The Woman Who Died Twice
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What shocking discovery did hunters make in the swamp?
Down here is where the hunters had discovered the torso of a female in the ditch.
Jack, had you ever run into anything like this?
No, ma'am.
What day were you out here, and what do you remember from that day?
This was December the 2nd of 2022, I believe. We was hunting that block of woods that particular day. We all kind of thought it was a mannequin to start with. It didn't look real. And this area right here and all around this is where all the trash, the bags of clothes, the tote, the knife, that's where all that was found right here.
And your big priority was to find the rest of this woman and find out who she is?
That's correct.
It was getting about dusk. I started walking and got to a point where I'm looking up and the sun's going down. It's shining in my eyes and there's an oak tree and I kind of look behind it and I see a little disturbed area, a mound. All the remains were found fairly close to the edge of the road. And at that point, as far as what we knew, there was the female had dark brown hair. You put out a sketch? GBI had had a forensic artist put out a sketch.
According to deputies, hunters found the body in the area of Barrington Ferry Road. This sketch from the GBI serving as one of the only glimpses of who the woman could be. I was like, whoa, wait a minute. Like, that looks like Mindy. That looks like Mindy. And I just froze. I said, I have reason to believe that this person is Mindy Kasotis, looks very much like her. I was like, I want to be wrong. I have never wanted to be wrong like this in my whole entire life. A drive through the area shows how dense the wooded area where the woman was found can be.
That was on the local news, but I had zero reason to connect it to Mindy.
So you get this call from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent, and he says, you're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you? Yeah, he absolutely said that. I think the first thing through my mind was disbelief.
I had been told back in December that she had died in the hospital.
That's what all of the immediate friends and family of Mindy's had been told. Nobody was looking for a murder victim. They thought she had died of natural causes. What did they think had happened to her? She died at the hospital on December 1st. She's not in the woods. She was cremated.
What do you do? What do you do when you're in a situation and you feel like something is wrong, but also the entire story is so crazy, who's going to believe you?
Aaron Moriarty reports the woman who died twice.
Investigator Jack Frost, now with the Liberty County Georgia DA's office, was one of the first detectives called to the scene on December 2nd, 2022.
The hunters had seen a knife and a tote and some wipes back there.
Detectives recovered a razor sharp Milwaukee brand knife, a plastic storage tub with what looked like traces of blood, and wipes. Do you think whoever brought her out here had to know this area? That would be a safe assumption because it's so desolate. It would take five days until investigator Frost found the rest of her body. Authorities said it appeared the woman had defensive wounds. There's no one that winds up dismembered in the woods that's not a victim of homicide. My name is Lori Baio. I'm an assistant district attorney with the Atlantic Judicial Circuit. Investigators from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation released two sketches. There were hundreds and hundreds of calls and leads that came in through the forensic sketches that were published from civilians calling in.
One call came from a woman 500 miles away in Virginia, Heather Thomas. I was like, whoa, wait a minute. Like, that looks like Mindy. Mindy Kasotis. Heather Thomas, turned out, is one of the people that recognized the photograph and said, this could be Mindy. Heather recognized Mindy because Mindy was married to Heather's ex-husband, Nick Kasotis, a naval officer, a lawyer in JAG, the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps. Nick had traveled the globe, was deployed to Iraq. He served in Italy and the Pentagon.
How did the investigation reveal the identity of the victim?
He dealt with sensitive cases involving Afghanistan.
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