Kill or Be Killed? (Revisited)

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Speaker 5 This is obviously no whom done it. It's a why done it.

Speaker 6 And you've got violent encounter, man inside an apartment, and gun.

Speaker 7 So how many shots were fired?

Speaker 8 Five of them.

Speaker 5 Okay, what is going on here?

Speaker 9 Where do I go?

Speaker 5 Like, what do I do?

Speaker 10 Your kids are fine. We are completely safe here.

Speaker 11 They find this young man lying on his couch with a very close shot bullet wound to his head. He took out his gun.

Speaker 14 He showed me how to load it. I lost that.
You think I'm doing anything like, here it is, here's your chance.

Speaker 11 It's pretty unique to have a beloved gymnastics coach of kids and a preschool teacher and stay-at-home mom involved in something like this.

Speaker 20 My mother came home and

Speaker 19 she woke me and I knew something was off.

Speaker 21 This appears to be murder.

Speaker 11 Anybody reading about it is like, what?

Speaker 22 She's not at all safe right now.

Speaker 11 It's 2.16 in the morning, September 28th.

Speaker 11 and there is a red car

Speaker 24 stopped at the traffic light.

Speaker 11 No one's out, just this car sitting there.

Speaker 5 This officer doing his regular patrol, he sees this vehicle that is at the traffic light. Probably looks a little bit suspicious.

Speaker 11 The light is green, blows his air horn.

Speaker 11 But the driver does not continue on, and instead,

Speaker 11 a very small young woman steps out.

Speaker 11 I know all your secrets.

Speaker 12 She's not wearing shoes.

Speaker 28 I know longer life.

Speaker 5 She's visibly upset and shaken.

Speaker 11 And she just starts spilling this story.

Speaker 29 I tried to leave.

Speaker 30 He wouldn't want me to leave.

Speaker 31 She told me I'm not going anywhere. I'm not leaving.

Speaker 32 She tells the officer her name is Nicole Atamando.

Speaker 33 The man at the house is her boyfriend, Chris Grover.

Speaker 5 She tells them that he took a gun out.

Speaker 25 He told me the gun for a mirror.

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 15 Okay,

Speaker 29 you gotta stay with me, okay?

Speaker 12 No, you can't hide

Speaker 12 your secrets and lies.

Speaker 11 Nikki and Chris met pretty innocently. They started out as friends and then, according to her, they were best friends.

Speaker 34 How did Chris and Nikki meet and fall in love?

Speaker 12 Through gymnastics.

Speaker 36 He started working at the gym that she worked at and it started as a friendship and it developed into something romantic.

Speaker 39 My name is Lisa Whalen. Nikki was my daughter's gymnastics coach.

Speaker 40 They were both very capable, very talented coaches. Nikki was more the kind, compassionate, mothery side of taking care of the girls.
Chris was more kind of the goofy joking around with the girls.

Speaker 43 He was funny.

Speaker 44 He was very energetic. Chris was just the quirky guy, the energy of the group.
He loved his gymnastics.

Speaker 44 He boasted and was so proud of their accomplishments.

Speaker 33 This girl just started doing this and she landed it.

Speaker 44 He poured himself into that gym.

Speaker 48 They had very common interests, strong family values.

Speaker 46 It really did seem almost like the perfect fit on paper.

Speaker 11 Everybody who has ever met Nikki describes her as super sweet, gentle, loves kids, lights up with kids.

Speaker 11 His family and her family, they'd lived in the community for a long time, so their families were known.

Speaker 32 Chris and Nikki lived in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Speaker 2 It's about two hours north of Manhattan, far enough away, so it doesn't feel like New York City, but it's not rural either.

Speaker 11 The town of Poughkeepsie is a suburban small town. Everybody knows each other.
Everybody's a cousin with somebody or worked with somebody, is married to somebody or a brother married to somebody.

Speaker 40 People are very friendly, very open.

Speaker 40 It's a bigger area, but it has a very small feel to it.

Speaker 52 You can be in Poughkeepsie and feel like you're in the city. You can be in Poughkeepsie and feel like you're in the country.

Speaker 52 There are so many great restaurants and shops, great schools, a number of colleges as well.

Speaker 11 It's along the Hudson River, which is beautiful, sparkling river. It's a really normal, bucolic little river town a few hours outside of Manhattan.

Speaker 2 Poughkeepsie checked a lot of boxes for Nikki and Chris. Lots of families, good schools.

Speaker 32 Chris was studying cinematography and coaching on the side.

Speaker 33 Nikki was pursuing her lifelong dream of teaching.

Speaker 46 She was pursuing her degree in early childhood education.

Speaker 48 Nikki always loved children so much, so it just really seemed like the natural fit for her. Life was good.
Life felt good at the time.

Speaker 11 Nikki finds out she's pregnant. She tells Chris and he's over the moon.
He's so sweet, he's so excited.

Speaker 11 So they move into a little apartment together, they paint the walls, they get the crib all set up.

Speaker 44 Chris had a YouTube for a while. He would post videos of little compilations that he would make of Nikki.

Speaker 44 It seems like adoration. Filming her planting flowers, filming her painting their nursery when she was pregnant.
It just seemed very romantic and cute.

Speaker 40 When Ben was born, she was really over the moon. So in love with Ben and very much a doting mother.

Speaker 51 And a little over two years later, Faye came along.

Speaker 34 So Nikki left teaching to focus on her kids.

Speaker 46 Nikki ended up finding community amongst a group of moms.

Speaker 41 It was a very wholesome kind of feel to that group of moms.

Speaker 40 Let's meet up and we'll have a music class that's the babies are shaking the rattles and do that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 We took our kids for pizza.

Speaker 40 They took their kids to go eat healthy smoothie bowls.

Speaker 36 When she had her kids, she started making little baby booties and selling those, which were just like expertly crafted.

Speaker 55 People loved them.

Speaker 36 So she posted those a lot on her Instagram. She was a photographer too.
She had like a little photography business for a little while, so she took amazing pictures of her kids.

Speaker 11 They were seen as just a really normal young family. It looked like they had this beautiful life, and for many reasons we know that they didn't.

Speaker 29 He didn't show you the gun, but I didn't know where it was at that night.

Speaker 14 Where are the guns? He had it. He had it.

Speaker 25 So, how many shots were fired?

Speaker 14 One.

Speaker 5 Her story is pretty bizarre because there's just so many questions that are left unanswered.

Speaker 17 It was just so incomprehensible to me to understand how this could have happened.

Speaker 17 I just lost it.

Speaker 41 I fell to my knees.

Speaker 40 It took my breath away. I never expected that's what I was going to hear, ever.

Speaker 11 It's the night of September 27th, leading into the early morning of September 28th.

Speaker 59 There's a vehicle at a traffic light, and it's not moving.

Speaker 59 A police car pulls up behind her. Nikki exits the vehicle.
She's got no shoes on. She's visibly upset and shaking.

Speaker 5 I've worked hundreds, if not thousands, of investigations, and I can tell you that even at that point, I might have to take a step back and say, okay, what is going on here?

Speaker 7 Deep breath, okay?

Speaker 28 Anything?

Speaker 14 Just one more time.

Speaker 6 Go through the story with me.

Speaker 10 Is there anybody else in the house that goes

Speaker 14 okay?

Speaker 11 And she starts spilling this very confusing, kind of disjointed story.

Speaker 11 I'm telling you, this means.

Speaker 8 This is me for my kids. Like, stay with me today.

Speaker 5 Where do I go? Like, what do I do?

Speaker 10 Your kids are fine.

Speaker 10 Yeah, we are completely safe here,

Speaker 44 It was after 2 a.m.

Speaker 22 The phone rang. I was fast asleep.

Speaker 60 I saw her name.

Speaker 22 Immediately grabbed the phone. And the first phrase of hers that I processed was, he pulled a gun out of the car.

Speaker 22 And she said, I'm with the police.

Speaker 18 Here's where I am.

Speaker 23 And can you come?

Speaker 11 So Elizabeth drives over, heart racing. She pulls into the parking lot, watching all this activity.

Speaker 45 Nikki's safe. The kids are safe.
Like,

Speaker 11 what's going on now?

Speaker 6 You've got kids in the car. These officers are asking her a series of questions, trying to ascertain information.

Speaker 6 If there's somebody that's in severe medical distress, they can be attended to.

Speaker 5 Police officers are prepared for basically anything, but this Poughkeepsie police officer is not prepared for what he's about to hear.

Speaker 11 He has chosen sound like he ordered a horse attack.

Speaker 10 And you have no idea what he might have.

Speaker 30 Where's the gun? He had it.

Speaker 14 He had it.

Speaker 16 Off the floor. On the floor.

Speaker 14 So how many shots were fired?

Speaker 14 One. One.

Speaker 8 Soldiers.

Speaker 16 We're calling him a fire.

Speaker 5 Just like it often is in police work, sometimes a situation can go from zero to 100 in a matter of seconds.

Speaker 6 And you've got violent encounter, man inside an apartment, and gun.

Speaker 5 We don't know at this point that he's not at home with the gun. We don't know that there's not any other people inside the house.

Speaker 19 He reached into the couch

Speaker 64 and I need him and it fell and I stopped.

Speaker 65 He said,

Speaker 14 I was ready to come.

Speaker 6 Essentially what they're able to get out of her is she has this violent confrontation with her domestic partner where she knees him in the groin and he drops the gun.

Speaker 29 I grabbed the kids and in the same arms, I put them in the car and I left, and then I like went through the lights, and I was like, I don't think I'm supposed to leave, I don't know what to do.

Speaker 2 After Nikki fled, she called her friend Elizabeth, who's now watching this harrowing scene of Nikki standing with officers while her two children are asleep in the back seat of the car.

Speaker 22 So I'm facing that road and just watching all this traffic going by, you know, like shivering in my car,

Speaker 22 and

Speaker 22 watched an ambulance go.

Speaker 22 And eventually watched it come back with no lights on.

Speaker 22 And they just weren't giving me any information. They wouldn't let me talk to Nikki.

Speaker 33 This is all happening in a very small area.

Speaker 66 Nikki is at a traffic stop with officers about a half mile from the house where officers are now responding.

Speaker 33 And the police station is just a mile away.

Speaker 6 So police arrive and remember they don't know what they're dealing with. There's been some sort of domestic dispute that a gun has been fired but they have to consider all possibilities.

Speaker 7 If I get a report that the door is open, he's left it on.

Speaker 7 Tam, anybody have a rifle I left the shield?

Speaker 5 This is a very scary situation when you walk into a scene like that.

Speaker 6 From the minute that these detectives walk in, they're trying to put pieces together to a gigantic puzzle.

Speaker 5 They find a male laying on the couch on his back, and this is Chris Grover, and he suffered one fatal gunshot wound to the left side of his head.

Speaker 5 There's a gun laying on the ground, and it's not in slide lock. So that shows you that the gun is still loaded, and there's minimally at least one

Speaker 5 bullet inside the chamber.

Speaker 5 There's a rug that's kind of pushed out of the way. There's a camera that's on the floor.

Speaker 6 They find a shower that's running with a broken computer inside.

Speaker 6 Seeing a computer in the bottom of a bathtub is probably a first for every one of these officers that's responded to a murder scene.

Speaker 5 At a certain point of the video, even though she knows it already, I think it sinks in and she says, Chris is dead, isn't isn't it?

Speaker 5 What do I tell his mom?

Speaker 5 Mom!

Speaker 25 You're not in any trouble right now, okay?

Speaker 10 Like I said, is it gonna be a long night for you?

Speaker 68 Yes, let me pick a listen to me.

Speaker 6 Tonight, you need to come out with that, okay? Start from the beginning

Speaker 10 because you're not gonna be talking to me all night, okay?

Speaker 6 You're gonna end up having to talk to one of our attackers.

Speaker 2 Nikki's been standing there talking to investigators for nearly two hours.

Speaker 54 She's still shoeless.

Speaker 2 And then we see her carrying her tired kids to a police cruiser.

Speaker 34 Her friend Elizabeth, who's been waiting nearby, follows them to the police station.

Speaker 22 So certainly a question came in my mind. Like, where is Chris? And I know Nikki's alive.
Is he alive?

Speaker 22 But I didn't know what had happened

Speaker 22 until after I had gone to the police station. Nikki came in with the kids.

Speaker 9 I and I hugged her

Speaker 61 and

Speaker 41 they took her.

Speaker 25 You know I would like to hear you side of the story and what happened.

Speaker 7 I wasn't there I don't know.

Speaker 6 They gave her every opportunity to explain this. From the officers at the scene the story she tells them makes no sense.

Speaker 28 This is

Speaker 7 you know a serious situation and these things are very complicated and

Speaker 5 I would imagine they've never had a case anything like this and they probably still never will after that.

Speaker 22 Thank God she's finally with the police. We can finally tell what's happening and then how much she's been in danger.
And then realizing the complete opposite of that, she's not at all safe right now.

Speaker 11 When the town wakes up,

Speaker 11 nothing's ever going to be the same.

Speaker 52 It's 6 a.m. here in the Hudson Valley.
Good morning.

Speaker 25 I'm Bobby Welber from WPDH.

Speaker 52 Many Hudson Valley residents are in shock after a popular Dutch County Gymnastics coach, Christopher Grover, was found dead from a gunshot wound early this morning.

Speaker 11 When Poughkeepsie wakes up, it's headline-making news. I think it was completely unexpected for most of the community.

Speaker 52 29-year-old Nicole Adamondo, Grover's girlfriend, and the mother of his two children, is later taken into custody and questioned by police.

Speaker 52 I checked the police platter every single day. I knew this was going to be a big story for the Hudson Valley.

Speaker 11 It's pretty unique to have a beloved gymnastics coach of kids and a preschool teacher and stay-at-home mom involved in something like this.

Speaker 20 My mother came home and

Speaker 19 she woke me and I knew something was off.

Speaker 11 People start turning their phones on and they start having very unexpected calls on their phones, messages, missed missed calls.

Speaker 11 Michelle gets a call. They're completely confused.
Wait, Nikki's at the police station?

Speaker 72 What was that phone call like when you heard the news?

Speaker 37 I first knew that the kids were at the police station.

Speaker 36 Then I knew that Chris was not at the police station with Nikki.

Speaker 55 And then I got the call that Chris was dead.

Speaker 38 It was like you could have told me literally anything in the world that would have made more sense than that.

Speaker 5 Police know that this is going to be a hater. This is going to be all over the news.

Speaker 5 You've got a deceased young man who suffered one fatal gunshot wound to the temple. The police have to make sure that they do everything right.

Speaker 5 You probably heard these,

Speaker 5 you know, Miranda writes on TV and stuff like that.

Speaker 6 You watch like crime shows and things.

Speaker 6 No, okay.

Speaker 73 So the first sentence is, you have the right to remain silent.

Speaker 11 She was not familiar with how any of this worked.

Speaker 11 And so kind of like on a crime show where the person doesn't know what they're doing and you think to the person on the crime show, like, why are you talking? That's what she was doing in real life.

Speaker 25 And you have the right to talk to a lawyer and have him or her present with you while you're being questioned.

Speaker 73 Do you understand what that means?

Speaker 18 You do look at her and you think, like, get a lawyer.

Speaker 11 Everybody got a lawyer, but yeah, lawyer.

Speaker 7 You know, I would like to hear your side of the story until you're fine with talking to us and everything.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 10 Yeah, yeah. Like that happened.

Speaker 28 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Um,

Speaker 14 sorry.

Speaker 15 TCPS came because there was a report that I've been seeing this bridges for over a long period of time.

Speaker 54 Nikki starts out by telling detectives that earlier that same day, Child Protective Services had visited their home to investigate claims made by an anonymous caller.

Speaker 22 Someone had made a call to CPS anonymously reporting that they had seen her injured and that they were worried about abuse happening at the home.

Speaker 15 He's like, if you didn't, you need to fix this.

Speaker 16 You need to call all your mommy friends, whoever it is, and you need to tell everyone that they need to not say anything, that everything is fine.

Speaker 5 And I did that. Someone from CPS came out and interviewed Nikki and Chris separately and they complied with it.
Nikki actually stated that there was no violence in the home.

Speaker 5 Nikki denied any allegations of abuse. Nikki stated that there was no weapons inside the house.
Chris was also interviewed and at the end of the interview, the CPS worker left.

Speaker 48 But Nikki says she lied to CPS.

Speaker 74 There was violence in her home.

Speaker 48 She says she was afraid that if she told the truth to CPS, it would infuriate Chris, a man she already feared.

Speaker 5 When the detectives hear CPS investigation, I'm sure that set off a red flag because everyone knows that domestic violence have the tendency to escalate to a situation like this.

Speaker 15 He came in and I said, how did it go today when they interviewed you?

Speaker 8 Because I didn't hear what they interviewed.

Speaker 14 And he was like, it's fine.

Speaker 15 This is all a big joke.

Speaker 15 He took out his gun.

Speaker 16 He showed me how to load it.

Speaker 25 So that you think of doing anything, like, here it is, here's your chance.

Speaker 65 But you're not going to do anything.

Speaker 65 He loaded it, like, handed me bullets to show me how.

Speaker 6 He shows her how to load the gun. Like, he's threatening her with the gun, but let me show you how to use the gun that I've just threatened to kill you with.

Speaker 47 After, you know, we had both taken showers, and

Speaker 47 um,

Speaker 47 then

Speaker 47 he

Speaker 47 made me have sex on the couch. It wasn't like the usual, like, violent sex.
He was saying, I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 Nikki Nikki talks about the fact that the sex that occurred right before the murder wasn't violent. She said that the sex was more gentle than it normally is.

Speaker 5 You would think if she was trying to paint him as this offender that she wouldn't have provided that information.

Speaker 73 He just said he was sorry. And he never says he's sorry.

Speaker 64 So now he's lying on the couch.

Speaker 64 I

Speaker 14 was waiting for him to fall asleep.

Speaker 5 She goes to the room to check on the kids because they're running fevers that night. And then she goes back to the couch and lays down with Chris again.

Speaker 5 We pulled it out from there,

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 73 I jumped up, and I made like enough hard to meet him a little bit that he like flinched and dropped it, and then turned back over to me and said,

Speaker 15 you don't have it in you if you're gonna give me the gun. And I'm gonna tell both of us,

Speaker 47 and your kids want to know one. And then I just

Speaker 47 Trigger.

Speaker 47 And then what do you do after that?

Speaker 47 Oh, God, it's loud. Um, I don't know what to do.
I do, I do, like, turn his head and check his pulse sight, and looking at his own blood.

Speaker 5 Why is she touching him and checking his pulse?

Speaker 64 I heard the shower on. I ran in there.

Speaker 15 But his computer was in it.

Speaker 5 Why is the laptop in the shower? And what is on that laptop that someone in the house wants to get rid of?

Speaker 5 And I left

Speaker 5 and I picked up the kids and I just ran out of shoes and

Speaker 5 draw driving.

Speaker 6 That would, in the minds of law enforcement, not be consistent with somebody who's just had to defend their life.

Speaker 5 When Nikki tells her story, something in the room shifts at that point. And I think what the detectives were seeing was one big red flag.

Speaker 65 Can I, like,

Speaker 15 talk to someone? I feel like I don't know if I'm making sense.

Speaker 11 She's realizing that things are going from, like, I'm explaining what everyone's gonna obviously see

Speaker 13 to,

Speaker 11 I think I'm being interrogated as somebody who's maybe not truthful.

Speaker 15 Obviously, self-defense, right?

Speaker 73 And go on. I mean, I can't make that determination right now.

Speaker 6 She is raising this issue of self-defense during the interview. Her head is immediately in a place where she is asserting legal defenses.

Speaker 47 She thought, obviously, all I did was protect myself.

Speaker 11 She's soon going to find out it's not going to go the way that she thought.

Speaker 6 To investigators, this does not appear to be self-defense. This appears to be murder.

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Speaker 5 The first 48 hours are critical in any investigation, and these investigators have their work cut out for them. This is obviously no who done it because Nikki admitted to doing it.
It's a why done it.

Speaker 5 She believed that she killed Chris in self-defense.

Speaker 6 One of the unique features of every homicide case is your best witness is always dead. You have to piece together the truth from what isn't probably true.

Speaker 32 Nikki's story of that night is bizarre, but consistent.

Speaker 33 She says there was a history of abuse, that she wanted to leave, but that Chris wouldn't let her.

Speaker 51 So police are now wondering, is this a woman fleeing abuse or fleeing the scene of a crime?

Speaker 6 The first thing the police do when they arrive at the scene is they do what's called a canvas.

Speaker 6 And this is an apartment building. These are neighbors that share walls with this woman.
And none of the neighbors heard or saw anything.

Speaker 11 And the crime scene seemed to not quite make sense. There didn't look like there'd been the struggle they wanted.
There wasn't a bloody knife in his hand.

Speaker 6 For investigators, it doesn't make sense. They're fighting and they're struggling over a gun, yet he's on his back.

Speaker 6 And he says, you're not going to do it. He lets her put the gun next to his temple and pulls the trigger.
That's her story.

Speaker 5 He's a black belt in Taekwondo. He's an athletic gymnast.
He's laying there and doesn't fight back, doesn't move.

Speaker 59 Investigators are developing a theory that Nikki shot him while he was sleeping because the medical examiner rules that it's a hard contact wound.

Speaker 6 Which means she actually put the gun to the side of his head and made contact with it when she pulled the trigger.

Speaker 5 Was the hard contact wound consistent with Nikki's story? Yes.

Speaker 5 But was his position of the body consistent with her story? Absolutely not.

Speaker 5 You would expect the body to show you that this altercation or knee to the grain happened.

Speaker 67 After she shot him, Nikki says she put the gun down on the ground and checked his pulse.

Speaker 74 That admission had detectives scratching their heads.

Speaker 5 Probably wasn't good for her to admit that she did that because it showed that she didn't attempt to render aid after she shot him.

Speaker 9 And that laptop in the bathtub, that was troubling to the police as well. Investigators had found blood on the shower curtains, so they thought maybe she put the laptop there after she shot him.

Speaker 2 Even more puzzling, Nikki says she had picked up a bullet casing.

Speaker 6 One of the things she says is she leaves the computers there because she doesn't want to tamper with evidence, but she admits taking a bullet casing from the scene, which is tampering with evidence.

Speaker 6 And she's never able to tell police what happened to that shell casing.

Speaker 29 I grabbed the kids in the same arms I put in the car and I was like, I don't think I'm supposed to leave. I don't know what to do.

Speaker 59 All of these strange little details that she's offering up are painting a picture that doesn't look good in the eyes of police, including the fact that she calls her friend and not 911.

Speaker 6 Let's say she's in that scenario where she has been forced to pull the trigger in self-defense and defense of her children. The first thing somebody does is they dial 911.

Speaker 11 She was fleeing with her kids, and I think that she just totally panicked.

Speaker 58 But it's true.

Speaker 11 She didn't call the cops and she didn't go to the police station.

Speaker 2 The police learned that after CPS interviewed her that morning, Nikki was calling friends and family, asking them to tell CPS that everything was fine.

Speaker 17 She says Chris told her to make those calls.

Speaker 45 But again, detectives see it differently.

Speaker 8 Can you just walk me backwards through events?

Speaker 6 Meanwhile, she is semi-frantic and attempting to control the information. Chris Grover doesn't do any of that.
To detectives, she is behaving like somebody who has something to hide from CPS.

Speaker 33 When forensic searches the couple's phones, a few things stand out.

Speaker 5 Five weeks prior to the murder, Nikki sent a text out where she references killing Chris.

Speaker 59 In one text exchange with a friend, Nikki writes, I haven't figured out how to kill him without being caught, so I'm still here. And then this emoji.

Speaker 2 That text exchange is not great for Nikki's story of self-defense. But then investigators find something on Chris's phone from the night of his death that they say is even more suspicious.

Speaker 6 Shortly after 11 o'clock, somebody is looking up and trying to get information about what happens when you shoot a sleeping person. And that is hugely significant from the view of law enforcement.

Speaker 5 There's two possibilities here. Either Chris was searching for information on how to kill Nikki, or Nikki did that search herself in order to make it look like Chris was going to kill her.

Speaker 6 What the investigators in the case see, the computers in the bathtub, the missing shell casing, those searches on the cell phone, which notably had been deleted, and it begins to appear very strongly to police that this is somebody who's doing everything she can not to get caught.

Speaker 2 And Nikki is not only arrested, but charged with second-degree murder.

Speaker 45 But what about those claims of abuse?

Speaker 77 Is there something in Nikki and Chris's history that might explain what happened that night?

Speaker 6 The police start interviewing friends and family and coworkers and neighbors. They describe Chris Grover as being a normal guy who doesn't get mad.
He doesn't raise his voice.

Speaker 44 When I first heard the news about everything that happened that night with Nikki and Chris,

Speaker 44 I couldn't believe it. I was...

Speaker 44 I'm gonna cry. I was devastated.

Speaker 43 I was angry.

Speaker 44 I wanted her in prison.

Speaker 43 And then little trickles of he had been abusing her kind of came out. And I didn't believe it.
I didn't believe a word of it.

Speaker 52 Christopher's death was felt not only by his family, but also all the young children that he coached in gymnastics.

Speaker 11 Nikki's family, her closest friends, certainly Chris's family. People at the gym, totally shocked.
And anybody reading about it is like, what?

Speaker 58 But there were a few people who knew a lot more.

Speaker 22 One of my first things I said was,

Speaker 22 Chris was a bad man and he was hurting her.

Speaker 63 People started coming out of the woodwork saying this

Speaker 58 was happening.

Speaker 71 We have proof of this horrific, horrific abuse happening.

Speaker 2 And now for the first time on television, Nikki is sharing her side of the story.

Speaker 53 I felt paralyzed. I knew I should leave.

Speaker 22 What were you afraid of?

Speaker 14 I was afraid he was going to kill me.

Speaker 59 Nikki Adamondo has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder. But while sitting in jail, she insists that she had no choice.
She says she shot the father of her two children in self-defense.

Speaker 59 Oh, I've never spent a day without them.

Speaker 14 It hurts so bad laying here every day. What if they don't even remember me when they get to see me?

Speaker 38 I think any mother

Speaker 36 can empathize with that feeling of being ripped away from your children.

Speaker 2 Nikki's sister, Michelle, takes in four-year-old Ben and two-year-old Faye and files for custody, still trying to figure out what happened to her sister.

Speaker 16 You have truth on your side, and it could have been you.

Speaker 16 Yeah, but

Speaker 16 this was the choice, and now he's still waiting. I'm still not

Speaker 16 free.

Speaker 16 I'm still not free.

Speaker 37 When the news hit, so many witnesses come forward and say, oh, I saw her at the mall and her arm was in a sling. I saw her with this bruise on her face.

Speaker 55 A lot of people saw, and a lot of people didn't know what to do.

Speaker 48 But Nikki's story of abuse doesn't begin and end with Chris.

Speaker 74 As the case unfolds, it becomes clear that the full story really begins decades earlier.

Speaker 46 Nikki has been one of my closest and dearest best friends for 30 years.

Speaker 69 She was like a little vision.

Speaker 48 This dark hair and these gorgeous long dark eyelashes.

Speaker 32 She was exuberant.

Speaker 55 She was curious.

Speaker 22 And then something happened to her and she like changed overnight when she was five to a really fearful and broken and sad child.

Speaker 34 And you had a pretty idyllic childhood,

Speaker 34 but there was there was some dark trauma as well.

Speaker 53 I was sexually abused at five, along with my best friend.

Speaker 23 Me and Nikki endured

Speaker 46 horrible things that no children should have to endure. When you're traumatized as a child, it literally changes your brain chemistry.

Speaker 33 Nikki carries this secret with her for years, and yet for those around her, she seemed like she was thriving.

Speaker 36 She was good at gymnastics. She was a good student.

Speaker 38 She never got in trouble.

Speaker 11 She meets Chris. He seemed safe.
She felt safe with him.

Speaker 37 So she told Chris,

Speaker 11 look, I had this traumatic experience. He said, it's okay, like we can go slow.

Speaker 11 I trusted him. I told him about what had happened.

Speaker 54 Do you remember the first time things got violent?

Speaker 53 Maybe not the first time, but it was

Speaker 64 pretty early on.

Speaker 51 People started noticing on you bruising and injuries.

Speaker 75 When they confronted you with it, what did you say to them?

Speaker 12 I just made up an excuse, anything.

Speaker 53 I would tell them I walked into a wall or Ben accidentally bumped me with his guitar.

Speaker 40 At the gym, I started noticing some things that just did not seem right.

Speaker 41 Finger marks on her neck and bruises on her neck.

Speaker 2 Parents talking that Chris could never do anything like that.

Speaker 40 There were many parents saying, what is he doing to her?

Speaker 51 One concerned parent brings a very reluctant Nikki to police.

Speaker 5 There's actually an investigation and a recorded interview.

Speaker 10 I want this to end for you.

Speaker 10 I want to be able to take care of this for you. I don't remember.
I don't know.

Speaker 13 What do you mean, you know?

Speaker 5 Nikki is so shut down, she refuses to even name her abuser.

Speaker 59 When you have a person kicking you, punching you, what are we going to do?

Speaker 25 Just, okay, yeah, that's alright, it'll go away.

Speaker 52 Absolutely not.

Speaker 25 I will will turn over every rock i have to to find this person to get this person to stop doing this to you

Speaker 51 that day nikki isn't able to bring herself to report chris and a few months later after that interview she finds out she's pregnant and she says the violence stops

Speaker 69 In her telling, he's like the old Chris.

Speaker 11 So then she's hopeful and he promises it's going to change.

Speaker 54 I didn't see his many marks for a while.

Speaker 40 So I thought, this is it.

Speaker 61 This baby might save her.

Speaker 59 But just six weeks after the baby was born, Nikki says the abuse begins again. She says she's still too afraid to report to authorities, but she does get help from a therapist through victim services.

Speaker 60 My name is Sarah Caprioli. I'm a licensed mental health counselor.
Nikki and I worked together.

Speaker 60 Nikki was hopeful that at some point he would just grow out of it or that he would just get bored of it and then stop. Unfortunately, that's just not what tends to happen with domestic violence.

Speaker 39 Nikki said time and time again,

Speaker 39 no one will believe me.

Speaker 2 Everyone loves Chris.

Speaker 22 The violence was escalating.

Speaker 60 She was coming in with more and more injuries, Visible marks and bruising. Marks on her wrists, clear strangulation marks on her neck.

Speaker 51 Nikki's therapist convinces her to have her injuries photographed by a forensic nurse.

Speaker 2 Some of those photos showed Nikki's most intimate parts.

Speaker 5 Nikki says Chris burned her with a hot metal spoon for talking back to him in a disrespectful way.

Speaker 60 I did speak with Dutchess County's prosecutors about options and the evidence that we have, and it did seem like everybody wanted to help, but the roadblock that we kept running into was

Speaker 60 we can't do much unless Nikki reports.

Speaker 6 When Chris is found dead in 2017, the DA's office of Dutchess County is already familiar with Nikki's name because of these allegations of abuse from prior instances.

Speaker 6 So they recuse themselves and pass the case on to the DA's office in Putnam County.

Speaker 34 All of those photographs would seem critical evidence now, but the new prosecutors see it differently.

Speaker 60 The narrative was, well, nobody has this much documentation.

Speaker 62 This must have been manipulated.

Speaker 70 I believe that that ended up being used against her.

Speaker 5 Everything that was documented as abuse is looked at in a different perspective as, oh, this girl was plotting this murder.

Speaker 11 Everything that she had to show that she was abused was flipped. She was turned into a villain at trial.

Speaker 82 If you didn't believe the allegations of the violence, you weren't going to believe Nikki.

Speaker 36 I thought, surely people are going to see. They're going to see the evidence.

Speaker 24 How did you feel going into the trial? Sick. Felt sick.

Speaker 13 What were you afraid of? Is afraid he was going to kill me?

Speaker 49 If Nikki was the one who died that night, it would have barely been a story.

Speaker 48 If it would have just been boyfriend kills girlfriend the end

Speaker 5 what actually happened I think only two people know what happened and one of those people aren't around anymore to tell us Nikki is charged with second-degree murder and is now facing 25 years to life in prison we know who pulled the trigger the question is why

Speaker 5 Why today? Why did you decide to kill him today?

Speaker 71 We have proof of this horrific, horrific abuse.

Speaker 11 She begins to suspect that he might be putting her on on court sites. Basically, her worst nightmare.

Speaker 67 Some of those images that you saw, you can't unsee.

Speaker 13 Never.

Speaker 22 Pretty much painted this narrative that Nikki was the puppet master that had been weaving this web of lies, all to culminate in the event of killing her partner to get away with it.

Speaker 35 The authorities saw it as murder.

Speaker 34 What did you see it as?

Speaker 53 This killer be killed.

Speaker 11 My name is Justine Vanderloon. I'm an independent journalist and I spent several years investigating the Nikki Adamondo case.

Speaker 12 I know all your secrets.

Speaker 11 I started to read some Poughkeepsie Journal articles. You could see these headlines.
A local gymnastics coach was killed. His girlfriend pulled the trigger.
I know all your lies.

Speaker 11 Ahead of time, it seems like nobody knew what was happening. Or does it seem like everybody had a suspicion but nobody wanted to believe it?

Speaker 11 But that's the nature of domestic violence. It's silence and secrecy.

Speaker 12 Secrets and minds.

Speaker 52 Good morning, it's 6 a.m. I'm Bobby Welver and here's what's trending at wpdh.com.

Speaker 52 It was one of those stories that really just divided the Hudson Valley.

Speaker 52 Both sides were writing into us, calling us here at the radio station to be pretty adamant about whatever side that they were on, that their person was in the right and the other person was 100% in the wrong.

Speaker 11 Just as for Chris, they were supporting Chris's family. They put on their red and their black.

Speaker 11 They didn't believe that he was who people were saying he was.

Speaker 43 I reached out to his mother and offered my condolences.

Speaker 44 I'm so sorry. No one deserved this.
You know, Chris was wonderful. And she responded, Nikki was a monster.
My son deserves to be alive.

Speaker 9 We have gathered stars, support, and our love for Nikki.

Speaker 22 We believed she was being unjustly held. We decided that we would wear purple, which is the color of domestic violence awareness.

Speaker 22 And that became our color to represent our efforts and our advocacy on Nikki's behalf.

Speaker 36 And our community rallied together to post a $600,000 bond.

Speaker 22 We were able to get her out on bail

Speaker 22 right before Christmas that year.

Speaker 2 So a year and a half after Chris's death, Nikki Adamondo is charged with second-degree murder. She's heading to trial and she's potentially facing 25 years to life.

Speaker 52 Supporters have gathered at the courthouse from both sides for Nicole Ramondo's highly anticipated trial.

Speaker 11 The courtroom was packed every day. Everybody would just come in, take their seats, red and black side, and the purple side.

Speaker 51 In front of this packed courtroom, you have Nikki and her lawyers and the prosecution team led by Hannah Krauss.

Speaker 32 Their job is to convince the jury that Nikki pulling the trigger was not justified and that her story of self-defense is fiction.

Speaker 11 The prosecution's case was that Nikki was a master manipulator. She wasn't who she seemed.
She wasn't a kind, sweet person.

Speaker 6 And she made a cold calculated decision to murder Chris Grover on the night of this incident.

Speaker 22 The pictures at trial that the prosecution put forward were of him in a tutu and being this playful, fun-loving person.

Speaker 63 So he was a nice guy and a good gymnastics coach. So therefore, he could not have been an abuser.
Therefore, Nikki could not have been abused.

Speaker 5 Just because she claimed to be a victim of domestic violence doesn't mean that she's necessarily timid and doesn't talk back to him.

Speaker 2 To prosecutors, Nikki could be confrontational with Chris when she wanted to be.

Speaker 6 In at least one heated text exchange, Nikki uses expletives and insults to describe Chris, suggesting that at least some of her text messages, she's not always afraid of them.

Speaker 2 One of the prosecution's key pieces of evidence was that text message that Nikki sent her friend five weeks before she shot Chris.

Speaker 40 I had to testify in court about this statement.

Speaker 32 What the prosecution ever asked me was, were you scared for Chris?

Speaker 50 Were you worried that Nikki was going to do this?

Speaker 13 No.

Speaker 53 It was nothing.

Speaker 40 There was nothing to it.

Speaker 63 If you're really involved in a major conspiracy to commit an intentional homicide, would you really end it with an emoji? I think not.

Speaker 59 Next for prosecutors, those deleted internet searches on Chris's phone from the night he died.

Speaker 6 Although these searches were conducted on Chris's phone, the prosecution contended very forcefully that Nikki Adamondo was the one that was actually doing the internet searches.

Speaker 82 There was no evidence of any connection of DNA or anything else of Nikki on that phone.

Speaker 6 There's also that laptop that was found on the bathtub. For prosecutors, that's another example of Nikki trying to cover her tracks.

Speaker 6 They say attempting to destroy any evidence that she thinks might be on it.

Speaker 2 The prosecutors also pointed to the medical examiner's report that suggested that Chris was shot at close range.

Speaker 59 In the medical examiner's report, you see the phrase contact wound, which from the prosecution's standpoint is consistent with Chris Grover being asleep on the couch.

Speaker 6 Because if he's awake, the argument would be: why on earth would he allow her to place a gun to his temple and pull the trigger?

Speaker 82 But the Dutchess County medical examiner conceded during the trial that there was no way for her to conclude one way or the other whether Mr.

Speaker 83 Grover was asleep the time.

Speaker 72 During the trial, the prosecutor painted you as a manipulator, as a liar, as somebody who's acting.

Speaker 53 I still hear her voice every day.

Speaker 53 The experience in the courtroom was

Speaker 53 just as traumatizing as

Speaker 53 living with him for years.

Speaker 11 The defense's case was that it was self-defense, that in that moment she was in imminent danger, that she feared for her life.

Speaker 82 The volume of corroborative evidence that we had, which documented Mickey's abuse,

Speaker 82 that's highly unusual.

Speaker 82 We had medical professionals who testified to the actual physical injuries to her body that really can't be contradicted.

Speaker 6 The prosecution's point of view is what you're seeing in these photographs is self-inflicted or it's from accidents that had nothing to do with Chris Crow.

Speaker 2 But when it's the defense's turn to make their case, they offer evidence that they believe helps to explain why Nikki pulled the trigger that night.

Speaker 60 One day, while they were in the bedroom, Nikki noticed a red flashing light.

Speaker 11 This is basically her worst nightmare.

Speaker 60 Anybody on the internet could find these unbelievably horrific pictures.

Speaker 80 You described that as something with Breaking Porn.

Speaker 53 It just brought like a whole new level of

Speaker 53 shame.

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Speaker 52 The trial of Nicole and Amondo now in its second week of testimony at the Dutchess County Courthouse.

Speaker 33 Free on bond now for three months, Nikki's juggling long days in court, all while parenting now six-year-old Ben and four-year-old Faye in the evenings.

Speaker 66 After a week of testimony, painting her as a manipulative murderer, it's time for her to tell her story.

Speaker 2 What made you want to testify in the trial?

Speaker 53 Silence didn't serve me well, and

Speaker 53 it was time to speak.

Speaker 8 I had to.

Speaker 64 The truth is worth fighting for.

Speaker 59 Nikki needs jurors to believe that the years she says she suffered at the hands of an abusive partner caused her to feel the threat from Chris was imminent.

Speaker 4 This was more than a murder trial. And if you did not look at it through a lens of understanding domestic violence, you would get it wrong.

Speaker 4 We don't understand the psychological warfare that has happened to victims.

Speaker 74 You were afraid you wouldn't be believed.

Speaker 53 Because he was so loved and

Speaker 53 he said nobody would believe me. I was afraid that if I moved forward, nothing would happen, or very little, and then it would be more dangerous when he came back.

Speaker 53 I stayed as long as I did, trying to keep us all together until I couldn't anymore.

Speaker 40 She loved his parents, and she wanted her children to have that, you know, warm,

Speaker 41 extended family.

Speaker 55 They had no idea what was going on.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 40 she was putting on a show.

Speaker 53 My pregnancy with Faye and Chris's violence

Speaker 53 increased as it went on. I loved being pregnant.

Speaker 20 I loved...

Speaker 52 But

Speaker 72 that pregnancy with Faye was tough.

Speaker 53 That pregnancy was really tough.

Speaker 53 I was in constant pain. in trying to care for a toddler and

Speaker 53 being pregnant or a newborn after she was born. He wouldn't stop.
It just kept getting worse.

Speaker 63 What were you afraid of?

Speaker 14 I was afraid he was gonna kill me.

Speaker 59 On the stand, Nikki testifies that in 2015, two years before Chris is found dead, she made a stunning discovery.

Speaker 60 One day, while they were having sex in the bedroom, Nikki noticed a red flashing light. She discovered that he had been secretly recording without her knowledge or consent.

Speaker 11 She begins to suspect that he might be putting her on porn sites, which is basically her worst nightmare.

Speaker 2 Nikki says that her boyfriend, Chris Grover, took images of her without her consent and tells the jury that she discovers these same images had been posted on Pornhub under the username Grover Respect.

Speaker 54 Even though the website says they forbid any content involving force or coercion.

Speaker 48 Most of the images of Nikki are too graphic to show on national television.

Speaker 60 Somebody with the username Grover Respect was uploading non-consensual photos of Nikki to Pornhum.

Speaker 60 This user was very interested in degrading women and in having power over women. There was at least one video they ever did featuring a gymnast, which I also found to be pretty disturbing.

Speaker 21 It was like a nightmare.

Speaker 80 You described that to your therapist as something of a breaking point.

Speaker 53 I felt paralyzed. I knew I should leave

Speaker 53 to have it filmed and broadcast. It just brought like a whole new level of shame and

Speaker 53 it was painful.

Speaker 59 Nikki tells jurors that her therapist set up a meeting with detectives to report these images on Pornhub.

Speaker 60 Nikki did allow the detective to come in and talk to her about options and he also gave us a deposition form where she could write down

Speaker 60 what had been happening.

Speaker 53 The police said, just sign this and I'll go arrest him right now at the gym.

Speaker 53 And when he said that, all I pictured were all the girls that he coached and what that would do for them to know that this man that they trusted and loved was capable of doing what he was doing.

Speaker 20 It made me want to hide it even more.

Speaker 53 And I felt like it was just my word against his. He said that he would just tell people I liked it.

Speaker 40 So you had the paper in front of you that you could have signed.

Speaker 33 I think people might not understand

Speaker 75 that thinking.

Speaker 53 When you're in survival mode, the thought of signing that piece of paper felt so dangerous.

Speaker 11 She has a baby at home. She has a toddler at home.
This is their dad.

Speaker 45 Nikki is a signature away from having Chris arrested, but she is unable to bring herself to do it.

Speaker 11 The detective sent out a department-wide email saying Nikki is the victim. He said that Chris Grover is the person he believes responsible.

Speaker 5 What they're saying here is we believe this woman is at risk.

Speaker 2 But at trial, the question becomes who posted those images.

Speaker 45 Chris isn't visible in any of the photos or videos, and neither the prosecution nor the defense is able to directly link the account to Chris or anyone else.

Speaker 24 So the judge blocks jurors from from seeing any of Grover Respect's profile or activity on Pornhub.

Speaker 6 The jurors do see those graphic images of Nikki. Now to counter that, the prosecution's strategy is to say, well, maybe it's consensual.

Speaker 11 Prosecution used narratives to destroy somebody as a victim and turn them into a master manipulator.

Speaker 59 But which narrative will stick with the jury? A victim of years of horrific abuse, forced to choose life or death?

Speaker 59 Or someone who methodically portrayed her partner as an abuser to get away with murder.

Speaker 22 We knew that the verdict could come down any moment. Everybody rushed to the court from sheer adrenaline, no idea what's going to happen.

Speaker 36 The days that she was testifying, knowing she was like saying the things that she had kept hidden for so many years with images that she had desperately tried to hide just on huge screens in front of his family, our family, friends, and doing the hardest work she's ever had to do.

Speaker 60 She rose to the occasion and said, Okay, I'm gonna fight for my life and I'm gonna fight for my kids' lives.

Speaker 51 In addition to telling jurors about the years of abuse she says she endured, Nikki needs to convince them that on the night in question, she believes she had no choice but to do what she did.

Speaker 35 The authorities saw it as murder.

Speaker 34 What did you see it as?

Speaker 20 Survival.

Speaker 53 I wish every day

Speaker 53 that that night ended differently.

Speaker 53 But the truth is in that moment

Speaker 53 it was survival. It was kill or be killed.
And

Speaker 53 I still can't wrap my head around the fact that I was capable of something like that.

Speaker 6 The prosecution's position on this was even if Chris Grover was abusive, Nikki Adamondo had no legal right to shoot him in the head as he lay on the couch. She has a clear path to the door.

Speaker 6 She's the one that's got the gun.

Speaker 4 We need to understand that it is quite possible the person holding the gun is far more afraid than the person not holding the gun, and that matters.

Speaker 4 That danger, risk, and lethality are always imminent for a victim.

Speaker 2 In your mind, you didn't have a choice.

Speaker 53 It was so much faster and stronger than me.

Speaker 53 There was no way.

Speaker 59 But would the jury believe that? After three weeks of testimony, the case was in their hands.

Speaker 52 It's April 12th, 2019, and we've learned a verdict is expected in the Nicole Atamando trial.

Speaker 6 Jury came back and found Nikki Atamando guilty of second-degree murder.

Speaker 82 For Nikki, it was the worst possible verdict.

Speaker 53 I just remember reaching behind my neck and taking off my locket that I wore.

Speaker 14 I had pictures of my kids in it and putting it on the table

Speaker 14 so that

Speaker 14 they wouldn't take it.

Speaker 6 The jury came back and vindicated Chris and they vindicated the family.

Speaker 35 Justice served.

Speaker 51 Here's his ashes.

Speaker 22 We are heartbroken and devastated.

Speaker 13 And that we are thinking of Nikki's two children, Ben and Peggy, who will go to sleep without, tonight without their mom.

Speaker 2 As Nikki's waiting to be sentenced in a prison cell, her guilty verdict to domestic violence advocates represents exactly what's wrong with our criminal justice system and how domestic violence cases are prosecuted.

Speaker 63 Criminalized survivors, I think, is a term that has been used to describe people like Nikki, where they take acts to survive and end up being just one more defendant in a criminal justice system that doesn't seem to understand domestic violence.

Speaker 30 In Ms.

Speaker 4 Aramando's case, there was lots of focus on the night of the incident and very little focus on how we got there. I thought to myself, if Ms.

Speaker 4 Aramando is not seen as a victim, then who could be seen as a victim?

Speaker 45 If Nikki was the one who died that night, it would have barely been a story.

Speaker 46 What do you mean a story? They wouldn't have even bothered to come up with a narrative.

Speaker 48 It would have just been boyfriend kills girlfriend, the end.

Speaker 6 This is a very emotional issue for a lot of people, and that's exactly why we have trials.

Speaker 6 It's the jury's job to make the call.

Speaker 52 A Hudson Valley woman convicted of murdering the father of her children hopes to be sentenced under a new law.

Speaker 59 Just one month after Nikki was found guilty, New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act.

Speaker 59 It gave courts discretion in sentencing crimes involving domestic violence survivors if the abuse was a significant contributing factor to the defendant's criminal behavior.

Speaker 63 The act was made for cases just like Nikki's. It's clear that the abuse was a material cause of the crime for which he was convicted.

Speaker 59 Nikki is facing 25 years to life in prison. Now under the new law, that could be reduced to as little as five years.
Her case is among the very first to test the new law.

Speaker 2 After a three-day hearing and months of waiting, Nikki Adamondo is once again facing the Dutchess County Court, awaiting her fate.

Speaker 6 The court found that she didn't qualify under the law.

Speaker 6 The court was unconvinced by Nikki Adamondo's contentions that Chris Grover was abusing her.

Speaker 6 She was sentenced to 19 years to life in York State Prison.

Speaker 22 19 years to life is unimaginable

Speaker 22 in the life of a mother. Even if you started when your child was a baby, their whole childhood is gone.

Speaker 2 The judge stated,

Speaker 50 Someone who made the choices you did is a broken person.

Speaker 11 It was upside down to hear the judge tell her that she was a broken person when it was clearly the system that was broken.

Speaker 50 Part of the judge's reasoning is that Nikki, to his mind, had, quote, a tremendous amount of advice, assistance, support, and opportunities to escape her alleged abusive situation.

Speaker 4 The number one question that I am asked all the time is, why don't they just leave?

Speaker 41 And it is an extremely simplistic and really archaic

Speaker 4 look at domestic violence.

Speaker 72 When somebody says, why didn't you leave?

Speaker 72 What do you say?

Speaker 53 I was scared what would happen after that.

Speaker 53 I was scared to die and leave my kids without me.

Speaker 53 But I also thought

Speaker 53 that if I could make him happy, it could stop or

Speaker 53 that things would go back to how they were.

Speaker 59 After her sentence, Nikki's supporters refused to give up, and her lawyers file an appeal insisting there was important evidence the jurors never saw.

Speaker 53 There was a lot that the jury didn't get to see.

Speaker 46 I think a lot of people are under the assumption that the truth comes out at trial.

Speaker 51 Nikki's army of supporters is now growing and she's about to gain a new supporter, a powerful legal ally determined to help her.

Speaker 53 I promised my kids I wouldn't stop fighting until I came home. I never let myself accept that it was the end.

Speaker 59 Nikki's supporters are now on the movement.

Speaker 59 And they're outraged, stunned by her fate. 19 years to life in prison.

Speaker 2 Nikki's sister is still taking care of the kids while Nikki is sent to Bedford Hills correctional facility.

Speaker 9 I went there to ask about her experience and that fateful night.

Speaker 88 You're gonna sit here. That's okay.

Speaker 24 Take a deep breath.

Speaker 72 We're gonna take a minute. You alright?

Speaker 53 I think there's a misunderstanding about

Speaker 53 the victim and perpetrator. I think it's hard.

Speaker 53 to understand

Speaker 53 that someone can be both.

Speaker 2 I know that your kids come to visit you weekly.

Speaker 41 What are those visits like?

Speaker 53 It's all we have right now, you know.

Speaker 47 They're really bittersweet,

Speaker 53 but they're really resilient and spend five years of that now, so they're kind of used to it, I think.

Speaker 69 Yeah. What do you do on those visits?

Speaker 64 We

Speaker 41 sing too loudly for the visiting room, probably.

Speaker 53 They tell me about their day. We try to just play games even during COVID, six feet apart.
We'd be playing hand games across the table.

Speaker 53 Just try to soak up as much time as we can.

Speaker 34 How hard is it to parent behind bars?

Speaker 53 It takes intention and effort,

Speaker 53 but it would be harder not to.

Speaker 13 Happy birthday,

Speaker 13 dear

Speaker 14 mommy.

Speaker 30 I would say you could come back home. That's what I wish too.

Speaker 53 But I talk to them every day and I know who they sit next to in class.

Speaker 53 I try to stay involved to their day-to-day. Those are the little moments that I miss most.

Speaker 80 Chris's parents, what's your message to them?

Speaker 53 I wish that I could explain to them how much I share in their hurt, how much I grieve Chris too.

Speaker 53 and how much I never wanted to cause pain and I know that I've caused so much pain in their lives.

Speaker 34 What would you change if you could rewind the clock?

Speaker 53 I don't know. I think about that all the time.

Speaker 11 A big thing that Nikki did was comforted herself thinking that her kids weren't seeing that abuse.

Speaker 20 At least her kids weren't a part of this.

Speaker 53 I don't know how I thought that I was protecting them by staying. I really believed that.

Speaker 38 I think if she had known earlier that the abuse was affecting the kids, it may have changed the trajectory of things.

Speaker 51 In 2018, while Nikki was awaiting trial at the Dutchess County Jail, her children, Ben and Faye, five and three at that time, started to meet with a clinical psychologist, Dr.

Speaker 34 David Crenshaw.

Speaker 42 The children were sentenced as well as their mother because it sealed their fate for the next number of years. There's over five million kids in this situation in the United States.

Speaker 42 This is not a unusual circumstance.

Speaker 11 It became clear as Dr. Crenshaw worked with them that they knew what was happening.

Speaker 42 When they first would be reunited with her, In the room, they would want to check her for bruises and cuts.

Speaker 42 and they would do that in places like her arms her hands but they would also want to check under her clothing on her chest

Speaker 42 because she would try to hide the bruises and the cuts that in my mind just simply validated

Speaker 42 everything that Nikki had testified to on the stand

Speaker 59 After Nikki was found guilty, a partner at the prestigious New York law firm Sullivan and Cromwell decides to take on her case pro bono.

Speaker 63 Nikki's case encapsulates everything's wrong about the way society addresses survivors of domestic violence and certainly with the way we treat them in the criminal justice system.

Speaker 51 Garrett Beaney is convinced that Nikki should never have been convicted of second-degree murder and he prepares to file an appeal on her behalf.

Speaker 40 There were so many things that that were not presented in the trial, things that were not allowed.

Speaker 30 Why?

Speaker 63 So the prosecution obviously had to paint Nikki as a liar and paint Grover as the saint. They did everything they could to do that, including excluding powerful evidence.

Speaker 63 And the judge in this case, in excluding that information, took away from the jury something they should have known about.

Speaker 59 Remember, jurors saw the images of Nikki from the Grover Respect Pornhub account, but not the user profile information.

Speaker 59 Her appellate attorney contends that jurors should have been allowed to see the profile and decide for themselves who posted those images of Nikki.

Speaker 63 Grover Respect

Speaker 63 described himself in terms of age and interests that fit Grover to a T.

Speaker 63 If the jury had heard that, it would have made them, I think, at least question the pictures that were being painted of Nikki and her abuser during the course of the trial.

Speaker 6 But the ultimate question is, on that night, was Nikki Adamondo justified in using deadly force against Chris Grover?

Speaker 59 According to Garrett Beanie, he and his team have put in over 4,000 hours of pro bono work preparing to present Nikki's case to the Court of Appeals.

Speaker 63 Nikki believed, I think until the final verdict,

Speaker 63 that all she had to do was to explain what happened and that someone would believe her.

Speaker 48 So what will the Court of Appeals do?

Speaker 48 And will Nikki be believed?

Speaker 40 She said, check your social media about Nikki.

Speaker 4 I'm scrolling. I'm like, oh my gosh.

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Speaker 51 It's April 2021, and Nikki's lawyer is on a Zoom with the Supreme Court's appellate division.

Speaker 63 Garrett Beani on behalf of appellant Nicole Adamondo. Ms.

Speaker 89 Adamondo has not received the fairness and justice our system provides.

Speaker 63 Someone finally looked at the evidence and said, oh my God, this was a woman that was horribly abused.

Speaker 6 This is a very sad and tragic historical narrative.

Speaker 63 The Court of Appeals did not have too much difficulty in unanimously concluding that the nature and extent of the abuse was not undetermined and then that a typical sentence under the criminal code was unjust.

Speaker 52 Yesterday a New York Appeals Court determined she should have been sentenced under the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act and her sentence was reduced.

Speaker 51 Nikki's sentence goes from 19 years to life down to seven and a half. As of now she's served six years of that.

Speaker 22 Getting the news that the appellate court had actually offered relief in reducing Nikki's sentence really did feel like a small miracle because what they said was the judge was wrong. She was abused.

Speaker 53 I felt found finally

Speaker 53 by them and heard.

Speaker 71 How did you tell your kids?

Speaker 53 Ben had Skittles, so I opened them up and I lined up 19 Skittles. on the table and I let them know that that's how many years the judge wanted mommy to stay here.

Speaker 53 And then I removed some of them and showed them this is how long mommy has left. It gave them something concrete to hold on to

Speaker 53 that I would be coming home.

Speaker 6 They did reduce her sentence but they did not reverse her murder conviction.

Speaker 51 We reached out to Chris Grover's family and although they declined to do an interview his mother Gail shared this with us.

Speaker 2 We were very happy with the prosecution in this case and believe the jurors reached the right verdict.

Speaker 51 The appellate court's decision was a slap in the face.

Speaker 48 We believe Nikki's accusations of abuse are untrue and maintain Chris was a peaceful, loving partner and father.

Speaker 80 You could see why some people would think, well, you took a human life, you had your sentence reduced, that that's what criminal justice should look like.

Speaker 53 There's nothing I could do to change what happened,

Speaker 53 to bring him back, to

Speaker 13 heal

Speaker 2 the collective pain from all of this.

Speaker 53 Staying in here

Speaker 53 causes more pain.

Speaker 51 In the wake of Nikki's appellate win, a lot of people are beginning to see her in a different light, including Chris Grover's ex-girlfriend, Bella.

Speaker 44 So I definitely romanticized my relationship with Chris.

Speaker 44 It wasn't until I started experiencing my own physically abusive relationship to where I was even able to look back and there were some red flags there.

Speaker 2 Bella says Chris never abused her, but she says her own experience made her change her perspective.

Speaker 44 There was a time that Chris was upset with me. I was just standing over the side of my bed folding my laundry and I looked up and I just saw Chris in my window.

Speaker 44 He was just watching me as a teenage kid.

Speaker 44 My thought was I feel bad because he is so worried that I'm going to betray him that he feels the need to watch me.

Speaker 43 Hindsight being 2020, I can look back now and say that's stalking and that's scary.

Speaker 88 So my ex-boyfriend was shot in the head and killed by his girlfriend and mother of their children in September of 2017, and justice was not served in that case, and I want to discuss it.

Speaker 44 If I could say anything to her, it would be that I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 I'm sorry for her experience, and I'm sorry that I didn't believe her.

Speaker 72 There's an open clemency application.

Speaker 62 If you go to that Instagram, you can get to it.

Speaker 51 Instead of getting out when her kids are young adults, Nikki is now set to be released in 2024.

Speaker 41 It's still not enough.

Speaker 40 It's still not right. She should not have been there for one day.

Speaker 11 Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 51 Nikki's supporters now have a renewed mission to get her home even before that new release date.

Speaker 2 And there's only one person who can make that happen.

Speaker 51 The governor of New York, Kathy Hokul.

Speaker 41 I think that Governor Hokul has a wonderful opportunity right now to show the rest of the country how New York State treats survivors of domestic violence.

Speaker 63 Nikki does not deserve to be incarcerated. Her children children don't deserve to be separated from their mother.
But Nikki's case is not just about Nikki. It's about all survivors.

Speaker 11 Nikki's story has rightfully gotten an immense amount of attention, but there are people with equally worthy stories out there.

Speaker 2 And some of these stories are also getting media attention. Piper Lewis waiting to hear her sentencing for killing her alleged rapist.

Speaker 84 Wendy Howard claims she killed in self-defense.

Speaker 51 Along Madison George, a Colville tribal member, will serve in prison for killing the man she says raped her. Bristol Kaiser, an appeals court ruled, can now make the case.

Speaker 2 And there are countless stories of survivors that never see the media spotlight.

Speaker 11 When I started looking into Nikki's case, I was curious if this was a one-off or if it was something that was happening all the time. So I started to write into prisons.

Speaker 11 One of the letters I received was from Tanisha Williams. She took part in a really horrible crime while her abuser had a gun to her.

Speaker 11 She was used as a key prosecution witness and then she was put away for 30 years.

Speaker 87 Why did you think that if you came forward with your story, you would get to go free?

Speaker 90 You would not go to prison. I just thought them knowing I'm giving everything from everything that happened to me, what he did to me, giving everybody what they need.
I would not be in prison.

Speaker 11 She had no money and she had no way out because she took a plea so she could never appeal it. She's in Michigan and she has a clemency petition too.

Speaker 11 She has a clemency application on Governor Gretchen Whitmer's desk.

Speaker 71 What would you say to Governor Hochold that you deserve clemency?

Speaker 53 I desperately feel the weight to empower other survivors

Speaker 53 before it's too late, before they end up

Speaker 53 where I am,

Speaker 53 Or worse, I just feel that responsibility.

Speaker 32 Nikki's file is one of so many sitting on the governor's desk, many of whom are domestic violence survivors.

Speaker 9 But amongst the hundreds of letters of support that Nikki has, there's one very loud letter saying the opposite.

Speaker 6 In their letter to the governor's office, opposing Nikki Adamondo's application for clemency, the district attorney wrote the following: Miss Adamondo was not the victim of sexual or physical abuse by Christopher Grover.

Speaker 6 To the contrary, she is a masterful manipulator who intentionally murdered Chris Grover in his sleep. But will the governor see it the same way?

Speaker 52 That will be up to her.

Speaker 27 Nikki Atamando is convicted of killing her partner, but she's always maintained it was self-defense and responding to years of abuse. Juju Chang is here.
She's been following the story.

Speaker 2 Good morning, Juju. Good morning to you, George.

Speaker 57 You know, Nikki Atamando's life seemed picture-perfect.

Speaker 51 I've reported on Nikki Atamando's case for more than a year now, and every holiday she and her supporters have asked the governor of New York to bring her home to her kids.

Speaker 2 But when the list of names for clemency was announced last December, Nikki's was not one of them.

Speaker 51 Her supporters are frustrated, but that doesn't stop them. In fact, their numbers have grown and they're expanding their reach, advocating for other criminalized survivors across the country.

Speaker 2 Why do you think so many women are dedicated to her cause?

Speaker 55 I think a lot of women see themselves in Nikki.

Speaker 38 Nikki is just one of many. It's just she's having more eyes on her than most of them have.

Speaker 63 So much of what happened to Nikki is so much of what's happening to other survivors of domestic violence.

Speaker 6 When considering whether or not Nikki Adamando is a criminalized survivor of domestic abuse, even if we take everything she said as true, the prosecution would still argue that she shot a man who was apparently asleep on a couch.

Speaker 80 There's this phrase that the punishment should fit the crime.

Speaker 34 What do you think about your punishment?

Speaker 53 Even with a reduced sentence, Even had I been acquitted, I'll live with this for the rest of my life. Knowing the pain pain that I've caused so many people.

Speaker 53 Playing over and over again all the things that I did and that I didn't do, I can't change that now.

Speaker 72 What would you say to other women who might be in a position like yours?

Speaker 53 Tell them that I see them and I hear them and someone will believe them.

Speaker 63 We have not figured out how we create a system

Speaker 63 that addresses better domestic violence, which is a scourge in this country.

Speaker 22 Of course the best ending is where no one dies and we clearly haven't figured out a way to make that happen as a society.

Speaker 34 When you daydream about leaving this place, what does that look like to you?

Speaker 53 Just being with my kids and helping them find a new normal for our life.

Speaker 34 You tell them good stories about their dad.

Speaker 53 And they hold on to it. They try to keep those parts of him alive for them.
He was loved and I loved him too.

Speaker 84 Nikki's two children, now 10 and 8, continue to live with her sister and they see Chris's parents regularly.

Speaker 84 Nikki's currently set to be released sometime in 2024, but her clemency application remains open with New York's Governor Hochul. That is our program for tonight.
Thank you for watching.

Speaker 84 I'm David Muir and from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News.

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