Sword and Scale Nightmares - Trouble Ahead

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

A teenage girl’s discovery of a human skull on Iowa’s Greenbelt River Trail led investigators to the murder of missing 29-year-old Angela Nicole Bradbury. The case unraveled into a chilling confession by Nathan James Gilmore, whose digital trail and coded clues revealed a cold, deliberate killing. What began as a missing person report ended as one of Iowa’s most disturbing murder cases.Get commercial free access to over a decade of Sword and Scale's true crime podcasts at http://swordandscale.com

The bike tires hum against the gravel on the Greenbelt River Trail as a young girl pedals down the path. The warm evening air of July flows through her hair as she races past the tall grass on either side of the trail. She embraces the flickers of sunshine breaking through the canopy above. It's quiet, she thinks, a sort of quiet that makes her feel like she's the only person in the world. But she's not. She's not. And just then, she gets a sense of being watched as something off the trail

catches her eye. She coasts to a stop, perches on one leg, still half on her bike, staring into the brush. Whatever it is, stands out against the backdrop of nature. The hair on the back of her neck stands up as she drops her bike and inches closer. It's something pale, round, and unmoving.

When she finally realizes what it is, her hand flies to her mouth to stifle her gasp. There, balanced unnaturally on a stick jutting out of the ground is a human skull. It's weathered and discolored. It's empty sockets staring right back at her. She blindly walks backwards trying to distance herself from what she's just found. She nearly stumbles over her bike as she reaches for her phone and dials her mother. By 5.30 p.m., the Mitchell County Sheriff's Office phone rings.

The young girl's mother relays what she's found on the trail. Within the hour, a sheriff's deputy is on the scene. He sees the skull just as described resting on a stick in the overgrowth. It's collected and sent to the Iowa office of the state medical exam. They have no idea who it belongs to or how it got there. In time they will, but for now, it was just a piece of someone found in the woods watching. To Sword and Scale Nightmares. True Crime for Bedtime.

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Starring Ashton Couther, Bella Hadid, and Evan Peters. I would like the first pop. Effects is the Beauty, an original series, streaming exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscripts required. Tis and C's Apply. Acero Gordo Sheriff's Office Deputy sits down at his desk. He shudders. as he sets his steaming cup of coffee down, still trying to shake off the cold from outside.

Across from him sits a mother and daughter still in their coats. The mother clutches a folder while the daughter sits silently. He takes a sip of coffee, noticing the worry in their eyes. The mother keeps rubbing her thumb against the zipper of her purse, back and forth, over and over. She always calls, the mother says. no matter where she is. He opens the intake form and fills in the date, February 2nd, 2022. He reads the information already filled out.

Missing Adult. Angela Nicole Bradbury. Age 29. Last scene, April 2021. He jiggles his mouse and a faint electrical hum starts as his computer turns on. He positions himself in front of the keyboard and starts asking the standard. questions. The two women answer before he even finishes the sentence. They offer their DNA and Angela's dental records before he can even ask. As he reaches for the mother's folder, a few photos fall out.

There of Angela, some recent, some not. One was from her birthday two years ago. She's laughing and has cake in her teeth. The deputy has done this before. People do vanish. But this one feels different. He turns back to his computer propping the photo of Angela against his monitor and uploads the information to the system. He clicks the little box that flags it as a priority, but something gives him pause. He remembers the skull found in Mitchell County, the next county over. For the last seven months, it has sat in a sealed evidence bag in a box with the case number written across the top. There are no matches in the system, no name, no missing person cases that fit.

It had been identified as female, but no one was looking for her. At least, not then. Nine days passed before the call came in. The deputy stared at the report, at the name, the case number, the photo from her birthday, and remembered the woman who sat across from him, the worried mother searching for her daughter. His heart sank when he saw the results. The DNA and dental records matched the skull.

It was Angela. Two months later, the young girl sits on her couch. The TV is already on. Some commercials, half muted in the background. She's picking at dinner, scrolling on her phone, half watching when she hears the name. Green Belt River Trail. Her head snaps up.

snaps up. The screen shows a map of Mitchell County and then a shot of the trailhead. Then a photo. Not of the skull, not of what she saw, but something close. Yellow crime scene tape. Trees. Flags marking the ground. She knows that place. She recognizes the way the tree branches hang, the dip in the path. It's the spot. Her chest tightens as the TV announces. Authorities have confirmed the recovery of additional remains. The voice on the news keeps talking about investigators, about searches, about a woman, they say was killed, but she barely hears it.

All she sees is that trail, the trail where she found the skull. And she wants to know who put it there. Once the skull was identified as Angela Bradbury's, a murder-endant. investigation was launched. The Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation orchestrated the multi-jurisdiction case. Detectives from the Cerro Gordo Sheriff's Office started at Angela's last verified location, the county jail. The detective circles Angela's release date at the top of the clipboard, April 6, 2021. He walks through the front doors of the county jail and goes up to the front desk, asking for Angela's intake records. As he flips through a couple of pages, nothing jumps out.

She was arrested at a car dealership just before midnight on a trespassing charge. No red flags, nothing violent. She was in and out in less than 24 hours. He puts the clipboard down and turns back to the front desk and asks to see the surveillance footage from that day, that afternoon. The receptionist cues up the footage with a few clicks of the mouse. The deputy leans in close as the receptionist clicks play. Silence fills the room as the grainy black and white video starts. They fast forward until they see Angela exit the building. She walks out alone.

The deputy watches closely seeing her alive for the first time. She's in her late 20s with a thin frame and shoulder-length brown hair. She's wearing a loose hoodie and walking fast. like she already knows where she's going. The deputy's eyes dart to a small car in the lot. Angela heads straight for it. A young white man, maybe in his late 20s, leans over, pushes the passenger door open, and Angela jumps inside.

The deputy clinched his fist in a small triumph. Her mother had already told him Angela had been seen by a friend that afternoon, sometime between 2 and 5 p.m. Now he knew how she got there. He just needed to find out who the man driving was. He asked the receptionist to pause the video before the car drove out of view. There, he shouted, pointing at the license plate. A little while later, the deputy gets back to the station.

He slumps in his office chair and jiggles the mouse. Then he logs into the Department of Motor Vehicles database. He types in the license plate number from the grainy video. and hits enter. He sits back in his chair and rubs his eyes. It's already been such a long day. Before he can finish, he hears the familiar ding of his search results. He blinks a few times to regain his focus and looks at the screen.

There's a name. Nathan, James, Gilmore. 22 years old, lives in Osage. The deputy scratches his head, doubting, the lead. He has no criminal record other than a few minor traffic tickets. He sits up abruptly, noticing one detail. Nathan had a court appearance on the schedule. One 15 p.m., the very day Angela was released. So, he was there, he thinks, and they definitely crossed paths. The deputy printed out a picture of Nathan and hurried out the door. Before long, he was at Angela's friend,

house, the last place she went before reappearing on that trail. He knocked on the door, and a woman with tired eyes answered. She invited him inside. They sat around the kitchen table, and he asked her again about the last time she saw Angela. The woman cleared her throat briefly and said, She showed up sometime after two. She changed her clothes, ate some food, and then left. She said she was headed to St. Ansker with some guy.

Did you know him? he asked, as he shuffled through the files. She said she didn't, but described him as white, young, and quiet. He pulled a photo of Nathan from his stack of papers. Could this be the guy? He said. She took the picture from his hand and moved it closer to her squinting eyes. After a few seconds, she handed it back and said, If that isn't him, it looks just like him.

On August 19th, 2022, almost a year and a half after Angela was last seen, investigators knocked on Nathan Gilmore's door. When he answered, they showed him the search warrant and asked to talk, and he agreed. Inside the house and Osage, the rooms are dim and orderly. The floorboard creaks under the officer's boot as one deputy stops to look at the whiteboard hanging on the living room wall. He calls to the others pointing to a drawing on the upper left-hand corner. He describes the drawing of a goat's head centered in a pentagram. Across the drawing are painted red spatters. Beside the drawing are a set of numbers.

0-4-06 and what looks like coordinates, 43.3 and negative 92.8. The investigators stood in front of it for a a long time. They collected the whiteboard. Forensics pulled GPS data from Nathan's account and discovered that on April 6th, 2021, the same night Angela disappeared, it was northwest of the Greenbelt Trail at 7.21 p.m. and southeast of the park at 8.37 p.m. that night. Three months later, his GPS placed him at that trail again. On the very day, the skull was discovered. He even spoke with law enforcement at the scene.

He told police he was just curious. But the data was saying otherwise, and the mystery of the skull on the stick would soon be solved. A detective sits across from Nathan in his living room. His home fills with the sounds of officers rooting through everything. He starts an audio recorder and grabs a pen and paper. He looks up at Nathan. He's pale with an average build.

He looks younger than expected, he thinks to himself. He doesn't look dangerous, but he doesn't look nervous either. Just flat. The detective starts simple. Do you know Angela Bradbury? Have you ever been to the Greenbelt River Trail? Nathan's answers are short and inconsistent. First, he says he doesn't know her.

Then he admits he picked someone up near the trail. He says he dropped her off a few blocks from a friend's house. The detective jots down brief notes as Nathan talks. He says he had lunch with his mom and then went back to work. Nathan rings his hands, waiting for the detective to fill the silence. They don't. They just let him squirm for a moment before laying a photo of his drawing on the table. He asks,

What do these numbers mean? He points to the numbers, 04-06 with a loud tap. That could be interpreted as April 6th. The last day anybody saw Angela alive. Nathan's demeanor changes when he says this. Suddenly, he's not fidgeting anymore. The detective then points to the other numbers, the ones that look like coordinates.

And he says, 43.3 degrees north, negative 92.8 degrees west is the exact GPS location of her remains. Each number was a breadcrumb, a confession in code. Later, investigators would uncover Snapchat messages to his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend that hinted at violence and a disturbing lack of remorse. It read, You'll be looking like the body they found outside Mitchell, boy.

Another message uncovered expressed that Nathan was sexually aroused by the sound a person makes while dying from a neck wound. But even without those, Nathan was already unraveling. He stared blankly back at the detective, rigid. Then he relaxed, sighed, and started to speak. I met someone. I stabbed her in the neck, and then I went back to work. I never even knew her name until she was reported missing.

The words landed like static, emotionless, and clean. He didn't apologize or even try to explain. It was easy, he said. Not the worst thing I've ever done. The detective clicked his pen closed and stood up. He already knew what had happened. Angela trusted this man. She got into his car and he drove her out of town, into the quiet, into the trail.

Maybe she followed him willingly, maybe not. But once there, on the secluded trail, he stabbed her in the neck, quick and deep. She collapsed and he stood over her, listening to the air bubble from her throat as she choked and her body seized. She died face down in the tall grass as the sun flickered through the canopy above. He hid the body and left it behind. But something pulled him back. He returned later under the cover of dusk, dug up the body, separated the head,

and mounted it on a stick just off the trail. How long it sat there? Nobody really knows. But on July 12, 2021, a young girl riding her bike found it, and Nathan was there too. Watching. Nathan Gilmore was arrested. He would eventually take a plea deal, reducing his charge to second-degree murder because they couldn't prove he planned it.

On October 16, 2023, Nathan Gilmore was sentenced to 50 years in prison, required to serve at least 35 years before parole, and ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution to Angela's family. During a sentencing, Angela's father stood up and said, You did not stab my daughter in an act of self-defense or even rage, but to feed your own sadistic appetite. I will forever live with the fact that your face was the last face she saw. Now the woods are quiet again. The trail still cuts through the trees.

The stick is gone. But the story of what was placed on it remains. If you enjoyed the show, please consider joining Plus at swordendscale.com slash plus. But if you can't, consider leaving us a positive review on your preferred listening platform. sweet dreams and good night