Bad Blood

Speaker 1 the creator of Homeland, Claire Danes and Matthew Rees star in the new Netflix series The Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 1 The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt and justice and doubt, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 2 If you're a custodial supervisor at a local high school, you know that cleanliness is key and that the best place to get cleaning supplies is from Granger.

Speaker 2 Granger helps you stay fully stocked on the products you trust, from paper towels and disinfectants to floor scrubbers.

Speaker 2 Plus, you can rely on Granger for easy reordering so you never run out of what you need. Call 1-800GRANGER, clickgranger.com or just stop by.
Granger for the ones who get it done.

Speaker 1 I loved everything about Nikki.

Speaker 3 She was a phenomenal, amazing person.

Speaker 4 She loved those girls.

Speaker 3 Pretty much her pride and joy. It's hard for me to even...

Speaker 1 It was hard.

Speaker 1 It was really hard.

Speaker 5 These two beautiful 16-year-old girls had come home from school and found their mother murdered.

Speaker 6 They were rocking back and forth. They were going in and out of fits of tears and crying, traumatized, disturbed.

Speaker 7 We were told by the twins that Nikki had a second boyfriend. Two boyfriends?

Speaker 1 Two boyfriends. Jealousy or bad blood involved?

Speaker 7 That's what we immediately thought.

Speaker 8 The whole death may have been premeditated.

Speaker 1 The questions that go over and over in your head are like what?

Speaker 6 Everything about this goes against nature.

Speaker 1 I was shaken. Oh my God.
Oh my God.

Speaker 10 You can't even imagine.

Speaker 1 Once in a while in a complicated life, a woman can get lucky. Which is why you're looking at a sweet little town called Conyers, Georgia.

Speaker 1 Antique downtown, ringed by gated communities, good schools, a sheen of newness.

Speaker 1 It was really pure luck that brought Nikki Whitehead to this house in this quiet, safe neighborhood. Just far enough away from Atlanta, that capital of overheated ambition down the highway.

Speaker 1 Here in Conyers, she could give her beautiful twin daughters a better better life than hers.

Speaker 1 But of course luck, fortune, fate can go either way, sometimes in ways very hard to comprehend.

Speaker 6 Everything about this goes against nature.

Speaker 10 How could somebody do that?

Speaker 7 It was definitely the bloodiest crime scene I've ever been to.

Speaker 1 In the next few minutes, you will learn what happened. But the real question is why?

Speaker 1 And the answer?

Speaker 1 that's complicated but that's how Nikki Whitehead's life was

Speaker 1 I loved everything about Nikki Yaka Harris grew up with Nikki could see she was a wild child and pretty and fun irresistible Nikki was to me she was a phenomenal amazing person yes and she was effervescent said Nikki's mother Linda bigger than life she was the kind of person that when she comes in a room she just take over the space, you know, with her personality, her laughter.

Speaker 1 But when Nikki was 12, oh boy, a handful. Linda was a single mom with other kids at the time, so she agreed to let young Nikki move in with Della, Nikki's grandmother.

Speaker 1 Trouble was, said Yocca, Della let the girl run wild. Boys, parties.

Speaker 3 We grew up kind of fast.

Speaker 3 And then later, she became pregnant at the age of 18 or 19.

Speaker 3 So we move kind of fast. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Pregnant with identical twins whom she named Jasmine and Tasmia. Jazz and Taz, born in 1993.
The twins' dad was around briefly, then gone. And their mother figured when Nikki's grandmother, Della.

Speaker 1 Nikki's mother, Linda, didn't like that.

Speaker 10 I wanted Nikki to

Speaker 10 get her own place, establish her own life. And my mom would discourage that.
She would, you know, find ways to tell her, no, you're better off here.

Speaker 1 That's how it went for years.

Speaker 1 But Nikki had learned how to style hair and was doing well at it and eventually saw the possibility of independence.

Speaker 1 And then one day in 2000, Nikki was shopping at the mall and Robert Hadley just happened to be in exactly the right spot. I was sitting on the fountain one afternoon, about six o'clock, and that walks

Speaker 1 Nikki coming into the mall. You're just your eye caught.
Yes, she was, I said, I just can't let her get away. That he was old enough to be her father? Didn't matter.
Robert was in love.

Speaker 1 So he persuaded her to go to dinner that very night. He took her dancing.
He bought her nice things, treated her like a lady. She was my movie star.
That's what I call her, my movie star.

Speaker 1 His movie star with two sweet daughters, he also soon loved as if they were his own.

Speaker 1 And that's how Nikki came here to safe, secure Conyers. This is Robert's house.
And here they made a family. Unusual in some ways as you will hear, but.

Speaker 1 It was nice.

Speaker 1 It was really nice. Everything clicked just right.
And she wanted her life to get even better.

Speaker 1 So, while she kept her job as a hairstylist, she enrolled in Atlanta's Bodder College to study fashion design.

Speaker 11 That's when I actually learned that Nikki was a hairstylist.

Speaker 1 Rhonda Anderson taught a couple of Nikki's classes. She thought Mickey had a sense of purpose, whether it was about her kids or fashion or other people's hair.

Speaker 11 I came in the class early one day, as I normally do, and she looked up at me and she said, Mr. Anderson, what's going on with your hair?

Speaker 1 And I said, what?

Speaker 11 Excuse me? And then she asked me this question. Do you have a hairstylist? And does she know you have your hair looking like that today? And I said, yes and no.
She said, Ms.

Speaker 11 Anderson, I'm giving her one more chance. One more chance.
If it's not right, I'm taking over.

Speaker 1 Rhonda loved Nikki, and Nikki loved her girls. She put the twins in dance and music classes.
At school, they won awards.

Speaker 6 Their teachers describe them as almost angelic, sweet, and

Speaker 6 happy and engaged, and there's pictures of them, you know, one on each of Nikki's arms.

Speaker 1 NBC's Katie Beck covered the story when she was a reporter at our affiliate, WXIA, in Atlanta.

Speaker 6 Teachers described them that way, that they had a sweet demeanor in their classrooms and with their classmates and

Speaker 6 they were almost timid.

Speaker 1 And then as they reached their teens they changed somehow in the ways children often do, in the way Nikki herself once did.

Speaker 1 And just like Nikki, the twins were sent to live for a couple of years with the rather permissive family matriarch, Della.

Speaker 1 Until 2010, when Nikki welcomed Taz and Jazz back, all together again in Robert's house. A fresh start.
And Nikki turned up at school beaming.

Speaker 11 Yeah, she was in a very good mood. She looked great.
She had, you know, a new look with her hair, and she had braids in, and she was happy.

Speaker 1 As if the braids in her hair were kind of an announcement. Her girls were back.

Speaker 3 They were pretty much her pride and joy.

Speaker 1 Oh, you started thinking about her.

Speaker 1 It was hard.

Speaker 1 It's really hard.

Speaker 1 It was January 13th, 2010. A sheriff's deputy happened to be in the neighborhood.
The girls had just come home from school. The deputy saw a look of horror on their faces, heard their screams.

Speaker 1 as they came pounding on his car.

Speaker 5 One of the twins ran up and literally beat on the side of his car

Speaker 5 and told him that they had come home from school and found their mother murdered.

Speaker 6 They were going in and out of fits of tears and crying, traumatized, disturbed.

Speaker 1 Exactly what had happened. Two distraught daughters are about to reveal a clue.

Speaker 7 We were told by the twins that Nikki had a second boyfriend. Two boyfriends?

Speaker 1 Two boyfriends.

Speaker 1 Wednesday afternoon, January 13th, 2010. A gated community in the town of Conyers, just east of Atlanta.

Speaker 1 16-year-old twins Jasmia and Tasmia arrived home from school, walked in the front door, followed a bloody trail, and there she was

Speaker 1 in the bathtub.

Speaker 1 Their mother, 34-year-old Nikki Whitehead.

Speaker 1 As we walked in, the mess that greeted arriving Conyers Police Detective Chris Moon told a terrible story. This was a long, drawn-out fight.

Speaker 7 Nikki was fighting for her life for several minutes. This was not a quick attack and over with.
She fought here. She was struck in the back of the head.
She had a laceration to the back of her head.

Speaker 7 There was blood on the door, on the door handle, as if

Speaker 1 somebody tried to get out or she was fighting it out.

Speaker 7 And then along this wall, you could see a bloody imprint of hair braids, which Nikki had her hair in braids, where she fell, slid down the wall. The most severe blows came when she was face down.

Speaker 7 In this area, this is clearly where the assailant got on top of her from behind and started stabbing at the base of her neck.

Speaker 1 And a huge amount of blood in it.

Speaker 7 Yes, this was the largest pool of blood in this area right here.

Speaker 1 She was dead or near dead when her assailant dragged her to the bathroom. And that's where she was in a tub of water.
What her daughter saw before they ran to the street screaming.

Speaker 5 As we get there, you have these two beautiful young 16-year-old girls that discover their mother murdered.

Speaker 1 Kanye's police captain Jackie Dunn wanted to get Jazz and Taz away from the house. And that's when he noticed they were hurting themselves.

Speaker 5 One of them was biting their arm and were like, hey, why are you biting your arm? And she said, I'm just so upset I do that when I'm upset.

Speaker 1 This was the worst kind of case. Detectives need information fast.
But how do you get it from children who have just left their dead mother?

Speaker 6 They were going in and out of fits of tears and crying,

Speaker 6 asking for their mom.

Speaker 6 They both seem to be rocking back and forth,

Speaker 6 you know, contemplative, traumatized,

Speaker 1 disturbed.

Speaker 5 I can remember thinking, man, I hope there is a suitable family member to adopt these girls.

Speaker 5 They really need

Speaker 5 somebody to reach out and be good parents for them.

Speaker 1 Word spread through the late afternoon gloom. A friend called Yucca Harris.

Speaker 3 She had asked me when was the last time I talked to Nikki and I said, well, I talked to Nikki Saturday.

Speaker 3 She had told me that you may want to go over to her house because she said the helicopters were there and the news reporters.

Speaker 5 Tell me, when you heard that, what did you think?

Speaker 13 I don't know.

Speaker 3 It was like television. I was just, it was slow motion.

Speaker 1 Yucca called Nikki's mother, Linda, told her something bad was going on over at Nikki's.

Speaker 3 I was so nervous. I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 1 I was like, oh my God, oh my God.

Speaker 10 I was just shaking.

Speaker 1 I could hardly drive. Linda pulled into her daughter's neighborhood and saw a police officer.

Speaker 10 He said, Ma'am, can you pull over there?

Speaker 14 I said, no, I need to go to my daughter's house.

Speaker 1 He said, Ma'am, will you just pull over there, please?

Speaker 9 I pulled to the side.

Speaker 14 I said, what is going on?

Speaker 14 Mr. Ma'am, the only thing I can tell you is your daughter has expired.

Speaker 1 There is no getting over news like that.

Speaker 1 As Nikki's family tried to take it in, investigators set to work figuring out who did this.

Speaker 1 The girls said their mother was still in her room with the door locked when they left the house for school at 7.30. We missed the bus, so we had to walk.

Speaker 1 Perhaps the crime scene would yield more clues than the girls could. Lieutenant Chris Moon headed back there.

Speaker 7 We were looking for cell phones, computers, indications. You know, typically victims are going to have called or spoken with their assailants just before the murder or around the time of the murder.

Speaker 1 The attack did not look random. It was not rape, but it was so violent.

Speaker 5 That suggested rage.

Speaker 5 And when you look at a rage murder, it's usually somebody very, very close to the deceased.

Speaker 1 So naturally, the first person they wanted to talk to was the man of the house, Robert Head, Nikki's boyfriend. But Robert wasn't around.

Speaker 15 When was the last time you saw Robert? Yesterday he left.

Speaker 1 He came in on Sunday. He stayed for a day with us.

Speaker 1 Here's the thing. Robert was a long-haul truck driver, which explained his absence, but not where he was, especially when Nikki was murdered.

Speaker 5 We had to find Robert, and we had to check on his

Speaker 1 GPS. That takes a while, right?

Speaker 5 Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, detectives spread out through the neighborhood, knocking on doors. Had anyone seen anything unusual?

Speaker 1 A couple of neighbors said they saw a red car in Nikki's driveway that afternoon, a car they had never seen before. And a black car on the street, too.
They asked the girls, who could have been there

Speaker 1 okay does

Speaker 16 your mom have any other friends or anybody else that come over that you know

Speaker 15 a lot of them talk

Speaker 15 in but the only one i've been hearing her talk to lately is joe joe

Speaker 1 who was joe

Speaker 1 we were also told by the twins that nikki had a second boyfriend uh joe carter two boyfriends two boyfriends now that got the investigators attention time to dig a little deeper into the life of Nikki Whitehead.

Speaker 1 Two boyfriends, two possible suspects? That was my

Speaker 1 about a half since she was gone.

Speaker 17 I wanted to find a killer and I wanted to know that it wasn't me.

Speaker 1 Struggling to see up close? Make it visible with Viz. Viz is a once-daily prescription eye drop to treat blurry near vision for up to 10 hours.

Speaker 1 The most common side effects that may be experienced while while using Viz include eye irritation, temporary dim or dark vision, headaches, and eye redness.

Speaker 1 Talk to an eye doctor to learn if Viz is right for you. Learn more at Viz.com.
Looking to crack the code on your career? Well, maybe it's time to get your degree.

Speaker 1 Southern New Hampshire University offers over 200 programs you can complete online. No set class times means you can do it all on your schedule.

Speaker 1 And with some of the lowest online tuition rates in the U.S., they make getting your degree affordable, too. Get started at snhu.edu slash dateline.
That's snhu.edu slash dateline.

Speaker 1 Most holiday gifts end up in a drawer or the back of your closet or accidentally left at your cousin's house. Not this one.
Mint Mobile is offering unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 1 That's their best deal of the year, aka a holiday gift you'll actually use every single day. Don't get them socks.
Get them premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 1 Shop Mint Unlimited plans at mintmobile.com slash dateline. That's mintmobile.com slash dateline.
Limited time offer. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for 6 months, or $180 for 12 months.

Speaker 1 Plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra.
Initial plan term only.

Speaker 1 Greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when the network is busy. Capable device required.
Availability, speed, and coverage vary. See mintmobile.com.

Speaker 1 Detectives in Conyers, Georgia, were getting a crash course in the short life of Nikki Whitehead.

Speaker 1 Found stabbed to death in the home she shared with her live-in boyfriend Robert and her twin teenage daughters Jaz and Taz,

Speaker 1 who at least had each other for support.

Speaker 6 The girls put their arms around each other and it's going to be okay. We're going to find out who did this.
They were clearly relying on each other to get through this.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 they were able to convey some real... information.

Speaker 15 Any idea who she was talking to?

Speaker 16 It was Joe. It was Joe.

Speaker 1 Their mother had a second boyfriend, a man named Joe Carter, a local barber whose shop was right next to Nikki's salon.

Speaker 1 Love triangle? Sounded to veteran homicide detectives like a potential recipe for murder.

Speaker 1 First, they talked to Robert, boyfriend number one, who was on the road in his long-haul truck. How did he react to the news?

Speaker 5 He was devastating.

Speaker 1 It was easy enough to check on Robert. GPS records put him a full day's drive away when Nikki was murdered.

Speaker 1 And when they met him, as we did, they could plainly see his grief was real. Because that was my

Speaker 1 about a half since she was gone, you know.

Speaker 1 It's a hard thing.

Speaker 1 This was how detectives discovered the unusual nature of Robert and Nikki's relationship. Robert told them he knew about the other boyfriend.
It wasn't a secret. He didn't mind.

Speaker 1 He said he wanted Nikki to be happy when he was away on the road.

Speaker 5 He's a truck driver. When he was home, he expected for

Speaker 5 her and him to be a couple. And when he was away, he realized that she was going to have other relationships.

Speaker 1 But what about Joe? How did he feel about that? He was upset about something, said the twins. Night before the murder, they said Joe and Nikki had a nasty, loud argument on the phone.

Speaker 15 All she told Joe is that he couldn't come over there last last night.

Speaker 7 Obviously he was an immediate person of interest.

Speaker 1 So he was.

Speaker 1 And remember, a neighbor spotted a black car near Nikki's house the day she was killed. Joe's car, perhaps?

Speaker 16 You know what Joe drives?

Speaker 4 No, I know the black car in that driveway, and it's a black, black car.

Speaker 1 Rockdale County District Attorney Richard Reed.

Speaker 8 We needed to look at Joe Carter, especially since Nikki and Joe had been in an argument.

Speaker 1 It wasn't hard to track Joe down. He was in the barber shop where he worked.

Speaker 17 It was around closing time. We were ready to pack up and get out of there.
And they approached me and my friends. Then they basically said that she's passed away.
I mean, she's dead. I was shocked.

Speaker 17 I was just in shock.

Speaker 1 How did he react when he came to see me?

Speaker 7 He immediately started weeping.

Speaker 1 He didn't know about the or claimed not to know.

Speaker 7 He claimed not to know.

Speaker 1 But reactions don't always tell the real story.

Speaker 17 But they was basically asking about me and her relationship, when the last time I seen her, and I started to realize I was a suspect.

Speaker 1 Detective Moon did what any good detective would do. He looked for the sort of marks Nikki might have left on her assailant's body.

Speaker 7 Looked at his hands, looked at his arms, looked at his... He took off his shirt.

Speaker 1 But Joe was clean. Not a suspicious scratch on him.
And detectives learned that black car outside Nikki's house didn't didn't belong to him.

Speaker 1 Still, they brought him in for questioning, hooked him up to a polygraph, and asked him point-blank if he killed Nikki.

Speaker 8 And the polygrapher determined that he was not deceptive in answering questions.

Speaker 17 I wanted him to find a killer and I wanted to know that it wasn't me.

Speaker 1 So that's it for Joe.

Speaker 8 It appeared that Joe was not involved in the death of Nikki Whitehead.

Speaker 1 So, two boyfriends and two dead ends.

Speaker 1 You know, in addition addition to Robert Head and Joe Carter, it could have been a stranger, could have been another.

Speaker 1 Did you look into that, possibly? We did.

Speaker 1 Yes, and they still wanted to know who owned another car, a red one, that was also seen in Nikki's driveway the day of the killing. It didn't take long to find out.

Speaker 1 It belonged not to a murderer at all, but a friend.

Speaker 5 Nikki had missed a hair appointment with this friend, and the friend had come by, knocked on the door, and not been able to make contact contact with Nikki and left.

Speaker 1 Imagine had she opened that door. Such a grisly scene so full of rage and passion.

Speaker 1 So who killed Nikki? Someone close?

Speaker 1 Then as they struggled to figure it out, investigators encountered in their own police files something rather stunning.

Speaker 18 I just woke up and my daughter's gone.

Speaker 15 Your daughter was abducted?

Speaker 18 I don't know, ma'am. She was gone.

Speaker 1 Family secrets. There were a few yet to be revealed.

Speaker 3 It turned into a fight. Physical fight.
A physical fight. And she contacted police.

Speaker 1 The investigation into the murder of Nikki Whitehead was not offering up any usual suspects. The two men in her life, Robert Head and Joe Carter, had been eliminated.

Speaker 1 And a home invasion seemed very unlikely in her gated community.

Speaker 7 There's no histories of any peeping toms, no histories of assaults in the neighborhood, so we just kept coming up to dead ends.

Speaker 1 Thing is, they felt sure this had to be a rage murder, so violent, so protracted. Which made it very likely it was someone Nikki knew, even possibly a family member.

Speaker 5 So we started getting into some of the family dynamics.

Speaker 1 And that's when they turned up in police files, this remarkable incident back in 2007. One brief snippet of family history, but an event that changed everything that came after it.

Speaker 18 Kanye Samuel Juan? Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 15 I just woke up and my daughter is gone at the house.

Speaker 1 That was the voice of Nikki Whitehead.

Speaker 19 Meaning your daughter was abducted?

Speaker 18 I don't know, ma'am. I woke up, the door was unlocked, and she's gone.
I have twin girls. One of them is gone.
How old is your daughter? Oh, Lord, 13.

Speaker 1 You can hear her terror.

Speaker 18 Oh, Lord, my worst nightmare.

Speaker 19 Do you think maybe somebody came and got her?

Speaker 18 I don't know. Somebody came and got her, ma'am.
She don't do stuff like this. I don't know.

Speaker 1 But a few hours later, Nikki learned that her daughters did do stuff like that. Jazz had not been kidnapped.
She'd snuck out to fool around with a boy.

Speaker 8 Up until that day, I believe in Nikki's mind she had perfect girls. Nikki realized that they weren't necessarily the girls that she thought they were.

Speaker 1 Nikki was determined to help her girls avoid the mistakes she made at their age. So she cracked down on curfew, on boys, on cell phone use.

Speaker 1 The following months would be familiar to many parents of teenagers. Screaming, slammed doors, stony silences.

Speaker 1 And then one summer night in 2008, a year after Jazz sneaked out of the house.

Speaker 3 A big argument and it turned into a fight. A physical fight.
A physical fight. It was Taz and Jazz against their mother.
And at that time, I think she felt fearful and she contacted the police.

Speaker 1 Was it the right decision to call the police?

Speaker 1 That ensured the family ended up in juvenile court. Nikki asking the judge to help her teach her daughters a lesson.
Instead, it seemed to Linda the judge was blaming Nikki.

Speaker 10 I guess the judge thought they were too cute and too smart that, nah,

Speaker 10 they couldn't be doing, you know. He did not take it seriously.

Speaker 1 What did he decide to do?

Speaker 10 Well, he asked my daughter, he said,

Speaker 10 do you want your kids to come back home?

Speaker 9 And she said,

Speaker 10 no, Your Honor, not unless they understand that I'm not going to tolerate that kind of behavior. And so he was like, You mean to tell me you don't want your kids to come home?

Speaker 1 What Nikki wanted was a court-sanctioned demand that her daughters obey the rules. But that is not what she got.

Speaker 1 Instead, the juvenile court judge sent the girls to live with Della, their great-grandmother. What were they doing while they were at Della's house?

Speaker 6 Pretty much whatever they want. They kind of ran wild.

Speaker 1 And got in trouble repeatedly, in school and out.

Speaker 10 Shoplifting,

Speaker 10 smoking marijuana, seeing the wrong type of boys.

Speaker 3 Well, she didn't want that. She knew, you know, she was going back to when she was their age in her grandmother custody.
She didn't want that for her kids.

Speaker 1 Seemed to Nikki that Della was undermining her and had somehow stolen away the daughters who mattered to her more than anything else in her life.

Speaker 3 She really wanted them back. Really wanted them back.

Speaker 1 How did you know this?

Speaker 5 How did she express that?

Speaker 9 She said it every day.

Speaker 3 I want my girls. I'm going to fight for my girls.

Speaker 1 And in January 2010, Nikki finally won. The judge ordered the girls back to Nikki's.
And Jazz and Taz

Speaker 1 did not like it. Not one bit.

Speaker 10 So they start screaming and hollering, we don't want to go back with her.

Speaker 9 Why would you make us go back?

Speaker 1 In court, they were doing this? Yeah. Nikki told her mother not to worry.

Speaker 10 She said, I'll be fine. They'll mell out.
They'll, you know, they'll come around.

Speaker 1 A few days after the court's decision, on a Saturday night, Nikki put on a welcome home party for the girls.

Speaker 3 They hugged me, you know, they kissed me.

Speaker 1 And that was the last time Yucca saw Nikki. Four nights later, there they were, Jazz and Taz answering the increasingly pointed questions of a couple of detectives.

Speaker 16 Can you tell me what happened when you got home today?

Speaker 1 It seemed a little odd that the girls were still wearing outdoor gloves.

Speaker 1 The detective asked, Could you take them off, please?

Speaker 1 Procedure, since you're in there. I'll need to see your hands and your arms.

Speaker 5 When we did that, we did see a cut on one of them's hand. We saw bruising on the knuckles and skin marks and bite marks.
Bite marks. And we asked them to explain those.

Speaker 1 The bite marks could have been self-inflicted. Remember, the girls were so upset on their way to the station?

Speaker 1 They were biting themselves.

Speaker 1 And the other cuts and scratches? The twins told the cops cops they had been fighting with each other.

Speaker 1 It was as they told their story,

Speaker 1 Detective Dunn took a good look at Jazz and Taz,

Speaker 1 and a disturbing idea settled down somewhere in his brain.

Speaker 5 I haven't made up my mind, but I'm suspicious.

Speaker 1 Suspicious? Were there reasons to be suspicious?

Speaker 7 We watch the high school video surveillance, and you see the twins showing up about two and a half hours after they should have for school.

Speaker 1 What were the girls doing the morning of the murder?

Speaker 13 Hey, weirdos!

Speaker 4 I'm Elena and I'm Ash and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 13 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 4 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 13 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 4 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 13 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 1 Yay! Woo!

Speaker 22 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason. But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 22 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand. Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program.
There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zin.

Speaker 22 Check out Zinn.com slash find to find Zin at a store near you.

Speaker 22 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 20 Just got a new puppy or kitten. Congrats! But also, yikes!

Speaker 20 Between crates, beds, toys, treats, and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune, which is where Lemonade Pet Insurance comes in.

Speaker 20 It helps cover vet costs so you can focus on what's best for your new pet. The coverage is customizable, signup is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds.

Speaker 20 Pro tip, LemonAid offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a quote at lemonade.com/slash pet.
Your future self will thank you. Your pet won't.
They don't know what insurance is.

Speaker 1 There's a look, a way of talking that suggests a thing the spoken words most certainly do not say.

Speaker 1 As Nikki Whitehead's petite teenage daughters told their story, how they discovered their mother's body, how horrified they were, the detectives watched their eyes, their tearless sobs, saw their bruises and cuts, and just knew.

Speaker 5 They're not behaving consistent with somebody that found their mother murdered.

Speaker 1 Mind you, there's a hurdle a person has to overcome to imagine that these two sweet teenagers might have been involved somehow in what could only be called a slaughter.

Speaker 1 Though Nikki's mother, Linda, remembered clearly how angry the twins were just a week earlier when the court sent them back to Nikki.

Speaker 10 When Jazz came out, she looked over at my daughter and she said, if I got to go back home with you, I'm going to kill you. You heard this? I heard this and it stunned me.

Speaker 1 But teenagers sometimes do talk that way. It doesn't mean they actually do anything about it.

Speaker 1 So the detective set about fact-checking the twins' version of events on the day of their mother's death, starting with their claim that they had to walk to school that morning.

Speaker 5 They told us that they had

Speaker 5 overslept a little bit, that they had missed the bus,

Speaker 5 and had

Speaker 1 walked to school. It was a rush, said the girls, but they did get to school on time.

Speaker 15 Made all your classes today.

Speaker 1 So, cops did what the cops do. They checked surveillance tape from businesses along the route to school.
And what do you know?

Speaker 8 Law enforcement had observed the girls walking down

Speaker 8 the roadway next to the gas station a little after 10 a.m. that morning.

Speaker 1 Nowhere near on time, as the school surveillance camera confirmed.

Speaker 7 We watched the the high school video surveillance and you see the twins showing up about two and a half hours after they should have for school.

Speaker 1 So the twins were caught in a lie and it was a big one.

Speaker 1 But it wasn't proof of murder. They flatly denied any involvement in that.
Even when they were put in separate rooms, they presented a united twin front.

Speaker 5 They wouldn't sway. There was never any disloyalty to each other.
They never said a negative comment about each other.

Speaker 1 Getting one to flip on the other was not going to happen. No.
After those interviews, they released the girls. The juvenile court farmed them out to family, friends.

Speaker 1 And the police sent their DNA and photos of their injuries, like those apparently self-inflicted bite marks, off to the lab.

Speaker 1 And then they waited, pretty sure science would tell them that these sweet little girls were anything but.

Speaker 1 Do they appear manipulative to you?

Speaker 8 Absolutely. I'll give you, for instance, Jasmia is in one room.
Tasmia is taken to a smaller interview room.

Speaker 8 It's apparent that Tasmia knows there's a camera and there's a recording system in that room.

Speaker 5 And she starts to pray.

Speaker 23 And I really want him to catch this person.

Speaker 8 She knew at some point in time somebody would watch that video and they would see a young, innocent, sweet girl. asking God to help law enforcement find the person who did this.

Speaker 1 And meanwhile, at the glacial pace these things occur, the crime lab worked on the DNA and pored over those photos of the bite marks. One on Taz's arm was the impression of a big, ugly bite.

Speaker 1 They compared the contours of that bite to a mold of Nikki's mouth. The similarity was uncanny.

Speaker 7 Nikki was most likely source.

Speaker 1 Had their mother bitten them trying to fight off an attack?

Speaker 5 The bite mark on Taz's arm would be consistent as if she had her mother in a chokehold from behind and that her mother, Nikki, is biting her trying to get away.

Speaker 1 And when detectives saw the twins biting themselves right after the murder, maybe that was an attempt to cover up evidence. Then the DNA results came back.

Speaker 1 They knew they'd find Nikki's blood, but remember, one of the twins had fresh cuts on her hand. And sure enough, in a smear of Nikki's blood mixed with her likely assailants, a match.

Speaker 1 It belonged to one of the twins. But which one?

Speaker 7 They're were identical twins. They have identical DNA, so we don't know.
We couldn't tell for sure which twin the blood came from.

Speaker 1 By this time, the twins had been out in the world without a word from the police for five months.

Speaker 6 I think those months built their confidence, built almost in arrogance,

Speaker 6 that we're going to get away with this.

Speaker 1 So you can only imagine how it was May 21st, 2010, just after school. How did they react to being arrested?

Speaker 8 Shocked.

Speaker 5 They thought it was over with. It had been five months since they had heard from us.

Speaker 1 The arrest was big news in Atlanta. Two sweet little girls charged with the murder of their mother.
Who would have thought?

Speaker 23 I mean, people

Speaker 6 were riveted by the story.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes, they were.

Speaker 1 And when the twins finally told their version of events that cold morning in January, the city was riveted all over again.

Speaker 23 Threatening us we all are gonna die today.

Speaker 1 The fatal struggle. Did their mom start at all?

Speaker 23 She's like a charge for, okay, tell her to stop, just stop.

Speaker 1 It's a complicated thing. Lots to do.
If you're a prosecutor preparing a murder case against pretty twin teenagers. And so D.A.

Speaker 1 Richard Reed was interested when one day defense attorneys suggested they wanted to make a deal.

Speaker 8 My response is, it's great to hear it from you,

Speaker 8 but I want to hear it from them. And so I'd like to talk to your clients.
I'd like to ask them questions.

Speaker 1 And that's how D.A. Reed met the 19-year-old Jazz and Taz and heard them confess they did kill their mother.

Speaker 1 But was it a confession, really?

Speaker 1 In fact, said the twins, it wasn't their fault. She started it.

Speaker 4 She started cursing and stuff.

Speaker 23 I think she was mad about us being late.

Speaker 1 That morning they said Nikki was furious that they were late for school and picked up a pot in the kitchen, they said, and swung it at them.

Speaker 23 She still called them

Speaker 23 and sluts and everything like that and

Speaker 23 stupid and everything like that and she

Speaker 10 threatened us with like no we all gonna die today

Speaker 23 that's jazz then taz picked up the story so you took the pot away from your mom what happened then she like kind of just like charged for

Speaker 1 i didn't need her and jazz Now Nikki had a knife, said the girls. They tumbled room to room trying to get it away from her before she cut one of them.

Speaker 1 And in fact, said Taz, that's how her finger got cut.

Speaker 21 I kept telling her to stop.

Speaker 23 Just stop, just stop, just stop.

Speaker 1 But she didn't, they said. So

Speaker 23 I'm trying to punch her up here.

Speaker 23 And

Speaker 23 I think Teya stay up there.

Speaker 23 Did they stay up there?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 8 at this point in time, how many times did Taya stab her?

Speaker 23 That was once.

Speaker 1 At some point, exhausted, the twins said they all called a truce. It didn't last long.

Speaker 8 They both described mom lunges for the knife, and when she does, it's on again.

Speaker 1 Finally, said the girls, they overpowered their mother, who stopped struggling and moaned that she was cold.

Speaker 1 So they put her in a warm tub, tried to soothe her, even though they said she was still spitting mad and threatening them.

Speaker 1 Kill me now, and

Speaker 23 I'll kill y'all.

Speaker 1 Eventually, they said she stopped talking, drifted off in the warm water, and died.

Speaker 1 Did you believe them? Did you believe everything they said? No.

Speaker 1 Still don't.

Speaker 1 The idea that Nikki launched an attack on her own daughters. Difficult to believe, said the DA.

Speaker 1 Sheer nonsense is what Nikki's mother called it.

Speaker 10 My daughter never have hit her kids. They never had them spanking, more or less.
Anybody that knows Nikki knows that wasn't her behavior.

Speaker 1 It was very clear, said the detectives who worked the case, that in fact Nikki was the victim of an unprovoked attack. She had at least 45 stab wounds.
Her spinal cord was almost severed.

Speaker 5 Nikki fought for her life.

Speaker 5 We think she fought defensively. You can see where she's on her back some of the time, fighting off people that are attacking her from above with knives.

Speaker 1 As for the girl's claim that they put their dying mother in the tub to keep her warm as they watched her fade away.

Speaker 1 Fiction through and through, said the police.

Speaker 5 We think she was dead before she was placed in the tub, or she would have bled into the water and the water would have been bloody.

Speaker 5 They were putting her in the water trying to wash off the crime scene, wash off the evidence.

Speaker 1 In truth, said the detectives, these girls were remorseless, defiant, brilliant little actresses. Remember how they sounded just after their mother's death?

Speaker 1 And I really wanted to catch this person.

Speaker 1 Listen to the little darlings when they didn't know they were playing for the cameras. Are you available for 59 or you're 34? This was recorded in the back of a squad car just after their arrest.

Speaker 1 Sweet little girls.

Speaker 1 Hardly.

Speaker 3 Because they say I saw a murder with me.

Speaker 1 Please do that.

Speaker 1 Please find a murder whipping. Thank you.

Speaker 6 They are aggressive. They are angry.
They are combative.

Speaker 1 Redneck,

Speaker 1 dumb, dirty ass caught dead this bullshit.

Speaker 1 Oh, and one more thing. Tucked away in one of the girls' bedrooms, police found this journal.
Inside, in childish handwriting, a death sentence.

Speaker 1 They were notes to each other, said the DA, written just before the killing. She don't care.

Speaker 5 She's selfish.

Speaker 1 We got to get rid of her. To which the other twin responds, that's what I think also.
She got to go, ASAP.

Speaker 8 It may be the most telling piece of evidence that the whole death of mom may have been premeditated.

Speaker 1 Still, DA worried maybe a good defense attorney could spin the family's turbulent history, the juvie court drama, Nikki's two boyfriends, and somehow sell a jury on self-defense.

Speaker 1 It would have been an ugly trial.

Speaker 8 And I think to some extent would have been a misrepresentation of Nikki's life.

Speaker 1 So he didn't like it much, but he left them plead guilty to the lesser charge, voluntary manslaughter, 30 years for each.

Speaker 1 Not enough, said Nikki's mother, Linda.

Speaker 10 These children have killed my child brutally, and you're going to get them 30 years? They shouldn't even be able to walk the street. I know these are my grandkids, but come on now.

Speaker 10 I mean, if they can do this to their mom, God help us all.

Speaker 1 And the questions that go over and over in your head are like, what?

Speaker 6 How everything about this goes against nature.

Speaker 6 How the person that provides for you and raises you and loves you and gives birth to you, how you could watch that person die in a bathtub

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 6 lie about it. Now, tomorrow night.

Speaker 1 It was Katie Beck's reports that brought the story to an Atlanta, both horrified and fascinated.

Speaker 1 She who first secured access to to all those police videotapes, exposing those pretty little liars for all the world to see.

Speaker 6 It suddenly becomes clear that

Speaker 6 these girls have multiple personalities, that they can be whoever they need to be for their own purposes, that they can morph between a fragile, disturbed, innocent teenager into sort of this demonized criminal.

Speaker 1 Those girls you knew, those sweet little girls. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What happened

Speaker 3 to them?

Speaker 3 It's hard for me to even...

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 And Nikki's mom, Linda Whitehead, carries the helpless grief with her every day, every sleepless night, without her daughter, without the granddaughters she thought she knew.

Speaker 3 I was so proud of them and I knew, and

Speaker 1 they would talk about

Speaker 10 what college they wanted to go to.

Speaker 7 I'm sorry. It's okay.

Speaker 10 So I'm sitting here and everybody go home, you know.

Speaker 1 It's an awful tough road.

Speaker 10 You can't even imagine.

Speaker 10 Because every morning I wake up, I think about

Speaker 1 adoring and my grandkids.

Speaker 9 It's just a tragedy.

Speaker 1 One about a mother who dared dream that her sweet Gemini twins would surpass her, who instead became their victim.

Speaker 1 This time of year, many are checking off their holiday gift lists, but identity thieves have lists too, and your personal information might be on them. Protect your identity with LifeLock.

Speaker 1 Lifelock monitors millions of data points every second. and alerts you to threats you could miss.
If your identity is stolen, LifeLock will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back.

Speaker 1 Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com/slash dateline. Terms apply.