Nicole M. Saylor & Kayla M. Harris (7 & 8 of Hearts, Indiana)
2024-02-21 00:30:08
For years, some law enforcement agencies have replaced the faces of traditional playing card decks with images of missing and murdered people and distributed those cards in prisons hoping inmates would come forward with information needed to crack these cold cases wide open. Now, audiochuck is dealing you in. Each week, we will be working with investigators and family members to bring you the details of some of the coldest cases from around the country in hopes that someone listening can finally bring these victims the justice they deserve.
Our cards this week are Nicole M. Saylor and Kayla M. Harris, the seven and eight of Hearts from Indiana. When cousins Kayla Harris and Danielle Carter and their close friend Nicole Saylor all piled into Kayla's two-door coupe. After a long shift of serving drinks at a nightclub in Fort Wayne, Indiana, I imagine all three were looking forward to the same thing, going back to Kayla's place. Kicking off their shoes, pulling on some comfy clothes and climbing into a soft, warm bed on a chilly November Indiana night. But none of them would make it to the comfort of bed that night.
Two of them would never feel the comfort of bed again, they'd be gone before sunrise, and the third would be left fighting for her life. I'm Ashley Flowers and this is the deck.
It was Thursday morning in Fort Wayne, Indiana, when emergency service phone lines began lighting up. The first caller was a guy named Kamari, and he wanted to report a shooting, not just a shooting, multiple shootings. And the whole thing was still unfolding outside of his front door.
He could see a woman lying motionless on the ground near a front porch, and a different woman was running down the street as fast as she could, screaming. It didn't take long for Kamari to realize what she was running from, or, I guess, I should say, who? Driggling closely behind her was a man in a dark hoodie. And Kamari watched as he calmly raised his arm and fired in the woman's direction. One, two, three, four, five, at least six times. The fleeing woman dropped to the ground and the gunman calmly approached her, seeming to be in no hurry. But instead of unloading even more bullets as he towered over her, the gunman leaned down.
He was going through their pockets and flipping them, moving the bodies around, as if he was looking for something on their person or in their clothing.
The voice you just heard was Detective Brian Martin, with the homicide division of the Fort Wayne Police Department, Detective Martin told us. This gunman's strange behavior is backed up by another call that came in almost at the same time, also from the 200 block of East Sherwood Terrace. A man and a woman on this call said that they had heard multiple gunshots outside. And when they ran to the window to see what was going on, they also saw a man hunched over a woman lying on the ground in the street. They, too, thought it looked like he was going through her pockets. And when he found what he was looking for, or maybe he didn't, they couldn't really tell. He casually walked to another woman who was already sprawled out on the street nearby.
After rifling through her pockets as well, he then grabbed her by her hair and dragged her toward the first woman. Amidst all the horror unfolding before them, what stood out to this couple the most was just how unbothered this gunman seemed to be. He was relaxed, nonchalant, even like he had all the time in the world. It was only when he pulled on the door of a random car and set off its alarm that he took off, running into the dark.
When first responders arrived just minutes later, the scene that they found could only be described as one of carnage. By all appearances, the women had been ambushed right as they climbed out of a car. One woman was lying in a pool of blood near the porch, and it was clear almost immediately that she was beyond life-saving measures. She would soon be ID'd as 36-year-old Nicole Saylor, and she was declared deceased there at the scene.
There was still a chance for the other two women, still clinging to life and laying near each other in the street. They were identified as Nicole's best friend, Danielle Carter, who was 29 years old, and Danielle's 24-year-old cousin, Kayla Harris. The women were loaded into the same ambulance and rushed to the local hospital.
Kayla was pretty much out of it. She was very critically injured. She unfortunately passed shortly after arriving at the hospital.
Danielle, too, was in critical condition, but she survived the ride to the hospital and seemed to be holding on with doctors doing everything they could to stabilize her. It was touch and go at best. And even though investigators hoped that she would live to tell them who her shooter was, they didn't want to lose precious time. So they began processing the scene and interviewing witnesses. And slowly but surely, they began to piece together the outline of what had happened in those early morning hours, an outline of a targeted ambush. Another neighbor of Kayla's, named Donna, who had also witnessed parts of the shooting, had no doubt that the gunmen had laid in wait for these women.
Local media outlet Wayne quoted her as saying, ".
I knew it had to be personal. I mean, he took the girls out, he was there with that intent, Detective Martin agrees.
The gentleman had come from around the side of the home from the back and approached immediately, gun up. Nicole was down immediately and the next person shot would have been Kayla. It took Danielle a moment to get out of the car because she was in the back seat. She had to wait for the other ladies to get out of the car before she could get out the door.
While no weapons were recovered from the scene, shell casings were. We know that those were processed and entered into Nibin, but we don't know if they connected to any known weapons. We also asked Detective Martin if they had gotten any hits to casings from other crime scenes, but that was information he wanted to hold back. What he would share with us, though, is information about a piece of evidence that was missing from the scene.
Kayla was said to have a phone, but we did not locate a phone on Kayla's person. It would be logical to think that when it was described that the shooter was rummaging through the ladies pockets and moving them around. That it'd be logical to think that. Maybe that's what he was also looking for, and maybe retrieved it before we got on scene.
To investigators, this was just more evidence that whatever the motive for the shooting was, it was likely personal. Why else would the shooter have been so interested in Kayla's phone? Investigators were becoming more and more suspicious that she may have been the primary target of the shooting and that the other women were collateral damage. After all, it took place outside of her house, they'd all come from her car.
And this suspicion only grew as they began interviewing friends and family members of the women to learn more about them.
They found out that all three women were devoted mothers. Nicole had a 17-year-old daughter, Danielle was a mother of five, and Kayla had an 18-month-old little boy. And though Nicole and Danielle seemed to enjoy relatively conflict-free lives, Kayla wasn't so lucky. There were actually two men in her life that were sources of a lot of turmoil for her. The first was the father of her son, a man Detective Martin has asked us to refer to as X.
And the other was the husband that she was in the process of separating from when she died, who we'll call Z. Kayla's relationship with both men were complicated, to put it mildly. She had a long history with X, dating on and off through most of her teens and early 20s. Here's Kayla's mother, Carrie Freeze, describing their tumultuous relationship.
Ended up getting together, I think she was about 14, and her boyfriend and girlfriend. Even back then, Carrie had reservations about the relationship. For one, X was older than Kayla, but what bothered her more was that even as a teenager, he was known to experiment with drugs. He's a bad influence.
I was always trying to keep her away from him and whatnot, and it was impossible. As they got older, what had maybe started out as acts of teenage rebellion grew more serious in nature, and X began having frequent run-ins with the law. And this, unsurprisingly, was a source of tension in his relationship with Kayla.
Well, then he went to prison, they break up and then he'd get out, she'd get back.
With him, and that was just their routine. Now, the timeline here gets a little fuzzy. But what we know is that in the years leading up to the shooting, things between Kayla and X were rocky as ever. For a while, X was out of prison and they lived together in a rented apartment. But Carrie says that while Kayla was working two jobs to support them, X wasn't working at all. She also says that there was a lot of fighting around this time.
Much of it centered around suspicions Kayla had that X was being unfaithful, and then Kayla found out she was pregnant and X was less than supportive. Honestly, less than supportive is a massive understatement. Carrie says that he'd actually asked her, her, as in Kayla's mother, to maybe give Kayla a little push down some stairs. Presumably hoping to induce a miscarriage.
I'm sure he would say that he was just making a joke, but who the fuck jokes like that? So when he wound up facing more prison time during Kayla's pregnancy, she ended the relationship. They just lived in a different world. My daughter needed to be with somebody all the time, she couldn't be with somebody in prison.
It just was never going to work for her. Before long, Kayla met someone new. This is the man we're referring to as Z, and he eventually became her husband. It's not 100 clear if they tied the knot before or after. She gave birth to her son, but either way, when she did, it was Z who stepped in in the fatherly role. She even gave her son one of his middle names.
But that rubbed X the wrong way, which is ironic considering his reaction to the pregnancy news in the first place. But there wasn't much he could do about it. He was serving a multi-year prison sentence, and Kayla and Z were raising her son. But in late February of 2017, the tables suddenly turned. By. Now, X had completed his sentence and it was Z who had a run-in with the law.
And when he did, he took Kayla down with him. The two of them were both charged with a string of drug-related offenses. And the Department of Child Services removed Kayla's son from her care and put him into a foster placement. In the months between this arrest in February and when the shooting happened in November, Kayla did everything in her power to get her son back. Seemingly up to, and including ending her marriage to Z. And if this next part isn't devastating, I don't know what is.
According to Kerry, when Kayla was killed, she was just days from receiving the court's blessing to be reunified with her son. So, all told, it was abundantly clear to investigators from the jump that they needed to take a hard look at both X and Z. And they started with X bringing him in that same day for questioning.
He actually came to the station and provided his whereabouts and talked about his evening activities, who he was with and was extremely upset.
Kerry also talked to X that day, and she felt as though his distress was sincere. He was bawling so hard I could hardly understand what he was saying, He was hyperventilating and that was someone in pain. He was also able to provide investigators with an alibi, while it wasn't the strongest alibi in the world, it did seem to check out.
And actually claimed to be at home in bed. At the time of the shooting, he was with a female who confirmed that story.
X was adamant that he didn't have any involvement in the shooting. But that's not to say he didn't have a theory about who might have been behind it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his suspicions revolved around Z.
Mr. X believed that narcotics could have been involved. There was some information that Mr. Z had been possibly selling narcotics out of the residence. On Sherwood Terrace, it was pretty common knowledge that there was some narcotics history or drug dealing going on at that house on Sherwood Terrace.
And that was just a theory that was presented by Mr. X. I believe he knew about the arrest and he blamed Mr. Z for that. And I think he also blamed Kayla in a way. But I think it was easier for him to blame Mr.
Z Because he had kind of stepped into that role of being the new man in the life, if you will.
But there was a wrinkle in any theory that pointed to Z as the shooter.
At the time of the shooting, I believe that he was actually incarcerated, and obviously that plays into how we investigate a crime. You can't very well be sitting in jail and be involved in a shooting out on the street.
But what if Z wasn't the shooter, but was still somehow involved in the crime?
So Mr. Z had been talking to other individuals and we were getting some information from other sources that were talking about this being a possible quote-unquote hit. And when I say hit, we're talking about somebody received some kind of financial gain for killing these ladies. And you know, when somebody does a hit, it can be to pay off a debt. It can be they were going to be given money, or they could have been settling a drug dispute or given drugs in lieu of money.
Which is all to say that Z remained firmly on their list.
Mr Z had to be thoroughly vetted and investigated for the possibility that maybe he helped set this up or orchestrated the killing of the ladies and the shooting of Danielle.
Did you catch that Danielle was still alive? And actually more than just that, in the middle of them, looking into X and Z? Danielle, who was already in protective custody in the intensive care unit of a local hospital, had regained consciousness. By the grace of God, or the universe, or Lady Luck herself, she was awake and ready to talk.
From interviews with Danielle and what investigators pieced together from official reports, the reality of what Danielle survived was harrowing. Reporting in the journal Gazette indicated that Danielle was quote shot 10 times twice in the right ankle, once in the left knee, twice in the left arm. She also suffered four shots to the chest that miraculously didn't touch any of her organs, and another shot in the back. That shattered her hip and pelvis and nicked a tiny portion of her colon. So Danielle had been shot 10 times and was on the ground but still alive. They realized she wasn't dead, so they came over with the pistol.
Now the clip's gone, so he's not able to shoot her no more. And then he started beating her to the point where he broke every bone in her face with that pistol. They went. This part's hard to believe. Hey, they grabbed Kayla by her hair and drug her all the way down the street, so she's back with the other girls. She was still alive when she reached out and grabbed Danielle's hand.
Here's their aunt, Tiffany Butler, recounting Kayla's final words to Danielle.
And that was when Kayla told her what she suspected that she knew. And they laid there and tried to keep each other present until help got there. Kayla told Danielle before she passed away that she knew who did it. I don't know if she said that she knew the shooter, but she said she knew that he hired the guy.
This information wasn't completely new. Those closest to Kayla knew that she'd been getting threatening text messages from X. Death threats. Pretty much.
He had told her numerous times that she would get the baby back over her dead body. Like, flat out told her she would never get the custody of the baby. That he would kill her first, and he had told her that numerous times.
And now here. It was, days before she was supposed to get her son back, and Kayla was dead.
That's why the girls were together, because they had just gotten off work and they were going to Kayla's house to put the crib together and finish putting the new nursery together for the baby to come later that day.
Now this is where Detective Martin gets a little cagey, with our reporter declining to specify which man he believes to be behind the shooting. Not wanting to tip his hand. In an open investigation, he won't even confirm that X was the name Kayla gave to Danielle. But as far as we understand, Z had never made threats about custody of her son, but either X or Z. Detective Martin confirms that information continued coming in, suggesting that the entire thing had been set up by one of them.
There began to be information coming in on this case that this did appear, and there was a lot of talk that this was actually somebody. And I won't say whether it was Mr. Z, Mr. X, who indicated that they would pay money to have the girl shot and killed.
Except, either way, it had to have involved someone else.
Danielle was able to provide a description of a male white, wearing dark clothing I believe he had on a blue or dark colored hat, and described tattoos on the gentleman's face. Danielle said that the night of the shooting. That the shooter actually stood over her when he punched her in the face, and that she felt that she could possibly identify him.
Now, both X and Z were white men with facial tattoos, just like the gunman described by Danielle, But here's the thing Danielle knew both X and Z. Before this, she would have recognized either one of them, she would have also recognized their voices. But when the gunman yelled at the women to shut up amidst all the chaos, the voice, like the face, was that of a stranger.
This is when Detective Martin brings up a third man, a man he has asked us to refer to as Y, a white man that he confirms. Like X and Z had facial tattoos, Y is who investigators suspect to have been the actual trigger man.
The individual who I believe is a very viable suspect may have been incarcerated around the time of this, or shortly thereafter. Turned themselves in on a warrant, an outstanding warrant.
Detective Martin confirms that Y was interviewed by the original investigators on the case. He was even fairly cooperative, but for whatever reason, the investigation kind of fizzled out. He acknowledges that there is more work to be done and that Y was at the top of the list of people he'd like to speak with.
As the Cold case investigator, I would definitely like to run through a full interview myself with this individual. There are some questions I would like answered, there are some details I'd like clarified, and there's definitely information I think that could be gained from a follow-up interview.
Ironically, since our interview with Detective Martin, Carrie reached out and indicated that she'd heard Y recently passed away. And while we haven't been able to confirm this, it's a good reminder that the longer cold cases go unsolved, the more likely suspects are to evade justice, and critical sources of information are often lost. And here, Detective Martin gets a little philosophical about the whole thing about cold cases in general, and about his cold case specifically, about what drives cold case detectives. To pick up these older files, take another look and retread old ground.
Any case, any cold case, any active case. Obviously, our goal is justice for the victims answers and justice for the family.
So let's talk about the victims for a moment. Because in the blink of an eye, two women were ripped away from their families, away from their kids, and a third woman had her life permanently altered. As I mentioned toward the beginning of this episode, Nicole Saylor had a daughter who was 17 years old when her mom was killed. She was just on the cusp of adulthood, but still young enough to need her mother's love and guidance desperately. And old enough to fully appreciate the immeasurable depth of what she lost that day.
Another reporter for the local Fort Wayne news outlet, Wayne, explained that quote. The 17-year-old describes her mother as a strong woman, a great mother and a loyal friend. Faith said many people did not know about her mother's love for art or her passion for politics. If you looked at my mother, she didn't seem like the woman who would have a strong opinion about what's going on in the world. But she had her strong suits and knew exactly what she believed in. It goes on to quote Faith as saying I was her love, I was the one that she had in her heart.
My outlook on life is that it's only worth living for the people that are around you and the people that you love. My mom was one of the only people I loved, so for her to be gone, it really took a toll and left a gap in my heart. End quote A year after the shootings, Faith was interviewed again, this time for the Journal Gazette. Faith said that she found out something was wrong when she got a Facebook call from a friend of her mom's at around nine that fateful morning, telling her that she needed to go to the hospital as fast as she could.
So she did. She raced to the hospital, begging someone, anyone to tell her her mom's room number, to take her to her mom, only to be told that there wasn't a room number. And she couldn't be taken to her because her mom was already gone. That she had died on the cold, hard ground outside of a car that she had stepped out of in those dark, early morning hours. In the same interview, Faith said that she had to leave Fort Wayne, a city marked by reminder after reminder of what she had lost, a city of ghosts for her. She left it all together.
And she'd since moved to Kentucky, where her father lived. And she said quote I was like a mess every day. Carrie Freese makes clear that the loss of a daughter is no easier than the loss of a mother. I hope whoever is listening knows that they took her away.
They ruined a lot of lives when they took her from the world.
Her friends, everybody still miss her.
They still write me these girls.
They love her so much. Carrie has no doubt what Kayla's life would have looked like today if she hadn't been so senselessly struck down. That day in November. She'd be raising her baby and being a perfect mom, because she was a great mother for the short time she got to be one.
It's all she ever wanted was her own baby.
Tiffany agrees.
She loved her baby more than anything in the whole world, that was her entire universe.
Though Detective Martin declined to indicate which man he suspects put why up to the shooting, Carrie and Tiffany have no doubt about it. Had been breaking in her house, been stalking her at work two days before she died, told her that he'd put a bullet in her before he'd seen her get.
Back.
And she was due to get back the Thursday after he killed her. She told my mom, grandma, If something happens to me, I need you to promise me you won't.
Let them have. They were going to have something notarized and he killed her before.
To add insult to injury, following her death, Kayla's son was put in the care of X's family, which is where he remains to this day.
Because of the obvious contention between the two families, ever since that time, we have not had any contact with him. We have our concerns about being with them, obviously, but we have no idea how he's doing, We don't know where he is, we don't know anything.
Carrie did have the opportunity to briefly speak with the child recently. He's no longer the 18-month-old toddler he was when his mom was killed, according to Carrie. He turned eight in January.
I want justice for my kid.
I want justice for my son, he deserves that, and he told me she's with him, he said. My mommy kisses me on my forehead every night before I go to sleep. Danielle, the quote-unquote lucky one who survived the shooting, had her life upended in ways that are almost impossible to fully comprehend.
Her left leg was shattered, I think it shattered her pelvic bone. I think that night she had to have like three emergency surgeries just to like, put her back together enough to like keep her with us. And then she ended up having to have several more. She was in a wheelchair for quite some time.
She had to relearn how to speak, how to write, she had to relearn, like everything. I know. There was a period of time that she had to give up custody of her children because of her health condition.
Tiffany says More than anything, though, it's Danielle's resilience that stands out to her.
Danielle is so strong, I look at her now. I'm floored. To see her now, to see what she's doing with her life and to see how she has come out of this. I mean, I just I don't think I could do what she's done.
As for Detective Martin, he remains committed to delivering justice to those who lost so much on that dark, cold morning of November 9th, 2017. The ones who are still here, and the two who are gone forever. And he believes that this case is solvable.
I believe that the tips that could really move this case along are individuals who have direct knowledge. And I understand that there may have not been anybody else who was out at the scene who witnessed it, and I would call an eyewitness. But I believe that there are individuals that have been present when conversations have happened, whether it was a conversation with Mr. X, Mr.
Y Mr. Z. Where they maybe they claim credit for something, maybe they talked about, hey, I was given this much money, hey, this happened. Or even better, maybe one of those individuals was bragging about paying to have this done.
And if somebody would come forward and be able to articulate and tell me that and about when it was. That's information that can take us in the right direction and solve a case.
We asked Detective Martin how anyone with information should reach out and share that information with law enforcement.
So the best way to relay a tip is on the P3 tip line. If you have a Android phone, you go to your Android shop and look for P3 tip line. If you have a iPhone, you just go to the App Store and do the P3 tip line. And that will queue you up. And you'll just put in Fort Wayne, Indiana, or Allen County, Indiana, and then you can type your tip in. You can remain anonymous.
Three families were devastated in those early morning hours of November 9th, 2017, and the impacts continue to reverberate to this day. If you know anything about the murders of Nicole Saylor and Kayla Harris and the attempted murder of Danielle Carter. You can submit a tip anonymously via the P3 Tip Line app, or you can call the Greater Fort Wayne Crime Stoppers at 260-436-7867..
The Deck is an audiochuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast..com. So what do you think, Chuck, do you approve?
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