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[Assistant] I think that probably took a full 45 seconds for you to say. Now, yeaah, that's a dynamic ad.


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[Assistant] And we're all just gonna take this 12 year old motherfuckers.


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[Assistant] What does that mean? Is that lie or truth? Bet? I think that just means like, yeah, I bet. Oh really? Is that what that means? That's how I took it. I never knew.


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[Assistant] That's on another level, and you just have to go about your life after that.


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[Assistant] The second book. The second Butcher in the Ren book. There is a sneak peek.


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[Assistant] I don't know why, but that, you know, I think it's pretty small, so like you could put it in your back pocket, I think. You know, you got a big back pocket, shove it right in there. Uh, put it wherever you want, I don't care, just read it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And these people are hearing these people be like, no, seriously? I have all the plans. I will get away with it. I'm going to do it. And they're like, I don't know. I thought he was joking.


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[Assistant] He's a nefarious fucker. He is. Keep him where he is.


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[Assistant] What's that place? Disney World. You can say it. My body rejects it. But we met her and she was so sweet and...


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[Assistant] Yeah, I think he's probably like, out of all the princes, I would say he's the hottest.


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[Assistant] I'm telling you, it literally, underrated criminally in all facets. Never. Is that movie, those characters, the songs, the soundtrack. The songs. Flaps. Never did I ever think that we would have this conversation on this podcast. No, no I did not.


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[Assistant] We turned the room around, we changed positions and now we're feeling much better. We're kinda like at a chat set now, it's pretty good. Yea, it's pretty sweet. You know why we were feeling that way, like the way that we were. Not only Mercury was in retrograde and now it's in a shadow period.


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[Assistant] And that gets you in your muh-fucking-feels. But then, we're entering Gemini season. The best season. So everybody's feeling like a mm, the best season. Debatable. We could do this all day. So everybody's feeling like a bitch, see?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you know what, be your best bitch self, and I hope everybody watched the Vanderpump Rules reunion. Oh, fuck. How did we not open up with that? I know.


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[Assistant] I mean... Guys, I don't know what to say about it. I'm gonna get a timeout.


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[Assistant] It was when, when James said, nah, it's not hitting for me. It's not hitting for me. And Lala said, I didn't even listen. It's saying.


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[Assistant] James and Lala's friendship forever. Oh, all day, every day. Ever. I'm very excited about episode two and three, uhm, and I hope that you guys are too. Yeah, just one more quick thing. Lala on her podcast, which everybody should go listen to, it's called Give Them Lala, fucking love it. Uhm, and she said that.


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[Assistant] She texted her producer about the first part of the reunion and was like, holy shit, like this was incredible. Like, yay, I love it.


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[Assistant] And the producer was like, oh, you think this is good? It doesn't even stand up next to part two and three.


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[Assistant] But yeaah, so we, we Tiana'd, we Disney'd, which was crazy, we Vanderpump'd. And now we're gonna morbid. And we zodiac'd too. Oh we did, we did, we covered all the bases. You know, we zodiac'd and astrology'd, so now we're gonna morbid.


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[Assistant] We will cover the downfall of the monster of the case at the end.


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[Assistant] But I'm not gonna like give it away who it is just yet. Don't worry. Don't give it away. I won't. Don't you fucking dare. I said I fucking wouldn't. Alright, I'll trust you. That's good.


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[Assistant] We should always trust each other. Always trust me. Always. I don't really know what happened there. Anyways.


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[Assistant] So, bring it down. So everything happened just one day after Christmas. Oh. In this case. Yeah. That's upsetting. Yup. And it was December 26th, obviously. The year was 1997.


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[Assistant] And police and fire were called to the home of Nick and Don Hackney in, uh, Bremerton, Washington.


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[Assistant] So when they got to this house, it was absolutely engulfed in flames. But as far as the investigators knew, the house was empty.


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[Assistant] And then when they reached the Hackney's bedroom, they unfortunately did. And they found 28 year old Don Hackney badly, badly burned.


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[Assistant] Her laying in her and her husband's bed. And her husband Nick had left early that morning for a hunting trip with his friends, so obviously he was okay, and this was what he was gonna come home to.


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[Assistant] And the Hackney's neighbors, Tim and Amy Pitts, they were the ones to call the fire in.


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[Assistant] And how they noticed it was Tim's coworker, uh, Jeff Richardson was his name. That guy usually picked Tim up for work in the morning.


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[Assistant] Now Jeff was able to kick the door open, but by that point the fire had already spread to the first floor, and the room was filled with not only flames, but like super thick black smoke. It was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Obviously beyond dangerous, but Jeff tried to make his way into the living room, just wanting to help anybody that was inside.


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[Assistant] I kept trying, kept trying, but the flames and the smoke kept pushing him back. It was obvious he wasn't going to be able to get inside without getting physically hurt himself.


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[Assistant] So at that point there was literally nothing they could do except wait for first responders to get there, so they just stood on the lawn and watched the house burn. Oh, that's awful. I can't imagine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chief Deputy Coroner Jane Jer- uh, Jeremy. I believe that's how you say it. In a coroner walking up to you? Yeaah.


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[Assistant] So she steered Nick away from the house luckily and back towards her truck and she explained what had happened. And he was like, oh my god, Don and I spent Christmas together with our family earlier, like yesterday, but she wasn't feeling very well. She had a gnarly head cold, so she took Benadryl to go to sleep. And he said that he had woken up around 2 a.m.


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[Assistant] Excuse me, she had woken up around 2am to take another dose and she wondered out loud whether she had no tolerance for it.


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[Assistant] Because she didn't take that medicine very often, so she was like, oh my god, like, I'm kinda feeling this.


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[Assistant] So that's, that was his explanation to the coroner the day before. And how she would sleep through. And how she would sleep through it.


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[Assistant] So it made sense to the coroner because the position of Dawn's body on the bed suggested she hadn't even tried to get up to escape the fire. Which at first was baffling to investigators. They were like, nobody would just sleep through a roaring fire like that. But if Dawn wasn't used to taking Benadryl,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was possible that it had a strong effect on her and it kept her sleeping entirely while the fire occurred. That's some strong Benadryl. Oh it is. Yeah.


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[Assistant] So as far as anybody could tell, Nick Hackney was completely devastated and he started leaning closely on the members of his and Don's church while he grieved. He and Don had been married about seven years at that point and they'd been together even longer from when they were dating. So this was going to be a process for him to get over. Yeah.


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[Assistant] But before we get into that whole process and what it looks like, I want to tell you more about Don, more about Nick, and more about their life that they had made together. Okay. So Don Marie was born December 5th, 1969 in Seattle, Washington to parents Donald and Diana.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Donald worked in a shipyard, which I think is really fucking cool. That is cool. And Diana, Diana was a homemaker.


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[Assistant] And Don was their first child and she would eventually be the oldest of four kids and their only daughter. She had her brothers, or excuse me, she and her brothers, Dennis, Darren, and Derek.


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[Assistant] They were all raised in Bremerton, Washington. So she had lived there her entire life.


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[Assistant] Now, their childhood was not always the easiest. Dawn's mom, Diana, struggled a lot with anxiety and from the sounds of it, probably depression too. Oh, okay. She was really going through it.


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[Assistant] And she by her own admission quote, required more love than she could get from her husband Donald.


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[Assistant] So I think it was one of those things where they were very, like they were religious people, so I think they stayed together even though they weren't necessarily the happiest together. Yea, that makes sense. And for that reason,


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[Assistant] Diana would sometimes look outside of her own marriage for love and affection, or to put it less lightly, she was stepping out on Donald. Uh oh.


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[Assistant] So in 1980, when Dawn was 11, Diana actually left the family and moved in with a man that she was having an affair with.


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[Assistant] Yeah, me too. Now, it also turned out that she was pregnant and this man was the father.


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[Assistant] Oh, yup. So she had her son Darren with him, but eventually things fell apart with whoever that guy was. And she ended up returning home to the family with her new son.


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[Assistant] And they all just kind of made it work together. Wow. So obviously things were, uhm,


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[Assistant] Tense. Yeaah. To say the least. I mean, you just left your whole family. And then you just come back with a baby. I'm like, oops, sorry, I'm back. Here's your brother.


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[Assistant] So things were tense when she came home and the kids could feel the tension in the air.


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[Assistant] So in response to all the tension at home, Dawn really leaned into making her mom happy and she became just determined to achieve, achieve, achieve. I don't want to call her an overachiever because I feel like that's, that's like a weird label. Like you're an overachiever. It makes it sound like a bad thing.


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[Assistant] Wow. Wow. I mean, spelling. Yea, spelling, right? Exactly. Now, so all throughout her school year, she kept that same tenacity, worked super hard at everything she did, and it would actually lead her to becoming Bremerton Christian School's valedictorian in 1988. Damn. Get it, girl.


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[Assistant] Now after high school, Dawn enrolled at Northwest College of the Assemblies of God, which is informally known as Northwest Bible College. Damn. Like even the people there call it that. That's a mouthful. It is. I think that's why they shortened it to Northwest Bible College. It's just the Bible. The Bible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was at college, the Bible college, where she met Nick Hackney.


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[Assistant] In the coastal city of Palsbo, I think is how you say it. I love it. I looked it up, so.


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[Assistant] He grew up there and while Don's family had their issues, it seems like they were able to keep the home life somewhat stable at Don's house. Okay. That wasn't necessarily the case for Nick's family.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, the author of Twisted Faith, which is a really good source on this book. And actually, I was looking at another book and then I saw that book advertised and that's how I found this case. It's a good name. It is. Twisted Faith. Yeaah. I like that. And it's by author Greg Olson. He's an incredible writer.


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[Assistant] So definitely read that book. But anyways, I digress. He put it that Nick came from a troubled family. Okay.


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[Assistant] And when he was home, he wasn't really emotionally there. He was very distant from his children and it seems his wife. Cool. Yeah. And Nick's mom, Sarah, uh, Sandra, excuse me,


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[Assistant] Did her best to support the family. She ran a daycare out of the home and she would take in foster kids when she could.


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[Assistant] But it didn't seem like she thought too much about the fact that her children were already looking for more themselves.


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[Assistant] And other children just kept coming into the house. Yeaah, she's spreading herself too thin. She is, and I mean, for like a great cause, bringing in foster kids is amazing. Take care of these kids that are already here first. Yes. Make sure their cup is full. I agree.


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[Assistant] So that's the thing, their home life became even more chaotic with all these other kids running around.


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[Assistant] That's awful. And I'm like, I don't know why, why, why you thought she hated you. Yea, like what would make you think that? Exactly.


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[Assistant] But what we do know is that she did unfortunately also suffer from long bouts of depression.


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[Assistant] And eventually, while he was alone, he turned to the Bible and kind of like found peace and harmony in that. And it was then that he developed an interest in Christianity.


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[Assistant] According to Nick, quote, it was God's calling that gave him strength and shaped every bit of his character. Wow. So yeaah.


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[Assistant] Nick found a new confidence through his dedication to religion and all throughout his teen years it seemed actually like his self-esteem was really improving.


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[Assistant] But unfortunately, that didn't always endear him to other people.


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[Assistant] Yes, when he and Dawn first met at Northwest Bible College, Dawn's friends and roommates thought it was really odd that she would have any interest in Nick.


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[Assistant] Some of her friends thought he was pushy, he was like too self-assured, like almost came off cocky. Oh.


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[Assistant] So they also started to notice a change in Dawn whenever Nick was around. Before Nick, Dawn was super confident, super self-reliant, always working hard, accomplishing accomplishing like I said, and just like looking for her next goal that she was gonna crush. Yea.


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[Assistant] But around Nick, she kinda seemed to mute all of those parts of herself. She was reserved, she was shy, and she started looking to him when it came time to make a decision for anything. Oh no, and that's never a good thing. No, like you don't want your partner to mute the best parts of you, you want your partner to bring out the best parts in you.


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[Assistant] I remember one of my best friends had this significant other who was always like annoyed by their outgoing personality and would like kind of


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[Assistant] Like mute them down, like be like, you're being annoying. Right. And it always bothered me because I was like, no, like that's one of the best parts about this person. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Whether you think it's annoying or not, that's like who they are. If you think it's annoying, you're not meant to be together. If your love is conditional in that way that like only if you tamper yourself down a little bit, then you don't love that person. Exactly.


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[Assistant] But after two years at Northwest Bible College, Dawn, she got her associate degree.


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[Assistant] And in 1990, Nick did end up proposing to her.


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[Assistant] The proposal actually sounds adorable. It was over Oreo cookies and milk on Alki Beach. Okay, that's really cute. Yeah, like, give me Oreo so I know it's real. Hell yes. They got married on April 20th, 1991, and they ended up moving back to Bremerton where Dawn had grown up. Okay.


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[Assistant] Now she started work as a loan officer at a credit union and Nick started pursuing a job as a youth pastor at Christ Community Church, which was on Bain, uh, yes, Bainbridge Island. Okay. And that's a small island community right across the bay from Seattle.


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[Assistant] I love these little islands with like a spooky little church on it, like Midnight Mass.


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[Assistant] John and I. I didn't know you finished it. I was super late on the midnight mass train, but like, and it sucks to be late on something like that cause you're like, guys, midnight mass and everybody's like, yeah, I


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[Assistant] You would like it. I'll watch it. I have to finish succession first. You do. And then I also, off shoot, I just really want to watch Yellow Jackets too. Me too. Okay, great. We'll set that together.


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[Assistant] So to her friends, Dawn seemed happy enough, but a lot of them were still worried about her.


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[Assistant] And how easily she was deferring decision making processes to Nick. Yeah.


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[Assistant] That's not good. No. It's one thing if you're just like, oh, I mean, I'm super indecisive, so I'll be like, Drew, what do you think? Like, oh yeah, do we finalize it like this? But when you're... Deferring all?


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[Assistant] Part of that, and I think author Greg Olson also points this out,


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[Assistant] The reason why Dawn was submitting to her husband was because she believed in quote, the fundamentalist edict that submitting to her husband's authority was God's plan and the greatest gift a woman could give him.


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[Assistant] Queens and kings go right off. Personally, that just sounds like fucking awful to me. Yeah.


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[Assistant] But Nick had dreamed of becoming a youth pastor and he specifically wanted to work at Christ Community Church.


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[Assistant] Because of his connection to his own former youth pastor, who was Bob, also known as PB Smith.


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[Assistant] He sounds like a really cool guy, I'll put it out there. Good. He sounds like he was like a nice gentleman. That's great. And he still worked at the church.


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[Assistant] PB already had a partner that he was leading the church with. Robert, I think it's Byley, Robert Byley. It could be Billy. I couldn't figure it out. And I looked it up.


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[Assistant] She did, I was there for it, thank you. So Robert, I'm just gonna call him either Robert or Pastor Robert for the rest of this so I don't piss anyone off.


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[Assistant] But Robert, he was this like, charismatic, very animated man. He was in his early 40s. He'd been raised in a wealthy family. And he kinda seemed to like,


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[Assistant] He would start these like really big projects and like have like this big picture in mind but then it would all kind of fizzle out.


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[Assistant] And he had just left a job working for the galloping gourmet television program. Wow. I'm just gonna urge you to look further into that. It's wild. Ooh.


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[Assistant] But to most, and especially to Nick, Gallup and Gourmet Television Program, type in Robert B-I-L-Y. So to most, and especially to Nick though,


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[Assistant] He seemed like an odd fit for church leadership.


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[Assistant] P.B. Smith, he took more, and he's the nice gentleman, he took more of a friendly but still conservative approach to church leadership.


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[Assistant] Also, repertoire is a really fun word, feels good in your mouth. It is, yeaah.


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[Assistant] Even though that was his approach, uhm, and on top of that, he actually had no theological training. Oh. Even though of all of those factors, the church board still voted to promote him to pastor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, I don't understand how any of that works, but interesting. But alright. But okay, go off. So his new position seemed to go to his head almost immediately.


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[Assistant] PB sermons, they usually related to the more, like, traditional subject matter of the Bible.


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[Assistant] And his whole message was just about forming a strong relationship with God and your community. Those were like his main goals. Yeah.


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[Assistant] But Roberts, they were really theatrical, his sermons. Okay. He incorporated very different elements of belief systems that were like on the fringes of Christianity. Like, not really there.


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[Assistant] He set up a new deliverance counseling program that was put into place to help the congregants, quote unquote, build a stronger relationship with God.


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[Assistant] But to me, it sounded more like setting up scare tactics. Ooh, I don't love that. Yeah. So, these sessions, again according to Olsen, were intense, dramatic, and stepped in fear and shame, with Robert and PB praying and screaming at demons to exit the afflicted church members. Okay. PB had never done that before.


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[Assistant] Oh, so this is all new. This is all new. These, these church members had never had demons screamed out of them. Oh no. But they would ask the congregants all kinds of personal questions in these counseling sessions about their marriages, their sex lives, like they wanted to get any kind of deep, deep, dark secret out of them.


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[Assistant] I hate that. And they would also focus on, of course, how wrong it was to be gay, how shameful it was to have an abortion, those kind of things. That we personally don't agree with.


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[Assistant] So Greg Olson goes a bit further into his book, this whole piece of this in his book, and I would really recommend


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Reading that section at the very least because holy shit.


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[Assistant] But it was more like the topic of conversation and like, they just seemed to be trying to shame people into submission.


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[Assistant] I think that's the like, that's the vibe I'm getting and that's why I don't like it, like that's why I said boo, it just sounds like...


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[Assistant] This is really steeped, like you said, in like, shame, fear. Yeah.


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[Assistant] But like almost bullying in some way, you know, like this doesn't sound fun. No, and it wasn't what Christ community church was before. Yeah, that's the thing. Cause it sounds like it was like a, you know, regular.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These are people that are used to something and they have a sense of community and family and then all of a sudden this guy walks in and kinda like disrupts all of that. Yeaah, I don't like that. I feel like a lot of people were probably on edge. Yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that was the environment that Nick Hackney entered into when he finally managed to get an offer to join that congregation as youth pastor. He achieved his dream of becoming youth pastor.


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[Assistant] But, uh, it was different. It was different these days.


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[Assistant] And that's the thing, he saw PB as like, again, this charismatic, warm man, somebody he really looked up to.


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[Assistant] But then he walked on the scene and realized that this guy...


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[Assistant] And the other thing was, not only had Pastor Robert risen up the ranks quickly, but he had completely changed the entire church along the way. Like, that sucks.


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[Assistant] So by the mid-90s, Pastor Robert had convinced the congregation that he had a direct relationship with God and was one of his apostles. Like, he could get messages from God and then


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[Assistant] This is an actual question I have. Isn't that exactly what a cult leader does? Yes it is. Absolutely.


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[Assistant] Honestly, the beginning of all of this kind of reminds me of the Holy Rollers case that we did, uh, I think we did it with Rachel O'Brien on her podcast. Yeah. That really does remind me of that. It's spooky. But yeah, so he was like, I have direct messages


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, most members at the church, they fully believed him, I think because


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[Assistant] They either believed fully in their faith or because they were scared into believing him. Yeah.


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[Assistant] And there were also some members in this congregation that said they were starting to receive messages and prophecies from God or they had all along and just realized it. Yeah.


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[Assistant] But those who didn't believe Pastor Robert were definitely scared into silence when one of these people spoke out and called him a false apostle. Uh oh. So that man who was brave enough to say that. Is it apostle or apostle? Uhm, I don't really know.


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[Assistant] So this man called him a fake apostle. There you go. It's losing all meaning at this point. It sure is. But that man and his entire family were excommunicated from the church, excommunicated, excuse me, from the church in a ten page letter that was actually written by P.B. Smith.


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[Assistant] So Robert was free to and continued to take the church in a more conservative direction at this point.


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[Assistant] And now he was insisting that they should be homeschooling their children.


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[Assistant] This is becoming a cult everybody. It absolutely is. Jesus. Now, since it was well known that Nick and PB were close, Robert didn't really have much interest in Nick when he first joined the church.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He figured Nick would probably just be kind of an extension of PB and not worth his time or somebody to push out. Yeah. So it kind of came as a surprise to the pastor.


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[Assistant] When Nick approached him and asked Robert to take him under his wing. Like Nick said to Robert, will you take me under your wing?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Charismatic man? A charismatic war man? Yeah, what the hell? Like what? I think- Like you look at this guy, do you want to be like him? Like, I mean cult leader. Power. Yeah.


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[Assistant] So even though he'd been close with PB for years, Nick clearly identified Robert as the stronger of the two, and that's why he wanted to align himself with him.


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[Assistant] But similarly, Robert saw Nick as a tool to help him achieve his goal of outstaying PB and just taking over the church once and for all as senior pastor.


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[Assistant] But anyways, by early 1997, Nick and Dawn had gotten really sick of moving around. They were moving around a lot. And obviously the inevitable cost that comes along with that.


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[Assistant] They were in like the little side business of flipping, flipping properties, but Dawn was also getting tired of that. She just wanted to move into a home.


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[Assistant] So when Nick found yet another fixer-upper for sale in East Bremerton,


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[Assistant] Don just reluctantly agreed that it was time for them to become homeowners. They were gonna buy this house.


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[Assistant] Fix it up, flip it, but not sell it. Okay. But she didn't want to do that, but she agreed because it's what Nick wanted.


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[Assistant] Yet another house to fix. Just defaults, yeaah. Right. But the thing was,


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[Assistant] She and Nick spent the better part of the winter and early spring remodeling.


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[Assistant] But by the spring of 1997 the cost of renovating and the second mortgage that they had taken out on the house put them very deeply into debt.


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[Assistant] They saw that Dawn seemed to be willing to do whatever it took to support Nick's dreams and she was. She absolutely was. It sounds like it. She worked really hard to always support Nick.


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[Assistant] But the renovation and the spiraling debt was really starting to put a strain on their marriage. And it went deeper than probably anybody could have imagined.


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[Assistant] Now one afternoon, Dawn met for- Dawn meant met. I kept saying meant. Dawn met for lunch with her friend Eunice. Eunice had also fallen on hard times recently, so she moved back in with her parents.


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[Assistant] But she was still surprised when Don confided in her saying, If Nick and I end up splitting too, I would never ever want to live with my parents. So Don is like, or Eunice is like,


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[Assistant] Oh, she's even mentioning the fact that like they could split. Yeah, like even putting that out there as a possibility. Like that's a big fucking deal. Yeah. So she laughed it off just like casually and was like, well, if that ever happens, you can live with me. Like don't worry about it.


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[Assistant] She was half joking, but Don apparently applied, uh, replied, okay, that might happen. Oh, yeah.


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[Assistant] I think it was like a very like passing exchange, but at the very least it suggested that Dawn was thinking of a world where Nick wasn't a part of her world anymore. And it was significant enough that Eunice remembered it years and years after Dawn had passed.


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[Assistant] Coming just from that. It was more Nick's reckless spending and irresponsibility with money in general. Like not just with the house, but with everything.


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[Assistant] If a congregant needed money, he would lend it to them, without any expectation that they pay the money back.


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[Assistant] Which is like very kind. Sure, absolutely. But like, but not when you're, when you can't, when you have a family, like you, you also have to have a responsibility to them. You gotta put your oxygen mask on first. Exactly.


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[Assistant] You know? So by 1997 he had started also funneling money into his latest dream project, which was a Christian youth camp.


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[Assistant] All in for this, and he actually even started eyeing some property in Jefferson County. He thought it was gonna be perfect for the camp.


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[Assistant] In fact, he thought that this was the camp that God wanted for him.


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[Assistant] And his feeling was only solidified further.


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[Assistant] When Sandy Glass, another member of the congregation, who claimed to have very frequent visions from God himself,


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[Assistant] She claimed that her latest and most prominent vision was that of a new church on a property just like the one Nick had seen for his youth camp.


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[Assistant] Interesting. Oh, she said she saw this new church prospering under Nick's leadership. Oh. And of course, with her own support, she would be more than willing to help and support. My goodness. Yay. Look at that.


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[Assistant] Just to tell you a little bit more about her, she came from a difficult background. She had really gone through her fair share of tragedy. She was only in her twenties at this point and


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[Assistant] A lot of stress and heartbreak for their family. Oh, she's going through it. She's only in her twenties at this point. So I can understand why she turned to God for sure.


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[Assistant] Oh absolutely, I can understand why a lot of people do. Yea. Absolutely. And that's all I'll say about that. Yea, exactly. Now, she didn't, she wouldn't let those things become excuses and I think, er,


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[Assistant] Yeah, she did her best to be a strong source of support for her kids and her husband, Jimmy. But by 1997, things with Jimmy hadn't been going well for a while. And money was tight. Because they were a single income household.


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[Assistant] Only relying on Jimmy's salary as a carpenter because Sandy was staying home with the kids.


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[Assistant] Or completely distance himself from the situation and go to the bar for hours and hours and hours. Oh no, and they have kids? Yeah. So he's either there and like they're fighting or he's not there at all. Yeah.


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[Assistant] It's sad. Now, like a lot of the other couples at Christ Community Church, Sandy and Jimmy decided to turn to the church for help with their marriage, with the deliverance counseling.


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[Assistant] In their case, that meant turning to Nick Hackney and again, the Deliverance Counseling Program.


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[Assistant] To which I say big fucking yikes. Uh oh. And Jimmy's parents also said big fucking yikes. Oh really? James and Mary Glass, they were like, I don't know about this.


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[Assistant] They thought that Sandy and Jimmy's decision to turn to the church for help.


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[Assistant] Especially during like family gatherings and events that she would have, even if she was the host, she would walk away and excuse herself and be on the phone with Nick for like, way too long, just privately. What the fuck? It was weird. Yea, that's inappropriate.


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[Assistant] It is. And Jimmy's parents, James and Mary, they weren't the first members of the congregation to notice that Nick seemed to pay not only special attention to Sandy, but just to the women in the congregation in general.


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[Assistant] Oh Nick. Actually when Nick took over the counseling program a couple years before,


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[Assistant] There were multiple people that complained about them, about him.


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[Assistant] One woman actually went to Pastor Robert about Nick and said all he wants to do is talk about sex. And for that reason, she didn't want to go to the church for counseling anymore. She was like, I'm at the point where like I want to look outside of the church for counseling because this asshole that you have running it,


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[Assistant] Now, Pastor Robert's wife Pamela, she was yet another person who noticed how Nick was treating the women, and she was starting to get really ticked off and troubled by it.


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[Assistant] And she was like, you are too eager to involve yourself in people's marital issues, and especially their sexual problems, and you need to knock it off. Oh, I'm glad somebody was like, ya creep. Yeah, and I love that it was a woman. Hell yeah, Pamela. She was like, cut the shit. She literally told him, and this is a quote,


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[Assistant] This is marital abuse. You need to focus on Dawn, like, your wife. You need to comfort her, and Dawn needs to know that she's number one in your life. Good for her. So she was like, hey, why don't you focus on your own fucking family? Yeah, stop being weird.


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[Assistant] So Nick, surprisingly not one to welcome criticism, just brushed the conversation off and forgot about it.


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[Assistant] Pamela was the first woman to openly criticize him, but she probably wouldn't be the last.


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[Assistant] Other people at the church were being quiet about their opinions, but they also felt like Pamela did and like James and Mary Glass did.


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[Assistant] It was clear to them that Nick did not give a shit about Don's feelings at all.


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[Assistant] And they thought it was really gross how he threw himself head first into private issues, but at the same time they trusted PB, who was still with the church, and Pastor Robert


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[Assistant] I don't know if they trusted him, but I think they just didn't wanna pick any fights with him.


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[Assistant] So the church had almost been completely transformed by the fall of 1997.


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[Assistant] And in late August, Pastor Robert had officially pushed PB out. Oh no. As the senior pastor. And it was a decision that was actually backed by the church board. Oh no. So now that he wasn't in charge of the church, PB and his wife just headed off to Africa to do some mission work. I mean good for PB and his wife. I love it. I think they were like,


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[Assistant] But back at the church, the deliverance counseling sessions, they were starting to become routine and they were getting stranger and stranger and stranger. Nick was relishing in this newfound power and Pastor Robert was too busy to give a fuck. Too busy becoming a cult leader.


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[Assistant] The sad thing about telling this story is that because she passed away when she was so young,


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[Assistant] And because if she had spoken out against anything, it would have caused a huge uproar.


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[Assistant] We don't know how Dawn felt about all the changes going on in the church. And that's sad. Yea, and not only just the changes going on in the church, but the changes going on in her husband. Yea, her marriage. Like, we don't know how she felt about it, because one, she passed away so young, and also because


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[Assistant] Maybe she wouldn't have said it out loud because she took the conservative church doctrine very seriously.


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[Assistant] So even if she suspected that Nick was cheating on her or being inappropriate at the very least, it's not that likely that she would have confronted him. Because as part of the whole thing, it's like...


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[Assistant] Deal with it. Yep. Quietly. Quietly and with a smile on your face.


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[Assistant] So, you know, she may have been staying tight lipped about her suspicions, but by the end of the year, more and more people in the congregation were starting to notice that Nick was


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[Assistant] So more and more people were going to Pastor Robert to say like,


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[Assistant] The concerns were becoming so frequent that even Pastor Robert couldn't push them off. He tried his best, but they started, they were coming in probably daily at this point. When Pastor Robert is doing anything besides leading a cult, you know that it got intense. You know it's real. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Exactly. But instead of pulling Nick aside, he pulled Sandy aside.


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[Assistant] And he was like, hey, your relationship with Nick is inappropriate and you should focus on your husband, Jimmy, because your relationship is already fucked up. I'm sorry, can we talk to the church leader here instead? No, it's Sandy's fault. What are you talking about? She's a woman, of course it's her fault.


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[Assistant] So Sandy didn't receive this well, nor would I. Not well received. Not well received, me either. Now she maintained that she believed that God wanted her and Nick to be together. Oh, she literally said that.


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[Assistant] Yeaah, so like, essentially what she was saying is God wants me and Nick to be together, and if you don't believe that, then you don't believe in me, and fuck everybody else.


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[Assistant] Now, outside of the church, Sandy and Nick were barely hiding their affair, and it was taking a toll on literally everybody around them. Yeah. And this is really sad, I just wanna let you know, this is gonna bum you out big time.


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[Assistant] One day one of Sandy and Jimmy's kids went to their dad, upset and crying, and told him, Mom and Nick told us that after you die, Nick's going to be our new dad.


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[Assistant] That is fucked up in a way that I can't even describe.


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[Assistant] Ugh. It's beyond. These two are gross. But, Jimmy refused to entertain the idea that Sandy was cheating on him.


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[Assistant] Even still at this point when the affair was so public that even his kids were coming to him with it.


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[Assistant] So the tension in the Glass family was growing and growing and growing and it was dangerously close to a breaking point. Like dangerously close.


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[Assistant] And by Thanksgiving, the cracks were beginning to show even in Dom, who as we know usually put a brave face forward. She told two other women in the congregation,


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[Assistant] Things are not so good right now. I'm overwhelmed by everything. Our finances are a mess, but mostly I'm worried about Nick. I don't think I make him happy.


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[Assistant] He's never home. He's gone all the time. I don't even know if he wants me anymore. Oh, that's so sad. And what's sadder is she was trying everything she could do to make him happy. She was trying to lose weight, which she did not need to do. She was beautiful. She was just doing anything she could think of.


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[Assistant] So the woman in the congregation, they tried to reassure her, and they were like, whatever is causing problems between you and Nick is not your fault. Like, please, and I'm happy that somebody told her that. Not like, yeah, like, try this diet, cause you know some people will do that. Absolutely, and it sounds like, you know, there were people around her who could have said that, so I'm glad that she had people who were like, no.


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[Assistant] Desperately wanted to be a mother. She wanted to have kids so bad.


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[Assistant] Just so fucking sad if you find yourself in that situation. Yeah, that you weren't, that you didn't talk about it beforehand or were honest with each other beforehand and now you're married and you're...


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[Assistant] And two totally different camps that way. And she feels stuck. And when you want kids. Yeaah. It is a feeling and a need that you simply cannot ignore. Like you just can't. Yeaah.


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[Assistant] When John and I decided we wanted kids, it was a desperation. Oh, I remember. When it was hard, and it took a long time, and we had to go through the fertility treatments, it was...


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[Assistant] Devastating. Of course it. The thought of not being able to was devastating. So I can't imagine what she was going through. I'm not even at the place right now where like we're talking about it obviously, but like


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[Assistant] Now, strangely, all of the chaos actually seemed to be affecting Nick too. By December, he seemed absolutely exhausted to everyone who knew him, which was a big change because normally, outwardly, he was very enthusiastic and like excited about church and being weird in deliverance counseling. But there were a few women in the congregation in particular,


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[Assistant] Who seem to be demanding his time more and more, other than Sandy.


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[Assistant] And then there was still Sandy, whose messages from God were growing more demanding.


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[Assistant] She was urging Nick that he needed to take action toward that dream of the youth camp. Oh yea. And as Christmas got closer, it seemed like there was something big that was going to shift. And it was going to be Nick who shifted it. So.


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[Assistant] Dawn woke up on Christmas morning to find that, like I said, she was sick with a cold. Remember I said that at the beginning.


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[Assistant] She'd been fighting a cold the previous day and when she woke up on Christmas it was even worse. She like didn't even want to go out.


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[Assistant] She and Nick took the ferry to the mainland that morning and they spent the day with her parents and her brothers.


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[Assistant] Later that night, they actually dropped by to see PB Smith's family.


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[Assistant] Uhm, they played board games and Nick made plans with PB's daughter Lindsay and two other friends to go hunting the next morning.


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[Assistant] Their friends had no idea that would be the last time they would see Dawn, obviously, because she died in a tragic fire. So the next morning, December 26th, Lindsay Smith and her husband Phil met Nick to go hunting just before Dawn, uhm, at the Hood Canal Bridge in Jefferson County.


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[Assistant] They spent a couple hours in the woods, but they never fired a single shot. There was nothing to hunt. To which I say, HA!


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[Assistant] But around 9am they decided they were going to call it a day because like nothing was going on. So they drove into town to have breakfast at a local diner.


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[Assistant] And as they were eating breakfast, Nick suddenly jumped up like out of nowhere and was like, Don and I still haven't had time to open our Christmas presents. And then he asked for the check and quickly headed home. Now the timestamp on the credit card receipt showed that it was nine thirty in the morning when that happened. So Nick would have made it home a little after ten.


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[Assistant] Now as we know, he did show up a little after ten.


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[Assistant] To his home completely engulfed in flames and heard the news that his wife Dawn had been killed in a fire.


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[Assistant] The blaze had been actually mostly confined to the bedroom at first, which now was like a burned out shell of what it had been. And the cause of the fire appeared to be a faulty space heater.


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[Assistant] Which escalated quickly due to quote, the abundance of newspapers and wrapping paper.


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[Assistant] And a collection of mini propane containers near the headboard on one side of the bed.


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[Assistant] Do you remember when earlier he just said they had him? Yeah. Yep. No, they did.


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[Assistant] And since Don wasn't feeling well, they just headed right to bed instead of cleaning up all the wrapping paper.


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[Assistant] And they were like, okay, totally. What about the propane tanks? Like, what's that about? I'm like, did you get propane tanks for Christmas?


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[Assistant] Yes. Oh, that's literally the ex- okay. Yes. Okay. He told the investigators that they had actually been a gift to him from Dawn.


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[Assistant] Because they were still using space heaters to heat the home throughout their renovation. Okay. Now overall...


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[Assistant] The death seemed to be an accident. It was truly a tragic one, but unfortunately in the winter months, a very familiar accident. A faulty space heater, poof, you're up in flames.


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[Assistant] So once the scene had been cleared, Pastor Robert showed up. Woohoo! Oh good. He was like, I'm here to help. Yeah, things weren't chaotic enough. Let's bring this guy in. He showed up and you know, he wanted to try to provide support and comfort to Nick.


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[Assistant] That, I mean that like literally can't happen, so like that's really fucked up to do to someone. Of course it is. To place that kind of hope in there.


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[Assistant] But he had been doing that back at church. His sermons at the church had recently come to include the belief that certain people, those of the truest faith,


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[Assistant] Had the power to resurrect somebody from the dead. Okay.


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[Assistant] If that is a belief system that people are holding here, that this could happen, that is a very reasonable thing to say. And something that I can absolutely go, oh, yep, I get it. For sure. Like that would be...


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[Assistant] So, even though their relationship had gotten off to a rocky start, Robert always knew Nick to be among the most faithful in the church. So the fact that he refused to even try to raise Don from the dead, it struck Robert as strange. He just went...


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[Assistant] So instead, Nick asked Robert if he could inform Dawn's family of the death.


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[Assistant] Which Robert also thought was strange. He was like, you want me to go tell them? And Nick was like, yeah, I do.


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[Assistant] I just can't bring myself to do it. Yeah. And he was like, okay, no problem. So the news made its way.


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[Assistant] Through the church congregation very quickly and a lot of the congregants were absolutely shocked by this. Nobody expected Dawn to pass away in a house fire. Like, why would you ever?


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[Assistant] So they formed a prayer chain to pray for Don Sol, which, that's nice. But at the same time, not everybody was so quick to accept this explanation of what had happened. Sandy's mother-in-law.


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[Assistant] Mary Glass had a lot of insight into the tensions at church, not only with just like her daughter-in-law and that whole side of the marriage, but she, she seemed to have eyes on everything in the church. Okay. She knew what was up.


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[Assistant] And she suspected that Dawn's death was not an accident. Oh, look at her. She did not think so.


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[Assistant] And she told her husband, she was like, I don't think it's an accident. Like, I don't know if we should go talk to somebody about this.


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[Assistant] If Nick really had something to do with the fire, the police will certainly discover that in their investigation and we need to keep our noses out of this.


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[Assistant] Mary was quickly proven wrong. Just days later, the fire and Don's death were ruled accidental.


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[Assistant] And the Bremerton police handed the investigation off to Safeco Insurance Company, who had already received Nick's request to process Don's life insurance claim. Huh. Which he was struggling with money, so sure. Yeaah.


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[Assistant] Some people were like, okay, yeah, her death was an accident, and you know, Nick is just a victim of cruel circumstances. So the church community held a celebrations of life event as a funeral for Dawn, and they invited family and friends to tell stories and just celebrate Dawn's life while they grieved her death. Nick ended up giving a 45 minute eulogy.


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[Assistant] And some people were like, how is he capable of being so clear so soon after his wife tragically died? To give a 45 minute eulogy?


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[Assistant] But then on the other side of things, people were like absolutely touched by it and thought it was beautiful. I was going to say, then there was probably that whole, and also the fact that he's a pastor. He's a pastor. That's his whole thing. This is what he does. Turn to God in tragedy. Exactly.


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[Assistant] So with the house destroyed by the fire, Nick moved in with the Smith family, actually.


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[Assistant] He moved into their daughter Lindsay's old bedroom, and around that time, some people started noticing how strangely hot and cold he was when it came to the subject of Dawn's death.


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[Assistant] At times, he seemed like he was almost performatively grief-stricken.


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[Assistant] And then there were other times where it seemed like he couldn't be bothered to even think about Don.


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[Assistant] Now one day when Lindsay came back to the house to get some of her things.


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[Assistant] She found a photo collage of Dawn that she'd made for Nick, and probably for the funeral.


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[Assistant] And she found it stuffed into the back of her bedroom closet. And she was like, at first she was like, that's weird. And obviously like Nick must have been the one to stuff it back there. But then she said,


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[Assistant] To yourself, it must have been really hard for him to look at that every day. Okay.


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[Assistant] Fair. So in the weeks and months that followed, it's just Nick's way of grieving was a constant answer to a myriad of bizarre, callous and rude behaviors by Nick.


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[Assistant] He snubbed his neighbors, he kept having inappropriate relationships with young women from the church, and he seemed to be using his widower status to try to make other people feel bad for him.


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[Assistant] Yeah. I don't like it. I don't either. Just months after Don's death, he started confiding in several women from the church, including PB's daughter Lindsay.


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[Assistant] Oh. The one married to his friend Phil. Oh. Yeah, uh huh. But rather than see his behavior as extremely inappropriate, all of these women seemed honored that a leader of the church had chosen them to trust with his most inner thoughts, his innermost thoughts.


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[Assistant] So some people, they made sure to keep their relationship platonic and just, you know, be a shoulder to lean on.


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[Assistant] Nick was able to manipulate Don's own mother into thinking he was a suffering widow, and they too slept together. Not long after Don's death.


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[Assistant] I was, I don't need, like I'm shocked right now and I already knew that obviously. When I, I was reading it in the book and I was like, oh.


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[Assistant] My God. And for those that are going to read A Twisted Faith, just know that it


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[Assistant] It's a little graphic in that scene. Oh my. So I'm gonna move on now.


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[Assistant] Nick just kept on abusing his power and taking advantage of his congregation. He's a fucking filthy animal. He kept taking advantage of his congregation for a few more years.


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[Assistant] But it got to the point where the complaints were too numerous for the church board to ignore because now people were not, they were going over, uh, fucking Robert's head there to the board and being like, what are you going to do about this?


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[Assistant] Glad that you guys were taking it seriously. So they couldn't ignore it at this point. He wasn't just carrying on affairs with a few women, that would have been bad enough, but there were some cases where he was clearly just leading women on and taking advantage of them. I'm so confused by this.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so these women, obviously they felt completely betrayed and victimized and they weren't gonna let things go. Yeah. So finally in the spring of 2001, they had a church board meeting about the issue and it was decided that Nick needed to leave Christ Community Church. Damn, finally. Not only like, did he get like demoted, he had to leave the church. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Now some congregants called for forgiveness, but a majority seemed happy to see him go. And they were happy because


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[Assistant] So being kicked out of the church that he devoted almost a decade of his life to was a big blow to Nick.


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[Assistant] But it was just the beginning of his troubles. Oh. Because on April 10th, 2001, Sandy Glass and her lawyer sat down with the county district attorney


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[Assistant] According to Sandy, Nick called her on the morning of December 26th and all he said, this cryptic motherfucking asshole of a loser, said, I did it.


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[Assistant] Before the call was interrupted by another incoming call.


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[Assistant] So Sandy put Nick on hold to answer the other call, which was actually somebody from the church calling to say, to tell her what had happened to John.


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[Assistant] And she was like, what are you talking about? And all he would say to her was, it's done. What? It's done.


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[Assistant] So maybe she was too scared or maybe she didn't want to know, but Sandy allegedly didn't ask Nick for further clarification until a few weeks later.


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[Assistant] And when she finally asked him what he meant, according to Sandy, Nick told her that on the morning of the fire this is terrible and graphic. He had given Don a large overdose of Benadryl.


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[Assistant] And then covered her face with a plastic bag to smother her.


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[Assistant] She literally watched her husband kill her. Through a plastic bag. Through a plastic bag in their bed. Oh. In their home.


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[Assistant] That's horrific. So once he was sure that she was dead, he scattered old newspaper and wrapping paper around the room and under her body.


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[Assistant] I'm sorry, we ignored that to begin with? We didn't ignore it, no, but we came up with a very fucking weird, bizarre reason for why that happened. Or, why in one of the photos of Dawn's corpse taken immediately after the fire was extinguished,


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[Assistant] Why you could see paper lying underneath her body? I don't know how anybody didn't question that. Wow.


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[Assistant] I think some people looked the other way because this was a pastor. I mean, this is wildly botched. Wild, wild. The fire marshal at the time said he never forgot about this case all throughout the years. He was like, I didn't think it was an accident. But he, there was, it wasn't up to him to decide.


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[Assistant] All she could say was that she was too afraid she'd lose her kids if the police thought she was involved, which I understand, but wow.


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[Assistant] She also had been thoroughly manipulated by Nick to think that their relationship was what God wanted for them and it was only after she learned that he was


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[Assistant] Stepping out on her too with other women in the church that she realized she was being used.


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[Assistant] She realized the relationship was not what God wanted.


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[Assistant] This is wild. Wild. So this, yeah. It was enough for investigators to reopen the case and look into what Sandy alleged. Yeah. So they revisited the evidence that had been collected in the initial investigation.


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[Assistant] And in talking to those folks, they learned all about the other women that Nick had been having affairs with. Oh no. And investigators also reviewed the original autopsy results with the forensic pathologist.


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[Assistant] He was trying to set it all up. But there were also signs of her having been dead before the fire started. Like I said, no soot in her lungs.


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[Assistant] In the original autopsy it was noted that there was no carbon monoxide in her lungs.


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[Assistant] And once blood work was done, there was no carbon monoxide in the blood.


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[Assistant] Like you were just saying, that was something that did stick out to the forensic pathologist initially because carbon monoxide always attaches itself to red blood cells in a case like this. And if a person is breathing while a fire rages around them, they will sure as shit have some fucking soot in their lungs. Absolutely. But.


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[Assistant] This pathologist was working under a preconceived idea that the fire was accidental and this was a pastor's wife. There couldn't be


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[Assistant] There couldn't be murder involved here. No way. That's wild. That's looking the other way. Of course it is. Like there's no... To put that along with them being like, it is weird that she didn't move at all while being burned alive. Like, Benadryl?


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[Assistant] You're telling me Benadryl makes it so you don't feel your flesh burning? Like, I'm sorry, she would have moved a little. And maybe it was because it was five times the amount, but even still I would think. It doesn't paralyze you, it doesn't kill all the nerves in your body, you're gonna feel it.


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[Assistant] And your body's gonna move a little bit. You're gonna at least attempt to move or shift. And for them to take that and also take that along with the fact she didn't have sit in her lungs and along with the fact that there was propane tanks. It's like, and to not look at that and go,


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[Assistant] A real big look into why there wouldn't be any soot or carbon monoxide in the blood or the lungs. Yea, they went really hard in proving why that is all not weird at all. Instead of looking the other way and going, well, that's weird.


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[Assistant] What they did was, they kept researching for some reason why this case would be different, and they found their reason in a medical journal. That's, no.


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[Assistant] So the article that supported the pathologist's belief that this was still accidental.


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[Assistant] Pointed to something called a laryngospasm. Laryngospasm.


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[Assistant] Essentially in a flash fire like the one at the Hackney's house, apparently it is possible for the larynx to suddenly close off, and the airway is sealed because of the high heat.


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[Assistant] But now, that Sandy had offered up what she knew and it sounded like Nick had killed Dawn before setting the fire, and considering all of this newly found evidence, the prosecutor's office felt like there was enough to move forward.


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[Assistant] And so a warrant for Nick's arrest was issued. Good. And the pathologist changed the cause of death.


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[Assistant] Because of this lady saying all of this and being like, yeah, I know he did it. Like, I know that this happened. He admitted it to me. And then you put it along with all that stuff. It's like, okay, I know rare things can happen that laryngeal, laryngeal spasm or whatever it is. That can happen.


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[Assistant] Come on. Right. And how specific it was. Yeah. And like there's like newspaper and wrapping paper under her body. Yeah. When he just told his friends that morning that they hadn't opened Christmas gifts yet. And then immediately got to the house fire and was like, Oh, we opened Christmas gifts last night and we haven't even cleaned up. And it was propane tanks. Yeah. Wild.


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[Assistant] So yeaah. So yeaah. On the afternoon of September 12, 2001, detectives did arrest Nick in the parking lot of a Kinkos for the murder of his wife.


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[Assistant] He immediately insisted that he had absolutely nothing to do with Don's death, and this was all a conspiracy being carried out against him by the members of Christ Community Church, particularly Pastor Robert.


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[Assistant] He insisted to the investigators you have no idea what these people are capable of. Wow.


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[Assistant] But regardless of his denial, Nick was booked on a charge of first degree murder the next day and his bail was set at $750,000. Bye bye. So the news of his arrest came as a shock to a lot of people in Bremerton and


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[Assistant] So for a little stretch there at least, he was a well-respected youth pastor and a leader in his community, and now people were portraying him as a manipulative, philandering murderer, like stark contrast there.


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[Assistant] After collecting the insurance payout from Dom's policy,


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[Assistant] Nick couldn't even be fucking bothered to purchase a headstone for his wife's grave. Shut the fuck up. He took out her entire life insurance policy and got all of that money and it wasn't much.


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[Assistant] But still, it would have been enough to pay for a fucking headstone. Anything. Anything. A marker.


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[Assistant] Wow. It was literally like a taped piece of paper to the area. That tells you something. Of course it does. Piece of fucking shit.


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[Assistant] And instead of spending the money on what he should've, the headstone, he quote, took several women shopping for new clothes. Yeah, fuck this guy. So hard. Sooooo hard.


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[Assistant] Now just for the comfort of everybody's mind, like all of us in this room and all of us out there in the world, luckily a victims rights organization did end up paying for a headstone for Dawn, so she has one. That's amazing.


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[Assistant] The fact that a victim's fucking rights organization had to do that?


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[Assistant] Thank goodness they exist. Yeah. What about anybody else that loved her? Jesus fucking Christ.


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[Assistant] So, some of Nick's former congregants from the Paul's Boa offshoot of Christ Community Church, so it's like a sister church, I guess, I don't know. They showed up at the hearing to support him.


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[Assistant] Uh, you're on trial or you're about to be for the murder of your wife? This isn't a game of Monopoly. There's no get out of jail free card or like I promise I'll come back. Like hey, just...


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[Assistant] Burned your wife in a fucking house fire after suffocating her with a plastic bag, and you just think that you're gonna walk out of here after drugging her. Yes, thank you, there was also that. Make sure you include that.


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[Assistant] Obviously the judge was unmoved to say the least. Thank goodness. And he only reduced the bond to $500,000, which nobody was gonna be able to pay to get him out.


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[Assistant] So on September 17th, Nick went before a judge where he pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder. He also again,


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[Assistant] Claimed that this entire thing was a plot against him by the former church, led by Pastor Robert. And he also claimed, are you ready?


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[Assistant] That Pastor Robert had placed a curse on him, and the reach of his diabolical influence was just so much deeper than the police or anybody could possibly comprehend.


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[Assistant] You have no idea, I have been cursed.


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[Assistant] I have no idea he is correct about that. Oh, I have no idea. I have no idea. How? You really thought in a court of law you could look up at the judge and say,


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[Assistant] You couldn't possibly comprehend how diabolical this pastor is. He cursed me. Couldn't possibly. Sir. Couldn't possibly comprehend. Sir.


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[Assistant] This is a court, is what the judge said. No, this is a Wendy's. This is, this is better than a Wendy's. Not surprisingly, the judge, uh, was not interested in talks of curses or conspiracies and he said, okay, trial date, November 7th, see you there, asshole.


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[Assistant] Probably a little more eloquently. Probably. Now while Nick was in jail awaiting his trial, uh, the Kitsap County Prosecutor's Office was obviously building their case against him.


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[Assistant] In early October, Deputy Prosecutor Neil Watcher, or Watchter, excuse me,


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[Assistant] Announced that they were considering changing the original charges to aggravated first degree murder. Which meant that Nick could face life in prison without the possibility of parole.


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[Assistant] Now the change in charges was because of the arson of it all.


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[Assistant] The prosecutor's office was considering it, considering it an aggravating factor.


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[Assistant] Prosecutor Russ Haug, I think it is, assured the press that they weren't going to go for the death penalty.


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[Assistant] Goodbye. As part of their investigation, Jesus Christ, I keep saying Jesus Christ through that and it's very ironic. I know. Cause I don't know if I usually say that. I was gonna say cause I don't even think you usually. No, it's just coming to me in the moment. It's happening. It's a, it's a vision. But the prosecutor started collecting testimony from the women that Nick was having affairs with at the time.


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[Assistant] Three of those women were willing to give testimony, but one of them, named Nicole, was now engaged to Nick.


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[Assistant] Shut up. They had gotten engaged. Shut up. And she was refusing to cooperate.


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[Assistant] Nick and Nicole actually were planning to get married and then move to Tennessee at the time that he was arrested. Yea, I bet they were. Like they were already planning it when he was arrested. But they were planning to move to Tennessee, so the prosecutor's office was like, uh,


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[Assistant] No, don't reduce his fucking bail. And they also had to get a court order to compel her testimony.


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[Assistant] And they were like, yeah, like, he's gotta run away to Tennessee and complicate this whole case further. Do not let him out.


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[Assistant] And luckily, at the final bail hearing in late October, the judge agreed with them and the bail was left at $500,000. And he said, killing of a wife is one of the most serious crimes in our system of justice. Like, you're not just gonna be able to go away for that. So, fall turned over to winter.


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[Assistant] And Nick's trial date kept getting pushed back for like different reasons. The prosecutors and the defense team were arguing over what was going to be admissible, what wasn't.


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[Assistant] But the gist is that the defense didn't want most of the affairs to be discussed because they, they claimed that they didn't start until after Don had died. Which, that's not true and like we can create a timeline.


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[Assistant] So, they were like, they can't be used as a motive, what's the point in talking about it? Shut up. It's like a character? Like, maybe? And then, relating to Sandy and Nick's whole affair,


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[Assistant] They couldn't argue that it was going on while Dawn was still alive, like it absolutely was. So they just argued that her testimony was questionable because she was a woman scorned.


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[Assistant] Nick was still counseling all of these women at the time. Yeah. One of which was the teenage daughter of his own mentor, P.B. Smith, Lindsay Smith. Mhm. And their argument was that Nick was laying the groundwork for sex through these counseling sessions. Eww. And he murdered Dawn to quote unquote free himself up for this. Eww. It's so gross.


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[Assistant] So the judge, Superior Court Judge Anna Laurie decided with, uh, excuse me, sided with the prosecution and noted that Nick, quote, had romantic attachments in the form of flirting hugs,


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[Assistant] Physical contact and intimate conversations with several women prior to the death and these relationships were sexually consummated once he was freed of the confines of his marriage. Wow. Yeah.


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[Assistant] So a few more delays, uh, after a few more delays, Nick finally went on actual trial on November 4th, 2002. In his opening statement, the deputy prosecutor, Neil


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[Assistant] Uh, watched her, told the jury in the early morning hours of December 26th, 1997, Nick had drugged his wife with a toxic dose of Benadryl.


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[Assistant] Placed a plastic bag over her head and suffocated her until she had died.


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[Assistant] Then to cover up the murder, he scattered and arranged a large number of flammable items around the room


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[Assistant] And they argued, obviously again, that he did all of this to free himself up to have relationships with all these other women.


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[Assistant] And not only that, but because he had put himself and Don in a shit ton of debt from his church activities and the home renovation.


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[Assistant] So he hoped to cash in on the life insurance policy to remedy all those financial troubles. This is so callous. It's so messed and they also said in their opening statements how he couldn't even use that money to buy a headstone for his wife.


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[Assistant] And how he spent a lot of it on women he was having affairs with. Yeaah.


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[Assistant] Now Mark Yelish, the defense attorney there, claimed of course that quote,


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[Assistant] So he tried to obviously put doubt in the minds of the jury, telling them that the prosecutor's office had to suggest otherwise was one jealous witness. That's all they had to- Oh, okay. To point away from this. Yeah, obviously.


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[Assistant] It's ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. So the prosecution called all four women that Nick was having affairs with around the time of Dawn's death to testify.


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[Assistant] And it was through these women that the jury learned about the heavy influence that the church had on their lives.


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[Assistant] And they also heard all about the visions and direct messages people claim to have from God that played a role in Don's death. Yeah?


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[Assistant] And how Nick used those visions as messages for justification and manipulation.


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[Assistant] Lindsay there, uh, formerly Lindsay Smith, she was married now.


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[Assistant] But she told the jury about how she had met Nick through her father, PB.


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[Assistant] And how she'd been groomed by Nick as a teenager. Uuuh.


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[Assistant] Just after Don died, they did engage in a sexual relationship.


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[Assistant] And the prosecution also introduced into evidence a large number of sexually explicit emails between Nick and Lindsay that contained quote


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[Assistant] A mix of protestations of love, fantasies about sexual contact yet to come, and attempts to explain to one another how God could allow what they were doing. Wow.


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[Assistant] I can't. Like can you hear the blink blink? I cannot. So some of the more important testimony came from the pathologist, Dr. Emanuel Lacina, who had performed the original autopsy on Don.


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[Assistant] Now like we know, his original report concluded, quote, a spasm in the woman's larynx when a flash fire engulfed in her bedroom must be the explanation for absence of soot in her lungs or carbon monoxide in her blood. That's a quote.


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[Assistant] But when he was informed by the police that they suspected Don had been murdered,


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[Assistant] He changed the results of the autopsy when he learned about more of the details, meaning the change was purely on the circumstances, not new evidence.


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[Assistant] So that was a little tricky. Ah, I was gonna say that can get a little hairy. It got a little hairy. Because the defense obviously used this to their advantage. Yeah. And they said, well, would you change your results if it turned out that Sandy's story was proven false? Yeah, would you like flip it back? And he said, yes, I would. So the defense pushed even further and they said,


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[Assistant] Does having a bag over one's head, like would that cause a violent reaction?


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[Assistant] But this backfired when the doctor noted that absolutely it would cause a violent reaction. What kind of question is that? But only if a person is fully conscious and at the time of her death


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[Assistant] Well, if he put a bag over her head, why didn't she fight back? And he was like, uh, cause she had five times the normal dose of Benadryl in her system and was immobilized. He had drugged her first. Idiots.


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[Assistant] They did everything they possibly could, the defense, to undermine the state's evidence against their client.


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[Assistant] But it was Sandy Glass that the defense attorney pushed the hardest. The case against Nick obviously rested a lot on Sandy's statement to the police that Nick had confessed to her.


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[Assistant] So they were determined to frame her as this jealous ex lover.


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[Assistant] Who wanted revenge when she found out about all these other women, of course. They pointed to the fact that Sandy never warned anybody about Nick before going to the police. Which is true.


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[Assistant] And the fact that she waited years before reporting about a murder.


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[Assistant] Yeaah. So the defense attorney asked her, and Annette was one of the women he was having an affair with. So that's the crazier thing.


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[Assistant] What got Sandy to the point of being like, this is wrong and I can't believe I've been going along with it for this long. Man, this is so messy. It is.


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[Assistant] But so, so he said, you know, you never warned anybody and you weren't scared yourself. So obviously suggesting she was lying. Yeah. Now finally he got at what he had been implying all along and he said, by accusing Mr. Hackney of murder, haven't you changed your role in the relationship as a victim that you were manipulated by a murderer? So he's like, you're just trying to rewrite history here. Eek. Trying to point to the fact that she herself


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[Assistant] But anyway, the trial lasted nearly two months until finally, on December 26th,


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[Assistant] 2002, which was super eerie because it was five years to the day since Dawn had been discovered. The jury retired for deliberation.


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[Assistant] They deliberated for less than a day and ended up siding with the prosecution and found Nick Hackney guilty of aggravated first degree murder.


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[Assistant] Nick Hockney returned to Superior Court, where he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility for parole.


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[Assistant] And he told the courtroom, which included Don's parents and family


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[Assistant] I didn't murder Don. There are a lot of things that I regret that I wish I could take back and undo.


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[Assistant] I'm sorry for the pain of going through this trial and losing your daughter. Dawn was kind and beautiful and true.


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[Assistant] She deserved better than me. I loved her with all my heart.


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[Assistant] No the fuck, you didn't. I'm gonna call bullshit on that. You don't place a plastic bag after drugging your wife over her head and then light your entire house on fire.


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[Assistant] When you love that person. Yeah, you don't know. I can confirm that. And, uh,


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[Assistant] And like they were just like yelling at him. The judge was about to call the room back into the, into order, but they both just left. I'm glad they were both like, you're fucking worthless. See you later. See you never.


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[Assistant] The fact, like I think they should be able to respond to that statement. Cause that's an absurd statement. It is. And I'm glad that they got to. Now unfortunately,


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[Assistant] Essentially what Nick's team argued was that the jury was not properly instructed on the aggravating factor thing. Because Dawn was already dead since Nick had suffocated her, the fire happened after the murder.


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[Assistant] And technically they were arguing it wasn't an aggravated factor during the course of murder because she was already dead.


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[Assistant] I don't know how you find that loophole and feel good about it. So yea, sometimes these little loopholes are like, really? Mhm, but it worked. With the appeal, he was still convicted of murder.


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[Assistant] But because it wasn't technically aggravated murder, the life sentence was thrown out and he was re-sentenced to 26 years in prison.


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[Assistant] I love that they were like, it wasn't aggravated murder because he didn't burn her alive. He just did that afterwards. He just put a bag over her head after drugging her, so that's not really aggravated. No, it's just, that's just murder. Yea, it's just straight up murder. Just murder, yea. Oh, okay. So that means he could get out within like the next several years.


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[Assistant] Awesome. And that is the tragic case of the murder of a beautiful, beautiful soul, Dawn Hackney. I know, like if you look up pictures of her, she just seems like such a sweet, kind, beautiful soul. I'm like, you are better than everyone in this story. Except your friend Eunice and like a few of the supporting people. Everyone. Yeah.


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[Assistant] She is better than all of these people. You deserved a lot better. She did. And the fact that life didn't give it to her pisses me off. Yeah.


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[Assistant] That sucks. It does. It was a really tragic case to research. But again, I really, really recommend that book, Twisted Faith. I was, it's a fucking page-turner. Yeah, it sounds wild. Yeah, and you can get it on the Kindle if you want, if you, if you like to do that. You can get it on the Kindle, everybody. You can get it on the Kindle, you can get a hard copy, it's available. It's available, you can just read it. Yeah, it's available. I'll link it in the show notes. Oh my god, that story. Cuckoo Nuts Bananas, and just senseless and so sad and like,


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[Assistant] Ridiculous, like the visions and all that. Yeaah. It's just too much. There's a lot. Yeaah, it is. That's what it is. It's too much. So, we need to go have a palate cleanser, I think. Yeaah, for real.


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[Assistant] Yeah, alright. Well, guys, we love you. We hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But that's so weird that any of this just go hug someone and touch grass. Yes, do all that.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's like, they all ended up like, you know. Yeah, I love it.


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[Assistant] I love that. I love you guys. I wanna write a ghost story now. I know, I love a good ghost story. Feeling so haunted.


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[Assistant] I also got you one as well, so that's very exciting. I appreciate that. Uhm, and I was talking about how wonderful but also how dangerous the TikTok shop is, because I've gotten a pickle sweatshirt


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[Assistant] And I was like, oh, TikTok shop. So the Lizzie McGuire shirt, which is fucking awesome.


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[Assistant] Is from the TikTok shop Elaine Sage Boutique. It's E-L-A-I-N-E S-A-I-G-E Boutique. Hell yeaah.


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[Assistant] And then the pickle sweatshirt that I got is from bad addiction boutique or boutique if you're nasty.


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[Assistant] And then I also got an electric spin scrubber. I mean, might as well just shout her out because my shower floor has never looked so lovely. And I got that. Where the fuck did I get that?


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[Assistant] Where the fuck did you get that? Well there's like 55 of them apparently. Where the fuck did you get that?


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[Assistant] Okay, so you're gonna have to just decide where you wanna get that from, cause it's not telling me where I got mine from. That's okay. Uhm, and you can get it from any outlets on TikTok Shop. But yeaah, I fucking love the TikTok Shop. I mean the TikTok Shop is pretty fucking great. And it's like supporting small business. It is.


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[Assistant] But I still love Etsy in my heart too, because I went over to Etsy and bought so much, uhm, Halloween stuff the other day.


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[Assistant] And so much Disney stuff the other day. Oh, look at you.


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[Assistant] Yeah, we're talking about a haunted mansion today, and then, like, while I was talk- while I was like doing this case, I was like-


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[Assistant] I wanna watch the Haunted Mansion and I want to go to Disney and ride the Haunted Mansion. She said, I want to go to there. I want to go to there.


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[Assistant] It's in Massachusetts. So yea, today we're going to talk about the S.K. Pierce Haunted Mansion.


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[Assistant] Oh it is, and he thinks that it's haunted as fuck. I'm pretty sure you can stay the night there if you want to, and uh,


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[Assistant] I mean Lizzie Borden had a vibe to it that I just think is unmatched personally. I've never felt that way in a haunted location before. I got almost like physically ill in one of the rooms.


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[Assistant] Like a visit and tour of the Conjuring House for our anniversary. That is the cutest thing ever. He, I, he like, I always pester him into telling me like what he's gonna get you for like Christmas and like anniversaries and birthdays and stuff. Yup. And he was like nervous about this. He was like, do you think she'll like it?


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[Assistant] I think she'll fucking love that. Like I think you're so smart. And he was like, is that like a good anniversary gift? I was like, that is THE anniversary gift for your wife. Truly the anniversary


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[Assistant] It's true. Alright, but yeah, we're going haunted, bitches. I'm bringing us to a haunted location in Massachusetts, like I said.


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[Assistant] And we're gonna start in the spring of 2009, and then we're gonna travel back. Let's start there. Let's start there, kid. So, oh, also sorry if my voice annoys you, I'm sick, but you'll live. I love you. It's sultry.


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[Assistant] She put her eyeballs up to the sky and she said, uh. So I don't know what that was, but it was great. It was like haunted sexy. Like I said, do sultry and you went, uh.


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[Assistant] In the spring of 2009, Edwin Gonzalez and his girlfriend Lilian Otero


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[Assistant] Which like also they should be in a Disney movie. I was like damn those names. Edwin and Lillian, gorgeous names. But they fled their house in Gardiner, Massachusetts after less than a year of living there.


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[Assistant] Now when they originally moved into this place, the S.K. Pierce Mansion, they thought that it was their dream house, but once they were safely away from this old Victorian mansion,


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[Assistant] They told their friends and family what really happened and it was far from a dream house experience. What happened in Gardena?


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[Assistant] Now obviously they didn't know it when they moved in, but their home, the SKPS mansion, had long been considered by locals to be haunted.


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[Assistant] And, and it's more than 100 year history. The home had seen its...


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[Assistant] Fair, probably more than its fair share of tragedies. Several people died there. Somebody actually died as recently as the 1960s. And aside from the deaths, there were countless other unsavory myths and legends about the house.


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[Assistant] But, and the fact that they sold it to a guy that like runs it as a haunted attraction raised some questions about their claims and raised some questions about the extent to which the rumours of the haunts were true.


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[Assistant] So, is the SK Pierce Mansion truly one of the nation's most haunted houses? Or is it nothing more than legends and a very clever marketing scheme?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So over the last 50 years or so, we're going over to Western Massachusetts, so I'm going to give you a little rundown on Western Mass. Let's go! Yeah, so over the last 50 years or so, Western Mass has gone through some pretty big changes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, the economy there is mostly fueled by, you know, tourism, education, the arts. I love Western Mass, it's beautiful. It is. But, back in the day, it was mostly fueled by manufacturing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Western Mass was one of the biggest manufacturing hubs in the Northeast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was famous for its production of hats, shoes, and furniture. All things I love.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But among the cities and towns that make up the area, the small community of Gardiner became known in the mid-19th century as Chia City. Chia City! Not there, Chia, not there problem.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At one point, Gardner was home to 12 furniture companies, which was a pretty high number back then, given the fact that the town only had a population of a few thousand people at the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Damn. So fierce competition if you were in the furniture business. I would say so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now Gardner was settled in the late 18th century and it quickly became one of Massachusetts main sources of lumber.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was just gonna say I feel like he was born to be important. Sylvester K. Pierce. And he's from Massachusetts, so I don't know why I keep putting like a weird, uh, Why not? Accent on it, but I'm gonna- It's like a little bit of a transatlantic accent that we're throwing in there. The way that I was just thinking that exact thing in my brain. We're vibing. Crazy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yea, he's a pretty important guy. I hope you can see where we're going here, cause Sylvester K. Pierce, S-K-L-O-L, yea, L-O-L.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Sylvester was the seventh child of Jonas Peirce in, I believe it's Oxaw Fairbanks, born in Westminster, Massachusetts, on April 11th, 1820. So quite some time ago. We love an 1800s moment. We do, and this moment was Sylvester.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So his life was marked by tragedy very sadly at an early age. His father actually died when he was only three years old.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And his mom did her best to keep the family together and she was successful at that for a lot of years. But probably because there were so many children, some eventually did have to be sent off to live with different relatives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So when Sylvester was 11, he moved to live with, uhm, relatives. I'm not quite sure who he went to live with at first. But then three years after he originally moved, he moved again, this time to live with his uncle Abraham.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, when he turned 15, Sylvester went to work for one of Gardener's earliest furniture makers, Elijah Putnam.