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Chapter 1: What happened on the night of Heidi Firkus's murder?
It's the middle of the night in a small town on the Jersey Shore. Someone reports an abandoned car on a bridge. A search gets underway for the missing driver, 19-year-old Sarah Stern. Is it a missing person? Is it a suicide? At this point, nobody knows. Old friendships, buried cash, and a sinister plot that was once pitched as a movie plays out in real life.
I'm Juju Chang from 2020 and ABC Audio. Listen now to Bridge of Lies, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, everybody. Welcome to 2020 The After Show. I'm Debra Roberts, and as always, I am so delighted that you're spending some time with us as we pull back the curtain on the stories that we're doing here at 2020 and let you get an idea of how we put these things together. Now, today we're going to take a look at one of our most talked about episodes.
It was called Stranger in the House, and I reported on this story. I went to Minnesota to talk about it, and the details have just stuck with me. This one centers on the really sad and tragic death of Heidi Furcus, a 25-year-old woman from St. Paul, Minnesota. Her friends described her as bubbly and caring and outgoing, and she was deeply dedicated to her faith. Heidi and her husband, Nick, both,
pretty religious people, were married in 2005, but they met as youth group leaders in their church. They were young. And then a few years later, they got married and bought a house together and began what looked like it was going to be a bright future.
But that future was cut short on the morning of April 25th, 2010, after Heidi frantically makes a 911 call to authorities to report someone she said was an intruder in her home.
Then a minute later, 65 seconds to be exact, another frantic call from inside the home to 911, but this time it was Nick saying that his wife had been shot. Okay, hold on, hold on a sec. Are you in a house or an apartment? What's the problem? Wait, you've been shot? Yes, please! Okay, stay on the phone with me, okay? Okay. Nick?
Nick?
Stay on the phone with me. Who shot you? Okay, we're going to jump out there right now. Go ahead. You said your wife is shot also? Okay. Nick, take a slow deep breath. I've got a lot of help coming.
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Chapter 2: How did Nick's story about the intruder unfold?
What got me in this story, and we've seen this happen in a lot of these stories, too, where the person who police are sort of suspecting gives a description. And so Nick gives them a description of this alleged intruder. And it's a black man in his 30s who's wearing a hoodie, a very specific description of this guy.
And ultimately, you know, it does sort of pan out that there is a person who sort of fits this description, a homeless guy. And, you know, police go to look into this and then they discover, like, there's no way.
Well, what's so interesting about this is the police wanted Nick to come in and sit with their sketch artist. He refused to do that. He wanted to do it on his terms. So he did it with his defense attorney. And if you Google break-ins in this area at 6 AM, this man's face comes up. He had been arrested for breaking and entering at 6 AM in this neighborhood.
He was very thoughtful in how he did this intentionally because he knew that it would be believable because here's a guy who has been arrested for it. And thankfully, that man was happy to have been incarcerated.
Yeah, because otherwise he might have been picked up for this.
He would have.
Yeah.
He absolutely would have.
So police discovered this guy's already in jail. So that doesn't fly. And it was also very interesting that Nick had already gotten an attorney. And oftentimes in these stories, you know, when police are first questioning the spouse, you know, they're just like talking. Right. But then Nick starts to his story.
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Chapter 3: What role did Rachel play in the investigation?
Yes. Nothing has happened. But now Rachel is kind of ready to move on. She wants to leave him. And it's not an easy thing for her to do. I remember she told us about that. And we'll talk more about her interview. But then a new detective hits the scene and it would be a woman detective, which I always loved. Nicole Sipes.
Yes, she is fabulous as a detective and a person. She's amazing. And it is because of her that that justice was brought to Heidi. Truly.
Well, this happens in our stories a lot where somebody new hits the scene and they look at the evidence again. They look at the story. So Sergeant Sipes starts looking at this case and she thinks something is odd. Oftentimes, these female detectives bring something that is a little bit different to these unsolved murders.
And she started looking at it from a female perspective of the women who did not know. And in this case, Rachel, who suddenly now sees something. So Talk about how she brought a new breath of air to this case.
Yeah. Nikki Sipes is amazing. And she remembers the crime because she was a beat cop at that time in that area. So she remembered it. Now she's in homicides.
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Chapter 4: How were secret recordings crucial to the case?
And she was determined to pull in resources from the FBI.
Yes, she brought the FBI to the case, which had not previously been involved. Correct.
And she was determined to look through everything. She went back through their correspondence, their text messages, their phone calls. And something that struck her is even in their casual conversations, their quiet texts between each other like a husband and wife, there is not a single mention of, we have to move out of our home. Not, hey babe, did you get the boxes?
Hey, I'm looking at the, they had nowhere to live.
There's no evidence that they were being evicted or that she knew about it.
No, absolutely nowhere did they talk about where they were moving. And so that really was when she was able to look at everything and see it. That stuck out. That stuck out to her. And then she took a deep dive on their finances and realized there was a lot of money that was missing. There was a lot of things that just didn't add up.
And the other thing is Nick wasn't really pressing police to try to solve this murder over the years.
He did not call to check what's the status of my late wife. What happened to my late wife? And if we believe his theory on what happened, there is a person on the loose that killed somebody. And shot him. Yeah.
Yeah. And so that was also very troubling to her. So she starts thinking about him in a very different way. Yes. Everybody had clammed up around him. Nobody was actually giving anything, but she's looking. So then the biggest bombshell in this case and what we revealed in our story were these secret recordings. Yeah.
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