their own way and her voice and the crying her seeing her house burning up could be organic to her

so just that without any context I'm okay with it now once we get more into the story it's gonna paint a better picture but just the recording just dissecting that, I'm not looking at it or listening to it saying, oh, my God, I can't believe she said that or I can't believe she started crying like that over a fire. But she wasn't crying for like a while and then all of a sudden she was. I agree.

And then it changed like she had seen something that she hadn't seen. I completely agree. That's why I thought she saw his body, but no. But it could have been a delayed reaction. I guess, yeah. Everybody, some of the craziest behaviors in trauma I've seen were traumatic situations where one second they're fine. the next second they're completely losing their mind.

I've conversely seen it the other way where they're losing their mind and then all of a sudden they go into a state of shock and I can't even get them to answer a question like what's your name? They're just like looking right through me. She was answering questions and what do you make about being so like distraught about seeing your house like this but then continuing to tell the dispatcher, I just want to go inside. I want to go inside. I want to go inside. Why do you want to go inside?

She's not saying my husband might be in there. I want to go inside. She just keeps saying, I just want to go inside. Right. That is the one thing. But now that goes back to what I just said. Like I would like to think, well, I know. I know I've done it where I showed up to a burning building and I got in trouble for this, but I ran inside. There were seven people inside there. I ran inside because I knew by the time.

You're a first responder, though. But technically, I don't want to go make this about me, but I got in trouble because now I become a problem for the fire department as well. So we went in there. It wasn't just me. Burning building 3 a.m. No smoke alarms. The house was in flames. And so I ran inside.

And fortunately, there were seven people in there sleeping, but we got all of them out safely, including a seven-year-old boy. And afterward, I got in a lot of trouble because I had no respirators, no, it was completely dark. I was on the floor crawling around. And I could have been incapacitated just as easily. And now fire department has to go in there and get me as well. They have one more person to save.

But that's a different story for a different day. My point being, if it were my house on fire and I knew a loved one could be inside, I'm going in. But everyone's different. Everyone's different. So, you know, it is what it is. I'm not putting too much weight on the call itself. Now you add everything else into it as we're going to get into the story. Well, now it becomes, it's a little different. Right. And good. We're going to add some textures. Yes. When the firefighters entered the Ansel home, they immediately encountered a haze and hot temperatures somewhere between 80 and 90 degrees. As they walked through the house, they found quite a bit of soot, but no active fire. So they continued searching and found a closed door to the primary

bedroom at the end of the hallway. Inside that bedroom, it was obvious that a fire had occurred there. This was the point where the fire had started. There was far more soot and damage than in the rest of the house. Now, at the foot of the bed, firefighters found a sunflower heater attached to a propane tank with the valve in the open position. At first glance, it looked like this heater could have been the source of the fire, so firefighters immediately closed it. On the bed itself, they noticed a double-barrel shotgun and a bottle of whiskey. Then on the floor next to the bed, they found a naked, soot-covered body. It was Chad. So firefighters kept checking the rest of the house. The garage appeared fine, but in the basement, they found a smoldering fire coming from the

top of the furnace. The furnace's cover looked like it had been removed and set aside, and investigators found debris stacked on top of the metal casing, and that fire was extinguished quickly by the firefighters. So while firefighters finished clearing the house, a patrol deputy interviewed Nikki. He later testified that her demeanor at first was surprisingly calm, but changed quickly after she learned her husband had died. So on the 911 call, she's surprisingly calm, and then suddenly her demeanor changes into like panicked wailing. But then when the firefighters get there, she's surprisingly calm again. But then her demeanor escalates again when she finds out that her husband, Chad, was dead. Now, this patrol deputy

said, quote, I would describe her behavior as erratic. It was one minute, bright, cheery, happy, not fitting the situation. And then it would be hysterical, forced, or pressure breathing, and kind of high-pitched crying and kind of squealing, end quote. And we definitely heard a lot of that on the 911 call. So it's kind of like, oh, I wonder what he means by high-pitched crying and squealing. And it's like, no, we don't wonder. We heard it. We know exactly what she was doing. It was obnoxious. So Nikki told the deputy that the furnace had been giving them trouble for a while. She said she had reported the problem to the homeowners on Christmas Day and December 27th. And she claimed that several people had come to look at it, but hadn't been able to get it working.

According to her, the issue still wasn't fixed by December 30th. So she and Chad argued about it. And she started staying at a hospital because she had a medical condition and could not stay in a cold home. So now we have some answers about why she's been out of the house for a few days. Now, when asked where her sons were, because remember, Nikki has two sons, she said they were staying out of state with their grandparents. So this is weird to me because why? Like, convenient. Maybe initially you're thinking lucky, right? You're thinking lucky. But I also, how long have they been with their grandparents? It was just Christmas last week. Like, were they not with you on Christmas?

Why are they staying with the grandparents? Why couldn't they stay with you in the hotel? Are they just staying with the grandparents because the house is cold? Because that doesn't make sense. Yeah, no, you're not wrong. It's definitely something that you have to look into because it does seem awful convenient. I also don't want to skate over the fact that for anybody who is on audio right now, Stephanie's describing the crime scene.

And if you're not watching on YouTube, there's multiple photos that we're showing during this, that you definitely want to see adds much more context, much more texture as Stephanie. I like how you worded that to the story. You can see a diagram here of the basement where everything kind of is laid out. You can also see a photo of the whiskey bottle and what appears to me to be the outline of the shotgun, not the shotgun itself, where there's a lot of ash and soot on the area and the shotgun has been removed. I'm assuming by law enforcement or the fire department prior to this photo being taken, but you can clearly see the outline of the shotgun and the shotgun.

a whiskey bottle. I can't make out what brand that whiskey bottle is. I'm not a, I am someone of a whiskey drinker, too, so I'm a little mad at myself that I can't. But then also, you have the furnace here where I would like to say this is completely abnormal. I lived in a community and worked in a community where this kind of honestly was what I saw a lot of, where people are trying to fix things on their own and then they don't get to it or they don't finish closing everything up and you find a panel on the ground. The one of the things that are most concerning to me, and I'd never heard of a sunflower heater before. Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but this looks awful dangerous where you basically have a

propane tank sitting in the middle of your bedroom with a fan attached to it and clearly it's propane powered, but that does not seem safe to me. Yeah, it's a, it's a... You see the rhino propane tank like you'd have for your grill. Well, it's propane powered, so it's a portable heater that's propane powered, but... I would see that being for outside the... It is. It's usually used for, like, you would guess, camping, ice fishing. Yeah, that would make more sense to me.

Yeah. Why is it in the bedroom? Like, I get it. The heater's not working or the furnace isn't working. So maybe you want a heater in the master bedroom to make it a little bit more toasty. This is 2019, though. You can get a, just put a regular heater up in there, close the door. You can go to Target and get one for like $25.

Mm-hmm. About the same price of a propane tank, for real. So it's usually for outside use, I will say that, yeah. I don't think you should have propane tanks in your house, just me. But I wanted to point that out because these pictures, when you hear what Stephanie is saying, it's one thing. But then as she's talking about it, I'm clicking on the links that she's provided in our script. And it adds so much more to me where I'm now looking at it going, oh, yeah, something ain't right here. Something is definitely not the way it appears to be.

Yeah, exactly. And once again, they thought the fire started in the bedroom because they saw this very dangerous contraptions. sort of set up, and then they realize, no, it's the furnace downstairs, but there's a ton of so, you know, more than the rest of the house. So what's happening there? Something happened there. And by the way, if you go back to that illustration, you can see that the furnace is in the basement, but it's still relatively close to the bedroom right above it. And you can see it in this map where if you were trying to set up a fire that's going to specifically hit a certain spot, the furnace would be pretty much right underneath the bedroom. So that would be one of the first

areas to go up. So that's important to note here. And one more thing to point out that I think that you're going to discuss even further, but it's on this map here, is some of you may be saying, okay, well, if the fire started in the basement, could someone else have gained access to said basement? There's usually a point of egress in the basement. It's required by code. And there is. There is an area here, as you can see on this map. But as you can see from the image, if you're looking on YouTube, if not, I'm describing it to you, there's an alarm slash entry sensor on that door. So if someone were to use that entry to get into the basement and set that fire, you would have some type of notification of it. And I don't know if that happened or not yet, but that's what

I'm seeing here. And I'm looking forward to talking about that because that could rule out the possibility of an outside intruder. Yeah. And remember, this isn't Nikki. and Chad's home. They're renting it. Right. And there's a homeowner who owns the home. Someone else could have came in, right. Right. So we have some options here. So Nikki tells the deputy, hey, my kids are with their grandparents in another state. I've been staying in a hotel because I have a medical issue and I can't be cold.

And that's why I'm not in the house. But then she also said that another reason she wasn't staying in the house and she was at a hotel was because Chad drank a lot and would abuse her in front of her children. She claimed he drank, quote, two cases of whiskey and month and beer on top of that and the more he drank the matter he got end quote she actually then showed the deputy pictures of a bruised arm and claimed chad was responsible for the injuries nicky also explained that she intended to leave him and relocate to texas she said she'd been searching for homes in the area and had a job interview scheduled there later in the month now all of these things can be true although we will talk about this um there's no evidence that

Chad was abusive or this like horrible violent drunk. There's no evidence of that. All that Nikki is saying could be true. He could be drinking too much. She could be abusive. She could be looking to relocate to Texas, the job interview, all that. Why are you talking about it right now? Yeah.

Why are you talking about it right now? Seems like she's trying to put out a narrative. She's trying to defend herself already. Already. Yeah. So he's dead. The house is on fire. Like these are more pressing issues.

And in order to put the fire. out or to figure out what happened with Chad, the deputy does not need to know that you're having marital issues and you're planning on leaving your husband and he's this horrible person. It's just irrelevant information unless you're trying to set an early narrative that, you know, this guy wasn't who he seemed to be and I'm having issues with him and I'm scared of him and he's dangerous, et cetera, et cetera, because you're thinking that it may come out later and then that maybe you were more involved than it seems to be right now. And you might have to defend yourself.

And then you can say, well, I'm not making this up. I told the deputy the day that Chad died, you know, that this was going on. I'm not making it up now to just defend myself. Yeah, I said it before they ever accused me of anything. Exactly. Which, by the way, for anybody out there, that's, it doesn't help you at all. No. If anything, it's, it almost draws our attention to it more.

It's suspicious because I'm not, I'm not going to be thinking about that. It's like, I'm shocked. I don't think anybody needs to know this right now. This man's dead. Right. Yeah, let's focus on that. Somebody's dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Nikki wasn't done sharing information, though.

She told the deputy there was a security system at the home. She had installed it shortly after they moved in when he asked if he could look at her phone so they could access the cameras, she agreed. But once officers had her phone, Nikki said she had no way to communicate with anyone and she asked if she could get an extra phone that she had in a box in her car. Police said yes, but they made sure to take a picture of the box first, which, which was great, quick thinking on their part. Don't you like when guys do their job? I know. I love it.

It's great. It makes my job a lot easier because I'm not here having to defend everything. Yeah, usually in these cases, we'd be like, oh, man, why didn't they look at that phone? That extra phone isn't it suspicious that you're giving the police your phone? But you're like, well, I happen to have an extra phone in a box in my car. Can I use that while you have my phone? Like who just has an extra phone ready, knowing that the cops are going to take their phone? It seems very suspicious.

So they did. Yeah, they grabbed the box. They took a picture of it. They noted that it was addressed to somebody named Earl Howard, a name that police didn't recognize yet, but they would later. So it doesn't sound like Chad. That's not Chad. I don't know who Earl Howard is.

It's not Chad. So before ending the interview, the officer asked Nikki whether there were any firearms in the house. Nikki said, yes, there were firearms, but she said she was not good with guns. Once again, information they don't need to know. It seems like you're, you're doing too much. For sure. Are there firearms in the house?

Yes. That's it. Who cares if you're good with them or not? There may be. Yes, there is. Yeah, there are. Okay. That's all they need.

They're asking you a question. You give them what they need to know. You don't have to add these personal details. So once firefighters finished clearing the home, detectives went inside to look around. When they examined Chad's body in the bedroom, they noticed a gunshot wound to his head. Now, at first, they thought Chad might have completed suicide. And after he died, the sunflower heater caused the fire. but the more they talked about that theory, the less it made sense.

They questioned how Chad could shoot himself in the head with a gun that was found lying on the bed, not on the ground with him. To get another opinion, they called the coroner to the scene, and thankfully, they did this because he saw something everyone else had missed. Chad didn't just have one gunshot wound. He had two, one to the back of his head and one to the upper left arm. So after learning that two shots had been fired, detectives searched for two spent shotgun shells. But they only found one. That was another problem for the suicide theory. At this point, they were looking at a likely homicide.

Chad's body was then taken in for autopsy, and the medical examiner determined that Chad had been shot twice with a shotgun from a maximum distance of about three feet. One round struck the back of Chad's left upper arm, passed through his shoulder, and then entered the last. left side of his head. The second shot was fired from behind and slightly below his left ear traveling into the base of the skull and that wound was determined to be the one that killed him. And I don't know if I'm kind of talking out of my ass right now, but I think with this type of gun, it would be pretty impossible to shoot yourself in the back of the head. Am I wrong or right? Yeah, that's not the, the, I have never seen a case personally where through suicide, they shot themselves in the back of the head, although Ellen Greenberg apparently stabbed herself multiple

times in the back of the head. If you're to believe that one, no. Two things here. One in the back of the head, and more importantly, shooting yourself and would you say the arm through the back for the first shot and then the second shot is the back of the head, two shots for a suicide. Those two things in conjunction basically rule out the theory of a suicide, yes. Now, additionally, they examined Chad's airway. And what did it show? It showed no such. in his windpipe or lungs. And this confirmed he had already died before the fire was ignited. Yep.

Same thing happens with water. Same thing happens with water where you find a body. If it hasn't been there long, no water in the lungs, i.e. no drowning. So additionally, the heat from the fire, and I assume also the heat from the heater that was in the bedroom, had accelerated decomposition, which I think was intentional, right? And we've seen this in a lot of true crime cases. We destroy a lot of evidence. Frantically destroys a lot.

can't put time of death. So then the person's alibi doesn't really matter as much because you don't know exactly when this person died. So you can't really point fingers at anybody who doesn't have a specific alibi because you can't really pinpoint exactly the time of death. But the medical examiner believed that Chad could have been dead anywhere from 36 hours to up to about a week before he was found. Now, Chad's manner of death was officially ruled homicide, not suicide. Back at the Ensel home, there were now two separate investigations. So they've got the homicide investigation and an arson investigation. Homicide detectives focused on the bedroom where Chad's body had been found.

And the head of the bed near where the pillows were showed the most amount of fire damage. Detectives looked closer and found bird shot embedded in the wall. So the trajectory and damage were consistent with Chad being shot while he was lying in bed, probably asleep. Yeah. Got to love forensics. I love how it tells a story. and when you get good investigators out there and they know what they're doing,

they can really quickly identify what actually happened even when the criminal is trying to lead you down a different path. I love it. I never get tired of hearing in cases like this. So detectives also found visible blood drip trails in the bedroom. So to see if there was more blood that wasn't visible to the naked eye, they used blue star, which as we know makes possible blood traces glow bright blue. And when they sprayed the blue star around the floor outside the bed,

They saw a glowing trail that started near the wall by the bed, ran around the foot of the bed, and continued along the other side, ending where Chad's body had been found. So based on everything they saw at the scene, detectives theorized that Chad had been shot while sleeping. He then woke up, ran around the bed, and was shot again. So what does that tell you that he's shot, that first shot that went through his arm? That wakes him up. And then he notices someone in the room with him who shot him. he's scared. He gets up and it appears maybe he tries to like run away, knowing that they're

going to shoot again. And maybe he feels like, wakes him up. Yeah. Maybe he feels like if I can't get out, maybe this person is standing between him and the door. But if I like run around the room, I'm a moving target. I'm going to be harder to hit. And I can try to escape. But then as he's kind of running around trying to escape or just trying to make it more difficult for the attacker to shoot him again, he is shot again in the back of the head. And this is the wound that kills him. Yeah, exactly. And as far as the blue star, that's the brand, what we're actually talking about, which everybody here being a part-time detective already has heard before, liminal, right? Turns the blood that may be hidden into something fluorescent under an ultraviolet light that you're going to be able to see clearly. The opposite of that would be LCV, which I do believe we've talked about before, not at length. But LCV, I would describe in just basic terms, as more of an enhancer, where it will turn blood that you think might be blood where you can see with the visible eye. And if it is blood, it'll enhance it to like a purplish color that looks like, almost like a fingerprint dust for a lack of better way to describing it, but it's more of

like a purple paint where luminal, on the other hand, is better when you can't really see anything and you'll just douse the whole area and then it'll pop. So with something like this with a fire where everything just looks burnt, if there's blood within that soot, whether it's the carpet, the bed, et cetera, luminal is going to be the perfect chemical to use. So, but blue star is the brand that we usually use. There are other brands. What was that other substance? L-C-V-L-C-V-V-V-V-E? L-C-V-V-B. It's L-Rol-Crystal Violet, I believe. Oh, L-U-O-Crystal Violet. All right. So that's if, like, maybe law enforcement sees a substance and they're like, this could be blood, but we need to make sure. So me and you were in a crime scene, and we're walking around and you say, hey, Derek, I see some brownish black

spots over here on the load. Blood-like substance, as they call it, in police reports. Could be a marker, could be dirt. could be whatever, but based on the crime scene, there's these blackish-brownest spots on the wall. You'll take the LCV, you can wipe it, spray it, and then all of a sudden, boom, it'll pop, and it'll turn purplish blue, which positively identifies it because of the chemical reaction that it is, in fact, blood. Okay, so with the luminaub, given that there's, you know, this crime scene has sort of been burned, would the burning of the bedroom, would it not burn the blood as well?

would the blood still show even through the soot and everything if it had been if it had been like under direct heat would that cause issues with the blood and not show up in luminal? That's a great question. I'm not an expert in it. I would think that the chemical makeup of blood, what's in the blood and what the luminal reacts to would still be there. And so you would still have some type of reaction. Maybe it wouldn't be as prevalent. Someone who's doing crime scene analysis all the time, they'd probably be better equipped to answer that. But my guess would be you would still get a reaction because the blood itself would still be in there, even though it was boiled.

You would still have certain areas that weren't as impacted as others. So I looked it up and it says bloods mostly proteins, iron amino acids, and when exposed to very high heat, especially the kind that causes charring, combustion, oxidization of the surface or destruction of proteins, the chemical structures that luminal reacts with can be destroyed. If the fire is hot enough to char the surface, the blood may be burned. For a long time, yeah. But, you know, extreme heat can change the iron that Luminaw reacts with. But it also doesn't really look like this bedroom was kind of heavily charred because the fire started in the basement. Correct. That would be what I'm saying.

Like, with you, you go back to the photo specifically with the whiskey glass and the bed, the shotgun, right? Yes, it looks horrible. But it's not just the coils. of the mattress, which I've seen. The mattress is still there, right? The label on the glass whiskey bottle is still intact, which is exactly what you're saying here. It looks really bad, but structurally, it's not as bad as you think.

It's more a lot of the smoke and soot and debris ash that you would have from the fire, not the fire coming in direct contact with that room. So there weren't active flames. Burning up the blood, correct, yeah. So, yeah, it still may be a little harder to find, But this is why when you look at that specific picture of the bed, that is where you would want to spray the luminal all over the walls, shut off the lights, pop on the ultraviolet lights, and it's going to light up like a Christmas tree if there's blood in there. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, what we're going to come to find, there were two separate fires here.

So when the firefighters initially came in, they were like, oh, did the fire start with this heater in the bedroom? Did it start with the fire in the furnace? They're going to find out that there was two fires. So we're going to talk about that in a second. We'll be right back. You know how in true crime, it's always the little habits that give people away, the routines, the ticks, the things they think no one else notices. Well, sometimes looking at these cases makes me realize that I had a habit of my own I wasn't very proud of. And that's what made me try fume.

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was. Yeah, the first time I touched it, I was surprised. That's actually one of my favorite things. It has this weighted, fidget-friendly feel with a twisty barrel that keeps your hands busy. And another thing I really appreciate is there is zero nicotine, no heat, no vapor, no batteries. It's just flavored air. Natural cores, that's the flavors, the cores, nice design, simple habit swap, nothing complicated. And Fume isn't playing around with safety either. They continuously invest in third-party studies, toxicology testing, and their products are. backed by doctors in the U.S., and that matters to me. And I think it should matter to anyone who's trying to live a healthy life, yeah.

Should matter to all of us, especially if you're consuming something like this. It should definitely be important that the company behind it is testing their products. And over 700,000 people have already used fume to take steps toward better habits. And if you're listening to this and thinking you might want something healthier to reach for or trying to break a bad habit you're not proud of, this is such an easy place to start. All right. So here's the offer. Use our code Crime Weekly to get a free gift.

with your journey pack, head to tryfume.com, that's tryfum.com, and use code crime weekly to claim this limited time offer today. Again, it's tryfume.com code crime weekly. If you've been looking for a sign to switch to a better habit, this just might be it. All right, we're back from break. You know what we should do, Stephanie, for like, CrimeCon or something? I don't know. We have to figure it out. But I would love to get a bottle of Blue Star and a bottle of LCV. bring it to somewhere. The only problem is you've got to have some type of real blood there and there may be some biohazard issues, but

I'd love to set up a little experiment where people can see the differences. I know one thing that I can do to replicate the reaction to luminal, bleach. Luminol reacts with bleach the same way. And I've actually done some cool experiments for like TV purposes where you rub the counterdown with bleach and then

you spray it and it pops. It actually almost is sometimes brighter than blood. So that could be a cool experiment. But the LCV, you technically have to have some type of blood there. The luminal is what you see in movies and television. That's what people see more of. Well, I mean, you can bleed a little bit for

Crime Weekly, right? Yeah, or you can. Just whack you once and listen. I'm always hurting myself and always cutting myself. I know. We just got to follow you around long enough and I'll get some blood from you. Yeah, you definitely would. You definitely would. So the fire investigators, including the fire marshal, focused their attention on both fire locations, the bedroom and the furnace in the basement. And they determined they were two completely separate fires with two separate origins. In the bedroom, they found that the heaviest

fire damage was at the head side of the bed and in the area around Chad's body. The burn patterns were spotty and irregular, and there was evidence that an ignitable liquid had been poured on the bed and the floor. An arson dog was brought in and confirmed what they were already thinking. Later, testing showed that the accelerant was classified as a medium petroleum distillate, so things like paint thinners, turpentine, lamp oil. Those are commonly used to spread fire rapidly. Now, fire investigators also paid close attention to the soot patterns in the bedroom, which showed even more proof that Chad was dead before the fire started. Under where Chad's body had been, the carpet had no soot at all. There was basically an outline where his body had been.

That meant he was already in that spot before the fire started. The same was true for the shotgun on the bed. There was a clean area on the bed where the gun had shielded the surface beneath it. And when investigators lifted the sunflower-style propane heater, they discovered multiple soot rings beneath it, each with varying thickness. So this pattern indicated the heater had been repositioned while the fire was burning, not left in one place, as it would be if it had fallen over, it ignited the fire by accident. So at this point, you can't even really say something happened to Chad, whether he did it to himself or somebody else did it, but the fire was just because that propane heater was in there. And after he died, the propane heater caused the fire because clearly somebody moved it after Chad was in the spot where he died. Right. And in reality, it's a red herring. Yeah, somebody else was in that room. Yeah. And what are we talking about, right? Like, first off, it's always a fire marshal or fire investigator who's going to work these arson cases in conjunction with law enforcement. They're much more equipped to handle it than we are. We're kind of just witnesses at that point, following them around, letting them do their job, taking good

notes. But we're always looking for the accelerant and point of origin. And usually to be an outlet or something in the basement, the furnace, a boiler, something like that. But here, what you're describing is very simple. The point of origin is in the bedroom where Chad's body was because they were trying to destroy evidence. And the furnace was just a distraction.

They were trying to create a narrative that the furnace, was what actually may have caused the fire or the propane tank is what actually may have caused the fire. And that's why Chad was, you know, he died. So clear here is day what they're working with. One's the original point of origin. One's just something to try to throw them off the track.

Yeah, absolutely. So, and also I think to obviously destroy evidence make time of death harder to determine. Well, they can't leave them just like that, right? If they do that, it's clear as day what happened. They could, they could, but yeah. And then they know there's not a lot of people who have access to that house, so the suspect pool is very small.

Especially if there's no forced entry, right? Yep. Get the alarm system. That's not going to help you. So in the basement, they examined the furnace and found that it was in a good condition. There was nothing mechanically wrong with it. So here we go back to Nikki's statement. Furnace wasn't working.

We called about it on, you know, December 27th. We called about it on Christmas. People came out to look at it, couldn't fix it. it was still not working, and that's why me, Nikki, I had to go and say at a hotel because it was too cold. This is all gone now. I mean, before you even start calling the homeowner and being like, hey, did Nikki and Chad report that the furnace was broken? Before you call and say, hey, who was sent here to look at this furnace? I'm going to go ahead and say probably nobody did because if somebody did look at the furnace and they knew what they were talking about, they'd be like, there's nothing wrong with this furnace.

The furnace is perfectly fine. The debris on top had clearly been placed there to help start a fire. Based on everything they'd found, it was clear that both fires had been intentionally set. Chad had been murdered and someone had tried to burn the house and his body to cover it up. Now, at this point, detectives were obviously very suspicious of Chad's wife, Nikki. Her 911 call and police interview felt off. She wasn't acting the way they expected a grieving widow to act, and they thought it was strange that she said she'd been staying at a hotel when Chad was

and that she had a second phone tucked away in her car. Now, knowing there were security cameras at the Ansel home, detectives used Nikki's seized phone to access the security system. And here's what they saw. They saw Nikki and an unknown man show up at the house on December 30th at 6.54 p.m. while Chad was bowling. They stayed, Nikki and this man, they stayed for more than an hour and a half, repeatedly removing items from the house and loading the house.

and loading them into the man's truck. At 8.27 p.m., Nikki got into the man's truck. The man briefly went back into the garage of the Ensel home, then the two of them left together. After they left, the camera was put into privacy mode, and so further video was no longer available. Aw, man, isn't that terrible? I mean, come on. No, I mean, listen, bad luck sometimes, Stephanie. Who put the cameras into privacy mode?

It accidentally did it on its own. It would have to be Nicky. Oh, that's right. It would be, wouldn't it? It would have to be. So you see them going in, taking things out, and Nikki's going to say now, well, remember. Which, by the way, why not put it in privacy mode before? Yeah.

Well, that's what I'm saying. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe Chad's got the security stuff on his phone, too, and you know he's at bowling. And you, Nikki, you don't want him to know that you and this man, whoever he may be, are going into the house and taking stuff out. So you put it into privacy mode. You wouldn't go and do all your stuff. stuff and then put it into privacy mode when you leave?

What is up with these guys, even Koeberger, allegedly, shutting off their phone like minutes before the time when the crime potentially occurred? Nah, you got to do it like days or weeks before. You can't do it like moments before and use that as a sign of innocence. It's not going to work out for you. Yeah, because why would you keep it on when you're, you know, actually making your getaway? But then when the, you know, you're allegedly leaving and not coming back, it's in privacy. Got to love cloud-based security systems.

Can't be damaged by fire or water. It's great. It's great for investigators. But, you know, it's in privacy mode, which I would assume is a mode that you as the person who has the security system can put it into. If you're like, okay, we're all home. We're all safe. Maybe me and my husband want to run around the lawn naked and do some fun things and

we don't want it, you know, taken, picked up out on camera, privacy mode. You don't put it in a privacy mode when you're leaving your husband and you're taking your stuff because now she's going to. going to tell the detectives. They're going to be like, well, you were there. You took some stuff. Yeah, remember, I told you I was going to leave him. Remember? I told you that. Right? We already talked about this. I'm not suspicious at all. So detectives then checked Nikki's story about staying at a hotel on December 30th and they learned she had been staying at a hotel, stay bridge suites. However, she actually checked in on December 29th, not December 30th like she told them. On top of that, the room she was staying in wasn't even in her name. It was in the name of Earl Howell. the same name that had been on the box that her backup phone was in. So detective started looking into Earl Howard, and they learned his full name was Earl Roy Howard. He was a Canadian man with dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship.

He lived in Bellwood, Ontario. He was married. And on paper, he had a, quote, very clean criminal record. He also matched the man seen in the surveillance footage from the Ensel home on December 30th. So obviously all of this looks extremely suspicious. So detectives dug deeper into Nikki and Earl and quickly learned they were surprise, surprise, having an affair. They had begun their relationship in February or March of 2019, and by August they had

opened a joint bank account, even though both of them were already married to other people. By now, detectives saw Nikki as a proven liar. You know, she's got some stuff to hide, and they started questioning her claims that Chad was an abusive alcoholic husband. Toxicology on Chad showed a blood alcohol content of 0.069 below the legal limit, and the medical examiner noted that decomposition could have increased that number. There was also no evidence of chronic alcohol abuse in his body, so you're not going to see things that you'd see in somebody, maybe the liver, the organs, things like that.

Nikki claimed to the deputy that her husband, Chad, would consume two. cases of whiskey a month as well as beer. So if somebody is consuming two cases of whiskey a month, you're going to see some sort of indication in their body that they're drinking that much. That's a lot. Even like their stomach lining, you know, things like that. It's not going to be going unnoticed in the body. This is a lot of alcohol to be consuming. So all of this did not line up with Nikki's description of somebody drinking massive amounts of whiskey and beer and further investigation into Chad's bank accounts actually showed that he didn't buy too much alcohol at all, which is unusual for someone who was supposedly dependent on drinking and

was, you know, downing two cases of whiskey a month. So then investigators also spoke to people who knew both Chad and Nikki. Michelle, who was a friend of Nikki's, she said she'd never seen Chad act abusive or change moods when drinking. However, she said Nikki had told her about arguments and what she called drinking games, which Nikki described as a sick game where Chad would get drunk and abuse her. Nikki had shown Michelle pictures of bruises and sent a photo of herself with a black eye claiming Chad had hit her, but Michelle wasn't 100% sure that they were due to abuse. She said Nikki had several medical conditions that would cause her to bruise easily.

So it kind of seems like even Michelle, who's a friend of Nikki's, is like, yeah, that girl can, she lies sometimes, you know? Like, normally, if my friend told me that her husband was physically abusing her and my friend was sending me pictures of the outcome of this alleged abuse, I wouldn't be like, well, Nikki also has, you know, medical conditions that could have caused these things. So she might not be being honest about these injuries coming from her husband's abuse. Now would be the time to be honest. Yeah. And Michelle, Nikki's friend, she's like, yeah, she told me he was abusive. She told me about this horrible game that he allegedly played.

She sent me pictures, but I'm not 100% sold that's actually true. And this is Nikki's friend, not Chad's friend, Nikki's friend. So it seems like maybe Nikki might have a reputation, even amongst the closest people to her, the people who know her, that she's not always like 100% honest about things, you know? Because otherwise, if it's my friend, my friend's going to be like, yeah, absolutely. I know my friend doesn't lie. I know that she would never say this about somebody if it wasn't true. But Michelle's like, I'm not sold on it.

And listen, there's a real possibility that some of this is true. And depending on what you're dealing with it, as a police officer, it can be viewed two different ways. It can be viewed as maybe justification for a self-defense claim, if that's the direction we're going. Or it could be used as motive for the potential murder. It could only, it might only strengthen the idea that Nikki would have had a reason to want to kill, Chad. So there is something here where it's like, you know, the fact that she's painting this picture of Chad, it's not necessarily inaccurate. There is a possibility that what she's saying, at least partially, could be true. It doesn't make it a good thing.

It doesn't mean it warranted killing Chad if that's what happened here. But sometimes in these cases, I feel like the offenders will try and paint the victim as this monster. And in some ways, yeah, it might be able to help you if you're claiming that you had no other choice. to do this, but when you're trying to distance yourself and say you had nothing to do with it, by painting this picture of this person who is so quote unquote horrible to you, it almost strengthens the argument that you're potentially involved. So I don't know why they do it. I mean, I agree. I think that it might be something of like a future consideration. So she's thinking, you know, I'm not a career criminal. I don't really know about evidence. Like, yeah,

I'm going to set this house on fire and hope that it gets rid of the evidence, but it might not. And I might actually have to, like, face, you know, the police and go on trial for this crime. And in that situation, I can say, yeah, I did it, but it was only because he was abusive. And I've already told you this stuff. So it's kind of like a backup plan that if they find enough evidence to arrest her, now she can go to her plan B. Well, yeah, I did. But it was only because he abused me. And of course, I didn't want to tell you the truth at first because I knew I would still get in trouble for it.

But, like, what else was I supposed to do? I had another choice. He was never going to stop kind of thing. I think it's like a preparation to have a plan B to have a backup in case they have enough on you and they find enough evidence to actually, you know, arrest you and charge you with something. Yeah, maybe like trying to play the victim card, I guess. Like, oh, this is why she had to do it. I don't know. Yeah, that we've seen this in legal defenses.

I've recently covered cases where this happened. And at first, the girl was like, no, I was never there. That never happened. And then once, you know, evidence placed her there, she was like, well, yeah, but he was abusive. If he was throwing me around and he was being horrible to me and I had to do something, I had to defend myself. So then it's like a self-defense claim, you know, so she could say, well, I went back after I turned the privacy mode on.

Yeah, I don't know. And he was drunk and he was trying to hurt me. And so what else was I supposed to do? And then I didn't want to get in trouble. So I tried to cover it up. I think it's more important in a case. Like, do you remember we covered Danielle Redlich? Oh, yeah.

Daniel, yeah. To be, to me, a case where that were she's building this narrative of how abusive the husband was and how she had no choice. I believe she killed him in the kitchen while he was. Yeah, she said they were having an argument. Allegedly he was choking her. That would be more relevant in a case like this. But, but Daniel Redlich in that situation was claiming that she had no other choice. Her life was in danger. When you have removed yourself from the home and you have the freedom of saying out of said home and you go back in order to kill this person, if that's what happened here, you're kind of up Shack Creek without a paddle. That's not going to, no court is going to side with you. She could say

She went back because she forgot something. She was getting her stuff out. She forgot something. She went back. Right. And she knew something was going to happen beforehand so she put the camera in privacy mode. Or she, yeah, or she, you knew something was going to happen so you came with a gun. Right, right.

You know, yeah. If you think something's going to happen and you think that this person could be potentially dangerous to your life and kill you, then you don't go back at all. You send someone else for the rest of your stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not looking good. So Nikki's friend Michelle, she told the investigators, listen, I encouraged my friend Nikki to leave this alleged

abusive relationship, and eventually Nikki said she was planning to leave for Texas with Earl, who she sometimes called Roy, his middle name. So Michelle said Nikki claimed she had reported Chad's abuse to her doctor and had a plan to leave that involved Roy having at least 10 people watching Nikki to make sure she was safe and that charges would be pressed. Now, obviously, when detectives talked to people who actually knew Chad, they had a different story. They painted a very different picture of him. And we're going to talk about that as soon as we get back from this break. Okay, I've entered my final form for this season. I'm officially a

pajamas person. Comfort is the hill I'm willing to die on. And I used to think that pajamas were either cute or comfortable, but never both until I finally tried skims. Now, the second I put on my skim sleep set, I literally stopped in the mirror and said, oh, oh, this is dangerous. Right. So the fabric is like any skims product, buttery soft, stretchy, lightweight. It doesn't cling. It doesn't twist. It doesn't get too hot. It just feels like the smooth, cozy hug that makes you want to climb into bed at 6 p.m. and never leave. Yeah, a little behind the scenes. We do, we do like our rehearsal slash like, you know, business meetings. And Stephanie will show up and she's like, don't judge me. I'm in my skims. And I'm like, okay, I get it. At least you're supporting the products. I like it. I mean, they're becoming my personality, right? They're perfect for everything. Editing, watching documents. commentaries, wrapping gifts, drinking tea, existing. And with December already in full swing, I've been grabbing skims for gifts too. They make pajamas for women, men, kids, even pets, and

their holiday princess here are so cute. I got a matching set for my kids and myself, and I'm telling you skim's pajamas, we're one of those gifts that people are actually going to get excited about. No one has ever opened up cozy loungeware and said, ugh, why? And I think it's kind of like the safest gift you can give, right? Because who doesn't want to feel comfortable, especially during the winter. Exactly. Who doesn't want like cute, seasonal, printed, comfortable pajamas for Christmas time when it's sounds amazing. Somebody's got to buy me something. I know. Maybe I did. Okay. Noted. And what I love is that it's not just comfort. It's quality. The stitching, the fabric, the way everything is designed. It genuinely feels high end. And if you're someone who overheats a night, like I said, these are a dream. They're

breathable, soft. They move with you instead of fighting you. This has become a little tradition for me. Every December, I get myself a new pair. And now I'm getting them for people. I love to. And I just did an Instagram story, well, like a few weeks ago. And I had on their sweatsher. It's like a red sweatsher and has a furry hood that you put up. And I love it so much. It's so soft. And everybody was like, where did you get that from?

And it's from Skims. Yeah. And this is how you know you've officially become an adult when you get excited over pajamas. And obviously, if you're listening and thinking, okay, I need this energy in my life. Here's how to try them. So shop my favorite pajamas at skims. After you place your order, make sure to let them know that we sent you crime weekly. So select podcast in the survey.

choose Crime Weekly from the drop-down. And if you're looking for the perfect gifts for everyone on your list, the Skims Holiday Shop is now open at skims.com. Okay, so Chad's mother told the police that he had never shown any signs of being abusive, either with Nikki or with his first wife, Susan. Now, you might expect that from his mother, right? Even if he was abusive or wasn't a drunk and was kind of a dick, sometimes we see that even the guy's own mother will be like, no, he was an absolute peach.

But then you go to his ex-wife, Susan. And Susan's probably not going to defend Chad if he was abusive in the least. You know, she's probably not going to want to do that. She's not his mother. And Susan, Chad's first wife, she backed this up in her own interview. She also said, no, he never was abusive with me, never showed any signs that he was violent, etc. Chad's younger sister said that Nikki had mentioned that the couple had been getting into verbal fights and then Nikki claimed Chad had issues with drinking but would never seek treatment.

But in Chad's sister's experience, when Chad was intoxicated, his personality was giggly and she had a hard time believing that he was violent. She said Nikki had mentioned bruises to her in the past, but had attributed these bruises to blood cancer. Now, once again, I'm going to say for the record, it doesn't matter. what someone appears to be to you when they're drunk, like your Chad's sister, he's drunk and he's giggly and having a good time. He could be a completely different drunk with his wife. Okay. So I don't believe Nikki, for the record, but I will say it doesn't matter if Chad's sister's like he's just a blast in a glass when he's drunk. Because if he, he's probably having a good time, he's not mad at you for anything. But if he's mad at his wife or his girlfriend, you might say it

Yeah, you might say very different. It's just that your impulse control and everything's kind of like suppressed at that point. How many times over the years have we talked about this where me as a civilian would see prominent figures within our community, whether they were coaches or city councilmen or just really cool, quote unquote, parents that like everyone like to be around. Oh, the guy everyone likes. And then I'm as a police officer that same night responding to their house at three or four in the morning because they're beating the shit out of everybody who lives. there. Exactly. Exactly. So what I'm trying to say is, yeah, like his sister and his mom could be like, yeah, child was just a great drunk, but it doesn't matter. In this case, I don't believe Nikki, but in general. It does not matter. Yeah, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So

detectives also talked to the Encel's landlord about Nikki's claim that the furnace had been a problem. Now, the landlord said Nikki had contacted him about the furnace issues, but that it was before December that she had contacted him. So an HVAC company was called out, replace the flame tube and after that the furnace worked fine. So going into December, no furnace issues, no reason for Nikki to not be in the house because the furnace is broken and it's cold there. And I really have a hard time understanding why she didn't think that the story would be checked out. I'm really having a hard time understanding that. So at this point, almost nothing in Nikki's story was checking out. Detectives decided to build a detailed

timeline of her and her boyfriend Earl's movements in the days leading up to Chad's death. They He leaves emails, texts, phone calls, home surveillance video, and hotel surveillance footage. So they built a pretty comprehensive timeline. We're going to go over it. Let's start with Thursday, December 26th. This would be just one week before Nikki called 911 to say that the house was on fire. So on that day, Nikki got an online quote for renters insurance. The policy was $26,000 and was set to take effect at 12.01 a.m. on December 27th, how could

convenient. So the renter's policy listed only Nikki as the insured. Her husband, Chad's name was nowhere on it. Detectives questioned why she would want a new renter's policy on a home she claimed she was about to move out of to escape an abusive husband. You're going to Texas, Nikki. The hell do you care about this house, right? Now, after obtaining the quote, Nikki called home site insurance and purchased the renter's policy. Receipts showed it was paid for out of the joint account she shared with her boyfriend Earl. During the call, Nikki mentioned having matching earrings with her daughter that needed to be listed on the policy. She doesn't have a daughter.

Remember, she's only got two sons. So investigators believed that she was referring to her boyfriend Earl's daughter. So on the morning of Friday, December 27th, the renter's insurance policy took effect. That evening, Nikki flew to Minneapolis on a one-way ticket and she met up with Earl. She did not tell Chad she was going out of state. Instead, she told him she was away at a work training. The following day, Nikki and Earl spent part of the day shopping in Minneapolis before driving back to Bismarck together. During this time, Nikki's texting and talking to her husband, Chad, she kept telling Chad she was still at this work training.

When he asked if she had come home the night before, she told him she had only been at the home briefly because she needed to be at the training very early that morning. Chad texted back, quote, okay, have a good day, end quote, which detectives later pointed out, not sound like the response of an abusive husband, right? And once again, I don't take this stuff at face value. A lot of abusive men are not going to start texting and being like, okay, have a good day. But when you get home, I'm going to beat your ass for being out at a work training just so you know. Yeah. And they can usually turn on a dime too. Yeah. And honestly, depending on who it's coming from and as the person on the receiving end of this text message, you might perceive that, okay have a good day as kind of like oh shit I'm in trouble he's being very short with me right now

yeah that's true too that's that's a really good point it just has to do with like the communication style yeah what you as the partner of this person knows their communication style to be and how you know it can change and how they they start talking to when they're mad when they're mad at you exactly so that doesn't to me I'm not like the detective like just that's sound like an abusive husband it's like dude trust me all of them sound different but and you learn to pick up on their patterns and you know when they're mad and you know when when you're in for it. But that doesn't mean I believe Nikki because I don't. So by just for the record.

All that said still don't believe Nikki. Because I want people to understand like when there are issues of real abuse and that law enforcement's looking at this stuff and they're like, he said, okay, have a good day. Does that sound like a scary man? It can. It can be the sound of a scary man. Only that person's partner who is now used to their ebbs and their flows and their patterns and what their words mean, what they're saying, that's not really being said.

It can be. So I want everybody to understand that. And if you are in a relationship like that, understand that these things may be perceived that way. And you're going to have to, you know, defend yourself. And that's just the sad reality of the world. So I still think it's great that you're bringing it up because we cover so many cases like this. And in this particular case, we may feel like a certain way about it, even if some of what's being alleged about chat is true.

where in another case, like a Danielle Redlick, which I believe our stance was there may have been a reason why she had to do what she did, and it's different than this case. So I think taking it on a case by case basis and not coming off as hypocritical by saying, hey, guys, we're acknowledging that what Nikki could be accusing Chad of may be true. And yet we still feel like what she did in this particular scenario is not right. It's going to be, for every single story, we have to evaluate said story to determine whether or not we feel like the action's taken were justified. Yeah, Chad, in this story, when we find him, he's dead.

He's the victim. So there will be sometimes a bias to be like, the guy's dead. He's the victim. Right. And he must be just like the most amazing person ever. He didn't do anything to deserve this, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not saying he would have done anything to deserve it. But in these cases where law enforcement's looking at things and trying to decipher, does that sound

like he's abusive? I don't think it, I don't think it freaking matters. No. He shouldn't have been killed, right? Correct. He shouldn't have been killed. He had the ability to get out of there. Yeah.

Yeah. So it doesn't really matter one way or the other at this point. If he's abusive, I don't believe that he was based on what I know about this case. But there's men like him who are. And then there's these things that come off as, oh, that's not a red flag. And they still could be red flags. It's a case-by-case basis. So by early Sunday, December 29th, Nikki and Earl were back in Bismarck, where Earl checked into the stay-bridge suites with two guests.

with two guests listed and only one bed in the room. So basically they're sharing a bed is what we're being told here. Now, hotel records showed he had been staying there regularly since October 2019 and staff remembered Nikki visiting him there. So at one point, she even asked an employee whether the hotel had cameras. I wonder why she wanted to know that. Now, shortly after Earl checked in, hotel video showed the two of them entering together. Later that morning, Nikki texted Chad to tell him it was her last

day of training. Chad responded, quote, sounds like a very long intensive training, haven't seen you in a few days, glad it's the last day of training. You always succeed at what you do, babe, end quote. Now, to me, I would say that doesn't really sound like a guy who's mad, you know, if he's going like sounds like a very long intensive training, haven't seen you in a few days and stops there, it's like, oh, maybe he suspects something, he's angry. But he doesn't seem to really suspect anything. He's like, you know, you always succeed of what you do. I'm really looking forward to seeing you.

It doesn't seem that he thinks that Chad thinks Nikki is lying. So Nikki and Earl left the hotel soon after. That afternoon, they went to Walmart where purchases were made using their joint checking account and security footage captured them kissing in the store. How romantic.

So that evening, they met up with Nikki's brother to drop off presents for her sons who were staying with their grandparents. So now we've got Nikki and Earl and they've been going for months, right? They've been together since February, March of 2019. He's been staying in the staybridge suites because most likely because this is where she lives, you know, and he's staying there so he can spend time with her, even though he's married.

She's introduced him to her family at this point because her brother's meeting up with them and doesn't seem to be like, who's this guy? Yeah. Yeah. So everyone seems to know except for Chad. Now, her brother, Nikki's brother, Matthew, told detectives that during that meeting, Nikki said Chad abused her and left bruises on her legs. Although he himself did not see any bruises. Matthew also noted that Nikki and Earl seemed affectionate with each other. Nikki and Earl later returned to the hotel.

Chad texted Nikki to say he was going to bed. He did not ask where she was, even though he hadn't actually seen her for days. So the timeline's going to continue. We're going to talk about that when we come back from break. Real talk here. Eating well during the holidays can feel impossible between parts. parties, travel, baking, leftovers. December is basically one long buffet.

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Stay festive and stay groomed. All right. We're back and we're back to the timeline. So on Monday, December 30th, Nikki called Chad early in the morning, and shortly afterward, she returned to the Ensel home. This is Monday. Chad's got his bowling league that night. So Nikki had told detectives that she and Chad had argued about the furnace before she went to work, even though, according to the landlord, there was nothing wrong with the furnace. The furnace is perfectly fine.

Now, Chad left the house not long after her, and around midday, Nikki met Earl for lunch. He picked her up in the parking lot and dropped her back at her work. and then he kissed her goodbye. So that afternoon, Earl, he went to several stores, including Praxair, where he bought a welding torch kit containing oxygen and acetylene tanks. Did I say that right? Acetyline? Acetylene.

Acetylene. Acetylene. Do you know what acetylene is? Acetylene is essentially a form of just like a propane tank almost like that. It's obviously a different chemical, but. So is it flammable? Oh, yeah. It actually, it's like a torch.

Like an acetylene tank is like you would see on a TV show or something where they kind of like hit the little fire starter on it and it causes this big torch to come out and they can like, you know, weld materials together, et cetera. Yeah, that's what you would use in a settling tank. All right. So we got, we got Earl at the store getting some flammable materials. Okay. And detectives recognized this same welding torch kit as being in the Ensel's garage after they went there because Chad was dead and there was a fire in the house. So during the initial search, they hadn't realized it was significant and they hadn't collected it. But once they learned that Earl had bought it right before Chad's death.

Obviously, they went back and they seized it. The kit had been assembled, but it didn't look like it was used. Yet both tanks, which were full at the time of purchase, were now empty. Dun, done, done. Yeah. What they're saying is the kits assembled. It doesn't look used because I would feel like, and I don't know because I've never welded, but I feel like if you'd used a welding kit, the torch part would probably be a little

charred, would look a little discolored. It would look like something had happened. discolored for sure that there's been some heat applied to that metal at that point because acety tanks it could be used for a variety of things it could be used for welding but it could also be used for cutting but at any point when that metal gets hot you're going to see some discoloration or some bluing of the metal because of the heat that's been applied to it yes exactly that's what i was seeing it like a blue yellowish sort of tinge not not burnt necessarily but sometimes i don't i'm probably not using the right metals but maybe like a brass fitting or something

where you may not see it as much but you would be able to tell if the thing had ever been used before. That's the simple term of it. It's assembled, hasn't been used. Both the oxygen and the acetylene tanks are empty. The regulators were turned all the way open, and this was far beyond the small turn you would normally need for welding, and this would have effectively drained the fuel very quickly. So detectives believed that Nikki and Earl intended to use that torch kit to ignite or even explode the home, but it didn't work out as intended. Yeah, that is interesting, Because I will say with the sunflower heater and the propane tank being attached to it, when I first saw those photos, I was saying to myself, wow, they're lucky that thing didn't blow up because that would have been bad for not only anybody in the area, but also first responders. But now when you come back to it again, it does make more sense because I was saying to myself, okay, they started a fire on the bed, which is obviously to destroy evidence.

And then they created the illusion of a fire or they set a fire near the furnace to try. try to present that as the point of origin, and yet there was this propane tank with the sunflower heater attached to it. What was that for? Why would they need to have a third point of origin? But then it hit me, as you were kind of talking about it, oh, that would be the literal bomb that would go off in the room where they could say, oh, my God, the furnace started the fire, right? And then the fire from the furnace got up to the second, the main floor. and then unfortunately there was a propane heater there and exploded basically destroying that room and also in their mind destroying any possibility of identifying that there was a fire started on the bed itself that was never meant to be found the propane tank the heater there was supposed to destroy all that so like we we don't know what happened we don't know what happened here this could have been a completely natural occurrence yes unfortunate set of circus circumstances. That would have made investigators job much harder because that could have

literally blown that portion of the house apart. There would be nothing left. And that would also explain why they were willing to leave certain items out, like the shotgun being there and all that stuff, because they didn't think that law enforcement would ever have the ability to see those things and document it. They thought that room was going to be a hole in the wall. Like, it was just going to be gone. That is very scary, though, thinking about firefighters and first responders going into these scenes. So scary. because you don't know, like somebody could have set something up to blow

and maybe it didn't work the way it should have at first. But then as you're going in, the thing just like explodes. It's very scary. That's the concern here with every case you go into and that part, it goes back to what I was saying about me going into that fire, right? Like there's a reason why you don't.

They're experts. They know what to look for. They know what to smell for. Like they can have different equipment where they can test the air before going in. But no, this horrible situation could have been a lot worse. Could have been a lot worse for everybody. Can I also say one more thing that I don't want to get too far in front of my skis here?

I know Nikki presented it as if she was sad she couldn't go inside. I think there's part of it. She knew she couldn't go inside and she couldn't get too close to the house because she knew there was a propane tank inside of there that could go off at any moment. Or maybe she was like, I want to go in the house because she realized their setup hadn't worked and she was hoping maybe she could like, you know, fiddle with it. Then she would have went in. Yeah. She would have went in. I think the fact that she didn't, she's thinking like you and I, it didn't work when it was supposed to, but it could go off at any second.

Maybe it's just not hot enough in that room yet. She doesn't want to go inside. So you're telling me she called the fire department and had people come to that house to go inside knowing that it might freaking explode? Possibly, yeah. Holy shit. That's a whole new level of evil, if that's the case. Yep. Damn.

Or maybe she thought it did go off already. I mean, wouldn't it have exploded? Yeah, you wouldn't know, but maybe she didn't realize the damage that would have occurred if that happened. I mean, they say right out, you shouldn't even cook on a grill near your home because if there's an accident, it's not going to be just an isolated incident. There's going to be a radius that's going to be affected by that. Have you ever seen some of those gas leak videos and stuff? I mean, you can take out a whole neighborhood. It's scary.

Gas, electricity, man, I do not mess with it. And the thing about gas, too, is it's like, you can't really detect it with like your eye, right? You might smell it, but, you might smell it. But if you're outside... Could be too late. No, it's scary. It's really scary. So later that afternoon, Earl returned to the hotel.

Nikki left work a short time after. And by the time she arrived at Staybridge Suites, Chad had already come home. And then he left again for bowling because this is Monday. So Nikki texted him wishing him luck. Like, have a good bowling leave. However, detectives believed that text was more about confirming he was out of the house than cheering him on, which, of course,

either to kind of keep appearances up, like, I'm still your wife, I still love you, have a good bowling league, which to me also kind of detracts from Nikki's, you know, claims that she's being abused. Because at this point, you've been staying at the hotel with your boyfriend. Right. You're going to go in and take all your stuff out, okay? You are planning to go to Texas. You've told your friends this. You're talking to your brother about it.

What do you need to keep Chad appeased for at this time? He doesn't know where you are. He can't get you. Do you need to text him and be like, have a good bowling league? Right. No, you don't. So the police are saying, hey, we think she was trying to text him to make sure he was going to bowling and he was going to be out of the house. And yeah, that's probably somewhat true.

But I also think she was trying to keep up appearances because she could have just checked the security cameras to see if he was there, if his car was in the driveway, if he was home, she would have known he'd left. She could have monitored them. She could have even called the bowling alley and been like, hey, is my husband Chad there? You know, because they know him. He's been going there forever. there's a lot of ways she could have checked to see if he was out of the house without texting him but in my opinion she's trying to keep him thinking

I'm just at some work training I'm thinking of you, you're my husband, I love you good luck tonight sweetie have the best bowling ever I think there was a lot of that to it as well yeah agreed so with Chad gone and out of the house going to bowling Nikki and Earl could go over and start

clearing out the things that she wanted to save before the house burned because she knew the house was going to burn so before heading to the home, Nikki tried to shut the cameras off, but it didn't work. So when we were like, why would you leave them on and only turn them in privacy mode after you left? Because she tried to turn them off and she tried to probably switch them into privacy mode and that didn't work. Yeah, there's an image here too that we showed the first time. You'll see it again. We

see a quick screenshot of the truck and them removing items or taking items to the truck from the house. So the detectives were later able to see Nikki and Earl on the security footage removing items from the house between 7 and 8.30 p.m. Then Nikki got into Earl's truck and Earl briefly re-entered the garage before the two of them left together. They went back to their hotel room at the stay bridge suites and they started unloading the items they had taken from the house. Meanwhile, Chad finished bowling and drove home. When he arrived at the house, Nikki and Earl were still unloading their truck at the hotel. I don't know if Chad walked in and noticed things were missing.

If he was like, what's going on here? I'm not sure. But after midnight on Tuesday, December 31st, Nikki's login was used repeatedly to access the Encel security system. Privacy mode and camera settings were changed, and video recording was successfully shut off. But the motion sensors continued to log activity. This was something that Nikki, bless her heart, she didn't realize.

So a short time later, she and Earl left the hotel again, and they drove back to the Ansel home or Chad was now inside. What happened next would lead to Chad Ansel's tragic murder. And I also, you know, that's going to have to wait for part two. We're going to talk about that in part two.

But you also have to come back to part two because Nikki's behavior when she's brought in and questioned about Chad's murder is just so bizarre and so suspicious. And she does things that you know immediately make her look guilty. but I don't think that she has, I don't know if she has the self-awareness to realize that, but

it's bad, it's bizarre. It's definitely something you want to stick around and find out what happens and hear about what her responses are and what she has to say for herself. So come back for part two to see all of that, but for now, we're all done for the night. There's not a ton of mystery here. It's more about how it occurred, why it occurred, maybe a potential motive, the science, the rationale, the reasoning. Behind this crime is what's interesting in this case. Obviously, nothing's going to justify it.

But I always like these investigations because you can see how it was put together, what they did right, what they did wrong, what the criminals thought they could get away with, the mistakes that they made that allowed us as investigators to capitalize on that. What do I always say, right? We're looking to identify those mistakes. In this case, one of the big ones is the inability to deactivate or just the lack of knowledge of how to deactivate the motion sensors, right? Yeah, the lack of knowledge of the security system in general, I would say, yeah. Right, not doing your research for that prior to the actual crime. That is something that law enforcement could have missed. If they didn't know what they were doing and they didn't go to that, go that route,

they may have missed that critical piece of evidence and allowed her to share a story that wasn't true. Yeah, Nikki can still say, yeah, we did go to the house and took myself out. Remember, I told you I was leaving him. And that's why. And yeah, the motion sensors went off after we left and the security camera was turned to privacy mode, but you don't know that that was me. That's probably what her lawyers are going to try to argue. It could have been anybody.

It could have been somebody who was after Chad, who has zero enemies. But it wasn't me, right? There's that kind of, you know, reasonable doubt that her legal team will attempt to raise. It's going to be an uphill battle for multiple reasons. I know with Simply Safe and some of these other systems, you have usernames, right? So if you have a, you and a partner who live in a house, you could have different usernames to log into set account so they can actually identify which user went in there and access the cameras or updated security system settings.

The other issue she's going to have is in many instances, they can contact whatever security system program that she's using, and they can get a warrant for the metadata where they'll be able to identify the IP address that was used, whether it's a cell phone or another computer, and through that IP address, they can also reverse engineer what, why, Wi-Fi router or what communication device was used to access the internet to access the security system. They will have that data. And so with a simple subpoena, you'll be able to figure out where and when the system was accessed and also compare that to where your potential suspects were at the time when it was accessed through that cross-reference. If they're involved, it'll more

than likely put the suspect and the access point at the same location. I also feel that that, you know, she's going to have a hard time arguing that it was anyone else because what do you always talk about? Means, motive opportunity. Right. She's giving you the motive. She had the means. She had the motive. She had the opportunity. She's got it all. So. Yeah. She's literally, literally giving you the motive. And you were hoping, they were hoping the evidence would be all burned up. And nobody would know that. Like, you wouldn't be able to tell if the house had been broken into because the house is all burned up. But you can tell

there's no forced entry. Who can get into that house, right? Right. No, the only thing that I'm going to throw out there and I truly don't know what's going to happen in part two here and I'm not going to look it up. The only angle that I see here, the only play left that Nikki has is to blame Ed. Yeah, be like my boyfriend at it. He wanted me to himself. He knew that I wasn't going to be there. He knew Chad was going to be there. He had been at the house with me earlier. I had told him what Chad was doing to me and how he was treating me. I had given him the password to access the security system because in case he ever had to go in there, he must have used my phone, turned off the system, and went back there and killed Chad on my behalf, but without

my consent. Unbeknownst, unbeknownst to me. Unbeknownst to me. I'm a victim here as much as anybody else. That's the only place you really has, and I wouldn't put it past her. Yeah, unless Nikki and Ed have talked about this previously via messaging. Oh, you're giving us a little. You're giving us a little.

I don't know. Maybe that happened. And then she knows that Ed could just be like, really? Really, Nikki? Because then why did you say this to me on December 25th at 8.59 p.m. EST. Yeah. She might not be able to dime him out because he knows where the bodies are buried, literally. I don't think either of them planned on getting caught. They probably thought they had a pretty full proof plan. So I don't think that, you know, her turning on him would be beneficial to her because she knows that he knows where the bodies are buried, essentially. I can't wait to hear how this one plays out. It's a. a good one. It's educational. It allows us to kind of figure out why these things happen and how they attempt to carry them out and how they can get caught. So now let's see what happens on the other side because it's one thing to know who did it. It's another thing to be able to prove it in a court of law. And we do know that a lot of the times the two don't go hand in hand. Depending on investigative efforts, evidence, preservation collection and preservation, it could make or break a case. Also, depending on the defense. Are they able to able to present some form of reasonable doubt that opens the possibility to a jury member saying

just one, that's all you need, saying, I don't think they did it. I think that there's a possibility that could have been the landlord who just hated Chad and set Nicky up for his murder. So here, what I would do is you have to find other people that would have an axe to grind with Chad. Yeah, which I think once again, that's going to be hard pressed because, you know, I don't think he was an abusive dickhead. And I think that he really didn't have a lot of people that could have said anything negative about him.

He certainly didn't have enemies, no enemies that would have access to his home. These are the things that everyone involved in this case has to do, even as unlikely as it may be. They have to explore those theories because the defense will if they don't. And if they do that, they can say, yeah, we actually looked into that. We went down that path. We were able to come to a dead end because of this reason. So, yep, that one doesn't work. And, oh, you had another one.

I'm glad you brought that up. We investigated that possibility as well. Here's why that one doesn't apply. We will explore that next week. And you'll hear all about Nikki and what she has to say for herself and what she did and how she tried to get away with this. We're looking forward to it. Until then, everyone stay safe out there. Have a good week.

We'll see you next week. Have a good night. Bye. Thank you.