Rachel Kozloff
Detectives track down leads from rival biker clubs and scorned lovers to uncover the truth when a beloved biker is found shot to death in his Pennsylvania apartment.
Season 29 Episode 10
Originally aired: June 6, 2021
Watch full episodes of Snapped for FREE on the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/WatchSnappedPod
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Listen and follow along
Transcript
Hey, it's Stephanie Gomolko with oxygen.com.
When I'm running a marathon, I have enough to worry about.
My hydration, to my time, to how my knee is feeling.
The last thing I need to worry about is blisters.
Thanks to Bombas, that hasn't been an issue.
Don't let bad socks and blisters stop you in your tracks either.
Bombas make slides, socks, and seamless essentials to keep up with however you pace your days.
Bombas offers sweat-wicking blister fighting and impact cushioning socks.
You can also order Bombas abroad.
That's right, along with the U.S., they now ship internationally to over 200 countries.
Head over to bombas.com and use code Snapped for 20% off your first purchase.
That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com, code SNAPT, at checkout.
This season, let your shoes do the talking.
Designer shoe warehouse is packed with fresh styles that speak to your whole vibe without saying a word.
From cool sneakers that look good with everything, the easy sandals you'll want to wear on repeat, the SW has you covered.
Find a shoe for every hue from the brands you love, like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas, New Balance, and more.
Head to your DSW store or visit dsw.com today.
He was a big man with even bigger ambitions.
He had a dream of working for himself.
He always wanted to be the best father he could be.
He was the vice president of the Iron Wings Motorcycle Club.
But his gang can't protect him when shots ring out in his own home.
It was shocking, vile, and so violent.
As the case unfolds, detectives will explore the seedy underbelly of gang rivalries.
He enjoyed being feared.
Nobody messed with Big Mike.
Big Mike was someone to be reckoned with.
They got into kind of seeing who was the Alpha Club.
The lifestyle that he led, people that he hung out with, you know, maybe it was some type of retaliation.
Or is someone else in this tough biker's life out for revenge?
They fought nearly every day.
The relationship was in a downward spiral.
He's basically said, get lost.
I'm done with you.
I'm sick of your sh ⁇ .
It was such chaos.
He like started yelling, telling me to get out.
April 12th, 2012, 10 p.m.
It's a quiet night in Erie, Pennsylvania, as members of the Leader of Men Riding Club are winding down for the night in their clubhouse.
The Leader of Men Riding Club, they're motorcycle enthusiasts.
They enjoy riding motorcycles, they have fundraisers, they have a band.
The clubhouse is kind of like their hangout, their meeting point.
But the camaraderie is shattered when gunshots ring out overhead.
So they duck and scatter in the clubhouse when the shots went off.
Club members believe the sounds came from the apartment upstairs.
Michael Henry lives in an apartment above their clubhouse.
And he's a member of another motorcycle club, the Iron Wings, and he's a prominent member in that club.
As the air grows quiet, Leader of Men Club member Pete Miller calls Mike to find out what's going on.
He called approximately five times.
Michael Henry is not picking up his phone.
Now he's getting concerned.
Now he's getting worried.
It's dead silent up there.
Petey reaches out to several of Mike's club members.
Within minutes, a small group of iron wings shows up.
They bang on Mike's front door, which is a door in the middle of the building that exits out into the parking lot where everybody is parked.
This door is locked.
They go to the back door and and they find that this door is ratcheted closed with an industrial ratchet.
Fearing for Mike's safety, his club members kick in the exterior door.
As two of the men walk cautiously up the stairs to Mike's apartment door, they're met with a horrific sight.
He then sees Michael Henry sitting in there on the futon, slumped over to the side.
There was a large amount of blood on the carpet.
There was a large amount of blood on the futon.
Petey Miller made the 911 initial call.
He calls and says there had been a shooting.
Officers arrive in minutes and are immediately taken aback by the gruesome scene.
He was shot approximately four times.
Who could have done this?
Who would have had a motive to do something like this?
31-year-old Erie native Michael J.
Henry was known for his big stature and love of motorcycles.
I kind of known him for pretty much all his life.
Everybody just called him Big Mike because he was big.
He always loved bikes, you know, he knew a lot about them.
He was a mechanic, so he knew how to build them too.
Mike actually started his own motorcycle club called the Iron Wing Club.
They're very serious about their motorcycles.
They're very serious about being bikers.
It was just a bunch of guys that had regular jobs.
They all hung out together a lot on the weekends and stuff like that.
It was all about motorcycles.
Mike was just as dedicated to the club as he was to running his own business.
He had a dream of working for himself.
He wanted to start his own pallet company, kind of like you take these pallets and you kind of just pick them up from businesses and you recycle them.
And eventually his idea was to take the palettes and make them in other things.
Though Mike had big ambitions, he did have a checkered past.
Mike had a short fuse.
If he got something in his head that kind of made him angry, it wasn't so easy to calm him down.
Mostly, people appeared to be afraid of him.
He was known to start fights with people.
Mike had served five years in prison for aggravated assault, where he beat a man into a coma.
They were at a bar and someone was harassing the girl, so he kind of got in a little brawl there and ended up in jail.
After his five-year prison sentence was complete, Mike worked to turn his life around.
In addition to co-founding the Iron Wings and starting his own company, Mike found love in 2006 when an old friend walked back into his life.
I didn't live here for like 10 years.
He was actually at my brother's house.
And I went over there and just kind of started talking to him because I mean I was attracted to him.
Single mother of three, Nicole Spinelli, had no problem seeing past Mike's tough exterior.
He was really funny.
I mean, he could make me laugh, like, probably I'd never laughed before,
which was interesting because everyone looks at him like this big, scary guy because he was huge, you know, but he was actually just a softie in a way.
The two quickly fell head over heels.
We had a lot of fun.
We would go motorcycle riding.
We were together 24-7, it seemed like.
I just couldn't wait to always be with him.
In 2010, after four years together, the couple found out they were expecting a baby.
He talked about it all the time, you know, us having a child, but I really didn't plan on having any more kids.
I think we were both kind of like shocked and excited.
He always wanted to be the best father he could be.
In May of 2011, the couple welcomed their son, Jackson.
He longed to be a, you know, full-time father, that's for sure.
That was very important to him.
I think it's all stems from him not being around his father as much as he would have liked growing up.
While things were great at first, Mike eventually slipped back into old habits.
He succumbed to the pressure of the club.
You know, they were going out every night, you know, and they wouldn't come home.
It was just kind of like a bad time when it should have been a good time.
Ultimately, the couple split in 2012.
Neither one of us really knew what we were going to do.
It was very confusing.
I was going to do what I could to see if we could fix things.
But before Mike and Nicole could work out their differences, tragedy strikes when Mike's life is cut short on April 12th, 2012.
The police went to the place where 911 had directed them, which was an apartment over a motorcycle club.
As officers begin clearing the apartment, they hear a faint cry coming from the next room.
They discovered Mike's 10-month-old son in the crib,
just waking up, starting to cry.
Luckily, the child appears unharmed.
You start to think, who would do this?
Who would fire off four or five shots in an apartment with a 10-month-old child within 15 feet of his father?
It was shocking, vile, and so violent.
Coming up, evidence suggests Mike may have been targeted.
The person who murdered Mike wanted him dead.
Was this homicide committed by a rival motorcycle club?
Or was it something more personal?
And a tangled love affair sparks suspicion.
He had been seeing other women.
She knew that she was not his only girlfriend.
On the night of April 12th, 2012, Erie, Pennsylvania police officers find 31-year-old Mike Henry shot to death in his apartment.
Their first order of business is protecting Mike's 10-month-old son.
The thing that got everybody is that his son was sitting there and then whoever shot him shot him, killed him, and left and the son was still there.
The child was okay and was removed and taken into custody by Child Protective Services.
I was very shocked when I found this out.
My mom called me and told me
Mike's dead.
And, you know, the first thing through my head is, well, you know, where's the baby?
And the baby's fine.
I mean, I couldn't believe it.
I was thankful that nothing happened to my son.
A lot of thankfulness and, you know, tears at the same time.
It was a very hard time, though.
It definitely was.
As Mike's son is taken away, detectives arrive on the scene and get to work.
Mike Henry was shot four times.
He was shot once in the leg, twice in the chest, and once in the head.
We could tell that it didn't take long for him to pass.
It would have been a matter of seconds.
thoughts were initially okay
was this homicide committed by a rival motorcycle club
or was it something more personal
based on the positioning of the body and the location of the bloodstains detectives theorize about what may have happened the individual walked up on him while he had been laying in bed and initially fired and then upon him getting up continued to fire and walked out of the apartment right after that.
So it was almost like walking by shooting somebody and continued to walk out of the apartment.
As detectives search the scene they recover four shell casings.
The shell casings were nine millimeter shell casings which told us that a nine millimeter handgun would have been used
and that it matched up with the number of shots that we believe were on Mike Henry.
Though detectives are able to determine the type of weapon used, they are unsure how the killer gained access to Mike's apartment.
We're looking, trying to figure out: okay, how would this individual get into this apartment without Mike Henry knowing?
Being that his size and everything, and the position that he was in, he was surprised.
Although detectives have many questions, there is one thing they know for sure.
There's a TV there.
There's appliances there.
There's money located in a bedroom.
It doesn't appear that burglary or robbery was the motive.
The fact that it looks like they got in there, shot him, and got out.
That was the intent.
The intent was to kill Mike Henry.
Since there were no signs of forced entry, detectives suspect one of two things.
Somebody either had a key or they knew how to get into the apartment without having to kick in the door or pry it open or anything like that.
So everybody close to Mike was a suspect at first.
As CSI continues processing the scene, witnesses are transferred to the station for interviews.
Detectives first speak with Leader of Men motorcycle club member Petey Miller.
He's the one that made the 911 initial call.
We learned that he heard an argument,
some shuffling around, and then pop pop, some more muffled sounds, and then a pop pop pop.
Petey says he hadn't called 911 right away because he didn't want to upset Mike.
He said, if Mike was up there doing something himself, I didn't want him to get pissed off at me.
I'm not going to get involved.
I'm going to let his motorcycle club look into it.
He was a biker and he lived the biker life.
Nobody messed with Big Mike.
Petey says three weeks earlier, the Iron Wings and another club had gotten into a brawl.
There was an incident involving Michael Henry in a fight out in a local bar called the Oasis a couple weeks prior.
So his initial thought was, could this be a continuation of that?
And that motorcycle club was called the Lucky 13 Motorcycle Club.
The lifestyle that he led, people that he hung out with, you know, maybe it was some type of retaliation.
Detectives ask Petey if someone else may have been angry with Mike.
While he can't think of anyone, Petey admits Mike was very very popular with the ladies.
He was known through his hangouts as he was a ladies' man.
You know, he didn't, you know, stick with one girl very long.
Armed with multiple leads, authorities next turn to Mike's heartbroken family to learn more about his personal life.
His mother and father said even though he did have a past when his son was born, that was the turning point for him and he was starting to turn his life around and better himself for not only him but for his son as well
Mike's family says he had dated his son's mother Nicole Spinelli for years but the two had recently split and within a couple of weeks Mike started seeing a woman named Rachel Kozloff
When we were split up, Michael told me one day, you know, that he did meet a girl.
Rachel was her name.
So at that point, we're trying to gather as much information as we can about Rachel.
A native of Erie, 30-year-old Rachel Kozloff was known for her lively, independent spirit.
Rachel is a good person.
She has a great personality.
She has a great sense of humor.
Despite her charismatic personality, Rachel had never been lucky in love.
Rachel had four children with four different fathers.
Some of them she remained friendly with,
but regardless, she had four men in her life that gave her children and nothing else and walked away.
What her love life lacked, Rachel made up for in motherhood.
My mom is a loving,
caring
mama bear.
She just wants the best for us and she tried her hardest.
She's always been a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen,
and a mouth to give advice.
She's always been there for all of us.
Though raising four children was a financial struggle, Rachel always found a way to make ends meet.
She jumped around from job to job.
She did a bunch of different things.
She instilled in me just to be an independent person.
You don't need a man or a woman to be there to help you do anything.
By February of 2012, Rachel had all but given up on love until Mike Henry walked into her life.
I feel like Rachel was definitely trying something new in her life when it came to Mike because her other boyfriends weren't the same.
They were more, I guess, mild compared to Mike.
Though Mike seemed a bit rough around the edges, Rachel could see a future with him.
He had been seeing other women.
She knew that she was not his only girlfriend.
But I think she thought that maybe
they would have a relationship, just the two of them, one day.
Rachel loved kids, you know, and maybe the combination of Mike having a son and that, you know, she saw that family unit, you know, and that kind of endeared her to Mike.
Mike's family says, although he was in a relationship with Rachel, he and Nicole still loved each other.
We were like I said so much confusion and do you know do you want to let him go?
Do you want to try to work it out?
And you know, so you were, I was still together with him.
According to Mike's family, in mid-March, Nicole had to leave unexpectedly for a family emergency and has been there ever since.
I was actually had to go to Ohio and I was going to be in Ohio for like a month and it was unexpected.
So while I was down there, he had Jackson at the time.
After finishing up with Mike's family, detectives track down Nicole.
This is informational in nature and we just want to gather as much information as we can.
We want to talk to everybody who may have been involved.
Police confirm Nicole was out of town at the time of Mike's murder, eliminating her as a suspect.
Next, detectives work to track down Mike's new girlfriend.
We needed to speak with her immediately.
Coming up, detectives come face to face with Mike's new lover.
She was sobbing and breaking down.
She either didn't do this or she's the best actress in the world.
And a chilling interview fuels the flames of a gang retaliation.
There was a pretty good stomping and beat down until someone fired a shot.
The only thing I know is that he was shot at a waste.
Him and this other motorcycle club had a beat.
This show is sponsored by Liquid IV.
Hey, it's Stephanie Gomolco with oxygen.com.
Soaking up the last bits of summer sometimes means more time in the sun.
I trust Liquid IV to keep me hydrated, whether I'm squeezing in another pool day, weekend trip, or running in the park.
I used to drink so much water and found my lips would still be so dry.
Liquid IV helps me stay hydrated, so that doesn't happen.
Liquid IV is packed with electrolytes, essential vitamins, and clinically tested nutrients that turn ordinary water into extraordinary hydration.
Just one stick and 16 ounces of water hydrates better than water alone.
My favorite flavor hands down is Firecracker.
I'm obsessed and I have have it every day.
It's delicious with ice cold water and tastes like summer in a bottle.
Savor the last bits of summer with Liquid IV.
Tear pour, live more.
Go to liquidiv.com and get 20% off your first purchase with code snapped at checkout.
That's 20% off your first order with code snapped at liquidiv.com.
Candice Rivera has it all.
In just three years, she went from stay-at-home mom to traveling the world, saving lives and making millions.
Anyone would think Candace's charm life is about as real as unicorns.
But sometimes the truth is even harder to believe than the lies.
Not true.
There's so many things not true.
You gotta breathe.
I'm Charlie Webster and this is Unicorn Girl, an Apple original podcast produced by Seven Hills.
Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.
Just four hours into the investigation of the brutal homicide of motorcycle club member Mike Henry, detectives have uncovered a number of leads.
There was a fight involving Michael Henry and another member of the Lucky 13 Motorcycle Club, and in a complicated love life,
Mike's been in and out of relationships.
Though detectives have verified the mother of Mike's son, Nicole Spinelli, was in Ohio at the time of Mike's murder, they have yet to track down Mike's current girlfriend, 30-year-old Rachel Kozloff.
Luckily, it doesn't take long to find her.
We were given information that Rachel Kozloff had driven to the police department.
She was downstairs and ready to be interviewed.
Mike's club members had reached out to her and said, hey, the police want to speak with you.
Come down to the station.
Rachel did not indicate that she knew why she was there.
And we did not tell her.
Detectives start by asking Rachel about her relationship with Mike Henry.
We've been together since Valentine's Day and
like everything is good.
We've literally had three disagreements, not even fights, just verbal disagreements.
I asked her just to go through her day, her evening.
Rachel says around 6.30 p.m., she stopped by Mike's to have dinner.
And that's when things got intimate.
Rachel says that when she goes over there, he asks her to pleasure him.
I asked, Is this something that you normally do?
And she said, Yes, this happens all the time.
She said, But when I go to pleasure him, he smells of sex.
So I asked him,
He always tells me he doesn't,
so apparently he did today.
Rachel says, After Mike explained himself, the two were were fine and she left shortly after.
But around 9 p.m.
while she was out with a friend, Mike initiated a fight over text.
Out of nowhere, I get a text that pretty much says f ⁇ off and I'm like, that's literally what he sent me.
I'm like,
okay, where'd that come from?
Were you really that pissed that I questioned you or is it that I'm out?
And that's when he said, sick of your
Rachel explains that the texts were going nowhere, so she decided to return to mike's apartment she wanted to go there and see how he was doing
and make up with him
according to rachel she arrived at mike's around 9 30 p.m and had to park in the adjacent lot since the parking lot outside of mike's building was full she says that She walks around the building, goes in, and lets herself in because she has has a key, and walks into his apartment and says, what's up?
What's going on?
So we sat there for a little bit and talked and pretty much everything seemed fine then.
Rachel says Mike then went to the bathroom.
And at that point, she sees a number on his phone that she doesn't recognize.
So according to Rachel, she memorizes that number.
According to Rachel, when Mike came back, he went into a rage.
He like started yelling, telling me to get out, and I was like, what's going on?
You know, we were fine.
You went to the bathroom and now you're freaking out on me.
Rachel says he grabs her by the arm, he pulls her off the futon, and he throws her under the wall.
I'm like, well, I need my stuff.
And apparently me trying to get my stuff pissed him off more because then he opened the door to the back and threw me down the steps and then threw all my stuff with me.
Rachel claims she has no idea what caused Mike's sudden outburst.
So she thinks, I'm going to call that phone number because it's got to be something that's going on why he's acting like this.
She says a woman answers on the other end of the phone.
According to Rachel, the woman identified herself as Josie Noble, an ex-girlfriend of Mike's.
She asked me who I was and I told her.
And I'm like, you know,
what's going on?
And she's, I don't know if she thought I was accusing her or something because she first started, you know, well, nothing, we're just friends.
Hours later, Rachel says she received an ambiguous text from one of Mike's friends.
He asked me if I was with Mike and I said, no, you know, I left him.
And then...
I kind of didn't hear anything, so I text him.
I was like, so what's going on?
He's like, nobody knows anything.
Yeah, cops here need to talk to you.
Please come.
Detectives ask Rachel if she owns a gun.
Um, I did.
Yeah, I had a uh a Glock,
but I haven't been able to find it in
since we were at an Oasis a couple weeks ago.
She tells us she lost her gun.
She's not sure where it's at.
The last time she saw it, it was in Michael Henney's center console in his truck.
Though Rachel appears genuine, detectives can't help but think she's hiding something.
At this point in the interview, I thought I would let her know why she was actually there at the police department.
Well, Rachel, I am sorry to tell you that
Mike is deceased.
I'm sorry.
There is Rachel Kozlov immediately sobbing and breaking down.
And we both looked at each other and said, she either didn't do this or she's the best actress in the world.
I know this is going to sound insensitive, but do you know what happened?
No.
The only thing I know is that he was shot at the oasis.
He was shot at at the oasis.
Yeah, in the parking lot.
Him and this other motorcycle club had a beef.
Rachel says last month, a physical fight broke out between the members of Mike's club and the Lucky 13 Club.
It was such chaos.
We got to the door, and that's when the other people started shooting at him, and that's when we all tried to get the hell out of there.
God.
Before concluding Rachel's interview, detectives assess her injuries.
On her right arm, I did not notice any visible injuries.
When I examined her right ankle, I did, however, note that it was a little puffy and there was a scrape on the side of her ankle.
Rachel willingly turns over her phone, car, and clothing for analysis.
As Rachel's items are sent to the crime lab, detectives call in one of Mike's fellow club members and ask if Mike's murder could have been the rival gang coming back to finish the job.
They had a misunderstanding and then they were kind of seeing who, you know, who was the Alpha Club.
He told police that the Lucky 13 and the Iron Wings were at peace.
Investigators work quickly to confirm this claim.
We learned there hadn't been any issues with Lucky 13 in the past several weeks after the Oasis incident.
Once our criminal investigation detectives had time to talk with their club members, we ruled out that it could be a rival gang that did this crime.
They were all extremely upset and concerned about Mike,
and it did not appear to us that they were responsible for his shooting.
Coming up, a new witness turns the investigation on its head.
She was threatening.
She was rude.
She attacked her.
It was not civil at all.
And investigators turn up the heat.
I don't care.
I know what I did and didn't do.
You need to start telling the truth.
Well, I'm done.
I told the truth.
It's been two days since the shooting death of Mike Henry.
After eliminating a rival motorcycle club for Mike's murder, detectives decide to track down Josie Noble, the woman Mike's girlfriend Rachel Kozloff claims was in contact with Mike on the night of his death.
She's a friend of Mike and a former ex of Mike's.
She said that Mike had reached out to her and she hadn't heard from him in months.
He subsequently sent a picture of his son to her.
And she responded back cordially, oh, he's cute.
How are you?
And that was the extent of that conversation.
Josie says later that night, she got an alarming phone call.
On the other end was a woman that said,
who are you?
And of course, Josie said she responded, well, who are you?
As in, who is this woman yelling in the phone, asking me who I am?
Josie's depiction of the encounter greatly differs from the one Rachel Kozloff described.
It was the exact opposite of what Rachel said.
She was threatening.
She was rude.
She attacked her.
It was not civil at all.
Following her interview, Josie was subsequently ruled out as a suspect.
With Rachel's cell phone already in hand, detectives pour over her phone records and find a different type of relationship with Mike than the one she had portrayed.
They didn't just fight literally only three times.
They fought nearly every day.
The final text exchange between the couple suggests that on the night of April 12th, Mike was ending the relationship for good.
He's basically told her, get lost.
I'm done with you.
I'm sick of your shit.
So she sends out a text to Michael Henry, sleep tight, I'll talk to you tomorrow.
She in turn goes and drives over to Michael Henry's apartment, unannounced.
But that's not all the texts reveal.
April 10th, just two days before the murder, we have a text conversation between her and Mike, asking her if he wanted her to bring her gun over to the apartment.
So this dispels her initial story that she lost her gun.
Evidence continues to pile up when detectives dig up surveillance videos from Mike's building and catch Rachel in a myriad of lies.
The lot was not full.
She instead parked one street over in an effort that her vehicle, we theorize, her vehicle would not be spotted by Mike Henry because the parking lot was right beneath his window.
She stated in her first interview that she exited and left after being thrown down the stairs the same way she came in.
We could not find that on the video, which means she left another way.
That only left one other door that she could have gone out without being caught on camera, and that was the door down
through the vacant apartment down to the street.
On April 16th, detectives confront Rachel with the discrepancies they have found.
Okay, so you pulled up, saw that lot was full.
Why was the lot full?
Because everybody was downstairs at leader men.
And what did you say happened to your gun?
Last time I saw it was the Oasis car fight, which I think was like March 25th or something.
It was in his truck.
You have no idea where that gun is?
No.
No, absolutely not.
No, Rachel, I've been doing this for a long time.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
And your story has enough inconsistency in it.
A few things aren't making sense.
Wait, what?
I told you exactly how everything happened.
I mean, if you just got thrown down the steps, would you go back up to mine?
If I had a gun on my personal way?
Yeah, I know.
Detectives ask Rachel once again how she got in and out of Mike's apartment.
She stated she had gone right to the back door because she had a key, and that's the door she went into.
I watched the video, Rachel.
You walked up the front stairwell.
No, I didn't.
It's on video.
Oh,
I didn't.
Didn't kill you.
I don't care.
I know what I did and didn't do.
You need to start telling the truth.
Before I'm done, I told the truth.
She denied no less than 17 times that she had shot and killed Michael Henry.
She had lied about what she was wearing, what door she had gone in and out of.
All the discrepancies continued to mount.
And that, based on the evidence that we had, we decided that we were going to arrest her.
Our theory of the case was that this was a very possessive woman,
possessive of her boyfriends.
boyfriends.
Rachel Kozloff was charged with criminal homicide murder, aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person, and possessing instruments of a crime.
Rachel's family is shocked to learn of her arrest.
I was devastated.
I was like, no.
You know, she would never do that.
She would never do that.
I think I had a lot of emotions, anger, worry, like what's going to happen to her, what's going to happen to the kids.
Coming up, new evidence forces Rachel to change her story.
If that doesn't say that you're lying, I don't know what does.
But will her harrowing tale get her off the hook?
It was either she shoot him and stop him from attacking her, or he was going to kill her.
In November of 2012, prosecutors in Erie County are working hard to secure their case against 31-year-old Rachel Kozloff for the murder of 31-year-old Mike Henry.
There was not any direct evidence at that point in time that Rachel Kozloff had committed the murder.
And time and time again, she denied and denied and denied.
Then, three weeks before the trial is set to begin, they receive a game-changing piece of evidence from the crime lab.
What we learned was her pants had GSR residue on them.
Empowered by this new evidence, when Rachel's trial begins on December 3rd, prosecutors come out swinging, asserting that Rachel killed Mike Henry in cold blood.
Rachel Kozlov would not accept the fact that the relationship was in a downward spiral and he essentially was kicking her to the curb.
I think that she suspected he might be seeing somebody else.
So the night that she went there, she saw that strange number and called it.
and got a woman on the other end.
That just sent her to the next level.
Prosecutors bolster their claim through text messages, video surveillance, and the gunshot residue found on Rachel's clothing.
The evidence pointed right to Rachel.
She was the person that had been lying throughout this entire process.
Everything just all led back to Rachel every time.
When it's the defense's turn, they finally admit that Rachel shot Mike Henry, but argue it wasn't premeditated.
The defense says that it was self-defense that Rachel was in fear for her life during the altercation in Mike's apartment that night.
To support their claim, Rachel takes the stand and gives a shocking new version of events.
She stated that she was pushed down the stairs.
violently by Mike.
Rachel then testified that she gathered herself and her belongings at the bottom of the stairs when Mike came back down and dragged her up the stairs back to the apartment where the fatal fight ensued at that point.
It was either she shoot him and stop him from attacking her, or he was going to kill her.
It wasn't that she wanted to do it, it's that she had to do it.
Prosecutors counter by noting the evidence simply does not support Rachel's new version, even if she did have a slightly swollen ankle when she was interviewed by police.
This is just my theory that she stumbled and fell and was trying to get in and around and get out of there as quick as she could.
Because there was no indication that Mike had thrown her or her purse down the stairwell.
He wasn't a monster like she described.
As far as like, you know, beating up women, I don't think that was his style at all.
On December 7th, 2012, the jury breaks for deliberations.
The verdict did not take long for the jury to completely dismiss Rachel Kozlov's story of self-defense.
The jury's unanimous Verdict was that she was guilty of third-degree murder.
I pretty much gave her every opportunity to tell me, hey, it was obvious from your guys' text that you had problems.
You know, please let me help you.
Tell me what happened.
If it's a crime of passion, it's a crime of passion.
But she denied, denied, denied.
Her story just seemed to change.
I think the fact that the baby was there when it happened was maybe the most disturbing part for the jurors.
On January 29th, 2013, Rachel is sentenced to 18 to 40 years.
I was in shock.
I just still can't believe that she would go to that to that level, you know, and kill him.
It changed everybody's lives.
It was devastating for our family.
You know, my wife and I, the kids, I mean, they lost their mom.
She does feel very remorseful about, you know, what she did and how it impacted, you know, so many people.
I believe in all my heart when she pulled that trigger, she was defending herself and her family.
And
unfortunately, once she started to tell the truth,
it just didn't matter.
Though Rachel still maintains her actions were that of self-defense, many believe she was just a woman that had been pushed too far.
I believe that on the night of the homicide, it was just one rejection too many.
I think Rachel snapped.
We're really never going to know what happened the night of April 12th between Mike and Rachel.
She had proven herself to be a liar, which is sad in her case because if he did really physically abuse her,
we're never going to know if that's true or not.
Though justice has been served in the eyes of the law, the events of April 12th, 2012 have a lasting impact.
Our family broke up after that.
My parents got divorced.
We all went our separate ways.
My mom's now in Florida.
My dad has all three of the boys.
The daughter's with her dad and her stepmom.
We're just, we're all split up.
I think the biggest tragedy is Mike's
not here just to grow up with his son.
Because at the end of the day, that's what he really, really wanted.
He would have been an amazing father.
I know it.
Rachel Kozloff is serving her sentence in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.
She will be eligible for parole in 2031 at the age of 50.
How hard is it to kill a planet?
Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.
When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.
Are we really safe?
Is our water safe?
You destroyed our town.
And crimes like that, they don't just happen.
We call things accidents.
There is no accident.
This was 100%
preventable.
They're the result of choices by people.
Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.
These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.
Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wonderry Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.