Crime Junkie - MISSING: Niqui McCown

Episode Date: December 18, 2017

The story of an Indiana woman who disappears from a laundry mat only weeks before her wedding.For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/.Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-niqui-mccown/   

Hi everyone, welcome to the first ever episode of Crime Junkie. I am your host, Ashley Flowers, and some of you might know me from a Monday morning radio segment I do here in Indianapolis called Murder Monday. And I have learned a lot about you guys from doing this segment. I keep hearing that you love stories of true crime, you love all things true crime, but hearing about it once a week just isn't enough for you. You guys are just like me, you're true crime junkies, and you need to hear stories more than once a week to get your fix.

So every week I'm going to be getting on with my producer, Britt. Britt say hi. Hi everyone. And we are going to be telling you stories of true crime, everything from the most notorious to the most obscure local cases. And before we jump into our first episode, I'd love to give you a little information on one of our favorite non-profit organizations, Crime Stoppers. This episode of Crime Junkie is brought to you by Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana.

Excuse me, can I ask you a question real quick? Yeah, go for it. Do you know what Crime Stoppers is? Um, is it that dog, the scruff of a gruff? Nope, can't sing the song, can't afford the song. But do you know what they do? Uh, isn't it that the dog just kind of goes around and helps solve the murders for the sake of him?

I don't know. No, no, not quite. While everyone loves the idea of a badass crime fighting dog, that's not what Crime Stoppers is. Crime Stoppers is a non-profit that allows a place for people to give anonymous tips about crimes if they are in fear for their life or for whatever reason don't want the police to know who they are when they give the tip, but they have valuable information. You can do this through phone numbers, online tips, they even have an app called P3 that

you can download and submit your tip along with photos and videos. Crime Stoppers is a non-profit and receives no government funding. So look into yours, see how you can get involved, see how you can help, and if you want more information on Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana, go to CrimeTips.org. This week, I thought nothing was more appropriate than to actually talk about a local case. So I'm going to give you guys a story of a missing woman here in Indiana. Nikki McCallan is a 28-year-old female who lives in Richmond, Indiana. And for everyone not listening from Indiana, Richmond is about an hour east of Indianapolis

and about 50 minutes west of Dayton, Ohio. Nikki was actually engaged at the time she went missing to Bobby Webster. He was her fiance, they were set to be married on August 18th, and they had actually had a history. Bobby and Nikki dated in high school, and they only broke up because in 1991 he moved to California and they just kind of had this natural separation and started living different lives. And Nikki dated other people, she actually had a child with someone else, and in 1998

is when Bobby moved back, they realized that they did love each other, wanted to spend their lives together, and they got engaged. So the story really starts on July 22nd of 2001, just a couple of weeks before they were scheduled to get married. And by all accounts, this is a super average day, it is a Sunday, and they are just running around doing errands, they are doing some chores, so Bobby takes his cousin to the mall to get his tux fitted, and Nikki borrows his, Bobby's car, his car, to go to the laundry mat so that she can do some laundry.

And she drops off her daughter at her parents' house, heads to the laundry mat, and a few hours later she drops back by her parents' house while her clothes are in the dryer. And she comes over to her mom's house because she said, I just felt super uncomfortable at the laundry mat. These guys were just giving me a hard time, they were harassing me, and I just needed to get out of there. And her mom said, well, you can feel free to come do your laundry at my house, you don't need to put up with that, and she said, don't even worry about it at this point, my clothes

are drying, I'm almost done, I'm just going to wait it out here, when I think the clothes are done, I'm going to go pick them up, and then I'm going to leave. So she leaves her mother's house to go pick up her clothes, and a few more hours pass by. And she doesn't come back to pick up her daughter, Peyton. And Bobby actually returns home from the mall with his cousin, and there's no Nikki, there's no laundry, but her purse and her ID are still at the house. So he thinks, okay, she's probably still just at the laundry mat, took a little bit longer,

maybe she's running an errand, and he waits, and he waits, and he waits, oh no. And finally around like six or seven at night, he starts calling around and asking people, okay, is she with you? And he starts learning that nobody's seen her for a while, and she hasn't picked up her daughter. And so by 10pm, he's done calling people, he's like, I'm getting in the car, and I'm going to go look for her. So he kind of drives around town, drives by the laundry mat, and then he actually makes

the drive to Dayton, Ohio, because Nikki actually works in Dayton still. She works at a correctional facility, and she started there a long time ago as a CO, correctional officer, and now she's their head of accounting. So he's like, you know, maybe something came up at work that like I don't know about, or she had to pick something up, I'm going to drive, I'm going to drive the whole way, maybe she got in an accident, and I need to keep an eye out for her. So he goes all the way there, and there's just no sign of Nikki anywhere. Her family fills out a missing person report that next morning, because everyone is concerned

for her at this point. And they decide on their own, after they felt this missing person report, they're going to go to the last place they knew she was and start asking around. And next to the laundry mat, where she was doing her laundry is a village pantry, which I'm pretty sure is like a convenience store, right? I would say I think it's like a, maybe like a grocery store, maybe akin to like a Kroger. Okay, so she goes to the village pantry and they actually let the family see the security footage from there.

And it's totally normal, like she does not look stressed. She looks fine. She walks in, just shopping around, right? She walks in, she buys a Coke, leaves, you can see her car in the front of the store, and you can actually see it drive away. There appears to be no one that followed her. And this video footage was actually taken before she went and stopped back at her mother's house.

So they know that nothing happened to her after that, but they were kind of looking to see, you know, was she with anyone? Did she look upset? They were looking for, was she being followed? Yeah, any clues at this point. After they go to the village pantry, they decided to go back to the laundry mat because her mother remembers her being distressed and talking about these guys that were harassing her. So they go talk to people who would have been at the laundry mat, people that were working

at the laundry mat, and the thing is, nobody even remembers her. Not that she wasn't there, but nothing of note was happened to the point where anyone else... Nothing out of the ordinary. Right, no one else took notice. So someone might have been giving her a hard time or making her uneasy, but no one was actually like confronting her or being physical with her, and no one made a scene to the point where anyone else would actually be aware of it.

Now, at this point, police are just saying, you know, she probably left voluntarily. She had the car, you know, she's a grown woman. She doesn't look like she's distressed on these videos, but her family knows there's no way she's leaving her daughter. There's no way she's leaving with her wedding three weeks away. She was so excited to get married, and she loves her job. And so the one thing they're waiting for is they're like, okay, let's wait until Nikki's next shift.

And if she doesn't show up, then all hell's breaking loose, because we know something is wrong. And sure enough, she doesn't show up to work. Police can't find anything on her cards, like her bank cards or her phone records. And at this point, I think police are even getting concerned as well. They're not brushing the family off anymore. And they actually do a helicopter search between Richmond, Indiana and Dayton, Ohio, looking for her car, because everyone's thinking that, okay, if we find the car, like that is going

to have all of our answers, we're going to be able to find Nikki. Police in the meantime, they don't find the car. And so, you know, there's only one person police look at first when a wife or a fiance goes missing, so they look at her fiance, Bobby. And Bobby did not do it himself any favors. So one day after she goes missing, Bobby calls the community college where Nikki is taking classes and he, according to the lady who spoke to him, he was basically trying to collect her unused tuition, which like isn't, it's not a thing, but like, she's been gone like

a day. Like, and you think that you're going to like, okay, she's not coming back for classes. Like he automatically goes right there. And yeah, he didn't know that her college was being paid by her employer. So it's not even like there were funds sitting in her account. Like if you cancel your classes by a certain day, you can get money back. And I don't know if that's what he was thinking, but it doesn't even matter because her employer wouldn't have gone back to him.

Exactly. By Wednesday, again, she went missing on Sunday. He actually went to the jeweler where Nikki bought his wedding ring and tried to return the wedding ring for money and by midweek, Bobby has totally canceled the wedding and demanded their deposit back. What? We're talking like three or four days. So when I said this guy didn't do himself any favors, like no exaggeration.

That's honestly kind of an understatement. He did like everything to, he could possibly do to look suspicious. Right. So, you know, cops looked at him right away, but for very good reason. And if you hear his side of the story, obviously there's, there's always two sides and he denies ever canceling the wedding. He just said that he made remarks that the wedding doesn't matter, that all he's focused on is finding her and the wedding didn't even cross his mind.

He doesn't really reference a deposit though. So I don't know if money was ever given back to him. He kind of just brushes that aside and he said that he was calling the school not to demand money back, but to make sure she didn't have like an outstanding loan that she would be defaulting on now that she's not there, which again seems like it seems kind of noble, but the last thing I'd be thinking about, if my fiance was gone for like what, 12 hours, 20 hours, like I'm not like, oh, I wonder like if I need to call like his credit card or his school and that's, you're not thinking about that, right?

No, no, definitely not. It just doesn't make sense. Yeah. And he finally, he said that he did go to sell the ring, but he only sold it because at the time they didn't have a cell phone and he thought he wanted to trade in the ring to buy a cell phone because it was super important. He thought to like keep the family connected. Everyone is really participating in search efforts and they're trying to keep connected

and see if anyone knows Nikki. He wanted a way for people to reach out to him if he was out searching. So that that's kind of on the up and up. It seems legit, but again, who knows. I don't know. There's no evidence that he actually bought the cell phone. So I don't know what's what. It's just stories at this point.

Yeah. I circulate a lot, but I'm just going to stop. Police asked Bobby to take a polygraph and he does agree. And the question, the most important question is they asked him, did you have something to do or did you know where Nikki went? And his response was no, but the polygrapher said that that was a huge lie. Bobby said that that's not how they asked him. He said that they said, do you feel responsible for her going missing?

And he said, how would any man not feel partially responsible for not being there when something happens to your fiance, your woman? So again, two sides of the coin, you have detective saying one thing, Bobby saying another, who do you believe at this point? And especially when there is no evidence of anything to point to him other than these statements, there's really nothing to go off of. And he's not labeled a suspect. He's labeled a person of interest, which I actually learned something new.

I think I know everything about true crime and every once in a while I learned something I didn't know. I know they label people person of interest and suspect, but I didn't, I guess I didn't really know what the actual definition of the difference was. I know person of interest is like a level below a suspect, but they say that what I learned is a person of interest doesn't necessarily mean they had anything to do with the crime or that that a person of interest necessarily could elevate to a suspect. It's possible, but really if someone's a person of interest, it just means that the police

believe that they have significant information that they need to further the case. So it makes total sense. Interesting. Right, it might be something everyone knows, but I thought it was a little fun fact. Definitely. Family members go rogue at this point because the case is kind of going cold and Nikki has nine brothers and sisters and her brothers are like pounding pavement and literally to the point where they're getting arrested because I don't, they don't say exactly, I don't know

if they were harassing people or just getting too, you know, confrontational with people. I have no idea, but they're trying to solve the case on their own and even they aren't getting anywhere and really they're just getting themselves in trouble. And the family totally shuts Bobby out at this point. They think everything that he's doing is super suspicious. So he really has no interaction with the investigation or with the search for Nikki at this point. And the case goes pretty cold for about three and a half months until November 3rd of 2001 when her car is finally found in Dayton, Ohio.

And the car is about 40 miles from her home and it's found in an apartment complex. And I've heard rumors that she actually used to live in that apartment complex a long time ago, but I couldn't really substantiate it. It's just, I'd see it every once in a while when I was reading articles. They find her car and in the back seat of her car, it's like she was there minutes ago. Oh my God. There is still the laundry basket with folded laundry and nothing else. They tow the car back to Indiana and completely process it looking for blood, fibers, hair,

fingerprints, and they find absolutely nothing, oh my God. The one thing that this car does do is it gets them focusing on Ohio rather than Indiana. They think that she was most likely abducted from the laundry mat, but they're thinking, okay, at least we know now at some point her car was in Ohio, maybe she was as well. And she works in Ohio, so she does have connections there. And one of these connections is a man named Tommy Swin and he lived about a quarter mile away from where the car was found and he was a coworker of Nikki's. And I've heard in some places that he wanted a relationship with her, but she saw him more

as a brother. And I read that in all of the articles and all of the documentaries up until there was a really recent article from 2017 written at one of the local newspapers in Indiana. And it states that the reporter says she talked to Nikki's sister and Nikki's sister actually admits that at some point she had a relationship with Tommy. There's zero information behind that. I have no idea when it was. Was she having an affair with Tommy?

Was this forever ago and Tommy wanted to continue it and she's like, no, I'm moving on. I have a fiance now. I have a life now. But possibly there was some romantic history other than him wanting something and she not. Now Tommy does have a violent streak. The one thing that her sister had said from way, way back was that one time she had actually gone to visit her sister at her apartment and as she's walking down the hallway toward her door, she starts hearing screams.

So she immediately barges into her apartment and she says her sister is like sitting on a chair with Tommy over her and she's got her legs like her knees are up by her own chest and she has one of her feet into Tommy's chest, like trying to push him off of her. And when her sister walks in, she screams and says that he was trying to rape her. And this is never gets reported, but her sister says she's convinced that if she wouldn't have been there, something would have happened that night. So another piece of information that I found out in this 2017 article, but again, I can't substantiate through anything else is the day that Nikki went missing.

She called a female friend and said that after she was doing her laundry, she was going to stop by a pharmacy. This female friend that she called also had a relationship with Tommy at some point. So if we're believing all of this new information in this article, it's possible that Nikki had a relationship with Tommy at some point. This other woman had a relationship with Tommy at some point. We have no timeline for when this happened. All we have on this phone call is this other woman's statement of what Nikki told her.

Now Nikki didn't have her purse or anything and there's no record of her going to a pharmacy. So she might have had a plan to, but also this might have been a lie that this woman told because she didn't want to say what they were really talking about, but it just kind of muddies the waters so many years later. Yeah, it definitely adds a different layer to consider at least. Right, right. Tommy won't talk to the police. And so obviously this puts him also in that person of interest category.

They think that he's definitely got some information that would lend to answers in his case, but they can't get anything out of him. And again, this is where things just stall out. Police and the family get a call from a psychic that says Nikki died the same day that she was at the laundry mat and that they would find her body in a trench near the laundry mat. Whoa. Right, and law enforcement actually takes this pretty seriously and they do a full search

and they're searching the trenches around the laundry mat, but unfortunately find absolutely nothing. And they really up the ante and they offer a hundred thousand dollar reward if someone can bring home Nikki. That's a really high amount. I mean, you work with crime stoppers. They give out rewards for tips, right? A thousand dollars.

Right. Like one of those. That's a lot of money. Yeah. And especially, I mean, again, we're talking like what two thousand, someone between 2001, 2002, maybe at the time. So 10 years ago, it's even more money, right? But this doesn't lead anything like they, the family thought for sure, like someone

could have was scared before, but for a hundred thousand dollars, people are going to come forward, but absolutely nothing. The five year anniversary rolls around. We hold a candlelight vigil at the laundry mat begging for answers. And again, just absolutely nothing happens. The next time there's any kind of movement or flicker in this case is August 30th of 2007. Tommy Swint gets hired as a police officer in Trotwood, Ohio, which is near Dayton.

And Richmond PD hear about this and they're like, Oh, hell no. So they reach out to the Trotwood PD and say, Hey, I don't know if you know who you hired, but he obviously didn't disclose to you that he's a person of interest in our case. They laid it all out for them. And basically what Trotwood told Tommy was, okay, you can resign or we're going to start taking steps to have you terminated. And he resigns, but immediately turns around and sues them basically saying he was forced out Tommy's lawsuit ends up going nowhere.

He doesn't get anything from it. Nothing good anyways, but this lands Tommy all over the news. And shortly after he is featured on the front page, a anonymous tip comes into the Dayton police on November 29th, 2007, and there's very limited information. But the tip basically says, Hey, you need to look at this guy for an unsolved murder back in 1991 of Tina Marie Ivory. This was 16 years prior. And so the police decide, okay, I mean, why not, well, he's already a person of interest

in this other case. We at least need to follow up on this lead and they didn't have, they had DNA from the crime scene of Tina Ivory 16 years ago, but there was nothing in the system linked to anyone else. And basically the only way they were going to solve this case is if they had a suspect that they could compare the DNA to. And lucky for them, Richmond police actually had his DNA during this whole trial where Tommy was trying to sue the police and saying, you know, I never even knew I was a person

of interest. They had, they never even told me they wanted to talk to me or look into me. And so at the time police were trying to call his bluff and they said, Okay, if you're willing to cooperate, we'd love to take DNA from you. And he said, Sure, go ahead. And they didn't enter it into any kind of database at the time because, you know, they really only thought they were going to connect him to Nikki's disappearance and they didn't have anything to compare that to.

So they just held on to the sample. But when they got this new lead, they actually sent that sample out to Dayton's crime lab. And sure enough, he is a match for this 16 year old murder. Now they try and reexamine the evidence because, okay, to me, if there's a DNA match, like it apparently was on the cloth that she was wrapped in, weird, that would be perfectly enough for the prosecution and to send this guy to jail, but it wasn't enough for them. So they go back and reexamine all of the evidence and they actually get a palm print off of the tarp that she was wrapped in.

And they say, Okay, if we can match this palm print to him and the DNA to him, that shows that not only was he near her body, but then he was the person that wrapped her in this tarp and there's really no way out of that. So November 17th of 2009, Tommy had recently moved to Alabama and they track him down, interview him, get his prints and in the interview, I can't find this addressed directly anywhere in documentaries or in any of the articles I read, but in the video I saw of him being interrogated, dude is wearing another police uniform. No.

Yes. And I've seen it referenced that he was an officer at the time, but I can't figure out where he was an officer or how the hell he like passed all these screenings again and nobody caught it. But yeah, he was in Alabama as a police officer. When they question him, they only question him about Tina and not at all about Nikki. They're really focusing on the case that they have evidence on and they're not trying to get sidetracked.

They want to get this guy in prison and then see where they can go from there. So they get his palm print before they leave Alabama. So they collect his palm print, take it back to Dayton, Ohio and sure enough, it is a match and they take all of this evidence together and go to a grand jury. And on February 3rd, 2010, the grand jury indicts him for Tina's murder. The police in Dayton, Ohio immediately call the Alabama PD and ask them to go arrest him. And at 1pm that same day, February 3rd, they go to his house and attempt to make an arrest. But when they drive up to the house, they have their full team.

They're surrounding the house. They get to the front door and right as they approach the front door, they hear a gunshot. Once they get into the house, they see that Tommy is laying in the middle of the floor, gun in hand. He took his own life. No. Yes. So now there'll never be answers in Nikki's case.

And they assume, I mean, they had so much evidence in Tina's case that it's pretty obvious and they pretty much closed that, but they didn't even get the chance to question him about Nikki's case. So I know he was a person of interest and I know it kind of seemed like a good lead, but I thought her fiance seemed like a really good lead too. So what if he has nothing to do with it? I mean, really now his name has been forever tied with Nikki McGowan's case, but what if it wasn't him?

And no one's ever going to look for anybody else. Right. Right. So I keep wondering, you know, if there's any more women, you know, there's this woman 16 years ago. What are the odds he kills this woman 16 years ago, gets away with it? And then decides to kill again so many years later. And the woman he killed 16 years ago, she was a woman who was down on her luck.

She was a prostitute. Nikki seemed to have her life together. She was getting married. She had a child. She had a job. Like they're two totally different profiles. I just think it's super unlikely that in all of that time, he didn't kill again. Right.

And I also think it's super weird that the first time, I guess maybe not, but the first time he killed, they found the body almost right away. Even though they couldn't tie it to him, the body was found. And still in 2017, we haven't a single clue where Nikki is. So where would he have dumped the body? How would he have learned to dispose of a body in such a better way? Unless of course he did on his second try. Yeah.

Right. You know, I mean, he could have gotten better, but I just think it's crazy. I mean, he seemed to be a normal guy with a normal job. And now I'll always wonder if Nikki isn't the only person we should be asking questions about. If you guys want to connect with us on social media, Brett, do you want to tell everyone how to do that? Sure thing.

You can follow us on Twitter at CrimeJunkiePod or on Instagram at CrimeJunkiePodcast. And if you want more information on the cases we cover or to subscribe to our quarterly newsletter, you can do that at crimejunkiepodcast.com. Hey guys, tomorrow is a special day. It is not only my birthday, but also producer Britt's birthday as well. And we want nothing more for our birthday than if you would rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and also please remember to subscribe. The only way people find out is through subscribers and those reviews.

And we want to be able to keep doing this podcast for you. CrimeJunkie is written and hosted by me. All of our sound production and editing comes from Britt Preywat. And all of our music, including our theme, comes from Justin Daniel. CrimeJunkie is an audio check production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?