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Chapter 1: What happened to Rhonda Casto during her hike?
When beloved family patriarch Gary Ferris went missing, his family looked everywhere on their property until they came across something horrifying. It's a homicide. Absolutely. The blame game in this family went round and round. This is Blood is Thicker, The Ferris Wheel. I don't see how anyone can look at this story and think they were happy.
Follow and listen to Blood is Thicker, The Ferris Wheel on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. I want people to know that Rhonda wasn't just beautiful. Bye, Daddy. People always are surprised when they hear this, like, no, you can't be super beautiful like her and be intelligent at the same time. I'm like, actually, she was wicked smart. Very in love.
We planned on getting married in the summer. That was my timetable. They did look at wedding rings. I think she wanted one that was around 35,000, and I was thinking more 15,000 was my range. And you and Rhonda, did you like to get outdoors? All the time. We loved hiking. We played a lot of frisbee golf. So, yeah, we were outdoors most of the time.
We woke up early, she opened the drapes and we saw it's a beautiful day. Okay, so we are gonna go hiking. One of the things she asked me on the drive over, she said, if anything ever happens to me, do you promise to watch our daughter and take care of her? And I go, what are you talking about? She goes, I have dreams all the time that I am dead before 25.
Did Rhonda ever tell you that she was sensing something bad was going to happen to her? She said that he's either going to propose to me or kill me. She wasn't happy. She just fell out of love with him, and they were fighting all the time. She had mentioned wanting to take the baby and leave Steve. Started pouring down rain and thunder came.
And so she just started bolting down, like at a full sprint running down the trail. And what unfolded before your eyes? I don't know how far down it was, but she went off the trail. A man hiking with Rhonda Castro says that she fell off a cliff last night. Did she take a step and her feet went out in front of her? Did she tumble forward? What did you see? Next question.
I'm Steve Nichols, and in February of 2015, I was charged and arrested for the murder of Rhonda Castro, my fiance. We're in Hood River, Oregon. It's been six years, one month, and 26 days since Rhonda fell off that trail to her death. And for the first time, Stephen Nichols will enter a formal plea. Accident or murder?
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Chapter 2: What were Rhonda's final thoughts before the hike?
Murder. Murder. And from a mother's heart and mind, you are certain of that? I am 100% certain of that. He's evil. He's totally evil. I think I've just left a path of destruction. I'm Attila the Hun, basically, going through women. When you have a case where someone's falsely accused, you can't really separate yourself from work and home life.
For defense attorney Mike Arnold... Mr. Nichols is here with his lawyer. Representing Stephen Nichols gives new meaning to the phrase full-time job. You know, while I prefer to be coming home doing farm chores and listening to wildlife, instead I'll be thinking about my closing argument or what the next step of the case is.
We are on the record in Hood River County, state of Oregon, versus Stephen Wagner Nichols. Nichols was arrested for murder in February 2015, accused of pushing his girlfriend, Rhonda Casto, off this trail in Oregon six years earlier. To that charge, what's your plea? Not guilty. Bail was set at $2 million. Nichols would spend the next 14 months in jail awaiting trial.
I try to just take it one day at a time. I read a lot. I play chess. But really, when it comes down to it, I miss my daughter. So that's the hardest part. But in April 2016, with a trial date nowhere in sight, Judge John Olson reduced Nichols' bail to $250,000. Mike Arnold set out on a frantic mission to gather the 10% needed in cash to free his client.
So the farming defense attorney becomes a personal banker. People have taken off work to be there to get him out. So it sounds like a small price to pay to be there when my client gets to see freedom for the first time in a year. So much as luck. But Arnold would need more than luck. We can't get the client bailed out until tomorrow morning.
He'd need an extra day to arrange for the ankle monitor required for Nichols' release. So we're going to hold on tight to this and go get some supper. The next day... It was a little unexpected overnight trip in Hood River. I'm on recycled clothes. I'm looking forward to getting home to my family. It's my son's first birthday today. presumption of innocence, ladies and gentlemen.
Mike feeds the cash into the bale machine. I'm very excited to see Steve for the first time outside in the fresh air. Two more hours, and Arnold gets his wish. I want to cry, actually. I'm so happy. But it's a bittersweet victory. We will continue to fight until I've proven my innocence. There's still a long fight ahead, but now I've got him out with me so we can work on this as a team.
So this is a big deal. But how exactly did Nichols and his attorney end up at this moment? It all started 11 years earlier when a stunning 20-year-old woman knocked on Nichols' bedroom door at his home just outside Portland, Oregon. And I turn around and I look at her and my tongue pretty much hit the floor. Up until that point, she's the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.
And she's like, hi, my name is Rhonda. In 2005, Nichols, who was 10 years older than Rhonda and recently divorced, was working as a day trader. I had a three-bedroom condo, and the other two rooms were just empty. So he decided to get a roommate. I first met Stephen Nichols through the Internet. I was looking for a place, a room to rent. Who turned out to be Rhonda's mother, Julia Simmons.
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Chapter 3: How did Stephen Nichols describe the events of the fall?
Jessica says Rhonda had grown unhappy and that the relationship had taken a dangerous turn. She told me that he had, in the recent months, been physically abusive to her. But Nichols claims just the opposite was true. We wouldn't argue at all. We were spending a lot of time together. So I would think that would be the closest we ever were.
So when Stephen is telling us that they were planning their future together and everything was great and it was a lovey-dovey relationship, is he lying to me? He's absolutely lying to you. I've witnessed their fights. I was on the phone a couple of times when they were in a physical fight, actually. And Julia claims Rhonda made a chilling statement to her just before the hike.
She said, he's either going to give me a ring or he's going to throw me off a cliff. On March 16, 2009, Rhonda and Stephen would set out on that fitness hike, and Rhonda would not live to see the end of the day. There's a smile. Bye, Daddy. This is probably the most hiked area in the Columbia River Gorge for several reasons. One, the sheer beauty of the hike.
Three months after Stephen Nichols' arrest in 2015, his attorney, Mike Arnold, took his own investigative team up the Eagle Creek Trail, where he believes Rhonda Casto slipped and fell to her death. inclement weather hits and disaster happens. Between the physical evidence and the science, there won't be much dispute about this being a tragic accident on a dangerous trail.
Stephen Nichols says this is how the tragedy unfolded. They are heading down the trail. Rhonda was in a great mood and jokingly, she put a towel around her shoulders and was calling herself Supergirl. She broke into a run. And according to Nichols, at this very point, she slipped on the wet path and fell more than 150 feet to her death. That was his story in 2015.
I'm not going to comment on that. When Nichols was forbidden by his attorney from discussing details of Rhonda's deadly fall with 48 hours. Until now, his only account was the one he gave to police the day of the tragedy. Again, something I'm not going to comment on. But in 2017, Stephen Nichols broke that silence. Either I pushed her, she jumped of her own accord, or she slipped.
He sat down and spoke to us about the day Rhonda Casto died. Let's get in that time machine and go back to March 16th, 2009. We woke up early. Stephen says Rhonda seemed focused on the future as they drove to Eagle Creek Trail. She says, I desperately need to lose weight because they want to use me as the Maria Sharapova lookalike model. I'm like, yeah, you really do look like her.
But then, Nichols claims, Rhonda asked him a startling question, completely out of the blue. She said, if anything ever happens to me, do you promise to watch our daughter and take care of her? And I said, of course. Stephen says the question unnerved him, especially since three months earlier, he claims Rhonda had demanded he buy life insurance. She was adamant about it.
I said, why do you want this life insurance? And she goes, because I want to leave our daughter something in case I die. So both Stephen and Rhonda had each taken out a $1 million policy on the other. He planned the whole thing, was premeditated, the whole thing.
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Chapter 4: What evidence emerged during the investigation of Rhonda's death?
Stephen Nichols' mind games. There's definitely a lot more to the story, but I'm not going to say it, so. Manage to drop a bombshell. Well, you've led me down a path to believe this was a suicide. And I don't think you can look me in the eye and say, well, Peter, you're wrong. Can you? No. Suggesting that Rhonda Casto chose to jump to her death from Eagle Creek Trail.
What was her point in going up there? How to say this? She knew she wasn't living past the age of 25. She knew that for a reason. She just wasn't a happy person. And she thought that having our daughter would bring her happiness, and it didn't. She had a nine-month-old baby at home that she loved dearly, and she loved her family.
So that's just another one of his lies to take the heat off of himself. After Rhonda went off the trail, Stephen says he hiked down the deep ravine. What did you do when you got to her? Well, I held her. That's the first thing I did when I got there. With no cell service to call for help, Nichols says he made his way back to the trailhead and dialed 911.
The police never once asked me if it was a suicide. They never even brought up suicide. I just answered the questions that they asked. Why didn't you tell them back in the day that suicide was something she was contemplating? Would it have made a difference, do you really think? Nichols may have had a million reasons to keep suicide a secret. If it's a suicide, life insurance doesn't pay out.
So our daughter would have gotten nothing. Is Stephen being self-sacrificing, having said nothing about suicide until now, even as he stands charged with murder? You were willing to essentially take a bullet for that. Or is he self-serving? I think Steve is just throwing all these ideas out to throw people off the fact that he pushed her.
Oh, well, she killed herself because she wanted to make a better life for her daughter. An investigation into Rhonda's death was immediately launched, and a memorial was held. Rhonda's family claims that you were not grieving, that you seemed unmoved by Rhonda's death. The exact opposite. I was crying nonstop. When I'm really, really sad, I just, I close down.
That's just the way I deal with pain. Shortly afterward, Stephen moved across the state with his daughter to live with family. For about three months after Rhonda died, I completely shut down. By 2013, four years had gone by and no charges had been filed against Nichols. He decided to start a new life in a new land. So how does a kid from Oregon end up in China?
I had been there before and I liked China. Stephen packed up. I would tell on my daughter, this is our new life. Let's make it work. And headed here to Wuxi, about 75 miles from Shanghai. I decided when I got to China, this is a whole fresh start. And I was like, America, all the past. Stephen got a job teaching English to Chinese businessmen. My daughter was absolutely thriving.
A little over two months, and she was fluent in Mandarin. She had dance lessons. She was taking Taekwondo. She was learning to play the piano. And Stephen began to thrive, too, falling in love with Landi Yin-Yan. She's beautiful, of course, but she's the deepest, funniest person I've ever met. Stephen says Landy became like a mother to his daughter.
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Chapter 5: What led to Stephen Nichols' arrest for murder?
For months following his February 2015 arrest for murder. When you're ready, Mr. Arnold. Stephen Nichols faced pretrial hearings on a slew of issues, from evidence to motive. The state is present, represented by Kerry Rasmussen. Including whether there should even be a trial, since the defense considers Ronda Castro's death an accident. Both sides called witnesses.
Was this immediately investigated as a murder? No. And when did it become a homicide investigation as opposed to an accidental fall? Pretty much the next morning. I can tell that based on the injuries that she has, she landed predominantly on her legs and her pelvis. Medical examiner and forensic pathologist Dr. Christopher Young says Rhonda's injuries were mostly below the waist.
The pelvis was essentially shattered. The defense argues the location of her injuries indicate Rhonda left the trail feet first, not tumbling head over heels from a push. It's a theory that could support Nichols' new suggestion of suicide. When you look at the relationship that the defendant then had with Rhonda Casto...
Notes from a therapist Rhonda had been seen reveal she was depressed but not suicidal from her relationship with Steven, which she described as loveless. What the state has to prove in this case is the defendant did a criminal act. Prosecutors hope the judge will allow them to tell jurors about some bad acts in Stephen Nichols' troubled past at his upcoming murder trial.
It is something that obviously is titillating and interesting. The first one, a shocking love triangle involving another of Rhonda's younger sisters, Melanie, that may have provided a motive for murder. Do you believe that Stephen was in love with Melanie? Yes, I do. Jessica says Rhonda learned that Stephen was having sex with Melanie.
And did Rhonda ever tell you how young her sister was when she first had sex with Stephen? She was 15. 15 years old? Yes. In fact, just after his arrest for murder, Stephen was indicted on two counts of third-degree rape and three counts of third-degree sodomy for allegedly having sexual relations with an underage Melanie back in 2005. He did rape my daughter, and I didn't want to believe it.
In October 2016, while awaiting his murder trial... You agreed to plead guilty... Two counts of sexual abuse with Melanie Casto. And you signed your name under this statement. I had sexual intercourse with Melanie Casto twice. Stephen insists his admission was false. Did you have sex with her? No. I'm like, well, can I take a plea and then just say, obviously, it never happened.
And I was told later, nope. In order to pass the sex offender treatment, you have to admit that Even though he'd be a registered sex offender, the law would allow Stephen to still fight and regain custody of his daughter, who is in the care of the state. I became desperate. I wanted my daughter back. You'll be amazed at what you're willing to sign to stay out of prison.
But investigators believe there really was a relationship between Stephen and Melanie, one that continued on and off for four years, right up to that fateful last hike. Just a few hours before her death, Rhonda, who had learned of the affair, sent this text to her sister. I don't know what to say besides he's a piece of . He used you to hurt me. I won't let him screw us up again.
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