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Hashtag Homicide - Season 1 Episode 7 - The Murder of Nik
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00:13on Facebook there's a car club called the castaways this is for car enthusiasts they
00:20can talk about cool cars that they see basically a car lovers club Nick Bird was the founder of
00:27this Facebook group I first met him at a car meet and we really hit it off and became really
00:34good friends he had his friends he had his car he pretty much had everything that he
00:39won he just loved life he loved everything about it
00:57we had a male victim multiple gunshot wounds it wasn't looking good
01:05who would do such a thing especially to someone like Nick it was terrible how could you do that
01:13to somebody you know I lost my son we know that social media definitely played a part in the
01:22killing of Nicholas Bird for some people it's hard to tell the difference between real life
01:28and social media social media turned into something horrible because it consumed him
01:34with rage and anger to the point that he had to go back into that Facebook group and find the
01:39man
01:40and kill him in cold blood
02:12that's what's happening
02:13all right
02:13one more up
02:14then
02:17oh it's
02:18ok
02:20stop
02:22I despisations
02:23Bonilla
02:26ì…€
02:31Nick Bird was a young man his life was just getting started
02:36had his whole life ahead of him. Kind young man, loved Idaho Falls, loved living here,
02:43family loved him. I am Tara Withers, Nick Bird's mother. He was just a great kid.
02:55He went with me everywhere. He loved being with me.
02:58We picked huckleberries together. He came in one time and he said, Mom, there's two Pila Pils.
03:05And I said, what's a Pila Pila? And he goes, so I walk outside, there's two caterpillars. And he's like,
03:13two Pila Pils. It was so adorable. He was just a great kid. As Nick Bird got older, he developed
03:22a
03:22love for cars. He founded a Facebook group called Castaway's Car Club, connecting with
03:28others through social media who shared his passion. My name is Skylar Smith. Nick was my best friend.
03:34I first met him at a car meet. And he had a Subaru like mine. And we really hit it
03:42off and became
03:44really good friends. They got all those people with all the same interests together and would meet every
03:57couple of months, you know, to show off their cars. It was just all about that, you know, respect and
04:06just
04:07enjoying a passion that we all shared. He loved his car. Loved it. Worked on it all the time. You
04:15know, that was his
04:16biggest thing. He pretty much had everything that he wanted. You know what I mean? He had his friends.
04:22He did his BMX. He had his car and his dog. He was just a great kid.
04:29He was someone that I really relied on for advice and to get me through hard times. He was always
04:36there.
04:36He would always listen. You know, he would always give me solid advice. And he was just the type of
04:44person
04:45that whenever anyone was down or, you know, even when you didn't have something like per se, he invited
04:52you out or we went out together and we went to go get food. And I'm like, oh, well, you
04:57know, my
04:58paycheck's a little, you know, tight. I won't get anything. He's like, I invited you here. Like,
05:04I'm getting you food. You know, he was just always that type of person.
05:11On the Facebook group, Nick began to cross paths with 43-year-old Mark Bent.
05:17Mark would repeatedly provoke Nick. And what started as minor disputes soon escalated and tensions rapidly
05:24rose. All of this started when Mr. Bent moved to Idaho, approximately February of 2021 from Washington.
05:33He had a job with UPS. He was a very skilled mechanic and did quite well for himself.
05:41In life and in the workplace, Mark Bent was seen as difficult, often getting into disputes with others.
05:50He ended up leaving his job at UPS. He says he was overworked. This seems to kind of be a
05:54pattern
05:55with his job. So he has trouble with coworkers and gets into kind of like behavioral spats and ends up
06:02leaving his job or getting fired. He didn't really have like a good group of friends or anything like
06:07that. He was also alone here. So he moved here by himself, which is why I think he was trying
06:12to find
06:12like a social group.
06:16Mr. Bent, I think, was a very isolated individual. He struggled with some things. I don't think he had
06:21a large social circle. I don't think he had many friends. He struggled with establishing and
06:27maintaining relationships with people. I do believe that he was a loner.
06:33He decided that he wanted to kind of like be a part of a community. So he went on Facebook.
06:38He was
06:38really into cars. He found this car group called The Castaways.
06:46And The Castaways essentially just met up to look at cars. They would have car meetups and, you know,
06:52car shows all around town. And the Facebook page was just full of people kind of trying to relate
06:57to other people with that passion.
07:06In March of 2021, Mr. Bent started associating with the car club. The Castaways is what they were
07:13called. And they would, you know, frequently get together, go on rides and drive their cars around
07:18together.
07:21Mark initially fit in with The Castaways' Facebook group, but it wasn't long before things turned
07:27sour.
07:30To be honest, my first impression of Mark Bent wasn't bad. But all the impressions afterwards,
07:37you know, became too much.
07:40Many in the Facebook group were convinced that Mark had created multiple fake accounts to argue
07:46with other members. One of his supposed aliases was Doug Cook.
07:54He was pressing. He would always try to feel superior and just cause drama.
08:06And then June of the same year, he had a falling out with the club. He let Nick know that
08:15he didn't
08:16want to be associated with the club anymore, which led to a kind of a heated argument between the two
08:21of them. And that's really what kind of started all of this.
08:28In Idaho, you can go on the repository, which is essentially, it's a public records database.
08:35And so anything that's public record in terms of like criminal charges, citations, things like that,
08:41you can just look up for anyone in it. And what Mark was doing was he was looking at particular
08:46people
08:47in this club, viewing their criminal history, and then kind of throwing that in their face,
08:54you know, saying that they're criminals and he doesn't want to associate with criminals. And so naturally,
08:59that's going to turn a lot of people against you. But it also created this perception that he was
09:05potentially some kind of police informant, or he was involved with the police somehow, which wasn't true.
09:12And I think that rumor eventually was kind of put to rest that that clearly wasn't the case. But
09:18I also don't think Mr. Bent did himself any favors by saying, making those statements. And it kind of
09:25came to a head around February 2022. Mr. Byrd had a death in the family. It was his grandmother. And
09:35Mr. Bent reached out to Mr. Byrd via social media and was insulting him and
09:41mocking him for the death of his grandmother. And so that, again,
09:45led to another heated argument between the two of them.
09:49That's not what Castaways was about. You know,
09:51we weren't trying to prolong drama or keep it around. That's not the atmosphere that we wanted to
09:57run. So we were trying to sever ties and go separate ways.
10:03Amid the conflicts between Mark and other members of the Castaways, rumors begin to circulate.
10:11The rumors that were going around is that Nick was harassing him when really all that Nick was trying to
10:25do was just detach, was just to cut ties and go separate ways.
10:31He tried numerous of times to be like, look, you know, I know that you feel different.
10:38I just want to, you know, squash this, just, you know, leave everything alone.
10:44And Mark kept pressing and kept saying a lot of derogatory terms to just to get a rise out of
10:51Nick.
10:53Nick, he came to me for advice and he's like, I keep trying to get away from him,
10:57but he turns around and he does stuff like this. And I'm like, I know it's infuriating.
11:01I know it's upsetting. Just don't feed into it. Just leave it be. But that wasn't enough for Mark.
11:09He wanted to get a rise out of Nick. And so he just kept pressing and pressing. Nick wasn't the
11:15bully.
11:16If somebody was bullied at school, Nick would go get him. Why don't you come sit with us, bud? You
11:21know,
11:21why don't you come hang with us? Because he didn't like it and he wasn't going to put up with
11:25it. He was just so pure.
11:31Mark Bent would say terrible things, talking about the death of the grandmother.
11:36Just horrendous things. It's inexplicable. I don't know what the obsession was.
11:42It was pretty apparent that any time he had a negative interaction with someone,
11:47he would document that on his phone through screenshots. And so if you were to engage in an
11:52argument with him, he would look up your Facebook profile and then he would take a screenshot of it.
11:57He almost kept a record of wrongdoing against him. And it just kind of goes to show that he really
12:03harbored a lot of anger and animosity towards other people, specifically people that he felt had wronged him.
12:10I've never run into anyone that's ever had anything negative to say about Nicholas.
12:15You know, and why Mark targeted Nick, I will never know. I think he was jealous. I think he was
12:22jealous of Nicholas because Nicholas had a girlfriend. He had amazing friends.
12:28Nick was just trying to get away from him. But he couldn't.
12:52On Facebook, 23-year-old Nick Bird and 43-year-old Mark Bent clashed constantly. Mark's arguments became more
13:01personal and increasingly hostile. Then, without warning on September 3rd,
13:06a shocking report was made to the police.
13:11It was September 3rd, 2022, when Idaho Falls police officers were called to
13:16Claire View Lane for a report that a man was lying in the road.
13:21When they arrived, the man had clearly been shot 17 times.
13:32Hey, man.
13:38What's your name?
13:42We had a male victim with multiple gunshot wounds. It wasn't looking good.
13:49The first steps, obviously, is always if we can save a life, save the life, you know, get the victim
13:55medical attention as quickly as possible or get them in route to a hospital as quickly as possible.
14:01He was suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, but was still conscious and breathing.
14:08Immediately, an ambulance responded.
14:17Despite the efforts of emergency responders, the victim passes away. Shortly thereafter,
14:23word of the murder quickly spreads throughout the community and the castaways' car club.
14:30I was sleeping, and my boss actually woke me up, freaking out. Like, it was my day off.
14:39He called me freaking out, and I answered, and he's like, oh my god, thank god. I'm like,
14:45what are you talking about? What's going on? He's like, well, somebody was shot and murdered,
14:50and, you know, they were driving or in a Subaru. And I instantly opened my phone,
14:59and saw everything, and I just, I remember my heart dropping.
15:10As the crime scene investigators try and piece together what happened,
15:14the leading theory is that Nick's murder was an ambush.
15:18The scene was somewhat eerie. It's a darker neighborhood because there's not a lot of streetlights over there. And so
15:25I just remember,
15:26you know, I could see that the vehicle headlights were on. That's a pretty distinct part of my memory.
15:33And just the way it, they kind of hit the pavement, and you can kind of see where the blood
15:38was, where he was laying.
15:42It just had an eerie feel to it.
15:45If you're going to ambush somebody, that was probably a really good spot to do it because
15:50it was not a very well-lit area. It's pretty dark. My initial thinking was I could see how somebody
15:55could probably approach somebody pretty discreetly in that situation.
16:03They lock down the area. They begin processing the scene for evidence.
16:10And there you're collecting not only evidence from the victim, including potential gunshots or rounds.
16:20Unfortunately, his body now becomes a piece of evidence in this case.
16:24We saw pictures of cop cars, like, lining the street. And then there was a car. The rearview mirror was
16:32smashed.
16:43For our newsroom, at least, it was kind of like all hands on deck. And we started getting pictures of,
16:50you know, like, the crime scene and all of the cop cars on the street. And we started hearing that
16:55people were looking for some guy that had just killed somebody on the street. And that's obviously
16:58really scary. It's a really dense kind of area over there with a lot of houses. And I think people
17:04were pretty worried. And the Facebook groups blew up. And people were trying to figure out if they were
17:09safe or not.
17:12When we do have a homicide, it's kind of all hands on deck, which is good because we can throw
17:18all of our resources and all of our manpower at that problem to hopefully get it resolved relatively
17:24quickly.
17:26Police wouldn't have to search long for a suspect, as just minutes after the shooting, the killer
17:32revealed himself. Mark Bentz, he posted on Facebook a confession saying that he had committed this crime.
17:39He explained why, said he was being cyberbullied, and that he wanted to kill Nick Bird specifically.
17:46Mark Bentz said that people in this Facebook group accused him of being a police officer,
17:51an undercover police officer who was trying to get information from them in these Facebook chats.
17:56It clearly irritated him to the point that he felt he needed to do something.
18:02And he signed it at the bottom, you know, that I did this.
18:06The suspect posted on Facebook that he committed the crime. Wait, what? Who does that? You don't
18:14see that. I was shocked. I could not believe it. I remember seeing that Facebook post and saying,
18:20wait, is this fake? Because who would, who would do this? Who would go on and confess in such a
18:25public
18:26manner for the world to see before you've even had your day in court? I mean, what,
18:30what is that going to do? So at first it was a little bit of, is this true? Did he
18:35really post
18:35it? And then when you find out, yes, this is a legitimate post, he really did post this. I think
18:41it just showed that the guilt that he was feeling, the guilt that he had inside that he felt he
18:46needed
18:46to tell his friends, tell the world that I did this. I feel bad about it. And I'm going to
18:51do it in a
18:52very public way in a very public forum. I think people were shocked that he confessed. I think
18:58people were on some level relieved that he did because then, you know, you're not drawn out
19:03through this whole process of trying to look for the person and find out why, because at the end of
19:07the day, like the public wants to know why this happened. They wanted to know what the relationship
19:11was between Nick and Mark. They wanted to know if there was a reason, if it was a random killing,
19:16if it was, you know, rage from like a road incident, like something like that. But it was almost
19:22immediate that we knew or at least had ideas or rumors about what happened. And that's really rare.
19:29When the community learned these facts as we were reporting them, I think they were just as shocked
19:33as we were. One, that it happened. Two, that it happened on the street in a neighborhood. And three,
19:40that the suspect went on social media and confessed to it before even being caught, before even being
19:45arrested. The comments were, were, wait, what? The dude confessed? Why did he confess? Did someone
19:51set him up? Is there something more here? There was some doubt on, did he really confess? Was this
19:55really him? There was a lot of comments of, oh my gosh, why did he do this? Why would he
20:00go on and,
20:01and confess to doing something so horrific?
20:06The online confession left Idaho Falls shocked. Now police had to find Mark Bent and bring him to justice.
20:28On September 3rd, 2022, police arrived at Clearview Lane where Nick Byrd had been murdered that night.
20:37Moments after the killing, Mark Bent posted an online confession, identifying himself as the shooter.
20:44Just 30 minutes later, police received a shocking 911 call, a call that would further escalate the
20:51investigation.
20:55911 receives a phone call from a man who says, I need to turn myself in for killing a man.
21:03911. 911, where is your emergency? Uh, yeah, I, uh, need to turn myself in.
21:10Okay, so what? I shot. I shot someone.
21:16the dispatcher did a phenomenal job just being very calm keeping him communicating getting
21:23details about the case where she could she did excellent okay where did it happen at
21:35she realized what needed to be done she was asking questions we we call those parts of the crime
21:43that you have to prove so the person the defendant has to be identified the time the place and then
21:52you what does it take to prove a murder and this dispatcher was basically building through those
22:00for us what's your name my name is mark bent who is the guy do you know him yeah okay
22:14what's his name
22:17his name is nicholas bird
22:23after mark bent admits to shooting nick bird the dispatcher keeps him talking all the while trying
22:29to establish his current location can you tell me your side of the story what happened
22:37well actually i think at this point i'm a lawyer okay and where are you at now
22:46i'm at albertine's on the 17th are you in a car i'm in a truck hang on just a second
22:56i'm just gonna let you know when i officers are getting ready to pull up okay
23:03it was a crime involving a firearm the officers were on high alert and so arriving to a scenario
23:11for that could have been very dangerous for everybody
23:16while police race to the scene the dispatcher attempts to ensure bent does not resist arrest
23:23the dispatcher actually got him to step out of the vehicle away from his gun lie down on the parking
23:31lot
23:31asphalt stretch out his arms so he wouldn't look as a threat at all
23:36so just an extraordinary job by by that dispatcher are you outside yeah i'm outside what i need you to
23:48do is go ahead and lay down on the ground on your stomach right next to your truck put your
23:52hands out to
23:53the other side are you on the ground are you on the ground yeah i'm laying on the ground
24:05the other side are you on the ground are you on the ground are you on the ground are you
24:13on the ground
24:21the other side are you on the ground are you on the ground are you on the ground are you
24:27on the ground
24:28yeah let's grab some pictures let's uh take them right back here
24:43mark bent is taken into custody and police begins searching his truck
24:50that scene was then preserved because the vehicle is a piece of evidence everything inside the vehicle
24:56is going to be evidence and so we need to process through that
25:04it's important to get every piece of evidence or what you perceive to be evidence is
25:09labeled identified his firearm was left in the vehicle and that was evidence
25:17while investigators continue searching the vehicle mark bent is interviewed at the police station
25:25for a lot of trucks hey how's it going man i'm detective graham why don't you go ahead and stand
25:35up
25:35i'm gonna get you out of those cuts initially you know speaking with mr bent it was an attempt to
25:45first establish some kind of rapport some kind of common ground and we engaged
25:51on just various topics and I just wanted to get him speaking to me it's so
25:58important that we understand why something happened because it sheds a
26:04whole light on things and I want to hear your story and why this occurred tonight
26:12I wanted to understand him a little bit why he did what he did because sometimes
26:16understanding why is more important than what happened you know once I decided I
26:22wanted to engage with him about what occurred that evening and he seemed pretty open and
26:26willing to talk I made sure he was aware of his Miranda rights because he was in custody
26:31and he acknowledged that and he was going to talk kind of implied it's a long story and I
26:38told him I you know I wanted to listen tell me about today well it's kind of a long
26:45story you know how everything connected to today go back as far as you need if it's a
26:55week ago not to go in here where we must start he was well aware that he was in a
27:18bad spot in terms
27:19of the case against him and I think it kind of dawned on him that he already implicated himself
27:26and I don't think he wanted to further provide us with a better case against him I think he just
27:31thought better of it and he would rather talk to an attorney I also don't think that as planned as
27:38this was there is a level of it that seems unplanned and that is in the sense that he really
27:45took didn't
27:46take much effort to conceal his crime which again kind of corroborates the idea that I don't think he
27:53intended on living through this based on his own statements I think he intended to kill himself his
27:58father talked him out of it prior to him turning himself in which helps explain as calculated as this
28:05was there's a level of it that you just like well if you're not a very good criminal if you
28:09leave all
28:09this evidence and so I think that he was kind of conflicted on the end result here
28:21but immediately after that is when I find out about the Facebook post
28:32Mark's Facebook post indicates that the killing was premeditated police prepared to charge him
28:40he had written the confession notes weeks before the actual murder he wanted to show his parents
28:49what happened in the case that he actually went through with it
28:52he told his dad after the murder that he tried to stop himself from doing it but it's definitely
28:59premeditation because they can go back he wrote it in his notes app on his phone so investigators can
29:04go back and see when he wrote it and he wrote it weeks before which is you know an obvious
29:11indicator
29:11that he had planned this all of this started online and ended online with that confession
29:21this was initially one suicide letter that evolved over time as Mr. Bent decided that he wasn't just going
29:28to kill himself that he was also going to kill Nick Bird and then potentially himself but ultimately we know
29:34that he didn't end up taking his own life the suicide notes were written that we kind of traced as
29:40being kind of the foundation or the beginning parts of his confession but then ultimately on September 3rd
29:47kills Nick Bird which was a pretty calculated act that was when we clearly knew okay I feel
29:55comfortable booking him for a first degree at the murder charge at this time
30:20preparation is now underway for the trial of 43 year old Mark Bent
30:24charged with the September 2022 killing of 23 year old Nick Bird prosecutors plan to use Ben's social
30:33media activity as key evidence there was overwhelming evidence we had a 911 call and that was just prior to
30:47him
30:48being arrested and in that conversation he not only admitted to the shooting but actually named who it was the
30:57victim Nick Bird
31:00digital evidence and social media there's always a footprint somewhere it's a matter of can you find it can you
31:07sift through that data to determine if there's a connection and I think when you look at a case like
31:13this where he really didn't take any preventative
31:15measures to destroy or alter any of the social media the evidence was overwhelming there's a confession this is not
31:25going to be trying to prove Mark Bent killed Nick Bird this is going to come down to just how
31:32depraved was it
31:36the trial the trial commences in December 2024 there were many moments that were pretty tense during
31:43this trial a lot of murder trials end in plea agreements they don't actually go to trial but this
31:48is one where Mark Bent clearly thought that he had a defense and he wanted to present it to the
31:53jury and so the
31:54prosecution had to go forth with witnesses with evidence there were moments that brought tears to many people who
32:02were in the courtroom these trials can be extremely taxing on families they're reliving the moments of
32:08their loved ones deaths of their loved ones final moments
32:14very difficult being in the same room with someone who murdered your best friend
32:22it's also very difficult to watch him try to defend himself
32:29try to play victim
32:35it's rough
32:4617 times is what he shot him
32:50and does anybody deserve that no
32:53does did Nicholas deserve that absolutely not
32:59I said in my victim's impact statement I said
33:03you know every time we went to court
33:07the judges say well Mark's rights where were Nick's rights when he was being
33:11gunned down in the street you know and left to die
33:17how could you do that to somebody
33:21prosecutors lay out the evidence including dash cam footage recovered from Mark's truck
33:30there's actually a dash cam under his rearview mirror this almost taped every aspect of that evening
33:42so we could actually see him leave from his home in Pocatello
33:47drive all the way up the freeway which is 50 miles
33:51come into town
33:53and start stalking
33:55he was looking for prey
33:57you can watch him go to areas where these folks what he believed to be his nemesis this car club
34:04where they would congregate and he was looking for them
34:11Mark had planned to attack the castaways car club at their next meetup but Nick had cancelled it
34:19I feel that Nick was a hero because if if that meeting of that car club wouldn't have been cancelled
34:26that night
34:26Mark said that he would have killed many or he would have shot many and he drove around
34:31to the place that they go five times trying to find them
34:39we can see every area that he checked eventually he comes around and he discovers Nick Bird's car this
34:47is all on video in real time but then when he parks behind Nick Bird's car because the car's turned
34:57off the camera goes off
35:01so we have a two hour gap where he is just sitting and waiting he's lying in wait
35:10that's not enough
35:12he figures
35:13all right I might have an issue
35:16where he'll get in my his car and drive off before I get a chance to get out of my
35:20car and go shoot
35:21and so he devises a scheme where he goes out and he breaks the side view mirror on the driver's
35:28side
35:29we have the shards of glass from that mirror on the ground
35:35Nick Bird comes out he takes a picture on snapchat very angry about what happened
35:43he took a snapchat of it and was going to send it to his friends like what happened to my
35:48to my mirror but he never got to because mark came up behind him
35:57and that was the pause that allowed mark bent to cover that distance and then start shooting
36:11a neighbor looks out his window sees the figure he hears the shots sees the the shadowy figure
36:19leave get into the truck the vehicle starts back up so that dash video is actually you see the victim
36:27still moving lying on the ground next to his car and then you see the suspect drive away
36:38you see him drive down the road with responding police cars their lights flashing as they're going by
36:46all of these things happening and then he stops again the camera goes off and that's where he does
36:52these two major things he calls his father who talks him into turning himself in
36:59and he posts the the facebook confession
37:03after the prosecution concludes its case mark bent takes the stand
37:10he had had the opportunity to see all of our evidence and so there were just few very very few
37:18holes
37:19in what we were able to reconstruct and so he basically confirmed everything that we had put up
37:27that was what he described in his testimony and then he talked about the moment that he got out
37:34of his truck when i saw him i didn't do anything at first he was posting he had his phone
37:41and he was typing
37:41something reminded me of everything that was going on on social media and the song just
37:49took over me and i remember drawing my my gun and after that i don't remember i had blacked out
38:17it seems like he had forgotten a lot of details of what happened during the actual murder which is ironic
38:26because the facebook post details everything that happened and he made this post only minutes after
38:33the murder mark's defense argues his actions were a result of online bullying
38:40mark bent's defense was that he was bullied on facebook people in this facebook group accused him
38:48of being a police officer an undercover police officer who's trying to get information from them
38:52in these facebook chats it clearly irritated him to the point that he felt he needed to do something
38:58and so his defense was to point out that he actually may have been a victim that he may have
39:04been the
39:04original victim before nick bird was shot during the trial he showed emotion a lot of times he sat there
39:09very stoic without showing anything but without showing any sort of emotion but there were moments where you
39:14would see him well up with tears or he would be upset about what was being said he clearly thought
39:20that he might get off maybe with a lesser sentence that the jury might find him not guilty that they
39:25might find out that because of what was happening on facebook on social media in his life that he really
39:31was the victim but that clearly was not the case the defense didn't actually ever present any screenshots
39:37or evidence showing that but that was the defense that he had been uh picked on to the point that
39:44it
39:44consumed him and he needed to take action against nick bird
39:49i knew that once it was said that nick was bullying him i knew better i absolutely knew better because
39:57that's not what he was never never would nick do i mean after the stuff that mark said about his
40:05grandmother nick's grandmother i would have lost my mind i don't know anybody that wouldn't have
40:12nicholas he to look at his stuff he's never bullied anyone you know to look at his social media look
40:19at
40:19this look at that he just wasn't a bully he loved people you know he wasn't gonna hurt people like
40:25that
40:27after the jury deliberated for several hours they came back with a verdict of guilty
40:31and the judge sentenced mark bent 45 years to life in prison
40:40i'm happy that he got what he got because i feel like he's taking my life too you know
40:47we all felt a bit relieved i would say for sure
40:52nick is finally getting justice
40:58when i got this case i was pretty young in my detective career and i was still learning a lot
41:03i'm still learning today every case teaches you something and and it really also shined a light on how
41:10grateful i am to work with the people that i work with to have the entire department come together to
41:17make sure that the job gets done correctly is a sight to behold
41:25this case highlights the real life dangers of social media
41:31social media is extremely dangerous it can be an awesome tool and um it can be very very helpful but
41:39it can also be extremely dangerous i think in this case it was only dangerous because i mean no one
41:46could
41:46have predicted that this could have happened because of a facebook group it's entirely possible that
41:50this wouldn't have ever happened without social media it started with the car group facebook page
41:56and it ended with the car group facebook page
42:02i think that for some people it's hard to tell the difference between real life and social media
42:08and i think mark was one of those people i think he was so intensely hurt by the fact that
42:15somebody would
42:16put anything negative about him on a page where there was people from all over the world on it that
42:23it
42:24made him super paranoid that somebody was going to hurt him um which i think is in some aspects a
42:31fair
42:31concern but uh definitely not a reason for any kind of violence he was looking for friendships and in
42:39the beginning it seems he found it he found people with similar interests and so in the beginning it was
42:44a really great thing and then it turned into something horrible because it consumed him with rage and anger
42:52to the point that he had to go and find the man who established that facebook group and kill him
42:58in cold blood
43:01nick's life may have been cut short but he touched the hearts of many in his time
43:08one thing that i want people to remember about nick is that he like i said before he's one of
43:16the purest
43:16souls that i've ever met because of him i strive to be like him i strive to carry out you
43:23know what i
43:25would call his his legacy just an amazing person the impact he had on people was amazing nick's friends
43:38they text me asked me if they could name their baby after nick which is a huge huge honor you
43:46know
43:47the bane of losing him there's not even a comparison he was everything you know to a lot of people
43:56he was like the shining light you know
44:01he's been there through you know my darkest times he's been there for a lot of people
44:08he had touched that many lives and that was my son that touched those lives you know what i mean
44:12he's been there for a lot of people and he's been there for a lot of people and that's what
44:21i mean
44:22i think that's why i think that's what i mean
44:42that makes you proud
44:52Transcription by CastingWords
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