Nyesha Nettles (6 of Hearts, Ohio)

One August day in 1999, Nyesha was spending her Saturday afternoon like so many other

19-year-olds, playing video games.

But when her gaming was interrupted by a knock on the apartment door, a sinister plan was

set into motion that ended her game and her future.

I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Death.

August in the Midwest, like most months in the Midwest, can be a total toss-up as far

as weather goes.

And a young man who we'll call Ronald found that to be especially true on August 14, 1999,

when the afternoon temperature in Dayton, Ohio, was a bit chillier than he expected.

So at around noon, he'd left his girlfriend Nyesha's place, where he lived part-time kind

of like off and on, to go home and change into something warmer.

But after bundling up, he didn't go straight back to Nyesha's place.

Instead, he met up with a buddy of his, who I'm going to call Jared.

And by 3 p.m., the two of them finally moseyed back to Nyesha's apartment together to hang

out with her.

Little did they know, when they opened the door to apartment 26, they'd discover a scene

they could never unsee.

Sprawled out and motionless on a blood-soaked rug just inside the doorway was Nyesha.

In a complete panic, Ronald and Jared started shouting for someone to call 911.

And two women in neighboring apartments answered their cries.

Well, they got to let us know what they need, that's just what you just don't tell me.

Listen, ma'am, 911 means we got to get fire, ambulance, or police or something.

Hey, get the phone!

She's shot.

So she's been shot?

Yes.

What's your name?

Leo, 905.

I'm Brenda, I'm the neighbor.

Okay, Brenda, I understand that, but I need for you to help me as much as I can.

Okay.

I didn't see her.

Do you know her name?

You didn't see her?

No, I just went over there and asked what was going on, and he said she's been shot.

But nobody knows who shot the girl.

Uh-uh.

She's shot.

I think she's been shot.

Okay, okay.

Is the person that shot her still there?

No.

Soon, first responders were on the scene, and even though Nyesha had been shot multiple

times, including once in the face, she was still clinging to life.

So they rushed her to the hospital.

Just as quickly as first responders had gotten to the scene, word of the shooting was spreading

around town.

And it wasn't long before the news reached Nyesha's mother, Jennifer Cody.

I think I was there maybe about 30 minutes to an hour.

And then my little brother came, and he had told me something happened to Nyesha.

And when I got in the car, I just kept praying and saying, I hope my baby wasn't dead.

And when he got to the hospital, they told me that they tried and tried to revive her,

but they couldn't.

From the way I looked at it, from the way she was shot, Nyesha was dead on arrival.

And she was shot in the forehead.

Whoever did it, they really meant to kill her.

bustling with law enforcement.

Detectives pulled her aside and asked her a few questions about her daughter, but she

was just beside herself.

She couldn't believe Nyesha was gone.

She told police she had just spoken to her on the phone at around 2 p.m.

and she seemed perfectly fine and in good spirits.

I was just asking her how she was doing and how things had been going.

And she said they were okay.

She didn't sound like nothing was wrong.

In fact, up until about a month ago, Jennifer actually lived in Apartment 26 with Nyesha

and, like we mentioned before, sometimes Ronald.

Jennifer told the detective that she didn't know of any issues between Nyesha and her

boyfriend, and that he took good care of her.

Here's retired Sgt.

Gary White, who was one of the detectives on the scene that day.

Nyesha was working and she was going to school.

She wanted to be a paralegal, so she had a lot going on in her life.

Nyesha did not have a criminal record.

She was not someone who was involved in crimes.

She was connected to her family closely, so she didn't live the lifestyle that would

open her up to someone wanting to come back and murder her for any criminal reprisals

or anything like that.

And investigators had some questions for her, too.

Sharonda said that the reason she showed up at the complex is because at around 3.30pm

she got a call from Ronald, who was frantic, saying that he found Nyesha shot.

Now, Sharonda, of course, was panicked, but the phone connection was bad, so she tried

to reach Ronald through the apartment phone, but the line was busy.

So she came in person to see what was going on.

Investigators asked her about Nyesha and Ronald's relationship, and she said that she didn't

know of any big issues the couple had, aside from one time several months prior when Ronald

gave Nyesha a black eye during a fight.

Which, for clarity, violence of any kind should never be tolerated, and that is an issue.

But Sharonda's assessment of their relationship was that it was decently steady.

She mentioned that Ronald didn't have a job, but he always had money.

She said before Ronald, Nyesha dated this guy, and she would still occasionally see

that guy.

But Sharonda said she didn't know of any enemies Nyesha had, because she was a quote-unquote

homebody and only went to work and school.

And just like Jennifer, Sharonda had also spoken with Nyesha earlier in the day, and

she said the same thing.

Nothing seemed off.

You know, like everybody has trouble, right?

So, for the most part, you know, they were good to each other, and there may have been

some differences where he might move out or move back in.

But certainly no one that we talked to at that time would consider him to be violent

to the point where he would harm, seriously, Nyesha, like, kill her.

apartment, Sergeant White and his team got busy.

on her door.

It appears as if she may have let someone into her apartment from where her body would

have been positioned prior to our arrival, based on two bullet entries into a wooden

floor that passed through her body.

It appears as if she was initially confronted at her front door.

She's shot, and then she falls backwards into her apartment, and two more shots are

delivered to her there.

So, her apartment is semi-well organized.

There's no evidence that she fought with anybody.

The furniture is still where it normally would have been positioned.

So, we didn't think at the time that this was, like, a home invasion for the purposes

of a robbery or an assault, anything like that.

It appears as if she answered her door, was immediately shot, and then shot two more times.

the flooring to retrieve the bullets.

recovered there, so it suggests to us that the weapon was probably a revolver.

if anyone heard the gunshots or saw anything.

So, there was not, like, you know, hundreds of people living there.

We went to multiple floors, contacting people, and there weren't a whole lot of people there.

There are, in my experience of 15 years of investigating homicides, there are certainly

people who hear gunshots, you know, in their neighborhood, and they hear those gunshots

so frequently that it doesn't really arouse their suspicion anymore.

There are some people who hear gunshots and don't want to be involved in contacting the

police or making notifications so they don't call.

So, unfortunately, hearing gunshots in a neighborhood or even in an apartment complex, at times,

will not generate phone calls from people that may have heard that.

she did hear gunshots.

She said, quote,

There wasn't no scuffle or nothing.

A few minutes later, there was a little bumping, then two more shots.

End quote.

But it seems as though this resident chose not to provide this information to police.

help us with who the potential suspect was.

There's no one seen running from the apartments.

The apartments themselves have secure doors on the outside, so you'd have to be, you know,

inside the apartment.

And then to gain entrance to her apartment itself, someone had to knock on the door and

she let them in.

So there's certainly some evidence and some suggestion that the person involved in this

may have lived inside that apartment complex itself.

down for a formal interview with law enforcement, Nyesha's boyfriend, Ronald.

Ronald recounted for detectives the details of his day, how he came back to Nyesha's

place and found her lying on the floor.

He said once he saw the gunshot wounds, he called Nyesha's cousin Sharanda, then began

shouting throughout the apartments that someone had been shot.

Now, even though it's common in murder investigations for everyone to immediately

point the finger at the significant other, especially when they're also the one to

find the victim deceased, Sergeant White said nothing Ronald told them set off any alarm

bells.

He wasn't acting suspicious or being uncooperative, so they had no reason to label him a person

of interest.

As investigators continued speaking with friends and family and scouring everywhere for clues,

they found someone who seemed to have proven that they had it out for Nyesha.

You see, on May 14th of that year, Nyesha had reported a burglary at her apartment.

with her there at the time, and a safe was taken, and the safe may have had up to $5,000

in the safe.

She claims she stole the safe because Nyesha owed her half of its contents.

But once Delaney had the safe in her possession, she couldn't get it open on her own, so

she gave it to someone else for them to crack it.

And she says she never saw the safe or the money again.

Now, Delaney was arrested and charged for the theft back then, and now investigators

were wondering if she could have been holding a grudge against Nyesha for reporting the

burglary.

Could she have been angry that she didn't get the money she was supposedly owed?

Clearly, there were reasonable grounds for motive, which caused Delaney to quickly rise

to the surface as a suspect in Nyesha's murder.

Investigators couldn't recall for sure, but for one reason or another, today, Delaney

is no longer considered a viable suspect.

They thought it might have been because she was incarcerated at the time of Nyesha's

death, possibly still locked up for the whole safe-stealing fiasco, but they weren't

100% sure.

Even though they were still in what you would call the early stages of their investigation,

once the Delaney lead crumbled, things started losing steam fast.

They didn't have a suspect, and really, they didn't even know the true motive yet.

But that doesn't mean they didn't have a theory.

It's very close, it's very personal, and it's very final with the coup de grace shots

on the floor.

It was obvious that two additional injuries to her cheek and another one in her neck,

that those two shots were delivered by the shooter to Nyesha while she was on the floor.

And if this was a burglary or a home invasion or a sexual assault attempt, that doesn't

make sense that anybody would walk up to her after she's initially shot in the forehead,

which certainly would have killed her then.

The purpose of delivering two additional shots certainly suggests to me that this was a personal

revenge, vendetta type of a homicide.

Like her cousin Sharonda told investigators the day of the murder, Nyesha was a homebody.

She stayed pretty busy with work and school, and she wasn't involved in illegal activity

that anyone knew of.

The forensic evidence that we had was basically a couple of bullets, and bullets are routinely

checked, you know, for other crimes.

And those bullets had not been traced to any other criminal activity that we knew of.

That was the frustration of this case is it was just the lack of evidence with basically,

you know, two bullets to go on.

to go.

But a few months later, another murder happened.

This one a little bit too close for comfort.

Sometime between December 16th, 1999 and January 5th of 2000, 40-year-old Brenda Taylor was

found murdered in the bathtub of a vacant unit.

And this was literally the apartment just down the hallway from Nyesha's.

Even more eerie is that the victim Brenda was the same Brenda who called 911 when Nyesha

was found shot.

So, of course, two women murdered in the same building just months apart was cause for alarm

within the neighborhood.

And I'm sure everyone was ready to connect the dots and cry serial killer.

But investigators weren't convinced.

Another female was murdered.

However, she was assaulted and beaten.

And that's what caused her death.

So there was no firearm, no bullets to examine with her death to connect her death to anything

that occurred to Nyesha.

So we didn't think that there was any reason to think that the person who murdered the

woman in 2000 was connected to Nyesha's death.

In fact, she's featured as the two of hearts in the same cold case death Nyesha's in.

So maybe we'll get to go in-depth for her case someday.

But since investigators quickly determined that the two murders weren't connected,

Nyesha's case stayed cold.

Dayton police didn't just give up, though.

Sergeant White told us they still did the occasional media push to try and draw in tips.

But their phone line stayed silent, like for years.

As Nyesha's case sat there, her friends and family were left to pick up the pieces.

And it just seemed like somebody just ripped half of my heart out of my body.

I don't understand why it happened.

She didn't do nothing to nobody.

She'd give you the shirt off her back if she had to, if that's the last thing you needed.

So she was a good girl.

And Jennifer told us that she had no plans to stop there.

She dreamed of one day becoming a lawyer.

A dream that was killed by some coward who had yet to be identified.

Someone who had everyone wondering if they would ever be identified.

But then, one random day in May 2004, seemingly out of the blue,

someone came forward with a secret that they'd been holding onto

that they just couldn't keep in any longer.

and that reignited interest in the case.

Here's a voice actor reading it in part.

And at the request of law enforcement, we changed real names to pseudonyms.

The caller stated that Sharon committed the murder.

Sharon was living in the apartments at 905 Neal at the time of the crime was committed,

unknown in which apartment she actually lived in.

The caller advised Sharon shot Nyesha in the head because Nyesha was creeping with her boyfriend,

the same boyfriend that Sharon killed and was currently in jail for.

The caller stated the only two witnesses that had direct knowledge of this was Sharon's brother,

who was killed in a robbery, and Sharon's mother.

This is kind of a wild tip, and I can only imagine what was going through investigators' minds

when it first came across their desks.

I mean, this was the first time they'd heard Sharon's name in relation to Nyesha's case,

so naturally they had a lot of vetting to do.

They confirmed that Sharon was real and that she really did live at 905 Neal at the time of Nyesha's murder,

on the same floor in fact,

and that she was currently in prison for murdering her boyfriend, who we'll call David.

Investigators looked into David's murder and they quickly noted some striking similarities.

Here's Sergeant White recounting the details of David's homicide.

I mean, she just grabs a handgun, shoots him almost point blank through a window,

and then does deliver two coup de grace shots.

And then while David is laying there bleeding, she kicks David and spits on him,

and says, don't ever threaten me again.

And that was always something that stuck out to me that I found of interest,

that a person's profile or the way they react to certain situations,

they may more often than not react in the same way.

And I saw similarities between the murder of David and the murder of Nyesha.

Sometime after Nyesha's homicide, but before David was killed,

Sharon got into a violent altercation over parking.

She shot multiple rounds at two women who were blocking a driveway.

Clearly, the profile police were building of Sharon was one of violence and recklessness,

which seemed to fit right in with Nyesha's killing.

So they began trying to get an interview with her.

And in the meantime, detectives started revisiting all of the people they had spoken with years prior,

and those they hadn't, like Jared, the friend who was with Ronald the day of the murder,

but fled before police got there.

Investigators finally caught up with him and sat down to talk,

though he didn't have much to add beyond what they already knew.

Mostly, he just confirmed what Ronald had already told police that day.

Next, they re-interviewed Sharonda.

But this time, she actually had a lot more to say,

particularly about Nyesha's boyfriend, Ronald.

This time around, she said she never liked the guy,

and thought that Nyesha only dated him because he had money from being a drug dealer.

She also said that the couple fought a lot.

And the night before the murder, Ronald and Nyesha were having one of their fights.

Nyesha kicked Ronald out, but eventually he came back.

So this meant that investigators needed to revisit Ronald.

But not before they talked to Sharon.

She was still their priority.

And by the time November rolled around, it finally happened.

The stars aligned for investigators to interview her at the prison where she was being held.

Sharon confirmed that in August of 99,

she lived at 905 Neal in apartment 21 with her boyfriend, David.

At first, Sharon said she never really knew Nyesha super well.

Like she only knew her by sight and hadn't interacted with her beyond some maybe small talk in passing.

But as the interview went on, Sharon conceded that she and David would maybe sometimes buy drugs from Ronald and Nyesha.

And sometimes Ronald and Nyesha would buy drugs from her and David.

And she admitted that her and Nyesha were actually pretty good friends,

and they'd hang out at each other's apartments to smoke.

And what's more, Sharon said she'd interacted with Nyesha on the day of the murder.

Here's Detective Elizabeth Alley, who's on Nyesha's case today.

She needed a videotape, like a DVR to record something.

And so Nyesha said, yeah, I have one. You can come and get it.

And so she went to Nyesha's apartment to pick up that videotape.

While they were there, they actually did smoke weed.

And then soon after, Sharon left with the videotape and apparently never came back to the apartment, according to her.

A few hours later, Sharon's cell phone started blowing up with calls.

People were actually calling her, concerned about her safety and wondering if she was the one who'd been shot.

And that was her story.

Investigators asked what kind of gun she owned at the time, and she couldn't remember for sure.

But she thought they were a .25 caliber, a 9mm, and a .38 caliber, none of which were a .32 caliber like Nyesha was killed with.

Sharon added that she knew Ronald and Nyesha would often get into heated arguments,

but she never wanted to stick her nose where it didn't belong, so she didn't have any further information on that.

That's not uncommon. Detectives often say, well, if you don't know what happened, then what have you heard on the street?

What are the streets saying? Because streets talk.

And she said she hadn't heard anything in the street about what had been going on, which was really interesting,

because everybody has something to say about what's being said in the street.

But she did not have anything to say about what was being said in the streets.

And said no one really talks about it, which I find very hard to believe, because that doesn't ever happen.

Usually people are talking, and oftentimes it's not the truth, or sometimes the truth is somewhere mixed in between.

But in her case, she said no one's really talking about this case. Very interesting.

She said she thought Nyesha's murder was quote-unquote business and nothing personal.

Detectives left that interview with alarm bells ringing in their heads.

But clearly Sharon wasn't ready to confess to anything, and they didn't have enough to press charges.

So they were forced to press on with other leads and just wait until something more came in that could make a better case.

And a few months later, they got a tip they hoped would be exactly what they were waiting for.

A woman we'll call Diane, who was incarcerated with Sharon, came forward to police and said that she had tricked Sharon into confessing to the murder to her.

Diane told detectives that the story Sharon told her was that she had discovered her boyfriend and Nyesha were sleeping together.

So she went to Nyesha's place, punched her in the face, and then shot her in the face.

Now, it's worth noting that the autopsy found no indication of blunt force trauma to the face.

So not completely matching up with the evidence there.

But we don't know how hard she punched her, so it could still be true, it might not.

But basically, what police knew they needed to do was they needed to sit Diane down for a polygraph.

Problem is, I can't tell you how that played out.

Investigators today aren't sure what the results of that polygraph were.

What they do know today, and maybe even back then, is that Diane had a history of being a jailhouse informant in an attempt to getting things for herself.

So eventually this tip was discounted.

Soon enough, Nyesha's boyfriend Ronald was interviewed again, specifically about Sharon.

He said Sharon and Nyesha were pretty good friends, like close enough that they smoked weed together, but not tight enough to go out clubbing together or anything like that.

He said after the murder, he too heard rumors that Nyesha had been sleeping with Sharon's boyfriend, and that Sharon killed her with the same gun used to kill David.

Now, this is one of those things that also didn't entirely match up with what investigators knew, because we know Nyesha was killed with a .32 caliber, and David was shot with a .38, so it definitely wasn't the same gun.

But anyway, Ronald added that just a few months before that interview, Ronald saw Nyesha's cousin Sharonda, and she told him directly that Sharon had something to do with Nyesha's murder.

But just like everything else, everyone was saying it was all hearsay.

I heard this through the grapevine, so-and-so told me whatever.

And yes, it's helpful, but standing alone without anything to support it, it's simply not enough, no matter how many times they hear it.

So investigators were kind of trapped.

As the months passed by, more and more people were coming forward with similar stories, either recounting the town gossip or telling their own stories of how they knew Sharon did it.

But still, there was no physical evidence that they could tie to Sharon, no direct witnesses, no testimony, no confession.

There comes a time when you have to make a decision, you know, do you take this to a prosecutor's office for the filing of charges?

And it seems certainly our initial investigation, 99, never even got us close to that, and the case went cold.

With this information, it certainly is a step in the right direction.

However, with the death of David at the hands of Sharon, his information could have been crucial to solving this.

But without his input, this certainly doesn't get us to the point where we feel we can prosecute this case.

However, even with the death of David, we know that there are others who have knowledge of Naisha's murder and who committed her murder.

Sergeant White is retired now, but he is still with the Cold Case Unit on a part-time basis.

And he is still searching for the missing pieces of the puzzle to bring closure to Naisha's family.

this case can certainly be prosecuted based on the information of multiple witnesses.

So a case can be prosecuted through direct evidence, and cases can be prosecuted through circumstantial evidence.

And certainly cases can be prosecuted through reliable, truthful witnesses.

We're looking for people who have had direct communication with Sharon.

We know that Sharon has talked about Naisha's murder.

And we know that Sharon has revealed to other persons her involvement in Naisha's murder.

If they would come forward and tell us what they know about information that Sharon has revealed to them,

then certainly enough witnesses can bring this case to a point where we can prosecute this case.

So we're looking for people who have contact with Sharon.

And anybody who would have assisted Sharon after the fact, after the murder, with either cleaning up evidence or disposing of evidence.

Anything, no matter how minor you might think it is, anything is helpful.

Maybe you think we already know when we don't know.

Sharon may have been running from her apartment and even ran into a person who was in the hallway at 905 Neal.

Now this person would have had direct knowledge of what they saw, what they heard, and what happened immediately thereafter.

This person has not come forward to the police department.

here's what Naisha's mom, Jennifer, has to say to you.

because it's been a long time and a long time coming.

And I hope whoever did it that they pay for whatever they have done because she didn't deserve it.

For more advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.

So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?