Chapter 1: What led to the discovery of Regina Hicks' body?
In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water.
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Hello, everybody. Welcome to 2020 The After Show. So good to have you with us. I'm Deborah Roberts.
Chapter 2: How did new technology impact the investigation after decades?
And today we're going to talk about a story that I have to tell you I haven't been able to shake. And I think it's going to be hanging around with you for a while, too, after you hear the details. I'm going to take you inside my reporting of a story that just aired on Friday night for 2020 called The Secret in the Water.
I traveled to Willard, Ohio to learn more about this unbelievable story, one that took two agonizing decades for the family involved to finally see some sense of resolution. In this piece, we told you about 25-year-old Regina Hicks, a young mom who was on her way to pick up her son from her estranged husband but was never heard from again.
Well, as you might imagine, her family was desperate to find her. They were calling her phone all that night and the next day and nothing. Sadly, just four days later, Regina's body was found submerged at the bottom of a pond only a few miles from her home. And of course, the big question was, what happened?
Chapter 3: What were the initial theories surrounding Regina's disappearance?
Did she lose control of her car? There were a number of theories swirling in this small town, including one that maybe she had taken her own life or that maybe somebody deliberately and calculatedly murdered her. Well, this case went unsolved for quite a while. Police were investigating, but there were no arrests. And the big question was how and why.
Well, we're going to take you through it all today. You're also going to hear a lot more from the people that I interviewed who were in this episode. We're going to bring you some new details and some new sound that you didn't hear on Friday night. So joining me now to unspool it all is Court TV legal correspondent Julia Janae, who reported on this story with us.
And she joined us in our 2020 episode, as she has for a number of them.
Chapter 4: How did Paul Hicks' actions raise suspicion in Regina's case?
Julia, good to see you.
Deborah, good to see you. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, yeah. I wish you were here with me so you and I could talk a little bit more about our roots. We're both Georgia girls.
Oh, that's right. From the heart of Georgia. I'm from Decatur, Georgia, and I went to school not too far from where you grew up.
Yeah, yeah.
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Chapter 5: What key evidence emerged from the pond investigation?
Small town Georgia for me, and I went to the University of Georgia. And viewers might be very curious about you. You've reported on these kinds of true crime cases for a very long time. And I'm curious what captivates you about these cases, because they can be pretty dark.
They can be dark, and you definitely have to stay grounded in order to be able to cover some of these stories. I just feel for those investigators who have to go in and see what happened right after it happened. But I think something that really captures my attention about these usually... There is a struggle for justice in these cases.
It's unfortunate that victims have to not only go through the loss of a loved one, they have to get people to help them sometimes to get the case solved. Police have to work together with other people.
Chapter 6: What role did Steve Gates play in the unfolding of the case?
So watching that all unfold and play out, that is the truly interesting part of these cases.
Let's talk about the case of Regina Hicks, because when this was presented to me by the producers, I was just fascinated not only by how long it took to resolve the case, but the man who was involved in this case, Paul Hicks, who was her estranged husband, how he was implicated in this case. What were your first thoughts when you heard about it?
This case got stranger and stranger the more that you learned about it. It was already so atypical that there had been this length of time that Regina Hicks' family was looking for justice. And then you have the person that people believed all along may have been involved with essentially hiding in plain sight.
And just the way that she died, her body being found in a pond underwater in this car that she loved. And it just seemed like at this point in her life, she had gotten a new lease on life. So things were really looking up for her. And it just adds to this mystery of what happened to her and why did it happen like this?
Chapter 7: How did the trial change the narrative of Regina's murder?
Yeah, yeah. And we'll talk about that car in a minute. But let's talk about the two of them. These two were high school sweethearts. The relationship soured. And so on October 18th of 2001, they shared a child together, a four-year-old boy named Montana. They had a pretty tumultuous relationship. So they had this meeting point where she was supposed to go pick up her son from Paul.
They were separated at the time. And nobody heard from her after this.
Chapter 8: What were the emotional impacts on Regina's family after the verdict?
And of course, there were alarm bells with her family. They knew that that was unlike her not to show up. What were their immediate fears in the beginning?
Their initial concerns is that this was very unlike her. She would not just disappear and leave without her son that she loved so much. She had firm plans that day to go pick up her son, take him to her mother's house, and then go on a date with a new guy that she was dating.
So for her to, in this very small window of time, go from on her way to meet up with Paul Hicks to then not being heard from again... Everyone was really fearing that something very bad had happened and that this was not something that was voluntary.
Yeah, they were suspicious of him because their relationship, as I said, had been tumultuous. She had moved out. She was sort of moving on. He was moving on and had a new girlfriend. But they had had a bad relationship, fighting, money troubles, infidelity. Tell us a little bit more about their relationship that we didn't really get into in the piece.
It really had started to disintegrate after the birth of their son. And they were, as you said, fighting a lot. And there were these issues with infidelity. There was also problems with money. Now, their house burned down not too long before Regina disappeared. And this was a situation where most of the stuff inside of the house belonged to Regina.
This was devastating for her to lose all of her things. And because their relationship was already so fractured, She decided this was the time to make the break. They had settlement money. Right. That was it. That was the straw breaking the camel's back. And she took the settlement money that she split with Paul and was able to get her new car, get a new business with her uncle.
But she also was going to be getting child support payments from Paul. And that was coming up due very soon.
So she bought this new Camaro, white Camaro. She was proud of the car. Her relatives talked about how people knew that was her car. That was kind of her baby. She was very excited. Then things kind of take a heartbreaking turn. Of course, four days after her disappearance, these two farmers and I got a chance to speak with the dad when I was out there. These farmers see something in their pond.
They get a chain and they try to pull it out and eventually discover that it is a car, a white Camaro. Police find her body in the car. Initially, they're thinking an accident, but then they see something kind of strange. And let's talk about that. She's in the passenger side of the car.
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