Under the Prairie Sky

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Speaker 5 My mom knew something was wrong. She's like, what's going on?

Speaker 5 And I'm like, I just got the phone call that Nikki's missing.

Speaker 6 My mom's like, what?

Speaker 8 I didn't tell my mom her daughter's missing.

Speaker 10 Nicole was a loving young mom.

Speaker 11 Nikki was all about her kids.

Speaker 10 Embarking on a new life and a solo drive across the state is a very wide open, desolate place.

Speaker 5 I found out my sister hadn't come home.

Speaker 13 Did she break down on the side of the road? Did she get picked up by somebody?

Speaker 8 Kidnapping?

Speaker 14 Carjacking?

Speaker 15 Everything was on the table.

Speaker 14 They found her car, along with a clue that maybe Nicole had romance on her mind.

Speaker 15 There was a calendar.

Speaker 17 And on February 14th, Valentine's Day, there was a heart.

Speaker 21 Then a message on Facebook.

Speaker 5 Who is sending me something at this hour of the night?

Speaker 11 Because I got a message from Nikki.

Speaker 22 So she's not really missing.

Speaker 24 She's off somewhere and she just doesn't want to be found.

Speaker 26 Right.

Speaker 10 But where?

Speaker 12 I found one surveillance camera that captured the highway.

Speaker 27 This is our biggest lead.

Speaker 10 But the road to the truth would be bumpy.

Speaker 8 You.

Speaker 14 How's that?

Speaker 10 Maybe even dangerous.

Speaker 29 You didn't see that he had a gun?

Speaker 15 I missed it completely.

Speaker 10 Could anyone find answers for a frantic family?

Speaker 30 Where is she? Why did she have the beneath?

Speaker 16 What happened to Nicole out on that lonely highway? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 10 Here's Josh Mankowitz with Under the Prairie Sky.

Speaker 35 Way out west, the view in every direction is as big as the sky and just about as empty.

Speaker 40 Across Montana from the better-known breathtaking ski resorts that bring in a mountain of money

Speaker 43 Sits the prairie where our story begins.

Speaker 45 It's a mystery that without a doubt remains to this day.

Speaker 42 A tale wound around the slow downward spiral of a group of longtime friends.

Speaker 48 You hear people say that life is high school with money, right?

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Well, this is high school with murder.

Speaker 8 Very much.

Speaker 41 The twists start with the discovery of a Ford expedition alone on a bleak highway outside a small town.

Speaker 51 An expedition like this one that belonged to a woman named Nicole Waller.

Speaker 5 She loved animals. I mean as kids, we had mice,

Speaker 5 we had

Speaker 5 frogs, salamanders, and newts.

Speaker 43 Childhood memories spill happily from Nicole's sister Carmen.

Speaker 50 And as sisters, Carmen and Nicole loved and sometimes loathed each other.

Speaker 5 The beauty of our relationship is we would butt heads, we could fight and scream, but the moment we got in trouble for it,

Speaker 5 we were like in it together. Oh, well, we were just playing around, Dad.

Speaker 8 Did that work?

Speaker 5 Sometimes.

Speaker 5 As adults, if she needed anything, we were there. Nikki was the type of person that if

Speaker 5 you

Speaker 5 were low on food, she would be like, you know what, come over, have some dinner on me. She would literally give you the shirt off her back.

Speaker 60 Nicole, Carmen, and another friend named Cami all grew up together in the western Montana town of Kalispell, just a stone's throw from the majesty of Glacier National Park.

Speaker 64 Cami loved Nicole's free spirit.

Speaker 13 She didn't have really a care in the world.

Speaker 15 Now we were young, we were kids.

Speaker 36 And Nicole, especially, acted like one.

Speaker 57 In fact, when Cami Cammie got married back in the late 90s, Nicole was a bridesmaid.

Speaker 66 And true to her personality, she missed the rehearsal.

Speaker 59 But things changed in 2000.

Speaker 67 Nicole had a little girl when she was 18.

Speaker 69 How did she change when she became a mom?

Speaker 5 She became like, oh,

Speaker 8 I'm a mom.

Speaker 5 I can't go out and party all the time. I have a child.
I have to get a job. I'm going to go do a CNA.

Speaker 8 Nursing assistant. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And that's what she did.

Speaker 68 In 2002, at age 21, Nikki married a guy named Jason.

Speaker 71 They welcomed two boys who joined their sister.

Speaker 39 Then medical problems started.

Speaker 43 A neurological condition put pressure on her brain.

Speaker 40 Uncomfortable, but something she could live with.

Speaker 35 Her friends and family say it did take a toll on her marriage.

Speaker 44 Eventually, she went on disability.

Speaker 24 It did not stop her.

Speaker 5 She never let it get her down.

Speaker 5 She always thought positive. She didn't let life stop her.

Speaker 21 By 2012, things seemed to be looking up.

Speaker 77 She'd reconnected with an old friend named Cody on Facebook and fallen head over heels for him.

Speaker 75 And once her divorce was final, Nicole planned to move with her kids to join him 500 miles across the state.

Speaker 79 on the Montana-North Dakota border, where the discovery of billions of barrels of oil and an extraction process called fracking had led to a boom in an area known as the Bakken.

Speaker 41 But before the final move could take place, during a trip to see Cody in February 2013, Nicole texted her sister the night before Valentine's Day to say she was returning, driving back home to see her kids who were staying with their dad.

Speaker 83 And in between is a, what, eight or nine hour drive?

Speaker 38 Correct.

Speaker 49 A pretty long, desolate eight or nine hour drive in some places.

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 84 But on those long drives across Montana, Nicole did have company.

Speaker 85 Tell me about your sister's relationship with her phone.

Speaker 5 You know, some people love their pillow. My sister loved her phone.
I swear she slept with it.

Speaker 73 She certainly drove with it.

Speaker 5 That's why Nikki was the queen of texting. Where are you at? Did you stop and get gas yet? You need to stay awake? Call me.

Speaker 51 But on this trip, neither those calls nor those texts arrived from nicole you didn't talk to her every day

Speaker 5 no so the fact that a few days had gone by and you hadn't heard from her that was not in and of itself unusual or she no because she'd come home she'd sleep and want to spend that time with her children so for me to go a couple days without hearing from her wasn't unusual What Carmen didn't realize is that while she wasn't worried, some friends of Nicole's were, because they hadn't heard from her.

Speaker 63 Worried enough to file a missing persons report.

Speaker 53 Which brings us back to that vehicle, Nicole's expedition, found on the side of the highway about an hour up the road from her boyfriend's house.

Speaker 45 It was after dark on a frigid five-degree night in mid-February when FBI agent Craig Overby received a call from another agent about that vehicle.

Speaker 12 He asked me, would I go out and take a look at the car and see if there was any evidence of

Speaker 12 why she might be missing.

Speaker 37 So Overby, one of only a handful of FBI agents posted among the endless prairies of eastern Montana, drove the 70 miles from his home to the edge of a small town called Poplar.

Speaker 12 The car was locked, but we could see inside the car that it was just packed with belongings from the floor to the roof.

Speaker 44 The agent quickly made a decision.

Speaker 41 Why'd you decide to go inside?

Speaker 12 It was very possible that an injured or deceased person was concealed under all of those things inside the car that we just couldn't see from the windows.

Speaker 14 We opened the car, looked inside.

Speaker 83 Can you tell there's anybody in the car?

Speaker 12 No, but we heard sounds coming from the back.

Speaker 43 Sound of what?

Speaker 12 I didn't know what it was.

Speaker 12 A sound I'd never heard before.

Speaker 62 It was a sound the agent would never forget.

Speaker 94 What was making that strange sound? When we come back, a bizarre discovery.

Speaker 12 I was really surprised they were alive. It was five degrees outside.

Speaker 16 And then, then it turns out the place where Nicole's car was found has a reputation.

Speaker 49 I'm thinking you gotta have a lot of stabbings to be called Stab City.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 50 FBI agent Craig Overby was looking at Nicole Waller's Ford expedition.

Speaker 80 It had been found packed full of her belongings and abandoned on Montana's Fort Peck Indian Reservation, about a mile outside the small town of Poplar.

Speaker 52 Then Overby heard something strange.

Speaker 14 The agent walked around to the back door, opened it, and...

Speaker 12 There were two guinea pigs in the very back cargo area of the expedition. The two guinea pigs were making squealing noises.

Speaker 14 They hadn't been fed in a while, probably.

Speaker 12 That's right, and I was really surprised they were alive. The car had been there for a few days, and it was five degrees outside.

Speaker 77 Would Nicole, the girl who loved animals, have walked away from those family pets?

Speaker 39 It seemed unlikely.

Speaker 84 But the FBI knew nothing yet about Nicole.

Speaker 71 Only a highway patrolman's report that her expedition had been sitting there for four days and that she was nowhere to be found.

Speaker 91 The highways here in Montana are long and desolate.

Speaker 52 If you stop here, if you break down here, if you're forced off the road here, here, it might be a long time before anyone comes to help.

Speaker 50 And there's one more thing.

Speaker 95 The place where Nicole's vehicle was found was in an area so violent that decades ago, police gave it a nickname.

Speaker 56 They called it Stab City.

Speaker 12 The FBI has jurisdiction over certain crimes that occur on the Indian reservations throughout the country. And so primarily we work violent crime investigations on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

Speaker 22 I'm thinking you got to have a lot of stabbings to be called Stab City.

Speaker 12 Yeah, you know, not a lot of gun crime, but a lot of terrible assaults.

Speaker 12 The people that live on the reservation are some of the finest people in the world, but there are a few that abuse alcohol and drugs, which leads to a lot of violent crime.

Speaker 8 If someone had stopped there or been made to stop there for some reason and was walking in a poplar, would they be in a position of some danger?

Speaker 12 Most of our crime are people who know each other. Random crime is very rare in Poplar.

Speaker 80 Rare, but not unheard of.

Speaker 95 Just a year before, Overby was lead investigator when a schoolteacher named Sherry Arnold disappeared during a morning run in a town less than an hour from the reservation.

Speaker 45 Massive searches did not find Sherry Arnold.

Speaker 98 Her disappearance became national news.

Speaker 43 Just a week after Arnold vanished, an ex-con and an accomplice were arrested.

Speaker 25 Like so many other men and women, They'd been drawn to the Bakken by the prospect of oil jobs.

Speaker 57 And two months later, one of her killers led police to Sherry Arnold's body in a shallow grave.

Speaker 23 Both men were eventually convicted of her murder.

Speaker 12 It really changed the nature of the community. Eastern Montana was like Mayberry in a way prior to the Sherrick Arnold case.

Speaker 12 That investigation was really fresh in our minds when Nicole Waller became missing.

Speaker 8 Kidnapping?

Speaker 41 Carjacking?

Speaker 15 Everything was on the table.

Speaker 26 From the beginning of Nicole's case, one clue seemed important.

Speaker 70 Inside the Expedition Center console, console, Agent Overby found her keys.

Speaker 48 Did you check to see whether the car could be started?

Speaker 12 Yep, I started it.

Speaker 21 So presumably, she didn't break down there. That's correct.
She stopped for some other reason.

Speaker 12 That's right.

Speaker 74 But then weirdly left the keys locked inside?

Speaker 57 Agent Overby drove the Expedition to an impound lot and called in Montana's Department of Criminal Investigation.

Speaker 75 and Agent Mark Hilliard, who acted as both crime scene technician and detective.

Speaker 14 So as you go through the car, what do you find?

Speaker 19 It was somebody's life thrown into a vehicle.

Speaker 99 And it didn't make sense to me why.

Speaker 14 Why is it like that?

Speaker 50 Nicole had health problems.

Speaker 15 Were her meds in that vehicle?

Speaker 14 Yes, they were.

Speaker 101 I mean, it doesn't make any sense for her to walk away, leave that medication when she needed it to survive.

Speaker 15 There was a calendar on the passenger floorboard.

Speaker 100 And on the date of February 14th, Valentine's Day, it was like Cody Forever in a heart.

Speaker 15 And on the 15th, she had a medical appointment, which I thought was odd.

Speaker 17 She's got plans.

Speaker 53 Across the state of Montana, the same day that search was going on, Nicole's sister Carmen, found out from Nicole's friends that she had never made it back to Kalispell.

Speaker 14 Immediately concerned or just thinking she's off the grid for a little bit?

Speaker 5 Immediately concerned. Like freaking out.

Speaker 52 So you talked to her on a Wednesday. She's going to come back on Thursday.

Speaker 92 Correct.

Speaker 49 And now it's Monday and you're getting a call that no one's seen or heard from her.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and I'm angry because nobody got a hold of me prior to that. And my mind is like, why? And I'm like, okay, let me call the sheriff's office, you know, because I'm in disbelief.

Speaker 40 Incredibly, Nicole's friends had filed a missing persons report without ever once checking with Nicole's family.

Speaker 38 Any good reason why Nikki would go off the grid for four full days?

Speaker 5 None at all.

Speaker 5 She wouldn't have left her kids. I must have made a dozen or more phone calls to her.

Speaker 103 And you texted her?

Speaker 5 Texted her. Where are you? What's going on? You know, please respond.
Can you talk to us?

Speaker 75 But again, from the woman known as the queen of texting, no response.

Speaker 79 So why would Nicole Waller just disappear?

Speaker 35 It was time for investigators to speak with those who had last seen her.

Speaker 16 Coming up, why some thought Nicole might be just fine.

Speaker 22 So she's not really missing.

Speaker 26 She's off somewhere and she just doesn't want to be found.

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 103 And that does sound like Nikki.

Speaker 8 Very much so.

Speaker 105 When dateline continues.

Speaker 37 Across western Montana, word spread that Nicole Waller had disappeared while driving more than 500 miles across the state, a trip that began near the booming Bakken oil patch on the border with North Dakota.

Speaker 61 It was left to Nicole's sister Carmen to break the news to their mom.

Speaker 5 My mom knew something was wrong and she's like, what's going on?

Speaker 15 And I had to tell her.

Speaker 5 And I'm like, I just got the phone call that Nikki's missing.

Speaker 5 My mom's like, what? And she's screaming at me in the phone. And it wasn't that she was mad at me.

Speaker 5 it's fear.

Speaker 8 So I had to tell my mom her daughter's missing.

Speaker 54 Carmen and her mother immediately wondered if Nicole's neurological condition was the cause.

Speaker 5 My mom and I called hospitals. We called sheriff departments,

Speaker 5 all just thinking, okay, did she have some sort of medical issue on the way over

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 is unconscious and they brought in a Jane Doe and they all told us no.

Speaker 5 They hadn't seen anybody with that.

Speaker 70 Looking for support, Carmen called her best friend Angie.

Speaker 25 How'd she sound?

Speaker 8 Frantic.

Speaker 11 And Carmen's never frantic. Carmen is the most level-headed person I know.

Speaker 19 What did you think had happened?

Speaker 11 Neither one of us really knew what was going on.

Speaker 5 She was just disappeared.

Speaker 75 News of Nicole's vanishing spread via Facebook, where it was seen by longtime friends like Cami.

Speaker 13 And you you know, at first you wonder if she's just somewhere, you know, because this doesn't happen in small-town USA.

Speaker 22 So she's not really missing.

Speaker 49 She's off somewhere and she just doesn't want to be found.

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 26 Or she doesn't want to talk to anybody.

Speaker 103 Right. And that does sound like Nikki.

Speaker 13 Very much so.

Speaker 36 But before long, Nicole's friends and family wondered if something more sinister was behind the disappearance.

Speaker 58 Carmen called Nicole's estranged husband.

Speaker 71 Did you talk to to Jason?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 5 I called him and asked him, have you seen Nikki? Have you heard from her? And he says, I have not heard from her since the morning of the 14th. She was on her way home.

Speaker 42 Detectives, too, called Jason Waller.

Speaker 5 Jason, you know why I'm calling you today?

Speaker 32 Yes, I do.

Speaker 30 Because

Speaker 32 no one can find her.

Speaker 40 Jason said he had last spoken with his ex, Nicole, at about 7 a.m.

Speaker 36 on Valentine's morning, February 14th, when she called to say she was headed back home from her boyfriend Cody's house in eastern Montana.

Speaker 73 By all accounts, Nicole and Jason got along well.

Speaker 42 They had an open-door policy regarding visitation for their two boys, and he was known as a good father.

Speaker 51 There was, however, a big day coming up, a meeting about officially ending their marriage. We were supposed to sign some divorce papers and parenting plans Monday.

Speaker 51 That's just why I I was kind of wondering where she was at.

Speaker 13 She didn't show?

Speaker 32 No, she hadn't.

Speaker 33 Is that like her?

Speaker 33 No, not usually. I mean, if she's going to stop somewhere or truck's having problems, she'll call me.

Speaker 33 Because I'm a mechanic.

Speaker 69 Do you think he could have had anything to do with this?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 5 He had the boys.

Speaker 5 He was working. Just in a way.

Speaker 90 Carmen felt the same way about Cody Johnston.

Speaker 50 Nicole's boyfriend.

Speaker 97 He'd been an old friend of the family since high school, before he and Nicole Nicole had reconnected on Facebook in 2012.

Speaker 23 We live in a world in which the boyfriend is always the first suspect.

Speaker 69 Right. Did you suspect Cody?

Speaker 8 Not at all.

Speaker 69 When you got Cody on the phone, what did he say?

Speaker 5 I said, hey, bud, how's it going? And I'm like, have you seen my sister? Have you heard from her? And he's like, I haven't talked to her since Thursday. And I said, Cody, my sister never made it home.

Speaker 38 Cody, as the last person known to see Nicole alive, also received a call from investigators.

Speaker 81 He volunteered to go to the police department for an interview.

Speaker 109 I am recording this.

Speaker 38 Cody told detectives that on the night before Valentine's Day, he and Nicole had been arguing and decided to break up.

Speaker 44 He said he drove to his workplace where he was a diesel mechanic at a trucking firm.

Speaker 24 That was 12 miles from the home he owned in a small town called Fairview.

Speaker 71 Cody said he slept with a colleague in a camper that the company kept to help provide shelter because of the chronic housing shortages during the the oil boom.

Speaker 81 Still, the next morning, Cody said Nicole texted him.

Speaker 109 And then the last one she says to you is at 6.51 a.m.

Speaker 109 your dog needs food. Is that correct?

Speaker 38 Cody said Nicole then called him a couple of times, but he didn't want to talk with her.

Speaker 109 I said, fine, I shut my phone off, I go back to bed. Okay.

Speaker 109 8 o'clock, I get up, I go in the shop, I get on the computer, her cell phone's on my plan, so I shut the damn thing off because I can't block her.

Speaker 109 The only option I have is to suspend service on her phone. Okay.

Speaker 109 Yeah, I shut off her phone. I went to work.

Speaker 14 So maybe that's why Nicole didn't text that day. She couldn't.

Speaker 81 Cody said he knew Nicole was leaving his house that morning, so he avoided her by staying at work until lunchtime.

Speaker 41 It was Valentine's Day, February 14th.

Speaker 109 At lunchtime, he went back.

Speaker 109 And she was already gone. Yes.

Speaker 52 FBI agent Craig Overby.

Speaker 14 When he went home, he found it.

Speaker 12 She and all her belongings were gone.

Speaker 48 And he figured she's headed home.

Speaker 12 That's right. And, you know, they had broken up and she was going back to Calispel.

Speaker 109 You know, I just hope she shows up. I hope she's okay.

Speaker 38 That's what everyone hoped.

Speaker 86 And then just two days later came what looked like a break.

Speaker 47 Maybe a miracle.

Speaker 62 A Facebook message that changed everything.

Speaker 20 Coming up.

Speaker 93 Who's it from?

Speaker 5 Nicole Willis Waller. That's her Facebook name.

Speaker 10 Was Carmen now messaging with Nicole?

Speaker 8 Where are you?

Speaker 49 What's going on?

Speaker 8 Where have you been?

Speaker 11 Yeah, it went from she's missing to she's just hiding.

Speaker 106 As investigators looked into the disappearance of Nicole Waller, the options for where she might be seemed as endless as the plains of eastern Montana.

Speaker 58 Department of Criminal Investigation agent Mark Hilliard.

Speaker 19 Could she have walked away? Sure. Could she have been abducted?

Speaker 17 Sure.

Speaker 18 Again, you just don't know.

Speaker 8 Never, never know.

Speaker 45 Then came a huge break.

Speaker 41 One week after Nicole apparently abandoned her Ford expedition.

Speaker 91 Nicole's sister Carmen, who'd spent every night tossing and turning since hearing the news, heard a noise in the dark.

Speaker 5 My phone kept,

Speaker 6 it binged at me.

Speaker 5 And I'm like, who is sending me something at this hour of the night?

Speaker 5 Well, I'm up. So I rolled over, grabbed my phone.
And who's it from?

Speaker 8 Nicole Willis Waller.

Speaker 5 That's how her Facebook name was.

Speaker 5 And I immediately bolt out of bed, and I'm panicking, I'm shaking, and I read the message.

Speaker 26 Here it is.

Speaker 36 That Facebook message reads, everybody had a lovely evening.

Speaker 111 Not coming home.

Speaker 6 Don't laugh at me.

Speaker 112 Sorry, I let everybody down.

Speaker 70 Carmen got out of bed and frantically phoned her friend Angie.

Speaker 11 Because I got a message from Nikki.

Speaker 8 Sweet.

Speaker 15 She's live.

Speaker 11 So I pop on Facebook. I'm sending private messages to Nikki.

Speaker 48 You're messaging Nikki on Facebook right then while you're still on with Carl.

Speaker 11 Mm-hmm. So is Carmen.
Carmen's sending these private messages to her sister.

Speaker 5 I think it was like two or three that I sent back.

Speaker 8 Where are you?

Speaker 49 What's going on? Where have you been?

Speaker 5 Yeah, we have the FBI and the police. Everybody's looking for you.
Where are you?

Speaker 11 And you could just hear it with

Speaker 11 every message sent

Speaker 11 and no reply. Carmen was getting more and more frantic.

Speaker 5 And I just started crying. Because I'm frustrated.
I was thinking, how could you send me something like that and then just leave me hanging?

Speaker 8 You call your family and tell them that?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 41 You didn't tell your family that a Facebook message had come in from Nikki?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 8 Because?

Speaker 5 I didn't want to get their hopes up.

Speaker 5 I didn't want to crush them that, hey,

Speaker 5 she reached out, but she wouldn't respond to me.

Speaker 14 Okay, but if that message is legit, then she's alive.

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 5 I didn't want to give my parents false hope. I had already felt like I had crushed them enough by having to tell them that their child's missing.

Speaker 70 By the light of day, Carmen and Angie took a closer look at the message.

Speaker 11 Just

Speaker 11 please don't laugh at me. That was Nikki.
She didn't want to be the butt of anybody's jokes.

Speaker 83 I know I've made a mistake.

Speaker 96 I want to hear about it. That sounds like her.

Speaker 11 That was very much sounded like Nikki.

Speaker 86 That had to change the way everybody felt about this.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it went from she's just missing to she's just hiding.

Speaker 14 Why would she hide?

Speaker 11 That's what none of us could figure out.

Speaker 43 But even though the message sounded like Nicole, the more Angie and Carmen looked at it, the more skeptical they became.

Speaker 61 For example, Nicole was notoriously poor at spelling.

Speaker 38 Ask anyone who knew her.

Speaker 78 Most texts sent by the so-called queen of texting practically required a translator.

Speaker 53 In this new Facebook message, all the words were spelled correctly.

Speaker 111 And some of the facts were clearly misstated.

Speaker 23 Had a lovely night. I mean, she'd been gone for like a week at that point, so she'd had seven or eight lovely nights in which she hadn't contacted anyone.

Speaker 5 Right. So, of course, at that time, I have my cell phone with me.
I take pictures. I sent it to Craig Overby with the FBI.
And I said, you know, I get this message, Craig.

Speaker 5 This isn't right.

Speaker 25 It sounds to me like you thought she had sent that message, but that something was wrong with her.

Speaker 51 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Maybe she's got too much pressure built up or she's had a head injury and that's why it sounds so odd.

Speaker 42 As the FBI went to work trying to trace the message, frustration led Nicole's friend Cami back to Facebook to get the word out about her friend's disappearance.

Speaker 45 With the case of missing and subsequently murdered school teacher Sherry Arnold still fresh in mind, Cami started the Find Nicole Waller.

Speaker 14 Facebook page.

Speaker 13 When Nikki first went missing, there was no talk of it on the news. It wasn't in the newspaper.

Speaker 13 And having just gone through the Sherry Arnold case, you know, tons of people came out and looked for her, rightfully so.

Speaker 13 But

Speaker 13 there was no word of a search party for Nikki. There was nothing.

Speaker 13 And when people go missing, you look for them. That's what you do.
And I was angry.

Speaker 14 It was like she was forgotten.

Speaker 13 Very much so. I told Carmen that I was going to go over to eastern Montana and kick up a ruckus because she deserved to be looked for.

Speaker 13 And we were basically told

Speaker 13 that we were not allowed to go to eastern Montana by law enforcement. You feel helpless.
You feel like

Speaker 13 you have to do something.

Speaker 42 But according to FBI agent Craig Overby, there was a very good reason for asking Nicole's family and friends to handle this disappearance differently than the Sherry Arnold matter.

Speaker 61 For one, Sherry Arnold was snatched off the street while jogging, a sneaker left behind.

Speaker 12 We had leads on where Sherry Arnold may be,

Speaker 12 but we never had a good lead on where Nicole might be.

Speaker 14 And Montana's too big.

Speaker 92 It's too big.

Speaker 23 Join hands and people watch

Speaker 12 needle in a haystack. If I had a place to go look, I would go look.
But we just, we never had that.

Speaker 58 It's a big state.

Speaker 81 Plenty of places to hide. Or to hide someone.

Speaker 10 coming up, investigators were about to take another look at Nicole's boyfriend, but everyone seemed to agree Cody was awesome.

Speaker 13 He always seemed to be able to calm the storm with Nikki, which is a valuable talent to have around Nikki.

Speaker 7 She was a tornado sometimes.

Speaker 5 Cody was the best thing that ever happened to her.

Speaker 105 When Dateline continues,

Speaker 73 The prairie winter of 2013 was cold, bleak, empty.

Speaker 89 Much like the mysterious disappearance of a 31-year-old mother of three named Nicole Waller.

Speaker 113 There were no answers written on the Montana wind, only her family left twisting in misery.

Speaker 41 You haven't had a good night's sleep since this happened, have you?

Speaker 51 No.

Speaker 8 I'm not winder. wondering.

Speaker 115 Carmen clung to hope, especially after she received that Facebook message from Nicole's account, the one that read, Everybody had a lovely evening.

Speaker 26 Not coming home.

Speaker 38 Don't laugh at me.

Speaker 86 Sorry I let everybody down.

Speaker 75 That message seemed far more comforting than the other facts of the case.

Speaker 35 Nicole's Ford expedition with all her stuff in it, found on an Indian reservation on the edge of a town once known as as Stab City.

Speaker 84 FBI agent Craig Overby was studying those facts.

Speaker 12 For someone to just disappear like that in Montana is very unusual. Nicole was the type of person who was in constant communication with her family and friends.

Speaker 12 And so for her to basically just cease all communications,

Speaker 12 something was not right.

Speaker 71 Investigators circled back to the two men in Nicole's life.

Speaker 95 her estranged husband, Jason, and her boyfriend, Cody Johnston.

Speaker 80 Both men claimed they'd been at work the day she disappeared.

Speaker 109 She said, Well, there's nothing I can do. You know, if nothing's good enough for you, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to leave.
I said, okay, yeah, so that's, that's fine. So I'm going back to work.

Speaker 52 In that videotaped interview Cody had given to police, he'd made no secret of how he and Nicole had been arguing for the 48 hours before her disappearance, and that it was his decision to break up.

Speaker 109 Yeah, I said, we're done. I said,

Speaker 109 I can't do this. Cody, would there be any reason why anyone would suspect that you had something to do with her being gone or missing or anything?

Speaker 109 Help, huh? Yeah, it actually hurts me and upsets me if anybody would think that I've done nothing but try to help her. No, the last thing, you know, no matter what she's ever done to me, I love her.

Speaker 109 And no, I wouldn't hurt her and I don't want to see her hurt.

Speaker 77 In fact, Nicole's family and friends felt that Cody was perhaps the very best thing that had ever happened to her.

Speaker 62 They had big plans.

Speaker 13 We all thought that this was going to make Nikki's happily ever after. He always seemed to be able to calm the storm, if you will, with Nikki.

Speaker 25 Which is a valuable talent to have around Nikki.

Speaker 13 She was a tornado sometimes. He promised her the moon.

Speaker 13 He was going to take care of her.

Speaker 59 And he was doing just that.

Speaker 77 Cody made six figures as a diesel mechanic in the oil fields, and he wasn't shy about sharing it.

Speaker 109 I'm the one person who actually tried to do everything for her.

Speaker 5 He was helping her manage her money, you know, make really good financial decisions for her and her children, helped her get a bigger home.

Speaker 38 He'd become so close with Nicole's daughter, Ashlyn, that with her own father out of the picture, Ashlyn had started thinking of Cody as a parent.

Speaker 5 My niece was always very protective of my sister, tried to shove out every boyfriend she ever had. I knew that it was serious when Ashlyn told me I was ready to call him dad.

Speaker 69 The perfect guy.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 14 Loves you, loves your kids. Yeah.
Takes care of everybody, and there when you need him.

Speaker 5 Exactly.

Speaker 5 With all your faults and everything.

Speaker 109 I love her dearly, but she's strained every relationship with every person she's ever had. You know, I've taken her to every doctor's appointment I could.
I've gone to a neurosurgeon with her.

Speaker 108 Like many couples, they've been on and off.

Speaker 43 But by late 2012, just five months before Nicole disappeared, they were back together.

Speaker 55 Because,

Speaker 71 well, if poor choices paid money, Nicole Waller would have been a Rockefeller.

Speaker 5 My sister made a pretty big mistake. I think she was just desperate because she realized that Cody was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

Speaker 5 So she told Cody she was pregnant.

Speaker 62 Even though she was not.

Speaker 5 Exactly.

Speaker 19 How did she persuade him that she was pregnant?

Speaker 5 She

Speaker 5 had taken my niece's ultrasound pictures, cut it off, like the date off, and sent them to him. And I know it makes my sister right now look like a real winner, but

Speaker 5 people have done worse to keep relationships.

Speaker 9 Here's the thing about lies.

Speaker 26 They work.

Speaker 14 This one did until about a month before Nicole vanished.

Speaker 109 Finally, it all broke down to where she finally, you know, admitted to me this about a month ago. She says,

Speaker 109 I wasn't wasn't pregnant. My lieutenant.
So at that point,

Speaker 109 we talked,

Speaker 109 and I said, this is just, I said,

Speaker 109 I said, you need help.

Speaker 43 And it was about that time Cody told detectives that with his relationship with Nicole starting to crash, another player would change the geometry of this story into a triangle.

Speaker 44 The night after Cody said Nicole left him and headed for home, Valentine's Day, Thursday, February 14th.

Speaker 77 There was someone else sleeping in Cody's bed.

Speaker 10 Coming up for investigators, what appears to be an eye-popping clue in a very strange place.

Speaker 101 I think Craig said, Hey, Mark, there's something up on the ceiling.

Speaker 8 Could it have been blood? Sure.

Speaker 89 Her name, as it turned out, was Amber.

Speaker 24 She was the other woman who arrived, as the saying goes, with the bed barely cold here at Cody Johnston's house just a block from the North Dakota border.

Speaker 63 That was the day after Nicole's expedition pulled away, pointed toward her home in western Montana.

Speaker 109 I figured since I broke up with Nikki, then I would actually, you know, wait, talk to Amber again, see if we could get some, because she was a great criminal.

Speaker 52 So what, if anything, did Amber Fleming's appearance have to do with Nicole Waller's disappearance?

Speaker 40 Well, that was the question.

Speaker 25 Amber was a schoolteacher, and in Montana, where everyone seems to know everyone else, she was also a lifelong friend with another woman you've already met, Cami.

Speaker 97 In 1999, at Cami's wedding, where Nicole was a bridesmaid,

Speaker 85 Yes, that's Amber.

Speaker 34 She was the maid of honor.

Speaker 14 Nikki and Amber were both in your wedding.

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 29 What's it like to look at those wedding photos now and see the two of them?

Speaker 13 Seems like a completely different life.

Speaker 24 Nikki and Amber got along.

Speaker 51 They did.

Speaker 48 If you'd asked either of them, she would have said, she's my friend.

Speaker 13 They were more acquaintances, two separate friend groups.

Speaker 8 And you're the connection.

Speaker 71 Cami considered herself best friends with both Nikki and Amber.

Speaker 28 In fact, she unwittingly introduced Cody to Amber and felt terrible when, shortly after, Nicole and Cody split and then he took up with Amber.

Speaker 61 But remember when Nicole sent Cody those ultrasound photos and lied about being pregnant with Cody's child?

Speaker 75 That was Nicole's play to get Cody back from Amber.

Speaker 26 And it worked until Cody found out Nicole was lying.

Speaker 12 I think she came back from Calispel to try to rebuild their relationship, relationship, but it was not working.

Speaker 76 And then investigators learned Cody started texting Amber again, just a few weeks before Nicole's disappearance.

Speaker 12 Amber and Cody were texting about Nicole, and she was insisting that he end this relationship with Nicole if she was going to continue to see him.

Speaker 87 And with that, the pot was stirred.

Speaker 34 Now it was up to state and federal agents to find out what was really going on in what looked like a love triangle grudge match involving Cody, Amber, and Nicole.

Speaker 49 He's dating a woman that she knows

Speaker 49 right in front of her and she's lying to him about being pregnant and phonying up the evidence.

Speaker 12 That's right. He was really upset about the fake pregnancy and she was really upset about him seeing Amber.

Speaker 70 The problem was that despite the way it looked, and for Cody it didn't look good, on the day Nicole left, there was no evidence implicating Cody in her disappearance.

Speaker 84 None.

Speaker 48 And so Cody's story is,

Speaker 49 I got home, she was gone, all her stuff was gone, and I don't know how she got 60 miles away and stopped.

Speaker 12 That's right. He doesn't know anything about her leaving other than that she's gone.

Speaker 95 Investigators served a search warrant at Cody's house.

Speaker 24 They took a video camera and searched room.

Speaker 50 After room after room.

Speaker 38 You don't even really know what you're looking for, right?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 99 And a lot of times, too, when you go into these crime scenes, you know, you have the luxury of having a body.

Speaker 19 And just looking at the surrounding walls, you can kind of figure out, you tell a story.

Speaker 99 This one I didn't have a story.

Speaker 69 Any sign that a weapon was fired inside that house?

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 59 Similarly, no sign of a cleanup.

Speaker 76 No smell of cleansers.

Speaker 84 But there was this.

Speaker 14 I think Craig said, hey, Mark, there's something up on the ceiling.

Speaker 99 It was in the kitchen,

Speaker 17 and there were several several of them there.

Speaker 101 It looked like it had some pattern to it.

Speaker 17 Could it have been blood?

Speaker 14 Sure.

Speaker 22 You test it, and what is it?

Speaker 101 I came up with probably spaghetti sauce.

Speaker 14 It wasn't human. There's some things that raise your eyebrows, but there's certainly no smoking gun in that house.

Speaker 8 No, not at all.

Speaker 40 A contentious breakup.

Speaker 97 A man with another woman waiting in the wings, and suspicion swirling.

Speaker 58 And then something that might change the course of this missing person's case.

Speaker 26 A safe with a a lock on it.

Speaker 102 And inside

Speaker 61 may be the answer to a mystery.

Speaker 20 Coming up.

Speaker 118 Protruding from the safe door were documents we did see Nicole's name on the face of.

Speaker 66 What could that mean?

Speaker 105 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 10 Continuing our story: Nicole Waller has disappeared. Her family is frantic.

Speaker 8 want to find her.

Speaker 10 The last person to see Nicole, her boyfriend, who was also seeing someone else.

Speaker 12 Amber and Cody were texting, and she was insisting that he end his relationship with Nicole.

Speaker 10 Now, detectives are about to question Amber about Cody.

Speaker 32 I have a list of people that saw him at work.

Speaker 4 We're asking questions too, and not everyone likes them.

Speaker 66 Thank you.

Speaker 14 How's that?

Speaker 16 Here again, the man on the receiving end of that, Josh Michaelis.

Speaker 43 Nicole Waller's family was teetering, on the edge.

Speaker 81 There had been no word, nothing, since that odd Facebook message from her account a week after her disappearance.

Speaker 23 As more and more time goes by after that Facebook message.

Speaker 5 I'm pretty sure my sister wasn't coming back.

Speaker 8 Nicole's three children, like everyone else, were desperately waiting for word about their mom.

Speaker 58 And Carmen, the rock of the family, was beginning to fracture under the pressure.

Speaker 5 My girls were fighting. You know, they're girls, they fight.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 something

Speaker 51 tripped.

Speaker 5 And my husband, he said, didn't you ever fight with your sister?

Speaker 15 And I just lost it. My husband carried me into my room and and i pretty much cried all night

Speaker 15 i remember telling him it's not there

Speaker 30 where is she why did she have to leave

Speaker 37 investigators had looked at several possibilities in nicole's disappearance

Speaker 82 random crime centered in stab city where her vehicle was found

Speaker 47 No evidence of it.

Speaker 44 Nicole hadn't left a single electronic footprint since she vanished on Valentine's Day.

Speaker 121 Was she using any credit cards or debit cards?

Speaker 12 We did not find any activity.

Speaker 37 That's ominous.

Speaker 35 It also makes a deliberate disappearance way less likely.

Speaker 63 The agents on the case had become suspicious of Nicole's boyfriend, Cody Johnston, who had quickly taken up with another woman named Amber.

Speaker 63 Had a love triangle played some role in Nicole's disappearance?

Speaker 47 But with Nicole's vehicle 60 miles from Cody's house, and Nicole or her body still out there somewhere in the many hundreds of square miles of grasslands, investigators had nothing more solid than suspicion.

Speaker 33 With the case a couple of weeks old, investigators asked another pair of detectives to take a crack at applying pressure on Cody and Amber during a trip the couple took to her hometown of Kalispell.

Speaker 63 Gino Cook and his longtime partner, Kip Takachik.

Speaker 122 He would never do anything to ever jeopardize me and him.

Speaker 81 Amber insisted to detectives she'd spent the entire weekend with Cody after Nicole left.

Speaker 35 And she said she saw no behavior that concerned her.

Speaker 122 He doesn't like to fight. He doesn't like to argue.

Speaker 69 Is she covering for him?

Speaker 14 Is he covering for her?

Speaker 48 Are they covering for each other?

Speaker 14 The thought was there.

Speaker 61 Absolutely.

Speaker 37 Detective Takachik decided to lay it on the line with Amber.

Speaker 82 What would really hurt me is if we came to Amber and said, Amber, you're now under arrest as an accessory to Nikki's death.

Speaker 123 Okay, and I don't want that.

Speaker 32 Okay, no, and I'll tell like absolutely no.

Speaker 123 He's no, there's no inkling of anything. Like we do not, I mean, he does not know where she is.
I do not know where she is. Leave us out of this

Speaker 123 because we had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 123 You know, he was at work.

Speaker 123 I have a list of people that saw him at work.

Speaker 35 For his part, Cody gave investigators two interviews that weekend.

Speaker 81 As the hours passed and detectives asked him to go over his timeline again and again,

Speaker 106 Cody did eventually lose his cool a bit.

Speaker 73 We'll be done on my test.

Speaker 123 I'm about to get my phone and I leave.

Speaker 123 okay because you know what you know

Speaker 122 you just sat there and tell me that you're trying to get this

Speaker 122 you know you got these kids that need their mother you know i bought them kids for some presents and birthday presents and i've taken them to basketball games and i understand the importance of getting their mother back

Speaker 77 it got to the point where he was pretty frustrated with the whole interview because he thought you didn't trust him or because he thought i'm under suspicion here and i shouldn't be i believe so i think that he thought he was under suspicion cody and amber soon left the justice building.

Speaker 43 But authorities, in an effort to find some evidence that might link Cody to Nicole's disappearance, confiscated his pickup.

Speaker 77 And in the back of the truck, they found an item that interested them greatly.

Speaker 38 An item taken from Nicole's house.

Speaker 118 It was a like a diamond plate toolbox. When that toolbox was opened up, there was a black plastic bag.
And inside that black plastic bag was the gray safe.

Speaker 118 And protruding from the safe door, which was locked, were documents. I didn't know what they were at that time, but we did see Nicole's name on the face of those.

Speaker 14 Was there anything valuable in the safe?

Speaker 118 Not in regards to gold, silver,

Speaker 14 you know,

Speaker 118 diamond rings, jewelry,

Speaker 118 nothing of that sort. Personal documentation.

Speaker 77 Detectives hung on to the safe and its contents.

Speaker 45 Amber and Cody returned to eastern Montana.

Speaker 84 And it's a long trip.

Speaker 37 No one's watching.

Speaker 26 Or were they?

Speaker 89 The unblinking eye of a camera, perched high above that lonely highway where Nicole disappeared, was about to tell investigators something they needed to know.

Speaker 94 Coming up, the tale of the tape.

Speaker 27 This is our biggest lead.

Speaker 31 This is our best lead.

Speaker 10 And then, for investigators, a new person to focus on. And the shock of a lifetime.

Speaker 15 I missed it completely.

Speaker 29 You didn't see that he had a gun.

Speaker 89 in the book of riddles that lay open before FBI agent Craig Overby, the toughest one to solve was this.

Speaker 44 If, in fact, Cody Johnston was involved in the disappearance and possible death of Nicole Waller, how did her Ford expedition end up more than an hour from his home on Valentine's Day, 2013, at a time when Cody said he was at work?

Speaker 45 The agent's thoughts returned to that kidnap murder case he'd worked the year before.

Speaker 12 It's a protocol in a missing person investigation to get on surveillance videos right away. We learned that in the Sherry Garn case.

Speaker 12 Surveillance videos that we obtained from local businesses gave us a lot of evidence about what happened.

Speaker 12 So in this case, we went out and started thinking about videos that might have captured her car going from the Sydney area to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

Speaker 96 This is not Los Angeles or Chicago where anything that happens outside is probably going to be on some piece of security tape.

Speaker 12 That's right. In fact, in the 70 miles between Cody Johnson's house and where her car was found in Poplar, I found one video.

Speaker 12 one surveillance camera that captured the highway.

Speaker 74 That one camera is is here in Culbertson, a town of about 700 souls along the Missouri River.

Speaker 26 It's atop the local high school, and it's aimed at Lonely Highway 2.

Speaker 54 Agent Overby asked for the tape from that camera from February 14th.

Speaker 121 And...

Speaker 12 And sure enough, there's Nicole's vehicle coming through town.

Speaker 82 Here is that tape.

Speaker 63 And right there.

Speaker 58 is Nicole's expedition.

Speaker 40 You sure it's Nicole's car?

Speaker 12 Yes, Nicole's vehicle was two-toned, and this was a two-tone Ford Expedition, older model, not so many around anymore.

Speaker 92 People think that maybe you're going to find some video of an actual crime being committed, but that's generally not what security video reveals.

Speaker 49 It's really more about building your timeline.

Speaker 12 That's exactly right.

Speaker 44 And the time that Nicole's expedition passed that camera, which is situated almost exactly halfway between Cody's house and the town of Poplar, where the vehicle was found.

Speaker 66 Well, that only added to the intrigue.

Speaker 115 Turns out the last text Nicole sent was on that Valentine's Day when she texted her caregiver a little before 7.30 a.m.

Speaker 66 saying she was leaving.

Speaker 25 Could you tell what time it was when her car passed that camera?

Speaker 12 Around 10 o'clock.

Speaker 25 So she left at 7.30 and in two and a half hours, she only goes 35 miles and something's not right.

Speaker 41 Not right.

Speaker 35 But Agent Overby didn't stop there.

Speaker 52 He wondered what else might be on that tape.

Speaker 71 And right there, not far behind Nicole's expedition was a pickup.

Speaker 12 It's a large F-350 pickup truck with an Amber light.

Speaker 34 Not exactly unusual out here in rural Montana to see a pickup on any road.

Speaker 84 But...

Speaker 12 I was really interested in that pickup truck, and it was distinguishing because it had an Amber warning light on its top.

Speaker 24 You can't see the license plates. No.

Speaker 75 You can't tell from the tape who's at the wheel of either vehicle.

Speaker 45 But now Overby and Hilliard had a hot lead.

Speaker 76 Who owned a pickup with an amber light?

Speaker 115 Pretty soon they heard a name they'd never heard before, Bill Sordeberg.

Speaker 12 Bill's farm's out in the middle of nowhere and it's dark. We go down a long dirt road to get to his house and there I see the F-350 with the amber light on top in the driveway.

Speaker 8 And you think what?

Speaker 12 Either we've got a really maybe a good suspect here or a very good witness.

Speaker 35 Agent Hilliard could barely contain himself.

Speaker 24 I almost ran to the trailer to confront whomever because I was so focused on, do we have a bad guy?

Speaker 14 Do we have a witness?

Speaker 50 Is Nicole here somewhere?

Speaker 30 Could be.

Speaker 27 You know, I mean, this is our biggest lead.

Speaker 99 This is our best lead.

Speaker 18 And I wanted to find the answer.

Speaker 12 When Bill came out and his wife came out, Bill kind of had a deer in the headlights look on his face. And he said, Bill, can we talk to you in my vehicle? And so Bill said, sure.

Speaker 58 The three men walked to the waiting FBI suburban.

Speaker 82 Bill got in the passenger side.

Speaker 12 Mark got in the back seat.

Speaker 41 I got in the front.

Speaker 12 And I looked down and Bill had a 45 point in my direction. And I said, Bill, do you mind putting that gun up on the dash?

Speaker 12 And he took the magazine out and jacked the rant out and threw it up on the dash.

Speaker 15 I missed it completely.

Speaker 29 You didn't see that he had a gun?

Speaker 27 I was so tunnel-visioned as far as getting him to cooperate.

Speaker 8 I didn't care.

Speaker 99 And I put people in danger.

Speaker 41 He had a 45.

Speaker 17 He did. He looked back at me and goes, I thought you were here to kill me.

Speaker 100 He thought I was hit, man.

Speaker 87 What on earth was going on here?

Speaker 34 Coming up from out of the blue, what could be a serious blow to the case?

Speaker 22 That's got to be shocking.

Speaker 14 It was.

Speaker 5 Felt like the bottom was being dropped out yet again.

Speaker 105 When dateline continues.

Speaker 65 State investigator Mark Hilliard has been called by many names over his two-decade career as a Montana lawman.

Speaker 6 But a hitman?

Speaker 104 Well, that was a new one.

Speaker 23 But that's exactly who Bill Sorderberg thought the agent was when Hilliard and FBI agent Craig Overby showed up at Sorderberg's farmhouse.

Speaker 37 A hitman Sorderberg believed had been hired by none other than Sorderberg's friend, Cody Johnston.

Speaker 109 Time is 20, 30 hours. This is Agent Hilliard.

Speaker 42 Now, why would Bill Sorderberg think Cody Johnston would want to kill him?

Speaker 43 In a series of interviews over the next couple of days, detectives learned the answer.

Speaker 33 There's an old saying,

Speaker 66 a good friend will help you move,

Speaker 26 but a best friend will help you move a body.

Speaker 14 Investigators thought Bill Sorterberg fell somewhere in between.

Speaker 12 Oh, this is is nuts.

Speaker 44 Remember, investigators had been looking for an explanation for how Nicole's Ford expedition ended up 60 miles from Cody Johnston's house the morning of Valentine's Day, 2013,

Speaker 42 a time Cody claimed he was at work.

Speaker 57 Bill told investigators Cody called him around 8 a.m.

Speaker 73 saying Nicole had run off with another man.

Speaker 109 It was basically a game, you know.

Speaker 87 And Bill said the game came with a request Meet on the road in his pickup.

Speaker 12 Bill drives out to the highway and sees Cody driving Nicole's Ford expedition. And Bill says, I know something's not right.

Speaker 41 Does he know that's Nicole's car?

Speaker 12 He asked Cody about it, and Cody said, well, I'm just playing a practical joke on her, and I'm going to take her car out to the reservation and drop it off.

Speaker 92 I know y'all are more trusting out here in Montana than we are in the big city.

Speaker 41 I have trouble believing anybody would fall for that.

Speaker 12 Knowing Bill, it doesn't surprise me that maybe

Speaker 12 he was just helping his friend out in a mischievous thing, but not a criminal thing.

Speaker 37 So Bill said he did what Cody asked and took off following the expedition.

Speaker 35 Not long after that is when the two vehicles, Nicole's expedition and Bill's pickup, were tagged by that camera atop the high school in Culbertson, Montana.

Speaker 73 A half hour later, Bill said Cody stopped the expedition right where it was later found, just a mile outside Poplar, that reservation town with a violent reputation.

Speaker 25 Would Cody have known about Snab City, believe her car there as a way of throwing people off the track?

Speaker 12 He would, but Poplar is not a violent place to a stranger. For a random person driving through Poplar is a very friendly place.

Speaker 49 And Cody probably didn't know that. That's right.

Speaker 69 Bill said that when Cody jumped out of the expedition, Bill thought it was strange that Cody was wearing gloves.

Speaker 109 And I'm thinking, what the hell you got two phones for?

Speaker 12 bill noticed that cody was carrying two cell phones and they actually stopped at a small store on the reservation and he saw cody take the phone apart and throw it in a trash can

Speaker 74 the agents wondered did that second cell phone belong to nicole

Speaker 93 i don't think they did and there was one more thing

Speaker 109 bill said cody was looking for a barrel i just can't believe he asked for a barrel

Speaker 109 And you know, just make sure it was like one of the steel barrels with the Rain 5 galon drum. He was like, well, I don't want one.
I ain't got no lid on them.

Speaker 26 For investigators, hearing that Cody was looking for a barrel big enough to hold a body and one with a lid was confirmation that Nicole was dead and that Cody had killed her.

Speaker 22 There has to be discussion about arresting him right then and there.

Speaker 12 We were talking to prosecutors as this was ongoing.

Speaker 44 And prosecutors said, despite the evidence agents had gathered, this case still had one glaring hole.

Speaker 14 Nicole's body had not been found.

Speaker 38 Weeks, then months passed without a word.

Speaker 8 And it was hard.

Speaker 5 You know, her birthday was May 22nd. I decided to make my sister a cupcake

Speaker 8 and

Speaker 15 I put a candle in it and I make a wish and I blow it out.

Speaker 49 What's the wish?

Speaker 30 That she'll be mapped.

Speaker 38 Six months after Nicole vanished, though they were not yet ready to make an arrest, authorities called together Nicole's family and broke the news.

Speaker 84 They believed Nicole had been killed by Cody, her body placed in a barrel and hidden somewhere.

Speaker 5 That was devastating.

Speaker 5 For somebody that said they loved somebody so much, that's the way you get rid of them?

Speaker 30 That she's just like trash, you're going to put her in a barrel and just get rid of her?

Speaker 65 For Cami, the news not only meant her friend Nicole was very likely likely dead, but it also meant another of her best friends, Amber, was dating a suspected killer.

Speaker 79 And not just dating.

Speaker 47 Just after the first anniversary of Nicole's disappearance, in March 2014, Cody and Amber, seen here at a photo taken at a county fair, got engaged.

Speaker 97 Soon after, they were married.

Speaker 8 Were you invited to the wedding?

Speaker 13 Thankfully,

Speaker 13 I was in another friend of mine's wedding. It was heart-wrenching because

Speaker 13 Amber was my maid of honor.

Speaker 14 Were you supposed to be Amber's maid of honor?

Speaker 15 I would have been in her wedding.

Speaker 13 I would have been

Speaker 13 helping her celebrate her happily ever after.

Speaker 77 As Cody and Amber began their life together,

Speaker 43 Agent Hilliard, who was raised on the prairies of eastern Montana, was scouring the oil fields and other areas for any trace of Nicole.

Speaker 15 I found some great holes when I was out looking for her.

Speaker 18 I jumped into a few of them.

Speaker 38 How many times did you think maybe this is it?

Speaker 8 A few times.

Speaker 26 But the agent's search hit a snag in the spring of 2014 when he fell into a hole he could never have foreseen.

Speaker 18 I was diagnosed with stage four melanoma cancer.

Speaker 8 You're a young guy.

Speaker 69 It's got to be shocking.

Speaker 17 It was. It was shocking for me.

Speaker 18 It was shocking for my family.

Speaker 37 But for Mark Hilliard, almost worse than the cancer was having to call Carmen and tell her what this might mean for her sister's case.

Speaker 5 And it kind of felt like the bottom was being dropped out yet again, like we couldn't catch a break.

Speaker 14 I wanted to reassure her that,

Speaker 27 you know, nobody's going to forget about Nicole.

Speaker 18 If something happens to me, somebody's going to run with this.

Speaker 49 Sounds like you're worried more about Nicole's family than you are about yourself.

Speaker 18 They needed answers.

Speaker 38 And unbelievably, Agent Hilliard wasn't the only one wondering if he'd live long enough to find those answers.

Speaker 40 Because when Hilliard began his cancer treatments, right alongside him was the prosecutor in charge of the case, the chief of the Attorney General's Prosecution Services Bureau, Brant Light,

Speaker 41 who had lung cancer.

Speaker 25 You and Agent Hilliard were getting chemo at the same time?

Speaker 107 Yeah, we actually were at the same facility and often talking about this case and working on the case as we were receiving our treatment.

Speaker 38 For these two lawmen and longtime friends, how much time they had left on the job and on the earth was an unknown.

Speaker 124 All of that might suggest that you would be in sort of a hurry to file this case.

Speaker 24 But you didn't do that.

Speaker 25 You actually kind of slowed it down.

Speaker 31 I thought the longer that we put it off, the better it was for us.

Speaker 126 In the back of our minds, we were hoping that maybe there would be a hunter or somebody who would discover her body.

Speaker 66 That didn't happen.

Speaker 57 Nicole's family and friends were asked to be patient.

Speaker 75 And as the two-year anniversary of Nicole's disappearance came and went, her case was featured on Dateline's digital series, Missing in America.

Speaker 38 Still, no body and no arrest.

Speaker 22 I'm thinking that you must have been frustrated at this point because After realizing that Nicole was never where her car was found and having Mr.

Speaker 12 Sorberberg say here's what happened prosecutors won't file a case and a lot of time goes by it's difficult the problem goes back there's nobody and up until this point that there had never been a prosecution of a nobody homicide in Montana

Speaker 80 until finally August 2015 two and a half years after Nicole's disappearance It would be a new development in cell phone tracking technology that would give the prosecutor the confidence to give the go-ahead.

Speaker 63 And Agent Hilliard, back on the job in between cancer treatments, got to snap the handcuffs on Cody Johnston.

Speaker 8 Yanko, you're being arrested for the murder of Nicole Waller.

Speaker 19 Didn't say a word to me.

Speaker 14 It was time to see if Montana prosecutors could send a man to prison for the first time ever in a case without a body.

Speaker 16 Coming up, the lack of a body wasn't the only problem.

Speaker 127 We don't have any of these traditional things that people expect. Forensics, DNA, physical evidence.

Speaker 10 But could groundbreaking software save the day for prosecutors?

Speaker 128 He was able to show us where Cody Johnston was on the very morning of the murder.

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Speaker 57 The Richland County Law and Justice Center in Sydney was to be the site where a jury would decide if Cody Johnston had murdered Nicole Waller.

Speaker 51 Or maybe not.

Speaker 115 Because before Cody Johnston's trial started, prosecutor Brant Light

Speaker 2 did this.

Speaker 114 Reluctantly, we offered him a deal. We were certainly prepared to go to trial.

Speaker 49 But you didn't have a body.

Speaker 126 We didn't have a body, and the family wanted the body.

Speaker 82 The state's offer to Cody Johnston, give up Nicole's body, plead guilty, and receive 80 years in prison.

Speaker 77 What was in it for Cody?

Speaker 87 No life sentence and possible parole after 17 years.

Speaker 126 I looked at it as a window for him.

Speaker 12 If he ever wanted to get out, this was his one and only opportunity.

Speaker 25 And the response from Cody's attorneys?

Speaker 12 Absolutely not.

Speaker 14 We're going to trial.

Speaker 12 We're going to trial, which was fine with me.

Speaker 36 Fine, he says, but it came with a cost.

Speaker 39 Prosecutor Light was suffering from lung cancer.

Speaker 90 He'd been going through chemotherapy.

Speaker 48 alongside state investigator and fellow cancer patient, Mark Hilliard.

Speaker 75 Now, Light made a life-threatening decision.

Speaker 114 Three weeks before trial, I stopped treatment.

Speaker 14 I have trouble believing that your doctors thought great idea.

Speaker 126 No, they didn't think it was a great idea, but I knew that to do those 16 to 18-hour days during trial, I needed to have energy.

Speaker 64 So, you're risking your own life to do that?

Speaker 126 I wasn't going to let this cancer change who I am. I made such a commitment to the family that I wasn't going to let him down.

Speaker 59 To be safe, in case his health was compromised and he couldn't continue, the prosecutor brought in two assistants, Joel Thompson and Oli Olson, who understood the task ahead.

Speaker 128 I think there was an awareness that you feel like the average person on the street is going to say, How can you prosecute a case without a body?

Speaker 48 But the average people on the street, that's who's on your jury.

Speaker 127 That was the big challenge for me. Like, we don't have any of these traditional things that people expect in a homicide case.
Forensics, DNA, physical evidence.

Speaker 127 And is that glaring omission going to be something that the jury says that that is reasonable doubt?

Speaker 90 By October 2016, when Cody Johnston's trial began, it had been three and a half years since Nicole Waller had vanished.

Speaker 38 For all but a few months of that time, Cody had been a free man, out on bond.

Speaker 115 At trial, his wife Amber was in the front row, accompanied by their newborn son.

Speaker 5 That was a shock I did not know about the baby. And at the same time,

Speaker 5 It's angered because here he'd been out living his life and my sister is not out there living her life.

Speaker 128 Ladies and gentlemen, this week

Speaker 128 we're going to take you back to Valentine's Day 2013.

Speaker 77 That Valentine's Day, prosecutors argued, was the final day of Nicole's life.

Speaker 43 It was the last day the woman her sister called the queen of texting had used her phone.

Speaker 77 Since then, they said Nicole had left no electronic trace, spent no money using credit or debit cards.

Speaker 92 And in today's world, if somebody hasn't used any of those things, it can reasonably be presumed that they're no longer alive.

Speaker 114 Exactly.

Speaker 75 And perhaps most revealingly, the state argued never after that day had Nicole reached out to the three children she loved so much.

Speaker 81 She was, they argued, undoubtedly dead.

Speaker 30 As you sit here today, and I'm sorry to ask her this, do you have any doubt in your mind as to her sister that Nicole is gone?

Speaker 30 She's gone.

Speaker 15 Please, I don't believe she's alive anymore.

Speaker 41 But how was she killed?

Speaker 50 And why?

Speaker 41 Prosecutors began their case by calling a former detective who's developed a groundbreaking software technology to accurately turn the route a cell phone travels into something that looks like Google Maps.

Speaker 128 He was able to basically show us as if we had a tracker on his car where Cody Johnston was on the very morning of the murder.

Speaker 50 And where Cody Johnston was, the state argued, was not where he claimed he'd been.

Speaker 62 Remember, Cody said he and Nicole were fighting, so he spent the night before Valentine's Day in a camper in Sydney, 12 miles away from his home where Nicole was staying in Fairview.

Speaker 47 Cody said Nicole texted him at 6.51 a.m., then called him around 7.

Speaker 41 But Cody didn't want to talk.

Speaker 109 Well, I said, fine, I shut my phone off, I go back to bed. 8 o'clock, I get up, I go in the shop.

Speaker 98 But it turns out this map of the location of Cody's cell phone showed something else, starting after that 7 a.m.

Speaker 86 phone call from Nicole.

Speaker 26 Right after that phone call, he leaves and he's heading to Fairview.

Speaker 77 Fairview, back to Cody's house where Nicole had been staying.

Speaker 44 Here's the map, the state said, that proved it.

Speaker 131 So by 7:13, we see the device start to move towards Sydney. Here's 7.18 just north of Sydney, another one at 7.23.

Speaker 128 On the way up to Fairview to confront her, he calls her five, six times. It wasn't her that was harassing him.

Speaker 128 It was him calling her because he was angry and getting more angry as he went up there to confront her.

Speaker 98 At 7.25 a.m.

Speaker 41 in Fairview, records showed Nicole texted her caregiver saying she was on her way back home.

Speaker 38 She's moments from getting in her car and going back to Calispel.

Speaker 126 He arrives at 7.26, according to the cell tower analysis.

Speaker 26 Cody does.

Speaker 31 Cody Cody does. And I think they had a horrible fight.

Speaker 114 And I think he exploded, whether he strangled her, whether he suffocated her.

Speaker 126 That's one of the things we don't know because we don't have the body.

Speaker 77 Nicole's family and friends had always said Cody was such a great guy.

Speaker 61 And prosecutors agreed until they said he suddenly lost his cool and became so upset and so angry.

Speaker 77 that he drove home and committed murder.

Speaker 77 Though prosecutors said Amber had nothing to do with with the crime, they said her calls and texts to Cody those last weeks may have helped light the match that led to the killing.

Speaker 114 She was putting pressure days before Valentine's Day that he had to make a choice. It's either her or me.

Speaker 126 And he kept reassuring her that, you know, she was the one and he just needed some time.

Speaker 48 Time, prosecutors argued, not only to break up with Nicole, but also to get her out of that home he'd purchased for her over in Kalispell.

Speaker 8 You think this is not about love?

Speaker 14 You think this is about money?

Speaker 114 Yeah, I think by the time we get to February 14th, love was kind of out the window then.

Speaker 126 He had already was seeing Amber without Nicole knowing it. This was simply about how is this breakup going to go and who is going to get the home.

Speaker 53 In fact, that night before Valentine's Day, Cody was so angry at Nicole that he had this man place a padlock on the home.

Speaker 35 When Nicole talked to her estranged husband, Jason, on Valentine's Day morning,

Speaker 38 she found out what Cody had done.

Speaker 131 I told her that there's padlocks on it. How, if at all, did she react to that?

Speaker 131 Very upset.

Speaker 82 So upset, in fact, prosecutors theorized, that Nicole reminded Cody in that 7 a.m.

Speaker 44 phone call that he had sold her that home, that she had a sales agreement in the safe showing she owned it, not him.

Speaker 43 To prosecutors, that's why Cody exploded and drove over, and days later showed up at her home to take that safe with the sales agreement still inside.

Speaker 78 Cody Johnston had plenty of money.

Speaker 87 Why kill somebody over a mobile home?

Speaker 38 He had put a lot of money into the home.

Speaker 114 He had basically told Amber, we are going to get this back.

Speaker 126 And I think that was just the vehicle that started that angry argument that morning.

Speaker 12 And he lost his cool and killed her.

Speaker 14 And after?

Speaker 50 Prosecutors said what really proved Cody Johnston was a killer was what they called the cover-up that followed Nicole's disappearance.

Speaker 131 What did he want?

Speaker 88 Did he ask you for anything at that time?

Speaker 8 A barrel.

Speaker 61 By 9:30 that same morning, Cody had visited his friend Bill Sorderberg's house.

Speaker 43 Prosecutors said he was looking for a way to dispose of Nicole's body.

Speaker 114 What else did he ask you for?

Speaker 30 Give him a ride back from Poplar.

Speaker 37 Poplar, where Cody had driven and dropped Nicole's expedition, 60 miles up the road.

Speaker 76 And during that time, from 9:30 a.m.

Speaker 9 until about 12.30 that afternoon, Cody Johnston turned his cell phone off, reappearing, as this security video shows, shortly after 1 p.m.

Speaker 22 How often did he turn his phone off for three hours in the middle of the day?

Speaker 14 Never.

Speaker 12 This was the only time he really went off the grid.

Speaker 25 And finally, prosecutors argued the cover-up included Cody asking friends to send that Facebook message using Nicole's account, the one that gave false hope to her friends and family.

Speaker 8 Told a little white rock.

Speaker 51 Two men turned him down.

Speaker 36 Another sent the message and said he felt terrible about what he'd done.

Speaker 118 Yeah, after I did it, I realized it was probably not the best thing to do.

Speaker 25 If he had her password, why would he involve other people who could end up testifying against him?

Speaker 128 I don't think Cody thought things through very well.

Speaker 8 I think that's the bottom line.

Speaker 115 Finally, the prosecution rested.

Speaker 65 But did the state have enough to convict Cody?

Speaker 35 The defense was about to present its case

Speaker 48 and its star witness,

Speaker 62 Cody Johnston.

Speaker 10 Coming up, a disarming strategy.

Speaker 131 I was behaving badly. I was being very childish and very vindictive.

Speaker 41 Cody, boldly owning his mistakes.

Speaker 131 Why should people believe you now? I've had a shy four years to run, and I'm here for my day in court.

Speaker 94 The surprising case he would make to the jury when Dateline continues.

Speaker 131 I'm going to be up front with you guys.

Speaker 89 When Defense Attorney Clark Matthews began his opening statement, he admitted his client, Cody Johnston,

Speaker 36 had done some strange things,

Speaker 97 but murder, or as it's called in Montana, deliberate homicide?

Speaker 50 He said that was absurd.

Speaker 131 Keep in mind, your task is to to determine whether they've proven you beyond a reasonable doubt that Cody deliberately killed Nicole.

Speaker 131 It's not Cody's responsibility to give you this explanation of why she's missing, because he can't do it.

Speaker 72 If Matthews and his fellow counsel Casey Moore, both of whom declined Dateline's request for an interview, could convince even one of the jurors of reasonable doubt, Cody Johnston would walk out of this courtroom a free man.

Speaker 13 Mr. Matthews, you may begin when you're...

Speaker 28 It turned out the first witness the defense called would be its only witness.

Speaker 131 We would call the stand Cody Thompson.

Speaker 41 It was a move that shocked everyone at the prosecution table.

Speaker 12 I would have bet my house that he wasn't going to take the stand.

Speaker 51 But Cody did and portrayed himself as a hardworking father who'd bought Nicole a home, taken her to doctor's appointments, and loved her children as his own.

Speaker 97 He told the jury he was an honorable man who, despite dating Amber in the fall fall of 2012,

Speaker 50 did the right thing

Speaker 91 when Nicole claimed she was having his baby.

Speaker 100 I broke up with her

Speaker 30 and I

Speaker 30 went back to Nicole.

Speaker 131 And did you eventually confirm with Nicole that she was not in fact?

Speaker 125 I told her that I loved her, but we couldn't, this we couldn't couldn't do this.

Speaker 88 That

Speaker 131 carry on a lie like that for so long, for that long and stick to it.

Speaker 43 And Cody said the pregnancy wasn't the only thing Nicole was lying about.

Speaker 59 He said she was also lying to herself.

Speaker 57 It turned out that over the years, Nicole had become addicted to painkillers.

Speaker 77 She was making trips to a methadone clinic every two weeks to deal with her addiction.

Speaker 131 I thought she needed to go to a treatment center and

Speaker 131 just get some help.

Speaker 43 Although prosecutors said medical records showed Nicole had been clean from narcotics or any non-prescription drugs for 10 months prior to her disappearance, Cody claimed Nicole's refusal to go into treatment was the reason they broke up just before Valentine's Day.

Speaker 92 He said she'd fallen off the wagon.

Speaker 100 You

Speaker 88 discussed with her a need for her to go to a treatment.

Speaker 30 Yes.

Speaker 131 Did she agree to do that?

Speaker 125 She told me that,

Speaker 131 well, first she said she wouldn't be able to do it because of her kids. Yes, I made the decision that it was that

Speaker 131 we just couldn't go on.

Speaker 84 There was a complication, he said.

Speaker 85 That home he'd bought for Nicole.

Speaker 77 And despite that signed sales agreement found in the safe, Cody claimed Nicole had never paid him for the home.

Speaker 131 And you believed you still owned the house?

Speaker 30 Yes.

Speaker 14 It was clear from texts sent by Amber that she wanted Cody to get Nicole out of the house as part of the breakup.

Speaker 38 The morning of Valentine's Day, Cody said he woke up in a camper at his workplace and Nicole called him and started yelling at him because Cody admitted he'd had the place padlocked.

Speaker 131 I got concerned.

Speaker 131 I want her well-being and I left and I went towards my house.

Speaker 41 Cody drove to Fairview.

Speaker 89 He admitted lying to investigators earlier when he claimed he never left work.

Speaker 8 Her car was there.

Speaker 131 I went into the house. I didn't find anybody there.

Speaker 131 My assumption was that either she had went to the store to get cigarettes before she had left

Speaker 131 or I didn't know she had left with somebody.

Speaker 51 So

Speaker 131 are you saying when you went home to Fairview, Fairview,

Speaker 131 you didn't see Nicole at all?

Speaker 30 No, I did not.

Speaker 52 And Cody said it was another childish act to enlist the help of his friend Bill to move Nicole's expedition 60 miles away to the town of Poplar.

Speaker 131 I was behaving badly.

Speaker 131 I was being very childish and very vindictive. I figured I would move her car, I would drop it off, and she would call me later on, and I would say, there's your car, get your stuff, please go home.

Speaker 80 Cody insists that he was never looking for a barrel large enough to put a body in, only a small grease barrel to wash tools in.

Speaker 68 And he said he knew the lies he told, especially enlisting his friend to send a message from Nicole's Facebook account, did not make him look good.

Speaker 131 I was scared, so I thought it would be a harmless thing. I'd get left alone, and she would come back.
How do you feel about that decision?

Speaker 30 She had

Speaker 30 been terrible about it.

Speaker 131 Why should people believe you now?

Speaker 131 Well, I guess the only thing I can say is that I've had

Speaker 131 just shy of four years to run, and I'm here for my day in court. Cody,

Speaker 131 did you kill Nicole? No, I did not.

Speaker 77 Before Cody Johnston could leave the stand,

Speaker 67 there was one more attorney waiting to question him.

Speaker 50 Prosecutor Brant Light.

Speaker 114 And even though I never thought he would testify, I had prepared hundreds of questions for him anyway.

Speaker 125 This was all about you getting away with murder, correct? No, sir.

Speaker 131 No body, no case, correct?

Speaker 125 No, sir.

Speaker 107 I didn't really care what his answer was. I knew he was going to say no, no, no.

Speaker 131 After dumping Nicole's vehicle,

Speaker 131 after hiding her body, you then spent the weekend with Amber, correct? Yes.

Speaker 88 So you...

Speaker 131 Let me get this straight. Wait a minute, sorry.
No. No, I did not dump her body.
Yes, I spent the weekend with Amber.

Speaker 107 But I was able to outline my case, really make my first closing argument to the jury and get him upset.

Speaker 92 Just by cross-examining him.

Speaker 114 Just by crossing him.

Speaker 131 You're hoping this jury gives you a break because you successfully hit her body, correct?

Speaker 125 No, sir.

Speaker 59 The prosecution had had its shot with Cody Johnston.

Speaker 14 It would soon be our turn.

Speaker 20 Coming up.

Speaker 32 F you.

Speaker 33 How's that?

Speaker 10 A startling confrontation and the verdict. Will there be justice for Nicole?

Speaker 5 I just started crying.

Speaker 72 Not long after the jury deliberating Cody Johnston's fate left the courtroom, came word that the wait for a verdict would not be a long one.

Speaker 5 Joel calls me and he's like, get to the courthouse. The jury's back.
I'm like, but it's only been like two, three hours. We got to go.

Speaker 109 Would the record reflect that all of the members of the jury are present?

Speaker 37 Any prosecutor will tell you a quick verdict is either very bad or very good news.

Speaker 11 Sitting there next to Carmen, Carmen's not an emotional person. She's guarded.
But if my anxiety was at a 12 out of 10, Carmen's had to be at a 50 out of 10.

Speaker 77 Would Cody Johnston become the first defendant in Montana history to be convicted of deliberate homicide in a no-body case.

Speaker 5 Count one.

Speaker 14 The answer was.

Speaker 11 On the charge of deliberate homicide, we, the jury, find the defendant guilty.

Speaker 97 Guilty of Nicole's murder and of tampering with evidence by hiding her body.

Speaker 5 I just started crying because finally,

Speaker 5 the person that had taken my sister away was being punished.

Speaker 42 The prosecutor, who stopped cancer treatments to save his strength for trial, now turned to Nicole's family in the front row.

Speaker 31 When I see the look on their face,

Speaker 31 it's why I do this.

Speaker 36 Cody Johnston emptied his pockets, preparing to go to jail while awaiting sentencing.

Speaker 57 Minutes later, he hugged his wife Amber and his baby boy for what could be the last time as a free man.

Speaker 11 As we walked out of the courthouse that day, After it was just Carmen and I, she goes, is it bad I just wanted to go give Amber a hug? It was so heart-wrenching to be so relieved for one person

Speaker 11 and yet feel so sorry for somebody else.

Speaker 48 Before sentencing, the prosecutor again offered to give Cody a break if he'd give up the location of Nicole's body.

Speaker 31 We made an offer and it didn't go anywhere.

Speaker 1 We just kind of threw it out there and they didn't want to hear it.

Speaker 59 Sentencing came in January 2017.

Speaker 14 And for the first time in the courtroom, came Ashland, Nicole's daughter, who who was 12 when her mother disappeared.

Speaker 77 She was once so close to Cody that she thought of calling him Dad.

Speaker 109 I want to know why,

Speaker 109 I mean, I know why this happened,

Speaker 109 but I want to know why someone

Speaker 109 would

Speaker 109 do this.

Speaker 109 And I'm not saying

Speaker 109 that

Speaker 109 he is forgiven by me

Speaker 109 because he's not. I do feel like it is my fault that she is gone.

Speaker 109 If I could have been there.

Speaker 109 I couldn't say truth.

Speaker 41 You know that this is not your fault.

Speaker 8 Yes. I'm starting to believe it wasn't my fault.

Speaker 8 But

Speaker 15 it's still kind of hard.

Speaker 62 Twelve-year-olds are not supposed to save adults from other adults.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 8 He's not not gonna ruin me.

Speaker 6 I'm not gonna let him.

Speaker 8 You're stronger than that.

Speaker 8 Stronger than him.

Speaker 5 Like, even though I wanna hurt him for what he's done to my mom,

Speaker 5 I'm not going to, because that's stooping down to his level.

Speaker 8 And my mom wouldn't want that.

Speaker 109 I sentence you to the sentence?

Speaker 14 Life in prison.

Speaker 56 And in March 2017, the Montana State Prison is where we found Cody, who agreed to speak with us, still claiming he knew nothing about Nicole's disappearance.

Speaker 49 I have to tell you, having spoken to that family, if you know anything, if you know where she is,

Speaker 124 you're putting people through agony.

Speaker 7 Yeah, if I did, I would, BS. And I don't know where she's at.

Speaker 7 But I do know if she showed up tomorrow,

Speaker 7 things would be a lot different.

Speaker 103 I don't think she's going to show up tomorrow.

Speaker 7 I don't either, but

Speaker 8 I'll pray for it.

Speaker 85 You have a new son.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 14 When he grows up, what do you want him to think of you?

Speaker 7 Well, I'm going through the appeal process, and hopefully at some point in time, I'll get out of here.

Speaker 7 But if not, what I want him to know about his father is that I love him, and that I didn't do this, and that whether I'm here or with him,

Speaker 7 I'll always be there for him.

Speaker 8 Regrets?

Speaker 14 What did you do wrong?

Speaker 8 Lied,

Speaker 7 clearly.

Speaker 7 I don't know what else I can do but say I'm sorry.

Speaker 14 What are you sorry for if you didn't do this?

Speaker 8 For moving our car.

Speaker 7 For not telling the truth to the police.

Speaker 36 Remember, prosecutors said Cody Johnston was a great guy until he wasn't.

Speaker 76 Until his temper caused him to snap.

Speaker 9 And after we pressed him for a while, we saw a little of that.

Speaker 124 If you had nothing to do with this, if you're innocent.

Speaker 7 I'm done. We're done.
We're done

Speaker 7 not doing this.

Speaker 8 Done.

Speaker 16 You're not going to make me look like an anymore.

Speaker 7 I've had enough of that.

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 33 F you. F you, you arrogant.

Speaker 8 F you.

Speaker 14 How's that?

Speaker 7 I'm done. Thank you.

Speaker 46 We persuaded him to stay long enough to answer the big question.

Speaker 7 Did you kill Nicole?

Speaker 8 No, I did not.

Speaker 7 No, I would not. I'm not a killer.

Speaker 7 And nothing in my character has ever, ever spoken to the fact that I would be.

Speaker 24 And with that, Cody Johnston returned to his new life in prison.

Speaker 14 He'll first be eligible for parole in 2049.

Speaker 46 Two of the lawmen who put him behind bars live to fight again.

Speaker 58 Brandt Light is still in treatment, but Mark Hilliard's cancer is in remission.

Speaker 8 I think there may have been times when you didn't know whether you or Brandt were going to make it to the end of this case, but you both did.

Speaker 99 Yeah, and we were taking on new cases.

Speaker 51 Glad to see that.

Speaker 23 Probably not as glad as you are, though.

Speaker 32 Yeah,

Speaker 41 I'm glad to be here.

Speaker 61 The search for justice is over.

Speaker 111 The search for Nicole Waller is not.

Speaker 62 There remains so much sadness.

Speaker 41 A daughter, sister, mother, and friend Gone.

Speaker 38 And would it be easier if you had a grave to go visit?

Speaker 5 Yeah, at least with a grave site.

Speaker 5 Or even if you go to spread her ashes someplace, there's someplace special where you can go talk.

Speaker 5 I don't have that.

Speaker 5 We're still in limbo.

Speaker 5 Where's her body? She's out there someplace.

Speaker 14 We don't know.

Speaker 16 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 10 Thanks for joining us.

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