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A Plan to Kill - Season 2 - Episode 08: Silenced to Death
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00:00.
00:06My daughter told my wife that she was going out to a Halloween party with her friends.
00:11But that next day nobody had seen her, nobody had heard from her.
00:15Her friends told us that she didn't ever show up to the Halloween party.
00:20The police were getting leads left in her eye.
00:22People saying, hey we saw her here, hey we saw her there.
00:24Also there were lots of rumors that she had gotten involved with a guy named Spider.
00:29The detectives heard that she could possibly be buried on his property.
00:34But they kept hitting dead end after dead end.
00:38And then a young woman comes to the police department and wants to talk to the detectives.
00:44I know what happened to her. I lied because I was scared.
00:50How in the hell can you do something like that?
00:52That's one of the most disturbing cases I've been a part of due to the premeditation.
00:56I've never seen such a thought out planned murder in my career as a prosecutor.
01:17Bend, Oregon is basically an outdoor paradise.
01:22Violent crime is low compared to a lot of places.
01:25It's a really safe place.
01:28But every city has its dark side.
01:38On November 1st, 2004, I was 12 years old.
01:43That night, I was home. My mom was home.
01:46My oldest sister, Nicole, was home.
01:49My daughter, Nicole, was 21 years old.
01:52She had lots of friends and she told my wife that she was going out to a Halloween party with
01:57her friends.
01:59And she'd be back later on.
02:00I was actually a senior in high school at the time.
02:04And around here, it's normal for people to have Halloween parties on November 1st.
02:09Especially adults, they want to be able to go out after handing out candy on Halloween.
02:15Nikki never said exactly whose house it was when she talked about the Halloween party.
02:26On November 2nd, that next day, Nikki still wasn't home.
02:31But Nikki would leave literally for like days at a time.
02:35She'd find some friends and they'd be like, yeah, just come stay here.
02:40Nicole always wanted to check out other areas.
02:45And so we just figured she was going to go on out and do her thing for a while.
02:49And then Nicole was going to show up one day just out of the blue.
02:52She was 21. Like, oh, I'm an adult. I can do what I want.
02:58But we noticed her purse was there. Her wallet was there.
03:01All of her personal effects were at the house.
03:04She didn't take them with it, which we found that kind of odd.
03:08Within a few days, things kind of started looking weird because she would have called.
03:16On November 7th, Nicole's mother Robin contacted the Venn Police Department
03:20and wanted to report her daughter as a missing person.
03:24Nicole had been gone six days at that time.
03:28When her mother last saw her on November 1st at 7.30,
03:31she was picked up by a vehicle that drove her to the party.
03:36But Robin did not see the car, and she didn't know who picked her up.
03:41Robin let police know that Nicole had been wearing black pants, white tennis shoes,
03:45and a maroon polo shirt that had actually been issued to her dad.
03:48And it had the word Ben inscribed on it because her dad was a bus driver at the time.
03:52We'd call her friends that we knew that she would probably go stay with.
03:56But nobody had seen her. Nobody had heard from her.
04:01We made up flyers. We posted them everywhere.
04:05All the cities around Central Oregon, hundreds of flyers out.
04:15Nicole's mom also let police know that Nicole had a large group of friends
04:19that were kind of gothic, dressing, and liked to hang out in the downtown Bend area.
04:25One of those people said that she knew there was a Halloween party on November 1st,
04:30and it was hosted at a house that was being rented by Lauren Bowers.
04:36Lauren Bowers was a friend of Nikki's from around town who she actually had dated,
04:41but they were just friends at that time.
04:44Lauren also was a friend of the family.
04:46He'd come over for dinner. Lauren would come over to, like, help my dad move something, fix something.
04:53So that party at Lauren's is possibly where Nikki was going on November 1st.
05:01Police went and talked to Lauren Bowers.
05:03He did indicate that he had been really good friends with Nicole and Nicole's family.
05:08Also present at the house was Lauren's girlfriend,
05:12and the other roommate was Craig Whiting.
05:17They all knew Nicole and were friends with Nicole,
05:19but all of them said that she hadn't been to the Halloween party.
05:28We knew Craig Whiting through Lauren because at one point,
05:32he actually lived with us for about six months
05:35because he didn't have a permanent residence, and we gave him one.
05:40At the time, Craig didn't have much money,
05:43and the parents were trying to help him get his life in order.
05:49Detectives back then wanted to get a statement from each person at the house
05:53and people that were at the party.
05:56We knew that Lauren had a criminal history, and he had been in prison before.
06:02But we didn't have any type of evidence that would give automatic grounds for search of his residence.
06:08Also, Lauren and everyone else in the house that lived with him was cooperating with police.
06:13And there was nothing indicating they would be linked to Nicole being missing.
06:19We have a young woman who's 21 years old who gets into a vehicle voluntarily,
06:24and then she doesn't return.
06:25Maybe there was a different Halloween party, but detectives don't have a lot of information to go on.
06:31So they talked to Nicole's family to try to create somewhat of a picture of who Nicole was as a
06:37person to help in this investigation.
06:46We were a really close family. Like, there's no ifs, ands, or buts about that.
06:52Nikki still lived at home, and she was the oldest.
06:56She'd help me get ready for dances, and we'd just like dance around, have fun.
07:01And mom and Nikki, their personalities were a lot alike as well.
07:04Very loud, outgoing personalities.
07:06But Nikki is completely daddy's girl.
07:09She was kind of a tomboy.
07:12She liked to go hunting and fishing with me, go out cutting firewood.
07:16Well, I got out of the Marine Corps in 1987.
07:20And she was actually getting ready to join the Marine Corps herself.
07:23And then get the schooling to be, she wanted to be a marine biologist.
07:27That was her dream in life.
07:29Worked with dolphins.
07:30She even had a tattoo on her shoulder of a dolphin.
07:34And she loved children.
07:37Back then, Nicole was a babysitter, so that's what she did for a living.
07:42Me and my sister Nicole were best friends.
07:44I was like the oldest and youngest.
07:45But as she was getting older, she started hanging out with probably not the best ideal people to be around.
07:54Nicole and I had several boyfriends.
07:55I didn't really know them individually, because as she got over 18, pretty much do what she wanted to.
08:08Talking with the parents and the family, the detectives find out that Nicole recently broke up with a boyfriend about
08:13a week or so before this Halloween party.
08:17In my eyes, he was not a good person.
08:19They hadn't dated super long.
08:21But Nicole had even told us he had gotten physical with her before and argued with her a lot.
08:28And from what I understand, he had been in and out of jail, so he had a really bad history.
08:33Hearing that this relationship was toxic, obviously, that is somebody the detectives wanted to contact, because sometimes relationships can end
08:42poorly.
08:43When somebody goes missing after a breakup like that, you never know.
08:48So it was definitely a thought that he could have done something to Nikki.
08:54Nicole's ex-boyfriend seems dubious because, conveniently, they just broke up and he doesn't know where she is.
09:01And then we heard that a body had been found.
09:04It was a female that fit generally the description of Nicole.
09:08The main suspect is talking, and I thought, oh my gosh, is he going to spill it?
09:13They had planned on killing her because she was doing the right thing.
09:18I already know what happened.
09:32Any time there's a missing persons case, police are naturally going to look to the people who are closest to
09:38the missing person.
09:40And so in Nicole's case, she had had a boyfriend, and they had broken up not very long before she
09:48went missing.
09:50The detectives contacted the ex-boyfriend, brought him in for questioning, and with some phone calls, they could corroborate his
09:59whereabouts on November 1st.
10:02Then he tells police that he has no idea where Nicole was.
10:06This is still seeming dubious to the police, so they asked him to do a polygraph.
10:11He passed the polygraph, and so detectives pretty much ruled him out as a suspect at that point.
10:21One of the challenges in this case was detectives were receiving a lot of information from local residents about locations
10:28on where Nicole had been seen.
10:30There was a news report about it on our local television station.
10:33So people thought they saw Nicole on a bus.
10:36They saw her downtown.
10:40But all of them were dead ends.
10:45So all we could do is just put up more flyers and just continue to look.
10:50I hold my emotions in better than most people.
10:55But we never gave up hope that she was out there somewhere.
11:00And I never stopped looking.
11:14Our detectives continued to work on following up leads and a few months after the initial missing persons report.
11:20There were lots of new rumors going around amongst kind of the friends and people that hung out in the
11:25Drake Park area known as the Park Rats.
11:28The Park Rats were young adults that were drug users.
11:31Nicole is a young 21-year-old.
11:34She's trying to navigate her way through this world, and she, like many other people, made some poor decisions along
11:40the way and kind of got caught up in a group of people that were probably not the best for
11:45her.
11:46The Park Rats said that Nicole had gotten involved with a guy named Devin who we actually knew had a
11:52street name of Spider.
11:55Spider was kind of like the leader of the pack, the leader of the group down at Drake Park.
12:00And he was a known troublemaker.
12:03He scared people, so to speak.
12:05That's where some people thought that they were a gag.
12:08And from what I understand, Nicole had actually gone out with him at one time.
12:12Of course, I didn't like it at all.
12:15Spider actually went to school with my sister for a while.
12:19He did have a really bumpy past.
12:21He is one of those who had been in and out of jail.
12:23We were told at one time that Spider and his group were into, like, satanic-type rituals and that they
12:32tried to get Nicole involved in that.
12:34So it was definitely a thought that he could have been part of Nikki's disappearance.
12:40And then somebody with a lead called the police department saying that Nicole could possibly be buried on his property.
12:46And they didn't want Spider to be able to have the time to move the body.
12:51So they contacted the National Guard and were trying to get a radar unit that flies over and detects ground
12:58disturbances using ground-penetrating radar.
13:02But the National Guard determined that the trees were so dense that their technology would not help us in this
13:08investigation.
13:10Detectives were able to contact Spider and get him to come down to the Bend Police Department for an interview.
13:15Spider was cooperative.
13:17And he said if he knew where she was, he would tell her parents because he could tell how distraught
13:21and upset her parents were since she had gone missing.
13:24He did recount that the last time he had seen her was at a Halloween party.
13:29Confusing.
13:30Not the same Halloween party that happened on November 1st with Lauren Bowers and that crowd, but a true Halloween
13:36party on Halloween.
13:37He described how her and some of their other friends actually went trick-or-treating for a while.
13:41And then they came back and all fell asleep.
13:43The next day, November 1st, somewhere later in the day around noon, Spider said that he took Nicole back to
13:50her house, dropped her off, and then left.
13:54Detectives talked to other friends and were able to verify Spider's story.
13:58But still were concerned he may have something to do with Nicole's disappearance, so they asked him if he'd be
14:03willing to take a polygraph test, and he said he would do so.
14:07They asked him, was he involved in Nicole's disappearance?
14:10Did he know where Nicole currently was?
14:12Did he cause Nicole's death?
14:14And he passed all those questions.
14:17So, the detectives at that time felt pretty confident that they could rule out Spider as being part of Nicole's
14:23disappearance.
14:25By this point in the investigation, detectives had already sent out subpoenas for Nicole's cell phone, her credit cards, her
14:34debit cards.
14:35If a person were alive, they would normally be using these things, but there was nothing.
14:41Her mother recognized she's been hanging around some really bad people, and there was something in Robin that felt that
14:48something bad had happened to her daughter.
14:52Mother's intuition? I don't know.
14:55And detectives just kept hitting dead end after dead end.
14:59They didn't know what happened.
15:03A few months after that, a body had been found closer to the Portland metropolitan area.
15:11It was a female that fit generally the description of Nicole.
15:18I thought Nicole was out there still alive, but we got a call saying that they found a girl's body
15:25about the same age and body style and all that stuff, and I couldn't believe Nicole was gone.
15:31So the one thing I asked him, I said, well, look on her left shoulder.
15:35If she's got a tattoo of a dolphin on her left shoulder, that might be her.
15:50When my parents got the message from the detectives here in Bend that in Portland a body had been found
15:57that matched Nicole's description, it was kind of like a gut shot.
16:01The last thing you want to hear is your person's being killed.
16:06Portland is only the three-hour drive from Bend, so this was a strong lead.
16:12Also, at one point before she went missing, Nicole had left, went to Portland, and so my parents were thinking
16:19maybe she had gone up again, and this was Nicole.
16:23It was just excruciating, waiting to find out if this body that was found is my sister.
16:32But the detectives at that time found out that ultimately it wasn't her because it didn't have the same very
16:39unique dolphin tattoo that Nicole had.
16:42It was a relief period because there's still hope that she's still out there.
16:48Okay, what next?
16:53As this case moved on through the months following, the detectives continued to track down leads.
17:00But at some point, they don't really have a lot of updates to give, and as an investigator, that's just
17:05really frustrating.
17:06It can also be discouraging.
17:08Well, I always had the thought in my head that Nicole was going to show up.
17:12I mean, driving around Bend in my bus all day long, every person I saw that resembled her, I looked
17:20and I had to make sure that it wasn't her.
17:22We still thought she'll come home, even if it's ten years from now.
17:34The way our department works is that every three years we rotate our detectives.
17:38So, in January of 2007, we have a new rotation, and I was promoted and given the Nicole Hutchins missing
17:47person case leading our investigation, and I didn't have much.
17:51I had a lot of police reports that were chasing dead ends that never materialized.
17:58But having fresh eyes on this case, you go in there with, like, this renewed energy of, like, I'm going
18:03to solve this.
18:05First, with our new detectives, a lot of us were tasked with sending out letters and faxes to different jails,
18:11different hospitals, running credit checks.
18:14But at this point, nobody had heard anything from Nicole in about two years.
18:21Next, I started to look into all the prior reports, trying to determine was there anything that we'd missed.
18:28And I noticed we had a couple early on suspects and planned to re-interview them.
18:37So, as we were developing our plan to speak with this group of suspicious people, a young woman named Shannon
18:43comes to the Bend Police Department into the lobby and wants to talk to the detectives.
18:49Okay. So, I hear that you want to talk to me about something. Tell me what you want to talk
18:54about.
18:54Um, the Nicole Hutchins disappearance.
18:58Okay. What about her?
19:01I know what happened to her.
19:04She said that her boyfriend killed Nicole Hutchins.
19:09Her boyfriend is Lauren Bowers.
19:19Lauren killed her.
19:21How do you know that?
19:23Because she was at my house that night and he told me he was going to.
19:29As soon as Shannon comes in, that revives this entire investigation.
19:33It changed everything.
19:36Shannon told us she couldn't live with herself anymore because of the information she had, that her heart was just
19:41broken for what had happened to Nicole.
19:44And I believed her.
19:46This is a huge break in the case.
19:49Shannon, who had been interviewed during the first investigation, indicated that she and Lauren Bowers had been together for several
19:56years.
19:57They have a son together.
19:58And she starts to tell us really good details about the Halloween party at Lauren Bowers' house on November 1st,
20:052004.
20:07They were talking about getting Europe to come over.
20:11Him and Craig Whiting.
20:14And so Lauren's friend, Craig Whiting, was involved as well.
20:19For all of us, it was pretty shocking because both of them initially had been interviewed as well as Shannon
20:25and were cooperative with the investigation.
20:27So Lauren called Nicole about coming over.
20:32And he told her what?
20:34Not to tell anybody where she was going.
20:37They spiked her drink.
20:39I think it was with Vicodin.
20:43Nicole was just kind of passing out.
20:46Lauren said, okay, it's time, let's go.
20:49And him and Craig picked her up off the floor and carried her out to the truck.
20:55They came back a couple hours later and it was time.
21:00Before the police got there, he just said everybody knows what to say.
21:03She wasn't here.
21:05Everyone lied to us when we first talked to you.
21:08I know.
21:10I lied because I was scared.
21:13He told me if I ever told anybody, you'll get a bullet right between the eyes.
21:31A lady named Shannon comes into the police department.
21:34Shannon's boyfriend is Lauren Bowers.
21:36And Shannon says Lauren and Craig Whiting killed Nicole Hutchings.
21:42She was obviously very scared of Lauren and we wanted to protect her.
21:46And we're trying to be compassionate as now she was going to become one of our key witnesses.
21:52Shannon decided that she's wanting to take her and her son and start a new life away from Lauren.
21:57This is kind of what motivated her to come to the police department.
22:01Did he plan this out ahead of time?
22:04Lauren came up with a plan and Craig just went along with it.
22:08They were talking about getting her to come over, drugging her, and then taking her out.
22:15And killing her.
22:19Do you know why Lauren did it?
22:22Yeah, I couldn't tell you for sure.
22:23Well, the most important thing is, do you know where her body is?
22:28No, I don't.
22:32After all these years of frustration and all these dead ends, now we have something to work on.
22:37What we have are a lot of corroborating statements, which are good, but what we don't have is a body.
22:51While police may arrest on probable cause, that's a much different standard than proving beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody
22:57murdered Nicole.
22:59A really good way to think about a no body homicide is, let's say you have a situation where somebody
23:05hears what they think is violence in a home and maybe there's a weapon.
23:09Or something where you say, hey, we don't have a body, but somebody was either seriously injured or killed here.
23:16We didn't have that.
23:18Without the body, we needed a confession.
23:20Without the confession, we were not going to be successful in this prosecution.
23:28So we asked Shannon if she would be willing to wear a wire with Lauren Bowers and we could have
23:35them meet in maybe a public area like a park.
23:38And she said she would be willing to do that.
23:42Weeks later, Lauren and Shannon, they're having a child visitation.
23:47And while the child was playing, she would try to get information out of Lauren's mouth about the murder so
23:53that we could prosecute this successfully.
23:56We had myself and other detectives close by as a protection detail if things, you know, did go sideways.
24:03Then we saw Lauren approach Shannon.
24:09And they started talking.
24:11I'm so scared that you're going to leave me.
24:14I'm not going to leave you.
24:16You're the only one I've ever talked to about this .
24:18I know, but I want to know why and what happened.
24:24That bitch was trying to destroy my life.
24:27You know how bad that hurt me.
24:30I hope you don't hate me for that because I hate myself for what I did.
24:35What did you do?
24:39I had her gotten rid of, okay?
24:45What about the bodies?
24:47I don't know.
24:48The body might be gone.
24:50But if somebody finds her bones, I'm .
24:55When the district attorney, Wells Aspie, heard, I got rid of her.
25:00We looked at each other and goes, we've got enough.
25:02Let's bring them back to the station to do a complete interrogation.
25:10A few days later, the plan was to pick up both Craig and Lauren simultaneously so they didn't have an
25:17opportunity to call the other person and tip somebody off.
25:20On March 12, 2007, we were able to watch Lauren and watch Craig early that morning and have our patrol
25:27units conduct a traffic stop.
25:29They're on opposite sides of town.
25:31During those traffic stops, we have detectives randomly show up and say, hey, we're part of the Cole case.
25:37We know you were initially contacted and interviewed on the Nicole Hutchins missing persons case.
25:42Would you be willing to come down to the police department and answer some more questions?
25:46And both Lauren Bowers and Craig Whiting voluntarily agreed to come down to the police department.
25:52And then one of the detectives had the great idea to have them pass each other in the hallway.
25:57When a co-defendant sees another co-defendant, he's going to make that person think, is that other guy talking?
26:04Maybe I should start talking.
26:05And if you talk first, maybe you get the best deal.
26:09When they saw each other, Lauren Bowers face literally just dropped like, oh, my God.
26:17So we're either going to really break this thing open or these two are going to ask for an attorney
26:22and we're moving ahead with a no body homicide.
26:28We started our interview with Lauren Bowers.
26:32She didn't know we had the body wire from Shannon.
26:35And we wanted to lock him into a statement about what happened to Nicole.
26:40A couple of things have come up.
26:42There's no one with my stance to me.
26:44Uh-huh.
26:44And that's what I want to ask you about.
26:46And you think you did?
26:47I don't know.
26:49I'm Logan, huh?
26:50So why did you wait two and a half years to go to a park to talk to your girlfriend?
26:55Why would you tell her then I had her gotten rid of?
26:58I did not say that to her.
27:00I never had her gotten rid of.
27:02I don't have that kind of power.
27:04I know a lot of you have.
27:07She's at your house.
27:08No, she would not.
27:10All I want to know is where the poor girl's lying.
27:13I didn't do it.
27:15We had Lauren's previous statement where he confessed on the wire and now we have him lying.
27:22Lauren begins crying because he knows in the other interview room Craig is going to be talking.
27:29Nice to meet you Craig.
27:30Yeah, nice to meet you too.
27:32It was most of our detectives' belief that Craig Whiting would be the one to ultimately break first and tell
27:38us the truth.
27:39That's because he didn't really have much of a criminal history.
27:42The detective asked some fairly basic questions.
27:45Last time we talked, we talked about Nicole Hutchings.
27:48Yeah.
27:48I wanted to try to get a little more detail from you.
27:50Do you remember when she went missing?
27:55About the time I can remember is, I believe, was when I talked to you.
28:02And then the detective started really moving up-tempo with the questions.
28:07Some stuff has come up, information that she was at your house on or about Halloween the day after.
28:16And you guys were with her.
28:19We know what happened.
28:21You could tell that Craig Whiting was getting nervous.
28:24And we just saw him take this huge breath just...
28:29And I thought, oh my gosh.
28:32Is he going to finally describe his role and Lauren's role in Nicole Hutchings' murder?
28:46Let's just get to the nitty-gritty here.
28:48Our detective was interviewing Craig Whiting.
28:51Trying to get the truth about his and Lauren Bower's involvement in Nicole's death.
28:56And hopefully break this case wide open.
29:04It was shocking because within the first five minutes of the interview, Craig strikes a confession.
29:10All right, it started the whole thing.
29:14I guess Nikki was spreading rumors about Lauren doing something with someone's kid touching her wrong or something like that.
29:25She was going to accuse Lauren of touching some small child?
29:28Yeah.
29:28Okay.
29:28Okay.
29:29He could go back to prison for a long time.
29:32Mm-hmm.
29:33He was going to take care of it.
29:35Craig explained that Nicole, when she was serving as a nanny, one of the children had disclosed to her that
29:41Lauren had abused her and touched her in a criminal way.
29:45Nicole confronted Lauren about that and Lauren denied that.
29:49And ultimately, her having that knowledge and her indicating that she was going to come forward to authorities, that is
29:54what caused Lauren to want to kill her so she couldn't ruin his life.
30:00That's a substantial motive.
30:02So Lauren creates a fake party.
30:05Even though Nicole confronted Lauren about sexually abusing a minor, she accepted the invitation and was trusting enough to go
30:12to that party that night because Craig and her other friends will be there.
30:16Who actually picked her up?
30:17Honestly, I can't remember if I picked her up or not.
30:20I might have.
30:21We were going to get her drunk and take her out.
30:27Craig said that Lauren made Nicole a drink and it was rum and coke laced with Vicodin.
30:33Nicole consumed it, became very, very intoxicated to the point where she passed out.
30:37Craig said they placed her in a truck, left the party, and went out into the Deschutes National Forest.
30:42He told me to pull over where we were.
30:45He started hitting her in the back of the head, which dropped her down.
30:50What hit her with?
30:51Like a big old stick, two foot long.
30:53At first, Craig didn't describe himself being involved in striking Nicole.
30:59But the detectives pressed on and Craig Whiting eventually said, I struck her first.
31:03I delivered the first blows.
31:06I took the first swing and when I had stumbled, I'm pretty sure Lauren had noticed that I didn't have
31:12no balance to me.
31:13I finished it.
31:15I finished it and just started beating on her.
31:18And then he said Lauren continued beating her until Nicole went unconscious and she's dead.
31:49Craig said they marked the grave with a burnt log.
31:52That way if they ever needed to come back and move the body, they would know where to find it.
31:55So how long was that holed up prior to it?
32:00A day.
32:01A day.
32:01So the spot was already picked out prior?
32:04Yeah.
32:04Okay.
32:05I gotta believe you were with him when he was digging the hole.
32:07Yeah.
32:10How long was this landing?
32:12Three, four days.
32:31Craig was truly remorseful, but it's really hard to understand why Craig Whiting would go along with this plan.
32:37He didn't ask you to move a couch.
32:38He asked you to kill somebody.
32:40Sorry it don't count, brother.
32:41Hearing everything that Craig sang, Craig and Lauren had dug the grave.
32:46They had planned the party to lure Nicole out of the home.
32:49And then let's spike her drink so she gets impaired to the extent that she can't resist.
32:55That she doesn't know what's going on.
32:57They had thought of everything.
32:59The evidence supporting premeditation for murdering Nicole is staggering.
33:05After talking to Craig, the senior detective went back to continue interviewing Lauren.
33:09Said, hey, Craig's kind of told us what happened.
33:11But he tries to blame everybody else at the party.
33:14Paul, everybody was pushing me.
33:16Okay.
33:17Craig wanted to go along with it.
33:19And so this is the classic, hey, I didn't do it, but if I did, I did less than the
33:23other guy.
33:24That's nothing new in our line of work.
33:26Let's cut to the chase.
33:27Let's not screw Craig.
33:29You picked out a club.
33:30I did not pick out a club.
33:31Okay.
33:31I had a tire buddy.
33:32And we knew it was heavy enough and probably would work.
33:37So the murder weapon was a tire buddy.
33:39And the end of it has a metal ring.
33:41And truck drivers used it to hit tires to make sure there's air in the tire.
33:45But I don't remember hitting her and I'll be honest with you.
33:49I may have.
33:50I honestly have so many stuff inside.
33:52I don't know.
33:53You're the person that has the motivation to kill her, not him.
33:56You're saying stuff that happened back two years ago.
34:01You're refreshing my memory.
34:03What am I going to tell my mother?
34:05I can't tell her I killed somebody.
34:08It wasn't worth it.
34:09It wasn't worth anything.
34:11Watching this was amazing.
34:13Now we have both Lauren and Craig finally saying we were both involved in Nicole Hutchings murder.
34:19During the interviews, other Bend police detectives serve the search warrant for where Lauren currently lives.
34:25The house of where the Halloween party took place.
34:28And also for the other suspect, Craig Whiting's residence.
34:31The residence where the party had taken place had been vacant now for about a year or so.
34:37But in the pellet stove, we were able to find remnants of a shirt.
34:42Nicole's father was a bus driver and they were issued shirts.
34:46And when her mother last saw her on November 1st, Nicole was wearing one of her dad's shirts.
34:52We took it to the Oregon crime lab and they determined that it was the same fabric from the same
34:57color lot.
34:59Also outside, we were able to find an area where they tried to burn something.
35:05We did not recover the actual tire buddy, the murder weapon.
35:09But we found the same type of ring that would be on a tire buddy.
35:21I've never seen such a thought out, premeditated, planned murder in my career as a prosecutor.
35:31In fall of 2004, Nicole confronted Lauren about sexually abusing a minor.
35:37She also threatened to contact DHS and the authorities.
35:42So Lauren convinced Craig to help him kill Nicole because that was the only way Lauren could avoid going back
35:47to prison.
35:48Lauren planned a Halloween party, which was a complete sham, to isolate Nicole.
35:54The night before the party, Lauren and Craig drove to an isolated area outside the town and dug a hole.
36:01The next night at the Halloween party, they spiked Nicole's drink with licodin.
36:06She would become unconscious and they could get her out of the house without any resistance.
36:11Craig and Lauren drove her out of town back to the site in the woods where they had dug the
36:16hole the night before.
36:18They hit her over the head with the tire buddy, take her clothes off of her, push her into the
36:22hole and then fill it with dirt.
36:25And then Lauren takes a partially burnt log and places it over the grave so that he has a marker
36:30for future reference.
36:31The men returned to the party and burned the clothes, which were clearly evidence.
36:36Lauren instructed Craig and everyone else who had been at the party to tell investigators that Nicole had not been
36:41at the party.
36:43So, on March 12th, 2007, Lauren Bowers and Craig Whiting were both arrested for the murder of Nicole Hutchings.
36:51Now, we need a body.
36:55It was very important to being able to best prove the case.
36:58But more important than that, we wanted to tell her parents that we arrested the two of them and then
37:03bring Nicole home so her family could have their proper closure and proper burial.
37:08Lauren and Craig had both admitted to burying her out on the Deschutes National Forest property and they gave us
37:13the general area.
37:15But they had been drinking that night and they didn't know exactly where the body was.
37:20I mean, there's nothing out there but trees and mud.
37:23It would be trying to find a needle in a haystack.
37:35Lauren and Craig had both admitted to being involved in Nicole's death and we were able to get them to
37:42agree to take us out and find where her body was buried.
37:44They were very vague about where the body was and the Deschutes National Forest out there is vast and it's
37:52a very, very desolate area.
37:55Lauren took us out of town about 20 minutes to an area.
37:59He was pretty confident it was the correct general area.
38:01We went down all these different roads.
38:04We were out there for 10 hours with nothing.
38:06And it was really deflating.
38:11Then Lauren was eventually able to isolate the specific area where Nicole was buried.
38:16We quarantined it off.
38:18We brought cadaver dogs in.
38:20The cadaver dogs alerted on a burnt log.
38:22Craig had told us that when they buried Nicole, Lauren had placed a partially burnt log over the grave as
38:31a marker.
38:32A specialist from the crime lab begins to slowly dig that area because we don't want to lose evidence if
38:37we find the body.
38:38As the technician is digging down further, she ends up striking what she believes is a skull.
38:51The burial was seven feet down.
38:54So it was beyond the frost line.
38:56It was beyond the bug line.
38:57So there was no deterioration on the body.
39:00Nicole had a dolphin tattoo on the back of her shoulder.
39:04And you could clearly see that there was a dolphin on the body.
39:07We knew that we had Nicole.
39:16The medical examiner was able to let us know that she had some severe skull fractures.
39:22Nicole's cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma.
39:26Everything matched Lauren and Craig's statements about using that tire buddy.
39:31So that was kind of the last piece of evidence we needed to bring the whole story together.
39:36Having found Nicole's body, we were able to communicate with the family.
39:40Your daughter was murdered.
39:42We're moving forward with this case.
39:49It was like 10, 15 at night.
39:51We were all getting ready for bed.
39:52It was knocking at the door.
39:54And I opened the door.
39:55They're looking at the police chief and the chaplain.
39:59And they said, we got some news for you.
40:04We found Nicole.
40:06She is deceased.
40:08My wife, she turned around and just lost it.
40:11Totally lost it.
40:13She wasn't missing anymore.
40:18I just fell to the floor.
40:20All hope was shattered.
40:22And it's not just somebody who passed away.
40:26They were taken.
40:31When they told me who it was that they had in custody, I had to ask them to repeat it
40:39a couple of times because I did not want to believe it was Craig and Lauren because they were so
40:43involved in her last few years of life.
40:47Craig lived with us for six months.
40:50Lauren had been in our house on New Bern.
40:52They had dinner with us.
40:53They helped us look for her.
40:56How in the hell can you do something like that?
41:00We were told that they had planned all this out ahead of time.
41:05We wanted to know why.
41:08The police chief told us that Nicole was babysitting this girl who went to Nicole and explained that Lauren was
41:16touching her.
41:18Nicole went into action right away and confronted Lauren.
41:22And because he didn't want to go back to prison, he turned around and killed my daughter.
41:27And we were told that Craig Whiting did it because he just wanted to help out a brother, help out
41:33a friend.
41:34Unbelievable.
41:35I was numb.
41:38Lauren Bowers and Craig Whiting both ultimately pled guilty to aggravated murder and kidnapping.
41:45They received a true life sentence, meaning they would never have a possibility for parole.
41:50So they will both spend the rest of their lives in prison.
41:54Of the hundreds, probably thousands of cases that I've prosecuted in my life, there's nothing like this case.
42:01And I just don't think I'll see another case or investigation like this.
42:06I hope I don't.
42:13There's a big void with Nicole not being here.
42:16She would be 42 years old right now.
42:19I want everyone to know my sister got killed because she was doing the thing that every human being should
42:24be doing.
42:27My sister was trying to save a little girl who was being hurt and her life was taken for it.
42:33If that does not signify somebody being a hero, I don't know what does.
42:43There was a reason for me moving in there, and her friends...
42:44She was a kid.
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