Talking Dateline: Justice for Nikki

Hey, it's Dennis Murphy here, and I'm your host for this edition of Talking Dateline. And I'm delighted to say that my colleague, Andrea Canning, is standing by here, too. Hi, Andrea, how are you?

Hey, Dennis. I am good. I'm ready to talk Dateline with you.

I've got to disclose right up front, I am a very soft touch for a well-constructed, well-told, keep-me-baffled, whodunit. And boy, this is one of them. You guys did a great job with this. So if you haven't seen this episode called Justice for Nikki, go find it right now on streaming. It's on the podcast list right below this one.

So, Dennis, just to recap for anyone who hasn't listened to the show or seen it, Nikki Vanderheiden, she was 31 years old, and back in May of 2016, she was reported missing after a night out in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Her body was found the next day in a field. Detectives quickly turned their attention to her boyfriend, Doug Dietry, until forensic evidence, GPS tracking, and, of all things, a Fitbit, pointed detectives to her real killer. So this is a case where technology played a massive role in solving this murder.

Andrea, tell me what a Fitbit is. I think I know. It's a tracking device you wear on your wrist? Tell you how many steps you've taken in a day kind of thing?

Yes. We really called it the silent witness, because it's not a human being. It's a piece of technology, but it showed that, Doug, the only place he went during the time that Nikki was murdered was steps within his own house to check on the baby. Just so many steps, I mean, from one room, his room, to another, and back. And that was it.

Andrea, have you ever seen a Fitbit show up in any other stories?

Yeah. I actually had another story that our listeners may remember called The Secrets of Birchview Drive, and that was in Connecticut. In 2015,. Connie DeBate was found murdered in her house. It initially appeared to be a home invasion, but information that was pulled from Connie's Fitbit showed that her husband, Richard, had lied about what happened the day of her murder.

And another part of the story you think about, Nikki went back to the gym to get in shape after the baby, and he has the Fitbit. He's showing solidarity with Nikki, doing workouts.

And that also shows a nicer side of their relationship as well. You hope that they had moments of happiness together, this couple, and maybe that was something that they happily shared together, was getting in shape. So it's nice to, maybe it's not all doom and gloom between Doug and Nikki.

So Doug, the boyfriend, is kind of a newish fella in her life, I get the feeling. Though they had a child, almost immediately after meeting, she gets pregnant.

She gets pregnant, yeah.

So this is sort of a date night, I get the feeling, huh? Richard, they're going to go out with his friends?

Yeah, I don't know if you would call it a date night. They're going out with friends, she's finally getting back out there in the world. And this was her night to return to some normalcy after having a newborn. So the poor thing just wants to go out, blow off some steam, have a good time, get away from her mom duties for one night, and she meets with evil.

And your team, Andrea, did such a great job of rounding up the friends who could take us inside her life, get a sense for who she is, and then really follow on video her trail as she heads to her doom. In the first bar, called the watering hole, they're going to hear some music. And the camera's rolling, and what do we see in that? They seem to be okay, the two of them.

Yeah, only they weren't.

What was the camera not showing us?

This couple had big problems. Even though they had this new baby, text messages would eventually show, and also conversations that she had with friends and family, that they were not getting along. Doug did not want to be in this relationship anymore.

Complicated relationship, to say the least.

So they weren't getting along that night. She had left because she was upset, and then the thing that really stung was when she called him. He didn't answer, so her friend called from her phone, and he did answer.

So what's going on? He takes a call from the friend, but not from Nikki?

Yeah, how would you feel if you call, and the person you love doesn't answer your call? But they answer a friend's call, right? So it doesn't feel good, and that further upset her.

And again, the cameras are there to show her kind of going away in a huff, right? She's out of the bar.

She's by herself.

So, Doug, he goes home, lets the babysitter go, puts the baby to bed. But he doesn't call anybody. The babysitter said something interesting, I think. How is it that you can go out together and come home alone?

Yes. I mean, it was almost like the babysitter kind of suspected Doug of something, but that intuition was clearly wrong, but her feeling that something wasn't right was right.

So word goes through the community that the body of a woman has been found naked in a field.

Yeah, and unfortunately, they get the worst news, that that body in the field is Nikki. And so immediately, Doug comes under suspicion, her boyfriend, that he's done this. And I have never, in all my years at Dateline, seen someone look so much like the killer, who was not the killer.

I totally agree. Tell us what happens when the detectives call at his home, as they do, and they start looking in the vehicle around the house. What kinds of things are they finding?

Yeah, they find shoes that could be that print that was on her body. They look like the print from Doug's shoes.

They think they've got blood. They've got signs of a cleanup. And then they find out the whole history of the bad relationship.

There were a lot of red flags. So if you're the police and you're seeing all these things before you get all your evidence back, and whatnot, I mean, it's no surprise that they thought it was Doug Dietry.

As they tell you, they're very, very candid about their case. They say we had probable cause, and it looked, to our best estimate, our experience, that this guy is good for it.

Yeah, they're police trying to get a killer off the streets, a brutal killer who left a woman beaten to death in a field. And so for them, they're following the evidence. So they didn't do anything wrong. I mean, I'm sure, if you ask Doug Dietry, he would say they did everything wrong, because he's the guy who was sitting in jail who was innocent of this murder.

What was your takeaway from the friends that you talked to that told their stories about being friends with her?

Just how much they loved her.

They seemed really shaken.

Yeah, like, you know, that is such a horrible, horrible thing to have to contend with when your good friend is killed like that.

And they were divided on to Doug's complicity or not.

Yeah, I think absolutely. some of her friends thought Doug did it. I mean, look, the police think Doug did it. He's in jail. And you knew the situation of the relationship.

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Yeah, George Birch. Who's George Birch? He's new to town. And, you know, the people that convinced him to move there and people he was living with,

they really liked him.

You know, they thought he was polite. They thought he was nice. And he had a girlfriend. So he didn't at first seem like a likely suspect to those people. But, I mean, it's hard to refute DNA.

And he's got a totally different, bizarre story, doesn't he?

Yeah, George Birch decided to take the stand in the trial. Right. So George Birch and his attorney went after Doug Dietry and said he was the real killer, that George and Nikki were having consensual sexual relations outside the house. And Doug came along and, you know, pistol whipped George and ended up killing Nikki. It was a Hail, Mary, if you will, for George Birch.

No surprises, the jury's not out very long, four hours, I think. They come back. and what's the verdict?

Guilty, which, I mean, to me, it was a no-brainer. I, you know, it wasn't one of those ones where you're on pins and needles, like, is he going to be found guilty or not? I just thought it was pretty obvious.

Andrea, after the guilty verdict, you had an exclusive jailhouse interview with George Birch. I can't wait to hear about this. How did it go?

This was a good one. I'll say this, you know, you and I have done a lot of prison interviews. The one with George Birch was probably the most combative I've ever had, which you don't necessarily see in the show. I mean, I feel like I hit on all the right points with him, but he was a real piece of work.

Andrea, I loved your line to him where you said, I'm going to put on my mom hat and let's talk about the logic of this. And I said, dude, you're in trouble. You know, you ask the tough questions, you don't back down, and you let this guy absolutely have it.

Many people say that your story is just really bad fiction, that you created this story that would fit the narrative of the evidence. You already knew about Doug Dietry, that he had been arrested, and that you just fabricated this whole thing to work in your favor.

Everyone's entitled to their opinions. If you want to be on the up and up. I don't have a violent past.

I mean, you have had brushes with the law. I've never been convicted of anything violent in my life. You're no stranger to law enforcement. He was no different from most of the killers that I've interviewed. You know, I'd say like 98% of them deny that they had anything to do with murder.

And you could see how smoldering he was. He was ready to leap.

Oh, he was getting mad, like, really, really mad. And he was trying to turn things around in my direction. So he was trying to play the interviewer with me. And I was like, I remember my face was kind of turning red. Like he was getting mad.

No, ma'am.

Okay. You have a good day. They find that this George Birch has been involved in some sort of a homicide incident back in Virginia years before.

He was acquitted in this homicide incident in Virginia. But that prior homicide charge, which he was acquitted on, that provided the DNA in CODIS. So that created the link. And the family of the victim, Joey White, back in Virginia, they were very upset because George Birch was acquitted of that crime, which they felt that he should not. So they attended George Birch's trial for the murder of Nikki.

I felt we needed to.

So these are two women who don't even know Nikki, but they felt personally attached to Nikki's case as well, because they wanted to see George Birch go down. Whether, if it wasn't for their loved one, Joey, then it would be for Nikki.

And trials in the criminal justice system, of course, can never bring back the loved one. But I've seen again, and I'm sure you have too, how important it is to friends and families to be able to lay hands on these verdicts and understand that there is a resolution to it. Somebody cared enough to find out. And I think that's the tale told by, you. know, these young women.

Yeah.

And they just wanted to see him pay for it.

Right. So it was like partial justice, right, if you will, for the family members. Like, at least he got something. That's how they felt in this case, that, you know, justice was being done, just in a different way.

Well, now we're going to take a quick break, and then we'll be back to answer your questions from social media.

It was. It really was.

We had Camille asking on Facebook, why didn't they look into the boot mark on her back? Well, they did look into it. It was a shoe mark. What does she need to know about that bit of technical evidence?

Yeah, it was a shoe mark. And that was, initially with Doug Dietry, they found shoes in his house that looked like they could be a matching tread. that was on Nikki, but the shoe mark was inconclusive. I am not sure if they were able to prove that it was George Birch's shoe. I don't have the answer to that, because they had so much powerful evidence with the DNA and the Google dashboard that I don't know where the shoe fit in, in the end.

And you heard from people that had met Nikki and that affected her in their lives. One of them said on our Facebook, Nikki was so funny as the teacher. She once wrapped a science book of rhyme to us. Can you just see her?

It really evokes who Nikki was. I mean, who doesn't remember teachers like that? You know, that come up with creative ways to teach the kids and just put themselves out there, right? I mean, that takes a special teacher who can do that. And her students loved her.

Carrie M. on Facebook has a good but probably unanswerable question. What was George's motive?

I think what the prosecution believed was that she rebuffed him, you know, his sexual advances, and he snapped. And I saw that in him. I saw that anger in my interview. And I truly felt that he doesn't like women or doesn't like women questioning him. I mean, would he have felt the same way if I was a man questioning him?

We saw a flare-up of that same trait in the stand. The prosecutor got to him.

Yeah. And I'll say it again. You know, we didn't show the whole interview in prison with George. We can't, you know, in our show. We really tried to hit on, stay focused on the evidence and his story.

And so many of the Facebook responders were telling us how sad they were to hear the story. Enjoyed your reporting, but it just made them feel very bad.

It was because, again, she's a new mom. And then you think about her three children and that they will grow up without their great mom, and that her life had to end that way. Just imagine her final moments. And her baby is just, you know, just on the other side of the wall, right? In that house.

Andrew, it was just a tough one for you to do, to dive into the material here. Yeah, absolutely.

Because, you know, I had a baby at that time. And, you know, I have six children. And to think of that time when you have a newborn and you're breastfeeding and, you know, you just want to go out and be normal again for a night as a mom, and, you know, get away from all of that just for a minute, you know, to feel normal and like you're back out with your friends and society. You know, that's exciting to get out again and to have it end that way for her in such a, like, gosh, like the happenstance of something so horrific.

And with that, Andrea, I think we'll button up this edition of Talking Dateline. Good job, you know, as always. Thank you. Thank you for taking us through it.

Thank you. And Jay Young did a great job producing this episode. Truly. Very thorough, thorough producer who worked tirelessly on this story. And I truly believe that Jay and all of Nikki's friends and family, you know, did such a good job honoring her as a person.

And that all came through. That all came through. Absolutely. And that's Talking Dateline for this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us or stories about Dateline, you can reach out to us on social media at DatelineNBC.