Anastasia Nicolazzi
speaker
1,398 appearances
24 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Jun 2025
Anastasia Nicolazzi’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Without locating Nikki or other evidence that a crime had in fact occurred, the investigation was stuck at a standstill.
That is, until a local man on a walk in the woods made a disturbing discovery, turning the search for Nikki Kuhnhausen into not just a homicide case, but a rallying cry for historic change in the state of Washington.
When law enforcement responded to the scene, they discovered several items that suggested that the remains were likely those of 17-year-old Nikki Kuhnhausen, including rings she was known to wear and that she had been seen wearing on some of her social media posts.
You might remember that large mountain where Nikki's remains were found was also the remote area where David Bogdanov's phone pinged on the night he admitted meeting Nikki Kuhnhausen. It was the connection that investigators needed to bring him back in for another round of questioning.
At that point, the detectives arrested Bogdanov, and he was charged with second-degree murder and malicious harassment, a hate crime in Washington state.
The high profile case was also Kristen Arnott's first trial as a new prosecutor.
But there were still ways to build a convincing case against him and undermine his claims that he had nothing to do with Nikki's murder.
It appeared that Bogdanov had actually fled the country just hours after his meeting with Nikki, which a jury was likely to see for what it was, a consciousness of guilt and attempt to avoid arrest.
But as it turns out, convincing a jury that Bogdanov killed Nikki would not be as difficult as they thought. The real challenge would soon become what actually happened.
It may have come as a surprise, but it actually was something that Nikki's mother and victims' advocacy groups had feared. It is what has become known as the gay or trans panic defense, and it is predicated on the idea that an individual is somehow justified in actions taken in response to what is a perceived threat to their lives, namely the revelation that a sexual partner is gay or trans.
And these are real issues for prosecutors and at trial. And I've encountered this defense more than once in the courtroom. You know, one case that quickly comes to mind, a defendant claimed that their own abuse as a child led them to panic when their victim supposedly made advances. And in that case, they were same sex. But I've also had cases.
defendants who say that when they realized that the partner that they found out that they were trans and actually born a different sex than what they believe them to be. And I'll close by saying in those cases that the jury convicted both. But it was definitely a defense that you had to be worried that it might impact the jury or sway someone on the jury.
So it needs to be dealt with, you know, head on from as early as jury selection if it's a defense that is viable, that is allowed to even come into court.
And, you know, the National LGBTQIA Plus Bar Association, which is, of course, monitoring things around the country, says that this is a defense that they have seen work routinely because of bias against specifically trans people, because that's what we're talking about here. So these are fears that people that decide to be or are trans, that they are predatory.
And obviously we know that isn't true. But again, as we know, Scott, this really had a lot to do with actual change in Washington state.
Nevertheless, the defense was still preparing to prove that in his encounter with a 17-year-old Nikki, Bogdanov felt that his life was actually in danger.
In addition to public pressure, the prosecutors were in a tough spot with their case against Bogdanov. He had pled self-defense, which they did not expect, at least not initially. So Kristen and Colin faced a lot of unknowns right off the bat. And most mysterious of all, what would Bogdanov say on the stand?
But then Bogdanov's testimony veered from what he had originally told police. He had originally claimed that after Nikki told him she was a trans female, he had pushed her away in anger and asked her to leave his van.
You know, Scott, so much of what he is saying just makes absolutely no sense. I mean, just the phone cord alone, right? He has it. It's around her neck and that it had already been in this loop. So that when he happened to put it around her neck, that it tightened and she died. I mean, that just, it makes no sense. And it, of course, defies physics.
And it was a fact that was supported by conclusions made by the medical examiner.
Showing 881–900 of 1,398 · page 45 of 70
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