Ashley Flowers

Now, this second call, investigators were able to trace to this Nebraska-based phone number tied to a trucking company.

And they, like, started to kind of run this down to see if any of these truckers had ties to the Richmond area or the Dayton area.

And it seems like they got it kind of narrowed down, but they were never able to identify who actually made this call.

I got kind of obsessed with this one.

Okay.

Our reporters followed this lead and we got in touch with the company owner's son.

And we're like, listen, like there are these two employees.

They had it narrowed down to these kind of like two names.

And based on the descriptions he gave us, one of these guys seemed more likely over the other.

We still tracked down both guys.

But either way, they each denied having anything to do with the call.

And they said they didn't know Nikki or anything about the case.

And we were even able to like figure out exactly what phone the call would have been made from inside the building.

It was like in this area that was accessible to all employees if they were in town at the time, of course.

But with this being so long ago, we couldn't get like 100% confirmation to nail down one person.

So kind of the way detectives hit a dead end, so did we.

And honestly, things really slowed down with this tip.

Those come in in 2006, and as they investigate into 2007, that's when things with Tommy start heating back up, right?

This is when they find out he applies or gets a job at Trotwood.

And so that's where all the focus ends up going.