True Crime with Kimbyr - Halloween Horror: The Tragic Fate of Nikki Hutchings: Part 3

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

The truth behind Nikki Hutchings’ Halloween nightmare finally comes to light in the dramatic conclusion of True Crime with Kimbyr. After a relentless investigation, the chilling reality of what happened to Nikki is exposed. But was justice truly served? And what lasting impact did this horrifying case leave behind? Kimbyrleigha breaks down the final moments of the case, the courtroom drama, and the unanswered questions that still haunt this tragedy. Tune in for the shocking conclusion of this heart breaking true crime story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The apprehended him a few days later on March 12th not to tip off that Jenny helped them. More in-depth background checks revealed that Lauren was a twice convicted S-offender who was sentenced to nearly two years in prison in 1995 for first and third-degree force intercourse. Go look it up. It's not good. The victims were 13 to 16. Yeah. And after his release from prison in 1997, he dropped out of the offender program altogether and he stopped reporting to his probation officer. for quite some time. He had also been convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm, theft, and giving false information to police. So they're thinking they're probably not going to get someone that's going to cooperate with them with this investigation.

But they were wrong because as soon as Lauren sat down, he was in tears. He was begging them to believe that he had nothing to do with this. Here's a clip of that so you can see his demeanor. He's saying someone else is involved in that person, is probably going to try to pin everything on Lauren. So who's this other person? Well, according to Lauren,

it was none other than his very best friend, Craig Whiting. You know, the guy who came to pick Nicky up the night of the party? The close friend of hers who knew her family for years, who Jim called the big, goofy, good guy. Why would he have a reason to hurt Nikki? These people were all close. Well, Detective Kandel, who's already spoken to Craig back when he did his initial investigation,

calls him back in for a follow-up interview. And he gets right to the point. He's like, listen, we know what happened. And your close friends with this family, they took you in when you had nothing. It's time for you to do the right thing and admit what you have done to their daughter. And you could physically see him take this deep breath.

And detectives thought, okay, he is going to spill. They asked him, who is the mastermind behind Nikki's disappearance? And he said the mastermind was Lauren. So how was Craig involved? Well, according to him, Lauren asked Craig to help him get rid of Nikki. And when Detective Kandel asked, well, what does that mean to you get rid of take care of her? And Craig just says, probably killing her. And he's so nonchalant.

But why, though? Who masterminded this? Who masterminded would be large? What do you say that's going to do her? He just said he was going to take care of her. What is doing away with her beauty? But I tried to kill her. Craig said that it all started.

when Nikki, in his words, began spreading rumors about Lauren that he had touched one of the children inappropriately that Nikki babysat for, and if that got out, it's something that could put Lauren back in jail. Nikki babysat for a few of the people who lived at Lauren's, and one of the mother's young children came to her and told her that Lauren did something inappropriate and took pictures of her without clothes.

Well, this was serious. Nikki was also in fear for the children due to drug-related, activities that she witnessed going on at that house. So this was it. Nikki brought this information to the mother of that child, and the mother confronted Lauren about it. Now, I don't know who this child was, whether this was one of Jenny's children,

you know, the one that's not biologically Lauren's, because this was a six-year-old, and we know that Jenny had a six-year-old at the time. Because if you recall on the wiretap, Lauren explicitly said that Nikki was trying to ruin his life with Jenny. That could merely mean that he knew if he went to jail, they would no longer be a couple, or it could be something more.

Whoever was whose child was involved. When their mother confronted Lauren, he went into a rage. He was punching walls, and he asked them, who told you this? When they admitted it was Nikki, he told them he would kill Nikki. So this does sound like what Jenny admitted to. Then he went on to say something so disgusting and chilling. He said that he had holes in the ground around Smith Rock and Sun River that could swallow Nikki of him.

It turned out that when detectives looked into these allegations, they were not rumors. Nikki had gone one step further and filed an actual complaint with the Oregon Department of Human Services, alleging that Lauren was inappropriate with a child and exposed them to a drug-filled environment. But how does Craig fit into all of this? Remember, he doesn't even have a criminal record. And when they were waiting for him to hopefully confess everything that happened, they stumble upon a very frightening detail about Krook.

Craig's past. One that makes them question whether he could be capable of hurting anyone, especially a woman, and I was shocked when I found this out. It sounds too insane to be real, but I assure you, it is the truth. Back when Craig was only 11 years old, he and his mother, Margaret, who went by Peggy and was 38 at the time, were living with Peggy's boyfriend, 40-year-old John Mata, in his double-wide mobile home in Anchorage, Alaska. Peggy went missing between April 25th and 27th of 1992. And when she didn't show up at work, her sister Suzanne was alerted

and she ended up calling Peggy's boyfriend who told her that Peggy had gone on a drunken vacation in Seattle and he had been receiving calls from her that she was going to return on May 28th. But when she didn't show up, her coworkers filed a missing person's report. She had been gone for five weeks at this time. On May 30th, Peggy's sister flew out to Anchorage and showed up unannounced

at the mobile home where her nephew Craig was living with John. When John opened the door, he apologized immediately for the terrible smell and said that Peggy's dogs, his words, pottyed inside the house. At this point, Suzanne hadn't even noticed the smell at all, but this whole situation seemed very suspicious. So she took 11-year-old Craig with her and she left. A few days later, Suzanne went back to the mobile home to get some of her nephew's things. And that's when she noticed,

entire place had been cleaned from top to bottom and it reeked of pine saw. Again, John says, I'm sorry. I was just trying to get rid of the doggie smell. Well, Anchorage Police Department learned that John was on parole for burglary, robbery, and theft. Plus, after interviewing several people, there were so many inconsistencies in his story. Not only that, friends of Peggy came forward and said that she told them that her and John had been fighting in the weeks leading up to her disappearance. And one time, he tried to choke her. Without going into too much detail to derail from Nikki's case,

I'll tell you what you can probably guess. Craig's mom, Peggy, she was dead. And poor Craig had been living among his mother's corpse this entire time. John had crammed her into the crawl space underneath the double white trailer. And then he lied to Craig and said that his mother ran off and left him. Can you imagine at 11 years old feeling like your mom, your mom did that to you. And all the while, John was going down there and pouring bottle after bottle of pine saw all over Peggy's remains to hide the smell of decomposition. Once John knew that they found Peggy,

he told the police he killed her, but it was all in self-defense. Isn't it always? His story was that on the night of the killing, Peggy came home drunk and attacked him in his sleep. She was yelling at him, she was berating him for not going to a bar with her. John said he had to fight back. So he grabbed whatever was nearby and that was a large, heavy metal ashtray. And he took it and he swung it at Peggy and smashed her head in. But to his surprise, she continued to yell and struggle. So he stuffed socks in her mouth to silence her. As the situation escalated, he tied her arms and hands with rope. And then he tied the rope around her neck, ultimately choking her to death. Then he wrapped her body in plastic and lowered her into that crawl space beneath

the double wide trailer. That is so disgusting. And poor Craig, we will never know what he witnessed. If he was home that night, he surely must have heard something behind those thin walls. So after John's confession, he was sentenced to 99 years in prison, and there was little Craig in the courtroom, holding a box containing his mother's ashes. So knowing that Craig his own mother had been murdered, would he ever condone an act like this? Did he really have anything to do with this? Or was his older best buddy trying to pin it all on him? Well, back in the interview room, Detective Kandel asked Craig, did Nikki do anything to you to upset you? And he said, no, she hadn't. What he admitted to next blows my mind. He said that he figured since Lauren is his best friend,

he should be able to do anything for best friend, even murder. Yeah. Craig admitted he, he He looked to Lauren as his older brother, and if a brother asked you to do something, you help them out. If you can do it, you do it. And when bluntly asked, even commit murder, Craig said yes. But had he or was he just covering for Lauren, they needed more to go on. But wow, the lengths that some people will go for loyalty. Detective Kandel said this was deeply disturbing to him. It would be for most of us who are human beings.

To get a confession from Lauren, they told him. told him that they had him on tape admitting that he had gotten rid of Nikki. He refused to admit that he said that, but we know he did because we heard it and they were there. And they saw his demeanor change. That's when they told him, we talked to Craig. And it's time to allow Nikki's parents to bury their daughter. But it would take two whole days so they could piece together exactly what happened.

But they got it out of them with the most important piece of evidence where Nikki was. To avoid being sentenced to death, Craig agreed to show Detective Vincent and Candel where they buried Nikki's body. The detectives made note that Craig's remorse? Well, there was none. It was like he accidentally ran over a cat. And that would be a lot for me, but what they meant was that it seemed like this wasn't a big deal to him.

He didn't have an ounce of compassion. How can people like this exist? I don't know. But meanwhile, Lauren was still making confessions about exactly what happened, and I will tell you everything after I explain where Chris. Craig instructed the detectives to look. It was a very remote area, about 20 miles out in the middle of a forest off a fire road. Here's the location I was able to pinpoint.

There is nothing out here. This area is southeast of the town of Sun River. And remember, Jenny said that Lauren told her he had holes in Sun River that would swallow Nikki up. This is probably only about 35 to 40 minutes away from where they had that Halloween party. But the detectives admitted they would have never looked here. More than a dozen officers, crime scene technicians, and search personnel went out there to assist and a cadaver dog was brought out to sniff for human

remains. Craig led them to an area in the middle of the trees where he said that him and Lauren made sure to put a partially burned log over the site where Nikki was. But this had been almost three years and there was a lot out there. I'm going to show you on the screen if you're watching and not just listening, but there's a lot of logs out there and they didn't know exactly where the location was, but it didn't take them long. to narrow it down. And they began digging using shovels and buckets in a 4 by 6 area.

Here are some pictures of this excavation on the screen. Finally, that evening in a shallow grave, officers found probable human remains that they believe belong to Nicole Hutchings. Now it was time to hear the whole story and to charge both Lauren Bowers and Craig Whiting with the murder of Nicole Hutchings. Putting together both confessions,

detectives were able to ascertain that Lauren wanted to silence Nikki. She was doing all she could to defend this innocent child and keep them safe, only to be met with a monster who would rather have her destroyed than to face the consequences of his own disgusting actions. So back in early October 2004, Lauren devised a plan with his bestie Craig to get rid of Nikki. They needed a way to get her alone though. So they thought of something simple, something innocuous, and they came up with throwing a big Halloween party and inviting the entire neighborhood all of their friends including Nikki but the night before this big bash they went out to that remote location and they dug a three-foot grave a shallow three-foot grave knowing that they

planned to kill Nikki the very next night to put her inside there it's so evil and heartless then on the night of October 31st Craig was the one that went over there and convinced Nikki to come have some fun Lauren did his best to stay kind of out of sight that night, and he let Craig handle serving Nikki drink after drink of what they called Jungle Punch. But Nicky's was spiked with Vicodin, and it didn't take long for poor Nikki to be barely coherent.

She was unable to walk without assistance, and she was totally out of it. And that's when they got her into Lauren's truck. And Craig told the investigators he was hammered, and he drove Lauren and it incapacitated Nikki out to the makeshift gravesite. Once they were there, Craig agreed to make it quick. He wanted to get it over quickly, so they dragged her out of the vehicle to where the grave was dug. Then Craig took what's called a tire buddy.

This is a heavy metal-tipped instrument like a club. It's used to check tire pressure on vehicles. I'm showing one on the screen. It kind of looks like a bat or a wooden stick. It's 16 inches long, and he took it and swung it at the back of Nikki's head at full force. He thought he could kill her in one strike. But when she was knocked down, she proceeded to get back up. She was not dead.

That's when Lauren grabbed this club-like item. He grabbed it right out of Craig's hands and began pounding Nikki again and again until she was unconscious. But before Nikki stopped breathing, the men stripped her down and dumped her into the hole in the ground. And then they covered her with dirt. This woman was buried alive. She suffocated to death all alone. out in those dark woods after two of her closest friends tricked her on a night reserved for tricks of a more innocent kind. It's unfathomable. It's pure evil. By Tuesday afternoon on March

13th, both men were arrested and charged with one count each of aggravated murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and two counts of first-degree kidnapping. They were held without bail. The aggravated circumstances related to the deliberate cruelty involved in this case and that a weapon was was used on a vulnerable victim. The aggravated murder count alleges that these men were trying to cover up the crimes of child neglect and criminal mistreatment by killing Nikki. Lauren was also charged in relation to that young child. Excavation of the site was continuing on Tuesday evening and the remains were sent to the

Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office for confirmation of identification. They said it would be weeks before authorities would know if the remains were 100% confirmed to be Nichols. The cause of death was still under investigation. They also obtained a search warrant for a Dodge Travelcraft Motor Home that was near Lone Cow Drive, which I'm showing here. This is where Lauren was apparently living at the time of his arrest, and it was believed that this was the vehicle that Nikki was transported in and that the instrument that was used

to try to kill her was still inside. Police seized evidence putting it into brown paper bags, and then they impounded that vehicle for processing at the crime lab. That night, around 9.45, detectives showed up at the Hutchings front door. Jim knew when he saw them that this was something bad. Amanda looked right at the detectives and said, please don't tell me that my sister's dead. And they looked at her just shaking their heads back and forth, and she knew.

And right then, she collapsed onto the floor. But once everyone was able to gain their composure, the detectives had more bad news. They revealed who was responsible for Nikki's murder. And when her family found out who had done this, they were shocked. Craig. Goofy Craig. Who was cared for in their own home?

How? And Lauren? Nikki's best friend. Why? Jim said he wished they would both rot in hell. The family was then led into the coroner's office of this time. And Jim will never forget seeing Nikki's dolphin tattoo. And knowing that this time, it was really her.

It was unbelievable. It was the worst news of family could have gotten. But at least she was found. And Jim said, she is home. But he also said he would like to save taxpayers' money and take care of these monsters himself. That is how angry he was towards both of them. Because how could they do such a thing?

Amanda said her sister died a hero. She was killed for protecting a child, for doing the right thing. And it reminded me so much of Ali Lamont. I talked about her case in the beginning of this month. Another very sad story. They did not deserve this. Our memorial service was held for Nikki on Friday, March 23rd, and her family and friends gathered around to say their goodbyes and to share memories of Nikki.

It would be nearly another year until both Lauren and Craig pleaded guilty to Nikki's murder. Lauren would plead guilty in December of 2007, but he did say he never, did anything to that child. He said in court, quote, I want to apologize to give my deepest regrets for the pain and suffering I caused Nicole and her family. I deserve the punishment that has been given, end quote. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Then Craig finally pleaded guilty in February of 2008. And the circuit court judge, Alta Brady, was presiding over his sentencing trial. And they were trying to actually decide if he would spend the rest of his life in prison or someday have a chance to get out.

And I'm sitting here thinking, life for sure. But his lawyer brought up the fact that Craig's own mother was murdered. And he tried to use that as some kind of bargaining chip, some reason that this man should be allowed a second chance. But so much was set forth by the Deputy District Attorney in this case. There was a pathologist who testified that they found dirt in Nikki's lungs. and I was stunned when I heard that. Because I was thinking after all that time passed that her organs wouldn't even be there after decomposition,

and that led me to conduct some very questionable Google searches. But apparently there are ways to tell. Even if they couldn't, these men admitted she wasn't dead when they dropped her into that grave. Now, they weren't actually able to tell the cause of death because of how decomposed Nikki's body was. So that's why it was a little confusing to me whether or not they were able to tell where the dirt came from.

Because if a person's put in a grave and they're covered with dirt, that made me a little bit confused. But in my opinion, if the court accepted this testimony to be reliable and this expert witness was qualified, then I'm going to assume that their testimony was truthful and there was a way that this could be determined. So the judge concluded that this was premeditated in every sense of the word. It was cold-blooded and that Craig would still be a danger to others

if he was released from prison in the future, because he was in her words, quote, dysfunctionally susceptible to the influence of others, end quote, and I had never heard it put that way, but yes, indeed he was. This is pure pressure to another level. And he didn't even need to be pressured. He was asked and he complied. Craig Whiting was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Nikki's mother, Robin, sobbed through the whole sentencing hearing. And then she turned and hugged her family. And once it was over, she was so happy. that Nikki could finally rest in peace. And she thanked the deputy district attorney for all that she had done. The family didn't know that Nikki was buried alive until that hearing. It was so hard to hear, especially for a loved one, because even for me to imagine that horrific image in my mind of Nikki's final moments

and how scared she must have been. In other cases, I've actually heard people say that it's a good thing if a victim is drugged or they're unconscious, they don't know what's happening. But honestly, either way, this is heartbreaking. And the family was glad that it was over, that these two men would never see the light of day. Amanda said that maybe now she could go back to college after she declined that full scholarship back in 2004

when Nikki was still missing. I just hope that somehow this family is able to find some peace. And I'm so sorry for everyone, Nikki's family, and all of her loved ones. And I thank you all so. very much for giving her your time to listening to this story. I want to thank you all for being here. I will see you in my next video. Bye.