January 16, 2025 • 35 mins
This week we are covering a lesser known, but still horrific (and also very interesting) case: the murder of Debbie Dorian. Debbie Dorian was a smart, driven 22 year old college student at Fresno State when her life was cut short by an unidentified attacker. Despite police taking immediate action, her case went cold.
Just a few years later, a string of sexual assaults began taking place in a nearby town, and when police submitted DNA from one of these attacks to their database, they came up with a suprising match, that lead them on a years long hunt for a very scary man.
Please like, rate, review, and join us on instagram! True Crime California
A proud member of the Darkcast Network
Sources:
https://abc30.com/nickey-stane-debbie-dorian-fresno-apartment/14110858/
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/crime/article282478238.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJkjGtsWlDo
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/crime/article282478238.html
Just a few years later, a string of sexual assaults began taking place in a nearby town, and when police submitted DNA from one of these attacks to their database, they came up with a suprising match, that lead them on a years long hunt for a very scary man.
Please like, rate, review, and join us on instagram! True Crime California
A proud member of the Darkcast Network
Sources:
https://abc30.com/nickey-stane-debbie-dorian-fresno-apartment/14110858/
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/crime/article282478238.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJkjGtsWlDo
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/crime/article282478238.html
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Dark Cast Network. Out of the shadows come the best
indie podcasts. Hey, guys, welcome back to I think episode seven. Eventually,
(00:36):
I'm gonna have to stop saying what episode it is
because I'm gonna lose track. I can't believe it's been
seven episodes already. It's absolutely crazy. Thanks everybody who's been listening.
I don't know a lot of subscribers already. You guys
are amazing. I'm not trying to brag. I'm like, honestly,
very pleasantly surprised and super super grateful. So thanks everybody
for listening. What you're listening to is true Crime California.
(01:00):
This is a podcast about murders another you know, criminal
activity in the Great Golden State. And I am coming
to you during a crazy windstorm. I don't know how
many people know, but I live in Los Angeles, in
Burbank specifically, and we are having like eighty mile an
hour wind gusts, which is not normal. We've definitely had
(01:22):
windy days before and even like exceptionally windy, but never
like this. This is nuts. My back fence just fell over,
like it's down. It's done, Dunzo, like ripped out of
the ground. It's absolutely bonkers. So if you hear some
deep rumbling in the background, it's just the wind. It's
not my dog's for a change, although it could be
them as well, but as of right now, it's the wind,
(01:44):
and that shit is loud. I was actually at the
Annenberg Beach House today. I'm a caterer and I was
there doing a walk through because we're gonna start catering
like weddings and events there, which is amazing. It's literally
on the beach in Santa Monica. And while we were there,
a brush in Pacific Palisades was just just like up
on the hill broke out and we saw it. And
(02:05):
with the wind, it's been spreading. I know people who
are having to evacuate. It's just nuts. It really really sucks.
And this year's been really dry. We had two years
of like wet, wet, wet, so everything grew, then I
dried out and now it's gonna burn, which is such
a bummer. So anybody who's up there out there, I
hope you guys are all okay. To my friends who
(02:26):
live in the area, stay safe. If you need somebody
to watch your animals, you know where to find me. Anyway,
this week, I am doing, as promised, a lesser known case.
Now I didn't explicitly promise that in any previous recordings,
but in the description about this podcast it says that
I'm gonna do cases that are very well known in
(02:48):
cases that are a little bit less well known. And
this one I think was well known in certain circles
but was fairly new to me. And it does have
some like TV shows and things like some amount of coverage,
but it doesn't have, you know, the same coverage that
like the Wonderland murders or poly class have like, for instance,
so comparatively, pardon me, this is a much less well
(03:11):
known case, but still like a really interesting case. And
so this week we're doing another case from the nineties,
and this is the case of the murder of Debbie Dorian.
Debbie Dorian was a twenty two year old college student
at Fresno State who was murdered in her apartment in Fresno, California,
most likely August twentieth, nineteen ninety six, but unfortunately was
(03:36):
not found until two days later when she was found
by her father, which super sucks. So this is the
case of her very tragic death and it takes some
really interesting twists and turns as well, and the most
surprising thing, well, I won't get ahead, but it's an
interesting case for sure. So let's just get into it
(03:56):
and talk about Debbie and her life and where she lived.
One of the things I like about this podcast is
I sort of get to talk about the state and
the cities. I love California. I love talking about it.
I love its history. So it's fun to sort of,
you know, discuss the different areas for people who are
or are not around from around here. Debbie was a
(04:17):
third or fourth generation Californian, specifically from Fresno. Now, Fresno
is very much in central California. It's surrounded by farm
towns and farming. It's pretty rural. Oh did you guys
hear that something just fell over? Okay, sorry, guys. My
son's basketball hoop just took a dive in the backyard,
(04:38):
as did one of my plant holders. But I already
got all the plants off of it, so I wasn't lying.
It's very very windy, and now our power is flickering,
so let's hope we can record this anyway talking about Fresno.
So Fresno is definitely, Like you know, it's it's in
the middle of nowhere. Basically, it's like in the very
middle of California. It's not near the coast, it's not
(05:00):
really near anything. And it's interesting because as of twenty twenty,
Fresno is the fifth most populous city in the state,
which is significant because California is the most populated state
in the USA with about I think just over thirty
nine million people, and Fresno has just over five hundred thousand,
(05:21):
so just over half a million people live in the city.
So it's not by any means a small town, but
it is sort of in the middle of nowhere, and
it's definitely not any sort of tourist attraction, you know,
like San Francisco's on the water, they have the ports,
they have like all the fun like the pier and like,
you know, it's just sort of a thing. Los Angeles
I don't think I need to explain. Even Sacramento. It's
(05:44):
like a capital city. So Sacramento is kind of gnarly.
Having lived, you know, grown up near there, I can
say that, but at least like it still has a
tourist draw. I would say Fresno stocked in cities like
this that are sort of just in the middle of nowhere.
They really don't have any sort of tourism or any
sort of draw for anybody who doesn't live there. And
(06:08):
this was especially true in the nineteen nineties when Fresno
was honestly like a really scary place. I remember growing
up and being like stay away from Fresno. They had
a ton of gang activity, ton of violent crimes, property crimes.
Things were a bit of a mess. Like even police
at the time were like, yeah, no, things were really
bad here in the nineties. Even today, actually Fresno is
(06:31):
way higher than the national average for crime and also
higher than the average in California by like quite a bit.
But back then in the nineties, it was even worse.
Like I said, I watched this interview with a detective
who worked in Fresno in the nineties, and he was like, yeah,
our city was completely overrun with crime. So for a
cop to admit that, like, it's got to be it's
(06:53):
got to be bad. Now that being said, even you know,
back then at this time, there there were nice areas
in the city just like anywhere, like any city, even
like the hardest cities in the country, are going to
have like little enclaves you know that are kind of safe.
And Debbie grew up like a pretty safe and stable
home life. You know, she wasn't like out on the streets.
(07:15):
You know, she had a fairly normal, like suburban childhood.
She was a fun, hard working young woman who graduated
from Bullard High School in nineteen ninety two and immediately
went to college studying economics. Now, her plan upon graduating
Fresno State was to go to grad school at San
Francisco State College, so like just up the road a
(07:37):
few hours. So, you know, she very much in control
of her life, knew what she wanted to do. She
was close with both of her parents. She was very independent,
so when she went away to college, she eventually ended
up getting an apartment by herself instead of staying at
home or living with roommates or you know, in the dorms.
Which is funny because Fresno State College is literally less
(08:01):
than five miles from her high school. So she absolutely
could have lived at home while going to college and
just chose not to because she was wanting to like
start her life. Now, going to Fresno State made a
lot of sense if you live in a city that
has like a decent college and you don't have to
move away, and you don't have to spend the money
on like a private school or like a UC or whatever.
(08:23):
Like it's the best thing to do because you still
get a good education and you don't have to pay
a ton of money. And again, she stayed in her hometown,
which I think is really nice because, like, transitioning to
college can be really scary. You're leaving home, You're leaving
everything you've ever known. It's nice to be able to
stay in the city where you grew up, you know.
But it's interesting because she chose to stay near home,
(08:45):
but not stay home. She wanted to have her own life,
which I think is really great. So she's twenty two,
which means she's getting towards the end of her undergrad
and things are starting, you know, she wants to go
to San Francisco State's checking out Sacramento State as well.
She's sort of casting a wide net to see where
she wants to go to school. Now. On the morning
(09:07):
of August twenty second, nineteen ninety six, her father, Peter,
drove to her apartment to check on her because she
had not shown up at his house that morning. Their
plan was to go to Sacramento State to look at
the campus as Debbie, you know, was going to graduate
at the end of that year, so she's scouting schools.
They're sort of getting ahead of things. Now she's in August,
(09:28):
so she's going to graduate what May or June if
she wants to go right into grad school, she's going
to be looking at these colleges and then applying to
them immediately and then going. Unfortunately that didn't happen, but
that's sort of like, you know, the order of things.
So she clearly is a very organized and really on
it person, which I wouldn't know anything about personally, but
(09:48):
I do respect that she is. Like so she was
so on target with her goals. Now, her father, Peter
arrives at her apartment and he noticed that not only
is her door unlocked, but it's partially open. And I
don't think it was like open open, like enough to
see it with the naked eye, but when you got
to the door, you could tell that it was not
(10:10):
fully closed. And I assume this is the case because
they made a point to say the door was open.
But also nobody had called the police or checked on
her prior to Peter's coming over, and she did live
in an apartment complex, and there'll be more about that later.
So if the door had been like open open, I
think somebody would have noticed, would have checked on her,
would have called the you know, management company, maybe even
(10:32):
the police, you know. But as it was, it was
just barely open and enough to make Peter worry. So
he goes inside and he finds what I would not
wish on my worst enemy, and that is his twenty
two year old daughter, Debbie dead inside. She's laying face up.
She's wearing only a T shirt and nothing else, so
(10:54):
she is naked mostly, which is fucking horrifying. Her hands
and feet are bound with duct tape, and her face
is covered in that same tape. The tape is covering
both her mouth and her nose so that she could
not breathe. And I will just say that this is
what killed her, which ugh, I mean to really think
(11:18):
about what that is like and what that must have
been like is just harrowing. It's awful. Peter immediately ran
out of the apartment, found a neighbor to call police.
He later said that he knew he had to keep
some level of composure to ensure that the police would
come quickly. If he'd been like openly losing it, he
(11:38):
wouldn't have been, you know, it would have been more
difficult for him to communicate what he needed. And also
I think he was probably in some amount of shock,
to be fair. You know, like this is not an
easy thing to come upon, so I feel like he
was probably having almost like an out of body experience.
But he later said that like he had enough presence
of mind to know that he needed what hit my mic, sorry,
(12:00):
you know, he knew that he needed to communicate calmly
so that he could get the help he needed as
quickly as possible. Now, unfortunately, Debbie was already dead at
this point, but I do think that his thought process
made a lot of sense. The police come, they find Debbie,
and they pretty quickly they determined that she had been
(12:20):
raped before she died. Now, luckily there is semen at
the scene, which they dutifully collect, which is good because
this is nineteen ninety six, so you know, DNA is
not great, but it exists, so they know to collect
this kind of evidence and to hold on to it.
This story, of course, makes the news, as Debbie was
a very pretty young white college student, so perfect for
(12:41):
a news story in the nineties. Like I said, this
place was overrun with crime. But they definitely pick and
choose who they want to sort of highlight, and she
was a good candidate for that. And this of course
terrifies people in the area. Like I said, you know,
she doesn't live in a bad area, so for this
to happen to her feels particularly traumatizing, I think for
(13:02):
people who live in this city and feel like they've
found a safe place to be and it's just not
the case. Police did what they could, and they did
work really fast, processing the DNA on the scene to
the best of their ability given the year's nineteen ninety six.
They took note of a few other things that the apartment,
mostly that the door had not been forced open, which
unfortunately comes into play later and we'll talk about that.
(13:26):
So they of course began looking at anybody who knew
Debbie because maybe it was somebody that she let inside deliberately.
So that was kind of their thought process in the beginning,
but it does have broader implications later. They didn't really
get very far with this line of investigation, but about
two months after her murder, police did arrest a suspect
named Maurice Dixon. I hate to admit that I couldn't
(13:48):
find hardly any information that explained how they got to
the point of arresting him. I think maybe he knew
her and do you want to call out that. Also, he
was a black man, so it was probably like a
pretty easy choice. I do also know that his DNA
ended up being a partial match to that at the scene,
So based on that partial match, he was arrested on
(14:09):
suspicion of murder. But about two weeks later and he
was in jail the whole time. After taking a more
specific DNA test, he was found to definitely not be
a match. Now, as I'd mentioned, back then, DNA technology
was not what it is today. They had multiple tests
back then to sort of narrow down suspects, while now
we can get like exact matches from touch DNA, so
(14:32):
the difference is pretty insane. So he took at first
what was called a DQ test, which indicated that he
might be a match. Now, not every person who takes
this test is going to potentially be a match, so
that gave police like a good starting point, like, okay,
let's arrest him, let's detain him. Potentially he knows her,
maybe he was in the area. I don't know. But
(14:53):
with the whatever info they had that got them to
this DNA point, the DNA again pointed to him. Now
fortunately for him, but unfortunately for the case. The second
test that was much more specific said he definitely was
not the perpetrator, and this was a one in three
million kind of deal. So not a match. Definitely not
(15:14):
a match. So now police are back at square one,
and they have no real leads, no suspects. They're pretty
much just like at a loss, and pretty quickly, very unfortunately,
the case goes cold and it stays completely cold for
six years. So now I'm going to talk about a
(15:35):
nearby town called Visalia. Visalia is also in California. It's
in a different county than Fresno, but not very far away,
like maybe forty miles, which when dealing with rural areas,
really isn't that far, at least in terms of drive time,
because there's not the same kind of traffic that you're
going to see in bigger cities. Now, I said six years,
(15:57):
and we will get there, but as of right now,
we're in nineteen ninety nine in Visalia, which is like
not a huge town but not tiny and again surrounded
by like farming. It's very rural and does have a
decent amount of crime. So it's nineteen ninety nine and
there's a young woman around eighteen years old who's riding
her bike home from her job at an ice cream store.
(16:18):
While riding, she is approached by a man in a
hooded jacket who pulls a bandana over her nose, grabs
her bike handles like the handlebars, stops her in the street,
and puts a gun into her side. He tells her
that he doesn't want to hurt her, but he will
if she doesn't do what he says. He then pulls
her off of the street into some bushes or like
(16:40):
sort of between them and like a tree behind the
bushes basically, and begins fondling her breasts. He then masturbates
onto the street or sort of does this while he's
fondling her, and then runs away. This poor woman, after
it's over, goes to her sister's house and tells her
what happened, and her sister immediately calls the police. Police
(17:03):
arrive on the scene and they take a DNA sample
from the semen on the ground, which is just so gross,
it's just awful, and they also get details from the victim.
Over the next four years, there are another seven or
eight attacks similar or worse than this one. Now, this
includes an attack in January of two thousand and two
(17:25):
where a woman was waiting for a bus again and vicealia,
when she was approached by a man in a hooded
jacket who put a gun into her side and fondled
her while she stood there terrified. Now there isn't a
ton of information about the other attacks, but I can
tell you that they include forced oral copulation, attempted forced
oral copulation, rape, sodomy, kidnapping, and other really terrible charges.
(17:53):
All of the attacks took place, or most of them
took place, or at least started outside in like public locations,
but sort of off the beaten path, and all of
the victims, except for the woman at the bus stop,
were moved to a new location before being assaulted. All
of these assaults also involved a gun, a man in
(18:14):
a hooded jacket, and often included a bandana. So police
are seeing a definite pattern here, but they have no suspect. Finally,
in two thousand and two. After this most recent attack,
and there is one more after this in two thousand
and two. But after this attack that occurred in January,
police upload the DNA from the nineteen ninety nine attack,
(18:35):
which they very much believe to be connected to this one,
into CODIS and they get a match. But it's not
the type of match that you're thinking. Police. Instead of
getting a match to a person, they get a match
to an unsolved case, and that case is the murder
(18:58):
of Debbie Door. That's right. Police were able to tie
the sexual assault in nineteen ninety nine to the Debbie
Durian murder in nineteen ninety six. Now note that I
do not say they found her killer, because that is
up for debate and will get into that later. But
(19:19):
the presence of semen, unfortunately does not mean that the
person whose semen it belongs to was her killer, and
we'll talk about that. However, that little note aside, I think,
based on the fact that the other location of this
DNA was it yet another crime scene, gives us a
good idea of the truth and what this guy is about. Now,
(19:41):
the hand of justice can be quite slow, so it
wasn't until two thousand and nine that police put together
a case of nine charges or nine separate cases against
an unknown John Doe perpetrator. This is a pretty uncommon
thing and it was the first time this ever happened
into Larry County, which is where Vicelia is is located.
So they didn't even charge anybody in Debbie's murder at
(20:05):
this point, only in these Visalia attacks, even though they
knew at least one of the attacks was connected to
her case. They only charged for these attacks, and it's like,
how do you file charges against no one? You are
only filing them against DNA with the hope that eventually
that DNA is going to be linked to a person. Now,
(20:26):
I think part of the reason they did this was
to drum up leads in the case and to let
the purp know that they were not giving up on
solving these attacks and that they were actively searching for
this guy. Unfortunately, even after this, nothing really happened. Now
seven years later, in twenty sixteen, so twenty years after
(20:47):
Debbie's murder, two retired detectives who had originally worked on
Debbie's case came back onto the case, which was declared reopen.
And these two men came back on because this was
like the case of their lives. They didn't want to
see it unsolved. They wanted it to be solved in
their lifetimes. So they came out of retirement they came
(21:07):
back to this case. And I believe that this is
due to some new information about the case coming up,
which apparently was good enough to bring these guys back.
But I'll tell you right now, I don't have any
specifics on what that was. And again, in just a moment,
this will all come together and we'll all kind of
know why that is. So the case has reopened, and
(21:27):
as I'm sure we all remember, in twenty eighteen, a
very big case was cracked thanks to the use the
brand new use of genetic genealogy. Now the case I'm
talking about is, of course, the Golden State Killer or GSK,
also known as Euron's the Original or the East Area Rapist,
(21:49):
the Original Nightstalker. This man had many different names. His
legal name is Joseph James DeAngelo, and he was caught
for his insanely terrible crimes using familial genealogy. And the
way this works, I'm just gonna kind of dumb it down.
I'm sure most people who know anything about true crime, No,
but I found a way that kind of, in my opinion,
(22:10):
makes it simple to understand. Basically, when police have a
DNA profile but nothing to compare it to directly, meaning
no matches in codis or any other database, they can
now start using familial DNA to narrow down their pool
of suspects, even if they don't have anybody in mind.
So what they can do is they can use the
DNA they have and compare it to the DNA people
(22:32):
upload online for genealogy purposes, and they use that to
figure out who their purpose within a few people. So like,
if there are three brothers, they can narrow it down
to the three, which they've done multiple times at this point,
but they narrow it down to like three brothers, but
then from there they have to do the legwork to
figure out which one it is, and that can be
based on like where they were or I mean, you
(22:54):
can get a DNA profile from the three brothers and
only one will perfectly match. So the genealogy gets you,
like really really close, but it doesn't get you all
the way there. And obviously it's much more complicated than
just like going to ancestry dot com. Like police can't
actually do that. There's a particular kind of database that
can be used, so it's not like they're just wildening
(23:15):
out with all of our DNA. But for the purposes
of explaining how this works, I sort of just simplified,
and to be honest, I don't fully understand all of
the laws or implications, but I know that essentially that's
how it works. So anyway, once GSK is caught using
this method, police nationwide did a collective hmmmmm, and then
started using this to solve other cold cases, including Debie's case,
(23:40):
which also included all of these sexual assault rapes and
attacks in Visalia. Now, I do know that they did
have this man in mind before they compared his DNA
the suspect. I do not know how or why. And
again I kind of mentioned that the reason that I
don't know how or why is because that information is
not yet availab because the trial for this man has
(24:03):
not even started. Now in twenty twenty five. That being said,
somehow police were alerted to a man who lived in
the area at the time of the attacks. Now, this
man did not have any DNA in the database, but
they used this new method and were able to narrow
down their search to his family and with this information
(24:23):
they were given a search warrant that allowed them to
collect DNA from his trash, which they did, and when
they did, they found that it was a perfect match
not only to the Vicelia attack, but to the Debbie
Dorian crime scene. So here we have two perfect matches
(24:44):
between the two cases. It's the same guy, and the
man is fifty seven year old Nikki Stain and it's
nick e Y Stane. And I tell you this because
he has active Facebook profiles at an online presence. So
if anybody wants to go look and kind of see
what this guy's about, you can do that. And I
don't really care because fuck this guy. Now. At the
(25:05):
time of Debbie's murder, he was a twenty nine year
old married father of two living in Vicealia, which is
beyond horrifying that that is. I mean, there's no good suspect,
but like to be doing the shit while you have
a wife and kids, It just adds another layer to it.
And as far as the attacks, there's a map that
(25:26):
shows where they all took place. And wouldn't you know,
Nicki's house is not even a mile from most of
the Vicealia attacks. And maybe under two miles at most
from all of them. So he's just kicking back in
his own backyard doing this shit, which is great because
it's just another sort of like gotcha for the police.
Right now. Once police matched the DNA, they arrested Nikki
(25:48):
at his job managing a Charlie's Philly stakes in a
nearby mall. His employees actually had to call the owner
of the business to tell him, like, hey, the police
just came in and arrested the manager, which was a
shock to everybody because he had no record. He seemed
like a family man. I think he was twice divorced,
but like he was like a very normal guy. Now
(26:12):
things from here get a little bit murky, because again
we're entering into a time where the evidence is still
being kind of kept hush hush because they haven't gone
to trial yet. But basically, I've read that at some
point he did admit to the attacks and visalia, but
denied having anything to do with Debbie's murder. Now, in
other articles, I know that he's pled not guilty at
(26:33):
all charges, So I don't know. But what I do
know is that this man lived a very dual life.
On the one hand, he's a twice divorced father of
two adult children who has pictures of his extended family
on his Facebook page, where he posted all sorts of
family friendly content, including him cooking for his family at
all holidays and get togethers now. On the other hand,
(26:56):
he had another Facebook page under the name Nick steal Steel.
This profile is super gross and includes all sorts of
like honestly like pathetic posts trying to like pick up
random women. It's such like an old person on Facebook
move to post like sexy posts on your own timeline,
(27:17):
as if you're talking to like an audience, where like
nobody's reading any of it, you know, It's like it's
just one of the It's almost like I would feel
bad for him if he wasn't who he was now.
On one of his like gross posts, he posts a
fireplace he apparently had installed in his bedroom barf, and
in another he's talking about finding someone to go have
(27:37):
drinks with, which again like barf. Criminal psychologists interviewed about
this case said actually that having this sort of dual
life is really common for criminals who have like sexual
motivation to their crimes. They have this dual life and
they're just sort of narcissistic enough to think that they
can get away with it. So this guy has just
(27:58):
taken all the boxes that point to guilty. I mean,
we've got DNA, but even beyond that, we've got the proximity,
We've got these weird dual facebooks, we've got just you know,
he just seems gnarly. So he was arrested on my birthday,
January twenty ninth, twenty twenty, which I love for him
(28:19):
and for me. His trial has not officially started, but
I do note that the pre trial hearings to determine
if he'll be charged have taken place, and as of
October of twenty twenty four, they were still kind of
ongoing when a judge finally decided to allow all of
these cases to be tried together. Now. Prior to that,
there had been multiple hearings where victims and witnesses, including
(28:42):
Debbi's father, testified in order to determine if Nikki should
be charged for the sex crimes and the murder, and
also if they should be charged together. One of his victims,
one of the women who've been fondled I believe the
first one from nineteen ninety nine, took the stand and
talked about how the attack forever changed her life, how
she lives in fear that she'll be attacked again. She
(29:03):
also talked about how the assault felt like it lasted forever.
You know, this has been you know, over twenty years
of her life. That feels like they've been stolen from her,
which is very, very sad. Debbie's father also says, you know,
he has the day he found her body burned into
his memory, which I fully believe, and he recounted that
(29:24):
in precise detail while on the stand. Now, another witness
also came forward, and this was Debbie's neighbor. Now, this
neighbor saw Niki Stain knock on Debbie's door two nights
before her body was found. He also saw her open
the door to Nicki. Whether or not she let him
(29:47):
in wasn't discussed in what I read, but I can
tell you that he positively identified Nicki as the man
at the house, pointing him out in the courtroom and saying, yes,
that is the man that I saw at her apartment
that night. And this very well could be the last
time anybody saw Debbie alive. And it also tracks with
(30:07):
the timeline of her having been dead for two days,
she didn't go to work during that time, nobody had
heard from her, and then her father had to come
and find her body. So everything aligns timeline wise as well. Now.
The first hearing ended and the judge decided that Stain
could be charged with all of these together. The second
(30:28):
hearing came and went and that judge ruled that he
could be tried. Oh sorry. The first one was to
determine if he could be charged at all, they said yes.
The second one was to determine if he could be
tried together, which his attorney said would get in the
way of him getting a fair trial due to all
of the emotion. But it really seems like nobody cares
about that because we have DNA evidence, eyewitness testimony, living victims.
(30:49):
I mean, it feels like a very slam dunk case.
That being said, Stain's team is going with the defense
that he and Debbie did in fact know each other
and that on the night of her murder or sometime
just prior to her murder, they had consensual sex, but
he was not the one to kill her and apparently
wasn't there when she died. His attorney won't give any details,
(31:11):
but does say that there's proof they were not strangers,
which is cryptic and concerning, because if they have proof
of that, I still don't think it's gonna do enough,
especially since you know they have proof that he attacked
at least one other woman, So it feels still not
that important, but it certainly could be, and it's definitely intriguing,
(31:35):
so I'm interested to see. I'm gonna keep an eye
on this case. But I did want to say, you know,
even if she did know him, that can actually lend
credibility to the idea that he killed her after attacking her,
because right now, it's honestly kind of weird that he
killed her but hasn't at least as far as we know,
killed anybody else, or as far as we know, killed
anybody before her, because it's very uncommon for a criminal
(31:59):
to start their crime their career with a crime like this.
I mean, it does happen, but my thing, my thought
process is that maybe he killed her to avoid getting
caught because she knew him, whereas these other women have
no idea who he was, so he covers his face
up enough attacks them, and then he doesn't have to
kill them because they're not going to be able to
(32:20):
identify him. They can't say for sure it was him,
and he only left DNA at the one crime scene,
which is a good thing he did because it tied him,
you know, that's kind of what got him. But anyway,
that's my kind of thought process. It's like if if
he did actually know her in a way that makes
it more likely that it gives him a motive to
(32:41):
kill her, essentially, so I'm interested to see how that
sort of a line of defense is going to work
out or potentially backfire. For now, though, that's all I
really have. This is an active case with you know,
only a suspect. He's not officially the perpetrator. I'll be
sure to update once we know how things end up.
(33:03):
I know this is a little bit of a shorter
case this week, but I found it really interesting and
I found it to be frustrating that this man was
able to attack these women for so long and that
he was never caught. It just goes to show that
there's a lot of crime in central California. It's you know,
(33:23):
it's just it's a it can be a scary place.
It can be a scary place. I want to eventually cover.
There was like a serial killer in some areas around there.
That I mean, he killed people for like years and
years and he was finally caught like a couple of
years ago. But the case is really interesting because it's
all like gang activity in these areas, which I don't
think people think about gang activity and like farming communities,
(33:45):
but it's actually very prevalent in California and part of
that is why he got away with it for so long.
But anyway, I'll cover that case eventually. For now, I
just want to kind of finish talking about Debbie, you know,
because I think it's really horrible that she was killed
so young. She was clearly a very intelligent, driven, smart,
(34:07):
hard working young woman, and I think it's really awful
that it's taken this long, you know, thirty years almost
for her family to potentially see justice. I'm glad that
her parents are still alive to see this case go
to trial. And I promise you guys, I will update
(34:29):
you once we have a resolution or if anything else
of interest happens with this case. And again, I want
to mix in these smaller, lesser known cases because I
think it's important to cover true crime that maybe hasn't
been done. One hundred times to talk about victims who
maybe don't get the same exposure, especially when their cases
(34:51):
aren't solved. So I hope everybody enjoys this. If you
feel like making yourself sick to your stomach, feel free
to look at this guy's Facebook pag. They're horrible guys,
A loser. But yeah. I'll update once we have a
resolution to this case, and I'll be back next week
with another case. Thanks to all my new listeners, you
(35:12):
guys are amazing. I really appreciate you, guys. I promise
I'm gonna be keep putting out content every week. There
won't be skipped weeks unless you know I've got the
flu or something horrible. I want everybody to I hate
having to wait for podcasts. I hate when they don't
post for like weeks at a time. It makes me insane.
So I promise not to do that to you guys,
(35:32):
and please like, rate, review, share with your friends and family,
join me on Instagram, and until next week, everybody, stay
safe and have a nice have a nice week. Stay
out of the wind if you're anywhere near me. Bye.
Dark Cast Network. Out of the shadows come the best
indie podcasts. Hey, guys, welcome back to I think episode seven. Eventually,
(00:36):
I'm gonna have to stop saying what episode it is
because I'm gonna lose track. I can't believe it's been
seven episodes already. It's absolutely crazy. Thanks everybody who's been listening.
I don't know a lot of subscribers already. You guys
are amazing. I'm not trying to brag. I'm like, honestly,
very pleasantly surprised and super super grateful. So thanks everybody
for listening. What you're listening to is true Crime California.
(01:00):
This is a podcast about murders another you know, criminal
activity in the Great Golden State. And I am coming
to you during a crazy windstorm. I don't know how
many people know, but I live in Los Angeles, in
Burbank specifically, and we are having like eighty mile an
hour wind gusts, which is not normal. We've definitely had
(01:22):
windy days before and even like exceptionally windy, but never
like this. This is nuts. My back fence just fell over,
like it's down. It's done, Dunzo, like ripped out of
the ground. It's absolutely bonkers. So if you hear some
deep rumbling in the background, it's just the wind. It's
not my dog's for a change, although it could be
them as well, but as of right now, it's the wind,
(01:44):
and that shit is loud. I was actually at the
Annenberg Beach House today. I'm a caterer and I was
there doing a walk through because we're gonna start catering
like weddings and events there, which is amazing. It's literally
on the beach in Santa Monica. And while we were there,
a brush in Pacific Palisades was just just like up
on the hill broke out and we saw it. And
(02:05):
with the wind, it's been spreading. I know people who
are having to evacuate. It's just nuts. It really really sucks.
And this year's been really dry. We had two years
of like wet, wet, wet, so everything grew, then I
dried out and now it's gonna burn, which is such
a bummer. So anybody who's up there out there, I
hope you guys are all okay. To my friends who
(02:26):
live in the area, stay safe. If you need somebody
to watch your animals, you know where to find me. Anyway,
this week, I am doing, as promised, a lesser known case.
Now I didn't explicitly promise that in any previous recordings,
but in the description about this podcast it says that
I'm gonna do cases that are very well known in
(02:48):
cases that are a little bit less well known. And
this one I think was well known in certain circles
but was fairly new to me. And it does have
some like TV shows and things like some amount of coverage,
but it doesn't have, you know, the same coverage that
like the Wonderland murders or poly class have like, for instance,
so comparatively, pardon me, this is a much less well
(03:11):
known case, but still like a really interesting case. And
so this week we're doing another case from the nineties,
and this is the case of the murder of Debbie Dorian.
Debbie Dorian was a twenty two year old college student
at Fresno State who was murdered in her apartment in Fresno, California,
most likely August twentieth, nineteen ninety six, but unfortunately was
(03:36):
not found until two days later when she was found
by her father, which super sucks. So this is the
case of her very tragic death and it takes some
really interesting twists and turns as well, and the most
surprising thing, well, I won't get ahead, but it's an
interesting case for sure. So let's just get into it
(03:56):
and talk about Debbie and her life and where she lived.
One of the things I like about this podcast is
I sort of get to talk about the state and
the cities. I love California. I love talking about it.
I love its history. So it's fun to sort of,
you know, discuss the different areas for people who are
or are not around from around here. Debbie was a
(04:17):
third or fourth generation Californian, specifically from Fresno. Now, Fresno
is very much in central California. It's surrounded by farm
towns and farming. It's pretty rural. Oh did you guys
hear that something just fell over? Okay, sorry, guys. My
son's basketball hoop just took a dive in the backyard,
(04:38):
as did one of my plant holders. But I already
got all the plants off of it, so I wasn't lying.
It's very very windy, and now our power is flickering,
so let's hope we can record this anyway talking about Fresno.
So Fresno is definitely, Like you know, it's it's in
the middle of nowhere. Basically, it's like in the very
middle of California. It's not near the coast, it's not
(05:00):
really near anything. And it's interesting because as of twenty twenty,
Fresno is the fifth most populous city in the state,
which is significant because California is the most populated state
in the USA with about I think just over thirty
nine million people, and Fresno has just over five hundred thousand,
(05:21):
so just over half a million people live in the city.
So it's not by any means a small town, but
it is sort of in the middle of nowhere, and
it's definitely not any sort of tourist attraction, you know,
like San Francisco's on the water, they have the ports,
they have like all the fun like the pier and like,
you know, it's just sort of a thing. Los Angeles
I don't think I need to explain. Even Sacramento. It's
(05:44):
like a capital city. So Sacramento is kind of gnarly.
Having lived, you know, grown up near there, I can
say that, but at least like it still has a
tourist draw. I would say Fresno stocked in cities like
this that are sort of just in the middle of nowhere.
They really don't have any sort of tourism or any
sort of draw for anybody who doesn't live there. And
(06:08):
this was especially true in the nineteen nineties when Fresno
was honestly like a really scary place. I remember growing
up and being like stay away from Fresno. They had
a ton of gang activity, ton of violent crimes, property crimes.
Things were a bit of a mess. Like even police
at the time were like, yeah, no, things were really
bad here in the nineties. Even today, actually Fresno is
(06:31):
way higher than the national average for crime and also
higher than the average in California by like quite a bit.
But back then in the nineties, it was even worse.
Like I said, I watched this interview with a detective
who worked in Fresno in the nineties, and he was like, yeah,
our city was completely overrun with crime. So for a
cop to admit that, like, it's got to be it's
(06:53):
got to be bad. Now that being said, even you know,
back then at this time, there there were nice areas
in the city just like anywhere, like any city, even
like the hardest cities in the country, are going to
have like little enclaves you know that are kind of safe.
And Debbie grew up like a pretty safe and stable
home life. You know, she wasn't like out on the streets.
(07:15):
You know, she had a fairly normal, like suburban childhood.
She was a fun, hard working young woman who graduated
from Bullard High School in nineteen ninety two and immediately
went to college studying economics. Now, her plan upon graduating
Fresno State was to go to grad school at San
Francisco State College, so like just up the road a
(07:37):
few hours. So, you know, she very much in control
of her life, knew what she wanted to do. She
was close with both of her parents. She was very independent,
so when she went away to college, she eventually ended
up getting an apartment by herself instead of staying at
home or living with roommates or you know, in the dorms.
Which is funny because Fresno State College is literally less
(08:01):
than five miles from her high school. So she absolutely
could have lived at home while going to college and
just chose not to because she was wanting to like
start her life. Now, going to Fresno State made a
lot of sense if you live in a city that
has like a decent college and you don't have to
move away, and you don't have to spend the money
on like a private school or like a UC or whatever.
(08:23):
Like it's the best thing to do because you still
get a good education and you don't have to pay
a ton of money. And again, she stayed in her hometown,
which I think is really nice because, like, transitioning to
college can be really scary. You're leaving home, You're leaving
everything you've ever known. It's nice to be able to
stay in the city where you grew up, you know.
But it's interesting because she chose to stay near home,
(08:45):
but not stay home. She wanted to have her own life,
which I think is really great. So she's twenty two,
which means she's getting towards the end of her undergrad
and things are starting, you know, she wants to go
to San Francisco State's checking out Sacramento State as well.
She's sort of casting a wide net to see where
she wants to go to school. Now. On the morning
(09:07):
of August twenty second, nineteen ninety six, her father, Peter,
drove to her apartment to check on her because she
had not shown up at his house that morning. Their
plan was to go to Sacramento State to look at
the campus as Debbie, you know, was going to graduate
at the end of that year, so she's scouting schools.
They're sort of getting ahead of things. Now she's in August,
(09:28):
so she's going to graduate what May or June if
she wants to go right into grad school, she's going
to be looking at these colleges and then applying to
them immediately and then going. Unfortunately that didn't happen, but
that's sort of like, you know, the order of things.
So she clearly is a very organized and really on
it person, which I wouldn't know anything about personally, but
(09:48):
I do respect that she is. Like so she was
so on target with her goals. Now, her father, Peter
arrives at her apartment and he noticed that not only
is her door unlocked, but it's partially open. And I
don't think it was like open open, like enough to
see it with the naked eye, but when you got
to the door, you could tell that it was not
(10:10):
fully closed. And I assume this is the case because
they made a point to say the door was open.
But also nobody had called the police or checked on
her prior to Peter's coming over, and she did live
in an apartment complex, and there'll be more about that later.
So if the door had been like open open, I
think somebody would have noticed, would have checked on her,
would have called the you know, management company, maybe even
(10:32):
the police, you know. But as it was, it was
just barely open and enough to make Peter worry. So
he goes inside and he finds what I would not
wish on my worst enemy, and that is his twenty
two year old daughter, Debbie dead inside. She's laying face up.
She's wearing only a T shirt and nothing else, so
(10:54):
she is naked mostly, which is fucking horrifying. Her hands
and feet are bound with duct tape, and her face
is covered in that same tape. The tape is covering
both her mouth and her nose so that she could
not breathe. And I will just say that this is
what killed her, which ugh, I mean to really think
(11:18):
about what that is like and what that must have
been like is just harrowing. It's awful. Peter immediately ran
out of the apartment, found a neighbor to call police.
He later said that he knew he had to keep
some level of composure to ensure that the police would
come quickly. If he'd been like openly losing it, he
(11:38):
wouldn't have been, you know, it would have been more
difficult for him to communicate what he needed. And also
I think he was probably in some amount of shock,
to be fair. You know, like this is not an
easy thing to come upon, so I feel like he
was probably having almost like an out of body experience.
But he later said that like he had enough presence
of mind to know that he needed what hit my mic, sorry,
(12:00):
you know, he knew that he needed to communicate calmly
so that he could get the help he needed as
quickly as possible. Now, unfortunately, Debbie was already dead at
this point, but I do think that his thought process
made a lot of sense. The police come, they find Debbie,
and they pretty quickly they determined that she had been
(12:20):
raped before she died. Now, luckily there is semen at
the scene, which they dutifully collect, which is good because
this is nineteen ninety six, so you know, DNA is
not great, but it exists, so they know to collect
this kind of evidence and to hold on to it.
This story, of course, makes the news, as Debbie was
a very pretty young white college student, so perfect for
(12:41):
a news story in the nineties. Like I said, this
place was overrun with crime. But they definitely pick and
choose who they want to sort of highlight, and she
was a good candidate for that. And this of course
terrifies people in the area. Like I said, you know,
she doesn't live in a bad area, so for this
to happen to her feels particularly traumatizing, I think for
(13:02):
people who live in this city and feel like they've
found a safe place to be and it's just not
the case. Police did what they could, and they did
work really fast, processing the DNA on the scene to
the best of their ability given the year's nineteen ninety six.
They took note of a few other things that the apartment,
mostly that the door had not been forced open, which
unfortunately comes into play later and we'll talk about that.
(13:26):
So they of course began looking at anybody who knew
Debbie because maybe it was somebody that she let inside deliberately.
So that was kind of their thought process in the beginning,
but it does have broader implications later. They didn't really
get very far with this line of investigation, but about
two months after her murder, police did arrest a suspect
named Maurice Dixon. I hate to admit that I couldn't
(13:48):
find hardly any information that explained how they got to
the point of arresting him. I think maybe he knew
her and do you want to call out that. Also, he
was a black man, so it was probably like a
pretty easy choice. I do also know that his DNA
ended up being a partial match to that at the scene,
So based on that partial match, he was arrested on
(14:09):
suspicion of murder. But about two weeks later and he
was in jail the whole time. After taking a more
specific DNA test, he was found to definitely not be
a match. Now, as I'd mentioned, back then, DNA technology
was not what it is today. They had multiple tests
back then to sort of narrow down suspects, while now
we can get like exact matches from touch DNA, so
(14:32):
the difference is pretty insane. So he took at first
what was called a DQ test, which indicated that he
might be a match. Now, not every person who takes
this test is going to potentially be a match, so
that gave police like a good starting point, like, okay,
let's arrest him, let's detain him. Potentially he knows her,
maybe he was in the area. I don't know. But
(14:53):
with the whatever info they had that got them to
this DNA point, the DNA again pointed to him. Now
fortunately for him, but unfortunately for the case. The second
test that was much more specific said he definitely was
not the perpetrator, and this was a one in three
million kind of deal. So not a match. Definitely not
(15:14):
a match. So now police are back at square one,
and they have no real leads, no suspects. They're pretty
much just like at a loss, and pretty quickly, very unfortunately,
the case goes cold and it stays completely cold for
six years. So now I'm going to talk about a
(15:35):
nearby town called Visalia. Visalia is also in California. It's
in a different county than Fresno, but not very far away,
like maybe forty miles, which when dealing with rural areas,
really isn't that far, at least in terms of drive time,
because there's not the same kind of traffic that you're
going to see in bigger cities. Now, I said six years,
(15:57):
and we will get there, but as of right now,
we're in nineteen ninety nine in Visalia, which is like
not a huge town but not tiny and again surrounded
by like farming. It's very rural and does have a
decent amount of crime. So it's nineteen ninety nine and
there's a young woman around eighteen years old who's riding
her bike home from her job at an ice cream store.
(16:18):
While riding, she is approached by a man in a
hooded jacket who pulls a bandana over her nose, grabs
her bike handles like the handlebars, stops her in the street,
and puts a gun into her side. He tells her
that he doesn't want to hurt her, but he will
if she doesn't do what he says. He then pulls
her off of the street into some bushes or like
(16:40):
sort of between them and like a tree behind the
bushes basically, and begins fondling her breasts. He then masturbates
onto the street or sort of does this while he's
fondling her, and then runs away. This poor woman, after
it's over, goes to her sister's house and tells her
what happened, and her sister immediately calls the police. Police
(17:03):
arrive on the scene and they take a DNA sample
from the semen on the ground, which is just so gross,
it's just awful, and they also get details from the victim.
Over the next four years, there are another seven or
eight attacks similar or worse than this one. Now, this
includes an attack in January of two thousand and two
(17:25):
where a woman was waiting for a bus again and vicealia,
when she was approached by a man in a hooded
jacket who put a gun into her side and fondled
her while she stood there terrified. Now there isn't a
ton of information about the other attacks, but I can
tell you that they include forced oral copulation, attempted forced
oral copulation, rape, sodomy, kidnapping, and other really terrible charges.
(17:53):
All of the attacks took place, or most of them
took place, or at least started outside in like public locations,
but sort of off the beaten path, and all of
the victims, except for the woman at the bus stop,
were moved to a new location before being assaulted. All
of these assaults also involved a gun, a man in
(18:14):
a hooded jacket, and often included a bandana. So police
are seeing a definite pattern here, but they have no suspect. Finally,
in two thousand and two. After this most recent attack,
and there is one more after this in two thousand
and two. But after this attack that occurred in January,
police upload the DNA from the nineteen ninety nine attack,
(18:35):
which they very much believe to be connected to this one,
into CODIS and they get a match. But it's not
the type of match that you're thinking. Police. Instead of
getting a match to a person, they get a match
to an unsolved case, and that case is the murder
(18:58):
of Debbie Door. That's right. Police were able to tie
the sexual assault in nineteen ninety nine to the Debbie
Durian murder in nineteen ninety six. Now note that I
do not say they found her killer, because that is
up for debate and will get into that later. But
(19:19):
the presence of semen, unfortunately does not mean that the
person whose semen it belongs to was her killer, and
we'll talk about that. However, that little note aside, I think,
based on the fact that the other location of this
DNA was it yet another crime scene, gives us a
good idea of the truth and what this guy is about. Now,
(19:41):
the hand of justice can be quite slow, so it
wasn't until two thousand and nine that police put together
a case of nine charges or nine separate cases against
an unknown John Doe perpetrator. This is a pretty uncommon
thing and it was the first time this ever happened
into Larry County, which is where Vicelia is is located.
So they didn't even charge anybody in Debbie's murder at
(20:05):
this point, only in these Visalia attacks, even though they
knew at least one of the attacks was connected to
her case. They only charged for these attacks, and it's like,
how do you file charges against no one? You are
only filing them against DNA with the hope that eventually
that DNA is going to be linked to a person. Now,
(20:26):
I think part of the reason they did this was
to drum up leads in the case and to let
the purp know that they were not giving up on
solving these attacks and that they were actively searching for
this guy. Unfortunately, even after this, nothing really happened. Now
seven years later, in twenty sixteen, so twenty years after
(20:47):
Debbie's murder, two retired detectives who had originally worked on
Debbie's case came back onto the case, which was declared reopen.
And these two men came back on because this was
like the case of their lives. They didn't want to
see it unsolved. They wanted it to be solved in
their lifetimes. So they came out of retirement they came
(21:07):
back to this case. And I believe that this is
due to some new information about the case coming up,
which apparently was good enough to bring these guys back.
But I'll tell you right now, I don't have any
specifics on what that was. And again, in just a moment,
this will all come together and we'll all kind of
know why that is. So the case has reopened, and
(21:27):
as I'm sure we all remember, in twenty eighteen, a
very big case was cracked thanks to the use the
brand new use of genetic genealogy. Now the case I'm
talking about is, of course, the Golden State Killer or GSK,
also known as Euron's the Original or the East Area Rapist,
(21:49):
the Original Nightstalker. This man had many different names. His
legal name is Joseph James DeAngelo, and he was caught
for his insanely terrible crimes using familial genealogy. And the
way this works, I'm just gonna kind of dumb it down.
I'm sure most people who know anything about true crime, No,
but I found a way that kind of, in my opinion,
(22:10):
makes it simple to understand. Basically, when police have a
DNA profile but nothing to compare it to directly, meaning
no matches in codis or any other database, they can
now start using familial DNA to narrow down their pool
of suspects, even if they don't have anybody in mind.
So what they can do is they can use the
DNA they have and compare it to the DNA people
(22:32):
upload online for genealogy purposes, and they use that to
figure out who their purpose within a few people. So like,
if there are three brothers, they can narrow it down
to the three, which they've done multiple times at this point,
but they narrow it down to like three brothers, but
then from there they have to do the legwork to
figure out which one it is, and that can be
based on like where they were or I mean, you
(22:54):
can get a DNA profile from the three brothers and
only one will perfectly match. So the genealogy gets you,
like really really close, but it doesn't get you all
the way there. And obviously it's much more complicated than
just like going to ancestry dot com. Like police can't
actually do that. There's a particular kind of database that
can be used, so it's not like they're just wildening
(23:15):
out with all of our DNA. But for the purposes
of explaining how this works, I sort of just simplified,
and to be honest, I don't fully understand all of
the laws or implications, but I know that essentially that's
how it works. So anyway, once GSK is caught using
this method, police nationwide did a collective hmmmmm, and then
started using this to solve other cold cases, including Debie's case,
(23:40):
which also included all of these sexual assault rapes and
attacks in Visalia. Now, I do know that they did
have this man in mind before they compared his DNA
the suspect. I do not know how or why. And
again I kind of mentioned that the reason that I
don't know how or why is because that information is
not yet availab because the trial for this man has
(24:03):
not even started. Now in twenty twenty five. That being said,
somehow police were alerted to a man who lived in
the area at the time of the attacks. Now, this
man did not have any DNA in the database, but
they used this new method and were able to narrow
down their search to his family and with this information
(24:23):
they were given a search warrant that allowed them to
collect DNA from his trash, which they did, and when
they did, they found that it was a perfect match
not only to the Vicelia attack, but to the Debbie
Dorian crime scene. So here we have two perfect matches
(24:44):
between the two cases. It's the same guy, and the
man is fifty seven year old Nikki Stain and it's
nick e Y Stane. And I tell you this because
he has active Facebook profiles at an online presence. So
if anybody wants to go look and kind of see
what this guy's about, you can do that. And I
don't really care because fuck this guy. Now. At the
(25:05):
time of Debbie's murder, he was a twenty nine year
old married father of two living in Vicealia, which is
beyond horrifying that that is. I mean, there's no good suspect,
but like to be doing the shit while you have
a wife and kids, It just adds another layer to it.
And as far as the attacks, there's a map that
(25:26):
shows where they all took place. And wouldn't you know,
Nicki's house is not even a mile from most of
the Vicealia attacks. And maybe under two miles at most
from all of them. So he's just kicking back in
his own backyard doing this shit, which is great because
it's just another sort of like gotcha for the police.
Right now. Once police matched the DNA, they arrested Nikki
(25:48):
at his job managing a Charlie's Philly stakes in a
nearby mall. His employees actually had to call the owner
of the business to tell him, like, hey, the police
just came in and arrested the manager, which was a
shock to everybody because he had no record. He seemed
like a family man. I think he was twice divorced,
but like he was like a very normal guy. Now
(26:12):
things from here get a little bit murky, because again
we're entering into a time where the evidence is still
being kind of kept hush hush because they haven't gone
to trial yet. But basically, I've read that at some
point he did admit to the attacks and visalia, but
denied having anything to do with Debbie's murder. Now, in
other articles, I know that he's pled not guilty at
(26:33):
all charges, So I don't know. But what I do
know is that this man lived a very dual life.
On the one hand, he's a twice divorced father of
two adult children who has pictures of his extended family
on his Facebook page, where he posted all sorts of
family friendly content, including him cooking for his family at
all holidays and get togethers now. On the other hand,
(26:56):
he had another Facebook page under the name Nick steal Steel.
This profile is super gross and includes all sorts of
like honestly like pathetic posts trying to like pick up
random women. It's such like an old person on Facebook
move to post like sexy posts on your own timeline,
(27:17):
as if you're talking to like an audience, where like
nobody's reading any of it, you know, It's like it's
just one of the It's almost like I would feel
bad for him if he wasn't who he was now.
On one of his like gross posts, he posts a
fireplace he apparently had installed in his bedroom barf, and
in another he's talking about finding someone to go have
(27:37):
drinks with, which again like barf. Criminal psychologists interviewed about
this case said actually that having this sort of dual
life is really common for criminals who have like sexual
motivation to their crimes. They have this dual life and
they're just sort of narcissistic enough to think that they
can get away with it. So this guy has just
(27:58):
taken all the boxes that point to guilty. I mean,
we've got DNA, but even beyond that, we've got the proximity,
We've got these weird dual facebooks, we've got just you know,
he just seems gnarly. So he was arrested on my birthday,
January twenty ninth, twenty twenty, which I love for him
(28:19):
and for me. His trial has not officially started, but
I do note that the pre trial hearings to determine
if he'll be charged have taken place, and as of
October of twenty twenty four, they were still kind of
ongoing when a judge finally decided to allow all of
these cases to be tried together. Now. Prior to that,
there had been multiple hearings where victims and witnesses, including
(28:42):
Debbi's father, testified in order to determine if Nikki should
be charged for the sex crimes and the murder, and
also if they should be charged together. One of his victims,
one of the women who've been fondled I believe the
first one from nineteen ninety nine, took the stand and
talked about how the attack forever changed her life, how
she lives in fear that she'll be attacked again. She
(29:03):
also talked about how the assault felt like it lasted forever.
You know, this has been you know, over twenty years
of her life. That feels like they've been stolen from her,
which is very, very sad. Debbie's father also says, you know,
he has the day he found her body burned into
his memory, which I fully believe, and he recounted that
(29:24):
in precise detail while on the stand. Now, another witness
also came forward, and this was Debbie's neighbor. Now, this
neighbor saw Niki Stain knock on Debbie's door two nights
before her body was found. He also saw her open
the door to Nicki. Whether or not she let him
(29:47):
in wasn't discussed in what I read, but I can
tell you that he positively identified Nicki as the man
at the house, pointing him out in the courtroom and saying, yes,
that is the man that I saw at her apartment
that night. And this very well could be the last
time anybody saw Debbie alive. And it also tracks with
(30:07):
the timeline of her having been dead for two days,
she didn't go to work during that time, nobody had
heard from her, and then her father had to come
and find her body. So everything aligns timeline wise as well. Now.
The first hearing ended and the judge decided that Stain
could be charged with all of these together. The second
(30:28):
hearing came and went and that judge ruled that he
could be tried. Oh sorry. The first one was to
determine if he could be charged at all, they said yes.
The second one was to determine if he could be
tried together, which his attorney said would get in the
way of him getting a fair trial due to all
of the emotion. But it really seems like nobody cares
about that because we have DNA evidence, eyewitness testimony, living victims.
(30:49):
I mean, it feels like a very slam dunk case.
That being said, Stain's team is going with the defense
that he and Debbie did in fact know each other
and that on the night of her murder or sometime
just prior to her murder, they had consensual sex, but
he was not the one to kill her and apparently
wasn't there when she died. His attorney won't give any details,
(31:11):
but does say that there's proof they were not strangers,
which is cryptic and concerning, because if they have proof
of that, I still don't think it's gonna do enough,
especially since you know they have proof that he attacked
at least one other woman, So it feels still not
that important, but it certainly could be, and it's definitely intriguing,
(31:35):
so I'm interested to see. I'm gonna keep an eye
on this case. But I did want to say, you know,
even if she did know him, that can actually lend
credibility to the idea that he killed her after attacking her,
because right now, it's honestly kind of weird that he
killed her but hasn't at least as far as we know,
killed anybody else, or as far as we know, killed
anybody before her, because it's very uncommon for a criminal
(31:59):
to start their crime their career with a crime like this.
I mean, it does happen, but my thing, my thought
process is that maybe he killed her to avoid getting
caught because she knew him, whereas these other women have
no idea who he was, so he covers his face
up enough attacks them, and then he doesn't have to
kill them because they're not going to be able to
(32:20):
identify him. They can't say for sure it was him,
and he only left DNA at the one crime scene,
which is a good thing he did because it tied him,
you know, that's kind of what got him. But anyway,
that's my kind of thought process. It's like if if
he did actually know her in a way that makes
it more likely that it gives him a motive to
(32:41):
kill her, essentially, so I'm interested to see how that
sort of a line of defense is going to work
out or potentially backfire. For now, though, that's all I
really have. This is an active case with you know,
only a suspect. He's not officially the perpetrator. I'll be
sure to update once we know how things end up.
(33:03):
I know this is a little bit of a shorter
case this week, but I found it really interesting and
I found it to be frustrating that this man was
able to attack these women for so long and that
he was never caught. It just goes to show that
there's a lot of crime in central California. It's you know,
(33:23):
it's just it's a it can be a scary place.
It can be a scary place. I want to eventually cover.
There was like a serial killer in some areas around there.
That I mean, he killed people for like years and
years and he was finally caught like a couple of
years ago. But the case is really interesting because it's
all like gang activity in these areas, which I don't
think people think about gang activity and like farming communities,
(33:45):
but it's actually very prevalent in California and part of
that is why he got away with it for so long.
But anyway, I'll cover that case eventually. For now, I
just want to kind of finish talking about Debbie, you know,
because I think it's really horrible that she was killed
so young. She was clearly a very intelligent, driven, smart,
(34:07):
hard working young woman, and I think it's really awful
that it's taken this long, you know, thirty years almost
for her family to potentially see justice. I'm glad that
her parents are still alive to see this case go
to trial. And I promise you guys, I will update
(34:29):
you once we have a resolution or if anything else
of interest happens with this case. And again, I want
to mix in these smaller, lesser known cases because I
think it's important to cover true crime that maybe hasn't
been done. One hundred times to talk about victims who
maybe don't get the same exposure, especially when their cases
(34:51):
aren't solved. So I hope everybody enjoys this. If you
feel like making yourself sick to your stomach, feel free
to look at this guy's Facebook pag. They're horrible guys,
A loser. But yeah. I'll update once we have a
resolution to this case, and I'll be back next week
with another case. Thanks to all my new listeners, you
(35:12):
guys are amazing. I really appreciate you, guys. I promise
I'm gonna be keep putting out content every week. There
won't be skipped weeks unless you know I've got the
flu or something horrible. I want everybody to I hate
having to wait for podcasts. I hate when they don't
post for like weeks at a time. It makes me insane.
So I promise not to do that to you guys,
(35:32):
and please like, rate, review, share with your friends and family,
join me on Instagram, and until next week, everybody, stay
safe and have a nice have a nice week. Stay
out of the wind if you're anywhere near me. Bye.
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