No Ordinary Sunday

crime junkie is all of that and more.

“I'm Ashley Flowers, and I'm Brett, and every Monday we dissect some of the most mysterious”

cases. But listen, we're not just rehashing what you can read for yourself online. We have a team of dedicated investigative reporters and producers who I work with for months on every single episode. But the show still feels like having a conversation with your best friend if your best friend

was attractive. But like a good detective. So join us and tune in to crime junkie every Monday wherever you get your podcasts. For years, a deranged man in which a taunt known as the poet stalked Ruth Finley.

He sent her letters, gifts, and poems. But no one could have guessed how this would end. From Sony Music Entertainment and New Metric Media, this is the poet, I'm Rachel Brown. The poet is available now on the binge.

“Search for it wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today.”

Libraries to the binge can listen to all episodes all at once, add free. It begins with butterflies. The kind you feel in your stomach when something exciting is about to happen. Like the moments before you say I do. Finding the dress, choosing the flowers, picking the music.

Every little detail brings you that much closer to the day when you'll promise to spend the rest of your life with the person you love. She wanted her wedding to be perfect. When I'm being perfect, I'm being perfect. For Marilyn McCown known as Nicky, July 2001 was a season of love.

At 28, she was just a month away from her wedding day, and she was excited about that. Very excited, very excited. She had found the right man, and now she was making all the plans. The countdown had begun.

Except, Nicky never made it to the altar, because on July 22, 2001, she vanished.

She was my best friend and just disappeared. It has been more than two decades, but the people who love her have made a different kind of vow to never stop searching, because that's the thing about love. It doesn't end just because someone disappears. I'm Josh McCwoods, and this is missing in America, a podcast from Dateline.

This episode is no ordinary Sunday. Please listen closely, because you or someone you know might have information that can help solve this case, and finally give Nicky's family the answers they've been searching for. Richmond in Vienna is not a big place. With a population of just more than 30,000, it is tucked along Indiana's eastern border

with Ohio, in an area known as the Miami Valley. And while this might sound familiar to Dateline followers, Richmond is the kind of small town where everybody knows everybody else, and in Richmond, everybody knew the McCowns. Harvey and Barbara McCown raised a big family there, ten children in all. Nicky was the baby of the bunch.

You were very close to Nicky growing up. Yes, I was. That's her sister Michelle. We're a year and a half apart, so we date about everything possible. Sisters can do together.

I can remember my mom and dad dressed in a like sharing the same room that's been in a lot of time together. Michelle says she and her kids sister spent much of that time playing with dolls, talking about school, and when they got a little older, about boys, tell me a little bit about Nicky and Stephen.

They were pretty young when they got together.

“Yeah, Nicky was in, uh, I believe, 1819 years ago when they got together.”

Stephen Johnston was Nicky's first serious relationship.

They same life day was really, really in love. He seemed to really care a lot for her. And like most young love, it grew quickly. It was 1992. Nicky was just 19 years old when they welcomed a baby girl.

Tell me about your mom. She had a smile at a light up the room. I get told quite often that my smile is similar, but I don't quite think so. I think her smile is a little brighter.

The mom that I remember was someone who was really fun and outgoing.

“She was firm when she needed to be. She would have been beyond for me.”

You described yourself as a mom's girl? Yeah, I was mom's girl, but in then I was also a dad's girl sometimes, too. Depending on what parent I was with. Peyton says the relationship between her parents did not last. They split when she was three years old.

Neither one had ever happy. And as much as I wanted my parents to be together, like every kid probably does, it was just one of those things where they had to end. After the breakup, Nicky focused on raising her daughter and on starting over. It was two years later in 1997 when love found its way back to Nicky in the form

of an old flame, Bobby Webster. What did you think of Bobby? You think he was the right guy for your sister? I thought he was the one because they had been separated for so long to get back together.

“Michelle says the two dated in high school, but when Bobby moved to California, they”

went their separate ways. That changed when he returned to Richmond.

Right, I left finally found him at the right time.

Peyton says it took her a minute to warm up to Bobby, because you were hoping that your mom and dad were going to get back together. Yeah, that was my hope. So I was a jerk in every sense of the word. My cousin and I wrote a note and put it in a software telling them, like, you know, Bobby,

I don't want to be with you anymore. I'm going to go be with Steven and this is it. And my mom found it because it was a laundry day. Eventually, he won her over. Bobby was a fun guy.

He seemed to have made my mom happy.

“It was not long before Bobby proposed and Nikki quickly said yes.”

The couple set the wedding for August 18, 2001.

Nikki could hardly wait and her siblings were excited too. I was going to be in the wedding. She was really in a good place in her life. A good place indeed and Peyton could feel it. The gettingess of the, oh, I'm going to have the wedding, my dad's going to walk me down the aisle.

The Bridesmaid's dress is my dress as a flower girl in all of that. That summer of 2001 was all about wedding preparations. And on Sunday, July 22nd, there was still plenty to do. That day, she went to church. They were picking out a song for the wedding.

He and Bobby planned to finish their wedding invitations that day too. Before that, a more mundane task lay ahead, laundry. So it's just a typical Sunday. And laundry was a regular bar of life. laundry every Sunday.

After church, Nikki dropped off Peyton at her parents house. I was a nine-year-old kid. I just wanted to get out to go play with my friends and run a muck in the neighborhood with my friends. Bye, Mom, have fun doing laundry.

Nikki headed to the Richmond Coin Laundromat, maybe two minutes away. That afternoon, Michelle was following her own Sunday routine. A trip to their sister Tammy's house for a hair appointment. Around 5 p.m., Michelle walked through Tammy's door. She said, "Have you seen Nikki?"

She said, "Bob, he's looking for her." That said, "I know I have it." She said, "Okay, well, he keeps calling here, looking for her." Bobby eventually showed up at Tammy's house saying, "He could not find Nikki." The group then headed to the Mcount family home, just down the street.

That's when their mother Barbara revealed something concerning. Around 2 p.m., she said, "Niki came back to the house during a break between laundry loads." Mom said, "Niki has stopped by and that she said she was pacing back and forth. She used the boat a couple of times after what was wrong. She says something to the back where he won't leave me alone."

Nikki told her mother, "Some man at the laundromat had been bothering her." She says, "You know, you're a very pretty girl, but if your dad could start and go get your things and finish here." That did not happen. Nikki left her mother's house that afternoon and simply evaporated.

And he never retired. "Who were those men at the laundromat?

The search for answers was just getting started, and it would take police through a series

“of twists and turns, with a long list of potential suspects, including Nikki's fiancée.”

"Starting informal interview with Robert Del Ray, Webstit, Winshrew Thoughts. We've got any thoughts where she would be." "I really love the start today app." "They care about how I feel." "It's the staff on the app.

It's the connections you make." "Without good mental and physical help, you have nothing." "It tells me how to cook to keep myself healthy."

"I look at my app and I'm like, "Wow, I'm not a 7,000 staff today."

"Start today, meets you where you are." "Download the start today, wellness app now on your Avalor Android device." "Terms apply." "See, App for details."

“"What drives a person to kill is an uncontrollable rage overwhelming fear, unbearable jealousy.”

Or is it something deeper, something in the darkest corners of our psyche?" Every Monday and Thursday, the Crime House Original Podcasts serial killers and murderous minds dives deep into the minds of history's most chilling murderers, from infamous serial killers to ruthless cult leaders, deadly access, and terrifying spree killers.

I'm Dr. Tristan Engels, a licensed forensic psychologist.

Along with Vanessa Richardson's immersive storytelling full of high stakes, twists and turns, in every episode of serial killers and murderous minds, I'll be providing expert analysis of the people involved, not just how they killed, but why. Listen to and follow serial killers and murderous minds, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Kate Snow, NBC News Anchor, and host of the NBC News Podcast, The Drink. This month, I'm sitting down with the hilarious Leslie Jones. We chat about her remarkable journey from her childhood to family hardships to the unexpected, almost accidental road that led her to comedy. From her unforgettable years at Saturday Night Live,

to her new show "Rost My Rental" about vacation rentals gone terribly wrong, it is a funny, candid conversation I hope you'll give it a listen. Join us for the drink, listen, and follow now wherever you get your podcasts. Night had fallen on Richmond, Indiana. What started as an ordinary Sunday for the Maccows, was now something else entirely.

Nikki had vanished. Her family now gathered at their home, had but a few leads to go on. They searched for the SUV she had been driving, at the laundromat and the area around it. No sign of Nikki, and now fear began to creep in. Michelle says their father thought it was time to call police,

and turned to Nikki's fiance Bobby Webster, who seemed to be in a state of denial. And her fiance said, "No, it's too soon. We don't want to do that yet." So, my desk said, "I don't know what you're talking about, but that's my daughter, and I'm going to go get the report, and you can fill it out." So, that's what he did.

She says Bobby was quite visibly upset. My husband had to help Bobby to fill the report out, because he was crying, emotional. For Michelle, reality and Monday morning arrived simultaneously. I was worried until the next day when I went to her job,

Nikki wasn't a person that missed work. She loved her job and what she was doing. Nikki worked as an accounting clerk at the Montgomery Education and pre-release center in nearby Dayton, Ohio. It's a correctional facility. And when I walked in there, and they told me that she didn't make it in, I broke down in tears, and the warden asked me to come up to his office,

“and I remember him saying they would do everything possible to help in search for her.”

While the adult searched for answers, Nikki's daughter Peyton was just trying to understand what was going on. I was a nine-year-old kid, so she disappeared seven days after my birthday. And when did you realize that was wrong? When I woke up in my grandma's next day, it wasn't abnormal for me to spend the night at my grandma's,

She says it all became real a few days later when she was at her father's Stevens house.

“I woke up one morning and my dad's girlfriend at the time was watching the news.”

And my grandma was on the news. And my my dad's coming home and explaining to me that we don't necessarily know where mommy is. Where was Nikki McCown? As family and friends scoured the Richmond area, the police department launched a search. So we knew she was out doing laundry.

That's detective Mike Wright, with the Richmond Police Department. He took over the investigation four years ago.

He says his predecessors in 2001 began working to determine exactly where Nikki went

after leaving her mother's house. You see it frequently would go into the country to get changed for the machines and such and there.

“The village pantry was a convenient store, just steps from the laundry mat.”

Police questioned employees there and looked at security video. And at two 17 p.m., there was Nikki walking through the door. So we were able to see how what she was doing on video then. The grainy video is a silent movie that has been studied again and again. It shows Nikki walking into the store, wearing a pink top and dark blue athletic shorts.

She walks up to the cash register and appears to briefly speak with the clerk. It looks as if she grabs some change then she leaves. Nothing about her expression or her body language suggests any worry, any hurry or any concern. About an hour later, Nikki returns. Speculation is that she probably went and went to the bathroom and then profit left.

That video is one of the last known images of Nikki. Nikki had told her mom that a man or man had been harassing her at the laundry mat. She described them as Hispanic. Nikki had stopped going to that laundry mat for like three weeks because the man was given her weird vibes in there. So she stopped going and then when she goes back, she comes up missing.

So investigators questioned witnesses there. The people that we talked to that were around the laundry mat indicated that the Spanish that were referenced actually were not causing any problems. Detectives quickly ruled out that possibility and they had to ask the family a difficult question. Wood Nikki simply have left on her own.

The answer. Absolutely not. She wasn't getting cold feet. No question whatsoever. Nikki was not getting cold feet. She was planning on a big beautiful wedding. Michelle wonders whether investigators focused too heavily on that theory in the early days. While valuable time was slipping away. I really don't think the police thought that she was missing. Michelle says Nikki also had graves disease. That is a condition requiring daily medication,

which Nikki did not have with her when she disappeared. More importantly, Michelle says

Nikki would never walk away from her family. She would never leave her daughter.

And I know that she loved my parents and her brothers and sisters and nieces. And I know that she wouldn't just run off.

“So if Nikki had not left voluntarily, then what happened?”

Investigators started with the people who knew her best, including the man she was about to marry, Bobby Webster. A few days after Nikki disappeared, investigators brought in her fiancee for an interview. Start an informal interview with Robert Del Rey Webster. This audio was obtained by a local Ohio station. Once you've thought, you've got any thoughts where she would be.

Man, I know you've been sitting there thinking for less three days. I've just to think about what Robert will tell me to be strong through the time I'm missing. I have faith. This is hard. Bobby told detectives the couple planned to meet up later to finish their wedding in the days after Nikki did the laundry. He also mentioned that he and Nikki

had switched vehicles that morning. Nikki took his black GMC Jimmy to the laundromat. He borrowed her black Toyota camera to take his cousin to the mall. I planned to take him to the mall to get sized with this text you don't want me.

Because my truck's a real piece of crap, you know, the gimmick?

Yeah, it doesn't run worth it.

“Bobby said around 215 p.m. he passed the laundromat and saw the Jimmy parked outside.”

Falcon, didn't see her in there? No, I was just right and bite. He said he drove to his cousin's house, picked him up, and the two headed to the mall. So did you unveil it and out there up the mall? I said it was roughly, I looked at rings for about to the 20 minutes.

I don't know several surveillance tapes between me and Tyler. Two at number five. I know I'm a lot of mass security tapes because we were, we hit those two shops and we ran there for a good 45 minutes. Bobby said after the mall, he drove back past the laundromat. And this time, the Jimmy was gone.

He said he assumed Nikki had driven to her sister Tammy's house down the street, a place where she often stopped. So he went there to check. Tammy was there. Nikki was not. No, she had to see either.

So along he went with his afternoon, Bobby said, stopping by his grandmother's,

talking with friends about the wedding, before finally heading home.

What time did you finally get home and where did you go there? It was out to go to after five. He said, Nikki was still not there when he got home. No messages on their answering machine either. And I was like, you know, they should be happy, you know.

Maybe it's longer than I'm out. I didn't call. I didn't call for another half an hour.

“I figured she's just doing the only thing right about him.”

He said he still did not think anything was wrong. So he just waited. I flipped into the channels and I got stuck on a movie accident. Dallas and Times, and he gave us time to go. As time ticked on, Bobby said his concern grew.

And he called Nikki's dad. I said Nikki there. Like, no, okay, caught a sister game. She went back there and she said no. So he said, he got started on those wedding invitations without her.

Then around 7pm, Nikki's cousin called, looking for her. She had not seen her either. That's fun. And she assumed she would have been home. Bobby thought so too.

That's when he said he decided to return to Nikki's sister, Tammy's house. And I just gotten a card to go up down here. This is probably starting to get dark. As detectives went through Bobby's story, they also began taking a closer look at his actions that day.

I don't know that I would go as far as I call him a suspect. There's pretty bizarre behaviors that just kind of didn't look right with him. Only on set of this case. Some of those odd behaviors were also things Nikki's family noticed. The day of her disappearance, that Sunday, we all were at my sister Tammy's house.

You know, waiting to hear something from the police or hoping that Nikki came home. Well, this was on the 22nd. On the 23rd, about 5 a.m. in a morning, he gets up and says, "I gotta go wash the car." And where I washed the car, he said, "Yeah, Nikki, you know, she told me to wash the car."

Where, like, you talked to Nikki?

He was like, "No, it's just some I always did."

And it just seems strange, like we're panicking and you're getting up to go wash the car.

“Michelle says that was not the only thing Bobby did that troubled the family.”

She says, "Days after Nikki disappeared. He went to a jeweler and tried to return their wedding bands. And then he takes the wedding rings back a couple of days later?" There was more. Michelle said that Nikki was attending Sinclair Community College, with the hope of becoming a U.S. Marshal. Not long after she disappeared, Michelle said Bobby tried to access money.

That Nikki had set aside for her education. When Bobby talked with a reporter in 2018, he denied doing that. He also said the ring was on layaway, and that he was only trying to get money to help fund the search for Nikki. Michelle was suspicious. If he would have said I gotta pay the bills or whatever, I could understand that in case he comes back because he took time off of work everyone did, but his reasoning didn't fly.

All of it left Nikki's family with questions. Investigators asked Bobby to take a polygraph, which detective Mike Wright said he failed. A failed polygraph, however, is not proof of anything.

So they kept looking for Nikki and for that black GMC Jimmy she had been driving. Weeks passed. Payton was learning what life looked like without her mom.

“I mean, you must have thought everybody must have thought like whatever this is. She'll be home.”

Yeah, I remember thinking like, oh, it's okay. Like she'll be home soon. Mommy will be home. I won't have to, you know, stay with dad forever and I won't have to stay with grandma forever.

And then first day school happened. And at that point, it'd been almost a month.

And that's a big event. And she would have been there for that. Yeah, first day school. I had to have my hair done. I had to have the right outfit. You know, like those are, those are big deals. And yeah, first day school happened and she wasn't there. This is one of those cases that captivated the entire Miami Valley region. WDTN reporter Kelly King has been covering Nikki's case since 2018.

She grew up in the area and remembered hearing new stories about Nikki's disappearance when she was a kid.

So when I first started working at the station, it wasn't exactly new to me.

Obviously, all the details were new. I had to investigate a little bit. Why do you think this case still resonates with people around you, with people in that area? I think partly because there are so many twists and turns to it. And she remembers when the first big twist arrived four months after Nikki's disappearance. She was a 28-year-old mother about to be married from investigators found her vehicle in Dayton.

Police located at the GMC Jimmy at an address Nikki would have known very well. And this new clue would send investigators deep into her past. That's the other question. Why would she need to go there? The moment a body is found, the clock starts ticking.

“48 hours. That's how long detectives have before the trail begins to go cold.”

From A&E in crime house, this is the official podcast from the famous true crime series The First 48.

Step inside the critical window, the interrogations, the dead ends, and the breakthroughs

that crack a case wide open. On Carter Roy, each week I revisit a landmark homicide investigation with the depth you know and immersive long-form storytelling built for your ears. Real detectives, real cases, real stakes. This is the first 48. New episodes, every Thursday. Listen to and follow the first 48 on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you use into podcasts.

Hey guys, Willie guys here, reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit Down podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with country music superstar, Luke Combs, for a special Sunday Sit Down live in Nashville. It was a great night with our viewers in the room as Luke and I talked through his extraordinary rise from college bars to sold out stadiums. You can get our conversation for free wherever you download your podcasts.

Natalie Jones disappeared July 4th, 2020. Three months later, her body was found, and that is where the mystery really begins. There's nothing to indicate that she was shot stabbed or anything of that sort. There's a lot of people that had motive to do something. We want to paint Natalie as this angel. It's not all angelic. I'm your host Sean Kai. And this is the truth about Natalie. Listen and subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.

Four months after Nikki disappeared, her family finally had something they had been waiting for. The GMC Jimmy, she had been driving the day she vanished. I was just so happy. They found her

“car because that's what the police was drilling into our heads. We had to plan her vehicle. I was”

relieved and hoping that they would be something in that vehicle that would find Nikki. Law enforcement found it parked at an apartment complex called The Meadows of Catalpa in nearby Dayton, Ohio. Detective Mike Wright said it looked as if the SUV had been tampered with,

the stereo was gone. I believe the battery was gone. However, there were no signs of a struggle,

no blood or anything of that sort. There was something else in the car, though. Nikki's laundry neatly folded in a laundry basket. And that suggested a chain of events.

“WDTN's Kelly King. So I think that's kind of why they just rushed off these people who were”

bothering her at the laundromat. The laundry basket in her car suggesting whatever happened to her happened after she left the laundromat, not there. Correct. The location of her vehicle raised even more questions. The Meadows of Catalpa was the apartment complex where Nikki once lived with her ex, Stephen Johnston, Payton's father,

and Stephen still lived there. So why would her car be there? Payton was at her grandparents'

house the day her mother disappeared. There would have been no reason for Nikki to have been at Stephen's. Detectives delved into that relationship, questioning family and friends, about why they broke up. And they learned something disturbing. Stephen had been abusive. Did she talk to you about that? Yeah, I witnessed with my own eyes, many times. You saw him hit her. I saw him hit her. I saw him kill her. I had to call the police one time.

Stephen did not hide from his past. In 2018 he spoke with a TV reporter and admitted that he had physically abused Nikki. On paper that raised some obvious questions. However, Detective Mike Wright said Stephen was fully cooperative, passed a polygraph,

and was never considered a person of interest. Michelle said the family reached the same conclusion,

that despite that troubled history, they never believed Stephen was involved. I would never think that if Steve had anything to do with her disability would just let the car

“like that. So it's same like somebody was trying to really set him up. That's what you said.”

You think this was somebody deliberately pointing the finger at Stephen. Yeah. After Nikki disappeared, Peyton moved in with her grandparents and split her time between them and her father. He wishes that he would have been better to her. And maybe if he was better to her, she wouldn't have been in any of these situations at all. Did you ever have conversations with your dad over the years about what happened to your mom or what he thought happened?

Yeah, in it. I think he from the conversations that we have had speculates that it was Tommy. Tommy. It was a name investigators heard early on during their interview with Bobby Webster, Nikki's fiance. There's another male's name that you have in the back of your mind.

“Tommy Swann Bobby told investigators, Tommy Swann worked with Nikki at the”

Correctional Facility in Dayton. He was 34 years old, married, and according to Bobby, he started working there around the same time Nikki did. They became close friends and they spent time together going out to eat and hanging out and stuff. Michelle says Nikki saw Tommy as a friend. However, she also believes Tommy saw Nikki as something else. He really started to find interest in her. She was not interested in it. She was interested in Bobby.

She wanted to get married. She was into Bobby. There was a disturbing encounter between Tommy and Nikki. One Michelle says she witnessed. Michelle is not exactly sure of the date, but believes it happened in 1997, a few years before Nikki went missing. Michelle had stopped by her sister's house one day during her lunch break. I approached her door. I heard some screaming through the door and I just walked in because I

heard screaming and when I get inside, my sister is sitting on a lovely chair with her foot and Tommy's chest as he's leaning over on her. She says help me. He's trying to rape me. Michelle says, Tommy played it off like it was all some big joke. Did he start chasing us both around and started laughing? Michelle did not find a single thing about that to be funny, even though Nikki seemed to brush it off. You didn't think he was playing.

I didn't think he was playing and I mentioned it to her and she was like, you know, she'll handle it like she thought she should just handle everything.

in Nikki's disappearance. A little more than a year later, they brought him back. This time

it was a more pointed interview. Today's date is August 21st 2002. We're presently

“inside the interview room here with the yard officer Tom Swint. What would he have to say?”

For years, a deranged man in Wichita known as the poet stalked Ruth Finley. He sent her letters, gifts, and poems, but no one could have guessed how this would end. From Sony Music Entertainment and New metric media, this is the poet. I'm Rachel Brown. The poet is available now on the binge. Search for it wherever you get your podcast to start listening today. Subscribeers to the binge can listen to all episodes all at once.

Add free. I don't know what you'd come to expect from a true crime podcast, but I guarantee you

crying junkie is all of that and more. I'm Ashley Flowers and I'm Brett and every Monday, we dissect some of the most mysterious cases. But listen, we're not just rehashing what you can

“read for yourself online. We have a team of dedicated investigative reporters and producers who”

I work with for months on every single episode. But the show still feels like having a conversation with your best friend if your best friend was attractive, but like a good detective. So join us and tune into crime junkie every Monday wherever you get your podcasts. You want to believe you're safe in the heartland and it just changed. On the murder in the heartland podcast for my

D, we'll examine true stories that happened in a town a lot like yours. I regret not telling

the police, I knew who did it. I wanted the person to pay for what they had done to her. There was a sense of blood thirst. We have to get revenge. Listen to murder in the heartland wherever you get your podcasts. It was August 2002, Nikki had been missing for more than a year and detective still had questions for Tommy Swint. The reason why I'm here is the last time I asked you when I came in here

whether or not you would submit to a blood test, a photograph or a fingerprints, a polygraph test if we didn't you had no objection to that. Is that still your comment today? Well, I'm going to come to that. I have to seek my degree. Tommy asked for his attorney and did not sound pleased about being questioned. He told the detective he was upset that he was even being investigated at all. Nikki, what my friend, I want to find her just in what you or her parents want to find her.

Then came the key question. Where was Tommy Swint on July 22, 2001? On that day to take the deal. We have my way of walker with the church. We even church until one blood effect. One blood effect, we came home, went to sleep. After that we went to death. Every we used to do the every time. Okay. And you know I know you told me that last time that I could not do it at that time. I'm going to do the last time. I'm going to do the last time. I'm going to do the last time. I'm going to do the last time.

You need to go with such detail with you. The detective said he also asked Tommy's wife if he had been at church that Sunday. Her response? He said she could not recall. And he was told me what? And

“we're no, no, I'm going back. No, honestly, I swear God, that's what I have.”

That interview did not end law enforcement's questions about Tommy Swint. Detective Mike Wright said Tommy was left without a concrete alibi. Investigators look deeper into his history and found a lot of it. There's complaints about Tommy. It almost everywhere you'll look sexually harassing women and problems of that nature at work. Tommy stayed on Richmond detective's radar. They collected his DNA. By 2007, detectives had officially identified Tommy Swint as a person of

interest in Mickey's disappearance. By then he had left the correctional facility and was working as a police officer in Trotwood, Ohio. When that department learned he was under investigation in connection with Mickey's disappearance, Tommy Swint resigned. By then, more than six years had passed since Mickey had vanished. Her case had gone cold while another was beginning to heat up. They started looking at the case of Tina Ivory.

WDT and reporter Kelly King knows that story well. Back in 1991, 33-year-old Tina Ivory was found murdered in Dayton. She was beaten and she was strangled. For years, Tina's case went unsolved. Her family pleaded for answers. It's been a long time and I need that closure.

Seaman recovered from Tina's jacket matched. Tommy Swint. Investigators believed they had found the

man responsible for Tina's murder. By that point, Tommy had moved to Alabama. As they continued building their case, officers went to question him again. What's it told you we had evidence that we're tired of it? I wouldn't believe it.

“It's not time to hurt. I mean, is she the light-up of the dead?”

It's dead. Tommy denied knowing Tina. Police pointed out the DNA said otherwise. Tommy asked to end the conversation. I don't do respect. I don't need a conversation. This is what's going to be the situation that you are going to go from. Okay, but I also think that you understand it. You'll say that again. That was not the last time detective saw Tommy Swint. They later matched Tommy's fingerprints to Prince found on the duct tape used

to bind Tina Ivory. Three months after that interview, Tommy Swint was indicted for Tina Ivory's

murder. He would never face a jury. When officers closed in on his house Wednesday afternoon,

they say they hurt a gunshot and found Swint dead. On February 3, 2010, Tommy Swint died by suicide when officers arrived to arrest him. Detective Mike Wright told us Tommy is still considered a person of interest in Nikki's case. He also said that a few years ago, Richmond detectives were able to obtain Tommy's old computer, and they are still going through it for clothes all these years later. I don't know if technology is advanced to war,

maybe we can get the latest files or any other information. So that's in the works. For Nikki's family, Tommy has stayed at the very top of their list.

“Crucial time was wasted and just people are assuming that she just ran away because she got”

cold feet. And now, Tommy's gone. Can't ask him. Tommy's gone. Mickey's fiance, Bobby Webster, is also gone. He died back in 2021 without ever getting married to Nikki or to anyone else. Detective say Bobby is no longer a person of interest, and for Payton, his death also meant losing one of her last living connections to her mother. She says she stayed in touch with Bobby over the years, even as she wondered whether he knew something about her mom's disappearance

that he never shared. That was tough loss for me, and I didn't we didn't talk every day, we didn't talk often, but that was one of the last people that I had a connection with my mom, too, you know? Adult Payton had that conversation with Bobby about your mom over the years. We had conversations, but it was more so if your mom was great, I miss her so much.

I'm so sorry that she's not with us. But he never talked about here's what I think happened.

Not to me. Nine-year-old Payton would like to believe that Bobby did not have anything to do with my mom's disappearance. Adult Payton? Yeah, what does adult Payton think? I think that maybe it, you know, there could have been a possibility they were getting ready to get married, tensions were high. Investigators followed other leads we have not explored here. Detective Mike Wright told us they also looked into a woman who spoke with Nicky on the day she disappeared,

and who had ties to Tommy Swent. Police have never publicly identified her as a suspect or person

“of interest. The truth is there is no firm answer about what happened to Nicky. Her family believes”

some people are to this day keeping important information to themselves and some of the people who might have been able to help with answers are no longer with us. That makes solving her case harder. Detective Mike Wright says it is not closed. He told us the department is still asking the public for information and still following up on tips. I talked to Detective Wright not often. I check in with them every now and then just like, hey, just checking in and seeing if

you heard anything. What I really like about Detective Wright is that if someone, if either the on-spring something that someone said to them to me and I text them like, hey, do you mind checking into this? It's probably a 24-hour turnaround when I hear back from it, which I appreciate. Peyton and her family are still pushing to learn the truth themselves.

With God's grace, I think we will get an answer. It's a lot to carry, isn't it?

“It's a whole lot to carry because I watched it take my dad away. I watched my mom”

agreed. I watched her daughter grow up wondering where mommy's at. This is a person I grew up with, shared the same room, grow into women together and our children are the same years apart as we are. She was my best friend and just disappeared. Over time, Michelle searched for her sister, led her to an organization with a mission that felt personal. What's the foundation you've been working with? The Doc Ellis Foundation.

The Doc Ellis Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to finding the missing in minority communities. Michelle serves as the organization's director of missing persons. I've had therapy, I've had lots of therapy and I'm telling you the best therapy has been working with the Doc Ellis Foundation

“to help in families. Because even if you don't have answers, you can maybe help other families get some.”

There's nothing better than bringing someone to child home. Nicki's father Harvey McCalm died just a few years after Nicki vanished. Her mother,

Barbara Estelle McCalm died in 2020. They never got to bring their daughter home.

That task has fallen to Peyton. My grandma was my mom's voice for a long time until she was unable to speak for anymore. So I took that over. This summer, on the 25th anniversary of Nicki's disappearance, Peyton gathered family and friends in the Richmond community to honor her mother and to keep her name alive. 25 years is a long time to wonder, a long time to search, a long time to hope. But through every unanswered question, you have given the strength to keep going.

Lord, we ask that you watch over my mom wherever she may be. We look at Taney to speak her name.

We will continue to love her. We will continue to fight for her because she is and always

will be deeply loved in your name. We pray. Amen. You think your wife's disappearance is going to be solved someday? Yeah, I do. When? No idea. But I know in my heart to hearts. Eventually, I will get the answers I'm looking for. Peyton has her own daughter now. Nickelette Estelle.

“She's named after two of the most important women in my life. The one who raised you and the one who”

should have. Yeah. She's 10 now close to the same age Peyton was when Nicki disappeared. I talked to Nickelette about grandma all the time about what I remember what she was like

things that mean my mom did. She tells her daughter about the grandmother she never got to meet.

About the smile her mother had that mirrors her own. About the mom who disappeared seven days after her ninth birthday. The mom she still hope she'll get to see again. Because that's the thing about love. It does not end when someone disappears. It lives on with the people who keep searching. I am her voice and I will always be her voice until she is found and even after she's found. Here's where you can help.

Nicki McCown would be 53 years old today. She is 5-3 and weighed 115 pounds at the time of her disappearance in 2001. She was last seen wearing a pink top, biker shorts and sandals. Anyone with information about Nicki's case is asked to call the Richmond Police Department at 765-983-7247. To see photos of Nicki and to learn more about other people we've covered in our Missing in America series. Go to dateline MissingInAmerica.com.

There you'll be able to submit cases you think we should cover in the future. Thanks for listening. We'll see you Friday's on dateline on NBC or you can stream any time on peacock, YouTube or by subscription to the NBC News app. You can also listen to full dateline episodes and original podcast series wherever you are listening right now. Subscribe to dateline premium for early access and add free listening on all our podcasts.

Missing in America is a production of dateline and NBC News. Keanu Reeves is the producer of this episode. E.D. Pethley is the Associate Producer.

Paul Ryan is executive producer and Liz Cole is senior executive producer.

From NBC News Audio, Jessica Fenton is head of audio production.

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