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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening. In March two thousand and nine, pretty vivacious Ronda Casto plunged to her death from a three hundred foot cliff.
In the Oregon Woods. The only witness, Stephen Nichols, the father of her nine month baby Annie, told police investigators she slipped and fell. Yet Nicholls's story didn't quite mesh with the facts, and some of his other actions raised suspicions as well, including just days after her death, trying to collect on a million dollar life insurance policy he'd taken out on his unemployed twenty three year old girlfriend four months earlier. What had begun with a nine one
one called report and accident quickly turned into a homicide investigation. However, in part due to lackluster police work, the case grew cold. Then in twenty eleven, Dardy Robinson, a tenacious investigator with a Portland law firm, began digging into the circumstances surrounding Ronda's death. The law firm represented Ronda's mother, who believed that Nichols, thirty four at the time, had murdered her daughter. She wanted to prevent him from gaining custody of Annie
and the life insurance money. What Robinson discovered, including an attempt by Nichols to throw his first wife off a high rise balcony in China, as well as sexual abuse allegations with Ronda's underage sister, convinced her that Ronda's death was no accident. So began her six year battle to save Annie from her father and fine justice for Ronda.
In the meantime, a parallel investigation into the case by co author Steve Jackson, an award winning journalist in New York Times, bestselling author and private investigator Tom McCallum posed the same questions, what really happened to Ronda Castle on that cold, rainy afternoon on the Eagle Creek trail and what would become of her child? The book that we're featuring this evening is Saving Annie, Book one the Fall, a true crime series with my special guest, journalist and
author and publisher Steve Jackson. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview.
Jackson, Hi, there, Dan, as always a pleasure to talk to you.
It's always a pleasure for myself and I know it's a real treat for the audience. You only deal with extraordinary cases, and this is no exception. Let's start right away with I guess we won't give too much away, but we want to talk about that Saving Annie is being published as a series of four books broken into distinct parts of the investigation. So just explain what Saving Annie is is as part of that four book series.
Well, okay, yeah, we're trying something new here, which is the serialization of this book, the entire books called Saving Annie, and then each one of the four parts, which we're also calling the book as you sometimes do, it is a distinct part of this case. It was even before I made this decision to try to do this, it was, uh, it just lays itself out that way naturally, as as
four parts. So I kind of came up with this idea of uh, you know, I've been kind of watching the the serialization of podcasts such as Serial which became very well known, and noticed how each part of the series sort of created buzz and people uh talking about the first part and then and then looking forward to
the second part. And and I remember back when I was a kid, and I used to subscribe to Boy's Life, and they'd have a story in there, and and and I couldn't wait till the next month, and I talked to my friends about it, and we'd wonder, you know, what happens in the next part. So I thought I would try this little experiment in publishing and see, you know how it's how it worked this way. There are several other reasons. One is it is a there's a
lot of material to this book. If you take all four parts of the book, it's a very large book, especially in the way I wanted to write about it, in the detail I wanted to include, So you know that was sort of the impetus behind it.
Now, let's talk about the genesis of this entire project. And December twenty eleven, you got a call from an old friend, Tom McCollum. But you were surprised, but you hadn't heard from him for about twenty years. Now, tell us who he was and when you met, in the
circumstances and just of your friendship. And before you talk about the content of that call, it originally hit called for advice, you'd say, you said, after all these years, But tell us a little bit about this relationship, and tell us then about that call and what he had to say.
Well, I'd originally met Tom in nineteen ninety. The head of the Oregon Corrections Department had been murdered in January of nineteen eighty nine, and I was an investigative reporter for a newspaper in Salem, organ at the time and had been covering this story for quite a bit. It was a very.
Different story in that it.
Had quickly become apparent to me that the police were sort of had settled on Oh, it must have been a stranger came upon the Corrections Department director Michael Frankie in the parking lot at night, robbed him as a robbery gone bad. But there are a lot of things were going on at that time that indicated it might be something more of a conspiracy. And so I have been working on this story for about a year.
When the police had arrested a.
Young man, a metheatic small time criminal named Frank.
Gable and.
And had settled on him as as the suspect. Not just the suspect that but you know, this this idea that he had, you know, come upon Frankie, tried to rob him, got in a fight, killed him, and and a lot of that just didn't didn't add up. And it's a great story itself. It's one I plan on writing someday. And even though it's been, like you said,
it's been twenty some odd years. Anyway, as I was writing about this story and Frank Gable had been arrested, I get a call from a guy identifies himself as Tom McCollum and says he's an investigator for Gable's defense attorney and wants to know if I can talk to if he can talk to me. And you know, I'm an investigative reporter and I was doing my own work, spends a year doing this, and this guy calls up
and wants to know everything I know. So I basically told him, in several choice words, where he could go with that, and hung up the phone.
He called back and tried.
To get a little bit farther, and I repeated the process of hanging up the phone, and he called the next day and he kept at it and said, hey, I'll buy you lunch. You know that we don't even have to talk about this. And from there, you know, I he gained my trust, I gained his trust.
He was.
We both were working from different ways, different avenues on this same story when overtime became friends and fishing, buddies and everything else, even long after that story was gone, and then I moved from Oregon and back to Colorado, and we didn't completely lose in a while on the phone or emailed or something like that. But when he called in December twenty eleven, I hadn't heard from him for quite some time, and as you note, it was a different kind of phone call.
Now he talks about he's asking you about advice about a book. So he's endeavoring to do that, and of course it's a good person to call for advice would be you. But he also has a conversation with you about a client, this Gary Caster, who was an extremely rich guy, I can see, a multi billionaire, and he had employed Tom and asked Tom to help him look into a guy that was being a private investigator, look into this guy who was dating his daughter. Mindy, now
you must have found this interesting. What did he say about this person and who was this person that he had found and what had had found out about this person who was dating his daughter?
Right, basically, Gary Caster, which isn't an alias for someone else, you know, was very concerned. You know, he's very wealthy man, as you pointed out, so you know, he's got to be careful about who gets close to his family. And his daughter had brought this guy over he had a young daughter, three or four years old at the time, and brought her to you know, a family Christmas thing, or brought him to the family Christmas thing his daughter
and and nobody got a good feeling from him. They just felt he was, you know, creepy, and he's sort of monotone and emotionless, and and and a number of people there, including the ranch foreman where this wealthy person in his family have a ranch there in central organ And so he just called Tom to sort of run a background check on this guy and see if there was anything notable or maybe he was just an odd duck and and they're all, you know, misjudging him or
something along those lines. But Tom started to look into this guy, ran some crime checks on him and found some restraining orders for violence, domestic violence, there were some allegations of sexual improprieties, and and and started finding more and more about this guy that you know, obviously red flags with the domestic violence and the restraining orders and.
So basically and.
Then right toward the end of it, they discovered because this guy was involved in a custody case over the child, found out that he was also had been suspected of having girlfriend the child's mother off a cliff. And as Tom looked into this, it seemed like, you know, okay, whatever happened to this case. Did they resolve it, did they close it, did they determine it was an accident?
Was it still going? And Tom found out that it was still an open investigation, but they didn't seem to be doing much.
Now as a result, when you heard this story and you got this information, he's planning to write a book. It's the agreement between the two. What do you guys decide to do as a result of what you've just heard and everything, all the information that he has, and both of you in the position that you are at that time, what do you decide to do?
Actually Tom was working on a different book, a different true crime. I was the one, well sort of together, I guess he how you know, I started talking about it's an interesting case, maybe I'd be interested in it as a book, and Tom was also seemed that he could use some help on the investigative end, as far as I'm pretty good at paper chases and finding documents and as well as interviews, and that maybe coming at
it from not together necessarily. I wasn't working as a PI and he wasn't necessarily working as a journalists, even though at a different point he's been wanting to write true crime books. And I said, well, you know, why don't you learn by working with me on this book as a writer and journalist as well. So basically we just sort of combined forces, if you will, and started
looking into the case. There was a lot to run down as far as documents and and finding people who could have been witnesses, some people who would have popped up on the witness list if I was a detective, and who hadn't even been talked to by the police
at this point, though they would at a point. And so that's that's sort of how we got started on it and started finding more and more, and you know, there's the little girl was sort of central in this, Annie and as we started looking into this, we're wondering, did the mother, ron de Casto, you know, had the police done everything they could to make sure that, you know her the case was closed one way or the other, either through justice or if they ruled it in some
other ways than fine, But also for the little girl's sake.
Yes, you write that she was nine months old when her mother died, and Annie was living currently with her father, Nichols. So that was a big reason for writing this book and wanting to do this investigation. As you write, now tell us a little about what you find about the investigation itself. Obviously, this was March sixteenth, two thousand and nine, in the Hood River County. Of course, you were re examining this after the fact. What's tell us about the actual crime itself? Well, the.
Right the ninety one one call is that on March sixteenth, two thousand and nine, about six o'clock in the evening, that this is in Hood River, Oregon, which is a
town in the Columbia River Gorge, and this calls. They get a call from the parking lot of a popular trail there called the Eagle Creek Trail from a man who first talks about that he needs help and can you send somebody and all this sort of thing, and kind of takes him a minute or two before he lets them know that his girlfriend has fallen from the cliff and he believes that she's dead, and and that kind of starts the whole process, obviously the police showing
up and eventually a search and rescue team showing up. But it's it's it's not nine to one one call, just.
There's some aspects about it.
You know, he's obviously more concerned that he's cold and wet, and and some other things that will come into play later on in this investigation.
M h.
Of course, that nine one one call is recorded, and of course people, investigators, police, everyone will look at that and review that later. You talked about the idea that one of the first things that people can judge the police do and they do put in their reports is
the behavior. And you talked about the coldness. So maybe he could tell us a little bit more about what this whole idea that he was so cold and preoccupied with his own condition rather than what some people might think is a normal response to his girlfriend, his fiance just being dead. So tell us what the first responders or he's talking to the nine one one operator and then there's the first responder, and what does that first responder encounter in terms of behavior from this person.
Well, again, it's this person who we learned by this time as Stephen nickels Is. He talked about that, you know, he tried to get to the body, and he tried to swim up a creek, and he's wet and cold, and it is March in Oregons and it had rained and some even some sleep that day, so it's chilly outside. But you know, i'd ask anybody out there, if you're hiking on a trail and the person you love, your fiance, plunges off the cliff.
What is your uh first thing You're.
Probably gonna say to the nine one one call uh operator, uh that you're cold and can somebody please help you? Or are you going to say, uh, my girlfriend fell off a cliff and I think she's dead, and and then maybe, by the way, I'm cold and I need some help. It's just it's just, you know, those sorts of things that you know, you look at as an investigator.
It's it's the demeanor evidence, if you will, and and demeanor evidence does count in the courtroom, by the way, and and and so these sorts of things that some people were almost right away. And by people, I mean the first responders were kind of taken back a little bit by this guy who is sort of phlegmatic when he speaks is monotone. He's still more concerned about how
cold he is. And then when they get him in the ambulance, now he's had a little bit of time in his car with the heater warmed up, but his body temperatures are normal.
Yeah, right away too. You have one of the first responders is a person from an interesting unit they called the crag Rats. And these guys are experienced with rescue, and also this person personally is experienced with the trail itself and where it might be more difficult or more prone to somebody having any kind of situation, since there is a place called suicide point on this trail. Tell
us what his impression was. You say about other people doubting, you talk about doubting the story, but this person, and based on that experience, has even more of a I would say a stronger opinion about that.
Well. Yes, Jeff Pritcher, who was both the.
Chief of the Cascade Locks, which is the nearest small town to this trail, of their fire departments and a paramedic as well as being one of these crag Rats, which is one of the top search and rescue teams probably in the country. They've they've been at it a long time. They have They do mountains, they do rivers, they do just about everywhere. They have a lot of territory they cover.
And he's struck too, just.
When he talks to Nichols at the parking lot about this guy's demeanor and some of the things he's saying, as far as you know, he pulled her from the river and that he tried to get up the river and tried to swim up the river, and a number of little things that, you know, he just kind of at that moment files the back of his head as sort of strange. And then when another volunteer shows up, apparently quickly after that, they head up the trail to see if they can find the point where she went
off so they can locate her body. Nichols had said he thought it was a mile up the trail, or a mile and a half or or something along these lines.
So they had to and.
It's getting starting to get dark, so they had to kind of hurry up there and see if they can spot her from the trail up above.
Yeah, you say that they have difficulty even getting down there, so we'll talk about that. But at the same time, you have that a deputy smith Is has heard the nine to one one call. Now he wants to know to hear the story. So police want to hear the story from from Steve Nichols. And so what does he say about Rhonda, their hike, her behavior, and the accident itself as he describes.
It well, Nicol first, and he will change his story a number of times throughout this talking to officers until he finally quits talking at all, but you know, his basic things. They went up there and she was acting crazy, even though he says he doesn't remember her doing any drugs or smoking any pot or anything else like that.
And if she's running down the trail with a towel around her neck, playing like she's Supergirl or Superman and running down this trail and whips and goes over the edge, and and and that's his basically his story, that they were having a hike, they're trying to lose weight.
She's doesn't mention any In.
Fact, he denies there's any sort of argument or fight or or anything else along those lines. So you know, basically that's that's his story, is that she's acting a little crazy and running down the trail before she falls.
He also is is witnessed to Steve Nichols not answering his phone and then inquiring who that would be and why he wouldn't be answering his phone, And that's the first we hear of the sister that Ronda has, Melanie, but also that that he's going to have a hard time telling Ronda's mother what has happened. Tell us about this phone call and what Smith maybe surmises from this if anything.
Well, during this time when they're talking, he does receive a couple of calls, and he basically tells the officer, well, that's that's her mom wondering where she is, and you know what do I tell her and do I contact her? At that time?
It's not terribly suspicious other than.
The police officer notes it and that you know, and tells Nichols, don't worry, we'll have a once we've confirmed all of this, we'll have a law enforcement get in touch with the family and let them know later on. It will become kind of interesting in that when they do look at his phone again, when they ask to see his phone and he hands it over for a little bit, all of the messages that he'd received or since weren't on the phone. They weren't on the caller ID.
And so that made me wonder, well, where did they all go?
And did he erase them all? And then so why did he erase them all?
Right? What are the We get back to the crag rats again. So when they go down and finally find the body, what is the condition of Randa's body? What do they note? And of course they've already spoken to Steve Nichols, and he has given them account of how she got down there under what circumstances tell us what they just even see immediately?
Well, and don't I don't want to give too much away here.
It's an important part of the book, but we can get into for one thing, it was very difficult. And these guys, I mean, they they climb mountain, they rope in, they.
They do everything.
It was very, very difficult to find a place one to even get down the cliff. And then they had to make their way back towards the body, which was which was a struggle for even two very experienced mountaineers. And then when they find her. One of the one of the main things that they that they noted that I'll reveal here is that Nickel told a couple of different first responders that when he looked over the edge, he saw her laying in the water of Eagle Creek.
The distance between the cliff and the Eagle Creek was probably about one hundred and sixty feet, so almost what's sixty yards or something home, they're not quite twoty five, but anyway, there's quite a distance between the cliff and the creek. When they find Ronda's body, she's about halfway between the cliff and the creek. So if you're going
to go with Nicol's story, well then she's was. He found her laying in the water, and one of the crag rats, Jeff Pitcher, that he pulled her from the water, and then she's a good eighty feet from the creek towards the cliff, dragged up a slope with a with a one of her leg bones jutting from her thigh and obviously not not alive, even though he said that he tried to give her CPR, so it struck the crag.
Rats as well.
You found her in the water, one would you just pull her up on the bank and turn her over and try to do CPR there, And then if that didn't work, why would you then try drag her eighty feet up the hill only to leave her where she was left and then make your way back to the parking lot. They didn't see any evidence of any disturbance of the ground either on.
The way to her body, and they had to cross a.
Couple of different places where it's likely that some sort of track would have been left, but even around the body none of the area had been disturbed, and that was one of the clues that they had that, you know, this story just isn't working the way that you know Nichols was saying it did, and so they quickly determined that it was a good possibility this was a crime scene, so they took photographs and bagged up out of there.
There.
There were a number of other details that I'll let readers find in the book as to what how they came to that conclusion, but that was one of the main ones, is that he said, oh, she's laying in the water, and so if she was lying in the water, why did he drag her so far up there where she's obviously got these horrendous injuries and and leave her where she was.
You talk about the ensuing investigation, and again not to give anything away, but you talk about the deputy Smith is at the hospital and an interesting drug Gamba penton. You say it's anti seizure antidepressant, nerve pain medication. How does this drug play into this? And can we talk about the autopsy and its results, especially given what Nichols has said that he is more than intimated that she was high on drugs on that cliff Or on that trail.
Well, I guess that it comes down to the Gaba Penson is. It's actually more of a used more as a pain medication, though there's some anti depressed qualities in it. She had Ronda did have some postpartum issues. But remember this is nine months later and she'd actually stopped taking it for a while, was back taking it she on her Dodger's advice. But even in the autopsy it was it barely registered. In fact, she barely registered for anything.
She had a little bit of cannabcal, cannaboid or what am I saying here, the residue left over from marijuana.
But it was at such a low level that it also could have been either.
A false positive or that she was around people that smoked. She had told people, and most people believed her that, especially after the birth of her daughter, she had stopped taking any kind of drugs and but what she did have in her system was legally prescribed.
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As far as as anything else, and in such minimal amounts that it's hard to madge that she was having some sort of drug reaction. He certainly didn't have any sort of hallucinogens in her or anything along those lines, or enough pot residue to you know, have caused her to run down the trail like Superman.
Right now. In the ensuing investigation, of course that you have the Deputy Smith, but he's he's enjoined by a guy named Deputy English, and these guys want to find out what he does for a living. And of course they have to investigate all the possible motives for this crime if it's not going to be an accident, so
they're doing their due diligence. Tell us about what kinds of questions they're asking and what kind of answers they're getting from Steve Nichols regarding what he does, what she does, things of that sort.
Well, early on in the initiation the investigation, he's these first interviews are they don't delve too too deeply, but they you know, he tells them he's a day trader and he makes that's how he makes his money. And a day trader is someone who buys and sells thoughts, all within a few hours, trying to make a little
bit that on these transactions. In that Ronda basically did not work, she was unemployed, she took care of the baby, she spent Uh, we find out that she's spent time both with Nichols and lived with her mom part of the time. And uh, and so that's that's sort of their financial situation at this time. And then I'll let you lead me into the next part where I think you're going.
Let's just use this as an opportunity. Steve, stop for a second to talk about our sponsor, which is Talkspace. Tonight's episode is sponsored by Talkspace, the online therapy company that lets you message a lightnsed licensed therapists from anywhere at any time. All you need is a computer with Internet connection or the Talkspace mobile app that means you can improve your mental health, even if you've had trouble making time for it in the past. Get something off
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dot com slash murder. Now, Steve, we were talking about the ensuing investigation and what Steve Nichols had to say, how do they get to the point where they you talk about another person becoming involved, a corporal Michelson. When do they first hear some rumblings of the real motive or in their mind a motive for this murder? Who do they talk to and what do those people say?
Well, the initial investigators are with Cood River County Sheriff's Office, and that's Detective Uh Tiffany and Deputies English and Deputy Smith, who you've you've discussed. Ronda and Steve and Ronda's mom and family all live in Portland, which is Washington County, so there's there's some inter office dealings here. And one of the Washington County deputies, Nicholson, who you've talked about, calls English and and this is within you know, uh, a very short amount of time, within a.
Couple of hours of.
Reaching the trailhead talking to Nichols, and then finally they are able to locate Ronda's mom and through her, the rest of the family and start talking to them. And right away the family says they think that he did it, and they note that he had taken out a large million dollar they thought it might even be more life insurance policy on Ronda, and this, of course immediately sends up.
A red flag.
Now, at the same time or soon after, they talked to the mother, Julia Simmons, then there is at Ronda's sister, Melanie. How do they get to the point where they hear any rumblings of the relationship with Melanie and Steve.
Well both a little bit from the family, but also one of Melanie's former boyfriends, calls the police after he sees a broadcast television broadcast about Ronda falling, even though it did not mentioned Nichols by name at that time, he sort of guessed, and he knew about the insurance policy,
and he knew about some other things. But what he knew that the detectives didn't have as much of at that time was that when Melanie was fifteen years old, and this was would have been four years earlier, Nichols had had a sexual affair with her and had continued this affair for quite some time, and that Melanie had actually at one point got angry and told Ronda in front of her mom and Nichols that they were having
this affair. And obviously Melanie is underaged, and Steve Nichols at the time of this affair started was thirty years old, and it became obvious in some of the investigation that ensued from that that Nichols was had an infatuation with Melanie Casto, who was Ronda's younger sister, and to the point where he was texting her within uh you know what, Actually he picked her up and took her over to
her mom's house after Ronda died. Melanie said he said a number of odd things, such as it only takes a baby six months to forget someone.
And.
And it's it's uh, what's really odd is he's a number of texts to her afterwards, and there's the you know, hey, we're friends still, and you know, can I talk to you? And and these are things. Nowhere in there does he say I'm grieving for Ronda. And this is supposedly his fiance that he, you know, allegedly was taking on this hike to as a romantic place to propose to her. And uh, you know, there's the there's just another one
of these flags that the police are seeing. Uh, you know, why why do none of these texts say anything about Ronda. They're all about you know, getting together with Melanie and you know, inviting her up to uh where he's living now with his family, and helping him take care of
Annie and and all of these sorts of things. So now the police start working on two different uh uh motivators, and uh one is the million dollar insurance policy, and the other one is that he obviously wants to be together with Melanie, Ronda's younger sister, and in of course mean to Melanie now had told her that they couldn't be together as long as Ronda was around.
What Micholson is hearing and the police are hearing too, is incredibly our joke shared between Ronda and Steve that the family is privy too. What kind of jokes would these people make and how cryptic would they be considering well.
This insurance policy that we've talked about, Steve arranged for this in Steve Nichols arranged for this in November of two thousand and eight, just four months before. In fact, the policies, which is a whole noother can of worms and its sulf. Just how they got these policies A million dollars on someone who was unemployed is pretty unusual, but yeah, going forward from there, they didn't even receive
the policy until January. But anyway they have, you know, they both took out a they made Nichols originally only wanted to have about two hundred and fifty thousand on his policy and a million on Rondas, but the insurance company made them both have million dollars equal policies. So they now have these million dollar policies. And and Melanie
says she's around when they're this couple. Randa, her sister, and Nichols are joking about, you know, who's going to kill who as far as to get the life insurance policy, and enough to the point where Melanie was actually concerned about it. She thought, you know that this this couple fought a lot. They really did not belong.
Together just to start with.
But anyway, they you know, so they're joking about killing each other. Nichols at some points talks about shoving Ronda off a cliff. According to Melodie, now we have to always remember that some of this is coming along after the fact, that these are stories and anecdotes that are being told to the police after the fact.
But the.
Very you know, one of the facts is that these are being told within a day, two days after Ronda's death. So again it's it's how quickly these you know, if these stories are being made up, they're being made up very quickly, and everybody is getting their story together very quickly. All all apparently, you know, trying to to get Steve Nickels, at least that from his side, that's what he would be saying on that.
Now.
At the same time, too, we have this other idea that they have to investigate, the idea of to looking at Ronda's sister Melanie and that love triangle possibility motive. But also they find out information regarding a jeweler named Cassab Jewelry. Jeweler tell us about this story and what they find and what Steve has to say about it and what they find contrary to.
That, well, part of that, as I mentioned a little earlier, part of it was that Nicol was going to ask Ronda to marry him, and uh, Ronda told her grandmother before they left on this high key's either going to give me a ring or push me off a cliff. Sort of happened justin and sort of you wonder, you know,
is this thing she was really thinking about? But Nichols told Julius Simmons, who is Ronda's mother, that he had purchased an engagement ring from this jeweler, cassav Jeweler, which is a very nice jeweler in downtown Portland, Oregon, and that you know, they picked out the ring and that he'd purchased it for her and he was taking her
on this trail. Julia's boyfriend noted a jewelry bag in the back of the car on the seat when they left, and so everybody maybe he did buy a ring and was going to propose to her, and they did know that they had been the couple. Rond in particular, had been to the jeweler looking at various cuts and settings. Steve had gone a couple of times that always seemed sort of, you know, his least favorite thing to do, and so Julia asked him, well, okay, well where is
the ring? And this is within a day or so, maybe two after Ronda's death, and he told her, according to Julia, that he had already taken the ring back and I got a refund for it, which is, you know, if you think about it, as awfully quick to decide, I'm taking the ring back for my fiance who just
fell off the cliff. Anyway, Julia tells a police officer that she called the jeweler and asked them about this, and that they'd said, well, we remember the couple because we keep a very detailed log of who comes in and looks for jewelry and that sort of thing. But they never purchased one, much less ever come into return a ring. There was no ring bot for him to return. Right.
Also, what they find is that and you say, this is it's going to be difficult to get around this or this is going to be problematic. Is what you say is that when Melanie made these allegations when she was fifteen years of age, a lot of people didn't believe her, including her mother, but someone did and called authorities and police.
Why is that right?
Tell us, well, there's actually two crimes that are being investigated at this point. One is, or put two potential crimes. One is what happened to Ronda? Did?
Was she did she slip and fall?
D did she was she pushed?
So that's a homicide investigation.
But now there's this secondary investigation into whether Nichols is guilty of sexual abuse of a minor, which is also a felony. And and so there's that investigation going on as well. Now you know they're they're thinking ahead, looking at the possibilities of this charge and if it gets to court. And what in the problematic part was is that when Melanie told everybody that I'm having an affair with Nichols, he denied it, immediately said.
She was a liar, and.
No one else believed her either at that point when she said it. But Melanie also told one of her friends who told her mom, and the mom called the police and social services to look into this. When the police and social services asked Julia about it, Golnda's mom, she said that Melanie, she thought Melanie was lying about it, and that Melanie was using drugs and basically she took Nicols.
Word that he didn't do it.
And you know Ronda at uh, you know, at that point, you know, she's she's engaged to this guy, She's going to have a baby with this guy. At some point it is also denies it. So you know they're looking at well to get this in the court. The first thing a defense attorney's going to do is is called Julia Simmons up and say didn't you tell police at that time that she was a liar and she was
on drugs. So this is going to it's a it's not a cut and dry case of you know that where you don't have the girl's own mother saying she's.
A liar, you also have another police official or detective Rosebra that becomes involved too. And to further complicate this too, is that there was different times where she lived with the couple, her sister and Steve Nichols, and engaged in sexual relations with him and then moved out and so and her story changed and till this Rosebra, I guess, really dug in and got the facts behind this. You also talk about a third motive as this investigation proceeds amazingly.
If it wasn't enough motivation that they found all this evidence that there's another motive. Tell us what this third motive was and what they found in that part of the investigation.
Well, the third.
Motive is that.
Nichols had been appointed the trustee or a trust that his mother had set up on behalf of his sister and half sister, which was a rental building in San Diego, and basically he was supposed to be, you know, kind of managing it for them.
He would get the.
Statements from the property manager and all these sorts of things and making you know, as a trust, the year is supposed to be watching out for the interests of the people involved in the trust. But in this property was mortgaged to it's about a million dollar property, and it was mortgage to about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. You know, at the time that it went into the trust,
that the mother had died. Now we get to the summer of two thousand and eight and the sisters find out that for some reason, there's now the property now has an eight hundred thousand dollars mortgage against it. Because and slowly this takes a number of months, they find out it's because Nichols has taken out two personal loans against the property, and he had no.
Right to do that.
He wasn't supposed to be getting money out of this, And now this property is obviously much less valuable. In fact, most of the profits coming from the rentals are going to pay the loans that he took out on it. So he's obviously using this money.
To do his day trading and whatever else he was doing with it.
To the tune up, he had taken out about another five hundred thousand dollars against his property, and so they weren't getting payments except for every once in a while, a little bit here and a little bit there. So they eventually, while this is going on, file a lawsuit against Nichols to get to get in their names the deeds away from him, as well as to force him to do an accounting of whatever happened to this five hundred thousand plus all the money that came into it,
which essentially went to paying the loans. So all this money over the course of how many years, and I believe its close to about forty thousand dollars a month was coming in that went somewhere else, and so did the equity, and this property went somewhere else.
So they sued.
But and here's the big button on this one is the police didn't find us. They did not know about this possible motive, which is that in shortly before he went to he looked into life insurance. He's been confronted by his siblings who said, hey, we're on to you. Whatever happened to this money, and we want to know
about it now. So if you put it all together, is he's confronted in October by his siblings about this November, he goes and gets life insurance against uh on Ronda's life in uh just I think less than two weeks before Ronda died. Uh, he gets they filed a lawsuit against him, requite you know, asking for a judgment that he uh, you know, providing accounting for all of this
and uh uh and also hand over the deed. So he's in serious financial trouble with his siblings when he signs up for life insurance policy his policy and then uh, you know, shortly after Ronda's death, Uh, there's a judgment against him saying, you know, give over the deeds and account for the money. But at this time the police don't even know about it. And this is one of those things where you know, if they'd asked one of his siblings anything about him, they would have found out
about this. You know, that's a pretty powerful motive for wanting money and needing to come up with a lot of money.
Fast, exactly. You Also in this include on August twenty fifth, two thousand and nine, Sherry Lee and her daughter Beth tell us about this story.
Well, while all this is going on, Steve Nichols moves up to a community near Bend, Oregon to live with his parents half brother, and he has Annie with him at this point. And one night he takes his half brother and his friends and a young girl, a thirteen year old swimming to a pool at a pool obviously, and they're in the pool playing Marco polo. He decides to join the kids. His half brother's fourteen. I believe
the other boy was as well. There's the thirteen year old and he and she feels him grab her butt during this play and at first she thinks it's an accident, but he does it again and she tells him to stop, and he's sort of, you know, okay, but at the end she would later say that he did it several more times. Anyway, he gets her home about our fight. The mom's upset, but you know, doesn't know what to make of it. And then a few days later, ah, hold on just a minute. A few days later, Uh.
She.
Is kind of snooping to her daughter's text from Uh, some man who you know, just goes by Steve and he's all sorts of things. He's he's asking her for hot photos of her and her friends. He sends her a text asking if she wants to get in a hot tub with him and and three hot men, including the two boys teenage boys and his friend. And he sends a photograph of himself shirt lists in his bedroom,
you know, and taking a photo of himself in a mirror. Obviously, a thirty four year old man sending these sorts of photos to a thirteen year old girl is pretty inappropriate. And and finally she breaks down and tells her mom, well, this is what happened that night. He grabs them to grab me, uh uh, and then he was sending me
these texts. And you know, when she's thirteen years old, it's not like she didn't she didn't respond at all, but she did finally stop breaking off with him because she found he was just weirdly creepy and got uncomfortable with this whole thing. And and eventually, so the mom calls the police, and the police look into it. And this is in Dashoot's County Sheriff's office, which is where Bend is, and they come over they listen to these stories.
Nicholas doesn't realize that they know about the text and have seen the text, and so he lies about it.
He's that's one of the things. He he is particularly good at his lying, and so he lies about this and they catch him in these lives and he's arrested and charged with felony counts those sexual abuse to a minor and he tries to explain it as, oh, well, my girlfriend died recently, and you know, I'm upset and this girl is a friend, and we talk, and once again you get around to why is a thirty four year old man feel that his closest confidant is a
thirteen year old girl that he's sending half naked photos of himself to.
Yeah, certainly nonsense. You say that he was released on fifty thousand dollars bail, but each one of these sexual abuse one charges each could net him a possible ten years. But you say, investigation of weever.
Goes cold, and that sort of where we end Book one is that the at this stage, whether it is.
The uh all these different sheriff's offices at this time, Hood River, Washington County and the shoots, the shoots is made aware that he is under investigation in.
Some of these other cases, and.
Will leave it at that. There. They sort of stopped doing much of anything as they watched the process of what's going on in the Shoots County with this underage minor case.
Obviously that's very ki to the Washington.
County case where Melanie Castos says he was doing the same thing, actually much more than they had actually had a sexual affair, you know, uh, but a very similar case. And obviously Nichols, from his text and everything else, was attempting to groom this, uh, this other young young woman. You know, the invitations say let's go out, He's send me, you know, hot photos of yourself and uh, and these
sorts of things. So that's where book one ends, with the case growing cold or scaled or I don't know how you want to describe it, but both of those work. But Nichols is he's under investigation for homicide, he's under investigation in two different places for sexual abuse of a minor, and he's been sued by his siblings, and uh in book two will pick up from there.
Absolutely. I want to thank you very much, Steve Jackson of coming on and talking about the first book in the series, Saving Annie the Fall, and the next book will be the called The Investigator of the Saving Annie series. I want to thank you very much, Steve for coming on and talking about this, it's been a real pleasure.
Well, thanks, Dan, it's always great talking to you.
You have a great show.
For those that might not know, this is a Wild Blue Press production publication. You are the publisher, so tell us maybe how they can just go see what more work you have and other very very deserving authors that are run Wild Blue Press.
Well, yeah, you can go to wild blue Press dot com. That's wild blue Press dot com. And you know, we have a lot of great true crime authors and books. Now we're we've been in business since twenty fourteen and have been picking up steam ever since. We're now putting out about to true crimes a month and the occasional crime thriller as well. But yeah, you can find my
work there. You can find the work of a number of both well known true crime authors as well as we take on the deserving rookie from time to time, and there are some really good books in there.
Absolutely, you've been doing a great job, and especially with all the great authors that really didn't have a publisher that understood true crime and understood the genre as well as you, and so you've put out some really really good titles and with a great roster of really really good authors. Thank you very much for another well Blue Press production, Saving Annie. Thank you very much Steve Jackson. Hope to talk to you again soon. You have a great evening.
Good night, Thanks Dan Ay bye bye bye
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