October 13, 2025 • 24 mins
When Destiny Jackson and Nazirah Muhammad were found gunned down in their own home, both their families and investigators in Hobart, Indiana, are baffled. Today, they’re so close to solving the case that’s haunted them for the past three years - but they need your help to take it over the finish line.
Crime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat.
Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
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- If you know anything about the murders of Destiny Jackson and Nazirah Muhammad, you can contact the Hobart Police Department by calling 219-942-1125.
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Crime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
High Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Fritz, and we're shaking
things up with not one, but two episodes hitting your
feed today. And here's why. The lead detective in a
case out of our home state of Indiana reached out
to us because he needs your help. He's got this
case that's pretty fresh, meaning there's a little bit less
information than usual. So we decided to cover two Indiana stories.
(00:25):
Ashley is bringing you the other, and it's actually already
in your feed. But this one we knew we had
to tell because they are this close to solving it.
They're pretty sure they know who is behind the murder
of two young women in Hobart, Indiana and why. But
there's a twist. The DNA they have in the case
doesn't match the main person they suspected. So are they
(00:47):
wrong or is the DNA just misleading? I have theories,
but one of you out there might have the answer.
This is the story of Destiny Jackson and Nisera Muhammad.
(01:32):
If you've been listening to Crime Junkie for a while,
or even if you're a new listener, you know that
a lot of the stories we tell start with a
loved one getting worried that moment that they realize that
something is wrong. On the morning of Friday, November fourth,
twenty twenty two, a woman named Felicia isn't all that worried.
She hasn't heard from her little sister, twenty year old
(01:52):
Destiny Jackson in a little over a day, which is
unusual for them because they live together along with Felicia's
boyfriend Todd and Snee's nineteen year old girlfriend, Nizera Mohammed.
But even when Nizera's mom calls her saying that she
can't get a hold of her daughter or Destiny, Felicia's
not thinking that something bad has happened. Felicia knows their
sleep schedules are a little bit off at the moment.
(02:14):
Nizera isn't in school at the time, Destiny's taking some
online classes and working part time, but they're staying up late,
sleeping in late, doing like normal college age things. Plus,
Felicia knows that Destiny turns on that do not disturb
when she sleeps, so even when she tries calling Destiny
herself and gets sent straight to voicemail, that doesn't feel weird. Unfortunately,
(02:35):
Felicia and Todd aren't home where they all live in Howart, Indiana.
They've been gone on a brief trip an hour away
to Chicago, so Felicia can't just go into their room
and check on them, so instead she keeps trying her sister,
but no answer. After so many unanswered calls, she asks
her brother, who she's staying with in Chicago, Hey, can
you check and see if you can see her location?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
But he can't.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Still, though Felicia isn't worried, she figures she'll hear from
her sister soon. But it's not her sister who calls
her later. It's Niziera's mom again, and she's still worried,
and that's when she says something that finally makes Felicia
a little nervous. According to Felicia, she tells her that
she recently sent her daughter a large sum of money.
(03:20):
She doesn't remember how much it was, or exactly when
or even why, though she knew that her mom had
been supporting her financially, so it wasn't totally out of
the blue, but I don't know. Something about it just
made her sister spidey senses tingle, so better safe than sorry.
Felicia decides to call local police for a welfare check
that afternoon. When police get to the apartment, even from
(03:42):
the outside, there is a sign that something is wrong.
Bags of groceries are sitting outside the apartment. They don't
look old, like they haven't been sitting there for days,
but there are perishables in there, so leaving them just
out in the hall feels like off and from the
moment police step into the apartment, they know that they've walked.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Into a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Bullet casings litter the floor, there are bullet holes in
the hallway wall, and blood spatter leads them from a
bathroom to the primary bedroom. There they find the bodies
of two young women, both of whom have suffered multiple
gunshot wounds. One of them, Nizera, is lying on the floor,
kind of on her side from the way she's laying,
and based on the bullet holes and blood in the
(04:26):
bathroom and hallway, it looks like she may have been
in the bathroom when the attack started and was trying
to run away from her attackers before succumbing to her wounds.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
In the bedroom and the.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Destiny is in bed with the covers still pulled up,
almost like she was caught while sleeping. The two are
long past life saving measures. They're going to have to
go back to Felicia and confirm the worst case scenario.
But while some officers are tasked with notifications, others begin
combing through the apartment, trying not to lose any more
precious time. One of the things they try to do
(04:58):
is determine exactly how the killer got in, because the
apartment is on the second floor and the front door
was locked with no signs of forced entry, but there
is an unlocked and slightly still open sliding glass door.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
In the living room.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
It leads out to a balcony, and below they see
that a table owned by one of the neighbors has
been pushed right underneath that balcony, and in the middle
is a single.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Dirty shoe print.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
That shoeprint is one of the first pieces of evidence
they photograph and collect, but it's not the only thing.
There are those numerous shell casings, along with Destiny's phone
and Niziera's phone case. At first flush, they think the
killer must have taken the phone itself, but they didn't
take it far because they end up finding her phone
off to one side of the main road that leads
(05:45):
into the apartment complex and by the time they get to.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
It, it's crushed to pieces.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
They think whoever took it might have thrown it out
a car window as they were fleeing, which leads them
to search even further across the road and down the street,
where they turn up more potential evidence, two pairs of gloves.
One is a blue latex pair think like medical gloves,
and the other is gray with like black rubber palms,
almost like work gloves. Now. Detective Gallagher, the lead detective
(06:14):
on this case, told our reporter that he doesn't think
the gray work gloves are connected, but the blue medical
gloves might be based on where they are in proximity
to the phone. They're directly across the street, almost as
if the killer tossed the phone out one window and
the gloves out the other as they were driving away.
Investigators send everything they can offer testing to the Indiana
(06:35):
State Police Lab while they request phone and social media
records for both women and speak to their families and neighbors.
When police interview both families, they're able to establish a
clear timeline of when the homicides likely occurred. Nazera's mom
says she last spoke to Nizera around nine thirty one
pm on November two, and she got a TikTok from
Nizera that was sent to her around one thirty six
(06:56):
am on the third. Then, Felicia says she last from
Destiny a little after midnight on the third as well,
but after that there was radio silence from both of them,
so investigators believe they'd likely been killed in the middle
of the night or sometime the morning of the third.
But when they talked to neighbors, no one reports hearing
any gunshots or seeing anything out of the ordinary, which
(07:19):
I okay, sure, maybe everyone was asleep. But what I
find even stranger is that when police walked into the bedroom,
there was a hair dryer that was plugged into the
wall and it was still running, So it must have
been running for like over a day. And I've lived
in apartments before, and sound travels a lot and forever
(07:42):
and long, so it feels really strange to me that
no one would have clocked that the hair dryer was
blasting like all day. Now, my first thought was that
the killer may have plugged it in and tried to
start a fire. It was right next to Nazera's body,
But to text if Gallagher doesn't think that's the case.
He told our team that the women probably kept it
(08:04):
in our room and Nizera may have been using it
at the time of the break in, which that threw
me for a loop too, because I knew, based on
the crime scene that their theory had been that she
had been in the bathroom when the attack happened or
when she was first shot.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So I had a reporter try.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
And clear that up with the detective, but I didn't
actually get any clarity. He just said that she was
probably in the bathroom when the attack first started, then
tried to run into the bedroom, been using the hair dryer,
got up to get something from the bathroom, and then
that's when the break in occurred. Or maybe she was
using it, heard someone come in, went to the hall
to look saw them, jumped in the bathroom first, or
(08:41):
maybe she was in the bathroom and then tripped over
the blow dryer as she ran into the bedroom. I mean,
it's hard to know for sure, but Detective Gallagher's confident
that it wasn't put there to try and start a.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Fire after they were killed, which.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
They can pinpoint to an exact time thanks to Nazera's
phone records, at four thirty am on the third, they
learned that she'd actually called nine one one, and that
call is disturbing, to say the least. We have the audio,
but we are not going to play it because in
it you don't hear much, I mean, nothing that helps.
Just gunshots and sounds from Niziera that make it clear
(09:16):
that she's scared and then dying. It's fast, but it's heartbreaking.
The call gets cut short and police couldn't pinpoint Nazera's location.
You can't with cell phones, so they couldn't respond at
the time. What the call does give them now, though,
is a precise time of when Nizera and Destiny were killed,
(09:37):
and they have to figure out where everyone they knew
was at that time, and they have to figure out
what the motive might be. The why usually leads you
to the who, and this is when the two families divide.
Nazera's family starts to question if Felicia and her boyfriend
Todd may have had something to do with it. I mean,
how convenient it was that this is the time that
(09:57):
they were gone and there had been some conflict, though
they were your normal roommate conflicts, nothing violent. But I
think they're just looking for anything, any explanation for this
inexplicable loss, but police are quickly able to rule that out.
Phone records and witnesses put them in Chicago on the
second before Destiny and Nisiera's last cell phone communications, just
(10:19):
like they said. But actually the reason they were there
makes police wonder if this was a targeted attack by
a family member, just a different one than Felicia. It
turns out the reason Felicia was in Chicago when the
murders occurred was because she was meeting with police about
pressing sexual assault charges against her and Destiny's brother Terence.
Both she and Destiny had allegedly experienced sexual abuse by him,
(10:43):
Destiny when she was a child, and Felicia had been
assaulted more recently. Now, Felicia is the only one pressing charges,
and he hasn't had contact with Destiny in over a year,
not since he reached out promising to make things.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Up to her, which she rejected.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
But with charges potentially incoming, they're wondering if he broke
in targeting Felicia or maybe Destiny too, and Nizera was
just collateral damage. But I'm not going to drag this
out after digging into his whereabouts on the second and third,
he is ruled out. He denies being involved, and his
phone records confirm that he wasn't in Hobart. Investiators even
(11:18):
speak with his girlfriend, who corroborates that he was in
Chicago and her phone records match up with his. And
just in case you were wondering, because I know our
crime junkies are always sleuthing for the missing piece or
the angle that hasn't been explored, there's no evidence anyone
in Destiny's family hired someone to do this either. And really,
when you break down the motive for Terrence, it doesn't
(11:39):
make a whole lot of sense. Killing Destiny wouldn't stop
Felicia from pressing charges. In fact, Felicia still met with police,
and Terrence got charged and eventually was sentenced to eighteen years.
Destiny's family agrees with police in the end, they don't
think the whole Terrence thing is related. They actually don't
think Destiny was the target at all. They think Naser was.
(12:00):
And here's the context for that thinking. Felicia tells police
that Nazera was known for purchasing really large quantities of weed.
At one time, she got it from multiple dealers, but
no one knew how she paid for all of it,
because remember, Nazera was unemployed. So Felicia's wondering if maybe
she didn't pay repeatedly and one of her dealers felt
they'd been ripped off. Felicia even told our team that
(12:21):
she knows Nazera had several sandwich sized bags of marijuana
in the apartment when she left, but police couldn't find
any in the apartment when they searched.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
It seems to be the.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Only thing that was taken, assuming Naizera still had it
all when they were killed. Now, is this why she
asked her mom for that large amount of money Felicia
told us about Maybe she was trying to pay someone back.
It would make sense if she actually got that large
sum of money, and there's some confusion around that. Felicia
is adamant that's what Nazera's mom told her the first
day that she called her. But Nizera's mom later states
(12:53):
to police that her daughter never asked for that money.
So I don't know what to make of the discrepancy.
Is someone lying, More likely it's misremembering. Trauma does a
hell of a lot to the brain. So I wouldn't
fault either of them if their truth was slightly off
from center.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Either way.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Police are in on this owing someone money theory, and
they have a pretty good idea who she owed money to.
Nazera's phone records revealed a whole saga of things that
happened over the twenty four hours before she and Destiny
were killed. Turns out she'd actually called nine one one,
not once, but twice, once in the early morning hours
(13:35):
in the middle of the murders where you can hear gunshots.
But she also called the police twenty four hours before
around the same time. So on the second at five
eight am, she called to report a man outside her
apartment looking in people's vehicles. Police drive over and they
do find a guy in the parking lot, a guy
that we're gonna call Chip, and Chip literally admits to
(13:58):
the cops that he's there to sell weed, and in
his car they find over a pound of marijuana along
with two legally owned guns. Now, marijuana is still illegal
in Indiana, so they confiscated the weed and issued him
a court summons, which I mean is pretty lucky. They
definitely could have arrested him, and it doesn't seem like
he's saying who he was there to sell to. But
(14:20):
Nazera's phone records are now doing all the talking. They
show that he was there to make a delivery to her,
according to her messages. He got there, she went out
to the parking lot to meet him and then must
have called the police after she went back inside. Now,
what would make her buy weed from someone and then
call the police on them. It seems risky, but it
(14:41):
makes me think again about Felicia's money theory, Like, what
if Nazera owed this guy money, she didn't have enough
to pay him what she owed him, and she was
afraid he'd be back to get it or something like that,
so she called the police on him. Or what if
he made a threat to her when she was there
and she was trying to get him taken away. But again,
Chip was very much a free man after this, and
(15:04):
he was not happy. Through Facebook messenger where he goes
by a pseudonym that we're going to call Chips Ahoy,
he found out that she'd called the cops and he
demanded she pay him for the marijuana they confiscated. Now,
initially she said she was trying to, but there was
an issue with her bank. But then the tone shifted.
Chip's messages turned threatening, prompting Nazera to say she was
(15:26):
going to get a protection order until she moved, which
according to the messages, would be soon. But Chip wasn't
having it, stating she quote won't make it, and that
he had friends in town to back him up. She
wasn't worried, though, She said she and Destiny were planning
to go out of town the next day, so quote,
catch us in the city if you can, because it
ain't going to be out here.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
So if he's the culprit.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
The theory is that Nazera hadn't been paying him and
calling the cops was the final straw. Now, detectives fine
Chip and bring him in for an interview, where he
confirms he did in fact deliver some weed Nyasiera in
the early morning hours of the second He claims he's
never been inside the apartment and denies killing the girls,
but he can't say where he was at the time
(16:08):
of the murders. That night, he claims he went to
work at a local factory as usual, but left around
eleven forty pm because of a headache, but he.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Didn't go home.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
He drove around and started making some sales, But when
it comes to exactly where he was driving, he can't
say he was smoking weed the whole time and claims
he can't remember where he was like at all, has
zero memory of that night. I don't know if investigators
buy that, But when they ask Tip if they can
get a DNA swab, he agrees, even though at that
(16:42):
point they still didn't have anything to compare it to.
All the evidence they had from the scene was still
being processed now. They also asked Tip for his phone,
but he refuses to let them search it. No biggie,
They get his phone in social media records anyway. Plus
they reviewed data from local license plate readers to try
to corroborate his driving around story, and what they get
(17:04):
paints a hazy picture of that night. First the license
plate readers on November third, when the women are believed
to have been killed, they put him about four miles
away at two am, and then again in the same
area at six am. Then his cell phone records put
him in the area of the apartment complex around the
time and.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
The murders, so for thirty am ish.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Although we couldn't get any more specifics on this, like
just like how close he was. Those records also revealed
that he was communicating with two other men both before
and after four thirty am.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Now we asked for those conversations.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Detective Gallagher told us he'd like to hold onto those
and we won't be naming the two other guys, But
investigators do have their phone records too, and what we
can say is that after the murders, those two other
guys were messaging back and forth saying, quote, don't say
nothing to nobody. Once evidence starts coming back from the lab,
it indicates that there may have been more than one
(18:01):
killer as well. The casings they have indicate that there
were two guns used in the attack, likely a rifle
and a handgun, the same kind of weapons they'd found
in Chip's car when they stopped him the night before
in the very same apartment complex where Nisiera and Destiny
would be murdered.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
But here's the catch.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
The rifle was seized shortly after the murders, but it's
not a match for the casings found at the scene,
so that's a bust. Investigators also do a bit of
digging on the shoe prints and determine they're either from
Nike Katy Tray five three shoes or Nike Katy Tray
five four shoes, and we'll have some photos in the
(18:39):
blog post if you're like me and had no idea
what that meant. They are basketball sneakers, but investigators can't
determine if anyone connected to the case owned a pair, so,
at least for right now, the shoe prints are also.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Sort of a dead end.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
What they need is DNA or a fingerprint, something they
can compare to literally anyone, but the Indiana State Lab
says they can't get anything like that off the rest
of the evidence. The questions I keep coming back to
were like, who is this Chip guy? Like could he
have gotten two people to help him commit double homicide?
(19:15):
And digging into him didn't really help me answer that
second question. It turns out Chip's just a small town
drug dealer from Gary, Indiana. I don't know what persuasive
power he has if these are like close friends of his,
no clue, But it's not like he's some big crime
boss out there who's ordering hits on people. So maybe
(19:37):
answers lay with the two men he was communicating with
that night. Police don't get to talk to them.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Immediately.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Detective Gallagher wanted more evidence before tipping them off that
he's on to them, but he's trying to make that
happen now. He's been working the case diligently since twenty
twenty two, and when the Indiana State Lab said there
wasn't anything on the evidence, he wasn't going to give up.
Ear Later this year, in twenty twenty five, he sent
a bunch of evidence off to a private lab in
(20:05):
Florida capable of doing more advanced DNA testing, and lo
and behold, they got DNA and a print. Now that
comes with some caveats. One, the print is off Nazera's
phone case, and it very well may be Nizera's. One
of the many challenges they've run into in this case
is not being able to get fingerprints from Destiny or
(20:27):
Nizera because they were too decomposed by the time their
bodies were found. Even after such a short period, it
just wasn't possible. There are fingerprints all over the apartment,
but without being able to compare them directly to both
Destiny and Nizera, Detective Gallagher just doesn't feel comfortable assuming
whose is whose.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
The second caveat.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Is that The DNA they got was from the blue gloves,
which Detective Gallagher thinks are related to the crime scene,
but they can't be one hundred percent sure because they
weren't found at the scene and he didn't tell us
whether it was male DNA for sure. And before you
ask CHIPS, DNA is in CODIS and they did compare
(21:11):
it to it, but it wasn't a match. Same thing
with the print not a match, and no matches in APHIS.
Now this development just came through and Detective Gallagher hasn't
had a chance to print.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Or swab the other two guys yet.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
If they're not a match, then there's only two paths
forward when it comes to DNA. Wait for someone to
slip up and get put into COTIS so they get
a hit or tips come in that develop new suspects
that they can directly compare against. I asked about IgG,
but unfortunately the DNA sample they had was used up,
so they don't have enough to do any genealogy stuff with.
(21:47):
So that's why Detective Gallagher asked us to share this
case with you. They've looked far and wide for alternate
suspects but haven't found anything. They even went digging into
the girl's backgrounds checked out, but an ex girlfriend of
Nazera's who had a tumultuous breakup with her, I mean
Destiny was the reason for the breakup. She cheated on
this other girl to be with Destiny, but even she
(22:10):
was quickly ruled out. Chip was recently arrested this year
on a weapons law violation, but he's still out and about.
Detective Gallagher feels strongly that this case is solvable and
they're on the right track. They just need something, a confession,
a witness, and that's where you guys come in.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Crime junkies.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
The guys who do things like this don't normally keep
things like this to themselves. If there was ever a
time to come forward, it's now. Destiny's family wants justice
for the young woman they say loved and.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Forgave so easily.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
She was described as the glue that held her family
together and an inspiration to her eight siblings because she
wanted to pursue higher education, and Nysiera's family went to
see justice for the fun loving girl who had an
infectious smile. Her mother said she remembers the hearts shape
pancakes Nysiera made for her on our last birthday. They
shared together a testament to how deeply she cared about
(23:06):
her loved ones. If you know anything about the murders
of Destiny Jackson and Issierah Muhammad, you can contact the
Hobart Police Department. I'm going to have the contact information
in the show notes. And don't forget, We're releasing two
episodes today on unsolved Indiana cases. So there is another
story told by Ashley that's in your feeds right now.
That episode is Murdered Jessica Starr, Go take a listen.
(23:43):
You can find all the source material for this episode
on our website crime junky dot com. And if you
want to listen to this episode and all of our
episodes completely add free, be sure to join the fan club.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
You'll also get early.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Access to new episodes every week, and you can follow
us on Instagram at.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Crime Junkie Podcast.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Ashley and I will be back next week with a
brand new episode.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Crime Junkie is an Audio Chuck production. I think Chuck
would approve
High Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Fritz, and we're shaking
things up with not one, but two episodes hitting your
feed today. And here's why. The lead detective in a
case out of our home state of Indiana reached out
to us because he needs your help. He's got this
case that's pretty fresh, meaning there's a little bit less
information than usual. So we decided to cover two Indiana stories.
(00:25):
Ashley is bringing you the other, and it's actually already
in your feed. But this one we knew we had
to tell because they are this close to solving it.
They're pretty sure they know who is behind the murder
of two young women in Hobart, Indiana and why. But
there's a twist. The DNA they have in the case
doesn't match the main person they suspected. So are they
(00:47):
wrong or is the DNA just misleading? I have theories,
but one of you out there might have the answer.
This is the story of Destiny Jackson and Nisera Muhammad.
(01:32):
If you've been listening to Crime Junkie for a while,
or even if you're a new listener, you know that
a lot of the stories we tell start with a
loved one getting worried that moment that they realize that
something is wrong. On the morning of Friday, November fourth,
twenty twenty two, a woman named Felicia isn't all that worried.
She hasn't heard from her little sister, twenty year old
(01:52):
Destiny Jackson in a little over a day, which is
unusual for them because they live together along with Felicia's
boyfriend Todd and Snee's nineteen year old girlfriend, Nizera Mohammed.
But even when Nizera's mom calls her saying that she
can't get a hold of her daughter or Destiny, Felicia's
not thinking that something bad has happened. Felicia knows their
sleep schedules are a little bit off at the moment.
(02:14):
Nizera isn't in school at the time, Destiny's taking some
online classes and working part time, but they're staying up late,
sleeping in late, doing like normal college age things. Plus,
Felicia knows that Destiny turns on that do not disturb
when she sleeps, so even when she tries calling Destiny
herself and gets sent straight to voicemail, that doesn't feel weird. Unfortunately,
(02:35):
Felicia and Todd aren't home where they all live in Howart, Indiana.
They've been gone on a brief trip an hour away
to Chicago, so Felicia can't just go into their room
and check on them, so instead she keeps trying her sister,
but no answer. After so many unanswered calls, she asks
her brother, who she's staying with in Chicago, Hey, can
you check and see if you can see her location?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
But he can't.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Still, though Felicia isn't worried, she figures she'll hear from
her sister soon. But it's not her sister who calls
her later. It's Niziera's mom again, and she's still worried,
and that's when she says something that finally makes Felicia
a little nervous. According to Felicia, she tells her that
she recently sent her daughter a large sum of money.
(03:20):
She doesn't remember how much it was, or exactly when
or even why, though she knew that her mom had
been supporting her financially, so it wasn't totally out of
the blue, but I don't know. Something about it just
made her sister spidey senses tingle, so better safe than sorry.
Felicia decides to call local police for a welfare check
that afternoon. When police get to the apartment, even from
(03:42):
the outside, there is a sign that something is wrong.
Bags of groceries are sitting outside the apartment. They don't
look old, like they haven't been sitting there for days,
but there are perishables in there, so leaving them just
out in the hall feels like off and from the
moment police step into the apartment, they know that they've walked.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Into a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Bullet casings litter the floor, there are bullet holes in
the hallway wall, and blood spatter leads them from a
bathroom to the primary bedroom. There they find the bodies
of two young women, both of whom have suffered multiple
gunshot wounds. One of them, Nizera, is lying on the floor,
kind of on her side from the way she's laying,
and based on the bullet holes and blood in the
(04:26):
bathroom and hallway, it looks like she may have been
in the bathroom when the attack started and was trying
to run away from her attackers before succumbing to her wounds.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
In the bedroom and the.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Destiny is in bed with the covers still pulled up,
almost like she was caught while sleeping. The two are
long past life saving measures. They're going to have to
go back to Felicia and confirm the worst case scenario.
But while some officers are tasked with notifications, others begin
combing through the apartment, trying not to lose any more
precious time. One of the things they try to do
(04:58):
is determine exactly how the killer got in, because the
apartment is on the second floor and the front door
was locked with no signs of forced entry, but there
is an unlocked and slightly still open sliding glass door.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
In the living room.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
It leads out to a balcony, and below they see
that a table owned by one of the neighbors has
been pushed right underneath that balcony, and in the middle
is a single.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Dirty shoe print.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
That shoeprint is one of the first pieces of evidence
they photograph and collect, but it's not the only thing.
There are those numerous shell casings, along with Destiny's phone
and Niziera's phone case. At first flush, they think the
killer must have taken the phone itself, but they didn't
take it far because they end up finding her phone
off to one side of the main road that leads
(05:45):
into the apartment complex and by the time they get to.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
It, it's crushed to pieces.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
They think whoever took it might have thrown it out
a car window as they were fleeing, which leads them
to search even further across the road and down the street,
where they turn up more potential evidence, two pairs of gloves.
One is a blue latex pair think like medical gloves,
and the other is gray with like black rubber palms,
almost like work gloves. Now. Detective Gallagher, the lead detective
(06:14):
on this case, told our reporter that he doesn't think
the gray work gloves are connected, but the blue medical
gloves might be based on where they are in proximity
to the phone. They're directly across the street, almost as
if the killer tossed the phone out one window and
the gloves out the other as they were driving away.
Investigators send everything they can offer testing to the Indiana
(06:35):
State Police Lab while they request phone and social media
records for both women and speak to their families and neighbors.
When police interview both families, they're able to establish a
clear timeline of when the homicides likely occurred. Nazera's mom
says she last spoke to Nizera around nine thirty one
pm on November two, and she got a TikTok from
Nizera that was sent to her around one thirty six
(06:56):
am on the third. Then, Felicia says she last from
Destiny a little after midnight on the third as well,
but after that there was radio silence from both of them,
so investigators believe they'd likely been killed in the middle
of the night or sometime the morning of the third.
But when they talked to neighbors, no one reports hearing
any gunshots or seeing anything out of the ordinary, which
(07:19):
I okay, sure, maybe everyone was asleep. But what I
find even stranger is that when police walked into the bedroom,
there was a hair dryer that was plugged into the
wall and it was still running, So it must have
been running for like over a day. And I've lived
in apartments before, and sound travels a lot and forever
(07:42):
and long, so it feels really strange to me that
no one would have clocked that the hair dryer was
blasting like all day. Now, my first thought was that
the killer may have plugged it in and tried to
start a fire. It was right next to Nazera's body,
But to text if Gallagher doesn't think that's the case.
He told our team that the women probably kept it
(08:04):
in our room and Nizera may have been using it
at the time of the break in, which that threw
me for a loop too, because I knew, based on
the crime scene that their theory had been that she
had been in the bathroom when the attack happened or
when she was first shot.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So I had a reporter try.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
And clear that up with the detective, but I didn't
actually get any clarity. He just said that she was
probably in the bathroom when the attack first started, then
tried to run into the bedroom, been using the hair dryer,
got up to get something from the bathroom, and then
that's when the break in occurred. Or maybe she was
using it, heard someone come in, went to the hall
to look saw them, jumped in the bathroom first, or
(08:41):
maybe she was in the bathroom and then tripped over
the blow dryer as she ran into the bedroom. I mean,
it's hard to know for sure, but Detective Gallagher's confident
that it wasn't put there to try and start a.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Fire after they were killed, which.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
They can pinpoint to an exact time thanks to Nazera's
phone records, at four thirty am on the third, they
learned that she'd actually called nine one one, and that
call is disturbing, to say the least. We have the audio,
but we are not going to play it because in
it you don't hear much, I mean, nothing that helps.
Just gunshots and sounds from Niziera that make it clear
(09:16):
that she's scared and then dying. It's fast, but it's heartbreaking.
The call gets cut short and police couldn't pinpoint Nazera's location.
You can't with cell phones, so they couldn't respond at
the time. What the call does give them now, though,
is a precise time of when Nizera and Destiny were killed,
(09:37):
and they have to figure out where everyone they knew
was at that time, and they have to figure out
what the motive might be. The why usually leads you
to the who, and this is when the two families divide.
Nazera's family starts to question if Felicia and her boyfriend
Todd may have had something to do with it. I mean,
how convenient it was that this is the time that
(09:57):
they were gone and there had been some conflict, though
they were your normal roommate conflicts, nothing violent. But I
think they're just looking for anything, any explanation for this
inexplicable loss, but police are quickly able to rule that out.
Phone records and witnesses put them in Chicago on the
second before Destiny and Nisiera's last cell phone communications, just
(10:19):
like they said. But actually the reason they were there
makes police wonder if this was a targeted attack by
a family member, just a different one than Felicia. It
turns out the reason Felicia was in Chicago when the
murders occurred was because she was meeting with police about
pressing sexual assault charges against her and Destiny's brother Terence.
Both she and Destiny had allegedly experienced sexual abuse by him,
(10:43):
Destiny when she was a child, and Felicia had been
assaulted more recently. Now, Felicia is the only one pressing charges,
and he hasn't had contact with Destiny in over a year,
not since he reached out promising to make things.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Up to her, which she rejected.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
But with charges potentially incoming, they're wondering if he broke
in targeting Felicia or maybe Destiny too, and Nizera was
just collateral damage. But I'm not going to drag this
out after digging into his whereabouts on the second and third,
he is ruled out. He denies being involved, and his
phone records confirm that he wasn't in Hobart. Investiators even
(11:18):
speak with his girlfriend, who corroborates that he was in
Chicago and her phone records match up with his. And
just in case you were wondering, because I know our
crime junkies are always sleuthing for the missing piece or
the angle that hasn't been explored, there's no evidence anyone
in Destiny's family hired someone to do this either. And really,
when you break down the motive for Terrence, it doesn't
(11:39):
make a whole lot of sense. Killing Destiny wouldn't stop
Felicia from pressing charges. In fact, Felicia still met with police,
and Terrence got charged and eventually was sentenced to eighteen years.
Destiny's family agrees with police in the end, they don't
think the whole Terrence thing is related. They actually don't
think Destiny was the target at all. They think Naser was.
(12:00):
And here's the context for that thinking. Felicia tells police
that Nazera was known for purchasing really large quantities of weed.
At one time, she got it from multiple dealers, but
no one knew how she paid for all of it,
because remember, Nazera was unemployed. So Felicia's wondering if maybe
she didn't pay repeatedly and one of her dealers felt
they'd been ripped off. Felicia even told our team that
(12:21):
she knows Nazera had several sandwich sized bags of marijuana
in the apartment when she left, but police couldn't find
any in the apartment when they searched.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
It seems to be the.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Only thing that was taken, assuming Naizera still had it
all when they were killed. Now, is this why she
asked her mom for that large amount of money Felicia
told us about Maybe she was trying to pay someone back.
It would make sense if she actually got that large
sum of money, and there's some confusion around that. Felicia
is adamant that's what Nazera's mom told her the first
day that she called her. But Nizera's mom later states
(12:53):
to police that her daughter never asked for that money.
So I don't know what to make of the discrepancy.
Is someone lying, More likely it's misremembering. Trauma does a
hell of a lot to the brain. So I wouldn't
fault either of them if their truth was slightly off
from center.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Either way.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Police are in on this owing someone money theory, and
they have a pretty good idea who she owed money to.
Nazera's phone records revealed a whole saga of things that
happened over the twenty four hours before she and Destiny
were killed. Turns out she'd actually called nine one one,
not once, but twice, once in the early morning hours
(13:35):
in the middle of the murders where you can hear gunshots.
But she also called the police twenty four hours before
around the same time. So on the second at five
eight am, she called to report a man outside her
apartment looking in people's vehicles. Police drive over and they
do find a guy in the parking lot, a guy
that we're gonna call Chip, and Chip literally admits to
(13:58):
the cops that he's there to sell weed, and in
his car they find over a pound of marijuana along
with two legally owned guns. Now, marijuana is still illegal
in Indiana, so they confiscated the weed and issued him
a court summons, which I mean is pretty lucky. They
definitely could have arrested him, and it doesn't seem like
he's saying who he was there to sell to. But
(14:20):
Nazera's phone records are now doing all the talking. They
show that he was there to make a delivery to her,
according to her messages. He got there, she went out
to the parking lot to meet him and then must
have called the police after she went back inside. Now,
what would make her buy weed from someone and then
call the police on them. It seems risky, but it
(14:41):
makes me think again about Felicia's money theory, Like, what
if Nazera owed this guy money, she didn't have enough
to pay him what she owed him, and she was
afraid he'd be back to get it or something like that,
so she called the police on him. Or what if
he made a threat to her when she was there
and she was trying to get him taken away. But again,
Chip was very much a free man after this, and
(15:04):
he was not happy. Through Facebook messenger where he goes
by a pseudonym that we're going to call Chips Ahoy,
he found out that she'd called the cops and he
demanded she pay him for the marijuana they confiscated. Now,
initially she said she was trying to, but there was
an issue with her bank. But then the tone shifted.
Chip's messages turned threatening, prompting Nazera to say she was
(15:26):
going to get a protection order until she moved, which
according to the messages, would be soon. But Chip wasn't
having it, stating she quote won't make it, and that
he had friends in town to back him up. She
wasn't worried, though, She said she and Destiny were planning
to go out of town the next day, so quote,
catch us in the city if you can, because it
ain't going to be out here.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
So if he's the culprit.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
The theory is that Nazera hadn't been paying him and
calling the cops was the final straw. Now, detectives fine
Chip and bring him in for an interview, where he
confirms he did in fact deliver some weed Nyasiera in
the early morning hours of the second He claims he's
never been inside the apartment and denies killing the girls,
but he can't say where he was at the time
(16:08):
of the murders. That night, he claims he went to
work at a local factory as usual, but left around
eleven forty pm because of a headache, but he.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Didn't go home.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
He drove around and started making some sales, But when
it comes to exactly where he was driving, he can't
say he was smoking weed the whole time and claims
he can't remember where he was like at all, has
zero memory of that night. I don't know if investigators
buy that, But when they ask Tip if they can
get a DNA swab, he agrees, even though at that
(16:42):
point they still didn't have anything to compare it to.
All the evidence they had from the scene was still
being processed now. They also asked Tip for his phone,
but he refuses to let them search it. No biggie,
They get his phone in social media records anyway. Plus
they reviewed data from local license plate readers to try
to corroborate his driving around story, and what they get
(17:04):
paints a hazy picture of that night. First the license
plate readers on November third, when the women are believed
to have been killed, they put him about four miles
away at two am, and then again in the same
area at six am. Then his cell phone records put
him in the area of the apartment complex around the
time and.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
The murders, so for thirty am ish.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Although we couldn't get any more specifics on this, like
just like how close he was. Those records also revealed
that he was communicating with two other men both before
and after four thirty am.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Now we asked for those conversations.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Detective Gallagher told us he'd like to hold onto those
and we won't be naming the two other guys, But
investigators do have their phone records too, and what we
can say is that after the murders, those two other
guys were messaging back and forth saying, quote, don't say
nothing to nobody. Once evidence starts coming back from the lab,
it indicates that there may have been more than one
(18:01):
killer as well. The casings they have indicate that there
were two guns used in the attack, likely a rifle
and a handgun, the same kind of weapons they'd found
in Chip's car when they stopped him the night before
in the very same apartment complex where Nisiera and Destiny
would be murdered.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
But here's the catch.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
The rifle was seized shortly after the murders, but it's
not a match for the casings found at the scene,
so that's a bust. Investigators also do a bit of
digging on the shoe prints and determine they're either from
Nike Katy Tray five three shoes or Nike Katy Tray
five four shoes, and we'll have some photos in the
(18:39):
blog post if you're like me and had no idea
what that meant. They are basketball sneakers, but investigators can't
determine if anyone connected to the case owned a pair, so,
at least for right now, the shoe prints are also.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Sort of a dead end.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
What they need is DNA or a fingerprint, something they
can compare to literally anyone, but the Indiana State Lab
says they can't get anything like that off the rest
of the evidence. The questions I keep coming back to
were like, who is this Chip guy? Like could he
have gotten two people to help him commit double homicide?
(19:15):
And digging into him didn't really help me answer that
second question. It turns out Chip's just a small town
drug dealer from Gary, Indiana. I don't know what persuasive
power he has if these are like close friends of his,
no clue, But it's not like he's some big crime
boss out there who's ordering hits on people. So maybe
(19:37):
answers lay with the two men he was communicating with
that night. Police don't get to talk to them.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Immediately.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Detective Gallagher wanted more evidence before tipping them off that
he's on to them, but he's trying to make that
happen now. He's been working the case diligently since twenty
twenty two, and when the Indiana State Lab said there
wasn't anything on the evidence, he wasn't going to give up.
Ear Later this year, in twenty twenty five, he sent
a bunch of evidence off to a private lab in
(20:05):
Florida capable of doing more advanced DNA testing, and lo
and behold, they got DNA and a print. Now that
comes with some caveats. One, the print is off Nazera's
phone case, and it very well may be Nizera's. One
of the many challenges they've run into in this case
is not being able to get fingerprints from Destiny or
(20:27):
Nizera because they were too decomposed by the time their
bodies were found. Even after such a short period, it
just wasn't possible. There are fingerprints all over the apartment,
but without being able to compare them directly to both
Destiny and Nizera, Detective Gallagher just doesn't feel comfortable assuming
whose is whose.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
The second caveat.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Is that The DNA they got was from the blue gloves,
which Detective Gallagher thinks are related to the crime scene,
but they can't be one hundred percent sure because they
weren't found at the scene and he didn't tell us
whether it was male DNA for sure. And before you
ask CHIPS, DNA is in CODIS and they did compare
(21:11):
it to it, but it wasn't a match. Same thing
with the print not a match, and no matches in APHIS.
Now this development just came through and Detective Gallagher hasn't
had a chance to print.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Or swab the other two guys yet.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
If they're not a match, then there's only two paths
forward when it comes to DNA. Wait for someone to
slip up and get put into COTIS so they get
a hit or tips come in that develop new suspects
that they can directly compare against. I asked about IgG,
but unfortunately the DNA sample they had was used up,
so they don't have enough to do any genealogy stuff with.
(21:47):
So that's why Detective Gallagher asked us to share this
case with you. They've looked far and wide for alternate
suspects but haven't found anything. They even went digging into
the girl's backgrounds checked out, but an ex girlfriend of
Nazera's who had a tumultuous breakup with her, I mean
Destiny was the reason for the breakup. She cheated on
this other girl to be with Destiny, but even she
(22:10):
was quickly ruled out. Chip was recently arrested this year
on a weapons law violation, but he's still out and about.
Detective Gallagher feels strongly that this case is solvable and
they're on the right track. They just need something, a confession,
a witness, and that's where you guys come in.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Crime junkies.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
The guys who do things like this don't normally keep
things like this to themselves. If there was ever a
time to come forward, it's now. Destiny's family wants justice
for the young woman they say loved and.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Forgave so easily.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
She was described as the glue that held her family
together and an inspiration to her eight siblings because she
wanted to pursue higher education, and Nysiera's family went to
see justice for the fun loving girl who had an
infectious smile. Her mother said she remembers the hearts shape
pancakes Nysiera made for her on our last birthday. They
shared together a testament to how deeply she cared about
(23:06):
her loved ones. If you know anything about the murders
of Destiny Jackson and Issierah Muhammad, you can contact the
Hobart Police Department. I'm going to have the contact information
in the show notes. And don't forget, We're releasing two
episodes today on unsolved Indiana cases. So there is another
story told by Ashley that's in your feeds right now.
That episode is Murdered Jessica Starr, Go take a listen.
(23:43):
You can find all the source material for this episode
on our website crime junky dot com. And if you
want to listen to this episode and all of our
episodes completely add free, be sure to join the fan club.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
You'll also get early.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Access to new episodes every week, and you can follow
us on Instagram at.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Crime Junkie Podcast.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Ashley and I will be back next week with a
brand new episode.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Crime Junkie is an Audio Chuck production. I think Chuck
would approve
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