The Vanishing Point: Episode 5, Covelo

As we prepare for a new season of Up and Vanish this January, please check out The Vanishing Point, a new series from the Up and Vanish team. This podcast is absolutely free, but if you want to listen to it ad-free, subscribe to Tenderfootplus at tenderfootplus..com or on Apple Podcasts.

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In the four cases we've covered so far, we've encountered a lot of hearsay and speculation, but not nearly close enough yet to a definitive conclusion. When we learned that there was a named person of interest, as well as multiple witnesses. In this next case, we were going to make the four-hour drive to interview as many people as possible. With this many leads, what could possibly be obstructing justice?

I'm having a little hard time, I got hearing aid things and they don't work half the time. You can holler at me because my wife does.

Okay, all right. How long have you been married?

We got together in 1966, one summer night, I fell in love, but she said, You did.

Meet Ronnie Hosler, the teen that Ronnie, at his house in Covolo, a small town on tribal land four hours south of Hoopa Valley. Ronnie is a husband, a father and a grandfather. But lately, he's taken on a new role the role of an advocate, an unwavering voice for his people.

I'm always hoping that people would listen to what I'm talking about because it's happening not only here, but all over these reservations. So many unsolved cases, I want somebody to finally step up and start holding these sheriff departments accountable.

Ronnie Hosler and his family have been appealing to different sheriff's departments and government officials ever since February 8th, 2018, the day his granddaughter, Khadijah Britton, went missing.

Khadijah stayed with us for maybe a year or two years. We really tried to do everything we could, you know, keep her, you know, concentrate on her academics. You know, she was a really good basketball player, you know, we supported her on that, we traveled with her.

Khadijah's family feels that her case has been downplayed by authorities, especially because they believe that the evidence in her case clearly points to the person responsible for her disappearance.

It's really sorry the way they handled that, they treated it like it was just another girlfriend-boyfriend thing, which, you know, it wasn't. You knew who took her, you knew what he's capable of, he's got a, he's got a rap sheet, everything.

How long is he in jail for right now? Do you know he's out?

Yeah, they let him out, he's right here in the valley with us.

I'm Celicia Stanton and this is the vanishing point.

I'm actually a Nomlaki from the Nomlaki tribe, Khadijah is Nomlaki Wailaki. We were both raised here growing up, she was a very happy child.

Connie Hosler is the mother of Khadijah Britton. She's a petite woman with dark hair and eyes. You can see the heaviness in her expression.

Growing up, she always wanted to play basketball in that WN.BA and she was good enough to do it. She just got, you know, with the wrong people.

Connie says she can't help but wonder if Khadijah, or Deej, as she calls her, would have pursued those paths. Maybe she'd still be here today.

Khadijah was kind of in a bad way, she hung out with the wrong people. Obviously, she stayed with this person. Nechi Follis, who had three children, and she was a good person. That she took care of them, she cooked for them, did what she needed to, she.

When you say she was kind of in a bad way, what do you mean by that?

She was into drugs, she hung out with this guy who sold drugs. She would come to my house quite often just to bathe, shower, because where they stayed, they didn't have a shower.

Connie told us she recognized that her daughter was struggling with addiction.

So it had to be a couple, like maybe two or three years, that she was on drugs. And I used to be an addict also, so I was just like, I'm done. I moved to a different spot, I started working at the school.

As Connie mentioned, Khadijah started seeing a man named Niji Follis. He was nearly 20 years her senior, and he had three children of his own. I would have never hung out with somebody like.

Niji Follis. But that was her choice, and she was only 18 when she kind of started hanging out with.

What was he like?

I didn't see the bad side of him, he was respectful to me, I didn't see anything negative. But I had people that told me that he was being rough with her, and so I stepped in and then she kind of got mad at me.

Of her again after that.

Khadijah was kidnapped at gunpoint in Covolo, California, and has not been seen or heard from.

Since, police were able to gather this account from two witnesses who claimed to be at the scene.

Two witnesses, they said the same thing. the one girl claimed that it was an accident.

Again, this is Khadijah's grandfather, Ronnie Hosler. According to his recollection, the witnesses said they were all at the house of a mutual friend of Khadijah and Nije's.

This is what he heard through the grapevine. Khadijah was with him, two boys and a girl. They went in there. They wanted to party with these two guys there, but they said we don't want to party. So they were getting ready to leave while Khadijah went into the bathroom.

She wouldn't come out. That's when the witness explained things escalated. Having lost his temper, Nije stormed back inside the house.

He described a pistol that this boy had. So they stood on the porch and watched him beat her by the car and throw her in a backseat, and they took off.

When this story began to spread throughout the community, Nije was nowhere to be found.

My mom was killed through domestic violence. Khadijah knew about that, but she didn't. I didn't really like drill it into her.

Again, this is Khadijah's mom, Connie.

I don't know. In this valley, it's like a lot, we see a lot, but nobody ever gets away. I mean, I was part of domestic violence.

Domestic violence is somewhat of an epidemic in the Kovalo area and on reservation land in general. In fact, according to a 2016 study by the National Institute of Justice, 83 of American and Alaskan native women have experienced some form of violence in their lifetime. The person we talked to next is no stranger to navigating these complex issues.

I'm not prohibited from talking about any of it. You know, I don't work for that agency anymore.

This is Trent James, a private investigator based out of Houston and former deputy sheriff at the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. He was stationed in Kovalo at the time of Khadijah's disappearance.

We asked him about his experience in Kovalo. So very small community, very, very rural. The valley itself is composed of various areas that are reservation land and some that are not. Basically, I like to relate it to, you know, the resident deputy position as being, you know, back in the 1800s, where it's one sheriff for an entire town, that's pretty much how it was.

Trent James tells us that the violence that Khadijah experienced at the hands of Niji escalated in January of 2018 after he brutally assaulted her.

From what she said that she was trying to leave him, the relationship was toxic, which it was for sure, and she was trying to break up with him. And he wasn't having it. So she left that night.

Following her report of the January assault to law enforcement, a restraining order was issued against Niji. At the time, he was a convicted felon out on bail, so this report led to an immediate warrant for his arrest. According to the Coalition Against Domestic Violence, women in abusive relationships are about 500 times more at risk when they decide to leave a relationship. So maybe that's why. A few days later and unbeknownst to her family.

Khadijah's story changed.

But Khadijah's request to drop the charges couldn't be fulfilled. She'd made the request to the tribal Police Department, and they didn't have the authority to do so after Khadijah went missing. Felony warrants were issued for Niji for a slew of charges, including burglary, possession of a firearm by a felon. Kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, and corporal injury. To a spouse, cohabitant or dating relationship. Meaning Khadijah. The warrants were out, but Niji Follis was nowhere to be found still.

This was like a month, a long fucking time since the warrant was originally issued. And it was some random ass house that none of us ever fucking expected. Ever in a million.

Fucking years. After asking around town, one of Trent's friends, a sergeant on the tribal Police Force, got a tip on where Niji was staying, so Trent and tribal police headed there. And.

Surrounded the home. So you pull up to a reasonable distance and you get on your PA on your patrol car and say, Hey, fuckface, get out of the house. We know you're in there, come out with your hands up. If we see anything else in your hands, you're going to get shot, right?

Six days after pointing a gun at Khadijah and forcing her into a car, Niji Follis was arrested and booked in the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. I was there for his first interrogation.

With the detectives, they called me in because I had known him more than anybody. He got taken down to Ukiah and I was sitting there with the lead investigator at the time. And Niji, it was just us three in a room, and Niji just. He just kept saying, Yeah, I don't know, I don't know where she's at.

Eventually, Niji went before a judge to face the charges.

So we went to court three, four or five times every week. We would go down there and then they would postpone it, then they would do this, they would do that.

Nearly all the charges against Niji Follis were dismissed by the district attorney's office, and all that remained was a single charge of possession of a firearm by a felon. We're not entirely sure why. Niji served 15 months of a four-year sentence before he was back in Mendocino County in February of 2020. Four months later, he was arrested again, this time for possession of drug paraphernalia and a stolen firearm.

Do you see him out? I do see his family and I go to the store the other day and it's his sister. And it affected my son at that time. He's like, Man, mom, I could just hurt her.

I don't go to no more events here in this valley. I kind of stay away because I don't know what I'll do, how I'll respond if I run into him.

We tried to locate Niji Follis, but were unable to do so.

That case was all dropped because he wasn't there to witness against him. Why? That's one of the biggest questions I have is why, why is my granddaughter still missing?

This whole investigation comes back to the moment that Khadijah was forced into that car. What happened after they drove off? What is Niji not saying? And are there others that could come forward to provide the full story? According to Trent James, both witnesses who gave testimony of that day have unfortunately passed away.

Is very concerning. Do you guys all believe what I'm telling you guys? We want to know why. Why is she still missing?

Next time on the season finale of The Vanishing Point.

She said that Niji called her on her cell phone. And he sounded like upset, like he was crying. And he was like, I fucked up, I fucked up, I didn't mean to. And she's like, What the fuck are you talking about?

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Vanishing Point. This six-part series is released weekly absolutely free, but if you want to listen to it ad-free, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at Tenderfootplus..com or on Apple Podcasts.

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