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In twenty twelve, six years after twenty one year old college student Nina Ingram was strangled at her apartment in Fable, there was an arrest and a man named Rico Cone was charged with Nina's murder, but after a key witness died suddenly, the criminal case against Rico was dismissed, and, as we said last week, Rico's legal team filed a civil lawsuit against the Fayeteful Police Department, suing several officers who worked on his case, as well as employees.
At the Arkansas State Crime Lab.
The lawsuit alleged that the case against Rigo Cone was weak, that there was no physical evidence against Rico Cone, and that the witness, Randy Applewhite, had told Rigo's legal team that she was not at all sure that Rico had committed the crime. Eventually, the entire case against Rico Cone was sealed by a judge, and eventually the civil lawsuit
was voluntarily dismissed. Now, as we said last week, the lawsuit is obviously only one side of the story, but there are a lot of details in the civil lawsuit about investigations that were done by Rigo's attorneys for both the civil and criminal lawsuits, and about leads that the
Fayetteville Police Department allegedly failed to follow up on. One of them was a person described in the lawsuit as a person of interest be who, from reading through the events of the case file, appeared to match the description of Jarvis Allen Harper, a man who worked with Nina Ingram at the Sixth Street Walmart at the time she
was murdered. So we went back and tried to figure out how did Jarvis's name first come to the attention of the Fayetteville Police Department, and if there were other leads or other people who should have been investigated, what else did the police miss.
I'm Catherine Townsend.
Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Helling Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a case like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
That's six seven eight seven four.
Four six one four five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen gonepod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Between the time of the murder and Rico Cone's arrest in twenty twelve, there were several tips in the case file that police received. One of the strangest happened on July twenty ninth, two thousand and seven, when the Fayetteful Police Department Criminal Investigation Division received an anonymous letter. The handwritten letter was addressed to the Investigation Department,
but investigation was misspelled. The letter was postmarked Fort Smith, Arkansas, on January twenty sixth, two thousand and seven. The letter stated that the author of the letter had left Arkansas in February and just moved back to the area and heard about Nina Ingram. The letter writer said they used to have a class with Nina. They wrote, quote it probably doesn't mean anything, but a guy always weirded her out at Walmart when he would come into the store.
She said his last name once it was odd, like dipper or deeper end quote.
The letter was signed a friend.
The detective stated that that the letter appeared to be suspicious, first because the letter writer was outside of Northwest Arkansas and because Nina had only attended classes at the Northwest Community College in Bentonville. Secondly, the detective who filed the report believed that the letter was connected to another event, a call that Detective Gentry got on January tenth from
a lawyer named Michael Robbins who lived in Russellville. Now it turned out that Michael Robbins was the defense attorney in the unsolved cold case murder a beauty queen, Nonah Dirksmeier, one of the biggest unsolved coal cases in that region. When the detective talked to Michael Robbins, Michael told police that his office had collected a condom wrapper in connection
to Known As case. He said they had a private laboratory test that condom for DNA, and he offered to allow the Fayetteville Police Department to run the sample against any unknown samples they may have in the Ingram investigation. Michael Robbins told police he believed that the cases could be connected somehow, since Nina and Nona were close in age and both college students, so this.
Could have been a huge lead.
Could there have been some kind of a connection between Nina and Known As cases? Could Nina Ingram have been murdered by a serial killer? The detective noted in his report that he didn't think so. He told Michael that they weren't going to take him up on his offer
because the DNA from Nina's case had been identified. He later contacted the fifth Judicial District prosecutor, and the prosecutor told the detective he believed that Michael was possibly trying to cast suspicion on Known As stepfather, a man named Dwayne Deeper, but the prosecutor said they had no evidence that connected known as stepfather Dwayne Deepert to the crime, So essentially, they suspected that Michael may have been behind this letter in some way because they suspected him of
trying to sway the police's suspicions in Nina's case toward Dwayne Deepert. That's just the detective's theory, as he noted in the report, but it's an example of something that on the surface may appear to be a credible tip, but ends up being just another red herring. We talked to Nina's boyfriend at the time of the murder, Josh Stewart,
about Nina's routine. Josh said that with Nina's life between her business classes at college, her job at Walmart, plus all the people who came into the store, Nina had a lot of men who she interacted with on a day to day basis, and a lot of them seemed to have their eyes on her in one way or another. We asked some questions about Nina's apartment. Josh said that one of the reasons why Nina went back to her apartment so often was to feed her cats and change
the litter. Because Josh's apartment was not big enough for Nina's cats. He said, that's why they were looking for a new place, somewhere large enough for Nina, Josh, and her cats to live. The day Nina's body was found, we know that her front window was open a couple of inches, but Josh said that he found that odd because he said that, in his opinion, Nina would not have left her window open.
I've always thought it was so weird that he was able to get through that window, because she would not have left the window open because she was cautious and she had a job where she had to confront people, right, That's really key to this whole thing. I've never understood with the screen on the window and it being open. It's like, why, if you're going to commit a crime like that, why would you leave the window open.
But a census worker had also observed Nina's window being open when she was canvassing Nina's apartment building in the days before she died. Now it's possible that the open window was something Nina had started to do recently, or just an oversight a way that someone could have slipped in. But in general, Josh said that Nina was very aware of her own personal safety.
They train, so she just females that are in that line of work with Walmart, they train them say hey, there's just some of the extra precautions that you have to take when you're in this type of work. And you know, her boss at the time was female. She's very aware of what could happen when you're confronting people, you know, and that can have life altering impact on their lives, right, and what that could drive as far as emotional wize.
Josh also told us that someone crawling through that window didn't make a lot of sense to him because while Nina's apartment was in a quiet neighborhood, it still would have been hard to do in his opinion, without being noticed.
Here's the thing about a front window. Though that front window would have faced inwards to the courtyard of the apartment complex at ten thirty on a Friday in a college town that time, that in time of year, there's going to be people around, so much's climbing through a window. Yeah, you can probably do it, but it's not a smart time and place to do it.
As we said last week, detectives believed that Rico Cone had knocked on Nina's door and forced his way inside, but the viscap FBI profile stated that the killer was probably someone who knew Nina well and was aware of her schedule. If someone was hanging around her apartment, it's possible that they spotted the open window and saw a
point of entry and were waiting for her inside. After Nina was murdered, detectives did interview some of her colleagues at Walmart, but apparently Jarvis was not one of them. There is no mention of Jarvis in the case file pages we've seen. He apparently did not appear on police radar until August of two thousand and eight, when, as we talked about last week, his girlfriend, Nikki Perry, called the police to ask for a restraining order against Jarvis.
When police talked to her, she claimed that on August second, two thousand and eight, Jarvis had installed a camera. She said that he monitored her movements in and out of the front door twenty four hours a day. Nicki said that Jarvis had tied her hands together with black drawstring cords that he had taken from a pair of his workout shorts, and then sat on top of her pulled a gun on her and interrogated her after accusing her.
Of lying to him.
At the time, Jarvis's address was on Wes Sycamore, not far from Nina's residence, but there was something else at that resonance. In the living room, Jarvis had a framed photo of Nina Ingram. The detective who interviewed Jarvis in two thousand and eight apparently didn't clock the frame photo, and none of this came up again until twenty twelve, when Rigo Cone's attorneys were working on his defense and later his civil suit.
When the detective.
Talked to Niki about the photo, she told police that when she asked Jarvis about it, he told her that he had it because Nina was a friend of his, and also he said he was good friends with her boyfriend, Josh. Jarvis told Nikki that he had worked with Nina at Walmart. He said that he quote was pretty sure he knows who did it, but that it could not be proven
end quote. In my opinion, someone with a definite connection to Nina Ingram, who worked with her and her boyfriend, who was accused of choking his girlfriend with the court of his athletic shorts and to allegedly exhibited violent behavior would be worth checking out. We know that, according to the autopsy report, Nina was strangled with an object that was between one sixteenth of an inch and one eighth of an inch wide, and that the murder weapon was
never found. So the civil lawsuit gave some more details about the photograph of Nina that was found in Jarvis's home. He had moved since Nina's murdered, and he took the photo of Nina with him. It was in the living room, prominently framed and displayed next to the front door, hanging on the living room wall. And Nina wasn't the only woman that Jarvis had photos of. The lawsuit stated that
Jarvis had photos of several female coworkers. Nicki also told police that Jarvis had photos of several other women in a filing cabinet next to his computer. One of them was a blonde, white female who he told her was a missing person. It's not clear whether the blonde missing woman was a coworker. That's something that we're trying to find out. We don't really know anything else about the other women in the photographs, but there are a couple
of potential clues in that case file. In twenty thirteen, Jarvis told detectives that one of the women in the photos was a female cousin of his who died after her car crashed into a tree and caught fire. Apparently, according to the police report, Jarvis described that crash as the first run in he had with detectives, again, though no mention of why he would have had a run
in with the police. Nicki also remembered that the name mc millan was written on the bottom front of one of those photos, but so far we haven't found anyone with that last name who may have been the mystery woman. So we know that Jarvis and Nina worked together at the Sixth Street Walmart. But how close were Jarvis and Nina. Nicki told detectives that Jarvis told her that Nina was a good friend of his and that he was also close friends with her boyfriend, Josh. But later when police
interviewed Jarvis, he said, yes, he'd worked with Nina. He had worked at Walmart for ten years, so of course he knew her, but he denied that they were close. After the domestic incident involving Jarvis and Nikki in two thousand and eight, police did do some further checking into Jarvis.
Nicki told detectives that Jarvis wasn't working the week Nina was murdered, according to the lawsuit, on August seventh, two thousand and eight, Detective John Gentry requested all of Jarvis's employment records from the Walmart Legal department, covering the months of April, May and June of two thousand six all the way to January two thousand and seven. This request was made specifically in reference to the two thousand and six Nina Ingram homicide investigation.
Jarvis was at work the day Nina was murdered.
He clocked out of a Sixth Street Walmart at seven thirty seven pm on April twenty first, twenty sixteen. He didn't come back to work until April twenty fourth, two thousand and six. He was absent the entire weekend following the homicide. Jarvis told Detective Carlton in one interview that he could not remember whether or not he was working or where he was the week of Nina's murder. He said in another interview with police he was camping at
Devil's Den during that time. Now, as part of their investigation, Rico's attorneys got in touch with the superintendent of Parks at Devilsden State Park. It was stated in the law suit, they were able to confirm that there were no records in the camping database for that park or any other Arkansas State park that showed Jarvis as a registered guest from two thousand and six to two twenty twelve. Of course, the fact that there was no registration in his name
does not mean he was not there. But interestingly, there's also nothing in the case file about police following up with the state parks to see if they could find a record of Jarvis being there. Nicki identified one of the pictures in Jarvis's filing cabinet as being one of his ex girlfriends. Nicki said that this woman also worked at Walmart and that Jarvis had beaten this woman badly. However,
Rico's legal team located Jarvis's ex girlfriend. They spoke to her, and this woman denied that Jarvis was ever physically violent with her, although she did say she was scared of him. And even if this is true, physical or domestic abuse does not mean that someone is a killer. Nicki said that in addition to using drawstring cords to tie her up. Jarvis had used other chords like the one similar to Bungies used to tie things down in a truck to restrain her in the past. Detectives also spoke to one
of Nicki's cousins. She said she had seen rope burns on Nicky's wrist. She said she'd observe bruising on Nicki's legs and collar bone.
She said Nicki had basically begged.
Her not to call the police because the cousin said Nicki was terrified of Jarvis. When detective Williams talked to Jarvis on August twelfth and then on August fourteenth, two thousand and eight, Jarvis told detectives he had worked at the Walmart on Sixth Street for ten years and knew Nina Ingram through work, but he said she was just a casual friend and, in his words, like everyone's little sister. He said that he knew Josh from working with him
in the food department. He said Josh taught him about store procedures. Jarvis told police he and Nina had a brother's sister type relationship. He said everyone looked out for Nina and cared about her, and he said that she quote could walk into a room and light it up with her personality and was just a great person to be around.
End quote. He also told detectives.
That he and Nina had to be discreet about their interactions in the store.
I'm not really sure what this means.
It might be a reference to the fact that Nina worked in Lost Prevention, so she might have been trying to go undercover.
In the store.
That might have been what he meant, though it really isn't clarified. Police asked Jarvis about the picture of Nina on his wall. Jarvis said that Nina's death killed him emotionally. He said he had found an employee who had a picture of Nina in his camera phone and presumably arranged
to have it printed out before mounting it. So, in my opinion, this is a little bit contradictory here because, on the one hand, in this interview, Jarvis tells detectives and Nina was just a casual work friend, and yet he seemed to have some very strong feelings about her death.
He said that he was quote torn up, torn to pieces over her death end quote, and that other associates saw him as being strong and wanted to come talk to him about how they felt, because they were all scared and terrified that someone as radiant as Nina could be, that someone could do that to her. Jarvis seemed to be saying that having pictures of people who passed away
was just something he did from time to time. He told detectives that another lady in the store had passed away and that he had been looking for a picture of her as well. Then, according to the lawsuit, in twenty ten, Jarvis's name came up again in connection with Nina's homicide. In that year, a detective with the Washington County Sheriff's Office emailed a sergeant at the Fayetteville Police
Department with a tip about Jarvis. Apparently, an employee of the Washington County Detention Center was approached by someone he knew, a woman named Robin Fleener. She worked in the gardening department of the sixth Street Walmart. Robin told police she had worked with Jarvis, and that Jarvis had been quote bragging that he knows who killed Nina Ingram and that he thinks it's funny that the police do not have any leads end quote, and.
There was something else.
Robin told police that Jarvis told her that Nina stood him up for a date one time and it angered him. It does appear as though, according to the civil lawsuit, the police did some investigative work on this lead. They generated Google map printouts of both of Jarvis's residence from two thousand and two to two thousand and six. They found that both residences were within walking distance of Nina's
apartment complex the law coaud apartments. As Rico's civil lawsuit was gearing up, his attorneys claimed to have interviewed several people who had worked at Walmart at the same time as Jarvis, who quote reported very similar and disturbing tales about his bizarre and frightening, threatening, stalking, controlling, and harassing behavior, and especially towards those women whom he may have felt had somehow rejected or wronged him in some form or
fashion end quote. The attorneys also talked to Robin, Jarvis's co worker, who talked to police in twenty ten. She told Rico's legal team that Jarvis always gave her the creeps that Jarvis had reportedly stalked another employee. This woman is named in the lawsuit, but were not naming her here, so Rico's legal team located this woman and interviewed her, and also talked to the father of an employee who had been a miner who had worked at the Sixth
Street Walmart store. This father apparently had threatened criminal charges against Jarvis over alleged stalking behavior toward his daughter. Robin had also told police that she remembered Jarvis missing work the day after Nina's murder. She remembered this, she said, because this was atypical for him. Again, this was confirmed by the police request for data from Walmart that showed that Jarvis was out of work until.
April twenty fourth.
The woman police spoke to who Jarvis allegedly stalked said that there had been complaints from multiple other female associates in the store. She said Jarvis often said, I just take care of women. She told Rico's legal team that on one occasion, Jarvis called her and told her it's okay, you can sleep tonight. Then he told her he was sitting outside her apartment and that he was going to watch to make sure everything was okay.
She said that she called.
Apartment security on him on more than one occasion after noticing him outside her residence watching her, and she stated that Jarvis had what was known as a red file in Walmart store records. The red file supposedly had details of these alleged complaints from other female employees, but Rico's attorneys were unable to get a copy of that file.
Rico Cone's civil lawsuit questioned why the twenty twelve police case file contained no references to Detective Carlton, the lead detective on the case, conducting a thorough investigation into Jarvis Harper. The lawsuit stated that this quote would certainly seem to be the most logical place to at least start end quote. Now, obviously this is just their opinion. It's only one side of the story, and we don't have access to the
complete case file. But I also wonder why police so quickly moved to Rigo Cone and did not follow up on several names from the case file. A key component of the state's case against Rigo Cone was the fact that several days before Nina was murdered, she was cat called by someone in her apartment complex. Detectives claim this man was Rico, but her boyfriend Josh had.
A much more ambiguous story.
In last week's episode, we asked Josh about the incident five days before Nina was murdered, the one where she talked about someone cat calling her at her apartment.
He told us that it alarmed Nina.
She was shaken up by it, and it was the only time she ever mentioned anyone making her uncomfortable at her home. But in the police reports, the court documents, and from what he told us, these kids who cat called Nina did not resemble Rico Cone. Josh said that the guys were younger than him, and other than that one incident, which was brief, he doesn't remember Nina ever talking about being stalked.
I haven't seen that any high profile. I haven't seen the majority of the police reporting. Really her mom, Judy. Most of my information came from her, you know, after fact, because I just it wasn't my place to go after that kind of information, and you know, I was trying to support the family as much as I could. But no, as far as being stocked in that sort of thing, I don't recall now and didn't recall the anything that would indicate that. And she didn't have consistent hours that
she wasn't working eight to five every day. Her work hours varied from week to week depending on what the needs and asset protection, where her class schedule also dictated some of her work schedule, and then also just how often she was at my place versus her place. There may be you know, obviously everybody has some consistencies, but I don't recall that there would be anything that somebody would have picked on quickly. But I wouldn't be aware of anybody that would have been stalking her.
Josh also said he was surprised when Rico Cone was arrested because this was not someone he'd ever seen before. We are still trying to narrow down the identities of men who were talking to Nina, and one of them, you may remember from past episodes, was someone named Joey.
There's the thing about where Nina was in her life at the time. She did a lot with business school and business classes. You know, oftentimes there's group projects, there's group work, and there were times that she would be interacting with a lot of different guys do that through the work. I knew a lot of the guys she worked with, I didn't know all of them. I recall that, yeah, there are times that she would be talking with different
guys on through chat and stuff. But I found a lot of it was for school, but I don't remember a Joey specifically.
Josh told police that he remembered Nina contacting someone online on April twenty first from his apartment before she left, and later a text from someone named Joey was found on Nina's phone. We spoke to Nina's cousin. She told us that Joey was one of Nina's cousins. We asked Josh about some of the names mentioned in the case file.
Josh said that he did not remember Freddie Hollingsworth, the friend and co worker of Nina's who stopped by her apartment a couple of days after the murder, who we talked about a couple weeks ago.
Josh said that.
He did remember police asking him briefly about Freddie Hollingsworth, but again he said he didn't know Freddy, but he did know Jarvis. We also asked Josh about his relationship with Jarvis.
I wouldn't say that was friends with Jarvis. I was friendly with him, just like any kind of work acquaintance. This is when I worked at the Fatal Supercenter on MLK. So I worked there through college, and so I knew a lot of people that worked there, and so when she got transferred to that store, we knew a bunch of the same people. Well, that particular store, being a college town, has a lot of college age employees, and
Jarvis was near our age. I would see him in the break rooms and there'd be times where there'd be broader social gatherings, friendly turns, but I wouldn't call him a friend. We didn't hang out together and that sort of thing.
But he said he did remember police coming to talk to him about Jarvis's domestic situation sometime in twenty twelve.
Yeah, I was made aware of that situation. I believe in twenty twelve. My interpretation of Jarvis, he was a friendly guy and he would always be sociable, but then he would flort with the girls, and it was very obvious that he would do that. I think it was sometimes that friendliness there, that poordness that he would have with women, could be a little bit off pudding. He
did know us. I don't know why he'd say we were friends, but I will tell you that during this time around the funeral, he did it first to me, got my number, called me a coupside, or texted me and was like, hey, you know, if you need anything and just let me know. And it did seem like he was trying to insert himself into the situation more than I would have expected for somebody who was on
the outside of it looking in. But at the time I just talked it up to you, well, when you have a tragic event like this that happens, people react differently and in a lot of different ways to that, and so I thought it was a little odd. At the same time, it wasn't anything where I'm like, this is strange to me.
Josh talked about what a kind person Nina was, how full of life she was, how hard she worked, and about the dreams she had.
She was well liked, liked her. She was very busy with school, working full time, and was focused on that. Wasn't living a risky lifestyle in any way outside of an asset protection, which you know, there are thousands of people do that and with no issues. But she didn't deserve it. And I just feel for her family because I know, especially Judy, I have children am now and
I just can't imagine going through that. We had only been dating for eight nine months, and that's just a very short amount of time, and I know the impact that it had on me. I can't have them the impact that it had on her parents, her brothers. There was just a trategy for her family. And the fact that they haven't been able to find anybody or convict anybody, the family never got that closure.
Believe that Nina Ingram's case is solvable.
If you have any information about Nina Ingram's homicide, please contact the Fayetfulee Police Department. And if you knew Nina or worked with her, or know someone who worked with her at the sixth Street Walmart in two thousand and six,
please reach out to us. Don't assume that police interviews have already been done, because as we've seen, there were a lot of people who police did not talk to you in two thousand and six, and any piece of information, no matter how small, could be the key to solving this case. Remember, if the Viscat profile is correct, the killer was someone Nina Ingram knew, and unless they're dead, the killer could still be out there. I'm Catherine Townsend.
This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah Kamer mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Sale. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and LC Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the
iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gone Pod. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
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