Who Is She? | The Woman in the Woods
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, listeners. It's 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty. This week, we're introducing 48 Hours listeners to the first two episodes of our new six-episode miniseries, The Woman in the Woods. Episode three releases this Wednesday, September 30th, on The Woman in the Woods podcast feed. Follow the series, if you haven't already, so you don't miss an episode. Here's episode two. Just a warning, this episode includes graphic descriptions of a crime scene. Please listen with care. So what do you call this area?
How were the woman's remains discovered in the Georgia woods?
This is the intersection of Jones Road and the hunt club known as the New Road.
Philip McKellar drove me in his white pickup truck to a rural wooded area about 50 miles south of Savannah, Georgia.
come out here pretty regularly? Every Friday and Saturday we hunt. We was hunting that block of woods that particular day.
He and his hunting buddies bring their dogs regularly here to track deer.
We start hunting at 6 30 in the morning and hunt till dark.
And that's why he was here on December 2nd, 2022. Phillip and I returned to that spot and parked on a dirt road to retrace his steps.
We got radios in our trucks and somebody had called and said that they killed a deer and We come right here and started catching dogs, and that's when we found it. But it wasn't a deer. We all kind of thought it was a mannequin to start with. It didn't look real. It didn't have no color. It was pale white. And then once we got to looking at it a little better, we kind of figured that it was real.
Philip and his friends called 911. Told them we found what we thought was a body. A dismembered body. Human arms and a torso. As the hunters waited for deputies, they discovered more evidence.
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 what kind of knife? Do you remember the kind
of knife? It was like a sheetrock knife you might load the cut sheetrock with.
The blade, he says, was about six inches long.
It was wrapped up in a towel like a sheath.
Law enforcement arrived on scene to investigate, but the horror of what he witnessed wasn't over. The next day, McKellar was hunting two miles away. And then what did you find the next
day? The
leg. McKellar found a human right leg. Investigators then expanded their search area in the middle of a 25,000-acre tract of land filled with planted pines, swamp bottoms, and creeks. they brought in their canine team. And less than a mile south of where the right leg was found, they found the other leg. Investigators thought the remains belonged to a woman, but they had no face, fingerprints, height, or weight to make any kind of identification. At
that point, I mean, it's trying to figure out who that person is.
Days later, on December 7th, Investigator Jack Frost with the Liberty County Sheriff's Office went back out to the woods. He spotted an area near an oak tree. The dirt looked like it had been
disturbed.
Why did Nick Kasotis's ex-wife recognize the sketch of the unidentified woman?
And that is where I discovered the head. It's something you can't prepare yourself for.
Now that they knew what the mysterious woman's face looked like, investigators released two sketches to the public asking for leads. I
was like, whoa, wait a minute. Like, that looks like Mindi. That looks like Mindi. And I just froze.
The person who recognized the sketch while looking at news stories online was the ex-wife of Mindi's husband, Nick Kasotis.
What was Heather Thomas's marriage to Nick Kasotis like?
You know, it was just too close for comfort.
I'm Erin Moriarty. From 48 Hours, this is The Woman in the Woods, episode two, Who Is She? Well, let's go back in time. When did you meet Nick Kasotis?
It was 2008.
Heather Thomas and I talked in 2025 near her home outside Washington, D.C. She told me how she first met Nick Kasotis.
We met on eHarmony, and back in those days, you know, it was still kind of new, the whole online dating, which I know I'm dating myself, but that's just kind of how it was. And I was a student, and I was also, I was working for a credit union, and then he was a JAG Corps student.
JAG is the Judge Advocate General's Corps.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:43
2
How were the woman's remains discovered in the Georgia woods?
0:43–3:32
3
Why did Nick Kasotis's ex-wife recognize the sketch of the unidentified woman?
3:32–4:08
4
What was Heather Thomas's marriage to Nick Kasotis like?
4:08–9:59
5
Why did Heather sue Nick Kasotis after their divorce?
9:59–12:40
6
How did Heather connect Mindy Kasotis to the woman in the woods?
12:40–15:14
7
How did investigator Jack Frost use a Home Depot purchase to find a suspect?
15:14–20:36
8
How did genetic genealogy identify the woman found in the woods?
20:36–29:56