Pod Insights Criminology Nikki VanderHeyden About this episode In May 2016, thirty-one-year-old mother of three, Nicole VanderHeyden, was found dead. It was apparent she had been murdered due to the state of her injuries. Nicole, who went by Nikki, disappeared after a night out with her boyfriend and other friends. The authorities immediately began looking at Nikki's boyfriend. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the murder of Nikki VanderHeyden. Nikki's boyfriend, Douglass Detrie, could have very well ended up spending the rest of his life in prison. The Fitbit he was wearing told the story of his whereabouts the night Nikki was murdered. This allowed the police to shift focus and find the real killer. You can help support the show through Patreon. We'd love to connect with listeners on social media. We are available on the following platforms: Facebook - Facebook Discussion group - Instagram - Threads - X Formerly Twitter - Blue Sky - Twitch - Tik Tok Criminology is an Emash Digital production hosted by Mike Ferguson and Mike Morford.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.
0:37 Speaker 01 Hello everyone and welcome to episode 378 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson.
0:43 Speaker 00 And this is Mike Morford.
0:44 Speaker 01 Mr. Morford, how you doing this week, buddy?
0:47 Speaker 00 I'm doing pretty good. How you doing?
0:48 Speaker 01 I'm having a great week. You know, you and I are recording pretty early in the week and so, you know, not a full week yet, but it's trending upwards, let's say that.
1:01 Speaker 00 That's always good. And you're getting a little nice cooler weather probably and it's making things a little bit easier on you?
1:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, but unlike you, I start to get a little blue. I love the fall, but the fall quickly turns to the winter and that's not my favorite time of year, for sure.
1:25 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's the one thing I miss is the fall. I used to like coming out my door every morning and just taking that fresh breath of air that you would bring in and now it's just, you don't have that nice cool air in the morning. I do miss that.
1:39 Speaker 01 Well, let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had new support from Randa and Kate Goldgird. So, great new support. We really appreciate it.
1:49 Speaker 00 Thanks so much, Rand and Kate, and thanks to everyone else that supports the show. And for anyone else that would like to, head over to patreon.com/criminology to get started.
1:59 Speaker 01 All right, let's jump right into this episode. And this week, we're going to be looking at a case where technology played a crucial role, specifically data from a Fitbit device.
2:10 Speaker 01 Many times when we talk about data on the show, it's been a suspect's downfall, destroying an alibi or catching them in a lie. But in this episode, we're going to talk about how an innocent man might have ended up in prison and could have still been there today if it weren't for data from a Fitbit proving that he was telling the truth. The case we're talking about is that a 31-year-old mother of three, Nicole Vanderheiden, who went missing and was subsequently found dead in May 2016.
2:44 Speaker 00 In 2016, Nicole, who went by Nikki, was living in Ledgeview near Green Bay, Wisconsin, with her boyfriend Douglas Deetree. They had one child together, a six-month-old son named Dylan. Her two older children, a son, Taylor, and a daughter, Michaela, from an earlier marriage, lived with the couple on weekdays and saw their biological father on the weekends. At around 7:30 PM on May 20th, Nikki and Doug left the house together to go hang out with friends and catch a Steel Panther concert. They hired a babysitter to watch their son headed off. They stopped at a McDonald's and went through the drive-thru before going to a bar called The Watering Hall. They arrived there around 8:00 PM. And I've got to ask you, like, have you ever seen Steel Panther?
3:30 Speaker 01 To be honest with you, Morf, I've never even heard of Steel Panther.
3:34 Speaker 00 Well, they're sort of a parody band, heavy metal. Some people say they rock. I'm not super fans of them, but they, they do like to dress in the glam look of the 80s and stuff and they sort of, it's, it's a little bit tongue-in-cheek, I think, but there's a lot of iHeart Steel Panther fans and it sounds like this couple was, were fans of theirs too.
3:56 Speaker 01 You know, that glam rock was, was kind of an interesting time period, right? In, in music history. And some of those bands were so successful and had great careers.
4:10 Speaker 00 Yeah, that 80s music was the best.
4:13 Speaker 01 After Steel Panther was done playing, Doug got in the line for the bathroom. While he was waiting, a woman that he had gone to high school with came up and spoke to him. She was standing pretty close to him while they talked and security footage shows that it looked like they hugged a little bit. Nikki saw this and it seemed to upset her. By the time Doug came out of the bathroom, their whole group, including Nikki, had left for another bar called the Sardine Can. Only Doug and his friend Greg had stayed behind at the watering hole. The rest of the group got to the Sardine Can around 11:30. Nikki ordered a drink, talked to the bartender, and danced with a man near the bar.
4:55 Speaker 01 On the security footage from the bar, she looks like she's having a good time, but after almost an hour, Doug still wasn't there. We don't know what Nikki was thinking when Doug didn't show up there. It's possible she could have been feeling pretty confused or abandoned. This was supposed to be their night out together and he wasn't with her for a pretty big chunk of it.
5:17 Speaker 00 At around 11:00 PM, she had finally had enough of waiting around for Doug. She started sending Doug angry and accusatory text messages. According to the Law & Crime Network, some of the texts Nikki sent were as follows. At 11:12, "So what bitch you with?" And she added, "Wow, what slut are you with? Because none of your friends know." One minute later, she said, "Fuck you, abusive asshole." Nikki then called Doug, but he didn't answer the phone. She had Angela, another friend, call him, and this time Doug answered her call. This was the last straw for Nikki. She was likely thinking, "Why would he answer a call from another girl but not from his girlfriend?" This just kind of validated everything she was already feeling upset about.
6:01 Speaker 01 So Morf, we have a kind of a situation brewing here, which I'm sure a lot of people have experienced. You're out. You've had a few drinks and the night doesn't seem to be going the way that, you know, at least Nikki thought it would. There's a couple of strange aspects that jump out at me. One, Doug going into the bathroom and then a large part of the group leaving for another bar while he's still in the bathroom. Now, we did talk about Nikki seeing Doug with this girl he knew from high school and that that might have upset her.
6:44 Speaker 01 I just wonder if that's part of the reason. Maybe she was already upset at that point and said, hey, let's get out of here. I don't know for sure. But then, you know, Doug doesn't show up, doesn't answer her calls, and you just get the the feeling that things were escalating as the night went on to the point where she then started sending some of these texts. There's no doubt she was upset.
7:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, I think you have the scene of a bar, probably loud, music playing, crowded. You have a group here that's together. You know, it's been a while since I've been in one of those situations, but it's not easy. You know, it's not hard, I should say, to imagine a situation where maybe the group just says, let's go to this next place and everybody starts moving out and maybe somebody gets left behind. You know, I wonder if that could have played a role and Doug happens to come out of the bathroom and basically the whole group's gone. And maybe that played a role.
7:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, it could be. I mean, a lot of stuff like that happens. You mentioned it. It's crowded. Again, when you're, you know, drinking, things like that could happen pretty easily.
8:02 Speaker 01 But in this situation with Nikki and Doug, everyone else in the group sort of backed Nikki up and kind of added to that vibe of like, wow, this is not okay. So I think that even fueled her more, right? To be upset. At 12:30, she stormed out of the sardine can and started walking down the street. One of their friends, Aaron, followed her and tried to convince her to stay, but she refused. He asked her if he could give her a ride home, but she said no. She was screaming at him and crying. When he tried to console her, she started hitting him and threw herself to the ground. This was a very difficult situation for Aaron to find
8:45 Speaker 01 himself in, standing in the street with a drunk woman sobbing, yelling at him and hitting him. He was trying to help her, but people were starting to look at him like he was up to no good. After a few minutes, Aaron returned to the bar, figuring that when Doug arrived, he could deal with it and he would know what to do.
9:05 Speaker 00 Just minutes after this, Doug called Nikki, but she was still extremely upset. And this coupled with how much she had been drinking, made it hard for him to understand everything she was saying. So Doug gave Greg his phone and had him try to talk to her. Nikki didn't believe that Doug had really passed his phone to Greg. She thought that she was still talking to Doug, who was pretending to be Greg, to try to convince her not to be mad at him. The thought of being tricked upset her even more, but the call dropped. The way Greg described it, he didn't think it was Nikki hanging up on him. It was the reception failing or the battery dying. Every call after this to Nikki's phone went straight to voicemail.
9:45 Speaker 01 Following the brief call with Nikki, the rest of the group minus Greg and Doug headed home for the night. Finally, around 1:00, Doug and Greg showed up at the sardine can. They learned that Nikki had taken off on foot, so they drove around the area trying to find her, but couldn't. They returned to the sardine can, hoping that Nikki might as well, but she didn't. After having a few shots, Greg and Doug left the bar at about 2:15. Since Doug had left his car at the watering hole, around 2:30 a.m., Greg dropped Doug back off at his house. Doug paid the babysitter and then after she left, he went to sleep. At 6:30 a.m. he had to wake up to feed their son his bottle.
10:29 Speaker 01 Nikki wasn't home yet, but he didn't think too much of it. If she had decided to stay somewhere else that night, 6:30 in the morning or earlier would be pretty early to be getting home after a bunch of drinking and crying. So Doug dismissed her not being home and he went back to bed. At around 10:30 a.m. he woke up again and Nikki still hadn't returned. And I do think more that, you know, we're, we're painting a picture of, you know, people partying pretty hard, you know, the descriptions of how much Nikki had to drink. It, it sounds like, you know, it was fairly significant to the point where she was intoxicated
11:14 Speaker 01 at the very least, but this scenario where, you know, Doug is home, has to wake up to take care of their son, but Nikki's not there. Now, I, I think people will look at that different ways. Some people might say they would do the same thing in his situation. And others would say, oh my gosh, you know, you wake up and your significant other is not there after a night on the town of drinking. That's going to be very worrisome. That's not a, you know, hey, let's go back to bed for four hours type of situation.
11:56 Speaker 01 But again, I think people will look at that a couple of different ways.
12:02 Speaker 00 Yeah, and I'm sort of envisioning this situation in my head that Doug's probably in a fog after a hard night of drinking. Now, you know, his son is waking him up 6:30 in the morning to be fed. And, you know, I'm thinking of those days when I had young, six month old children. You're in a fog, you're wandering around, you're trying to find a bottle or whatever he's feeding them at that point. And he's probably really out of it. And I'm thinking that maybe he just went right back to bed as soon as he had fed his son. Probably wasn't really too worried about Nikki and was more tired and out of it than anything else.
12:41 Speaker 00 And you know, I'm imagining that he probably didn't get super concerned until he woke up again. It's 10:30 and she she still wasn't there.
12:50 Speaker 01 Well, let's face it. I remember those days as well. It was much longer ago for for me, but you know, you mentioned being in a fog. Heck, in those days, in that time period where you've got a little one, you could be in a fog without even having gone out and, you know, been drinking the night before.
13:13 Speaker 00 Later that day, two teenage boys working on a farm on Hoffman Road in Bellevue, just southeast of Green Bay, found the body of a dead woman lying face down in a field of tall weeds on the property. It was immediately clear to them that she had been murdered. At 1:54 PM, authorities were called to the scene. Arriving officers couldn't tell much by looking at the dead woman, other than she had blonde hair. Her face had been beaten so badly that her face was completely unrecognizable. She wasn't wearing any clothes other than socks, but she did have a pink wristband, one of those paper ones you get at events and bars, on one of her wrists.
13:52 Speaker 01 While police were tending to the crime scene, it was becoming clear to Doug that something was wrong. Nikki still wasn't home. Even if she was mad at him, she wouldn't have left her young son Dylan for that long. He was only six months old and going to the concert was one of the first times she had even been away from him for a good amount of time. At around 4:30 PM, he finally called 911 to figure out how to report Nikki missing. An officer responded to the home and began to interview Doug and his friend Greg about the night before. They went over the timeline and also spoke about their relationship in general for a bit.
14:33 Speaker 00 Investigators immediately launched a missing persons investigation for Nikki. There was no waiting period to file a report or any talk that since Nikki was an adult, she could leave and do what she wanted. To their credit, police took Nikki's disappearance seriously. Doug seemed to fear that something had happened to Nikki on her way home. She had been alone at night intoxicated and walking through an area that Doug felt was shady. A place that Doug wouldn't even want to find himself walking through alone at night. Doug and Greg both admitted to snorting Adderall that Doug brought for them that night. And in the eyes of police, that certainly didn't look good.
15:10 Speaker 01 Referencing one of her texts from that night, an officer asked Doug why Nikki would say that he was abusive. According to the Law and Order Network, Doug said, I don't know where she gets this stuff sometimes. For the officer, there were really two options. She was talking to an innocent man who might be blamed for things he didn't do. Or she was talking to a guilty man who was being very flippant and basically gaslighting his missing and potentially deceased girlfriend. Doug also talked about how sometimes when Nikki got sad, she would talk about taking her own life. Nikki's sister did admit to police that Nikki self harmed as recently as two months before her death.
15:52 Speaker 01 And you know, I think at this point, there are a number of things that are starting to come to light. You have this police officer who's talking to Doug and Greg and they're admitting some stuff. Right? Obviously they were drinking. They admitted to snorting Adderall. And you have the officer asking about this text from Nikki, talking about how Doug was abusive. You know, a lot of these things are going to be eye raising and the officer is, is trying to sort all of this out. I think for police officers, for investigators, it's a tough position to be in. But one that they find themselves in quite a bit.
16:37 Speaker 01 You're, are people telling the truth? Are they lying? And in this context, you know, it's around a missing persons report.
16:47 Speaker 00 I think it's interesting that when an investigation begins by police, they start pulling back these layers and they find different things. You know, obviously Doug, as Nikki's boyfriend is going to be looked at closely. And they find, okay, she calls him abusive. He's admits that he used Adderall. These things probably are red flags potentially for investigators, but they also now see that Nikki may have had a history of self harm. So does that open up another possibility? Maybe that she's someplace and she's harmed herself and they probably have to consider that as well.
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18:51 Speaker 00 While this officer was taking in the details surrounding Nikki's disappearance, it seems like she was simultaneously aware of the body found in Bellevue. It was trying to figure out if it could have been Nikki. She was also obviously trying to figure out whether Doug and Greg were telling the truth about the last time they saw Nikki and how well they got along with her. It didn't take long for the deceased woman in Bellevue to be identified as Nikki VanderHeyden. This identity was confirmed via dental records. She had been violently killed and then left in a field just three miles away from her own home. An autopsy would reveal that Nikki had not only been strangled while she was alive, she had suffered through multiple blows to the head. She also may have been sexually assaulted before she was killed.
19:35 Speaker 00 Heavy bruising in multiple areas of her body, on her back, her arms, and her legs, showed that Nikki tried very hard to fight off her attacker. She had at least 240 separate injuries on her body, and whoever killed her had left an impression of their shoe on her back. Her jaw was fractured, her fingernails were broken. It was a vicious assault, complete overkill for someone of Nikki's stature.
20:00 Speaker 01 And I think those details, they paint a picture, one that is of just complete and utter devastation. I mean, you said it, right? This was a vicious assault. When you throw out that number, 240 separate injuries, I think it really, you know, just shows the magnitude of how bad this attack really was. But to her credit, there's no doubt, right? Nikki fought hard for her life.
20:35 Speaker 00 Yeah, this was just a really brutal and savage murder. And we talked about the possibility, maybe Nikki may have harmed herself, but I think it was immediately clear that that wasn't the case. They knew right away that this was a murder. So I think the investigation had to shift to, okay, we know she's murdered. Who did this?
20:57 Speaker 01 Well, and if police were somewhat suspicious of Doug, when this was a missing person's case, you know, she was reported missing, that suspicion has to go through the roof after she's found dead, confirmed to be dead.
21:18 Speaker 01 Doug and the rest of Nikki's family learned that a woman was found dead in Bellevue on the nightly news before anyone had confirmed that it was Nikki. At midnight that night, officers went to his home and brought Doug in for questioning. Doug asked a detective to confirm that the body found in Bellevue was not Nikki, but the officer couldn't. So that's how Doug learned that his girlfriend and the mother of his child was dead. Nikki's purse, cellphone and clothes, which had blood on them, had been dumped off a highway off-ramp not far from the home.
21:53 Speaker 00 On the afternoon of May 22nd, investigators requested a DNA sample from Doug. But by this time, he had already hired an attorney who advised him not to comply with a sample. If they wanted his DNA, they would need to get a warrant. Across the street from the home that Nikki and Doug lived in, investigators found a section of charging cable in the gutter next to a bloody curb. There was blonde hair stuck in some of the blood. The blood and the charging cable were swabbed for DNA. It was a match for Nikki. She had been attacked, beaten and strangled within sight of her home. The blood was apparently found just 118 feet away from their property line. And to clarify, this blood that was found wasn't a pool.
22:36 Speaker 00 It seemed to have been spilled while Nikki was moving or being moved. It's a trail that moves through the grass and down the road along the curb. It seems like she was fighting. She was trying to get away from her attacker. Now investigators still had to figure out whether Nikki had been heading home when she was attacked, or if she had potentially been running away from her home, maybe away from Doug.
22:58 Speaker 01 When Doug was first interviewed at the station, a detective informed him that he would need to hand over the clothes he was wearing that night and that his and Nikki's vehicles and their home would be searched. At first, Doug was understanding and cooperative. Obviously, they needed to clear him so that they could move on to other suspects. Police found that he had no injuries at all, no bruising, no scratches, nothing that would indicate that he had been in any kind of physical struggle. Of course, if he had gotten the upper hand and was able to overpower her, maybe he wouldn't have any injuries. But based on Nikki's wounds, it seemed like she had definitely fought back.
23:42 Speaker 01 And we've talked about some of the things that, you know, investigators would look at and deemed to be red flags concerning Doug. We mentioned the Adderall, the events, the timeline of that night, but now you add in the details of Nikki's murder. And then the finding of this blood and this charging cable, basically very close to the home. I think none of this is taking the suspicion off of Doug, but in contrast, he has no injuries.
24:23 Speaker 01 And we detailed out the injuries to Nikki that clearly showed she fought back against her attacker. You would think that her attacker suffered some injuries, scratches, would have at the very least bruises and scratches and things like that.
24:43 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's hard to imagine Doug, if he had done this, not having some kind of evidence that she had fought back against him. But, you know, as, you know, who knows what circumstances could have, you know, occurred and maybe he didn't suffer any injuries. I think the police had to approach it from that angle, you know, not just rule him out based on his lack of injuries. But, you know, they also considered how close that stuff they found, that evidence they found was to their house. So, you know, I think it, it didn't, definitely didn't clear him with the proximity of the evidence. On May 23rd, Doug found himself thrown into what has to be anyone's worst nightmare.
25:28 Speaker 00 He was arrested on suspicion of Nikki's murder. He would have been able to post bail for his freedom while waiting for trial, but it was set very high due to the brutality of Nikki's murder, especially as he was someone she was supposed to be able to trust. Doug's bail was set at $1 million. The arrest was recorded and when an officer told Doug that he was under arrest, the look on his face was one of true disbelief. It doesn't look like he's upset about being caught or anything like that. He truly looks like he thinks he must have misheard the officer. On the way to jail, one of the officer's body worn cameras captured tears rolling down his face.
26:04 Speaker 01 Investigators brought in one of Doug's ex-girlfriends and interviewed her about his behavior and his temper. She told detectives that he once tackled her during a fight that led to her breaking one of her ankles and that another time he choked her and shoved a bed sheet into her mouth in an attempt to smother her. She didn't hesitate at all, even slightly, to say yes, when asked if she believed that Doug was capable of harming or killing another person. Nikki's sister described Doug as controlling and painted a picture of an absent father who spent more time at the bar than he did with his family.
26:44 Speaker 01 Nikki's mother, Victoria, told detectives that Doug had been heavily using cocaine and that it had been concerning Nikki. She also told the detectives that when she asked Nikki if Doug had ever hit her, she replied, yes.
26:59 Speaker 00 There were blood droplets on a pair of Doug's tennis shoes and the tread looked similar to the shoe print that had been left on Nikki's back. There was also blood spatter in the garage and inside Nikki's car. Adding to the suspicion, Doug had showered that day before eventually calling to report that Nikki was missing. Testing soon revealed that the blood on the garage floor was not human. It ended up being from a turkey that Doug had harvested while hunting. The apparent blood spatter on his shoes turned out to be just red stains. They weren't from anyone's blood.
27:31 Speaker 01 And here again, Morv, I think you have this kind of back and forth with Doug, right? There are things that do not make him look good. You have ex-girlfriends talking about him attacking them, saying that they believed he could kill another person. He's being painted as controlling, using cocaine. And then you have what appears to be very suspicious evidence, but the testing turns out to not really back that up, right? The blood's not human, the spatter on his shoes isn't blood at all. I mean, it's a real back and forth
28:16 Speaker 01 with this guy.
28:17 Speaker 00 It seems like this left investigators a crossroads because here's all this damning stuff that his ex-girlfriend's talking about, the drug use.
28:27 Speaker 00 And then they find what they think is blood and it turns out not to be human. It was from a turkey that he had hunted. So there's no real physical evidence tying him to her murder at this point. So, you know, police are left to say, okay, we've got on the one hand, not so good stuff about him, but on the other hand, we don't have any physical evidence tying him to, to this crime.
28:52 Speaker 01 And the one thing we really haven't talked about is the, the position that the Doug was in. You know, to go from finding out that, you know, your significant other, your girlfriend didn't come home, to finding out that she had been murdered, to then be accused and arrested for her murder. That is a lot to go through. Now, if you did it, nobody feels bad for you. But if you didn't do it, then there's some real sympathy for a, a person to be put in that position. DNA from an unknown male was found on one of Nikki's socks.
29:35 Speaker 01 It was a match to a 39 year old man named George Steven Birch from Virginia. There was also DNA on that cell phone charging cord. It also matched George Birch. None of Doug's DNA was found on the charging cord. Obviously detectives had been thinking that any unknown male DNA was going to end up matching Doug's friend Greg. Lucky for him, he had also apparently never touched that charging cord. While the DNA on the charging cord not matching Doug seemed to clear him in Nikki's murder. It was Fitbit data that really helped to prove Doug was innocent.
30:15 Speaker 01 He had proof that between three and six AM, the window of time that Nikki was killed in and beyond. Doug took just 12 steps, likely to and from his bathroom and back to bed. Not nearly enough to have him involved in discarding Nikki's body. After 16 days, that had to have been the longest, most terrifying, unbelievable and excruciating days of his life. Doug Dietrich was released from custody. Sadly, he didn't even get to attend Nikki's funeral because he was in jail as the only suspect in her murder.
30:54 Speaker 00 Now that Doug was in the clear, police turned to the suspect whose DNA was found on the evidence, George Birch, who had only been in the state for about three months. Police quickly found that he had a very long criminal history, including being acquitted of the 1997 murder of a gang leader who was shot point blank in the head. He had been ordered to stay in the state of Virginia. Instead, he asked his friend if he could come to Wisconsin, stay with him, and start his life over. Sadly, when Nikki walked away from the sardine can that night, she walked straight toward George Birch.
31:29 Speaker 01 Investigators didn't need a warrant to look at Birch's phone data. They already had it through the month of June, even though it was part of a completely separate investigation. That month, a car belonging to the wife of the friend Birch was staying with was stolen, involved in a hit and run, and then set on fire. Investigators suspected Birch and even got as far as getting his phone data, but they weren't able to get enough proof to press any charges against him. They still had that phone data, and when they were looking through it, they noticed that Birch only used his phone to search for two things: pornography and news coverage of Nikki's murder.
32:10 Speaker 01 Investigators also noticed that Birch hadn't been far from the area that night. He was at a nearby bar called Richard Cranium's, just a little over a half mile, but on the same street as the sardine can, Nikki's last known location. Birch's phone pinged from the area of Nikki's home from 3:01 to 3:52 a.m. Shortly after this, it pinged near the area on the highway where Nikki's clothes were later found. And then finally, from a location near that farm field in Bellevue. And the phone data alone morph seems like quite a bit of evidence connecting Birch to
32:53 Speaker 01 Nikki's murder, let alone the DNA that we've already talked about.
32:58 Speaker 00 And it's, it's sort of plays hand in hand with the... Data evidence that ruled Doug out as being involved from the Fitbit. Here they're using this data evidence to help build a case against George Birch. So it's just a wonderful thing in this case that there's this much data that they're able to go through and help sort out what is true and what's not in this case.
33:26 Speaker 01 But you know, one of the things that I always do is take a case like this and then, you know, roll the clock back 40 years and try to figure out how police would have solved the case. And I think you could make a point that George Birch never even enters the picture here. It's possible that Doug goes to trial and is convicted for Nikki's murder. You don't have the DNA evidence, you wouldn't have the Fitbit, you wouldn't have the cellphone data.
34:07 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's a frightening thought and it makes you wonder how many times something like this could have happened back in the 60s, 70s, 80s where there was no DNA, no data to really go through. How many people did go to prison for crimes like this that they didn't commit? That's frightening. George Birch was arrested on September 7th, 2016, almost four months after Nikki was murdered. He was charged with first degree intentional homicide. Looking at Birch physically really puts into perspective just how helpless Nikki would have been and how unnecessary many of her injuries were to accomplish whatever sick goal he had in mind. He was six foot seven and nearly 300 pounds at the time of Nikki's murder.
34:50 Speaker 00 He would have towered over Nikki and she simply would not have been able to defend herself from the much more powerful Birch. The medical examiner determined that some of the injuries were inflicted on Nikki after she was already dead. So out of the 200 plus injuries she had received, many were inflicted after she would have been unconscious or dead, which really paints a picture of the rage that Birch had.
35:13 Speaker 01 Birch refused to speak to investigators about Nikki at all and requested an attorney. He finally went to trial in February of 2018. Doug had to testify and he was a very important witness. Of course, the defense team wanted the jury to suspect that Doug was the one who killed Nikki and that he was framing Birch for the murder. When Birch went to trial, he took the stand in his own defense and claimed that Nikki had made it all the way to Richard Cranium's and that they met there, flirted, and hit it off. He tried to take her back to his friend's house where he was staying at the time, but his friend's elderly father was home, so they decided to go to Nikki's house.
35:56 Speaker 01 Birch claimed that they then decided to have sex in his car. After driving to Nikki's house, a couple of things seemed to fall apart with this story. First of all, why would Nikki invite Birch back to her house for sex? When there was a babysitter there and Doug could come home at any time? And second, if they were going to have sex in the car, why not do it in front of Birch's house instead of driving to Nikki's?
36:24 Speaker 00 As wild as Birch's claims were on the stand, they got even more unbelievable. Birch even claimed that he had been attacked that night too while engaged in sex with Nikki. He said that someone pistol whipped him and he lost consciousness. When he came to with his pants still around his ankles, Nikki was already dead. Amazingly, Birch testified not only that he saw Doug and was sure that it had been him who hit him with the gun. He told the jury that Doug used that gun to force him to dump Nikki's body in the field where she was found. He said that after he moved Nikki's body from the car to the ground, he lunged at Doug, pushed him, ran back to his car and fled. While driving home, he saw Nikki's clothes in the car. He panicked and threw them out the window without stopping.
37:09 Speaker 01 And you used the word unbelievable and I think it's an apt description, but it never fails to amaze me. What people will try to come up with, or they do come up with to try to defend themselves and shift blame to others, you know, we see it in many, many cases, right? There is a set of circumstances. There is evidence. So the defense has to counter all of that. And in this case, Birch decides that he's going to take the stand. He's going to tell his story, right? He's going to win over the jury.
37:51 Speaker 01 But these things that he's saying, they just make no sense at all.
37:56 Speaker 00 Yeah, it makes me wonder if these people, when they tell these outlandish stories, it makes me wonder if they've played them in their own mind before they say them because they sound so ridiculous. But maybe on the other hand, they've got nothing left to lose. So it can't hurt to tell a whopper of a story like this on the off chance that somehow someone believes them, whether it's the police or a jury. But it's, it's just insanity that people will come up with these kinds of stories that are almost laughable if it wasn't something so serious.
38:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's almost as if they, they're just going down the checklist of evidence. Okay. How do I explain the sexual assault? Well, I'll admit to having met Nikki and having sex with her. Well, then how do I counter the cell phone data that shows me in the field where her body was found? Oh, Doug made me do it. And then the cell phone data that has me where her clothes were found. Well, I saw him in the car and I threw him out the window after I got away from Doug, who attacked me. I mean, to me, it's just the ultimate hail Mary, right?
39:14 Speaker 01 You're trying anything and everything you can do and just hoping, I guess, that one person on the jury buys it. But you have to imagine being Doug, right? You're sitting in that courtroom, listening to the man who killed the mother of your child, talk about her body, talk about having sex with her, and then on top of it, blame you for her murder. It's just such a slap in the face, really such a sick thing to have to sit through. Those 12 steps recorded on Doug's Fitbit proved that Birch was lying about Doug being involved in Nikki's murder at all. Not only did he not attack her, he couldn't have even walked out to the car and back
39:59 Speaker 01 without recording more steps. Birch claimed he left Doug in a field in the middle of the night, which simply didn't align with the Fitbit data.
40:09 Speaker 00 The defense also presented text messages from Doug that showed he was unhappy in the relationship. It's true, the relationship between Nikki and Doug did seem strained. The two met at a bar, and Nikki learned that she was pregnant just one month later. She had left her job as a middle and elementary school teacher to be a stay-at-home mom and raise Dylan. She wasn't able to get out of the house for work or have the support of her coworkers anymore. Nikki had a history of depression and had been experiencing some emotional problems after the birth of her son. So there were things going on that strained the relationship.
40:43 Speaker 01 Doug told his mother that he was thinking about kicking Nikki and the kids out because he didn't feel like he could handle the pressure of being a father, a partner, and a provider. In one text to Doug just 12 days before she died, Nikki wrote, "Thanks for making me feel like a piece of shit every day." Doug also talked about selling the house, telling his mother that once that was finished, they were going to go their separate ways. The text was just 10 days before Nikki was killed, and Doug had apparently been looking up escorts on the website back page and also looking up how to make sure that an escort wasn't an undercover officer.
41:25 Speaker 00 This behavior from Nikki, the suspicions, the jealousy and the accusations have been going on since her son Dylan was born. Doug told a detective about a similar time, just months earlier, that Nikki had gotten upset at a bar, hit him, and then ran off on foot. The commotion attracted the attention of officers who actually briefly put Nikki in their patrol car before letting them both go. They always ended up working it out, but the more upset she got at him, the more distant he got. It was a vicious cycle that they sadly kept repeating until she died. And Doug and Nikki never got a chance to work on their relationship before Nikki was killed.
42:02 Speaker 01 Ultimately, the jury saw right through George Birch's lies and they returned a guilty verdict. Brown County Judge John Zakowski told Birch as he handed down the sentence, "This is the most brutal murder that has ever been committed by one person in the history of Brown County. That's how severe this case is." The judge sentenced Birch to the maximum, life in prison without the possibility of parole. A 2021 appeal regarding Birch's Fourth Amendment right to privacy was rejected. He argued that investigators used his phone data without a warrant, which would have been an illegal search and would have meant that anything they learned from his phone would have been inadmissible at trial.
42:48 Speaker 00 We talked about the importance of the Fitbit in clearing Doug's name in Nikki's murder. Listeners may remember the murder of Connie DeBoddy on December 23rd, 2015. We covered that in a previous episode of Criminology. Her husband, Richard, told investigators a pretty wild story about an intruder in a burglary, but it was ultimately Connie's Fitbit that proved that he was making the whole thing up because he was the one who killed her. The timeline that Richard provided did not line up at all with the data from Connie's Fitbit, and the number of steps it recorded that day was a completely impossible number, given the scenario that Richard described.
43:24 Speaker 01 And I think it really makes you wonder, what would have happened to Doug if he hadn't been wearing his Fitbit that night? What if he had decided to charge it overnight? It would have been lying next to the bed, plugged in, and not recording any of Doug's actual data. The fact that he never took it off and it recorded his pulse, heartbeat and other things may have kept him from being imprisoned in Nikki's murder. Of course, the DNA evidence may have eventually cleared Doug, but how long might that have taken? In the end, Doug was wearing that Fitbit to monitor his health and it truly wound up being a lifesaver.
44:05 Speaker 01 And to me, it's this recording of the pulse, the heartbeat, things like that, that really proved, you know, Doug didn't kill Nikki. You think of something that just recorded steps. Well, it would be pretty easy to take that off and then leave the house and then put it back on later. But these things are so advanced, they monitor so much stuff. You think about a Fitbit, an Apple Watch, the technology that goes into these things can really save you or doom you, as we've seen in a number of cases.
44:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, I don't think anyone goes out and buys one of these Apple Watches for, for the benefit of it giving them an alibi or proving something one way or another in a crime, but we definitely see it happening. Uh, you know, and it's just one of those modern technology advancements that really helps in cases like this to sort out what's, what's accurate, what's not. And it, you know, it's a good thing. We should point out here that it wasn't just Doug that was impacted by being accused of Nikki's murder. His friend Greg was under suspicion of being a potential accomplice to Nikki's murder. Detectives accused him of providing a rehearsed timeline and they made it seem like they knew that he had been lying to them.
45:29 Speaker 00 For someone we know was telling the truth to the best of his recollection, that must have been an incredibly terrifying experience. Greg even got up and walked out of the interview room after detectives told him they were certain Doug killed Nikki and began to grill Greg about his and Doug's whereabouts in the hours before they returned to Doug and Nikki's home.
45:48 Speaker 01 The DNA on Nikki's sock had George's birch's DNA on it, but who knows? Maybe his defense team would have been able to convince a jury of a way it had gotten on the sock without him being a killer. But the crucial piece of evidence was the charging cable found in Nikki's blood near her house. It's fortunate that was even found. The charging cable must have been dropped by Birch in the grass because it had been severed by a neighbor who was mowing their lawn. When the neighbor found it, he tossed it onto the street where it was ultimately found by investigators. This neighbor noticed the blood on it, but assumed it was from a wounded animal. After seeing reports of Nikki's murder on the news, the neighbor called the police
46:33 Speaker 01 to tell them about the blood and charging cord. And in the end, it was a damning piece of evidence against Birch. If the neighbor had thrown away that charging cable, there may have been no way to prove who really killed Nikki without a stranger's DNA on that cord. You would be left with the blood near her home and a boyfriend whose alibi was at that same home alone sleeping. Now imagine if Doug had been charging his Fitbit that night.
47:04 Speaker 00 Doug tried to pick up the pieces and put his life back together, but in February 2017, he found himself in trouble again. This time Nikki's sister accused him of touching her leg in an inappropriate sexual way while they were in the car. And when she told him not to, he became angry and began to drive recklessly to scare her. He sped through a stop sign and refused to let her out of the car. He pleaded no contest to charges of false imprisonment, second degree reckless endangerment of safety, and negligent operation of a vehicle. According to the Green Bay Press Gazette, Brown County Judge William Atkinson accepted a joint recommendation from the prosecutor and defense to withhold judgment on the felonies until October 21st, 2019.
47:49 Speaker 00 If Doug adheres to conditions of his bond, mainly staying out of bars and staying out of trouble, the felonies will be dismissed. And it seems like since then, Doug did stay out of trouble. As far as Nikki's three children, they're all living with family and from all accounts, missing their mom, proving that this murder had a far reaching impact on those that loved Nikki.
48:10 Speaker 01 And I think that's the one thing that is a constant, right? In, in every case, when someone is murdered, the number of people affected is massive. A lot of times there's no way to know how far reaching that effect is. You know, we mentioned it at one point Nikki was a, a middle school and elementary school teacher. Think about all the people that she would have taught over the years. Okay. How did her death, her murder affect them? What would she have gone on to do in the future? Would she have gone back to teaching at some point? She never got the chance to.
48:55 Speaker 01 So, you know, people who would have benefited from her teaching didn't. I mean, it's just, there's so many effects more. If it's really hard to even quantify them.
49:09 Speaker 00 Yeah. And she didn't get a chance to see her kids grow up, you know, go to college, have careers, you know, get married, have children become her become a grandmother. And she missed out on all that. But in addition, her, her kids are going to miss out on all that, not having her in their lives to experience that. So it's just, you know, this is years and years of, of lives that are changed here going forward.
49:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's no doubt about it. And then, you know, obviously Doug escaping what, what could have been a, you know, a potential life sentence of his own, had he not been wearing the Fitbit or had things kind of fall in line to prove that he didn't kill Nikki. I mean, there's no doubt to me that their relationship was rocky, to say the least. I mean, you look at some of the text messages that he sent to his mom prior to Nikki's death. Yeah, they're, they're a little cold. The relationship was on the rocks, no doubt about it.
50:15 Speaker 00 Yeah, one frightening thing I think of just discussing this whole case is the timing. You know, if Nikki leaves that bar a minute or two later, or a minute or two earlier, maybe she makes it home. Maybe she never crosses paths with this guy that took her life. And that's just super frightening that she made it all the way to within sight of her home. And that's where she lost her life to this monster.
50:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, I think you can look at that in any case as well. Kind of like the butterfly effect type of scenario. What if one little thing had gone differently? What would the outcome have been? Now, you talked about it in the context of Nikki being murdered. You can also talk about it in Doug being convicted of the murder or of George Birch getting away with the murder.
51:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, so many things could have gone differently and the story would just have a totally different ending.
51:25 Speaker 01 But that's it for our episode on Nikki VanderHeyden. If you love the show but haven't done so yet, go out, you know, leave us a review, give us a rating. Also, keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the podcast really helps us out.
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52:01 Speaker 01 So that's it for another episode of Criminology, but Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, for Mike, and we'll talk to you next week.
52:12 Speaker 00 Take care, everyone.
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