Dark Downeast - The Suspicious Death of Nicole Parsons-Bucki (Rhode Island)

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

On a morning when the country’s attention was fixed on unimaginable tragedy, a Rhode Island family was learning that someone they loved was gone. In the hours before Nicole Parsons-Bucki died, there had been violence, a police response, and a relationship already under strain, but 25 years later, no one has been charged. That could be because the deeper you look at Nicole’s case, the less simple it becomes: We’re dealing with an uncertain timeline, evidence that disappeared, unanswered questions about who was actually with her, and the possibility that what has seemed obvious for years may not tell the whole story.  If you have any information about the murder of Nicole Parsons-Bucki, please contact investigators with the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office at 401-468-2233 or email [e-mail] View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/nicoleparsonsbucki Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low. Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok To suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Did you know you can listen to Dark Downeast ad-free? Join the Crime Junkie Fan Club! Visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/fanclub/ to view the current membership options and policies.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On a morning when the country's attention was fixed on unimaginable tragedy, a Rhode Island family was learning that someone they loved was gone. In the hours before Nicole Parsons' Bucky died, there had been violence, a police response, and a relationship already under strain. But 25 years later, no one has been charged. That could be because the deeper you look at Nicole's case, the less simple it becomes.

We're dealing with an uncertain timeline, evidence that disappeared, unanswered questions about who was actually with her, and the possibility that what has seemed obvious for years may not tell the whole story. I'm Kylie Lowe and this is the case of Nicole Parsons Bucky on Darkdowne East. In the first hours of Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, the date didn't mean anything yet. Providence, Rhode Island was still hours away from a morning that would permanently divide time for the entire country into before and after. But at one address on Charles Street, something had already happened that would leave one family measuring their lives in the same way. A little

after midnight, police were called to 607 Charles Street, apartment number one. When a Providence patrolman arrived at 1222 a.m., a witness at the scene told him that 277,000, year old Nicole Parsons' Bucky was dead inside her apartment. The dispatch information for Providence Police Department case number 2001-001-33950 was brief. Suicide attempt. Blow dryer in tub. According to Amanda Milkovitz's in-depth story for the Providence Journal published in 2003, Nicole was found fully clothed with her hair in a scrunchy and partially submerged in the bathtub. She was faced down in a fetal position with less than a foot of water beneath her. As the initial report had already indicated, somewhere near the bathtub was a blow dryer

connected to an extension cord. In later reporting by Sarah Bodden and Kim Kallunian for WPRI, Providence police major David Lapayton described the dryer as actually being inside the tub. At first glance, those details seemed to offer an explanation for what police had been called there to investigate, but the scene didn't tell such a simple story. For one, the shower curtain appeared to have been ripped from its rod, a detail that suggested there may have been some kind of struggle. Nicole's body was taken from the apartment

and transported to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy. And then morning came. Within hours, airplanes would strike the World Trade Center in the Pentagon. Another would crash in Pennsylvania. Television screens would fill with smoke and fire, newsrooms would abandon nearly everything else, and September 11th would become a date inseparable from loss. But before any of that happened,

Nicole Parsons' Bucky was already gone, and the first explanation for how she died was already beginning to unravel. Nicole was born and raised in Cranston, Rhode Island. She graduated from the Sawyer School of Business and went on to work for Fleet Boston Financial Group in Providence. She was also a mother. Nicole had an 8-year-old daughter at the time of her death,

who had been raised by Nicole's parents since she was a baby. Nicole's life had not been easy. Her family later spoke openly about her struggles with narcotics, including Vicodin. She had also been married briefly, but by 2001, that marriage had ended in divorce. For about a year before her death, Nicole had been seeing someone new. He was considerably younger than she was, less than a month a week. from his 18th birthday at the time of Nicole's death. When police arrived at Nicole's apartment on September 11th,

that relationship was already part of the story surrounding her suspicious death. Because the day before Nicole was found in the tub, police had already responded to Charles Street for an incident involving her boyfriend. At around 1.30 a.m. on September 10, 2001, Providence police responded to 607 Charles Street after someone heard Nicole, and her boyfriend fighting. Amanda Milkovitz's reporting for the Providence Journal is really the only reason why we know so much about this incident.

No matter how many times I requested the records or changed my request parameters, these records weren't part of what I received. That could be because the suspect in the incident was a juvenile at the time, or because the case is related to another case that is still open, but I'm not sure. So, according to Milkovitz's 2003 reporting, when Providence's, Police Officer George Smith approached the building in his cruiser, he saw two males leaving the area but wasn't able to identify them because they took off running when he called out to them. Officer Smith found Nicole inside her apartment. She told him that she and her boyfriend had gotten

into a fight because he was angry that she had been gone all day. Nicole said her boyfriend, grabbed her by the arms, dragged her out of the apartment, and locked the door behind her so she couldn't get back inside. Firefighters eventually helped Nicole regain access to her apartment while police located the boyfriend at his godmother's home. He was arrested on a domestic simple assault charge. After Nicole was found dead, investigators spoke with other tenants to learn more about this incident. A neighbor said that after seeing or hearing everything go down between Nicole and her boyfriend, she kept her company. According to what the neighbor later told Nicole's family, Nicole said that she was planning to leave her boyfriend.

The neighbor stayed with Nicole at Nicole's apartment until morning. Before the neighbor left, around 9 a.m., she promised she would come back later to check on Nicole. Meanwhile, also around 9 or 10 a.m., Nicole's boyfriend was released to family under a verbal no-contact order. According to witnesses, by that afternoon, he was back at Charles Street, despite the order. He was seen outside Nicole's apartment with family members pounding on the door, apparently wanting his belongings from inside, but Nicole didn't answer. There's no indication in the source material I have that the boyfriend successfully got inside, either by force or by Nicole opening the door.

Just after midnight, the neighbor who had promised to check on Nicole came back. She said that Nicole didn't answer for her either, so she used a screwdriver to pry the door open. She explained that inside the apartment was dark except for a light coming from the bathroom. She called Nicole's name but got no response. The neighbor told police she was afraid Nicole's boyfriend might be there in the shadows, so she left to get her own boyfriend before going back in. Her boyfriend was the one who reportedly found Nicole in the bathtub.

They called 911 and Providence Police arrived at 607 Charles Street at 1222 a.m. From the beginning, investigators did not treat Nicole's death as a straightforward suicide. Even before the medical examiner had officially determined a manner of death, police processed the apartment with the possibility of homicide in mind and collected physical and forensic evidence from the scene. Investigators found signs that Nicole may have been packing. Small household belongings had been carefully wrapped in tissue and placed in suitcases, while clothing had been gathered into bags,

almost as if she had been preparing to leave or move somewhere. At the same time, groceries were still sitting out on the counter. A receipt showed that Nicole had spent about $160 and another $80 on cosmetics like body oils and lotion the day before she died. There were also things of value still inside the apartment, a bucket of change, a watch. To Nicole's family, that made robbery seem like an unlikely, explanation for whatever happened there. On the kitchen table were paperwork and photographs,

including recent pictures of Nicole, her family thought she looked dramatically different in those photos, disheveled and bloated, almost unrecognizable compared to the woman they knew. But some of the biggest questions about what happened inside that apartment would arise from Nicole's autopsy. The medical examiner found water inside Nicole's nasal cavity, evidence that suggested she was still alive and breathing when she went under the water. There was bruising around her neck and marks from her necklace. There was also a hemorrhage to her pancreas that was believed to have been caused by a blow to the stomach. Nicole had bruises on her arms as well, but those were possibly from the confrontation with her boyfriend the day before.

There was also a roughly done tattoo on her buttock. It was the nickname used by her boyfriend. Toxicology showed that Nicole had wellbutrin and antidepressant and diet pills in her system. But according to the reporting, it was the medical examiner's opinion that the amount present was not enough to cause a fatal overdose. What the medical examiner could not establish was an exact time of death, and that left investigators trying to reconstruct Nicole's final hours from the people who had seen her and the evidence left behind in the apartment. The circumstances of her death and what had happened between Nicole and her boyfriend and the hours leading up to it

gave investigators an obvious place to start. Nicole's boyfriend drew immediate attention. Less than a day before Nicole was found dead, he had been arrested for allegedly assaulting her. After his release under a no-contact order, witnesses placed him back at Charles Street that afternoon, pounding on Nicole's door and trying to get inside. So, detectives attempted to contact him after Nicole's death. Sometime later, an attorney called them back and said his client would not speak with police unless they had a warrant. Now, Nicole's boyfriend had been part of her life for about a year before her death. He was approaching his 18th birthday.

Nicole was 27, and I don't think that age difference should be glossed over. Whatever the law allowed at the time, a relationship between someone in their late 20s and a 17-year-old raises legitimate questions about maturity, power, and whether the dynamic was appropriate. That said, separate from the age issue, Nicole's family made no secret of the fact that they disapproved of the relationship for several other reasons.

Nicole's mother, Robin Parsons, would not allow him inside her home. Nicole's cousin Roland, who was also described as her sister in Nicole's obituary, had distanced herself from Nicole because of the relationship. And following Nicole's divorce, she had moved in with her aunt Cynthia, but Cynthia eventually asked her to leave after Nicole and her boyfriend got into a violent fight at the house. Then came the alleged assault and her boyfriend's arrest on September 10, 2001. Nicole told police that her boyfriend

grabbed her by the arms, dragged her out of the apartment, and locked her outside. He was arrested for domestic simple assault. Hours after his release, under a verbal no-contact order, witnesses said he was back at Nicole's door trying to get inside.

Then, by the following night, Nicole was dead. It's not hard to see why suspicion settled so heavily on Nicole's boyfriend, both within Nicole's family and among people who have followed her case over the years. And his criminal history after Nicole's death

only added another layer to that suspicion. I confirmed the boyfriend's legal identities through a source close to the case. He has used two different last names over the years and Rhode Island court records associated with those names document multiple criminal cases involving allegations of violence. In December of 2002, a little more than a year after Nicole's death, Providence police charged him with domestic simple assault, domestic vandalism,

and several additional assault-related offenses. He ultimately pleaded no contest to domestic simple assault, domestic vandalism, and a charge that had been amended to resisting arrest. Two other simple assault charges were dismissed. The court sentenced him to one year of probation, ordered him to complete a batterer's intervention program, imposed a no-contact order with the victim, and ordered restitution for out-of-pocket medical expenses. A few months later, in May of 2003, Cranston Police charged him in another case involving the same victim. This time, the charges included domestic disorderly conduct,

domestic simple assault and vandalism. He pleaded no contest to the domestic assault and vandalism charges. The disorderly conduct charge was dismissed. Again, he was sentenced to probation, ordered to complete batterer's intervention and ordered to have no contact with the victim. The following year, court records show that he was brought back before the court and was found to be in violation of probation.

More recently, in October of 2024, he was charged in Cranston with two counts of simple assault or battery and one count of disorderly conduct. In March of 2025, he pleaded no contest to both assault charges. prosecutors dismissed the disorderly conduct charge and he was sentenced to one year of probation with a non-domestic no-contact order. To be clear, none of those cases have anything to do

with Nicole's death, and none of them prove what happened inside her apartment in September of 2001. In the months and years after Nicole died, her boyfriend publicly mourned her. On what would have been Nicole's birthday in October 2001, a remembrance appeared. in the Providence Journal, signed with the nickname he was known by at the time.

It included a traditional grief poem that goes like this. I thought of you today, but that was nothing new. I thought of you yesterday and will tomorrow too. It's lonely here without you. I miss you more each day. Life's not the same for me since you went away. Every time I see your picture, you seem to smile and say, don't cry, I'm only sleeping.

We'll meet again someday. I miss you, Nikki. More than two years later on Christmas Day in 2003, another remembrance appeared under that same nickname, saying Nicole would always be in his heart and that he would never forget her. So Nicole's boyfriend publicly associated himself with her and appears to have grieved her loss long after she was gone,

and he has consistently denied having anything to do with her death. I contacted him myself, to give him an opportunity to respond to what has been reported about him and to clarify anything he believed had been misunderstood over the years. At first, he told me he would think about an interview and that he had always wanted to tell his side of the story. Ultimately, he declined and wrote, quote, I honestly don't have a side in her death.

I loved her. She was a beautiful soul. I was incarcerated on the time of her death. There's nothing to say besides the police, did a horrible job on her case. It's sad. I really hope they find who did this and Nikki can finally rest. I hope your story helps in any way." End quote. When I followed up, as is routine, he gave me a longer response. He asked that I not use his legal name or the nickname he was known by at the time, despite the fact that the nickname is already public. He emphasized that he has never been charged with any crime connected to Nicole's death, and said his attorney instructed him not to answer

any of my questions. But he didn't stop there. He did want to say one thing. Something that, if true, could mean we have to look at Nicole's case through a completely different lens, one that challenges assumptions made by family and the public from the very first days of the case. quote, I was told by two investigators that I was cleared to my face in a public store on camera. They actually said they were going to give me a public apology, end quote. I have not found documentation in the records I have establishing that he was formally cleared. Investigators have previously declined to say whether Nicole's boyfriend has ever been ruled out as a suspect, and no one would go on record regarding that claim.

For years, suspicion of Nicole's boyfriend has been a major part of the public conversation surrounding her case, and it is easy to understand why, but suspicion is not proof, which raises a question that becomes harder to ignore the deeper you get into this case. If the answer was always as obvious as it appeared, why has the evidence never gotten prosecutors there? For years, Nicole's case existed in a strange kind of limbo. From what I can discern from the limited records Providence police released to me, there was very little documented movement in the investigation for a long time.

And even the way the case was classified inside the department did not reflect what Nicole's family believed had happened to her. For nearly a decade, the case was labeled threats. That designation was finally changed to homicide in March of 2011. By then, Nicole had been dead for almost 10 years. According to her mother, Robin, Nicole's death certificate listed her cause of death as asphyxiation at the hands of another. The prevailing theory was that someone had killed Nicole and staged the bathtub scene to look like a suicide. So who did it? Who set that scene?

Even when the investigation failed to progress, Nicole's family continued pushing for their own answers. to those questions. In 2014, a Facebook page called Justice for Nicole was created, and Robin was very open in that group about who she believed was responsible for her daughter's death. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, investigators were beginning to take another look at the evidence. According to the Providence Police reports I obtained, Detective Michael Atrondo was assigned to Nicole's case in 2015,

although there is some reason to believe the date is actually several years. earlier. Nevertheless, on September 29th of 2015, Atrondo met with Detective Captain Korea, Assistant Attorney General Stacey Veroni, and Special Assistant Attorney General Amy Dodge. About a month after that meeting, on November 2nd, a Bureau of Criminal Identification or BCI Detective obtained a buckle swab a DNA sample collected from inside someone's cheek from an individual whose identity is redacted in the records I received. That sample was sent to the Rhode Island Department of Health for Analysis. Three years later, in March of 2018, Robin posted something tantalizing in the Justice for Nicole group.

She told followers that big news was coming soon, but by July, her tone had changed. Quote, as previously posted, I had written that big news was coming soon. Well, sorry to say, no big news will be coming, though I was led to believe it was. I was hoping this year, on the anniversary of Nicole's murder, we all would have something to celebrate. Sadly, it just doesn't look that way, end quote. I asked around about what Robin may have been referring to. No one I spoke with could go on the record about it, but just a few months after that post, the case file shows another burst of investigative activity.

On September 5, 2018, a judge signed a search warrant allowing investigators to obtain DNA from an unidentified individual. It's unclear if this is the same person whose DNA was collected back in 2015 or someone new. The warrant could not initially be served, but on September 17th, investigators obtained a new warrant and successfully collected the sample. Detective Atrondo then turned that swab over to BCI, and it was sent to the Department of Health's Forensic Biology Laboratory for analysis. While we don't know whose DNA, was collected in 2015 or 2018, or if those samples came from two separate individuals or the same person, Nicole's boyfriend said in a 2021 emailed statement to WPRI News 12, quote,

I loved Nikki just as much as anyone else, if not more, I've talked to so many investigators, took multiple DNA tests. There's nothing much I can do at this point, end quote. So maybe one of the samples was his. The paper trail I received stops after the 2018 swab collection. There's no result attached to the records Providence Police released to me, no explanation of what the comparison showed, no indication of whether the DNA excluded someone, implicated someone,

or simply failed to answer the question investigators were asking. That would be frustrating enough on its own, but years later, the public learned about an even bigger problem. In 2021, Providence Police Major David LePayton acknowledged that evidence from Nicole's case had been lost. He could not say whether that evidence would have been enough to establish who killed Nicole, only that whatever investigators had before it disappeared had not resulted in charges. Depending on when that evidence went missing, it raises an obvious question about the DNA work in 2015 and 2018. What exactly was left to compare those samples against?

Now that same year, Nicole's case received a much-needed push from outside the police department, spearheaded by a fierce advocate who has made herself very well known when it comes to cold cases in the ocean state. Lauren Lee Malloy, who runs the Unsolved Rhode Island Facebook page, learned about Nicole's case from Robin and began helping bring renewed attention to it. At the time, Unsolved R.I. offered a reward for information that could help solve Nicole's murder. Whether that awareness effort and reward resulted in new leads or forward motion in the case is not public information at this point, but a few years later, in 2023, Lauren's Unsolved Rhode Island page announced an unexpected and encouraging development. According to information shared with Unsolved Rhode Island by a source close to the case,

evidence connected to Nicole's investigation was reportedly located. The specifics of what was found are not public. Neither is what, if anything, testing has revealed. But after more than two decades of lost time, missing evidence and unanswered questions, Nicole's case reportedly had something investigators could work with. And if that evidence can still tell them who was inside Nicole's apartment before she died, it could also challenge some of the assumptions that have surrounded this case from the very beginning. After 25 years, there is an obvious question hanging over Nicole's case.

If the answer really is as simple as it has sometimes seemed, why hasn't that theory ever been proven or even tested in court? When a case remains unsolved for this long, I think it is worth separating what we know from what we have come to assume. The timeline is a good place to start. At some point in the investigation, before 2003, detectives tried to estimate how long Nicole had been dead

by looking at the bathtub itself. Amanda Milkovitz reports that investigators determined that the tub had a slow leak. So they refilled it and watched how long it took for the water to drain down to roughly the level it had been when Nicole was found. It was hardly a precise clock, but the experiment suggested Nicole may have been dead for several hours before she was discovered shortly after midnight. So let's take that and press it up against the last relatively solid sighting of her boyfriend at Charles Street,

which appears to have been around 3 p.m. when witnesses said he came to the apartment with family members, pounded on Nicole's door and tried to get inside to take back his stuff, if he somehow got inside around that time, then the estimated time of death several hours before she was found could theoretically fit, but there is a problem with even that scenario. According to the publicly available reporting I have reviewed, no witness actually saw him get inside. There's no public reporting suggesting that anyone saw him successfully force his way

through the door. As far as we know, Nicole never answered when he was reportedly pounding on it, and hours later, when the neighbor returned to check on Nicole, the apartment was still locked tightly enough that she said she had to pry the door open with a screwdriver. I should note that there is also another reported sighting of Nicole's boyfriend much later that night, sometime between 11 and 11.45 p.m. That account is not as firmly established in the source material I have, but let's say that later citing is accurate. It only creates another problem with the timeline and the assumption about the boyfriend. Nicole was found only minutes after midnight. A death sometime after 11 p.m. would be difficult to reconcile with the bathtub experiment suggesting she had already been dead for

several hours. As far as I can determine from the public record, the last known person, to report seeing Nicole alive was the neighbor who said she stayed with her until around 9 o'clock that morning. After that, Nicole did not answer the door when her boyfriend reportedly came by in the afternoon. So what happened between 9 a.m. and midnight on September 10th, 2001? Was Nicole alive and simply refusing to answer when her boyfriend came pounding on her door at 3 p.m.? Or was she unable to answer the door because she was already dead. Again, none of this rules anyone in or out. The bathtub experiment was not an exact science and the medical examiner could not establish a precise time of death. But it does reinforce how little certainty we actually have about Nicole's

final hours. There are other details that I keep coming back to too, like the blow dryer. Remember, the theory is that someone killed Nicole and staged the bathroom to make her death look like a suicide. If that's true, then whoever staged the scene may have handled one of its most important objects. The reporting describes a blow dryer connected to an extension cord somewhere near the bathtub, while Providence Police Major David Lapayton later described it as actually being inside the tub. So was that blow dryer ever processed for fingerprints or other forensic evidence? evidence. Obviously, finding someone else's fingerprints on it would not automatically mean that person killed Nicole. Anyone who spent time in the apartment could have had an innocent reason to

touch something Nicole owned. I don't know, for example, whether her boyfriend ever used that blow dryer himself or had some other reason his fingerprints might normally have been on it. But context matters. If investigators believed someone deliberately positioned the blow dryer to create the appearance of suicide, then identifying who had handled it could have been significant, especially if prints or DNA belonged to someone who had no obvious reason to touch it. Unfortunately, I don't know whether usable fingerprints were ever recovered from the blow dryer, how that piece of evidence was processed, whether it was preserved, or whether it was among the evidence later reported missing. And that's what makes the lost evidence problem in Nicole's case

so frustrating. We know what's, what's, some of the important questions are, we just don't know whether the evidence that might answer them still exists. Then there are the substances discovered during autopsy and toxc screening. Toxicology showed that Nicole had wellbutrin and diet pills in her system. Welbutrin, or bupropion, is an antidepressant commonly prescribed for depression and also used to help people quit smoking. But there is another reason the presence of the drug caught my attention.

Uproprian has also been documented as a substance that can be misused. In a 2014 article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Drs Nathan Stahl, Jesse Godwin, and David Jirlink, noted reports from people misusing bupropian for stimulant effects sometimes described as cocaine-like. There is nothing in the information I have that establishes Nicole was misusing Wilburton. Her family had spoken openly about her previous, struggles with substance use, including Vicodin, but the medical examiner did not believe the amount

of wellbutrin present was enough to cause a fatal overdose. But I have a lot of questions about this still. Was the wellbutrin prescribed to Nicole? If it was not, where did it come from? Was there a prescription bottle in the apartment? Is that detail completely irrelevant or could it tell investigator something about what Nicole had been doing or who she had been with before she died. Another factor in this case is that, unfortunately, violence and other criminal activity were not unheard of at 607 Charles Street. In August of 1999, a woman living in apartment number five reported that someone had broken into her apartment and stolen a PlayStation, printer, VCR, and telephone. According to the report, the front door had been pried.

open. Then, in June of 2000, police encountered a 21-year-old woman arguing outside the building with a 21-year-old man who lived there. Officers reported seeing the woman punch the man in the face. She was charged with domestic assault and resisting arrest. The man was also arrested on disorderly conduct and resisting arrest charges after police said he became belligerent. Two months later, in August of 2000, a resident told police that three masked intruders confront hunted him and two visitors around 1 o'clock in the morning. According to a police log published in a newspaper, two of the intruders had guns. The resident said his visitors were tied up, while the men demanded to know where his safe was. The intruders apparently never got to the safe, but escaped

with less than $100. According to that account, the resident and his visitors then declined to cooperate further with police and said they had no complaint. In addition to police logs in the local paper, I also requested every police call, incident report, dispatch record, and related response associated with 607 Charles Street for all of 2001. Providence police released one report involving apartment number two. On August 31st, less than two weeks before Nicole died, police responded there for a 911 hang-up and domestic assault. One man was ultimately taken into custody. Nothing in the records I have suggests that incident had anything to do with Nicole's death. Providence police told me there were also two reports from 607 Charles Street that year that did not

result in charges. The department withheld both of them on privacy grounds, so I don't know what happened in those incidents or who was involved. None of these incidents appear connected to Nicole's case. But it goes to show that 607 Charles was not necessarily a place where a forced door, a domestic disturbance, or even serious violence would have been completely without precedent. But maybe the building and its residents might hold the answer, or at least a piece of the answer in Nicole's case. Nicole's family told the Providence Journal that the walls at 607 Charles Street were so thin that people in the building could hear much of what was happening in the apartments

around them. They firmly believed there were people who had heard more. or knew more than they had told police. Working off that belief, Nicole's family sought out the neighbor who said she had comforted Nicole after the fight with her boyfriend, the woman who said she stayed with Nicole until morning, promised to return later, and ultimately helped discover her body. Nicole's mother and aunt told Amanda Milkovitz of the Providence Journal that they wanted to understand something that really bothered them.

Why did the neighbor decide to pry open the locked door when Nicole didn't answer? According to Amanda Milkovits's reporting, Nicole's family said that when they asked the neighbor about this, she responded with words to the effect of, was I supposed to wait for the body to start smelling? That comment bothered them deeply. They openly wondered whether the neighbor somehow already knew Nicole was dead. For decades, attention has overwhelmingly focused on one person. Nicole reported that her boyfriend assaulted her hours before she died.

He was arrested. He returned to her apartment after being ordered to stay away. His later criminal history includes other acts of violence. Those facts matter. But so do the things we don't know. We don't know exactly when Nicole died. We don't know whether she was alive after her neighbor left. around 9 a.m. We don't know who, if anyone, entered her apartment during the hours that followed.

We don't know what every piece of physical evidence collected at the scene showed, or what the evidence reportedly discovered or rediscovered decades later, might still be able to tell investigators. Maybe, after all these years, Nicole's case is not quite as simple as it seems. When Nicole's family was eventually allowed back inside her apartment, her aunt Cynthia found one of Nicole's old robes lying on the couch. Police had not collected it, but Cynthia noticed what appeared to be a shoe print across the stomach area

and told investigators about it. Police told her the robe could potentially be evidence, but Cynthia could not bring herself to give it up. She said it was one of the last things that she still had that smelled like Nicole, and she was afraid that if she handed it over, she would never get it back. More than a year after Nicole died in December of 2002, police returned Nicole's purse to her mother. Robin waited nearly another year before she opened it. Inside were Nicole's signature dark red lipstick, including one she had borrowed from her mother,

along with photographs of Nicole's daughter. There were also two drawings signed by Nicole's boyfriend with the words, Love you always. For years afterward, Robin marked September 11th with a vigil for Nicole, trying to make sure that on a date associated with so much national laws, her daughter's name and the unanswered questions surrounding her death were not buried. Robin died in 2023 without seeing anyone held accountable for Nicole's murder. Nicole's daughter is grown now and has children of her own.

Nicole's grandchildren will never get to see her million-dollar. or smile outside of photographs. 25 years after Nicole was found in that bathtub, there is still evidence to examine, still a case to solve, and still a family waiting to know what happened inside apartment number one at 607 Charles Street. And somewhere, someone may still know

the piece of this story investigators have been missing. If that person is you, if you saw something, heard something, If you were there that day or have carried information about Nicole's death all these years, now is the time to say it. If you have information about the murder of Nicole Parsons-Buckey, please contact investigators with the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office at 401-468-2233, or email R-I-A-G Cold Case at r-a-g.org-org-org.

Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audio Check.

I think Chuck would approve.