Who Killed Stephanie Wasilishin? (CrimeCon Live)

On July 9, 1993, Stephanie Wasilishin, a mother of two, was shot in Sedona, Arizona, with her boyfriend present as the only other adult in the home. Prosecutors ultimately declined to file charges, citing insufficient evidence and conflicting accounts from the suspect. Ruled a homicide by the medical examiner, the case has remained unresolved for over three decades, with Stephanie's daughter Nikki continuing to fight for answers into her mother's death. For this week's Crime Weekly News, we sat down with Nikki herself at this year's CrimeCon to talk about her mother's case.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Good afternoon, CrimeCon. Please welcome the co-hosts of Crime Weekly, former police detective and licensed private investigator Derrick Levasseur and true crime content creator Stephanie Harlow.

• 0:46Derrick Levasseur?

  So, this case, Stephanie, you want to give them the rundown? We have a guest we're going to be bringing out. If you were here last year, we did Megan Trussell as well. That case, is Vanessa here by any chance? There's Vanessa. So, we like this whole format of incorporating a story where you can actually meet with the people who are affected by it because for us, that's what Crime Weekly and CrimeCon is all about, right? It's not just about sensationalizing tragedy, it's about bringing exposure to cases that maybe you're not familiar with so we can use this robust community to make a difference. And I think this case reflects that.

• 1:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, I'm really excited, actually, because I covered this case on my own YouTube channel and while I was going through it, I really wanted to get Derrick's opinion on it because of the police work done. And after he read through the synopsis and everything, he was like, "Yeah, this is something that we need to talk about."

• 1:43Derrick Levasseur?

  Absolutely.

• 1:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, this is the case of Stephanie Wasilishin. This happened in the early morning hours of July 9th, 1993, when 32-year-old Stephanie was shot in the neck at point-blank range inside her home on Coffee Pot Drive in Sedona, Arizona. Now, at that time, Stephanie's two daughters were in the house. 10-year-old Nikki, who you're going to meet today, she's not 10 anymore.

• 2:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  And three-year-old Christina. The only other adult present was Stephanie's live-in boyfriend, Russell Peterson. So Russell called 911 at 1:40 a.m., but there is some evidence that he first called his father. He went on to have several interviews with the police department, the Sodron Police Department, and of course, gave different varying accounts of what happened that night. At first, he said there was a struggle for the gun. He said he came home and he and Stephanie were sharing some wine and they were fine and there was no issue. And then she went into the bedroom and then came out and pointed a gun at him. And he was like, "What are you doing, Stephanie?" And then she shot once above his head.

• 2:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  And then he followed her into the bedroom and they wrestled with the gun. And then it went off. So he's kind of saying this was an accident because we were wrestling with the gun. And then the story changed and shifted. Now, the physical evidence, I think overwhelmingly pointed away from both accident and suicide because one of his later stories was, "Oh, I think she might have done this to herself." Which, given where the wound was and the trajectory of it...

• 3:18Derrick Levasseur?

  We're going to talk about the forensics, for sure.

• 3:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, the interesting part is, once again, the wound was a contact shot to the left side of Stephanie's neck. But gunshot residue was found only on her non-dominant left hand. And it was in a pattern consistent with a defensive posture. Police reenactment showed that she could not have fired the weapon at the angle of the wound. They brought in a female police officer who was around the same height and size as Stephanie. And they just couldn't do it, based on the type of gun it was and using your non-dominant hand at that angle, it just wasn't possible. Now, three-year-old Christina, Nikki's little sister, she first told the officer on scene, "Poppy killed mommy," and she repeated it to detectives hours later.

• 4:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Despite the medical examiner's ruling and also, obviously, the little girl's firsthand account, because it seems she may have witnessed this.

• 4:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep.

• 4:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  And the investigator's own documented suspicion, by the way, because even you could tell, the detectives at first were kind of like, uh, something's going on here. You could tell that they did not think it was on the up and up. Russell Peterson was never arrested or charged. The case was never presented to a grand jury, and it remains officially open to this day with the Sedona Police Department.

• 4:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And we have a lot more to talk about it. We're going to get into the specifics of it. Some of you may know Nikki. We're going to bring her out right now. Actually, let's introduce her. So, come on out, Nikki Wasilishin, please, to the stage. Perfect. Now Nikki, before we get into it, you are TikTok famous.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  I did.

• 4:59Derrick Levasseur?

  You're a little TikTok famous.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Okay, I like that.

• 5:01Derrick Levasseur?

  And, uh, and do you, is your podcast, is your show called Poppy Called Mommy? Is it Killed Mommy? Is that what it is?

• 5:07Speaker 03

  It absolutely is. The first thing my little sister said to me in the back of the police car, she kept repeating it, "Poppy killed mommy." That stuck with me for 33 years, so I figured that should be the name of the podcast.

• 5:18Derrick Levasseur?

  It's fitting, when we think about it. And Christina was three years old at the time.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 5:22Derrick Levasseur?

  So, you guys are so in tune, I figured, you guys are all part-time detectives at this point. How many times does a three-year-old come out and say that if she didn't actually witness it? We all were there at one point. A lot of us have children. How many times is a child that young an age going to say something that they didn't personally witness? They don't have that frontal lobe yet to do that. There's no time to think about it. They're just going to basically regurgitate whatever they saw. So, for me, that in and of itself is so critical to this case, even though it seems like it's just the surface of what we're talking about right now. But yeah, I think it's extremely fitting for what you're doing, Nikki, because at the end of the day, that's the best witness you could have. She's not influenced. She doesn't have no biases. She's only going to tell

• 6:05Derrick Levasseur?

  you what she saw. And yet, even with everything else we're going to talk about today, when Stephanie brought this to me and I thought... For sure. Oh, yeah. Well, he must have been arrested by this point. And he hasn't been. And then to hear some of the responses from the people in charge of the case as a former investigator is extremely, it's troubling for me. And I think that's why we sometimes have to go outside the box and do a podcast or do TikTok or come to CrimeCon and talk about it. And maybe after today, we're gonna actually have this on Crime Weekly as well. Some people will get in trouble. There'll be some political pressure, which normally happens. And then we start getting phone calls. And that's, that's the hope.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  That really is the hope. That's all I've really hoped for, for 33 years. And after 28 years of inaction, I got involved. I had a midlife crisis. I wanted to know what happened. I started on TikTok and then launched into a podcast. Now we're here. I will not stop speaking until there is some kind of accountability. So I really appreciate this opportunity. Thank you.

• 7:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Tell us, tell us just a little bit about your mom. I know we

• 7:04Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 7:05Derrick Levasseur?

  We want to hear about her as a person more than just this particular incident.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  Thank you for asking too. My aunt is an attendance, one of my mom's oldest friends.

• 7:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Where she at?

• 7:14Speaker 03

  Aunt Wendy, Cheryl, raise your hands.

• 7:16Derrick Levasseur?

  Hey.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  This is very emotional for my family.

• 7:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Thanks for coming. Thanks for doing this.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  My aunt has fought for 33 years. She never gave up. I'm the third generation Wasilishin woman that has taken this up. And I just took it to social media. But if you want to know about my mom, she was like the cool mom, dude. She had me at 19. She was always gorgeous. If she didn't dress up and do her hair, like there was no reason to leave the house. Holidays were a big deal. She made our own Easter baskets. She never bought the pre-made kind. She encouraged me to read at such a young age. Do you guys remember Goosebumps? Fear Street? Christopher Pike? Every time there was a new one released, I would come home from school and it would be on my bed. She was the she was the perfect mother. And everybody wanted their mom to be mine. They wanted sleepovers at my house because she was cool.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  She also liked to pick out my wardrobe and make me look like Melissa Joan Hart from Clarissa Explains It All. She was that epic cool mom. And it's just, it's a tragedy that she was taken from her family. And nobody seems to care. Until now.

• 8:18Derrick Levasseur?

  People here do. That's for sure.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 8:22Derrick Levasseur?

  Absolutely.

• 8:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  So I really want to talk about the whole process of everything because we have Derek here now. He's been in law enforcement and he can give a good perspective and you've struggled with the Sedona Police Department, yes?

• 8:36Speaker 03

  That's an understatement, Stephanie.

• 8:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Give me a little quick synopsis of the timeline of what your involvement with the Sedona Police Department has been and what they've kind of done because I think they've kind of given you the runaround of it.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  Well, like, never mind the 28 years that my aunt was knocking on their door. Let's just talk about the five years since I decided to get involved at the age of like 38. I reached out. My first email to the Sedona Police Department was very hopeful. "Thank you so much for looking." I was under the impression they were reinvestigating in 2020. So hopeful. My response back was, "They were managing my expectations. We're really sorry this has happened. It's been a long time and it sounds like you didn't see anything so we don't need to talk to you." That's what lit the fire. When I realized that they didn't even want to talk to me. They weren't going to interview me. They didn't want to talk to any of my mom's friends, my father, nobody that could put context behind that night. And it was very troubling and I sat at my desk that day and I realized that I was going

• 9:32Speaker 03

  to have to quit my job and my company as a pet sitter and become a social media true crime content creator and I didn't even know how to start.

• 9:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, and listen, that to me right there is mistake number one, reading this because when we're thinking about the possibility that she possibly killed herself, wouldn't it be important to go speak to the people closest to her? What was her mindset at the time? Was she in a good place? What was going on in her life? Was there anything that we need to know about that may suggest she was struggling? Because, listen, that does happen. And yeah, so you would want to go there and explore that theory. I have no problem exploring all theories. That's what we should be doing regardless of how unlikely they may be. And so to not at least check that box, to say, "Yeah, we spoke with everyone in her life who would have known her best and yeah, there were no signs of any type of depression or

• 10:20Derrick Levasseur?

  anxiety or suggestions of self-harm, nothing of that." And the fact that they thought that wasn't necessary, but yet they're willing to entertain the possibility that she did kill herself is unprofessional, in my opinion.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  Extremely unprofessional and they've kind of shut myself And my family out. They don't want to talk to us anymore because you know, what am I doing? I'm making them look bad. I mean, come on.

• 10:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, there is an ego with it, unfortunately, and I think that's, there's a lot of people here that are in the profession that come out and speak against it, and I think it's important to police the police. You know, we have to do that.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  Amen.

• 10:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Based on the police reports, in my opinion, it doesn't seem that the police ever really were entertaining the suicide theory. Uh, it just kind of got introduced by Russell randomly after

• 11:02Derrick Levasseur?

  After some thought.

• 11:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  After a lot of time and then he's like, and I talked to this person and I was wondering, I think maybe actually she did. He couldn't remember anything specific. Where did you struggle? Where did you grab her when you were struggling for the gun? What, what hand was she holding it? He couldn't remember any of that because he didn't want to pigeonhole himself into anything that the evidence could prove he was lying about, right? It seems the police always thought like, yeah, it definitely feels like Russell had something to do with this, or it might, the gun might have accidentally gone off in a struggle, which I, I don't personally believe. Now, if you have, you look at what, what the relationship was like with Stephanie and Russell leading up to what happened to her, and you look at the place they were in as a couple

• 11:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  and in their lives together, you can kind of tell this was a relationship that was fractured. It was probably on its way out because your father, Craig, right?

• 11:55Speaker 03

  Wow, I'm glad you asked about that. Yes, on this night when my mother is very unhappy with her current situation already, she first calls my Aunt Wendy and vents about how unhappy she is. She wants to leave this guy.

• 12:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  This is hours before she shot.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  Around 7:30 in the morning. Okay, so around eight, she's done with Wendy. At 8:06, she decides to call her ex, Craig. Who knows why? Maybe just to BS, maybe to talk about me. I don't know. But in that 106 minute phone call, my mom and my dad reconciled. She told him about Russell, how he was wetting the bed, he was a drunk, he was married to his work, he didn't care, it was neglect, it was on and on. And my dad's like, "Why don't you just come on back, Stace? I have an empty room." His girlfriend had moved out at the time. It was like the perfect storm of events for them to come together on that night, reconcile, and her to tell him, "Well, you know what? Russell leaves for Ithaca, New York for this culinary training trip this weekend.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  While he's gone, I'm gonna pack up the kids, the dog, the cat, and I'll be there that weekend."

• 12:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, can we talk about Ithaca for a second? Because I did some deep dive into this.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  Girl, I know, you went nuts.

• 13:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  It bothered me so much because Russell was making this Taste of La Cordon Bleu at Cornell University in Ithaca. And I have been one of the few chefs chosen to go to this very prestigious program. And I can't obviously miss it. And she was so mad, Stephanie was so mad that I was going to this thing. Well, come to find out, because I live in New York and I was going to Cornell every week because my dog Rosie was sick and they have a vet there, an animal hospital, and they do treatments. And I'm like, let me talk to people while we're here and find out what this is about. Because this sounds, there's no La Cordon Bleu program. It's a completely different thing. It's from France.

• 13:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  They're not just gonna let Cornell use their whole branding. And as it turns out, there were chef programs, but they were programs that you would apply for, like filled an application, which he said later when he's talking to the police, that's what made me think, he said, "Oh, I found it in Food and Wine Magazine, this application." And he filled it out. And then they're like, "Well, how much was it?" And he's like, "Well, I paid this much." Well, turns out, you just applied for it. They had space in this program at this session at this time. You sent a check, which was way more than you as a family unit had to spend at that time. And then you were gonna go away for two weeks, where you're not going to be bringing in money. And Stephanie and Russell were, you know, barely making it by at this point. They were able to pay rent and pay the bills, but not to pay for this fake Taste of La Cordon Bleu program.

• 14:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  And then also have Russell be away from work for two weeks, not bringing in anything, and leave Stephanie, who's gotta work, because she's the pastry chef at the restaurant he works at, she's gotta work, leave her with two children, and no childcare or really, you know, help from him at least. So that was the crux of the issue. Not that she was, as he tried to make it seem, jealous of him, because his career was skyrocketing, and she wanted to go to the fake La Taste of Cordon Bleu, the class in Ithaca, New York. No, he was like, "I'm gonna go to this class, I'm gonna take off and leave you." And it wasn't this prestigious thing that he had, you know, been handpicked for. He applied for it. And they were like, "Yeah, you've been a chef for ten..." That was the only, I talked to the people at Ithaca, the only thing you needed to do

• 15:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  was prove you'd been a chef, a working chef for ten plus years, which he was able to do. So, that's it. And he, it's, it's actually kind of ironic because I, I would assume he did not go to La Taisea Court on Blue.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  Oh, no, no, no.

• 15:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  No. So, the one thing he was fighting so hard for, and yes, he was an alcoholic, he drank all the time. But when the police come calling, he tries to make it seem like, no, Stephanie's the one who's drinking all the time. And, "Oh, actually, I found this bottle of alcohol in the bathroom. She was hiding it from me." No, why would a grown woman who is living in her own house with her partner, who also is grown and also drinks quite a bit? Why would she be hiding alcohol? So, none of it made sense. And it looks like when he got home, I think Stephanie probably was like, "Have fun in Ithaca. Me and the girls are gonna go to Craig." Because that's a man that's gonna take care of me.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  She sure did. My mom's talked, talked her mind. He came home and she was like, "I'm out." And what really triggered him was that, "I'm leaving, and I'm leaving with your kid." And that's what really, that's what made him grab the gun.

• 16:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Apparently Russell was a bed wetter too, right?

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. He, he liked to pee in the window.

• 16:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, the bed, a bed wetter?

• 16:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Shout out to my buddy Russ.

• 16:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  A sofa wetter?

• 16:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 16:27Speaker 03

  If, if you look at the crime scene photos, you see the, the blankets that my mom had to put over the couch 'cause he was notorious for peeing on the couch.

• 16:35Derrick Levasseur?

  Don't worry, Russ. Nobody's gonna see this.

• 16:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  And he was sleeping on the couch. So, they haven't, uh, Stephanie and Russell haven't, there's no kids here, right? They haven't had sex in eight months at this point, right? Because he's always so drunk that it's not working. He's sleeping on the couch. They're not in a good place in their relationship. You would think that this would be something the detectives would look at and say, "Hey, it's far more likely that he killed her because she was trying to leave than she killed herself because he was gonna go to Cornell for two weeks."

• 17:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. Look at it from two angles, right?

• 17:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  'Cause you can't live without Russell for two weeks. So, you'd rather end your life than be without Russell for two weeks. In fact... I think it would be a break. Hearing this man in interviews. It would be a break for, for two weeks.

• 17:16Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, this is the start, right? So you're looking for means, motive, and opportunity. So right now, we're looking at potential motives. You've already laid out, Nikki, the motive here, right? She was going to leave him.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  With the child.

• 17:27Derrick Levasseur?

  With his child. That could be enough for someone to harm or kill someone. Now, on the other hand, just to continue down both paths, explore them equally. What wasn't going on right at that point? She was in a good place. She had a good conversation with Craig. Probably optimistic about the future. She's going to reconcile with him. They were going to get away and be in a better situation. Does that align with a motive for possibly wanting to kill yourself only a few hours later?

• 17:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Three hours and forty-seven minutes later, she's DOA after getting off the phone with my dad.

• 17:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Why are you setting up plans if that's your intent? There's something leading up to that. So, just to be fair, exploring both possibilities, just from the motive perspective, what seems more likely at this point? Not even talking about forensics yet, right? Which is, to me, the most concrete evidence you can have in a case. But just as far as motive, what to you sounds more likely, right? I, I think it's pretty obvious.

• 18:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, in, in my opinion, I, I don't even think even the police ever considered, actually, the suicide theory as like

• 18:24Speaker 03

  No.

• 18:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  legitimate. I really don't. I, I think that it was a convenient way for them to be like, hey, we don't actually know what happened here. Like, we can't, uh, nail it down and say whether it was... It, it almost seemed like they were like, okay, was it an accident or did she kill herself? Or did this guy kill her? And you could see in the interactions that you sent me between, like, the DA and the police, where the, the police were kind of like, it seems like he definitely is not being honest. And it seems like there's definitely something going on here. And then, what do you believe the reason was for the district attorney to decide not to call a grand jury?

• 19:01Speaker 03

  Insufficient evidence.

• 19:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  But the evidence, if you look at it, right? Because the way it happened is Stephanie and Russell are in the living room when he says she points the gun at him. And then he follows her in, which again, somebody just shot a gun at you. I don't care if you're the biggest, bravest man that's ever walked this earth. I don't care if you're Thor. You're not gonna be like, "Let me follow this woman who has a gun in her hand and who just shot at me into a bedroom." Let me do that. That sounds like a really, "Maybe I can talk her down." She just shot at you. There's no, this is the time when you leave, you go to the neighbor's house, you call the police, and then wait for them to come so you can get your kids out and go.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  Did we talk about the size of the gun yet?

• 19:50Derrick Levasseur?

  44, you know, it was 44 Magnum.

• 19:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, Derek will know about that.

• 19:53Derrick Levasseur?

  I mean, but I don't want to skate over the fact that you're saying they never convened a grand jury because of, quote, "insufficient evidence."

• 19:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  Correct.

• 20:00Derrick Levasseur?

  So that right there, again, another problem. Because, yeah, that can be the case, but you can also convene a grand jury for investigative purposes, an investigative grand jury, where if you think you're getting close and you'd like to get more, you can use those powers to subpoena people to come into court under that grand jury and testify. And by putting them under oath and putting them in an uncomfortable position, now they may give up something that's tangible and something you can use moving forward, or may contradict one of their initial alibis. So even if that's true, which personally, not to bury the lead here, I don't think that's the case. I think circumstantially, you have enough here to paint a picture for a jury.

• 20:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  For a grand jury, yeah.

• 20:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Or even for a jury, in my opinion.

• 20:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  For a jury, for sure.

• 20:42Derrick Levasseur?

  To make it clear, I think he should have been charged. But if I'm just trying to find something here to give the benefit of the doubt, you could have convened an investigative grand jury, brought them in, gathered all the evidence, and then decided from there whether or not to indict. But yeah, the forensics, do you want to do the timeline first? Like, I know-

• 21:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I want to ask you one thing first, because we're talking about a lack of evidence. As a police officer, you're talking about a lack of evidence. What do you think about them never doing a GSR test on Russell?

• 21:08Derrick Levasseur?

  It's ridiculous.

• 21:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's ridiculous.

• 21:09Derrick Levasseur?

  But they did a GSR on her, on your mother, and we can get into that. The GSR was on her non-dominant hand. It was on her left hand and it appeared to be in a defensive posture from where the GSR was. Everyone here pretty much knows gunshot residue at this point. When the gun goes off in a certain distance from your hand, you'll have gunpowder on your hand under this this particular test. And so, again, when we think about suicide, I hate when investigators say, "Well, normally, the person will do it this way or that way." Everyone's different. But I can tell you more times than not in the suicides that I've done, if it's a firearm, they normally use their dominant hand. Because if they've had possession of that firearm before, that's what they're comfortable with.

• 21:54Derrick Levasseur?

  That's not even talking about the forensics that most of the time it's in the mouth or it's to the temple. She shot herself on the left side of her neck. If you're trying to kill yourself, and I'm not making, I'm not trying to make light of this, that's not the best way to do it, right? You're, you're gonna, there's a potential you could survive. So, and correct me, Nikki, if I'm wrong on this. You know this case better than I ever will. It was on the left side of her, of her neck. It was up from the left to the right.

• 22:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  It severed C3, C4, instantaneously dropped and was gone.

• 22:24Derrick Levasseur?

  And law enforcement did find a female officer, where they brought her in, they took measurements from her hand, and they tried to recreate this to see, is it possible that Stephanie did in fact do this? And from what I understand, that was not possible. The only way they were able to replicate that trajectory was by having someone else kind of participate in it to create the struggle.

• 22:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  She's holding it in her hand, but someone else pulls the trigger while she's holding it in her hand while there's this struggle.

• 22:54Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep, .44 Magnum. It's a big, heavy round, causes a lot of damage, and it was put up right to her skin on her neck.

• 23:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  And this is Russell's gun, right? And everybody who knew Stephanie was like, "No, this was not somebody who liked guns. She would never handle guns. She wasn't a fan." And Russell, in his police interview, he's like, "I don't like guns. I don't shoot guns." And they're like, "Well, where did this gun come from?" He's like, "It was a present from my father." "Why did your father give you a, a huge ass gun when you don't even like guns? Like, what kind of pres-" Father who should know you pretty well, right? It's just like he here's a big gun that you're never gonna use. And the rounds in it were really not something you would use for, I guess, not really something you'd use for home safety, more like something you would use.

• 23:40Derrick Levasseur?

  It's a very powerful round.

• 23:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 23:42Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 23:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  So it was just, uh, it didn't really make any sense. She went in the bedroom after shooting at him. He followed her. They struggled. But then the police come. Her necklace is found broken, right? Like the chain's broken. Right by the the door of the bedroom, like going from the the hallway into the bedroom. Her night shirt is ripped on the front. These look like we we struggled or more like she was pursued. I think she was pursued into that bedroom. I think he grabbed her and that's when the necklace broke. And I I think that basically he grabbed the gun, moved it into position and shot her. He can't even tell you what happened. That's the weird part, like.

• 24:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  How do you not know exactly what happened? The whole series of events that night kept changing. In his first interview, he frames it as an accident during a struggle. Stephanie fired him in the living room, walked into the bedroom. She cocked the gun. She said, Russell, I'm going to kill you. And then the gun went off as they struggled. He said he grabbed her wrists. Now in interview two, he's like, maybe there was a struggle, maybe there wasn't. And then by the end of that interview, Russell kind of floats the idea Stephanie could have done this to herself. In another interview, he says, I was standing at the door when the gun went off. But in the first interview, he says he's struggling with her when the gun went off. I understand that things like this can be traumatic and your memory might be,

• 25:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  you know, not as as sharp as you would like it to be, but you would definitely remember whether you were standing in the door or you had your hands on her struggling with her. Which one was it? How did it change? And how did the police see this completely changing story as not a, I think, an admission of I'm not being honest with you at the very least?

• 25:27Derrick Levasseur?

  I think you have to use critical thinking, reasonable deduction. You clearly have a motive here. You have evidence that's not consistent with a self-inflicted wound. You also have evidence that it's not consistent with someone who was the primary aggressor turned, you know, victim here, where they were basically overpowered by the person they were intending to shoot. According to the medical examiner, the gunshot residue pattern was consistent with a defensive posture. And it's very, it's very clear, when I've had shootings, what you normally see, it's usually these two fingers here, because that's the one on the trigger. The, under a microscope or under a specialized camera, you can see the gunpowder, how it sprays onto the backside of your hand where you're holding the gun.

• 26:09Derrick Levasseur?

  From what I understand, that is not the pattern, even though she was using her non-dominant hand. So, that is another suggestion that she wasn't the one actually holding the gun when it was fired. In fact, she was defending herself from the gun.

• 26:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. It seemed like they said she had kind of lifted up her hand. And also, the blood looked like it was, I mean, at points, he said she was sitting on the bed when this happened, or she fell on the bed and she fell on the floor. She also landed in different places. He kept changing his story. But the blood is sort of dripping down her leg, which, if you're shooting yourself in the neck, you kind of, what I'm trying to say is, I think she had her hand up when it happened, and then it fell down to her, her bottom half of her body, and that's how the blood got from up here to down there. But, do you think that's, your mother shot at Russell initially first in the living room? Because I kind of go back and forth about that.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  Absolutely not. She had made plans three hours and 47 minutes prior to. My mother never shot guns. She didn't like guns. I have a story to tell you really quick. There was one time when my mom's friend Lori Swift wanted to return guns to my dad, and my mom said, "I am not putting guns in the car with my child. She wouldn't even transport guns, let alone touch them."

• 27:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, what I think happens is, they did, they did, they were sitting on the couch, they were having wine, they were talking, and she's probably like, "Listen, Russell, it's been a good run, but you suck."

• 27:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  You're gonna be gone for two weeks. Have fun. When I, when you get back, I won't be here. And then at that point, she may have gone to maybe start, you know, go to the bedroom to start packing her things, or maybe just saying, "I'm going to bed. Good night." You know, "You're leaving tomorrow morning." Because he was leaving the very next morning for this fake La Cordon Bleu program. And he followed her in. He got the gun, which was in, you know, the closet of the bedroom, um, up on the shelf. He got the gun. I think he shot her at that point, and then he went out into the living room afterwards. And he was like, "Oh, shoot, what am I gonna do here?" You know, "I have to make it seem like this was self-defense." Because when he's talking to the police, he knows things, right?

• 28:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  He's asking them things. It's so, it's, it's so, uh, clear, but he's like, "Wouldn't this be considered so?" You know, he's like, leading them as if he already knows, but he wants them to think he doesn't know procedure and stuff like that. And he's like, "Well, I think that this would probably be considered this, right?" So it seems like he knows things already. Like, he kinda did his homework, or somehow already had the knowledge of, "Hey, this is gonna look bad. No one's gonna believe me. I have to make it look like I was defending myself, and she shot at me first."

• 28:46Speaker 03

  Why do you think he had all this planned, Stephanie? Maybe because at 1:36 in the morning, before he called 911, four minutes before he calls 911, he calls his father in Peoria, Arizona. That phone call was never investigated until 2025. Missed opportunity after missed opportunity by the Sedona Police Department and the Yavapai County Attorney's Office.

• 29:11Derrick Levasseur?

  And that initial call, when he does call 911 at 1:40, so four minutes later, he doesn't report that Stephanie killed herself?

• 29:19Speaker 03

  No, it was a struggle then, right?

• 29:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, it was an accident.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  I might have, or she might have. He literally says, "I might have shot her."

• 29:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  I might or might not have. I might or might not have.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  Make up your mind, bud. Like, which one is it?

• 29:31Derrick Levasseur?

  And at that point, and this is horrific to think about, but your sister Christina was in the room with your mom.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  Witnessing everything. You can hear her on the 911 call.

• 29:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, that's really what's hard. When she first, when Russell first calls the police, you can hear- Christina say, what, what happened to mommy?

• 29:47Derrick Levasseur?

  No, she said, you shot mommy.

• 29:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  You shot, oh yeah, but she's asking and you can hear her voice.

• 29:51Derrick Levasseur?

  You shot mommy and Russell responds, no, no, I didn't.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  Go back to your room. He kept telling her, go away, go back to your room.

• 29:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  He's even defensive. He's very defensive with three-year-old Christina. He's like, no, no, I didn't, you know, he's like, god damn it. I, I think that she was in the hallway when it happened and I'm not sure exactly what, what she was doing up at that time.

• 30:12Speaker 03

  Oh, they're fighting.

• 30:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  They're fighting, probably yelling got her up, yeah. She's coming out, she's probably looking around and you were in a different area of the house.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, it was harder to hear. Totally, because it was a two-bedroom house, but then we had, we needed three rooms. So they converted the garage, which was basement level, and then it had a garage door and then a laundry room door. So I had two doors shut. Why were there two doors shut? I was scared of the dark. The police had to open two doors to access me. I heard nothing.

• 30:36Derrick Levasseur?

  And then at 4:41 or approximately around 4:41, police do interview Christina, because obviously you didn't witness it. But, but they interview Christina and her exact words were, um, my dad killed her.

• 30:47Speaker 03

  Up to a dozen times she states that in one way or another. Poppy daddy killed mommy.

• 30:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  And this is a three-year-old who's being interviewed by two grown-ass male detectives. And this should never have happened. There's, there's specific people that are trained to interview children who have gone through a traumatic event. You don't want to, and they kept asking her and pushing her, no, what did you see? You didn't see that. What did you see? What did you see? They kept pushing her. She's three years old.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Lay down like mommy. Show me how mommy was. Can you show me how mommy was? They said that to a three-year-old little girl.

• 31:18Derrick Levasseur?

  And as we're building this right here, we're trying to paint a picture for you guys where we're sitting here in 2026 and there hasn't been a grand jury convened. There hasn't been someone who's come forward and we're going to talk about some of the quotes that some of the people in charge of the case now, which really pissed me off, but what their outlook is on this case at this point. And we'll get there, but it just seems like we're already developing a motive. We see the means, we see the opportunity, and then you have an impartial witness. The daughter of the person, right? This isn't Stephanie's daughter. This is his daughter.

• 31:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, Stephanie's daughter as well, yeah.

• 31:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Stephanie's daughter as well, but. He's the father and yet he's the one and she's the one saying that my dad killed her.

• 32:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  She's three. She's not thinking somebody's gonna get in trouble necessarily. She's just telling

• 32:04Derrick Levasseur?

  The truth.

• 32:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  The truth. What she sees, what she knows. So, did you want to get into the quote because they did reopen this and kind of go back to reinvestigate, correct?

• 32:13Speaker 03

  They did. After the pressure of podcast and the last crime con, they really did. They said they reinvestigated. They got the weapon out of evidence. They tried to like reinvestigate. They looked up that phone call, the 136 phone call he called us. Apparently, of course, it doesn't belong to Kenneth Peterson anymore. There's no, if you have a 1993 phone book from Phoenix, let me know so I can track down that number. And they're giving me all sorts of excuses why they're not going to continue to go on with it. So, one more time, it's sitting inactive, not enough evidence, and the only way to move forward, because I just met with the county attorney in February, is if Russell Bennett Peterson confesses to a crime that he's lied about for 33 years.

• 32:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  And gotten away with.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  Or we get somebody that knows something. Somebody, he has told somebody something and we get them on a hot mic and we get him a little tipsy tipsy because he likes to drinky drinky, and we get a confrontation call or something. Like, that's my ultimate last two resorts because otherwise, this man will never confess on his deathbed, I don't think. I gotta find somebody that knows something. And that's why I need your help.

• 33:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think Russell's convinced himself that he did not do anything. You have to hear him in these police interviews. He's very unsympathetic. I think he has convinced himself that this is something he has been the victim in.

• 33:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. It's unfortunate now because we sit here. I personally still think circumstantially, you wouldn't need a confession, but you think about the things that weren't done and we've already hit on this, but they were very quick to do GSR. They bagged Stephanie's hands. They were quick to do GSR testing on her. Never did GSR testing on Russell.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  Never took his BAC either. We never know how drunk that man was, but we know all about how much my mom was drinking.

• 33:51Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  It's just so one-sided and it's victim blaming and it's 1993, small-town policing.

• 33:56Derrick Levasseur?

  They did a BAC on her. Yeah, that's right. They did a BAC on her. They kept the search of the house pretty limited to the area where the crime occurred. Didn't really search anywhere else. Apparently, there was a recorder where Russell was

• 34:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  Hearsay.

• 34:08Derrick Levasseur?

  Russell was recording conversations and that again, to me, would be suggestive of potential murder, depending on what was on those recordings. If he found something on there where that suggested she was going to leave, again, motive, he knows he's leaving the following day. And finally, just the fact that they never looked at the opportunity to say, hey, yes, there may have been a struggle, but the reality is the struggle may have been because Stephanie was defending her own life. That could have been the start of the struggle. Not she's shooting at him and then, okay, now he has to defend himself and there's a struggle. And I don't know why that wouldn't be your first take, considering the fact that she was on the phone with another man only a few hours earlier, telling him, "I'm leaving."

• 34:50Derrick Levasseur?

  So, I'd love to sit down and talk with them and if they see this, I would love to have them come on and give us their side of the story if there's something we're missing. There have been a few people who've come out and spoken publicly about where this case stands, and we'll mention them by name, but if they're happening to see this or hear this, we're open to it. If there's something that we're missing-

• 35:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  I called, I called them. I called the Avapi County Attorney's Office-

• 35:14Derrick Levasseur?

  And they weren't receptive.

• 35:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  I called the Sedona Police Department. They were not receptive. It's the very basic lack of things. I remember continually, Nikki was great while I was researching this, and I had her on Messenger, and I had it up on my computer as I was researching, and every hour and a half or so, I'd be like, "All right, Russell says that he left Stephanie with plenty of money in the bank to pay the bills and be okay, and that he used his money for this. Is that true?" And she goes, "I don't know, they never pulled the financial records." So, he would say things during these interviews that you would want to sort of verify with an investigation, and then when I go to find out, what was the result of this verification? They never did that part.

• 35:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  He would say things and make claims, like they never even checked to see if he was actually going to La Corte on Blue, or if this was a real, you know, they never checked any of that. So, there was very basic stuff that just wasn't being done. On top of that, the day afterward, Russell goes to the house- And has the locks changed? And then he goes to the police, he's in interview with them shortly after and they're like, "Oh hey, we heard, you know, you were at the house," because they're suspicious of him. "We heard you were at the house and you had, you know, what were you doing?" He's like, "Oh, I had the locks changed." And they're like, "Why? We gave the key to your mother." And he's like, "Oh yeah, well, she, she's not here. She flew back home." Well, I'm sure before she flew back home, she gave you the key to the house that the police gave her to give to you. And he never sufficiently explained it.

• 36:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  And here's the thing, there'd be so many times where I'd be like, "Okay, the detectives got him. They're asking him the right track of question." And then he would give some weird, non-response response and they'd be like, "All right, let's move on." And they would never keep on him to get an actual response to it. And it was weird. And there was times where it felt like they were leading him. Um, I think they just wanted to, to put it to a close at this point. And he was making it difficult because he couldn't remember anything and he couldn't give a straight story. So they'd say, "Well, okay, so, so did, did you grab her hand? Did you grab her wrist?" Like they were leading him, giving him what he needed. And then he'd be like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I grabbed her wrist. That's exactly what happened." And I was, and Derek has talked about this before.

• 37:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's just absolutely not how you run a police interview. You let them talk. You don't offer them

• 37:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Outs.

• 37:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Or examples or options of what could have happened that they can, they can grab on to.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  Did you tell Derek how old the Sedona Police Department was the night they responded?

• 37:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Usually when we cover a deep dive, I don't know anything about the case because we have, you know, 14 to 16 hours of, of recording when we're done that you guys get to see. That's not even the unedited version. I mean, most of it's in there. But with this, because we were on a, a tighter time crunch here, I, I did some research on it. And I believe Sedona had only been established for five years at that point.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  Correct. How many homicides do you think they responded to in five years in that small town?

• 38:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And I, I was reading something here. There were some preliminary beliefs, internal notes that were, were revealed where they said, quote, "There's a nagging suspicion that the suspect may have committed some degree of homicide." So that were the initial thoughts.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  Then it goes on something about wishful thinking or trauma, right?

• 38:27Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm not making this shit up. It's like right here. Like, I'll show it to you. Like, you might think it's like satire, but no, that's literally what it says, so...

• 38:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  So it was an internal memo that, once again, I don't think came out for decades after.

• 38:41Speaker 03

  I wouldn't have had that memo if my Aunt Wendy didn't have a 1993 original case file or 1999 original case file. They tried to keep all this stuff from me because I broadcast it to the world. Yeah, we got lucky with Wendy. She's been the document keeper for 30 years. That's also how we found out that he called his father at 136 because of the unredacted phone bill, which the Sedona Police Department will never go and get themselves.

• 39:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  They had him bring it in.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  They let the suspect bring in the phone bill like 90-something days after the homicide, having evidence on there that he is calling other people before 911. This was not a hard case.

• 39:15Derrick Levasseur?

  That could suggest, I mean, to be fair, at that one point, you guys know how I feel at this point, I have had cases where something happens and they are not doing anything wrong, and they're concerned because of the optics and they do, they do reference or refer to someone they can trust to see how to approach the next step. In a vacuum, I don't necessarily have a problem with that one fact. It's the totality of circumstances that we're talking about in this entire case, where that pre-call to the father raises concerns for me. So I don't want to say, "Oh, he called someone beforehand. He's guilty."

• 39:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  The same father that gifted him this gun, by the way.

• 39:52Derrick Levasseur?

  What's that?

• 39:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  The same father that gifted him this gun randomly, even though Russell hates guns.

• 39:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. But if it was a completely innocent thing and you found out that someone had contacted someone for some advice beforehand because they were nervous, you know, there are people out there, let's be honest, who get charged with crimes that they didn't, they get found guilty of crimes they didn't commit. It's our job to make sure that the innocent are found innocent and the guilty are found guilty. So I'm okay with that, but not when you consider everything else that we have. That's the problem.

• 40:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  And that was the internal memo. It was the Yavapai County Attorney.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  Yavapai, baby.

• 40:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Jim Landis.

• 40:23Speaker 03

  Yavapai.

• 40:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I can't say that.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  Okay, sorry.

• 40:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yavapai. That's not how it's spelled.

• 40:29Derrick Levasseur?

  And you guys would be in our comments right now correcting us.

• 40:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  And Derek's like, "Derek, I'll say it'll be like Yavapai," and Derek'll be like, "I don't think that's how they..."

• 40:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's precious. Maybe I shouldn't have corrected it.

• 40:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  And he'll be like, "It's not." And I'll be like, "No."

• 40:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yavapai.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  You got it.

• 40:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yavapai, Jim Landis, he's the one that's like, "Listen, I think there's some degree of homicide that happened here." And then they're looking at the, because the interviews with Russell, they're all transcribed. And the, uh, the district county, the county attorney's office was like, "You know, we should have his statements analyzed by, like, a psychiatrist or someone who knows how to detect whether someone's lying or what level of deception they're using." And they were like, "Okay," and they, they sent it to the police department to, you know, start getting it set up. It was never set up.

• 41:13Speaker 03

  That was in 1999 when the Yavapai County Attorney requested all of this investigation. The Sedona Police Department never did anything.

• 41:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  But the county's attorney's office didn't make them do anything. They didn't follow up with it, really.

• 41:25Speaker 03

  Very true.

• 41:35Derrick Levasseur?

  One more thing, because I do want to put it out there, and this is not to cause issues, I'm just being transparent with you guys. Sergeant Michael Dominguez, his last quote was basically, "Short of a confession, I'm not going to bring charges." I respect your opinion. I respectfully disagree as well, so maybe you need to be off the case. And we need a fresh set of eyes, a new perspective to come in, look at the case from square one, use whatever science and technology that we have available today. And at minimum, what I would recommend is bringing it to a grand jury, allowing them to decide whether or not there's enough there to, to charge him with a homicide or indict him at least and let him get his day in court. We have had cases where people have been convicted of a homicide without a body. And yet, we're sitting here talking about all of these circumstances surrounding this

• 42:20Derrick Levasseur?

  case. And I think within this 45-minute period, with very little time, we've already kind of laid out a visual perspective of means, motive, opportunity. And I do think that a grand jury would agree with me and agree with most of you. So yet, the fact that we're sitting there and that hasn't been done, I'm hoping that either A, they reach out and explain something to us that we're missing, or maybe take a second look at it and go to the grand jury. If the grand jury decides not enough to indict... Obviously Nikki, you're not going to be happy with it. Obviously, your family would not be happy with it. But is it fair for me to say, and if it's not, feel free to push back, but at least then you would know that a jury actually looked at it and gave you a fair shot.

• 43:05Speaker 03

  And that's all I want Derek.

• 43:06Derrick Levasseur?

  That's it. And I think most families can live with that. They may not like the outcome. But at least they can live with the shot to go there and let someone else outside of the police department who's clearly already made up their mind. Objectively review the evidence and say, yeah, you know what? Totality of circumstances, I believe we have enough here to go forward with the trial. That's really what you're asking for. I mean, I don't think that's a lot.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  I just wanted people to listen for years. That's all I want. Listen and you be the judge. You be the grand jury then. If I can't get a real one, I've released it to the world. You listen and you decide was it, was there enough evidence to convict him in 93?

• 43:42Derrick Levasseur?

  Right.

• 43:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Or charge him at least to charge him. Yeah.

• 43:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Nikki, would you, would you be able to put together something and we can share it on our social media? Respectfully professionally, but send some type of letter, a template out. Where we can request to whatever people you think it would be important to request to, not just the Sedona PPD. Where we are as a community requesting that a second set of eyes, maybe an outside agency, maybe state or federal. Take a second look at the case, do an independent audit and let's see what they find. I think if everybody in this room and everybody who's watching online or listening right now. Respectfully does that. And they start to get a couple thousand letters on their desk, especially if it goes to people who are in higher positions and don't want to hear about it.

• 44:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Shit rolls downhill and then maybe the, you know, something will happen. That would be my recommendation, but what do you want to do?

• 44:36Speaker 03

  I want to do it all Derek. Do it all. Sign me up. Whatever I gotta do.

• 44:40Derrick Levasseur?

  In the meantime, you'll get us something where we have the right points of contact. So we're not sending things to the wrong people.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  We'll look it up man.

• 44:47Derrick Levasseur?

  Take five minutes, send an email. And you may help solve this case. I mean, I think that's really what we're asking for. Or at minimum, a second look at it to see if everybody else agrees when they have all the evidence in front of them. One final question from me. Is this considered a closed case at this point for them?

• 45:03Speaker 03

  Inactive.

• 45:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Not closed, inactive.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  Not closed.

• 45:06Derrick Levasseur?

  So therefore you don't get the records?

• 45:07Speaker 03

  Oh, I have records.

• 45:08Derrick Levasseur?

  All of them?

• 45:09Speaker 03

  All of them.

• 45:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  I, I, you probably don't have all of them.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  Well, I don't have like, um, you know, the audio records for mine and my little sister's because we were minors. But I have the transcripts. I have the audio files from him, the 911 call.

• 45:20Derrick Levasseur?

  So they put it out there, everyone would have access to it. They could bring in an outside agency, a federal agency, a state agency to take a look at it and, and see what they find. I think that's why we're covering this case today because these, and unfortunately, this isn't an isolated incident. There's so many cases, Meghan Trussell being one of them, where without YouTube channels and podcasters, more than likely you wouldn't hear about Stephanie's case. And that's unfortunate. It's unfortunate that we have to go to this extreme to have something very basic be done. And you know, that's the power of true crime. And I think sometimes there can be a negative stigma attached to it. But you, the community have the, have the ability to control that narrative.

• 46:01Derrick Levasseur?

  What we do with these cases and how we impact them will ultimately decide how far this thing goes. And ultimately it's not up to Stephanie and I or Nikki. It's up to everybody who's listening and watching. Are you just watching for entertainment? Or are you actually going to do something about it?

• 46:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  Strength in numbers.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  I need help.

• 46:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You want to, you did you, you said you want to do questions or what would you want to do? Open it up?

• 46:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, we should do Q and A's. So if anyone has questions.

• 46:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Minutes. If there's somebody who has a question, we do have a microphone here. We have a microphone here. We're not going to get to do all of them, but we will take a couple of questions. You may have some for Nikki. We'd love to hear from you and if you have any thoughts. I do have a question while we're waiting for somebody to come up. And Nikki, feel free to tell me to just shut up, uh, with this one.

• 46:48Speaker 03

  Never.

• 46:49Derrick Levasseur?

  It is a little personal, but, um, Christina, right now, from what I understand, she ended up growing up with Russell.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, this, the really sad story. Dad got, you know, her dad got custody. Um, the night it happened, it was poppy killed mommy. He kept us away from her for a year.

• 47:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  A year later Wendy took us to Disneyland and in the magical kingdom, my little sister announced to me that Mommy killed herself. So in the last year, he had brainwashed her. He had brainwashed her so bad and abused her so bad emotionally that she ran away about the age of 10. And that's when she found me again. I hadn't spoken to her in years. We reconnected briefly. She became 16, got pregnant, told her not to do it. She cut me out of her life for another 10 years. She managed to come back in my life around the time grandma was dying. And then she's disappeared around 2020. That's when they started investigating. They wanted her help for a confrontation call. She agreed. And then I took this public and I think it scared her and she's scared of her dad.

• 47:50Speaker 03

  And she has literally not called me in almost six years. I do a PSA all the time for my sister to reach back out. I'm desperate to talk to her. I need her help. My family's looking for her. We don't know where she is.

• 48:03Derrick Levasseur?

  Even if she doesn't want to speak to you, she can speak to Sedona PD.

• 48:05Speaker 03

  I would love to talk to my sister and rekindle, but yeah, I would, any kind of help.

• 48:10Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. All right. So we got a question? Go for it.

• 48:13Speaker 04

  I was gonna say that was going to be my question. So instead I'll just say, thanks again.

• 48:18Derrick Levasseur?

  We've been on the same page for years.

• 48:20Speaker 04

  I know, right? Come on now.

• 48:22Derrick Levasseur?

  All right, we'll go over this side.

• 48:23Speaker 05

  First, I'd like to say I'm a little confused because they seem to have a lot of evidence of what it's not, which only leaves crime on the table. So I'm calling BS there. But Derek, I'm curious, what is the reinforcer that this police department is potentially feeling by not pursuing this? Because behavior is usually based on punishment or reinforcement. So like, what are they getting, what are they getting out of having their heads up their ass?

• 48:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, I love, thank you for putting that so eloquently.

• 48:56Derrick Levasseur?

  You know, listen, I'm just gonna, this is gonna be a really basic answer, but I think a lot of you are gonna relate to it because it's not isolated to law enforcement. In most professions, it's hubris, right? There's ego. And so when you come up with a decision about a certain thing, or you feel like you know what happened, when you have outsiders who don't know what they're talking about, trying to tell you differently, you almost want to double down and dig in a little bit deeper because... Now you want to prove to them that you're right, when the reality is it's not about being right, it's about getting it correct. It's about making sure that you find out what actually happened. But you bring up a fascinating point, which is, yes, we as detectives and a lot of investigators don't do this, it's just as important to find the inculpatory evidence

• 49:38Derrick Levasseur?

  as it is to find the exculpatory evidence. You want to be able to go to a trial, when a defense attorney gets up there and tries to paint a picture for something different, and have the evidence to support that that does not fit. And as you just said, the suicide evidence, or even the, you know, Russell was being attacked and had to defend himself, the evidence does not fit. And you can present that at court to a jury of his peers, and let them decide out of the three kind of running narratives, which case, which scenario has the most inculpatory evidence. Let them decide. That's not for me to judge. Great question. Spencer, real quick, anybody who's been following us, Spencer's here, her mother,

• 50:20Derrick Levasseur?

  Joanne Zamora, she was, she was one of the cases that we covered on Criminal, on Crime Weekly, Criminal Coffee. You guys were supporting us through Criminal Coffee. We were able to find a Jane Doe, we identified her and reunited her with her family. And Spencer was one of the cases that we covered.

• 50:38Speaker 06

  Thank you so much. That's not why I'm up here, but truly thank you. I thought my mom had left me, and last July I found out that she didn't leave me.

• 50:51Derrick Levasseur?

  That's right.

• 50:52Speaker 06

  She was just murdered and wasn't found for five months.

• 50:55Derrick Levasseur?

  And by the way, we're not done with that yet. Because there is stuff there, we won't say too much now, but now, okay, we identified her. That's great that you have her back, but now we have to find the scumbag responsible, because I believe he's still alive, but that's a different story for a different day.

• 51:10Speaker 06

  Yes. So more to come on that. Who knows, maybe next Crime Con.

• 51:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, that'd be great.

• 51:16Speaker 06

  But Jeremy made me come up here to ask this question. So, were there any shell casings found in the, the room where supposedly your mother fired the gun?

• 51:29Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 51:30Speaker 06

  None found?

• 51:32Speaker 03

  No, they were. They were, yeah, they, they retrieved some from the, by the front door wall where he, she supposedly fired at him. Supposedly.

• 51:40Speaker 06

  Allegedly.

• 51:41Derrick Levasseur?

  Allegedly.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  Good work.

• 51:42Speaker 06

  Okay. Thank you.

• 51:44Derrick Levasseur?

  Thank you. And real quick too, give them shout outs everywhere. Jeremy, where are you? Jeremy, stand up. Jeremy is a genealogist. He works for Break My Company. He's the genealogist alone with Ryan, who's not here, who identified Joanne. So he, and, and so Jeremy is the man. He's the man.

• 52:02Speaker 07

  My question is about what would it look like if we got like a, like a more experienced detective department, like maybe in Phoenix, to come oversee what happened in Sedona, maybe like do a reinvestigation? Or even the FBI? What would that look like? Could that be like, would they be able to have more capabilities to do more different things? More technology? And could possibly people be like fired in that situation if there was misconduct?

• 52:31Speaker 03

  This is a great question, and I'm really glad you asked this because before I really got on TikTok, we took the legal avenue. I wrote to the Arizona Attorney General. I wrote to the Yavapai County Attorney's Office. We wrote to the DOJ. The DOJ, DOJ did bring an FBI agent to my aunt's house. He said, hey, I'm here to help. What can I do to help you? My Aunt Wendy pleaded, we just want somebody to listen. Go to Sedona Police Department and offer your help. Agent Krabs did. Guess what they told him?

• 53:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  We don't need it.

• 53:01Speaker 03

  We don't need your assistance. That was the hardest call for me to take from him telling me, Ms. Wasilishin, I'm federal. I just can't walk in there and take your mother's case.

• 53:11Speaker 07

  That's really unfortunate. I think they did need, they did need help and they just don't want to admit.

• 53:15Speaker 03

  I, I don't know how much further I gotta go other than talking to you and the media. I need more options.

• 53:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Who ultimately is the person in the state that can make the decision to say, Sedona Police Department, we don't care what you need. We don't care what you say. We're bringing somebody else in. Would it be a governor?

• 53:32Speaker 03

  I, I don't know. Who is that? If you know the answer to that question, send it to me. Papi kill mommy at gmail.com. Help me. I need resources. I don't know where to turn to anymore, except for these people.

• 53:43Derrick Levasseur?

  It's so, it doesn't even have to be that deep. It may get to that point when you have, again, we said shit rolls down. Where you have legislators who are the bosses of the bosses who oversee the chief or the sheriff or whoever and again when it rolls downhill and those people most of the time the chiefs and the sheriffs are as elected position or they're hired by the mayor so in that case they can be fired the people below them are usually in the union but I don't think it needs to be that deep Long Island serial killer is a perfect example of that it wasn't some like crazy agency that came in it was the state police it was a young detective who just came in without any biases or preconceived notions re-looked at the evidence and found a report that had been in there the whole I'm not gonna swear

• 54:26Derrick Levasseur?

  the whole time the whole time it was something that was available from the beginning and it was just someone different not necessarily even more intelligent but just seeing something that someone else missed and that's okay that happens what's not okay is to be so caught up in what your own beliefs are as an investigator that you won't even put it on the line and allow somebody else to question your work

• 54:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  So how do we so if the Sedona Police keeps saying no no no every time another agency or another you know law enforcement body comes in and offers help then how do we override the Sedona Police Department because they had the FBI say let's look at this it's not solved by their own

• 55:04Derrick Levasseur?

  You'd have to probably go to the Arizona State Police

• 55:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  State Police

• 55:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah it wouldn't be federal initially you'd go to state police and see what they would be willing to do but at the end of the day just to be truthful a lot of the times it requires some agreed upon collaboration it's not often that state police will come in and supersede a local agency unless they're asking for help so I do think what we're doing now is the first step to create that pressure where maybe Sergeant Michael Dominguez will say oh you know what I'm confident about this I'll allow somebody else to look at it and and we go from there

• 55:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  Dude he was removed from the case from his comments to the Red Rock News

• 55:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh it's almost like I figured that one out alright

• 55:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Dude yeah that got him out real quick

• 55:46Derrick Levasseur?

  We'll take, we'll take one more.

• 55:47Speaker 04

  Uh, thanks. My question has to do with, uh, the motive of the police department to do such a, uh, anemic investigation. Do you think it's possible Russell had friends on the department? And, or is it just plain sexism similar to the Ellen Greenberg case?

• 56:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, that's a crazy, yeah.

• 56:16Speaker 03

  It is a really good question, and that is a question I've gotten more often than not. I gave this case file to an attorney, Mike Hanson, he poured over it, and the best thing that he could come up with was Peter Corn. Peter Corn was the owner of Pietro's, this restaurant in Sedona, very small. He's a business owner. He hobnobbed with the important people. So Peter Corn had this, um, this sway with the police, and you could see his name all over the case file. So I'm pretty sure-

• 56:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  He and Russell were besties.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  Oh, besties, they're like this. So I'm pretty sure that the Peter Corn connection really did help. It was victim blaming. My mom was the bad one.

• 56:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, maybe he was like, "Hey, you know, Russell's a good guy. I vouch for him, I promise." And the police were like, "All right."

• 56:58Speaker 04

  So it's old boy stuff.

• 57:00Speaker 03

  1993, small-town policing.

• 57:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I think it's because they were new, too. So it's a police force that's new, doesn't really know what they're doing. And then also you might have the pressure of somebody who owns a business and is kind of friends with the police, and they're saying like, "God, you know, don't go all the way with this." And the police department's like, "Yeah, we really didn't want to anyways, because we don't know what we're doing." So it could be a combination of, of both. But now, I think the refusal to let anybody else look at that is because they don't want us to see that that's what happened.

• 57:29Derrick Levasseur?

  You see the mistakes that were made, yeah. But listen, we're gonna have this stuff, it's gonna be out on Crime Weekly News probably next week. We'll have all the places to go, the templates where you can send an email if you'd like. We appreciate you guys coming every year. We, we have an opportunity to highlight a case like this, and it wouldn't be possible without you guys. Thank you, Nikki, for being up here and doing this for us. Thank you to your family-

• 57:50Speaker 03

  Thank you, Derek and Stephanie.

• 57:51Derrick Levasseur?

  For coming as well.

• 57:52Speaker 03

  This has been a dream.

• 57:54Derrick Levasseur?

  We appreciate you guys, we love you, thank you so much. And we'll see you throughout the weekend.

• 57:58Speaker 03

  Thank you.