It's the middle of the night, in a small town on the Jersey Shore, someone re...
A search gets underway for the missing driver, 19-year-old Sarah Stern. Is it a missing person? Is it a suicide? At this point, nobody knows. Old friendships. Baring cash and a sinister plot that was once pitched as a movie plays out in real life. I'm Juju Chang, from 2020 and ABC Audio. Listen now to Bridge of Lives, wherever you get your podcasts. This could be a 2020 someday, because there were just so many unanswered questions.
Heidi's not responsive, Nick's been injured.
βYou're like, what? What do you hear from neighbors? Were they able to see anything here or anything?β
They were like a picture-perfect couple. Who would do this to this young couple? His story of an intruder coming into the house was the only story that made sense.
You had her, never mentioned this either, either set up parents, other parents or none of our friends.
No one knows about this except you and I. Wouldn't he tell you about this intruder? He was really big, by two, rather six, one, six, two. See that bay? That's when we were given the sketch of this alleged intruder. She said, I know who's in that sketch. We had maybe found our guy.
Were you ever concerned that you're sleeping with a killer? This is a story about a young married couple just starting out. They'd recently bought their first home and they had a lot of promise ahead of them.
βNick and Heidi furcus were in their 20s.β
Very active in their church, very family oriented.
We kind of couple that you hope all couples would be in their early 20s.
Heidi and Nick lived in the midway neighborhood of St. Paul. It was a very quiet, very family-friendly part of our city. This is just a fantastic, tight-knit community. Heidi and Nick were a part of that. In Minnesota, it takes a number of summers to get to know your neighbors
because we're pulled up for most of the winter. Good quiet neighbors would occasionally speak to Nick, you know, when they're running in and out of their homes. It was a Sunday morning that should have been like any other with Heidi and Nick getting ready to join their friends and family at church.
βBut this Sunday would change the couple's lives forever.β
April 25th, 2010, starts off as a quiet Sunday morning in the Hamlin Midway neighborhood. Son of Shining. I was patrol supervisor for the St. Paul Police Department. It was like 6.30 in the morning, but it had been a fairly quiet night.
We were all just getting ready to go home for the day. Stay patrol 911. The 911 call is from Heidi Forkus. She's calm, but you can tell that she's scared. What city are you in? St. Paul.
What address are you at? Me, haha, everything. Many ha, hot, someone's trying. The call ends very abruptly with a loud noise. And what that noise is exactly, we didn't know on the front end.
Several of us officers took the call and again our response. I activated my emergency lights. Certainly gets your blood going.
Shortly after the first 911 call is abruptly ended,
another 911 call comes in. I'll take the train to 911. This time it's from Nick Forkus. And Nick is screaming into the phone. Okay, all right.
All right. Are you an out there in apartment? That's the problem. What is the problem? Show me.
You've been shot. Yes. Let's pay today on the phone with me, okay? Okay. You can hear the panic in his voice.
He's hysterical. He's crying. He's screaming.
He's crying.
I've got a lot of help coming.
βI saw three other officers right on scene within five, ten seconds of each other.β
We know that we have potential gunshot victims. They find the outside screen door open and the front door Propped open just a little bit. We don't know if the suspect or suspects are still at the address, so we do have our firearms out.
There's an officer just to my left that kicked the door. They enter the house practically because they don't know if they're still in intruder in the house.
Nick is on the 911 call and you can hear the police arriving to render aid.
There was a very distinct smell of recently fired gunshot. We observe female down in the kitchen area. And then we see a male. The officers at that point quickly walk through the house to make sure that there is another potential suspect inside. They see Nick and Heidi in the kitchen and Heidi is not responsive. Nick's been injured.
Nick tells the police that the intruder broke in and the two of them wrestled over Nick's shotgun. He was absolutely terrifying and then the shotgun went off and Heidi got shot in the back. During this struggle with the intruder Nick had been shot one time from a double barrel shotgun.
He was screaming and he was upset and he needed an ambulance immediately.
Heidi had been shot in her upper back. She had lost a significant amount of blood. She had no signs of life. They pronounced Heidi for his deceased at the scene. Nick was transported by St. Paul Fire Paramedics fairly quickly down the region's hospital, which is one of the level one trauma centers in St. Paul.
βWhat was the crime to say like what did you discover in the house?β
There was a pair of jeans, laying in the foyer area and then the shotgun was laying there in the ground as well, right inside the doorway. The shotgun belongs to Nick. It's his hunting gun. It's a double barrel and he kept it in the closet of his bedroom for safety. We also saw the pellets that were in the door frame as well as the door itself from one Nick was shot by the intruder. Officers also photographed what looked like tool marks on the front door along the frame as if someone were trying to gimme it open.
When a call comes in of somebody that's been shot at six in the morning in an April spring morning, we have a massive police response. A canine officer responded to see if he and I could track the suspect from the front door. Officers and investigators began canvassing the whole area to talk to anybody we can. We began looking for cameras on houses or people out walking their dogs. We're looking for any sign of anything of someone running away.
Who would do this to this young couple? Maybe they had an interaction with the intruder, maybe met them the day before. The one person the police need to talk to is the lone survivor. The one witness Nick Furcus. We're going to start a hearing.
I feel a little hurt or not. There was an intruder trying to burglarize the home. That's when the struggle took place between Nick and the intruder. I hear trying to shot the door shot, but it gets to our stolen. Nick told us that he began having a fight for his life.
We began with him. We were all looking for that intruder. Nick and Heidi Furcus were a young, devout couple. Members of the Calvary Church, everybody who knew them knew that their faith was at the center of their lives. Everyone looked up to Nick and Heidi.
They both loved Jesus and had their priorities in the right place. The Furcus has lived in the Hamlin Midway neighborhood. It's a safe community with a lot of single family homes, small businesses, and some local colleges.
βI remember when Nick and Heidi bought the house, they were very excited.β
I wouldn't necessarily call it a fixer upper, but it also wasn't a beautiful pristine, no work needed house. Nick and Heidi had everything going for him.
They were like a picture perfect couple.
They had a very sweet relationship. They were very loving. The way that he loved Heidi was how I hoped to be loved. Very outwardly, and that nothing else really mattered because he had Heidi.
She was always smiling, always joyful, cheerful, and kind of had this mischievous edge to her.
βThat's what made her fun. She was always joking around with people, and yet she had this depth to her.β
Nick was furcus, worked at his family business, kind of subcontracting business, that does carpet and various installations, and is quite successful. Nick was very much a mentor to me. I wanted to be like him, to try to learn what it meant to be in a Christian man. On Sunday mornings, Nick and Heidi were found here with friends and family ready to worship.
Every Sunday morning, that is until April 25, 2010. I went to church, who was a normal Sunday morning, and I don't even remember who came up in a panic and said Heidi got shot. There was an intruder, and that was about all the information we had. And it was overwhelming, like you're like, what?
And the news would only get worse. Heidi doesn't make it, and they find out that Nick has been rushed to the hospital with a gunshot wound.
But injury that he suffered was from a shotgun blast to the upper thigh. Nick's injuries did not appear to be life-threatening. Once Nick was treated at Regents Hospital, the officers escorted him over to our police station. I was waiting there at our homicide office. This up here is our interview room where we talk to some of the victims and witnesses.
OK. Tell me about Nick when he got here.
βWhat kind of shape was he in? What was his mind like?β
He was in some pain. He was on his crutches, so he was moving fairly slowly. With low water, I wonder who had one?
I told him I wanted the back up at least 24 hours.
This is a very traumatic situation, OK. And I'm just going to try and ease into it, OK. So what I like to do is just trying to kind of backtrack a little bit. Maybe they had an interaction with somebody, and that the intruder might have met them the day before. My life, that was meeting a friend at our house because they don't get me to go to America for some spring shopping. Nick sent her a message telling her that he wanted to spend time with her alone on Saturday night.
And that they ended up watching the movie Avatar. They ordered dinner at each head. A glass of wine while watching the movie. Before he would defend it, did you lock up the house or anything? If I'm honest, I don't know if I remembered it or not. Nick tells the police the next day that he woke up around six in the morning.
He was thirsty, went to the bathroom, got a drink of water, climbed back into bed and was starting to fall asleep again. And then he heard something at the front door which woke him up. I heard the screen door open, and so kind of let it go for a little bit. Then I started hearing the film with her down now. He then goes to the closet to retrieve a shotgun.
And then I wake up high, OK. And then I say, somebody's feeling what they're not trying to get in the warehouse. Let's get your shoes out. Let's go off to the garage. Let's get out of here. They proceeded to go downstairs. Heidi's in front of him. He's got a shotgun in the left hand.
And he's pushing Heidi along down the stairs. And as they made the turn to go by the front door towards their kitchen, somebody burst through that front door. And that's when he began having a fight for his life with an intruder. And I remember exactly how I happened to begin with off.
So my finger is sitting on the trigger. So yeah, I don't even know I hit Heidi. I just, I know I hit him. Do you use the crutches to talk about how this played out? Yeah, actually I tried to re-enact part of the scene out there at the house. And I picked up the crutch to use as a shotgun as a point of reference for Nick to tell me how
he and this intruder's stored all over the weapon. And he got up and over. So you pointed at that him? No, it would be like straight up and over.
βOkay, that's what you're like going around down.β
Oh, it's a lot of the barrels down. Wouldn't he tell you about this intruder? Did he have a good description? He thought he was a black male but was not entirely sure. Well, this guy looked like a black guy with a dirt put in such a bite. I did not get a good look.
Well, he was giving me a little more detailed information than he gave. The officers who initially arrived at the scene. He was really big, my two brothers 6162. So he said, "Hey, you try that big, yeah." He now has a little bit more of a description, which was good for us to go on.
In the Hamlin Midway area, specifically, there's not a lot of violent crime t...
in those single family home areas.
Oh, there's minor crime, certainly. Our garage was broken into a couple of times once, I left the door open and the guy just came in and stole stuff. There was one time Heidi had all the girls over and then had a sleepover afterwards. Over night, one of the girls had her guard got broken into. What do you hear from neighbors? Were they able to see anything here or anything?
They weren't able to give us any information about seeing anybody running away from the house or anything like that.
βThe only thing that was discussed by neighbors was sounds that they heard.β
The neighbor directly to the west of the property. He heard what he thought was too. Gunshots. And that neighbor remembered looking outside and not seeing anybody running away from the scene.
We had our canine officers immediately begin to try to scent track the area.
And generally when somebody's running, they're going to admit a lot of sweat and odor. And our dogs were not able to pick up any sense that day. Police at the scene and in the neighborhood are coming up short. Meanwhile, downtown of the police station, the interview with Nick Forkus is about to take a surprising turn. We have to be out by Monday tomorrow.
Was this couple keeping a secret? No one knows about this except you and I. And I was quite shocked hearing that information.
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Ordinaryly on a Sunday morning, Nick Furcus would be in church. Instead, he's at police headquarters explaining what happened at his house just hours earlier. Every question that I asked he answered, there wasn't a time in our conversation, where he said, "Sarge and Gray, I don't want to answer that question." While this breaking in murder is a little strange for the neighborhood,
police don't find any red flags in Nick or Heidi's past. Nick had no criminal history at all whatsoever. Often times, you know, there will be domestic disturbances. There was nothing like that. Guy, guy here.
Hey, guys, that needs an urges concern, so we want to put it that you step in...
Yeah, I'm not here to judge you, Nick. We had a lot of trust in that part of our relationship for sure. But his detective Gray goes on with the interview, Nick does eventually reveal a secret. These are behind the building. In questioning, Nick divulges that they were in some financial trouble.
They're actually getting foreclosed on, and I have to be moving out at the very next day. The next day, April 26th at noon, the sheriff's were to show up and forcibly remove them. This is our, it's a hard place for us. We've reported close and had to be foreclosed at our house. Okay, we have to be out by Monday.
We need tomorrow. When you step back and you look at the time we're talking about, we begin tonight with the housing crisis. The nation's foreclosure crisis shows no end inside. Nick and Heidi were like a lot of families who were upside down on their mortgage and on the verge of losing their home. President Obama is expected to unveil his plan for dealing with the surge in foreclosures.
Even though Nick and Heidi's financial troubles weren't exactly unusual at the time. He says they were ashamed. This has been kind of a private struggle for us. Well, that's kind of, I mean, kind of close notice. He is, we're both kind of dealing with the shape of the whole thing.
Because we're embarrassed that we haven't been able to be honest with our friends about our struggles. Nick then explains that they also have a lot of credit card debt as well.
βJust like curiosity was told that the credit card said, right?β
Just about it's a little over 15. Well, thanks. The focuses were in a dire financial distress. They had a substantial credit card debt. Overdrafts and they're checking account, they just were living paycheck to paycheck.
Did he give you an indication of what the people knew about it? No, it was their secret. It was Heidi and Nick's secret that they were getting evicted. The very next day that they didn't disclose that information to either family or friends. I'm talking to everybody about it tomorrow.
Pressure in place.
See, you and her never mentioned this either either set of parents.
None of our parents or none of our friends. No one knows about this except you and I. There were no signs the couple was packing up and preparing for a move. The refrigerator was still stocked with food. There were a few if any boxes packed with belongings.
It did not look like anybody was planning to go on a long vacation, let alone moving out of the house. It just seems like you're kind of what you saw the guy's a clock. If you knew this train was covered, you know, you can't get ready for it. Yeah, the significant part of it is the shame of all things.
We're pretty crippled by it. Nick told us that Heidi was very aware of that situation and that she and him kept it a secret. But when we talked to the family, they just, they could not believe that their house was being foreclosed on, and Heidi hadn't told us all. The issue becomes why didn't Heidi tell her family.
βBeyond the embarrassment, is it possible that there was another reason that Nick and Heidi kept this secret?β
Nick and Heidi had a very traditional marriage from the standpoint of the church. Nick being the male to care of the finances. Heidi took care of some of the plans and vacations and those types of things. She deferred to Nick for all the financial issues.
At some point, you asked Nick a pretty critical question.
Yeah. Would you ask him? I asked him if he killed her. I came out and asked him straight out. Nick's like, you know, are you?
I want to say, I see this question. Did you have anything to do with this? No, absolutely not. Okay. Absolutely not.
Why is there a party that wants to ask that? Well, Nick, I'm a police officer. Okay. That's the tough questions, all right?
After this three plus hour interview with police, Nick finally gets to see his family.
βWhat happened when he finally was reunited with his family?β
Okay. He gave his mother a hug. Nick finally broke down and started crying, weeping openly. Please camp doubt and front and back of the circus home throughout the day, collecting finger prints and doing ballistic work.
We are investigating this as and as in some type of burger and intrusion.
Police have increased patrol in the neighborhood that say there's no evidence that anyone's trying to target this neighborhood.
βAfter Nick's interview, I think that there was some red flags.β
Based on some of the questions that police asked Nick, Nick realizes that police are looking at him and he's going to need to protect himself. I said, Nick, you can't go back and talk to him again. They want to do a sketch with a police sketch artist. They had produced a very detailed sketch. We received a call. She said, Sergeant Peterson, I know who's in that sketch.
I stopped everything I couldn't believe it. The resemblance between that individual and the sketch, it's unbelievable.
We had maybe found our guy.
Heidi's funeral took place at our church about a week after her death. The entire sanctuary, all the seats were filled with people that were there because they loved Heidi.
βI remember having Nick and just like saying, I'm just so sorry, I can't imagine what it's like to be you right now.β
It was overwhelming. There's a lot of very vivid memories about it when Nick spoke. He talked about her being an artist and thanking her parents for entrusting her to him. Nick was seen as a victim and a hero. He had done everything he could to protect Heidi. In the aftermath of Heidi's death, Nick does finally share with his family and with hers. The financial secret, he says they'd been hiding.
Heidi. The day after Heidi's death, Nick Furcus and his parents met with Heidi Furcus parents and laid out the financial struggles, the credit card debt, the foreclosure. Johnny Erickson, Heidi's dad, was trying to project strings and say, they'll find this person, they don't worry.
And Nick's response was just, they'll never find him.
And that really caught Heidi's parents off guard as did the details about the home foreclosure,
βwhich were now making headline news and had people questioning how much did Heidi really know about their financial problems?β
The newspaper ran the story about financial disaster that Nick and Heidi ran and that was the first that I was hearing about it. This doesn't make any sense. Nick was very quick to say, don't read the media, don't listen to the news they're lying. I didn't view him as somebody who would lie to me. The friends were worried about Nick, perhaps he was being unfairly targeted. But those close to Nick aren't just concerned about the media.
The police were also zeroing in on him. Nick, this is, like I said, but there's a lot of things we're trying to do. My name's Joe Friedberg. I got a call from Nick's dad, who said that we have a problem, can we come see you? I was retained very early on as his defense lawyer. Nick Virkus seemed to be the victim of a horrible crime.
Why does Dad, why would he need a defense lawyer? Well, the interview that day with the police, which he gave voluntarily, that questions took a turn. Do you have anything to do with this? No, absolutely not. Okay, absolutely not.
He was bright enough to know that he had gone from victim to his suspect. Nick and his attorney decided that they weren't going to give any more statements to St. Paul police. I told him that if he was going to have me represent him, he wasn't going to talk to the police. He was going to fool to, it kind of seemed like Nick was being a little bit of an obstacle. They claim they wanted to bring him in and have him do a sketch with a police sketch artist.
That's a good idea, but I knew they'd use that as a lever to try interrogate him more. So I said, "No, we won't do that, but we'll hire an artist and do it." I received a phone call from Nick Virkus's defense team. I agreed to have Nick come to my house and he had jaded down some notes. The skull and the ears were covered by black hoodie.
The eyes were bulging and he said, "It should be a little bit more age to them." So I made them deeper looking and asked him, "Does that represent what you saw?" And he said, "It was." They were going to come down to our headquarters because we still need to get a sample of Nick's DNA.
Then when Nick showed up, that's when we were given the sketch of this allege...
It was a picture of an African-American male, perhaps late 30s, 40s,
βwearing a hooded sweatshirt with a very, very round face and a larger nose.β
They'd never had that experience where it defended hired his own sketch artist.
And they were stuck without any context of how the sketch was made. An intruder was our best possible theory. We all wanted to find that hooded sweatshirt, wearing individual who did this to Heidi. The police released that sketch through the media to see if any tips would come in. The composite sketch got a couple of leads, but nothing concrete.
And then as the years passed on the anniversary of Heidi's murder, the police and the news media would re-release that sketch. If you know anything about this incident, I did a lot of media pushes with some of our local reporters and others. At least one person knows exactly what happened. And we are hoping that that person or someone else will come forward.
That revive the case, it revived the sketch, it revived the information, and it brought some more hope to Heidi's family. Just a loss of our daughter alone is something that's going to be with us forever. We received a call. The woman had left a voicemail and she said, "I know who's in that sketch.
His name is Michael Pye. I stopped everything. I went into our database computer and I typed in Michael Pye and I couldn't believe it." The resemblance between that individual and the sketch, it's unnyable. We started researching him immediately and we started to learn that he was engaged in a pattern of breaking into homes in St. Paul around six in the morning. We had maybe found our guy.
My name is Michael Pye. I'm the year football 35 years and 2010. I was a different person. My mind was gone and I basically was homeless. I basically was doing what I knew to survive.
βIt was a home invasions and that's what I was doing with home invasions.β
I went to talk to Michael Pye to the Bureau of Corrections, where he was being housed and we met with him. I showed him the sketch and he said, "That's me." And they said that it was a guy who said that I saw his wife in the back. And I said, "I ain't doing anything like that."
I hit a giant snack. Problem is that that individual was incarcerated when Heidi was killed. Michael Pye was in jail on the day that Heidi was killed. I got locked up on January 1st. The murder happened in April. So it was like three months apart.
There was no way that he could have possibly been involved in this case whatsoever. Investigators thought they were finally making progress. But now they're back to square one. For his part Nick Furcus is moving on with life, even meeting somebody new. Somebody who's about to become his second wife.
I am Rachel Furcus. And what she has to say will breathe new life into this investigation. I want people to hear the full story and to know the truth of what really happened. In 2010, when Heidi was murdered, I was a patrol officer. And I worked in the district that she was killed in.
And so I was aware of the crime from day one. I heard about it from other responding officers who talked about how the scene did not make sense.
The case always bothered me because the circumstances didn't seem to fit what happened.
A burglar broken to an occupied house and there was a struggle in the wife dies. Oh wait, they're being evicted the next day. Heidi was killed in the place she should have been safest. And with a person who should have kept her safe. As the details piled on, I wanted to know what I didn't know.
What am I missing?
βI think there was always a frustration within the department.β
This case couldn't be solved. And I came into the homicide unit in 2019. The case was then assigned to me.
Darn investigators held this case so closely to their hearts. It was never considered a close case.
It was very clear to the investigators that his family and all the friends rallied and supported him.
There was kind of two sides to this through the years.
You have a group in the community and Heidi's family that were just extremely suspicious of him.
βAnd you had a group of his friends and his family that were very much supportive of him as a hero in this.β
It goes on with his life and he's able to move on. A few months after Heidi's murder, Nick meets the sister of a really good friend of his and Heidi's Rachel Watson.
For the very first time Nick focuses second wife Rachel is sitting down to tell her story.
What do you think of Nick focus? I felt bad. I knew about his story. The Adlossus wife. I had a ton of empathy. What did you know about his story? There was a burglar that entered their home. He fought with them.
He was trying to defend them off and Heidi was shocked. And he also got shot. Rachel shares that she left a very difficult marriage. And she moves back to Minnesota to be with her sister. And that's where she connects with Nick.
I definitely felt sorry for him that he had gone through such a trauma. I related to trauma. My first husband and I met when we were young. It was a rough marriage. I was very quiet. I was scared, abused and vulnerable.
βWas the idea that you two could kind of help heal each other?β
That's what I felt like. He listened and he empathized with me. Within a year, Rachel and Nick are now talking about getting married. You invest in somebody emotionally when you process something so hard. People question how fast you two move.
Yeah, how fast we moved and friends were so grieving, Heidi and Nick's moving on. All of a sudden it was like, he's got his girlfriend. It seems like he hasn't fully grieved his wife. And at the same time, we want him to be happy. So we made ourselves okay with the situation.
As Nick and Rachel are getting closer, Nick's family,
who have always been very protective of him,
especially after Heidi's murder, is now concerned. Will people be critical that it's just too soon? They were so private and would mention that we have to be careful of how we talk about it and what we say, what we don't say.
βWhen you say talk about it, the family was careful to talk about.β
Any of it to tell the story about the shooting? Yep, about the shooting, about what happened that day. I knew that if I was going to be in their family that I wasn't allowed to share with anybody anything that I knew. Rachel says she and Nick decide to focus on making new memories as a couple.
Starting with their wedding. So as time went on in YouTube or planning this wedding, your sister Sarah wrote on a family blog. I got to watch him be married once to one of my best friends who passed away. He was incredible with Heidi.
I don't have to wonder what he's going to be like with Rachel. I trust him with all my heart. That was pretty strong endorsement of this man you're about to marry. Is that how you felt? Everyone that I was around at the time.
I felt that way. Before the wedding, you had a special request. You wanted to visit Heidi's grave. Why? Out of respect, I didn't want it to seem like I was replacing her because I wasn't.
I knew I would never replace her.
I wanted to be able to go there and say that. Tell me about that visit. What was that like? It was strange. Nick didn't have much to say or have emotions about it.
I envisioned it to be that he was protecting himself. I imagined it was tough having to relive a trauma that you had in your life. And I didn't want to cause more hurt. In August of 2012, Rachel and Nick get married. They start planning a family.
Rachel begins to grow closer with some of Nick and Heidi's friends. My friendship took off with Rachel, like right away. She just became someone that I love talking about. They had kids pretty quick, so we fell in love with their kids and would watch their kids for them when they were doing things.
What kind of a dad was Nick? He was a good dad. It didn't necessarily come natural, but he tried. Nick continues to be the main provider for his family. Still working for his family's business.
Rachel says he tells her that he's no longer in debt. He went through a program that helped him with finances. And he was able to pay off all of the debt that he had. So I respected that. They moved into a house that Nick's parents paid for.
Neither of us were able credit-wise to buy a house.
We had an agreement.
We were paying our mortgage to them.
βAnd when it was time to pay, the property taxes.β
He was just supposed to pay it with the money that we had. And it seemed to be fine. I was happy. But then one day Rachel finds something in Nick's sock drawer that literally took her breath away. When did you think?
Terrified? I didn't know that this was happening, and I'm living with this person. It was a very shocking realization. Could history be repeating itself? 2020 is partnering with Vibes, Open Year Wireless Headphones.
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Just go to abcsecretsavings.com/2020. Again, that's abcsecretsavings.com/2020. ABCsecretsavings.com/2020. Well, could possibly be more terrifying and traumatic than having someone break into your house early in the morning, and shoot your wife dead, and shoot you.
Oh, wait, they're being evicted the next day? What am I missing here? He's talking about the gun being chuss-hine. He says that they're fighting. He's talking about the gun being chuss-hine.
He says that that they're fighting. He says that that's not a gun. He's talking about the gun being chuss-hine. He says that that they're fighting. Over the gun up here.
Nick Furcus is under suspicion for his wife's murder. It's just like really traumatic to watch that all play out. And to see people say things about your friend then are true. The last time he had problems with finances, a lot of things went wrong. His wife was killed right.
This has been kind of a private struggle for us because we're embarrassed. How do you go from having financial troubles? To killing your wife? I didn't know it was going to happen in that conversation. In the fact that you're lying over and over and over,
makes me think that you're my wife. Maybe somebody really did break in. Maybe it happened as he said. Little did I know that it was not even close to being over. Police, sir, come on, come on, come on.
βRachel, you need to get out of the house.β
Time is not your friend in homicide cases. And as time went on, people start to move on. And people don't want to talk about it anymore. And people don't want to come forward anymore. This is one of those cases that would wake you up at night
to think about how we're going to bring justice to Heidi's family. They would call in April around the anniversary of her murder. They would call around Heidi's birthday. And I know that it was absolutely traumatic for them. Initially it was only Nicholas Ferguson's narrative.
That was out there. Friends rallied around him. They supported him. They all stuck with him. The family, the church community.
Every single piece of the story that he told us then has been consistent and remains consistent with the evidence. And he heard things that he's gone through. We've walked alongside each other. There was absolutely no way that he had been involved.
No, not at all. That how would that even cross people's minds?
We were like, nobody thinks that.
Still, there were details that stuck with investigators. One of them was the sketch release that was based on Nick's description of the intruder. It's clear that Michael Pi didn't kill Heidi because he was in prison at the time of the murder.
βWhat has police thinking is, where did Nick come up with that thought for the composite?β
In the winter months of 2009 and 2010, that man's face was all over the news as a known burglar in the area. I thought we'd turn on the news in a morning time. And I would be the first picture on the news on all stations. It appears like that sketch could have been made deliberately to throw people off.
It kind of seemed like Nick was trying to set someone else up. To try to frame another human being, that was disgusting. And that isn't the sign of an innocent man's actions. I was the lead investigator on over 85 some homicide cases. And I still have moms and family members that call me.
And they still say, "What's going on with this case?"
And Nick never called one time. He never reached out one time.
βWhy wasn't he working harder over the years to try to find his wife's killer?β
Maybe pressing the police, coming back to the police to find out what they know? Blame that on me. I didn't want any more contact with the police for Nick, because all they're going to try to do is get inconsistent statements on details from him. No criminal lawyer worth his salt, whatever of that Nick cooperate with the police, because the police were treating him as a suspect, not a victim.
But your wife has been killed by some unknown assailant. And over the years, I would think that that would just at the very least trouble him. He was always concerned about it.
It always afraid that walking down the street some day, he'd run into him.
Nick has moved on with his life. He's married has three kids, he's working. And you know, it's as if he's been able to get past that really traumatic part of his life. So you've been married now a few years. Let's say any talk about the fact that there was never a resolution to this tragedy that had happened, and nobody arrested for killing his wife? Nope. I asked him about it, and I said, "Why don't you ever talk about it?"
And he didn't really have anything to say. Rachel shares that she and Nick start to grow apart. We were living in the same house under the same roof, using, you know, the same money. But there was no relationship anymore. There was, you know, what times were.
I felt like he was lying, but I could never prove it.
What did you suspect that he was lying about? At first it was little things. I would see rappers and, you know, things in his car, and I'm like, "Hey, can you bring stuff from home so that we're not spending money every day?" On, you know, going out to eat, but there was always an excuse. Or, "Oh, somebody was, somebody was in my car with me today, and they left it in there."
You're lying to me and it's a dumb. Like it's not even things that are a big deal.
βWere you worried at all about how the finances were being handled?β
Yeah. When you get collections calls, you know something's wrong. One day, Rachel finds something in Nick's sock drawer that literally took her breath away. It was a notice that they were delinquent on the property taxes. He failed to pay those property taxes.
If these taxes on paid, you know, the county will look at foreclosure on the house. What did you think? Terrified? I didn't know that this was happening, and I'm living with this person. I have children with this person, and the last time he had problems with finances, a lot of things went wrong.
His wife was killed right, and so, you know, naturally that's where I went. Is that what this is? So you're beginning to think that you could be married to a killer. At this point, it was very possible. This piece of paper, Rachel finding hidden from her, proved to us enough that Heidi did not know about the financial struggle.
Because Rachel did not know. That is when we were like, "Did he kill his wife?" She gets so scared that she grabs the kids in the middle of the night, and she leaves the house. At around the same time, there's a new detective determined to crack this case.
I think she hit the ground running.
And she finds more suspicious evidence that seems to point back to Nick Furcus, including something found in his car on the day of the murder.
It is actually in my car. Why would it be there? This case had set quiet for almost a decade. And then in 2019, there is a sergeant at the St. Paul Police Department who wants to take another look at this case. I was transferred to the homicide unit, and I had an opportunity to take this case over from the previous investigator.
There have been no arrest, no progress, and almost 10 years have passed, and most people have forgotten about it. Where do you begin? At the beginning, I reviewed all of the reports, I reviewed all the evidence.
One of the first things that Sergeant Sipes does is to sit down and rewatch that interview that Nick Furcus did with police.
βThat was the single most important piece of evidence that I thought we had in this case.β
Sipes now brings fresh perspective to a number of red flags that original investigators had noticed. Heidi's only dead a few hours, and for the most part of this interview, Nick isn't crying, isn't emotional. I know she was hit in the bag, and I just knew it was high in the bag and probably, like I told her she'll do what she thinks so. How worried was he about his wife during that interview? He wasn't. It took him about an hour and 20 minutes to say, "Can I get an update on Heidi?"
Nobody gave me any answers, and I was going to have a third.
And then Sergeant Gray was able to deflect the question for quite a while, and then Sergeant Gray asked him to have any questions.
I just want to. The final answer, honey. Well, this is a couple of parts of my job that I really need to do this as a role. She did my job. I figured that. That was his response to the news that his wife was dead.
βAt that point, Nick does appear upset. Still, Nicky Sipes says, "There's something important she never sees."β
You would think that if your wife had just been killed in front of you, by a real person who was on the loose, you would have some questions of the investigator. What are you doing to find this person? Where did you look? Nothing. Sergeant Sipes then turns to the FBI to help her with Heidi's unsolved murder. We were initially contacted by detective Sipes from the same public department to help with some audio from the 911 call that they had. We really wanted to hear if you could hear this fictitious intruder.
The FBI took the audio recording to our laboratory in Quantico. There was no noise that we could detect in the background. What city are you in, St. Paul? We're in St. Paul. What address are you at? You can hear the shotgun, and then the line goes to it.
Let me hear how everything, many hot hot summons try and wept. And in that last terrible moment of Heidi's life, investigators analyzing the call say, "They hear nobody else there, but Heidi and Nick." Next, the FBI is using new technology to reconstruct Heidi's final moments. But even before they begin, there are plenty of red flags in Nick's version of the story.
He has a loaded shotgun, and he is ushering Heidi down the stairs in front of him.
βShe's in front of him, can I try to move her along quickly?β
And then I'm right behind her. Did that strike you as on? Yes, he's the one that has the gun. Why does he let his white go ahead of him? She's maybe a foot ahead of him, they're together, and he's trying to hurry her along. They wanted to get out of there.
Still, it's just not making sense to investigators. So the FBI now brings in its forensic firepower to help. One of the things we came up with was to recreate the scene. So we decided that we were going to get access to the house. The FBI came out into the full kind of digital scan that that ruins this in 2010.
They could make an accurate, two-scale digital mine.
Nick tells in the interview about how the gun is sort of pressed up against his chest
βwhen it goes off and Heidi gets hit by it.β
He's talking about the gun being charged high, and he says that they're fighting over the gun up here. So how likely was that? The FBI combines their ballistic's testing with the virtual model of the space to find out. We put her in a natural position, which is her standing straight up. We were able to take somebody that's the height of Nick Furcus and put that shotgun in space
where it would be when it went off. They believe that shows that the gun wasn't at Nick's chest as he describes. Instead, it was higher at his shoulder level as a shotgun would normally be if you're going to aim and fire. Which makes them think this was a deliberate shot and not a shot that was taken in the middle of a struggle.
Though Nick's attorneys insist that doesn't necessarily disprove his version of events. Another thing that catches the attention of Sergeant Sipes is that Nick, in this interview, talks about this vacuum for cleaning carpet that specializes in removing blood. And she found it really interesting that Nick just happened to have that in his personal car on the day of Heidi's murder. It is actually in my car back in the office.
Yeah, in your car. Okay. Why would it be there? Because I, that piece of equipment is not just for cleaning up a lot. I need to be able to take care of our customers.
So I just threw it in the back of my car. And what did that say to you potentially?
Well, you know, it was always an idea to us that Heidi planned to kill her and clean up the scene.
Even his Sergeant Sipes is closing in on Nick Burgess. What she doesn't know is that his current wife Rachel is having her own suspicions that will lead her to begin secretly recording out. And the fact that your line was so easy for you to do makes me think that I should murder my wife. Yes. When Rachel found the papers that said that their house was in danger of her closure was shocking.
That was the first moment that we were like, "Oh my gosh, did he kill Heidi?" That paper changed the course of the rest of the story. What did you think? Terrified? I didn't know this.
I didn't know that this was happening. And here I am sitting in a position that happened before to him. The last time his wife ended up dead by his shotgun.
βAnd so Rachel, you need to get out of the house to keep yourself safe.β
Did you fear for your life? There were times that I did for sure. With knowing that he could do it once, what makes you think he can't do it again. Once Rachel knows that her children are safe in a way from Nick. She decides she's going to confront him.
Rachel's feeling nervous about her safety, so she brings her friend Emily along. You decided you wanted to record the conversation? Yeah. Why? Because I didn't know it was going to happen in that conversation.
And possibly maybe there'd be a confession of some sort. But how did you secretly record the conversation? I just had my phone next to me on my lap. And the conversation started. I could get through this if it was just the line.
It really could.
The problem is the hidee stuff.
That's my problem. The problem is I don't 100% believe you. I said I found out about a possible foreclosure. I found out that you haven't been paying bills. That you've been lying about paying these bills.
βAnd then, you know, I said, how am I supposed to know this information?β
And not think that you may have had something to do with hidee's death. I know it's shocking for you to hear that from me. And it's shocking. Trust me it's shocking for me to think it. I don't know what this is going to do.
Nick sits there silently. Not saying a word. This goes on for minutes. So I didn't tell you to understand what you're saying. But the fact that you're saying it is all indescribably jarring to my soul.
But I can hardly be. I don't have words, Rach. It is too traumatic. And I don't know what else to tell you.
We're like, why are you not getting help?
Clearly there's a problem. There's a history of a problem. The fact that your line was so easy for you to do in front of me over and over and over. Makes me think that I should murder my wife. That you could lie about something.
That I could murder my wife. Yes. And then when you ask him like two talk about hidee's death, he just puts his head down and like kind of cries. But he will not touch it.
There are a hundred things going through my right now. Are you wanting to say more? I'm probably not.
βI think I'll be open to this conversation.β
I just can't do it today. Now Rachael insists that Nick tells his parents what's going on. So they get together again and he brings them along. You were putting him sort of on a hot seat at the time with the parents. You wanted him to come clean.
Yeah. And did he? No. He sat there and let us dad talk for him. I don't believe on it.
That's what scared me. What don't believe? I feel like I don't know the future. You don't know the future? These are the questions that I have.
If Heidi didn't know all this was happening, why was there nothing packed in their house? Like, that's just the logical. There was the beginnings of packages. I mean, there was stuff in the basin that was packed up.
There were things that were created up and easily ready to go. Yeah. Like very much at first blush it didn't look like a house pack. If you look at the videotape taken by police on the day of the murder, that does not look like a house that was prepared for a big move out.
You hear Rachel challenging Nick's parents asking, "How is it possible that you had no idea that Nick was losing the house?" Well, like nobody knew that's just so bizarre to me. So we weren't super entwined in their life. They weren't crazy.
They were involved that naturally gives them work of connection. But that was different for their family, right? That they said that they were shocked that they didn't know because Heidi told them everything.
They never pushed into our personal business.
Heidi and I decided together that we would figure this out together. Next Dad tells Rachel that their lawyer had advised the family not to speak publicly about Heidi's dad. The rule he had to play was to not say anything. Dad.
And that people that know how to play the tape they're doing. When Rachel challenges Nick about his memory, he says that a lot of stuff is fuzzy. Well, how did the memories from that thing? He did.
When you talked about it, it was like detail of what happened. And so he keeps saying that, but that's not true. She didn't trust him anymore, so she decided to divorce and they did divorce in 2018. I knew immediately as soon as I saw their divorce,
I wanted to talk to her. One day, I get a knock on my door.
βI think it's somebody that's telling me something.β
And she was like, "I'm Nicky Sipes. I'm from St. Paul Police Department. I want to talk about Heidi Furcus."
And I never, never and a million years thought that would happen.
The idea that Rachel, who was married to Nick Furcus, he's the father for children. That she cooperated with you. That's pretty amazing. She's a very brave woman.
How much danger was she potentially in? That's a great question, but if I were her, I would have been very afraid when I found this out. You're potentially helping them arrest your children's father for murder. Were you at all reluctant?
No matter how hard this is going to be, this is someone's daughter. And if I can fight for her, even if it causes pain for me, I will.
βIf Nick really did kill Heidi, then what's the motive?β
What we're doing here is the solution.
Police finally believe that they have enough evidence
to make their move. Police, we got a search warrant. Sergeant Nicky Sipes is still investigating the murder of Heidi Furcus. And more than ever before, she is focused like a laser beam
on her former husband, Nick. She's beginning to believe that the motive for Heidi's murder all stems from the couple's financial troubles. At the time of Heidi's death, they haven't made a mortgage payment in 22 months.
They're $18,000 in debt with credit card bills.
What struck me the most was the amount of money
that they had in overdrafties through their bank. And one year was over $8,000 in overdrafts. In overdraft alone, in overdrafts, I mean, their water was going to be disconnected at times. It appears that they were living way above their means.
Rather than cook at home, they were out at restaurants, not lavish places, but they were spending more than they were making. But it was there of $200,000 home that was really causing Nick and Heidi to fall behind.
They bought a home they could not afford. And so things kind of spiraled a little bit because of that. And the day after Heidi's murder is the day they were supposed to be evicted by the sheriff. Sergeant Sipes and the FBI
poured through the financial documents
and come up with a theory.
And what's your gut telling you after sifting through all of this? That Heidi had no idea the other house to be in for a close-on. She had no idea they were being evicted 30 hours later.
Nick says that it was their secret. But the police wonder of maybe it was a secret that only Nick was keeping.
βHow is it possible that they could be living together?β
And she has no idea that they're in financial trouble. He handled the finances. They were young. That just seemed to be the role that he took on. But Nick's defense lawyers see it differently.
They were being hounded by the bank, by mail, by UPS, by federal express. There were postings on the door and all of those mailings were found in the house. Heidi could not have been oblivious to what was going on.
In the mortgage and eviction paperwork,
there was never anything signed by Heidi for us.
You didn't see her signature on any of these documents. No one ever served Heidi for us with a piece of mail. She never appeared at the hearing for the eviction. She didn't communicate with anyone, not even her closest friends,
not even her parents about this situation. Whenever we spoke to any one of her friends, our family would Heidi have told you every single person said absolutely she would have. And not only was Heidi not talking about this looming move
with her friends and family. According to the police, when they dug through her text messages and her emails, it didn't appear that she had discussed it with Nick either. What we couldn't find anywhere in any of the emails
was any mention whatsoever of foreclosure or eviction. I mean, that's a life-changing event
βwhen you have to move out of your house.β
And for them not to have one correspondence about the coordination of this move is very suspicious. You know, the closer it got to the day of her death, you could tell she knew something was going on with a few of the bills.
She started getting calls and emails from creditors asking about bills that need to be paid. Every time she would get a call, she would immediately call text or email nick
and ask him to take care. She was definitely asking more and more about bills. Like, I got a call about this. She would ask him, is there any update? And he would give her these kind of elongated responses.
Like, oh, I called so. And so it became very clear that she believed what her husband told her. Police thinking is, nick is not telling Heidi the truth. So why is he lying to Heidi?
βAnd I think he knew that as soon as Heidi knew what happened,β
she would tell everyone around them. He thought she might leave him. So rather than reveal his financial problems, he killed his wife. He has destroyed their lives, essentially.
Without her knowing. Prosecutor Satanic was two different men. He was one man at church for his wife and his family and community. And then there was the secret nick.
The nick that couldn't pay his bills. The nick who was losing his house. It wasn't just going to be the loss of this house. It was going to be the realization that he had lied to his wife. And he had lied to his friends.
He had lied to the community for many years. Through the murder of Heidi, he came away as a victim in a murder. It just made no sense that he would kill his wife in order to spare him some momentary embarrassment.
But then he becomes the victim of a crime. Nobody's thinking about his financial troubles at that time is lost his wife. If you were trying to keep this secret, the last thing that you would do is bring in the police
because your wife has just been murdered.
After 11 years, police finally believe
that they have enough evidence to make their move against Nick Furcus.
βWe went to his house very early in the morning.β
Our spot team went, knocked on the door. Police department, search one! Police, we got a search warrant. Nick, come on on. Yes.
Go to your hands behind your back for me. Okay. Very cooperative. Three is a therapy with this follow-up officer. You know, a warm-free rest here.
One. I'm going to say it. Nicholas Furcus is in custody on suspicion of murdering his wife Heidi. Today, we're one step closer to getting justice for Heidi.
And the truth.
βDo you think that he thought that he would ever be arrested?β
No, I believe he thought he got away with it.
Nick is charged with both first degree
and second degree murder. I thought that was it. I thought, okay, he's going to go to jail. Little did I know that it was not even close to being over. The trial for a Saint Paul man accused of killing his wife back in 2010 is now underway.
His attorneys are arguing that Nicholas's wife Heidi was killed during a break-in. But Rams and Kenny prosecutors say there's no sign of anyone else in the home, other than the couple. It's been nearly 13 years since Heidi Furcus's murder and the trial for her husband Nick is finally underway in this courthouse. And both sides are arguing completely different versions of what happened that morning. The courtroom was packed every single day.
There were people who were sitting on the floor even. The tension between the two parties was very noticeable. One family against another family, essentially. Correct, and families that used to be somewhat united. It was just like really tragic.
And to see people say things about your friend, then, are true.
βAt the heart of this case, was there an intruder or not?β
It wasn't a fictitious stranger who was breaking into her home. She needed to be afraid of. It was the stranger she married. To prove their argument, prosecutors put Nick's intruder story to the test. They showed the jury video up, please, trying to reenact the break-in and the jiggling of the door,
Nick says he heard from the upstairs bed room. I'm at the front door, so let me know when you guys are ready. Sergeant Grace stood at the front door and jiggled the door knob. Here you go. Well, they took a video upstairs in the bedroom.
Yeah, man. And you could not hear that door knob being jiggled.
Which was an story on how he first was alerted to the burglar.
Nick's attorneys introduced evidence to contradict that by showing the tool marks on the door frame that suggests someone was trying to break in. There were marks on the door that were consistent with someone using a screwdriver. There was a screwdriver to pry open the door. Maybe somebody really did break in.
Maybe it happened as he said. And the police recognized that. Which is why they seized three screwdrivers from the house and from Heidi and Nick's cars and compared them to the tool marks. And none of the three screwdrivers could be matched to those tool marks.
You brought in a locksmith. We did. What did you discover? He has been to thousands of burglary scenes. He said his experience has been that with a burglar,
they're going to attack the deadbolt because once you defeat the deadbolt, you've got the door. But there was no evidence that anybody had tried to pry open the deadbolt. And he also said they don't care about damage. All they care about is getting in and getting in fast.
The locksmith had never seen a burglary with so little damage to a door.
At 6.30 in the morning on a Sunday when you expect people to be sleeping in the house, you do not break in by kicking in the door.
You break in covertly.
Another inconsistency in Nick's story, prosecutors say that undisturbed table in the foyer.
It's just inches from the door.
βAnd so when Nick describes the dynamic encounter with this man larger than him,β
you would look and think that that seat would just be destroyed. And yet nothing was out of place. Why isn't the table knocked over? Why are the contents still neatly on that table? Because that is in where the struggle was.
The struggle was as you come into the door to the right of there, as is shown by the spread of the bullets into the door. Look, four cops came bursting through that door into the house because of the emergency and the stuff was still there. But they weren't fighting with him over a gun.
The scene was not trashed, but there were things that were a skew. The front door was open and inch when the police arrived. The front mat was pushed up against the wall. Heidi shoes were sort of knocked the skew.
Another reason prosecutors believe that there was never an intruder
is because they never found anyone else's DNA. No foreign DNA in the house or on the gun. So what did that tell you?
βThat there was one person that touched the gun.β
The guy came in fully dressed with a hood over his head and wearing gloves. He was in the house for second seconds. Probably wouldn't be an ADNA. The defense argues that Nick wouldn't have had enough time after Heidi's 911 call to stage the crime scene and shoot himself
before making his own 911 call only 65 seconds later. Prosecutors know they've got to convince the jury that there was plenty of time and in their closing argument they put on a dramatic demonstration. Show me how you did the re-enactment. I demonstrated with my hands being in a shooting stance
to represent Nick for kiss holding the shotgun. So that would have been Nick shooting his wife. That's correct. I put down my imaginary gun. I walked over to where Heidi's body would have been. Nick for kiss would have turned her over.
With the timer running in front of the jury, Prosecutor Rachel Crocker walks through every step she says Nick had to take. Picked up the gun that he had left by the door. Braced himself against the door.
And then pulled the trigger to get that tangential wound that he got in his left leg. Shooting himself. Drop the gun, drop the gun, and then use the phone to call 911.
And you still had time on the clock? That's right. There's no evidence that he was able to walk. He had just been shot in the thigh. You take a look at the pictures of that wound.
He would have had to crawl. JΓΌrs have heard the case for just over two weeks. And now Nick focuses future as in their hands. There was a likelihood that the jury would believe Nick's story.
βSo was it possible that Nick would walk away a free man?β
Simon asked you about the story, also the Schuilflashback, just over the night. And then, hoping that it's stimmt? No, not at all. Like this story is like my safe space.
Hmm, do you think that's all right? Yeah, exactly. So this story is like the story of who just understood it. Egalobstudium, Job, or Unzug. Casteem?
Casteem? Casteem? I don't think so. Steuern LED? Safe?
With visor steuern. We'll be going over Boer. This is insane. We'll begin. Watch the new Hulu original series.
Love OverBoer. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundles subscribers. Terms of fly. It was the perfect storm. Somebody got shot.
You've run got shot. Get right here. There is terror. Children have seen their mother get shot.
Take a step back because they're never trying to take her up.
My daughter was killed. For children who don't have their mom. I scraped. She wants to have a conversation. Correct.
And instead, she gets a bullet.
I think there was so much shock that what had just happened.
Take a step back. Find him. They show what happened.
There is still someone with a gun.
And you see for certain exactly how it happened. He's inside. I have one down. I have one elderly female bear get into the house. Jumping her in.
βWhy would a woman kill an unarmed neighbor who not done her door?β
Did you know her? Yes. He's come back to me so well. Because of her children. Because of father and father.
And if they won't stop. Could have been any of us that wouldn't not done that door that night. The only 2020. Next Friday on ABC.
And stream on Disney Plus. [MUSIC PLAYING] The case of a St. Paul Man accused of killing his wife back in 2010. Could go to the jury as soon as today. Nick Furcus is under suspicion for his wife's murder.
His trial has just ended. But the jury comes back in four hours with their verdict. As St. Paul Man has been found guilty of killing his wife. A jury convicted Nicholas Furcus.
It's a first-end second-degree murder.
When you heard guilty, would you think? Devastated. I had to hold Nick. He started to sob. Nick Furcus' family declined our request for an interview.
But since the statement saying, they support their son and believe in his innocence. Nicholas Furcus was finally held accountable. Do we wanted to do justice to hide it? And we thought we had done that. On April 13, the emotion in the courthouse is palpable.
The other is justice, but that doesn't make things better. There are people still affected by this mass. Nick Furcus is back in the courtroom for sentencing. You may be seated. The way I'd like to proceed is allow the victim statements.
I really miss my sister. The load is lighter knowing the fight for the truth of her story has been won. And I know that Heidi was put in my life to bring me closer to God. It isn't fair that she's gone. Nick Furcus has had 13 years to live the life that Heidi deserved.
And finally, this is an opportunity for you, Mr. Furcus, to make her statement.
If I do maintain and will maintain to my dying breath, my innocence of this crime. Heidi was a bright light in this world. These past 13 years have not diminished my love for her, nor the love that I felt from her. This was a tragic event and there are no winners here, but the jury has spoken. It is the sense of law and judgment of this court that you be committed to the commission of corrections
for the remainder of your life without the possibility of release. [Music] Just knowing what the world was robbed of that someone is bright and just special was lost. It's tragic to think about.
βAnd remember the man who looked just like the guy in the composite sketch Michael Pye?β
Well, he has turned his life around after serving time and he wonders how differently things could have gone for him. If I wouldn't have been locked up, I would have got found guilty for it because wouldn't nobody bleed it. If I told him that it wasn't me.
I most definitely forgive him for what he tried to do. I also know if forgiveness you get surprised you're going to have to pay too. And so he's going to have to go to prison and pay that price now. [Music] I often get shocked by my own story.
Not many people can say, "Yeah, I married a murder, didn't know had kids with them." There are moments when I'm like, "Why did I choose to be with somebody like this?" When there were red flags to everyone but me. But I also know that I wouldn't have those three kids without it. And I know that I wouldn't be the person that I am today without the story that I have.
Heidi and Rachel are linked in a way that goes beyond their marriages to Nick Furcus. On the anniversary of Heidi's death, it also happened to be your birthday. It's a crazy coincidence.
βWill you always think about Heidi on your birthday?β
Always. [Music] She's important to remember. [Music] And that's our program for tonight.
Thanks for watching. I'm David Muir. And I'm Deborah Roberts from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News. Good night.
[Music]
Where? Is Jared off? I'm right here.
βDon't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil born again.β
So what's next? I believe we're ready.
We're going to take this city back.
βIn an all new season, now streaming only on Disney+.β
They're having us.
It's time we started hunting them.
I can work with them. [Music]
This should be tons of fun.
Marvel Television's Daredevil born again, else streaming only on Disney+.



