November 26, 2025 • 16 mins
First responders were called to a Cold Springs home for a little girl “not breathing”… but what they found didn’t look anything like a medical emergency. Five-year-old Izabella was cold to the touch, lying beside a bare mattress, her small body covered in bruises no child earns by accident.
As detectives moved through the house, the truth surfaced fast, and the parents’ stories fell apart the moment they opened their mouths.
Listen to the lies that Nicholas Loving and his partner tried to get away with.
**************************************
Do you have thoughts about this case, or is there a specific true crime case you’d like to hear about? Let me know with an email or a voice message: https://murderandlove.com/contact
Find the sources used in this episode and learn more about how to support Love and Murder: Heartbreak to Homicide and gain access to even more cases, including bonus episodes, ad-free and intro-free cases, case files and more at: https://murderandlove.com
Music:
℗ lesfreemusic
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/love-and-murder-heartbreak-to-homicide--4348896/support.
As detectives moved through the house, the truth surfaced fast, and the parents’ stories fell apart the moment they opened their mouths.
Listen to the lies that Nicholas Loving and his partner tried to get away with.
**************************************
Do you have thoughts about this case, or is there a specific true crime case you’d like to hear about? Let me know with an email or a voice message: https://murderandlove.com/contact
Find the sources used in this episode and learn more about how to support Love and Murder: Heartbreak to Homicide and gain access to even more cases, including bonus episodes, ad-free and intro-free cases, case files and more at: https://murderandlove.com
Music:
℗ lesfreemusic
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/love-and-murder-heartbreak-to-homicide--4348896/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
At six fifty am on April third, twenty twenty five,
deputies from the Washer County Sheriff's Office were sent to
a house on Crystal Canyon Boulevard in Cold Springs, Nevada
for a report of a little girl who wasn't breathing,
had no pulse, and was cold to the touch. When
first responders went upstairs, they found five year old Isabella
(00:23):
lying in a bedroom next to a tiny, cribsized mattress
on the floor with no bed frame. They started life
saving measures, but it was already too late. Isabella was
pronounced dead at seven twenty two am.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Welcome to Love and Murder Heartbreak to Homicide were kai's
AI co hosts jumping in with your midweek mini. Don't
forget that this podcast is completely listener funded. If you
want more cases early listens in bonus episodes you won't
hear anywhere else, join us on Patreon, Patreon dot com,
(00:58):
slash Love and Murder. I actually just put out a
bonus of a man who was accused of secretly administering
abortion medication to his pregnant girlfriend, leading to a miscarriage.
If you want to hear this case in more past bonuses,
join the lambfam at the five dollar tier or above
Patreon dot com slash love and murder. Now, let's get
(01:19):
back to your midweek mini.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
It didn't take long for deputies to realize this wasn't
a medical emergency. It was a crime scene. They saw
a lot of signs of trauma. Isabella had oral trauma
and heavy bruising on her face, pelvis, hips, the insides
of her biceps, and on her genitals. There were multiple bruises, cuts, scabs,
and scrapes across her arms, legs, torso and face. On
(01:44):
her face alone, they counted more than ten visible injuries,
a black eye on one side, a gash over the other.
This wasn't a child who fell once. This was a
child who had been hurt over and over. The adult
in the house were thirty five year old Nicholas Loving
and his wife Andrea. They lived there with Isabella and
(02:06):
her two sisters. It didn't take them long to find
out this wasn't Nicholas's first time being accused of hurting
a child. Back in twenty fourteen, he'd been charged in
a different case involving his then girlfriend's two year old son.
That case wasn't some minor thing either. He was charged
(02:26):
with two counts of child abuse and one count of
domestic battery. He eventually pleaded guilty to one count of
child abuse causing substantial bodily harm, the exact same charge
he was initially facing now in connection with Isabella. In
that twenty fourteen case, Nicholas admitted that he bit the
(02:46):
little boy on the right shoulder because he thought the
child was too rambunctious after a bath. The bite left
a distinct teethmark on the boy's shoulder. He also admitted
that he pulled the child up by the arm, which
most likely caused a spiral fracture. He told police that
he quote did not mean to harm the child, but
(03:08):
agreed the child had the broken arm because he lost
his temper. Judge Eliot Satler sentenced him to a suspended
prison sentence of up to ninety six months and sixty
months of probation. Because Nicholas stayed out of trouble on paper,
he never served time in prison for that conviction. Andrea
was already in his life back then. She was dating
(03:30):
Nicholas during that twenty fourteen case. Now years later, they
had three little girls together in this Cold Springs home
Isabella and her two sisters. When deputies started asking questions
about Isabella's condition and the obvious old and new injuries,
Nicholas and Andrea made sure to mention that there had
recently been a Child Protective Services case involving the family,
(03:54):
but told officers that CPS had closed it. They were
worried even in that moment, that police might call CPS again.
As detectives dug in, they learned that in the days
before she died, Isabella had been seriously sick. She had
been sick for about nine to ten days, coughing up
mucus and blood. When police asked why they hadn't taken
(04:17):
her to a doctor, Nicholas and Andreas said that they
were worried the doctors would see her injuries. They also
claimed somehow that they'd been advised not to seek medical
attention until their child had been sick for at least
twelve days, so according to them, they were just following
that advice. The picture of Isabella's daily life started to
(04:38):
come into focus through their statements and what deputies saw
in the house. In the girl's bedroom, right next to
that tiny mattress on the floor, there was a small
five y five foot cubby space. Nicholas admitted they used
that cubby as a kind of confinement area, and said
Isabella was sometimes put in there as punishment. He admitted
(04:58):
to locking her in their one but tried to push
more of the responsibility onto Andrea, saying she was the
one who mostly put Isabella in the cubby. Meanwhile, her
sisters slept comfortably on a nice queen sized bed in
the same room. Andrea started to give more details about
what life in that house really looked like for Isabella.
(05:20):
She told detectives she had recently seen Nicholas kick Isabella
in the genitals, and she saw him drag Isabella by
the collar or by the hood of her sweatshirt up
the stairs. Five days before Isabella died, Andrea said she
heard Nicholas screaming and then heard a thud that sounded
like a child being thrown. She didn't have to see
(05:42):
it to know what was happening. The night before Isabella
was found dead, things escalated, according to Nicholas, on the
night of March second, and yes, there's a date discrepancy
here with the April third death, Isabella told him she
was cold and didn't feel well. He said he took
her temperature and claimed it was only ninety six or
(06:02):
ninety seven degrees. Instead of calling a doctor, he put
her in the bath and later put her to bed.
Somewhere between seven and eight pm. Around midnight, one of
the other girls woke Andrea and Nicholas up and told
them Isabella was throwing up. They went to check on her,
decided she was okay, and all went back to sleep.
(06:22):
Sometime in the middle of the night, Nicholas said he
checked on her again. What he eventually admitted to police
was that he and Andrea actually discovered Isabella not breathing
at two am on April third, but no one called
nine one one until almost seven am. That's a five
hour gap. Nicholas first told detectives that the delay happened
(06:45):
because he was consoling Andrea, saying she was panicking and
he needed to calm her down, But as they kept
talking another version came out. Andrea told detectives Nicholas wouldn't
let her call nine one one at two am. She
said he told her he wanted to bury Isabella in the
backyard and then run to his parents' house in Virginia.
(07:06):
Andrea said she was against it because the body would rot.
According to her, They spent that time arguing and talking
about what to do, not trying to save their daughter. Eventually,
they gave up on the backyard burial idea and decided
on a different plan staging. According to the affidavit, they
(07:26):
decided to quote, remove Isabella from the cubby, drag her
and her bed across the room, and stage it there
so that the scene would match the story they were
going to tell that they had found her around seven
am and called for help right away. Later, when Nicholas
was reinterviewed and realized how bad that five hour delay looked,
he tried to blame it on Andrea. He told detectives
(07:50):
that running was actually her idea and tried to minimize
his role in the planning. When detectives pressed him on
the obvious injuries all over Isabel Bella's body, Nicholas gave
a long list of explanations. He denied ever hitting, spanking, shoving,
or kicking her. He said he was hardly ever home
because he was working. According to him, Isabella was just
(08:13):
constantly falling. He said she fell down the stairs. He
described two separate incidents where she supposedly fell out of
his forward pickup truck. About one of those accidents, which
he said happened a week and a half before her death,
he gave two completely different stories. In one, she hit
her face on the asphalt. In the other, she put
(08:33):
her hands down and broke her fall without hitting her face.
He said her black eye came from being hit in
the face with a plastic baseball bat by someone else,
maybe one of her sisters. To explain away the repeated bruising,
he told investigators they had planned to take Isabella to
a specialist in June to figure out why she was
(08:55):
falling so much. Andrea's statements didn't match his. She had
already told detectives she saw him kicking Isabella, dragging her upstairs,
and that she heard the thud of her being thrown.
Nicholas also had abrasions on his hands and fingers. When
detectives saw him, He blamed those on work too. Isabella's
sisters were interviewed separately. They told detectives they were woken
(09:19):
up around midnight, taken downstairs, and told by Nicholas that
Isabella had died and that they might be going on
a trip. So while their five year old sister lay upstairs.
They weren't being told to say goodbye, they were being
prepared to disappear. Andrea eventually summed it up in one sentence.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
I should go to jail for not helping her, and
Nick should go to jail for killing her.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Deputies secured the house immediately, and by the afternoon of
April third, twenty twenty five, detectives had enough to take
Nicholas into custody. His first charge was child abuse resulting
in substantial bodily harm. He was booked into the Washok
County Detention Facility. This was before the medical examiner had
(10:04):
even finished the autopsy, because the visible injuries alone were
enough to show Isabella had been hurt repeatedly and violently.
On April ninth, he had his first court appearance. Judge
Kendra Bertchie set his bail at ten million dollars cash only.
She told the court that Nevada lord didn't allow her
(10:24):
to hold him without bail on the charge he was
facing at that moment, but she made it very clear
she understood exactly how dangerous he was if Nicholas somehow
posted that bail. The conditions included home confinement and ankle monitor,
no contact with Andrea and absolutely no contact with his children.
(10:44):
All three girls were placed in CPS custody immediately. Nicholas
was supposed to appear virtually for the hearing, but he
never showed up on the screen. While the court system
moved through the first set of charges, detectives kept working
the case. They interviewed the family again, went through digital records,
(11:05):
reviewed the condition of the home, and waited for the
medical examiner's findings. Those findings turned everything. On July thirtieth,
twenty twenty five, the Washo County Medical Examiner's office officially
ruled Isabella's death a homicide. The final medical cause was
bacterial pneumonia, but the examiner reported that multiple blunt force injuries, malnutrition, dehydration,
(11:31):
and medical neglect significantly contributed to her death. In other words,
the abuse she suffered made her so weak and so
compromised that the pneumonia became fatal. She didn't just get
sick and die, her body had been broken down over time.
Once that homicide ruling came in, the charges changed. On
(11:52):
August sixth Nicholas was booked on a new charge, open murder,
and District Attorney Chris Hicks announced that his own office
would be filing a formal charge of first degree murder
against him that same week. Andrea wasn't spared either. Around
July twenty eighth, twenty twenty five, she was charged with
child abuse or neglect with substantial bodily harm. Her bail
(12:17):
hearing was held on August fifth. Judge Burchie set her
bail at two million dollars, also with no ten percent option.
If she posted it, she would be on home confinement
with GPS monitoring, supervised by the Department of Alternative Sentencing,
and forbidden from having contact with Nicholas or her children
unless CPS approved it. Andrea's next court dates were set
(12:41):
for August twelfth for emotion hearing and August fourteenth for
a status conference. While both parents sat in the legal
system trying to explain away a dead five year old,
d A. Hicks made it clear what direction the investigation
was going. He said his office and the Washoe County
Sheriff's Office were working closely to build a strong, evidence
(13:01):
based case. He emphasized that just as for Izzie, remains
our highest priority and that his team would methodically review
the evidence and ensure all legally viable charges are pursued.
He also made a general point that initial charges often
get amended after forensic findings come in, which was exactly
(13:22):
what happened here. On the other side, you could see
the defense strategies forming even before formal motions were filed.
For Nicholas, the pattern was obvious. Deny every injury, blame
every bruise on a fall point, fingers at Andrea whenever possible,
and keep repeating that he was almost never home and
(13:42):
the trauma extended far beyond just the physical evidence. When
Sheriff Darren Balm spoke publicly about Isabella's death, he said
the case deeply affected not only our community, but also
our dispatchers, the deputies, responding investigators, ri i'me. Scene investigators.
He said he made a personal commitment that they would
(14:04):
labor relentlessly to investigate this case and work tirelessly to
be the voice for and bring justice to Izzy. And
he finished with something that applies to every child abuse
case we've ever seen.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
If you see something, say something.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
By August twenty twenty five, that was where things stood.
Nicholas facing first degree murder, Andrea facing child abuse resulting
in substantial bodily harm and no trial or sentencing yet,
because the case was still active. The rest would be
up to the courts. The evidence, the autopsy, the witness statements,
(14:42):
the timeline, the five hour delay, and the overwhelming proof
that this little girl had been living in pain long
before she died. The community rallied in the only way
they could. Pink ribbons went up all over Cold Springs
and people held a candlelight vigil. Neighbors, strangers, deputies, and
families who had never met Isabella showed up anyway because
(15:06):
they wanted someone to show up for her now, even
if the people who were supposed to protect her never did.
Isabella was five, She was sick, hurting, frightened, and trapped,
and she deserved better than the people who were raising her.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
And that's all we have for this midweek mini. What
did you think of this case? Let us know we
always want to hear your thoughts. If you want more
information or to get episodes you won't hear on the
main feed, Join us over on Patreon, Patreon dot com,
slash Love and Murder. Every tear helps support the show,
helps us stay listener funded, and gives you access to
(15:44):
bonus content, early listens, and more. Just head over to
patreon dot com Slash Love and Murder. Thanks for listening,
thanks for supporting our podcast, and we'll see you in
the next episode.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Say the
At six fifty am on April third, twenty twenty five,
deputies from the Washer County Sheriff's Office were sent to
a house on Crystal Canyon Boulevard in Cold Springs, Nevada
for a report of a little girl who wasn't breathing,
had no pulse, and was cold to the touch. When
first responders went upstairs, they found five year old Isabella
(00:23):
lying in a bedroom next to a tiny, cribsized mattress
on the floor with no bed frame. They started life
saving measures, but it was already too late. Isabella was
pronounced dead at seven twenty two am.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Welcome to Love and Murder Heartbreak to Homicide were kai's
AI co hosts jumping in with your midweek mini. Don't
forget that this podcast is completely listener funded. If you
want more cases early listens in bonus episodes you won't
hear anywhere else, join us on Patreon, Patreon dot com,
(00:58):
slash Love and Murder. I actually just put out a
bonus of a man who was accused of secretly administering
abortion medication to his pregnant girlfriend, leading to a miscarriage.
If you want to hear this case in more past bonuses,
join the lambfam at the five dollar tier or above
Patreon dot com slash love and murder. Now, let's get
(01:19):
back to your midweek mini.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
It didn't take long for deputies to realize this wasn't
a medical emergency. It was a crime scene. They saw
a lot of signs of trauma. Isabella had oral trauma
and heavy bruising on her face, pelvis, hips, the insides
of her biceps, and on her genitals. There were multiple bruises, cuts, scabs,
and scrapes across her arms, legs, torso and face. On
(01:44):
her face alone, they counted more than ten visible injuries,
a black eye on one side, a gash over the other.
This wasn't a child who fell once. This was a
child who had been hurt over and over. The adult
in the house were thirty five year old Nicholas Loving
and his wife Andrea. They lived there with Isabella and
(02:06):
her two sisters. It didn't take them long to find
out this wasn't Nicholas's first time being accused of hurting
a child. Back in twenty fourteen, he'd been charged in
a different case involving his then girlfriend's two year old son.
That case wasn't some minor thing either. He was charged
(02:26):
with two counts of child abuse and one count of
domestic battery. He eventually pleaded guilty to one count of
child abuse causing substantial bodily harm, the exact same charge
he was initially facing now in connection with Isabella. In
that twenty fourteen case, Nicholas admitted that he bit the
(02:46):
little boy on the right shoulder because he thought the
child was too rambunctious after a bath. The bite left
a distinct teethmark on the boy's shoulder. He also admitted
that he pulled the child up by the arm, which
most likely caused a spiral fracture. He told police that
he quote did not mean to harm the child, but
(03:08):
agreed the child had the broken arm because he lost
his temper. Judge Eliot Satler sentenced him to a suspended
prison sentence of up to ninety six months and sixty
months of probation. Because Nicholas stayed out of trouble on paper,
he never served time in prison for that conviction. Andrea
was already in his life back then. She was dating
(03:30):
Nicholas during that twenty fourteen case. Now years later, they
had three little girls together in this Cold Springs home
Isabella and her two sisters. When deputies started asking questions
about Isabella's condition and the obvious old and new injuries,
Nicholas and Andrea made sure to mention that there had
recently been a Child Protective Services case involving the family,
(03:54):
but told officers that CPS had closed it. They were
worried even in that moment, that police might call CPS again.
As detectives dug in, they learned that in the days
before she died, Isabella had been seriously sick. She had
been sick for about nine to ten days, coughing up
mucus and blood. When police asked why they hadn't taken
(04:17):
her to a doctor, Nicholas and Andreas said that they
were worried the doctors would see her injuries. They also
claimed somehow that they'd been advised not to seek medical
attention until their child had been sick for at least
twelve days, so according to them, they were just following
that advice. The picture of Isabella's daily life started to
(04:38):
come into focus through their statements and what deputies saw
in the house. In the girl's bedroom, right next to
that tiny mattress on the floor, there was a small
five y five foot cubby space. Nicholas admitted they used
that cubby as a kind of confinement area, and said
Isabella was sometimes put in there as punishment. He admitted
(04:58):
to locking her in their one but tried to push
more of the responsibility onto Andrea, saying she was the
one who mostly put Isabella in the cubby. Meanwhile, her
sisters slept comfortably on a nice queen sized bed in
the same room. Andrea started to give more details about
what life in that house really looked like for Isabella.
(05:20):
She told detectives she had recently seen Nicholas kick Isabella
in the genitals, and she saw him drag Isabella by
the collar or by the hood of her sweatshirt up
the stairs. Five days before Isabella died, Andrea said she
heard Nicholas screaming and then heard a thud that sounded
like a child being thrown. She didn't have to see
(05:42):
it to know what was happening. The night before Isabella
was found dead, things escalated, according to Nicholas, on the
night of March second, and yes, there's a date discrepancy
here with the April third death, Isabella told him she
was cold and didn't feel well. He said he took
her temperature and claimed it was only ninety six or
(06:02):
ninety seven degrees. Instead of calling a doctor, he put
her in the bath and later put her to bed.
Somewhere between seven and eight pm. Around midnight, one of
the other girls woke Andrea and Nicholas up and told
them Isabella was throwing up. They went to check on her,
decided she was okay, and all went back to sleep.
(06:22):
Sometime in the middle of the night, Nicholas said he
checked on her again. What he eventually admitted to police
was that he and Andrea actually discovered Isabella not breathing
at two am on April third, but no one called
nine one one until almost seven am. That's a five
hour gap. Nicholas first told detectives that the delay happened
(06:45):
because he was consoling Andrea, saying she was panicking and
he needed to calm her down, But as they kept
talking another version came out. Andrea told detectives Nicholas wouldn't
let her call nine one one at two am. She
said he told her he wanted to bury Isabella in the
backyard and then run to his parents' house in Virginia.
(07:06):
Andrea said she was against it because the body would rot.
According to her, They spent that time arguing and talking
about what to do, not trying to save their daughter. Eventually,
they gave up on the backyard burial idea and decided
on a different plan staging. According to the affidavit, they
(07:26):
decided to quote, remove Isabella from the cubby, drag her
and her bed across the room, and stage it there
so that the scene would match the story they were
going to tell that they had found her around seven
am and called for help right away. Later, when Nicholas
was reinterviewed and realized how bad that five hour delay looked,
he tried to blame it on Andrea. He told detectives
(07:50):
that running was actually her idea and tried to minimize
his role in the planning. When detectives pressed him on
the obvious injuries all over Isabel Bella's body, Nicholas gave
a long list of explanations. He denied ever hitting, spanking, shoving,
or kicking her. He said he was hardly ever home
because he was working. According to him, Isabella was just
(08:13):
constantly falling. He said she fell down the stairs. He
described two separate incidents where she supposedly fell out of
his forward pickup truck. About one of those accidents, which
he said happened a week and a half before her death,
he gave two completely different stories. In one, she hit
her face on the asphalt. In the other, she put
(08:33):
her hands down and broke her fall without hitting her face.
He said her black eye came from being hit in
the face with a plastic baseball bat by someone else,
maybe one of her sisters. To explain away the repeated bruising,
he told investigators they had planned to take Isabella to
a specialist in June to figure out why she was
(08:55):
falling so much. Andrea's statements didn't match his. She had
already told detectives she saw him kicking Isabella, dragging her upstairs,
and that she heard the thud of her being thrown.
Nicholas also had abrasions on his hands and fingers. When
detectives saw him, He blamed those on work too. Isabella's
sisters were interviewed separately. They told detectives they were woken
(09:19):
up around midnight, taken downstairs, and told by Nicholas that
Isabella had died and that they might be going on
a trip. So while their five year old sister lay upstairs.
They weren't being told to say goodbye, they were being
prepared to disappear. Andrea eventually summed it up in one sentence.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
I should go to jail for not helping her, and
Nick should go to jail for killing her.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Deputies secured the house immediately, and by the afternoon of
April third, twenty twenty five, detectives had enough to take
Nicholas into custody. His first charge was child abuse resulting
in substantial bodily harm. He was booked into the Washok
County Detention Facility. This was before the medical examiner had
(10:04):
even finished the autopsy, because the visible injuries alone were
enough to show Isabella had been hurt repeatedly and violently.
On April ninth, he had his first court appearance. Judge
Kendra Bertchie set his bail at ten million dollars cash only.
She told the court that Nevada lord didn't allow her
(10:24):
to hold him without bail on the charge he was
facing at that moment, but she made it very clear
she understood exactly how dangerous he was if Nicholas somehow
posted that bail. The conditions included home confinement and ankle monitor,
no contact with Andrea and absolutely no contact with his children.
(10:44):
All three girls were placed in CPS custody immediately. Nicholas
was supposed to appear virtually for the hearing, but he
never showed up on the screen. While the court system
moved through the first set of charges, detectives kept working
the case. They interviewed the family again, went through digital records,
(11:05):
reviewed the condition of the home, and waited for the
medical examiner's findings. Those findings turned everything. On July thirtieth,
twenty twenty five, the Washo County Medical Examiner's office officially
ruled Isabella's death a homicide. The final medical cause was
bacterial pneumonia, but the examiner reported that multiple blunt force injuries, malnutrition, dehydration,
(11:31):
and medical neglect significantly contributed to her death. In other words,
the abuse she suffered made her so weak and so
compromised that the pneumonia became fatal. She didn't just get
sick and die, her body had been broken down over time.
Once that homicide ruling came in, the charges changed. On
(11:52):
August sixth Nicholas was booked on a new charge, open murder,
and District Attorney Chris Hicks announced that his own office
would be filing a formal charge of first degree murder
against him that same week. Andrea wasn't spared either. Around
July twenty eighth, twenty twenty five, she was charged with
child abuse or neglect with substantial bodily harm. Her bail
(12:17):
hearing was held on August fifth. Judge Burchie set her
bail at two million dollars, also with no ten percent option.
If she posted it, she would be on home confinement
with GPS monitoring, supervised by the Department of Alternative Sentencing,
and forbidden from having contact with Nicholas or her children
unless CPS approved it. Andrea's next court dates were set
(12:41):
for August twelfth for emotion hearing and August fourteenth for
a status conference. While both parents sat in the legal
system trying to explain away a dead five year old,
d A. Hicks made it clear what direction the investigation
was going. He said his office and the Washoe County
Sheriff's Office were working closely to build a strong, evidence
(13:01):
based case. He emphasized that just as for Izzie, remains
our highest priority and that his team would methodically review
the evidence and ensure all legally viable charges are pursued.
He also made a general point that initial charges often
get amended after forensic findings come in, which was exactly
(13:22):
what happened here. On the other side, you could see
the defense strategies forming even before formal motions were filed.
For Nicholas, the pattern was obvious. Deny every injury, blame
every bruise on a fall point, fingers at Andrea whenever possible,
and keep repeating that he was almost never home and
(13:42):
the trauma extended far beyond just the physical evidence. When
Sheriff Darren Balm spoke publicly about Isabella's death, he said
the case deeply affected not only our community, but also
our dispatchers, the deputies, responding investigators, ri i'me. Scene investigators.
He said he made a personal commitment that they would
(14:04):
labor relentlessly to investigate this case and work tirelessly to
be the voice for and bring justice to Izzy. And
he finished with something that applies to every child abuse
case we've ever seen.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
If you see something, say something.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
By August twenty twenty five, that was where things stood.
Nicholas facing first degree murder, Andrea facing child abuse resulting
in substantial bodily harm and no trial or sentencing yet,
because the case was still active. The rest would be
up to the courts. The evidence, the autopsy, the witness statements,
(14:42):
the timeline, the five hour delay, and the overwhelming proof
that this little girl had been living in pain long
before she died. The community rallied in the only way
they could. Pink ribbons went up all over Cold Springs
and people held a candlelight vigil. Neighbors, strangers, deputies, and
families who had never met Isabella showed up anyway because
(15:06):
they wanted someone to show up for her now, even
if the people who were supposed to protect her never did.
Isabella was five, She was sick, hurting, frightened, and trapped,
and she deserved better than the people who were raising her.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
And that's all we have for this midweek mini. What
did you think of this case? Let us know we
always want to hear your thoughts. If you want more
information or to get episodes you won't hear on the
main feed, Join us over on Patreon, Patreon dot com,
slash Love and Murder. Every tear helps support the show,
helps us stay listener funded, and gives you access to
(15:44):
bonus content, early listens, and more. Just head over to
patreon dot com Slash Love and Murder. Thanks for listening,
thanks for supporting our podcast, and we'll see you in
the next episode.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Say the
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