Crime Junkie - MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: The Family in Anaqua Springs

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

When Nichol Olsen and her two daughters are found shot in the home they shared with her boyfriend, a theory quickly emerges that lays the blame on Nichol. But to those who knew her, that’s not an option, and points to someone else as the culprit. Over three years later, the question still remains: what happened in that house on January 9th, 2019?Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/ to view the current membership options and policies.Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/mysterious-death-family-anaqua-springs/

Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is about a young mother, her two daughters, and the unknown circumstances that led to their fatal shooting in a South Central Texas mansion. It's a story that is either frustratingly familiar or completely unthinkable, depending on who you ask.

And that's because even after three years, the question remains, was this a double murder suicide, or was this something else completely? This is the story of Nicole Olson, Alexa Montez, and London Bribezkas. And for you to tell, It's a little after 9am on January 10th, 2019, when 911 dispatchers in Bear County, Texas get an inbound call.

The man on the other end of the line is saying that something terrible has happened at his home. He says there are three people dead and he believes that one of them killed the other two before taking their own life. The caller identifies himself as Charles Wheeler, and although I can't find many details about this initial 911 call, like whether he gives the names of the people that he found, I do know that an officer is dispatched to the home right away. Sheriff's Deputy Gabriel Colunga is first to respond, so he heads towards the man's

address in the upscale Anakwa Springs Ranch neighborhood. This neighborhood is nice, like it's this gated community with 24-hour security, and it's located roughly 25 miles northwest of San Antonio. All the houses in this subdivision are like million-dollar-plus homes, each sitting on one to four-acre lots. Oh wow, so crime is basically non-existent here. Exactly, especially violent crime, right? So when Deputy Colunga gets there, he first encounters 31-year-old Charlie, who is sitting

on the ground outside of his home, and he notices something odd about him. In his incident report, he states that although Charlie appears to be crying, like he's hunched over, he's making all the sounds, there aren't any visible tears. Now right away, Charlie launches into telling him that the bodies inside are those of his girlfriend, Nicole Olson, and her two daughters, Alexa Montez and London Bribeuskas. He says they're all up on the second floor, and he tells them that Nicole is the one who died by suicide. So once the deputy goes inside, he obviously heads straight for that second floor, and

as soon as he ascends the stairs, he sees the three bodies. Closest to him is the body of one of the girls. The incident report is redacted here, so I'm not sure if it's 16-year-old Alexa or 10-year-old London. But whoever it is, she's lying on her stomach, clearly deceased, with what appears to be a gunshot wound to the head. Next, the deputy spots Nicole laying just a few feet to her left, also with a gunshot wound to the head.

And beyond Nicole is her other daughter, dead of another gunshot wound. There is a large pool of blood on the floor, there is blood on the walls, and there's a handgun near Nicole's body. Exactly how near are we talking here? So I don't actually know, none of the source material clarifies if it's like a few inches from her hand, from her a few feet, what side it's on. Like there's a lot about this scene that we just don't know. No, obviously the deputy checks all of their vitals to make sure that there is no life-saving

measures that could help, but each are rigid and cold to the touch. And so with no signs of life, he calls for backup. Two lieutenants arrive, and shortly thereafter, all three are declared dead right there at the scene. The deputy Kulunga heads back outside, he finds Charlie standing up hugging somebody. Now he splits them up and takes Charlie to his squad car. He's not being detained or anything, but by this point there are like multiple emergency personnel arriving at the house, like everyone's scouring the scene.

So it's like mostly to get him out of the way, and partly so the deputy can just ask him a few questions, like in a space where he can focus. Charlie tells him that he hadn't been home when this had happened. He had just come back to his house, and that's how he found all three of them there, like that. Wait, you just said they all had rigor set in. How long was he gone from his own house? So a long time, actually.

So in this conversation, he goes on to explain that Nicole's his girlfriend, the two girls are hers from previous relationships, and I guess the night before he said that he and Nicole had had an argument at around 10pm, and so he decided to leave and stay the night at a relative's home. So does he say what they were arguing about? It's not in the report, so he may have, I don't know if they even asked him, and he just wasn't included, so I don't know what the fight was about, but basically he said that they both just needed some space to cool off.

He knew they'd be able to come back together in the morning, maybe talk it out more rationally. But while they were apart, he said that he still was trying to text and call her, but Nicole never responded. Now at some point, Charlie was texting her oldest daughter, Alexa, but then she stopped responding eventually too. During this time, I don't think the deputy has a ton of details about what he was texting Alexa about. Was it about the fight he was having with her mom?

Was it about something else? But either way, it doesn't seem like he was all that concerned when she stopped responding. I mean, at least not enough to drive back home and check that night. So it wasn't until he got back at nine that morning that he found all three deceased. And he just assumed that Nicole had been the one to kill them? Is there something I missed? That seems a bit like a leap. Well, that's what police are thinking too.

So they take his phone, they take his wallet, and he is escorted to the station for a more formal interview. Because again, there's something missing here. Yeah. But here's the thing. I can't find anything about what Charlie says in that first interview, or actually any interview for that matter. Police have kept a lot of information really close to the chest, so there's a lot about

the investigation I just don't know. But what I do know is that while he's at the station, crime scene texts are combing through every square inch of the house and collecting as much evidence as possible. Because they're not just taking Charlie's word or assuming that they know what happened. Though, that being said, they actually don't find much of anything that disputes Charlie's theory. Peggy O'Hare reports for San Antonio Express News that there are no signs of forced entry. And if there were signs of a struggle, they've never been publicized.

And so even before the autopsy results come back, investigators start to agree with Charlie's theory that Nicole killed Alexa and London before killing herself. Now, in an effort to be thorough, though, Charlie's truck is towed from the home and officers canvassed the neighborhood asking the neighbors if they heard or saw anything suspicious the night that the women were killed. But everyone they talk to says, no, they didn't hear anything. They didn't hear gunshots yelling like quite literally nothing at any point during the night.

But if the houses are spaced out by like acres and it's possible, honestly, probably likely that they didn't hear anything. That's totally true, which is why the officers asked for neighbors to check any surveillance that they might have, like doorbell cameras, for instance, and if they have any footage to take a look at it and see if there's anything suspicious on it. So while they wait for that, that same night, the sheriff of Bear County, Javier Salazar, holds a press conference. He doesn't go into much detail because at this point they haven't 100% determined anything

and they're still waiting on the autopsy results. But he does say that two of the victims are likely victims of homicide. So whether they say it in so many words or not, there is a clear implication there because the people who know the family know that three people are dead. And so this theory that Nicole killed her kids is not flying with the people closest to her. Even Alexa and London's fathers, Carlos and Hector, say that there is no way on earth she killed her girl.

She loved them more than anything. But all the people who love her can do is wait. Maybe the official autopsy will clear up all this nonsense. But the people on the inside of the investigation can do more than just sit around and wait. And they want to keep crossing off all possibilities from their list before they close the book on this one. And the place to start in any investigation is to dig into who your victim was and how their relationship was with those closest to them.

And surprise, surprise, like every crime junkie knows, things aren't exactly what they appear to be from the outside. Investigators learn from friends and family that Nicole and Charlie met on Instagram. Charlie had seen a photo of her, slid into her DMs, and not long after, the two started dating. What a very modern love story. Yeah, and at first it definitely seemed like that. Charlie had competed in the rodeo circuit.

He ran a successful business, owned again this million dollar home. He seemed to be absolutely in love with Nicole. And Nicole herself was a hairstylist. And although she had a bit of a rough start having been through two divorces in her 37 years, it seemed like she was on the right path. She had a college age son who lived on his own. She was able to provide for her daughters. And she was in what seemed like a loving relationship.

So to everyone on the outside, this was the great relationship. Everything seemed to be going well. But as investigators start speaking to her friends and family over the first few days of the investigation, they learn that it wasn't nearly as perfect as it appeared to be. One friend says that she'd once seen Nicole with a black eye. And when she asked her about it, Nicole just said that she and Charlie had been arguing. That same friend recalls another time when they went to a basketball game and they were in the car and Charlie called Nicole and asked to speak to the friend.

And she remembers Charlie saying how lucky she was that he trusted her enough to let Nicole go to the game with her. I'm sorry. Let's deal. Yeah. That is a huge red flag. Huge red flag. And that's not even the last one because according to this same friend after the game, they

went out to a club and Charlie started calling Nicole nonstop because I guess you could see on his phone that her location had changed. And basically he wanted her to come home. And so she did. But before she left, the friend says that she told Nicole that this type of behavior wasn't healthy and that he was being emotionally abusive. But Nicole just seemed more concerned with getting home and she didn't really seem to heed her friend's concerns.

As their relationship progressed, friends noticed Nicole becoming more and more withdrawn, which was a complete 180 from her typical social personality, which is a textbook sign of abuse, right? And they all say that she knew that too. They talked to her about leaving and she said that she was going to, but just never did. And listen, we know leaving an abuser is hard period, but what made it more complicated was that Nicole was living at Charlie's house with her two daughters. So even though neither Alexa nor London were biologically Charlie's, I mean, the addition

of having them in the mix made everything more complicated. It always makes things more complicated. But here's the takeaway that so many of her friends had because they said, even though their relationship was rocky, and I think Rocky's the best way you can put it. They all say all her friends that she wasn't depressed or suicidal, but there was something that stood out as abnormal. Before she died, Nicole's friends say that she canceled all her appointments at the salon for like the next week, which yeah, seemed like it could have been a red flag, but she

had also scheduled two appointments for that very morning that she and her daughters were found. And get this, according to an article by Yami Virhan for News 4 San Antonio, police found that Nicole got an email on the day she died from an apartment complex that she was looking to move into with her daughters. So maybe she was clearing her schedule to move. I mean, totally possible. Because if that's the case, we know that leaving can be one of the most dangerous times for an abuse survivor.

Right, right. But here's the thing, even if their relationship wasn't healthy, that doesn't necessarily mean that Charlie is responsible for their deaths, right? Because they towed his truck, doesn't seem like they found anything in there that could be suspicious. If they did, they never publicized it. But let's just go back to them digging into Charlie and Nicole's past just really quick, because there were some small things that pop up when they run their background checks.

It turns out that both had prior run-ins with law enforcement. Charlie had been arrested and charged with several crimes, including public intoxication in 2008, a DWI in 2009, and multiple speeding tickets over the years. Nicole had been arrested in 2014 on suspicion of misdemeanor assault. Basically, the story goes that she and a former boyfriend had gotten into an argument that did turn physical. That charge ended up being dismissed, and they obviously broke up. And afterwards, she had no other legal issues.

So this is all important information that the investigators are considering. But again, what we keep coming back to is this isn't proof of anything, one way or the other. Right. So as the autopsies are being performed, they also run a slew of other tests, including gunshot residue, ballistics, and toxicology. And the investigators are gathering cell phone records and GPS data from several vehicles, including Charlie's.

Again, I don't have a ton of detail about the extent to which these tests are performed, specifically the gunshot residue, that's the one that I have like the most questions about. Like I know they test Nicole and Charlie, but I can't tell you what the results actually say, which to me, I feel like those results would tell you everything. I know. I know. So I'm not sure what the point is in telling people like those tests are being done, but

then not saying what's found. Yeah. I mean, do they at least know who owned the gun? Well, here's the thing. So in Texas, you don't register firearms. So yeah, it could have been Nicole's. It could have been Charlie's. It could have literally been anyone's.

So I have no information about the gun. Now a few days later, the autopsy's are concluded. Those reports have never been released. So I don't know the full extent of what the medical examiner finds, but what I do know is that both Nicole and Alexa died of a single gunshot wound to the head while London was shot once in the head and once in the neck. And ultimately the M.E. finds that Alexa and London's manner of death was homicide, but they ruled Nicole's manner of death, suicide.

These findings are announced in a press conference four days after the bodies were discovered. But in it, Sheriff Salazar assures the public that they aren't closing the investigation. One of the greatest fears is that they're afraid that the law enforcement is not going to cover all bases because, well, it's been ruled a suicide and we're going to move on to the next case. And that is not what's occurring here. I can assure the public that this case remains very much an open investigation. He also says the medical examiner makes their rulings based on what's in front of them.

And that's it. They don't look at the totality of the crime scene, the circumstances surrounding the death, things like that. So based on everything that investigators have learned over the last few days, they aren't 100% convinced that there isn't something more going on here. And Nicole's friends aren't convinced either, especially as the murder suicide theory keeps growing. Her friends keep insisting her kids were her whole life and no matter what may have been

going on with her, she never would have hurt her kids. Okay, but I guess my question is who else could have hurt them then? Charlie doesn't seem like he was the best guy out there. But like you said, that does not make him a murderer. Plus, he had an alibi that I'm assuming that the police looked into and verified. So I guess who else could it be? Well, I can't speak to his alibi because once again, there's not much out there on that, but I haven't seen anyone point the finger at anyone else.

Although, to be fair, no one's exactly pointing the finger directly at Charlie either. Alexa and London's families are more just kind of like waving their hand in his general direction if anything. Right. According to reporting by Henry Ramos for Ken's Five, after the cause of death for the girls is released, Alexa's father Carlos says, quote, I know and I can say that Nicole could not have done this. The home she was living in, we just feel it wasn't a great place for our children to

have been loved, end quote. But in more reporting from Peggy O'Hare, it states that neither Alexa nor London ever said anything bad about Charlie to their families. Although London's dad Hector does say that Charlie never introduced himself, which he thought was weird. Well, I mean, yeah, if my kids were living with someone else, I definitely went to meet them. And especially if it sounds like the dads were involved with their lives.

Yeah. I mean, it's strange. I mean, even with a great feeling. But again, it's like if your kids are saying everything's fine, like they're never coming to you and being like, the sky is bad, the environment's bad, like there was never any indication to them that they should have intervened at any point. Right. And has Charlie made any sort of public statement at this point?

Not at this point. And actually, he never does because he hires representation and stays pretty quiet. But his mother and a few of his friends come out in his defense and they say that, like, yes, him and Nicole argued at times, but nothing passed like a normal couple bickering. And they are insistent that he most certainly didn't have anything to do with their deaths. But maybe the investigation is saying otherwise, because a few days later on the 17th, Charlie is officially named a person of interest. Now at this time, the sheriff is clear in saying that a person of interest does not

mean a suspect, and thus far, he has cooperated fully with police. So they're just thinking that he knows more or has information. I don't really get the person of interest thing here, because usually that's how law enforcement labels people that they haven't been able to find yet or someone who just isn't cooperating. But you're saying that they know where he is and he's totally cooperating. But despite that he's officially a person of interest, I don't get it. I don't either.

It was really kind of hard for me to piece this together. Now I don't know if him getting representation. It sounds like maybe because they're saying he's cooperative, maybe he's still talking just like with a lawyer. And they obviously have like all the cell phones, they probably have subpoenas for data. So I don't know what they wouldn't be getting from him if he's cooperating. I guess my question is what do they get out of naming him a person of interest? I think that's the biggest thing, because it's one thing to be like, I feel like there's

something else we haven't cracked here, but we're like still early days in the investigation. What was the point of telling the public he's a person of interest? Because again, you're not trying to track him down. You're not trying to get him to come forward. He's cooperating at least to a certain extent. Yeah, is it to rattle him? I don't know. I don't know.

Now, shortly after this, the FBI joins the case. Further reporting from San Antonio Express News claims this is to provide both investigative and technical assistance. Basically they have more resources and in cases like this it's better to have more resources at your disposal. Specifically, Sheriff Salazar says that the investigation is going to rely heavily on forensic evidence. Good to hear, but he doesn't say what forensic evidence there is.

No, but he does say that they're considering the possibility that Nicole and the girls may have all been murdered by a stranger. So no suicide whatsoever? No, like that word is completely gone. So they're considering this whole new theory. But he is firm in saying that even if Nicole died by suicide that he can't say for sure if she was the one who killed the girls. Okay, I'm assuming and honestly hoping he knows something that we don't if he's saying

that there could be, you know, a whole other person involved. Yet you'd think, but this pretty much marks the end of what we know about the inner workings of the investigation. The only other thing I know is that a search warrant was executed on the home and they obtained phone records for someone. The name on the warrant is redacted. Now people assume it's Charlie, but no one ever says that. So with this stranger now in the mix, who the fuck knows?

And I have no idea if they found anything from those records. If the sheriff has any other evidence or anything that indicates a stranger could be responsible, he has never released it and never said anything else about it. And this is super frustrating to the families and friends of Nicole and her daughters. Because the days slowly start to tick by and then it turns into weeks and the weeks turn into months, months with no word on how the investigation is going. No light at the end of the tunnel. There are zero answers.

Her families are waiting as Charlie sells the house and then moves to Austin, all while still considered a person of interest. And they continue waiting as time goes on. And soon the one year anniversary of Nicole Alexa and London's death comes and goes with no resolution. Sheriff Salazar assures the public in an interview with San Antonio Express News that the case is still ongoing, that he's not just ready to blame Nicole for the deaths of her children, which yeah, there's some evidence that's keeping you from making that call.

That makes sense. But to Alexa and London's families, they're just growing more and more frustrated. And it's not necessarily because of the lack of resolution, but because they have not been kept in the loop. Like they are in the dark about what is happening. What's the stall? Again, why are you not willing to call it a suicide? What have you found?

And what are you doing now? And so it's because of this wall of silence that they're dealing with, that their relationship with the sheriff completely disintegrates. Like by the one year mark, they're saying that they have no idea what's going on. And that's not to say that things aren't happening behind the scenes. Like what we're able to find out later is that the sheriff says they bought this new piece of equipment called a burla, which basically it's this thing that can get access to a vehicle's infotainment system and it can see things like your car's GPS data.

So it's insinuated that it'll likely be used on Charlie's truck to see where he was at the time of their deaths. And Sheriff Salazar sets it up as being this like super exciting piece of equipment, but like I think everyone's like, oh my God, we're waiting for this for there to be some resolution and some answers. Right, we have this piece of the puzzle that we can use now. Yeah, but they never share anything beyond that with the public. Did you get anything?

Did you not get anything? Did you find something but it wasn't important? Do you even use this? Right. Now, by this point, both Alexa and London's fathers have gained representation. As Hector's attorney, a man named Joe Holscher begins communicating with the sheriff like on their behalf, although according to the sheriff, those emails are quote unquote menacing. Okay.

Menacing how? Well, I mean, of course, this is the thing. They're never shared. Oh, shocker. But even though we don't know what they said, it just goes to create more of this rift between the sheriff's office and the family's. And then according to reporting by Mariah Medina for Kens 5, as Thanksgiving of 2020 approaches, the sheriff's office makes an announcement, the announcement that the families have been

waiting almost two years for. They say that the investigation is going to be closed. And there is this moment where everyone kind of breathes a sigh of relief because it seems like finally this is going to be over. People will know what happened. Maybe an arrest will be made. Maybe justice will finally be served. The rest of November goes by without a word and then all of December and there's still

no conclusion. Then on January 4th, 2021, the sheriff's office announces that they aren't closing the case after all. You're kidding. I wish I was. Sheriff Salazar releases a statement saying that there are still too many unanswered questions and he doesn't feel comfortable closing the investigation without answering those questions. Okay.

But what's still up in the air? It seems like they've done everything they can, done all the testing available, not that they've disclosed any of the results of it. But anyway, I guess my point is what could be left to uncover? I don't know. And he never says. And look, if there is something that's holding him back from closing this case, fine. Even great.

If telling the public is going to hinder the investigation, also totally understand that. But what I don't understand is that the families of these girls are desperate for anything at this point. They want to know why it was going to be closed and then not close. Like, there's got to be a reason behind this. Why do they have to continue living their lives without knowing what happened in that house on the night their kids died? All they're asking for is some communication, which isn't what they've been getting at

all this past year, which feels like a pretty reasonable request. I agree. How hard could it be to just bring the families in for a meeting say, hey, we don't feel comfortable closing the investigation yet for XYZ reason, but rest assured, we're still doing everything we can to figure this out. Get justice for your daughters. I mean, it's not only simple. It also seems like the kind, considerate thing to do for these grieving families.

The relationship between families and law enforcement, I know can be so tense and so strained. But I think that's part of the job that you have to know going into. Like, I'm not saying this is an easy job to do. Every day you are dealing with people on the worst day of their life, but this has to be part of it. And listen, I will say this again, I don't think the family necessarily needs details. That's how things can potentially get out in other ways.

But if that's the case, like at least tell them that you don't have to divulge every single detail. I think families are just so frustrated because they shouldn't be finding out it's closed, not closed from the news. There should be some communication happening directly. Now, on January 4th, the public does learn one thing about the investigation that, at first, seems like it might be the thing that's holding everything up. It turns out just hours before the murders, one of the girls' fathers, we don't know

which one, was actually questioning their paternity. And I want to be clear here. Carlos is 100% Alexa's biological father and Hector is 100% London's. So I'm not sure which of them questioned it or why. But at first, at least to the public, it seems like maybe that was the missing piece of the puzzle. Okay, sure, but neither of the fathers would have been a stranger. Right.

Now, what I know is that this theory gets quickly dismissed. And since the police aren't pointing any fingers, it seems like this was just a random detail that doesn't really mean anything in the long run. Like, it was just a red herring that kind of grabbed everyone's attention. Of all the details we are getting, we're getting the bad ones, cool. This one. Right, right. So after the announcement that the investigation is going to remain open, the sheriff turns

it over to a cold case detective. And not necessarily because it's cold, but because he says that cold case detectives can take a broader look at a case and provide a different perspective. Basically, they can look at the totality of the evidence and decide from there versus those who have been working on it from day one. Those people often get caught up in maybe some details that you can't see the forest through the trees kind of thing, right? Right.

And this could be a really good thing. Fresh eyes could be really helpful, especially in something that is this messy. Right. So that's all well and good. Maybe things will actually start happening. But all this time, Alexa and London's fathers have been doing a little investigating of their own. Now, much like literally everything else in this case, I don't have many details on

how they get the information that they do, but not long after the case changes hands, both dads file civil suits against Charlie, blaming him for the girls' deaths. So they're accusing him of killing them? Not that he killed them, just that he was responsible in some way. Here's the details in the filing. Basically Hector lays out what he thinks happened in that house. He alleges that Nicole was acting increasingly erratic while arguing with Charlie the night of January 9th.

The lawsuit claims that Charlie was likely there when upset and potentially violent Nicole grabbed a gun from his bedside table. And instead of calling police and securing his firearm, maybe calling a family member or taking Alexa and London with him, the lawsuit alleges that Charlie took no reasonable measures to protect the children and he left all three in harm's way. Wait, so now they do think Nicole pulled the trigger? What makes them think that, especially now? I mean, did they learn like new information or something?

Because I thought they had been pretty much kept in the dark the whole time. So you're right. So they have been. Basically they were able to piece all of this together on their own without help from investigators. And so because of all the things that they've been collecting over, again, I don't know what period of time, what I see from this suit is that their opinions have changed again as time has gone on, as they've learned new information. And I think a big piece that played into this is that some point they got access to a text

message that was sent from Alexa's phone. So Carlos's suit alleges that someone using Alexa's phone was communicating with Charlie just hours before they died and a text from Charlie's phone to Alexa said quote, I left your mom making me worried. To which Alexa said quote, Are you here? I think she's talking to herself. He also claims that Charlie texted Nicole's brother Justin at around 11 30 that night to ask that he check on his sister.

He said Nicole had been acting quote unquote really strange and that she was on some kind of pills, which we can't really verify at this point since none of the autopsy or toxicology reports have ever been made public. Right. But that's not all that it comes out. Welcome to more reporting by Yami Virhan for News 4 San Antonio. Someone quote unquote close to the investigation leaks that Nicole made five calls on the night she and her daughters died, one to Charlie's mom, and then four times she called 911.

I'm sorry, four times and no one showed up. So the sheriff actually comes out and clarifies that only one of these calls connected. But he says that it was disconnected soon after. And when the operator tried to call her back, she either didn't get an answer or there were more connection issues. Okay. But that seems like a good reason to just, you know, send someone out to the house to check in on things.

Normally, yes, but they needed to be on the phone for a little bit longer before the operator could pinpoint where the call was coming from. Because again, this wasn't a landline that's connected to an address. And so to pinpoint where a cell phone's coming from, they weren't on the phone long enough for that to happen. So without knowing where it's coming from, without being able to get back in contact with the initial caller, they said there's nothing they could do. Right.

Okay, Ash, I have a question for you. Do you think that part of the reason they're being super cagey with information is to hide all the f**k ups? I mean, that might even be a reason for them to keep the case open instead of closing it like they had originally announced. Yeah. So it is something I thought about because if they would have closed the case, that would have been a point for the family to get all the records.

Right. It becomes like a accessible thing. Yeah. They could get the autopsy. They could get everything that they've been like asking about. But if you keep it open, you don't necessarily have to. Now again, I don't have the files or the details. We have to take them at their word about these calls.

Did they not want people to know that? Again, if their explanation is true, it doesn't seem that bad. It's not like nefarious. So why was it not out there earlier? It's just weird. Well, yeah. Why not talk about it earlier? Because you're trying to either disprove or prove the suicide theory, like stuff like

this would play into it. So to not even tell the family, I don't know. This is the kind of stuff where I don't know what the point was of not sharing it, at least with the family, if not with the public. Yeah. And I guess I just keep coming back to the fact that there's a world where all of this could have been avoided. Lives literally saved if they had called her back just one more time to make sure everything

was okay. Not the only one, because actually around this time, this organization steps in called Project Absentis. Their whole role is they usually step in to bridge the gap between families and law enforcement. According to their website, Project Absentis was created to help families by, quote, serving as a liaison between the family's law enforcement media and the public, end quote. It's run by a variety of people with law enforcement backgrounds, including former federal agents. And one of these former agents named Tolita Copeland recommends using geo-fencing to

figure out who was in the area at the time that these three women and girls died. And just real quick, I know we've talked about it before, but Brick, can you explain what geo-fencing is just in case anyone listens unfamiliar? Yeah. So basically, geo-fencing is using GPS to see who was using an app in a particular area at a particular time. It has a wide variety of uses like research and marketing, think like when an app tells you that you're near a store whose app you use and, hey, they're having a sale or whatever.

And in law enforcement, it's used for things like the ankle bracelets to monitor people on house arrest. Yeah. So what she's saying is that they can take a look at an app like Google Maps, for instance, and see who was in the area at the time. So rather than pulling phone records for one particular person, you can see if there was anyone else other than Nicole, Alexa, and London in the house or like the direct radius of the house.

Right. So frankly, it potentially creates a wider pool of people that actually makes a ton of sense here. Right. So do they do that? Not that I can tell. Of course, we don't know what's been happening, right? They haven't been super forthcoming with much.

So it's possible that they actually do do it, but they just never release it to the public. Now in September of 2022, Alexa and London's families asked the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to reassign the case to the Texas Rangers. They say that as far as they know, no new evidence has been discovered in years and they don't know why it's being kept open. As of the release of this episode, that hasn't happened yet and their civil suits are still making their way through the court process, although Charlie has denied all of the allegations made against him.

So that's it? Please tell me that's not just it. As of right now, that's it. Alexa and London's families are continuing to ask for answers, for communication. And London's family has advocated for stricter red flag laws that actually might have helped take the firearm away from Nicole before she could have done anything. But really, it's still unknown who actually pulled the trigger that night or why or what led up to it or what could have prevented it, I think is the biggest thing.

Charlie is still out there living his life and although he's still considered a person of interest, he has never been named a suspect. If Nicole really was the one who took Alexa and London's lives, their remaining families just want to know the truth. But if she wasn't, then there's still someone out there who's responsible for murdering three people. And those three people deserve justice. But at the end of the day, their families just want answers, no matter what those answers

are. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. So, what do you think Chuck? Is this your proof?