#418 Maggie Freleng with Nikki Zinger

One Friday morning in nineteen ninety one, Nicki Zinger and her boyfriend Daniel Rischer decided to drive down to Shreveport, Louisiana, for the day. The couple were both in their twenties and they lived in Magnolia, Arkansas. Daniel was in a band and he needed to take his guitar amp to a repair shop in Shreveport, about an hour and a half away. They stopped off to pick up some magazines at the home of Nicki's mother, Linda Holly. Linda was already at work, so Nicki left her a note and

They mean because it was a little light. I figured she was in the bed, because when we went by the house the house was dark, but I thought the car was in the front yard.

The next day, Saturday, Nicki called her mother over and over but was unable to reach her. On Sunday, Nicki and Daniel drove over to Linda's house and when they got their cops were everywhere.

So when we pulled up and I asked what was wrong, and when they tell me that my mom was dead, I didn't understand why, because it just seemed like can be sinned. She couldn't be dead because she wasn't dead when I left.

Linda Holly had been viciously murdered, stabbed, and bludgeoned to death, and Nicki and Daniel were soon the primary suspects my I mistaking.

Danger and not being locked in for thirty one years for crome. I have not committed.

From lov of for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today, Nicki Zinger.

To accept this free call breath one to refuse the thank you for using securis. We may start the conversation now, Hi, Nikki, are we ready?

Yeah, I'm here, It's Maggie.

Hey, we're a really neat talking kid home something us?

Nicki? Yeah, we do. But let's get this interview, okay, and then we'll catch up because we don't want to We don't want to miss this. Nicki Zinger has been incarcerated at the McPherson Unit in Newport, Arkansas since nineteen ninety two, and Nicki and I have been friends since I first covered her case in twenty twenty for my podcast on' Justin Unsolved. Nicki's story has haunted me since then, and after listening to this episode, I think you will

My mom left my dad when I was just a baby. I mean, we went to live with my grandmother, who lived in Magnolia at the time.

Nicki Zinger was born in nineteen sixty three. After they moved to Magnolia, her mother, Linda Holly, raised Niki on her own.

My dad was never a part of my life because he was always drinking and drugging. It was mentally and physically abusive to both. As I got older, he tried to come see me a few but he was always drunk, and my mother asked him, can you not come see your only child sober? Because he was flushing me one day and he pushed me out of the swings and he just left me there.

Linda was a nurse and worked as a director with the health department, but Nicki says she could have done more with her life.

She was part enough to be a doctor. She just didn't, I think because of me, because of my problem I was born with a club foot in a foot drawn and I was born paralyzed and a throw from the marine.

And that meant that Nikki needed constant care.

I mean, I'm in the hospital for like three four months with my foot. I'm almost upside down because I gotta have pins in my pans and all my toes and a cast, and I got an upside down so I won't get a food cloth. So you really can't do anything. I missed a lot of the child my childhood being in the hospital.

Even when she was home in between operations, Nikki had to wear a cast day and night. She rarely went to school, so Linda homeschooled her.

I had no friends because I had to go every o the year for so many years. If you're friends with me one year and I'm out the next year, you're not gonna keep you know, you're you're a child, so you're not gonna keep trying to be my friend. So I really never did get posted anybody because I was never in school.

So tell me about growing up with your mom. You guys really were each other's people. She was kind of your best friend. She took care of you when you were having all your health problems to tell me about that.

She was. She was my playmate, She was my everything. I didn't know any other way. I mean, I couldn't work, so you know, I stayed home and did the little things. You know what I'm saying. We just got to do and everything. If we went to the sonic or went to the drive whatever drive through, we sitd in park a lot sometime and just have a big bass and just watch everybody. If me and my mother traveled, it

Nikki and her mom did everything together. They were happy in each other's company. But still Linda wanted more for her daughter, have.

A good career, have a good lie, not to worry about things, you know what I'm saying. She didn't want me to have to work hard like she did. She didn't want me to have to worry about the things that she worried about or the man that she had picked.

Like my father. As a teenager, Nikki was interested in boys. She was curious about dating but she wasn't quite ready to strike out on her own, to.

Be honest with you, making my mother, making my mom go and dragon so we could look at boys. She would take me to Tonic. We would look just look. You know what I'm saying, Just drive around and I don't know.

Wait, so you didn't. I actually never do that. So you and mom would go look for boys together.

Yeah, just go look on me.

Not.

I didn't date a lot because I always lived was so shy because of the scars on my leg or because when leg was bigger than the other. So my mom said, well, let's just see this.

Then in her early twenties, NICKI did meet someone. When they got married, she thought Larry would take care of her, but that's not how it turned out.

I didn't know a lot of things about Larry until after I got married. And he drank a lot. I knew he drank some, I didn't know that he had drank that bad. And he wouldn't want to leave and come in late at two o'clock in the morning. I said, we can't do that, this is my mom found. So he when he did late, and he would try to bang on the door, and my mother wouldn't let me in, and he just got out of hand and he was getting real verbal abusive and stuff like that, and so

How long were you married for?

Not even six months?

With Larry out of the picture, Nicki and her mom went back to their quiet life together. By now, they had sold her grandparents' house and moved into a new place, a brand new double wide trailer.

He had two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a living room, a TV room, and then the master bedroom had his own bathroom, home TV room, like a little apartment.

Linda continued with her job at the health center, and Nikki pitched in by babysitting and working at a nursery when she wasn't watching TV or listening to her favorite music. So, Nikki, I know that you in your past maybe still are a bit of a rocker. What kind of music did you used to like?

Me? Yeah? You? Oh my god, I was like ACDCA or Vane Highland or Journey. That was back when I was a little bit of a young person.

And then when Linda was forty five, something happened that would upset the balance of their life together. Linda's struggle with how to tell her daughter the devastating news.

And I happened to come home early, and I was like, well, why is the PaperWorks sitting on my bed? So I turned it on and it was her talking. That's when she told me that she had cancer. I was devastated because I had to know how to act and to deal with the feelings because cancer makes you so through so much.

Their lifetime roles were reversed and Nikki became her mother's caretaker. What kinds of caretaking things did you have to do for her?

I'd make the bed or cook. We went and got her a wig. We learned how to eat better because she had to change the way she ate to get the vitamin into that the chemotherapy and the radiation was taken out of her. So we had bought a steamer, so I learned to steam the vegetables that she liked. So I'll just cooked. And she still worked because she wanted to. Because she didn't she said she would drop her crazy see. So when she come in, I would fix her bath, have her dinner ready and we would

Anyway, it was hard for NICKI to watch her mom going through chemotherapy.

I don't know if the cure is worse than Kevin canthrope, because you know, I'd watched my mom go through so much, final tab her hair coming out, losing one of her breaths, which really upset her is very, very hard.

NICKI also had to process the fact that the worst might happen, that she might lose her mother, her best friend, because.

By this time she had been through chemotherapy and radiation twice. Sometimes she would feel better and sometimes you wouldn't. I just couldn't think about this being the end of my mom because I don't have any family. This is only this has been my only mah long. I just didn't thinking my life just staying after by Masel, you know.

And then when she was in her mid twenties, someone new came into Nicky's life. She had met a few people around the area and one day one of the girls invited her to a party.

Held my mom a mad and she said, looks like a heart. You might meet somebody you I'm play so I go, and there was Daniel.

Nicky was twenty six and Daniel Richer was four years younger. She was attracted to him right away.

His hair was it looked like a legal haircut when I first meet him, dark brown is straight. He had big, puppy dow brown eyes. He was kind of shy like me. He was just oh no, just different from everybody.

One day, not long after that, to Nicky's surprise, Daniel showed up at their trailer. Linda was on her way to work, but.

Who is this? And I introduced and everything she was talking about she didn't want to leave me, and he said, well, I bet if I just come up and keep recompany during the day while you're at work. And that's what he did, and that's where it started.

What stood out to you about him, It wasn't like my.

Ex husband, it was it was it was sweet because it was like a slow build that makes sense to you. It was this he helped with everything. It was just it was just so natural.

Not only that Daniel was into rock music like Nikki. Music was one of the things they bonded over.

You know. He played the guitar and he had his own little personal band and he was good at it, and I thought that was kind of neat to have my boyfriend that played the band. You know what I'm saying. It's kind of not necessarily a prestige or whatever you want to say, but it was kind of neat.

Before long, Nicky and Daniel were inseparable. They went back and forth between their homes, staying some nights at Linda's place and others with Daniel's parents, Albert and Rachel. At first, Nicky says, Rachel wasn't sure how she felt about her son's new girlfriend.

When she got to know me, things changed because, you know, she didn't think I was trying to take a betty to her soon or anything else. She was. I was really nice because I helped with the dishes, and I helped cook when we all lay down there, I helped everything that she did.

Did your mom like him?

I think so. Harry and Daniel really got along. She had asked that, you know what I thought about, maybe is going on vacation one time, all of us together?

Oh where would you have gone?

Well, my mom, she was a very history buff and Glen went to Mississippi together and seeing no battlefields, and she wanted to go to Dalamo. They see all the stuff in Texas. As things progressed with me and him, we talked about maybe getting married one day, maybe starting a family.

One Friday morning, about a year and a half into their relationship, Daniel needed to take his guitar AMP to a repair shop in Shreveport. It was about an hour and a half away, and Niki decided to go along for the ride and make a day of it. On their way out, they stopped by Linda's to pick up a few magazines for the drive, and Linda was already at work.

I left her a note on the bar the Taylor and we were going Straepoort. It was still daytime when we got there, so we went to the amp place and the city was closed for lunch, so we went to the mall and he decided he was hungry, so we went night a sandwich place and he bought me some perfume a couple of botles apart few.

They walked around the mall for a bit, then went back to the shop to drop off Daniel's AMP. As it was starting to get dark, they headed back to Magnolia, arriving in the late evening.

I don't know what time. It was exactly. We stopped by Easy Mark, we had dinner at Sonic, and we went home.

On the way, they drove past Linda's house.

I didn't think of myself because it was a little late. I figured she was in the bed. I mean because when we went by the house, the house was dark, but I thought the car was in the front yard.

The next day, Saturday, Nikki called her mom and left multiple messages.

But that's when she usually goes to the store. This her day. She goes to the grocery store, to the farmer's market, Kmart. Is just her day to do all that. And now I didn't think of anything.

So John, can you introduce yourself for listeners.

Sure, my name is John Harden. I'm a private investigator and four ten years as i rend the nonprofit Proclaimed Justice.

Can you walk us through what happens back on March eighth, nineteen ninety one. What do we know that happened? Basically, what we know.

Happened is on Friday March eighth, at four thirty five o'clock something like that, Linda Holly was seen at her mailbox by her neighbor Kara Lee Davis. She was in her scrubs. She was checking her mail. They had a brief conversation about maybe we'll go to the store together tomorrow, do a little shopping tomorrow. And that's the last sighting that we know for sure of Linda Holly alive. That's

So once the police arrive on the scene, what was the investigation?

Like the first couple of officers, they don't know what they're walking into. So they go through the back utility room door of the trailer and they're walking through broken glass or walking through blood, and you can't blame them. They've got their weapons drawn. They don't know if somebody's still in that trailer or not. They go in, they find Linda dead. It was multiple stab wounds twelve stab wounds, as well as blunt force trauma, some evidence of some strangulation as well.

John says that the investigation was a mess from the beginning.

That crime scene was not secured at all. There were very quickly, multiple people, multiple officers, kind of all over the place there. Going in and out of the trailer was sort of the first thing that went wrong with this investigation.

So you guys on Sunday are calling her. She's not answering. So at what point do you go over to the house.

I guess about lunch, maybe maybe a little after lunch. I come around the corner and there was a whole bunch of cars in the yard, and some them we pulled up. Everybody was coming out from behind my house, and I asked what was wrong, And when they told me that that my mom was dead, I just remember thinking that they're lying. So I run around behind the house and they caught me and told me that I told me that I couldn't. I couldn't go around there.

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. You can listen to this and all the LoVa for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to LoVa for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Within days of finding out her mother had been murdered, Nicky was told that she had to leave their home.

Nobody was paying for it anymore. We had like ten fifteen days to get everything out of the house, so me and Daniel and my friend Davy went up there and we would try to plan it up some during the days and keep the things out that I wanted to keep we would do to the day because I couldn't. I couldn't do in there at not time. It stretched me out too bad and I had not marriage from it.

The day after Linda was found murdered, Daniel and Nicki were allowed to go into the home unsupervised. They're cleaning all this stuff up from the murder before the crime scene folks got there before the State crime lab arrived, three days before the State crime labl.

Nicky says that at one point officers asked her if there was anything missing from the house, mcdona.

What was missing? Her gun was missing, hammer was missing, money was missing, jewelry was missing, and they did not one thing about any of that.

As it turns out, the detectives were concerned about something else entirely.

They weren't looking for valuables that were missing or anything like that. Officers testified at trial that immediately once they found Linda Holly murdered in her home, they immediately started looking for insurance and other important.

Papers Linda's two life insurance policies, which added up to ninety thousand dollars.

And they all four said that there were all these papers on the floor and scattered about and Nicky was gathering papers and putting them in this box. The day after Linda was murdered, they take them to daniel house.

At this point, the investigation had already begun to turn towards Nikki and Daniel.

I guess the old adage that you always looked at those you know, they look at those closest to you rings true to some degree here, and in that way, he sort of can't blame me either.

So when did they start questioning you about what happens? Tell me what you remember about when you started realizing, like, oh shit, I think they might think I did this.

They interviewed me and Daniel maybe I don't remember, right after the let us go in the trailer, the good things, and then I think that day or that next day they called s up there. They read Daniel's his rights, so they never read mine. Robert Borham talked to Daniel, and GM talked to me. He told me that they had a whole bunch of suspects, and then I'd ask him who he wouldn't tell me, and he asked where we'd been, and I told him where we'd been, and

On March fourteenth, officers got a warrant to search Daniel's parents home for evidence.

And they find this insurance box that, in my opinion, is so when they came to form this theory that it was done for insurance. And I honestly believe that there's a strong probability that these officers conspired to testify that they were immediately looking for insurance papers. So that's why the insurance papers became so significant at trial.

In addition to the box with the insurance papers, they seized a hunting jacket and some boots belonging to Daniel. The investigators also zeroed in on Daniel's rock and roll lifestyle.

This is nineteen ninety one, this is at the height of Satanic Panic era. It became a lot of this stuff of Daniel was this weird, aggressive guy that listened to all this heavy metal music, played heavy metal music, that kind of thing. So I think that those things are what sort of got the police's focus on them to start with.

They also scrutinized things like Nikki's rock posters and an Iron Maiden T shirt of Daniel's, which to them seemed to suspect.

And in fact, some of that stuff was ses as evidence. It wasn't used a trial, but shows you where their minds were at as they were investigating. So there was strong indication and even some comments made about this could be something to do with the occult. Ultimately, what the state decided on was that Daniel and Nicky murdered her mother for a ninety thousand dollars life insurance payout.

About a month later, on April eighteenth, nineteen ninety one, Nicky and Daniel were both arrested and charged with first degree murder. What were you thinking when that happened.

I don't remember. I don't think I was thinking because who does that? Who thinks that they would kill their mom? Who really thinks that they would kill their mom? I think that everybody just putting out every all kinds of rumors, and I think a lot of them come from the sheriffs office. I do.

So when they arrest you, when they actually put handcuffs on you, and you wind up in the jail and you're waiting for trial. The only person you have now at this point is Daniel, And were you even able to talk to him?

They were letting me talk to Daniel, but they were listening to everything that we said, just in case I said something or he said something, or or they would take him outside and they wouldn't take me. They did a lot of horrible things to me in county jail, trying to make me say that I did. And I keep telling them, then, if I'm not going to say that I did now, why would I say I'm doing it now? Because I haven't done anything wrong. I got

Sitting in jail awaiting trial, Nikki had nothing but time to think about her mother's life and what happened to her.

First of all, I loved my mom very dearly, even as broken as she was. I would have never traded for nothing in the world when you don't have anything and you were raised up like me with the day that was so mean and hateful, and he's already destroying one life, my mom, and she was trying to put it all back together. And you have a child that

In January of nineteen ninety two, Daniel and Nikki went to trial. They were tried together, but with separate attorneys. The trial lasted just three days. The most damaging testimony for the prosecution came from Arkansas state criminologist Don Smith. He had done lumino testing the camouflage, hunting jacket and boots that have been taken from Daniel's home.

I'm sure your listeners know, but you know, luminol is a chemical that is an agent that reacts with bloods, but it reacts with a bunch of other materials too. So if there's blood on something, you can spray luminol on it, put a black light over it, and it will essentially glow. Right. It doesn't tell you even if it's blood number one, number two, it doesn't tell you what species of animal the blood comes from, much less

In fact, Daniel has always maintained that the blood on his hunting jacket came from a deer, but against the expert criminologist testimony, all but saying the blood was Lindo's. It added up to a powerful argument for conviction.

In fact, I've interviewed multiple jurors since then, and that's the first thing any of them ever brought up, was the blood on the jacket.

Because besides that, I mean, what other evidence was there against them? It was the life insurance, the.

Life insurance and the blood. I mean, that was it. That was truly it.

The defense didn't seem to have much to present either, although they did try to introduce the possibility of alternate suspects.

There was a man named Lewis Burris. He with regularity would see people at Linda's home that he thought were out of place. Let me put it that way. One of them was the same guy that he would see there very often, and he saw him there that morning, saw him outside Linda's place on that Friday morning.

According to Nikki, Linda was dating a police officer at the time and he sometimes stayed overnight. Both Lewis Burris and Linda's neighbor Caro Leie Davis testified that they'd seen a police car parked in front of her house on a regular basis he would come at.

Light at night, because should I always say, if the car's in the front yard, please yourself stop and come back. And there'd be a lot of times his car would be in the yard at that time.

Another set of people that Lewis Burris saw with regularity, there were, as he described them, two black guys, the same black guys that were there almost every Saturday morning, is what he said. And I only really bring that up because there was a similar crime that happened in a town just thirty miles away, just a few days before Linda Holly's murder, that was very similar and the strongest suspects in that case were some African American males.

That was the case of a woman named Bernice Rankin.

She was found murdered in her home, stabbed, bludgeoned, so very similar crime, similar enough to the point where a detective named Jimmy Morgan felt strongly that these two crimes were similar enough that he wanted real work done in comparing notes, comparing potential suspects, that kind of thing.

In fact, Jimmy Morgan came to the trial he was prepared to testify about the similarity between those two murders, but the prosecution objected.

The jury left the room, and you know, there was an argument back and forth. Ultimately the judge decided that he should not be allowed to testify in front of the jury. The other thing that the defense did bring up, Nicky was the primary beneficiary of that ninety thousand dollars life insurance upon her mother's death. The secondary benefit, Sherry, was a lady named Jan Terrell who was Linda's friend.

And Jen was one of the first people to go to the house on that Sunday morning along with Carol Lee, and later after Nicki was convicted, the ninety thousand dollars went to Jen Terrell.

We don't know what she did with that money, we don't know anything like that, but we do know she was the beneficiary.

So, in addition to Nicky and Daniel, John believes there were several people in Linda's life that police could have looked into, but they didn't.

She's a nurse for the county. There's strong rumor that she would take prescription pads that were pre signed by doctors and fill prescriptions for people for money. That's not anything that we've ever been able to prove definitively, but there is very strong indication that that's the case. So you know that puts year around some shady people sometimes, especially in Southwest Arkansas in nineteen ninety one.

I'm wondering, do you have any thoughts on who might have killed your mom?

My mom didn't always know the best people in her life, or didn't always sometimes pick the best people in her life like me. I guess that's where I got it from a lot. I didn't always pick the best people in the world either. Before Daniel, you know what I'm saying. Sometimes there with people that would drive real, real slow about the house at not time, or they would call the house when's while we had to have her phone number changed.

Who do you think that was? I mean, what kind of people did your mom know? Was she involved in anything?

Well, she worked for the sheriff department when she wasn't working for the health department. After she passed away, I've had a few people tell me that, I guess just the people that you work with, You know what I'm saying, That she didn't necessarily hang with all the best people in the world. But I've never heard anybody's.

Name on January thirteenth, nineteen ninety one, Nicky Singer and Daniel Richard were both convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

When the realization comes in and I had a lot of sentence, it was just I just quit. I stayed into bed. I didn't know eat, I didn't shower because I didn't know how I was going to do this. The first five years of my prison stay was really bad because I had to learn how to survive. I learned that you couldn't be who you are. You don't be nice to everybody. You can't give your shoulder or try to say, you know, can I be here? You know that you need somebody that's ought to Because I've

But Nicki turned out to be stronger than she ever knew. She did survive and even earned her ged while in prison, and eventually she found herself becoming a mentor, helping others to adjust the way she wished someone could have helped her.

When I first came to prison, I didn't have anybody that was there for me, nobody to tell me that it was okay, the pad on the bag, or I'm very proud of you that you've survived another day. I try to be there and listen to him. I'll help many, and I do it for the simple mind and if we all need peace of mind, because there's none in here. And when we get something, we have to hold it very dear.

Through the years, Nicky has tried to keep up on how Daniel's doing.

I would ask Rachel with the okay because I wasn't okay, you know. I used to hear from Rachel all the time about Daniel.

In nineteen ninety three, Nicky and Daniel filed an appeal with the Arkansas Supreme Court, requesting a new trial, but the court upheld the conviction. Daniel and his family continued to pursue every avenue they could to prove their innocence, which is how John Harden learned about Nicky's case in twenty sixteen.

So when we first launched Proclaimed Justice, I got a message from the cousin of Daniel Rischer, and she asked us to look into it, and so I started looking into it, really on Daniel's behalf, and that's what got me into the case to start with. But of course you can't investigate Daniel's case without investigating Nicky's.

Daniel had already gotten the Innocence Project of New York involved, and they had agreed to have DNA testing done on the blood found on his jacket. The test results showed that it was not definitively human blood.

And it's what Daniel's saying all along, it's my deer hunting jacket is dear blood.

And there's something else that John keeps thinking about the lack of a motive when she was killed. Remember, Linda was still battling cancer.

She had gone into remission and then the cancer had come back. There was strong belief in indication that this could very well be terminal cancer this time around. And so if we're talking about the motive to murder her mother to get ninety thousand dollars of life insurance, and this sounds crasp, but if you want your mother dad to collect ninety thousand dollars and she's got almost certainly

In twenty sixteen, based on the new DNA findings, Daniel and Niki were granted a parole hearing.

The parole boarder unanimously recommended them for parole, which does not happen very often at all.

No, and then they get denied by the governor.

That's right, Governor Asa Hutcheson denied parole. Yeah.

Proclaimed Justice was started by John Harden and Jason Baldwin, one of the infamous West Memphis Three. John was a pivotal member in helping to exonerate the three wrongfully convicted men after eighteen years in prison. After Jason's release twenty eleven, the two decided to start an innocence organization together. They have worked on many wrongful conviction cases. One of the

It was just time. I mean, it's fucking hard starting an organization and keeping it, you know, a several hundred thousand dollars budget together every year, and I'm still active in the investigations in our current cases. I'll be able to keep some of my fundraising network in place to do this kind of good work.

And he has no intention on giving up on Nicki's case.

I promised Nikki. When I called her and explained what was going on with me and proclaimed justice, she was very supportive of me on a personal level, just because she's sweet like that. She's kind and caring and compassionate, and and she wants to make sure I'm okay, which is always strange to hear from somebody who's dealing with what she's dealing with on the inside.

You know, you and I talk about that, John, Like, anytime Nikki calls, it's like, are you okay? Is her first question?

Absolutely, how are you doing? And so I know to some degree she's mostly it's because she truly cares about me. To some degree, it probably helps her just be thinking about somebody else's life. So she's absolutely, one hundred percent completely innocent of this crime. And we just can't rest until we've got her out where we're at is we have to have a status hearing. We have this order

Nikki has been behind bars since she was twenty eight. She's now sixty. Her health has never been great, but she admits that as she gets older, things are getting even harder.

I have diabetes, real bands, I have high blood pressure, my headache to words crum sistress. I can't remember when the last time I feel good. Yeah, and it gets really pressing this time, and I try not to cry because I don't want anybody to boohoo or a baby thing.

What do you want for your future when you get out? What do you think about?

I don't want a perfect life, because there's no such thing as perfect. I just want to learn to be okay with me all over again, learn to be okay with the world, because I don't even know what the world looks like. I don't the world is so big now, I don't know maybe travel may be, tell my story, write a book. I just want people to get a chance to know who I am, to like who I am. I want know people to know that I'm capable of

I got to know Nikki really well while covering her case for Unjustin and Unsolved, and after learning about her case in her life and speaking with her at length, I felt compelled to be a friend to Nikki rather than just a journalist using her as a source. What gives you hope? Nikki? You Maggie, why did they know you were going to say that?

You've heard me get this bad before, and you get over to me and tell me that you have obvious people out here just because you don't say I'm visitly or not there even if people are here, though, will tell me Dad it's okay. Nikki. I wouldn't say I'm a bad person. I would say I've learned to be better person than I was before. My heart always hours Yeah.

Since Proclaim justice has closed its doors, Nicki is in need of a new team to pick up where they left off. Please reach out if you can help or can connect her with someone who can. It's been over thirty years now and it is time to get her out. In the meantime, Nicki would love to have your support. A donation to help with prison expenses, or even just a letter or card to let her know you've heard her story would mean the world to her. There is