Post Mortem | The Woman Who Died Twice

No, not at all. I'm so sorry. You're so sorry. You're all right? Yes, exactly. I'm so sorry that I'm just a part of the studio. I'm just a part of the studio or a part of the studio. I'm sorry. I'm not as sorry.

I'm sorry. - You're right. I'm sorry. Hello, I'm Anne Marie Green and welcome back to Post-Mortem. This week we're discussing the case of Mindy Meben Cassotus, whose dismembered remains were found in the woods near Savannah, Georgia on December 2, 2022.

It took five months to identify her remains, and when her family and friends found out, they were shocked. By the discovery, because Mindy's husband Nick Cassotus had told them that Mindy died in the hospital in December, and that her body had been cremated. When investigators zeroed in on Nick Cassotus, he denied any involvement in Mindy's murder, but told them a real sort of detailed story about how he and Mindy have been targeted and harassed by shadowy figures for years. Joining me today to give us some insight into this case is very unusual case.

It's 48 hours correspondent Aaron Moriarty. Thank you for joining us, Aaron. Well, it's a thrill to be here. I have to agree with you.

We've never really had a case like this where there really were two realities.

So if you look at the evidence, the cops did. It's an ordinary, well, ordinary pre-meditated murder. But if you listen to Nick Cassotus, he's a former naval officer and lawyer.

“He tells a very different story. So the bottom line was, who do you believe?”

So true, and so many people believed him for years. Before we get into it, a quick reminder, if you haven't watched or listened to the 48 hours episode, the woman who died twice, check it out, and then come on back and join us for this conversation. Okay. So let's dig into these two realities as you put it. Mindy and Nick Cassotus started dating back in 2015. They got married in 2016.

And at first, it really seemed like a fairytale marriage.

But at some point in 2018, Cassotus started telling Mindy that they were being surveilled and harassed by shadowy figures. And they went on the run. They basically went into hiding.

“Erin, can you break down just what was happening in the couple's lives in those months leading up to Mindy's murder?”

Okay. So by June of 2022, they were living in an Airbnb in Savannah, Georgia. And they were living with Mindy's parents who also believed, because so does the story that they were being surveilled, harassed. Mindy had told some of her friends about the harassment, and she told them it was all connected to her husband and some of the classified work that he had done when he was in the Navy. And according to her friends, there was no question Mindy believed it and was truly scared for her life.

And here's the evidence we found of that. This was time we did not put in the show, but that Airbnb was just blocks from where Mindy's best friend from high school, Morgan Paddock lived.

But Mindy apparently was so afraid to leave the house. She never even told Morgan that. She never reached out to her.

And Morgan had no idea she was there because they had stopped communicating at this point. And that really gives you an idea of just how scared Mindy seemed to be. Right, clearly she believed what her husband was telling her about the shadow we figures.

“And in a way, I can understand it, especially if he's cutting off her connections to other people, right?”

We've seen that before, Erin, where people, you know, their world becomes so small that they become almost completely dependent on this one person that's misleading them. But what I don't get is that even Mindy's friends and, you know, members of her family, they didn't question this outlandous story. So that's the question I asked people. I would ask her friends, why didn't you ask more questions? And they said that they did think the story was crazy. But because her husband had such an impressive background, they believed him and they didn't ask a lot of questions.

Keep in mind, Emily, because so does have been a lawyer in Jack, the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps, which is basically the Navy's legal arm. I don't know if I ever mentioned to you that before I went to law school, I thought about being a Jack because they pay for your way into law school, and it is considered to be one of the best ways it's a military lawyer.

It also occurred to me that because of the internet and there's so much talk about conspiracies, I think people are more open to this kind of story that he was telling.

“That is such an interesting observation. I think you're probably right.”

But then we sort of go a step further, right, because in December of 2022, because so does told Mindy's friends and family that she died from a sudden medical issue, and that, you know, there's no body because she had been cremated. I can maybe understand Mindy's friends accepting that story because they weren't around her, but her own parents didn't question this.

You know, this is still kind of a mystery to me, Emory. Her parents did not speak to us, but the investigators told us they did love their daughter.

“Still, we know that when Conservatives told Mindy's parents that their daughter had died, and that he didn't get her body, and couldn't tell them where it was, and oddly, they seemed to accept that.”

You know, you would think they would maybe call the cops. They did not. I should also point out they were all living in the same house, but they went away to visit her brother, their son during Thanksgiving, and when they got back, that's when Conservatives said that he had taken Mindy to the hospital and that she had died. And then here's the weird part of the story, right? This is the weird part of the story. Yeah, well, all right, it's getting weird. Right. So right after, because so does told them that Mindy died, but he, you know, couldn't show them the body or anything, then he disappeared.

He disappeared again. They still did not call the cops, and two months later, in February of 2023, Mindy's parents got an email, ostensibly from the company that Casota's claimed he worked for saying that he had been in her car accident. We know that they wanted to go see him, but then they get another email saying that he had died. Hmm, even then, even then, the least parents don't seem to realize that they were being bamboozled.

So when Mindy's dismembered body was found in the woods, investigators were unable to identify her at first, and they released two sketches of her face.

Casota says, first wife, Heather Thomas, discovered that sketch, and then made an anonymous call to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation saying that it looked an awful lot like her ex-husbands new wife, Mindy Casota's. What's interesting about Heather is that, when she spoke to you about Casota, she said at one point that, you know, they were best friends, that they remained friendly after the divorce, when did things sort of break down between them?

“Well, initially it was amicable. She said they had become roommates, not husband and wife, and that's why they broke up.”

Also, Heather and Casota's had shared two dogs, so they stayed in each other's lives, and she says they were friendly during that time, but there was one really big issue between them. Apparently, Casota's owed Heather money from the divorce, and he was supposed to pay off at this a lot of money, 1.5 million dollars for the mortgage on the house. He also owed her lawyers fees and interest and compounding. And the only reason why Heather really was upset about it, why she became upset about it, was she also worked for the government and had a security clearance, and she was worried it would be denied if she had large debts.

What's interesting is that Mindy, who is now married to Casota's, knew nothing about any of this debt. Her friends say that Mindy heard a totally different story from her husband. He told her that Heather was crazy and was trying to steal from him. Wow, I mean, people believe Casota's except for luckily investigators. They didn't buy his story at all when they brought him in for questioning. He told them are the same tale about being pursued and harassed by unknown individuals and also said that for his family's protection, he gave complete control to a mysterious FBI agent.

He said his name was Jim McIntyre. Of course, he said that he didn't kill Mindy and that he didn't know who did, but he thought maybe Jim was responsible. Let's just listen to a clip from the hour of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations Agent Tracy Sands asking Casota's about Jim McIntyre.

We could have had an unsolved death on our hands without Tracy Sands. In fact, Sands led both interviews with Casota after Casota's arrest and he worked with the FBI to try to find the mysterious Jim McIntyre.

“Sadly, this was Tracy's last case. He did agree to sit down with us. He would have been in our hour for an interview but he died unexpectedly right after the trial.”

This is why Tracy Sands and investigators didn't believe Casota's the way all of Casota's friends and family did because they had been investigating for weeks as soon as they were able to identify that woman found in the swamp as Mindy.

We just told us they couldn't find any evidence to back up Casota's story and they tried hard. They even wanted to find the mysterious Jim McIntyre.

They found a Jim McIntyre. He was an older man who managed a company that sold dental implants. He was not a federal agent. What they did find was surveillance footage of Casota's car and it was very close to the hunting grounds where Mindy's body was found. And they were able even to find the evidence that Casota's had bought the same kind of knife that was found at the crime scene. So in February of 2024, just a little over a year after Mindy's death, Casota's was indicted for his wife's murder.

And with the check-out with the world for the best conversion, the real murder, the check-out with the world for the best conversion.

The legendary check-out of Shopify, just at the shop on their website, a bit to social media and above everything. So let's talk about the trial. More than two-and-a-half years after Mindy Casota's murder, her husband Nick Casota's is charged with her murder and appears in a Georgia courtroom. I could not help but to notice just how different he looked from his police interview. He looks like a completely different person.

It really made me question, "Who is this guy?"

I mean, that was the big question I had all the way through this. Sadly, we don't know a lot about Casota's upbringing or even his background before he went to law school and got all his legal training. His parents decided not to talk to us, but we did see them in the courtroom to support him.

“And here's sign that we didn't tell you in the hour, which I think is so interesting, is that at some point, Casota said,”

"I don't think this should surprise anyone who's listening," he began to write fiction. It actually published a short story on Reddit. I should tell you what the name was. It was called "My mother-in-law was poisoning me," and then I found out why. I get this, Sony Pictures paid him $400,000 for the story right. You're kidding me. And here's a weird thing that we did tell you in the hour, but after Mindy died, which did not make Casota's look so good, he ended up getting married quickly to another fiction writer that he had.

He lied to that wife, also. He told her he was a whittower, and that was at a time when Mindy was still alive. Just like I said. I mean, this is really an unusual case, but another reason why it was unusual is Nick Casota's testified in his own defense. That doesn't happen frequently, even though I know if you watch 48 hours you see it frequently enough, but in general it doesn't happen. He testified for more than three hours, and he repeated to the jury this story about Jim McIntyre insisting that McIntyre offered him in Mindy protection and controlled every detail of their lives.

“So you spoke to Casota's defense lawyer, Doug Weinstein. What was his reasoning for putting his client on the stand?”

I was curious about the same thing. Weinstein is a very good trial lawyer. He says, and I think he's right, his strongest defense was that this case was entirely circumstantial.

But he did, because remember his client was a lawyer, and that lawyer insisted he wanted to testify. It was all Casota's who decided he wanted to testify.

“And I think what's interesting about that is, and this is just my feeling, so many people have believed Casota's, I think he thought the jury would too.”

Right. I was in the courtroom. When Casota's testify, I did not want to miss it. He was calm, unemotional, and when I thought about it, this was his wife and her dad. The piece, insinuating that someone else did it, you would think that he would be more emotional. I was also surprised when the prosecutor did not go harder on Casota's and cross examination, because I thought she would. I think everybody in the courtroom thought she would, but later that prosecutor Laurie Bayo told me that she thought he had sunk himself, and she thought it was better just to let the jury see that.

“The prosecution did present a really strong circumstantial case, including the surveillance footage of Casota's car near the hunting grounds.”

The evidence that Casota's had bought the kind of knife that they found at the crime scene, and then records from his cell phone and the car GPS showing both traveled to the exact location in the woods where Mindy's body was found.

It's hard stuff to refute, but what they were not able to do, and they don't have to, but it helps is they didn't really present a clear motive. They could not tell us why he would kill his wife.

Laurie Bayo, the prosecutor, felt that she needed to answer that for the jury, but she says that to this day, it's the hardest question to answer. Her theory is that Casota's really wanted a family. We know that Mindy and Casota's had told Mindy's family and her friends that she was pregnant, but after her remains were found, the deaths certificate revealed that she hadn't been and wasn't pregnant within the past year before she was killed. So did she lie about it? Did she lie to her husband about it? The prosecutor thinks that Casota's might have killed her when he found out that she wasn't pregnant, and maybe lying about it, Mindy was stabbed in the abdomen.

And that is really why Laurie Bayo thinks that. There's more evidence to show that he really did want to have children. At least the story that Heather told us is that when Heather had been married to Casota, she had really tried to get pregnant and he wanted her to. They didn't have children and then when she remarried, she had a child really quickly afterwards and she says that Casota saw her pregnant and that she thought he looked really. So that kind of supports that theory too. When you spoke to the District Attorney Billy Joe Nelson, he had another theory about Nick Casota's motive. I want to play a clip from the interview that was not in the hour.

“If you look at the evidence in this case, ultimately the defendant, Mr. Casota's in this case, was looking for a way out of his current situation. Why that had to end with the death of Mindy Meben?”

We'll never know unless he decides to tell you why he did it. But at the end of the day, if you look at the evidence, I think he was planning and escape out of the life he was living.

That is the theory. I kind of go with Emory. I really do. Can you imagine how many people he had told this story to? It must have been really hard to keep it up and keep all the details. He had already met the woman who would become his third wife a couple of months before he killed Mindy. So it's possible that getting rid of Mindy would let him run away from his past life and have a new wife. It's also possible. We don't know because we can't ask Mindy. Maybe she was beginning to question those stories toward the end. But these are all just theories. And as the prosecutor said, unless Casota decides to tell us, we'll never know for certain.

But when you think about it, he really came very close to getting away with a perfect murder. If Mindy's body had not been found, could Casota have actually gotten away with this?

“I actually think he could have. If he had not left Mindy at that hunting ground because he didn't realize how often people were there, we might never have heard about this case.”

If you think about it, all her friends thought she had died in the hospital. Her own parents thought she had died in that hospital. None of them were questioning it. If he had left her someplace where there weren't people all the time, he really could have gotten away with it. Other problem, of course, was driving a car that was a cell phone and getting caught on video. So his car was identified very close to where her body was. Those were the two big mistakes he made. You know, often when you discover that someone you trust and like has lied to you, it rocks you a little, like you start to reassess just how you view the world, you start to reassess the other people that you have believed and trusted. I'm just curious how the people who he lied to are, how are they grappling with all of this?

Everybody feels so betrayed because so does this first wife Heather specially. She has what she's been calling survivors guilt because she said to us, look, there were more reason to kill me, you know, he owe me so much money, but I survived and Mindy didn't and Mindy's friends say even though they're really devastated by what happened.

“They're happy to know what really happened to Mindy and that there is some sense of justice. I just want to let you listen to something that Angela win one of Mindy's closest friends said to us.”

I was very upset, I was very distraught, but I also felt like I'm finally going to get the closure that I needed because after that December, I didn't, I wasn't even able to to see her to say goodbye to her and so for me it was I cannot believe this has happened, but on the other side of that, I'm so glad that we now know and that he can be held accountable for it. I had been lied to for years, we all been lied to for years, right? Her parents, her friends, his friends, his family, I mean, he spun a web of lives, a web of lies that touched every single person that he knew.

Isn't that moving? He gaslit everyone. How many people were damaged by this man's lies? The other thing I kind of keep thinking about is we have done stories on people who were scammers or liars or and usually they're kind of failing through life, but here's a guy who was actually quite successful and if he just kind of continued along that path,

he would have the life that he always wanted, he didn't need to do any of this. I also wonder whether when he left the Navy, maybe things didn't come as easy for him.

And so maybe he had to create this interesting life because he never had a great job after he left the Navy. So I wonder if that's part of it too, that it became kind of a legal Walter Middick. That's actually a great observation. I don't know if he'll ever really know who Nick Casota's really is, but this was a fascinating hour. Aaron, thank you so much for talking to us today.

Thank you, Emory, always. And thank you all for listening. If you like this episode, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

So let's get to know about the 50-70% cost test and we have a flexible time now.

“Now let's go to stepstown.de/alljobs. Stepstown is the most important talent for all jobs.”

Schmeckte is already in the beginning of the month. Not a talent, it's a talent.