Transcript of The Unsolved Death Stephanie Wasilishin

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It is.

It's Morbid, you all.

And it always will be.

Always and forever.

Forever and ever. What's up, brother?

I'm really excited because this weekend is when all the haunted houses start opening.

Oh, is it this weekend?

It's like when they're starting to trickle open now. Should we go to Fuck, yeah, we should.

Oh, my God. Hell, yeah. Oh, my God.

I need a haunted house in my soul. My soul is a haunted house right now.

I think my soul is pretty full for sure. But just today is a rough day. And my soul is barren today. It wishes it was filled with spirits. Yeah, it can be. My spirit would love to be haunted, so we should go this weekend.

So we should get that shit going. Yes, let's do it. We really should. Also, that just made me think of when And you got upset that I had invited the spirit of a ghost.

Oh, and then it reminded you of the TikTok videos.

And it reminded me of the TikTok videos because I got to shout this girl out. I love this girl. She is so fucking funny, and I need her to know that she makes me laugh when I need to laugh. Immensely. And I appreciate that about her so much.

She also has my mannerisms down.

Yeah, it's actually shocking.

To a T.

So on TikTok, her @ is NicoleKreitzler. Com. Writes, and it's Nicole Kreitz, C-R-I-T-E-S. Nicole Kreitz writes.

Kreitz writes.

And she is so funny. So fucking funny. I love her. I almost said her channel.

I love her channel. I'm 100. Like and subscribe. It goes into the next thing we're talking about.

Oh, yeah, it does a little bit.

Go like and subscribe to her TikTok.

It. Smash that like button.

Smash that follow.

But, yeah, her TikTok is really funny, and she's just great. So follow her, like blow her shit up because she's great. She does like, she'll take audio from Old Morbid and rewatch her episodes and scream, actually. And she'll just like a lip sync to them. But she's so fucking good at them. And she also makes me remember some of the funnier things that have happened.

And I appreciate that. I know because she goes back to the very early days of Morbid sometimes. And I'm like, oh, my God, we are funny. I'm like, oh, look at that.

Like, L-O-L. That was funny.

I also think it's weird. I feel like my voice has changed. Like, for the years because I was 21, 22 When we started this, I'm like, damn, does your voice change within that time period?

We're like, whole different people.

It's crazy. I mean, I very much am a very different gal than when we started.

I mean, as we all should be. Yeah. You just keep growing.

Growth, babe. Growth.

But we also, just a little, maybe That was like a little tease that we just said.

We said, smash that like button, like and subscribe.

Speaking of. Channel, all that shit. We have a pretty fun collab that's coming out on Monday. And Yeah, I mean this Monday because we're caught up, babe. So I mean this Monday. It's going to be fun. I think you guys are going to dig it. We had a fucking blast with it. I don't want to give too much away. Yeah.

It's a collab. You'll hear it. You'll see it. It's a lengthy collab.

You'll feel it. That's all you need to know.

It's great. It's great. It was so fun. It's so much fun. It's not the only one of its kind.

Nope, it's not.

And that's all I have to say about It's a lengthy collab for sure. It is. I need this Baha blast to hit. Let me tell you, today was a day that required a Baha Ha Ha Ha blast.

Yeah. Sometimes just people be people in. Dear God, they sure do. None of you.

No, of course not. I'm literally none of you. You guys are great.

You guys rule. Other people, though.

Other people that come from us then.

Yeah. I think it's just one of those.

I'm rewatching Housewives of New Jersey right now, and I can think is Theresa's tagline when she goes, If you're not about the Namaste, get the hell away.

Honestly, that's the vibe we need to take on in our own lives.

Frankly, if you're not about the Namaste, stay the hell away. Stay the hell away. Really get the hell away. I forget exactly what it is, but she's so funny.

Oh, did I tell you guys that I got to go see Danny go?

Not what I thought you were going to say. I thought you were going to bring up Marcus.

Oh, probably going to bring up Marcus, too.

Back to back.

Breaking news. Just for my parents out there and teachers.

And. And TTs.

My kids love Danny Go. I'm sure many of your kids also love Danny Go or kids in your life. We got to go see him live because it came to Boston with the kids. Hell, yeah. We had a fucking blast and they were so sweet. My youngest loves Gerald. Who doesn't? And was so excited to see him. So like, Gerald, shout out to you for making her day. Yeah. But Danny Goe crew was so sweet, and the show was so great. If you're thinking of taking your kids, I highly recommend it.

She FaceTimed me for part of it. I did. I was living.

For, Give me that garbage.

Give me that garbage. Because it's a banger. I'm going to take out the trash. It just goes so hard.

It was great. My kids dance. We dance the entire time. I was exhausted at the end of it. I bet. I would have had a blast.

I would have lost my mind. Oh, yeah.

It was amazing.

I would have gone so hard. That was really great. And Marcus.

And Marcus, just as a final note before we get into this, have any of you followed Marcus the Worm on TikTok?

I'm going to remove South Carolina.

I literally don't know how to explain this, and I need you to just look it up.

I'm irritated. I am mildly irritated. I was irritated. Quite irritated.

That tells you everything you need to know. But he's brought us great joy.

Yeah, sorry, South Carolina. He did, in fact, remove you. He did, in fact, remove But you need to understand he was irritated. He was irritated. Okay.

You got to look it up on TikTok, everybody. Just go look.

I think he's on- Pause this right now. If you're driving, pull over. Yeah. You got to see it. You got to see it. For Marcus's sake.

And I got to know if you guys think it's as funny as I think because It made me cry laughing.

Yeah, I think it's very funny. I lal hard at it.

You raffle.

It feeds my soul. You raffle-ca. I do. Roll on the floor laughing, crying.

And I think you can look it up on YouTube and stuff, too. So if you don't have TikTok, It's okay. Just look it up on YouTube.

Marcus is everywhere.

Marcus the worm. You'll know him when you see him.

You sure certainly will.

And that's all I can say about that. All right.

Okay. Well, I think we, that's enough bid nasty. If you can even consider Marcus bid nasty, which you can. Of course. Write him off on your taxes. Just kidding. You'll get in trouble for that.

You will.

Just kidding. That's a federal offense. So we are going to be talking today about a A case that is close to us because a listener of ours and now friend of the pod.

Friend of the pod, Nikki. Yeah.

Nikki asked that we cover her mother's case, and we said, Abso fucking lootly, we will, Nikki.

Truly. And Honestly, Nikki's amazing. We're going to be talking about her mother's case.

Yeah, her mother's Stephanie.

Today. And we'll make sure we're linking to all of Nikki's stuff in the show notes because Nikki also has a podcast. It's called PAPI Killed Mommy, and it's P-A-P-I, PAPI, where she talks all about her mother and her mother's case and her quest to get justice and to get answers about her mother's case. She's been just She's like, as far as daughters go- Ultimate. Like A plus. She is elite. The daughter. She is elite.

She is not a daughter. She is the daughter.

Because she has worked tirelessly to get her mom's case just talked about, just get it looked at again, just get her mom's memory and the facts about this case out to as many ears as she possibly can. And she's doing an amazing job at it. She really is. And any parent would be really proud of having a child like that. So like, props to Nikki.

Props to Nikki. Also, props to other friend of the pod, Sarah Turney. Sarah Turney. Who's been helping Nikki.

Sarah Turney is a badass. I'm sure you guys know that.

And if you don't, now you know. While Nikki is the daughter, not a daughter, Sarah is the advocate sister. The sister. Slash all of the above.

Yeah, truly. So if you haven't, right off the bat, make sure you go follow. I mean, Nikki's on TikTok a lot where she's getting, she posts a lot about this and about her journey going through all this on TikTok. And it's Nikki Walshilishin, at Nikki Walshilishin, or Nicole Wausalishin. Her name on there is Nikki, N-I-K-K-I. But again, we're going to link it so you can just make sure you click on it.

Just go click on all Yeah.

And make sure you follow her podcast. And also make sure you follow Sarah Turney and Sarah Turney's podcast, Voices for Justice, because those are two family of true crime run pods that definitely deserve to be blown up.

Yeah, all the listens in the world.

And they're great people.

All right. So with all that being said, let's get into the unfortunate events of what really did take place here. So a little past 1: 30 AM on July 9, 1993, an emergency call came into the 911 dispatch center in, I think it's Yavapai County, from a man named Russell Peterson. He was requesting an ambulance for his girlfriend, Stephanie Wausalishin. So he told the dispatcher that He and Stephanie had gotten into a fight. Somehow that fight had ended with her being shot, and she was now bleeding heavily.

Which, how does a fight end that way?

It should never end that way.

It should never end that way.

Officers from the Sedona Police Department were immediately dispatched, obviously, to the couple's residence on Coffee Pot Drive. Which I just feel like nothing bad should ever happen on a street named Coffee Pot Drive.

No. Absolutely not. So sad. That should be like, a cozy, a cozy place.

The coziest of all.

Where nothing bad happens.

Yeah, exactly.

It's very stars hollow-esque. It is.

That's immediately what I thought of. So they arrived at the residence about five minutes later. They let themselves in through the front door in an They announced themselves, of course. And Russell came from what they later learned was the couple's bedroom. He stuck his head out. He was still actually on the phone with the 911 dispatcher at the time. And immediately, officer saw that his hands were covered in what appeared to be blood. Oh, boy. So now that they were at the scene, he hung up with the dispatcher and led them back into the bedroom, where they found Stephanie's body on the floor with a, quote, large caliber gunshot wound to her throat. Oh, my God. Yeah. As far as the officers could tell, at that point, Stephanie was dead, likely from the gunshot wound, obviously, and the loss of blood, which had now pooled around the right side of her head. But more concerning was that in addition to the presence of Russell Peterson, there was also a small child in the room just sitting on the bed. And she looked at this will break your heart. It's fucking terrible. She looked up at the officers and told them, That's my mommy.

Oh, my God.

Now, luckily, they got her out of there, and they got Russell into the next room and they started going through everything. In the living room, he explained that that was his four-year-old daughter that he shared with Stephanie. He said he didn't Four years old. Four years old. And she saw her mother in that state.

Oh, that just, that shatters my soul.

You could be two years old and you would never get that image out of your head. No. Like, that poor girl.

No child should ever have to see that.

And just because at the top of this, we told you a little bit about the case. This is not Nicki. This is Nikki's little sister. So Russell said he didn't think that she saw what had happened, saw the shooting, but obviously she saw the aftermath. Yeah. And he said he probably, she probably saw him do CPR on Stephanie. So he was telling them, I tried CPR. I did this, and she was here for that. So back in the bedroom, Officer Scott-Brooks just started to survey the scene. He saw that Stephanie was lying in the northern end of the room, just beside the bed, and she was just dressed in a green night shirt and red underwear, just like she was going to get into bed soon. No, just PJs. On the floor nearby, he saw a 0. 44 caliber magnum revolver. There was blood evidence on the wall and the table just above Stephanie's head, and also a bullet embedded in the wall with, this is awful, would appeared to be hair attached to it.

Oh, God.

And then there was also a gold chain necklace lying on the floor underneath Stephanie's arm, similar to another one that he found on the floor by the doorway.

Okay.

So out in the living room, the other officer started to question Russell Peterson about the events of that night. He explained that he and Stephanie weren't married, but they'd been living together for about four years, and they did have one child together. And there was another daughter in the home, Nikki. Nikki is Stephanie's daughter from a previous relationship, and he said that Nikki was sleeping when the shooting occurred. According to Russell, he'd been working for most of that night, and when he came home later, he could tell that Stephanie had been drinking and had spent more than 2 hours on the phone with her ex-boyfriend, who was the father of her other daughter, Nicki.

And this is Russell saying.

This is Russell saying this, by the way. Yeah. Thank you for clarifying. He said that there had been some tension between the two of them in recent weeks. And he said that stemmed from the fact that he was invited into a culinary program in Ithaca in New York. So it was like a ways away. And not only did he plan to go, but he had already bought the plane ticket and was leaving the following day. Well, damn. So he decided this on his own and didn't... I think from the sounds of it, Stephanie was Yeah, what about your family here?

Can you include me in this decision? Yeah.

So at some point, their argument started getting heated, and he said Stephanie left the room, went into the bedroom, and came back a few minutes later holding the 44 Magnum that Russell's father had given him. So Russell said he was sitting on the couch at the time and that Stephanie raised the gun in his direction, fired a single round, which struck the wall next to his head, and then said that she was going to blow his head off. Now, remember, this is him talking about this.

Yes, this is from his point of view, because obviously, Stephanie cannot say her point of view.

Exactly. However, rather than firing a second shot, she walked back down the hallway toward their bedroom, and Russell started following behind her. According to him, when they reached the bedroom, they started struggling over the gun just inside of the bedroom door, and that caused the gun to go off. That's when Stephanie was shot. After the shooting, he said he called 911 immediately. They instructed him to start chest compressions until officers could arrive, and that's just what he did. So that night, he was taken into custody, obviously, and the two children were removed from the home and placed in temporary foster care until they could figure out a suitable guardian, which is just It's such a sad scene to think about.

What a sad scene to think about. Traumatizing event. For those two girls. From beginning to end for those two girls.

Like, not only did the younger child see her mother in that state, she obviously wondered what had happened here. And then 10-year-old Nikki gets woken up and told that now this is her reality.

Yeah, like this is your life now.

This is what you have to do. And now you're placed in a home where you don't know these people. Yeah.

Awful. Like, your whole life got turned upside down in one instant while you slept. Mm-hmm. Which it's like she was 10. You're 10 years old.

Ten and four.

You should go to sleep every night without a care in the world. Without a care in the world.

And no worries.

You should wake up the next morning without a care in the world. And it's like it kills me when this stuff happens.

Because you just get thrust into adulthood when something like that happens to you. And it's just so sad. You become an adult at 10 years old. Or the adult problems get put on you at that age.

I also whenever it's like, and obviously this is technically an unsolved case. Correct? Because they haven't officially decided that there's a fault or what had actually happened. Just putting that out there.

Which is why I think everybody can gather at the top of why Nikki has a podcast.

Yeah. So she, she can better explain that, I'm sure. She's searching for justice. But obviously, I'm just speaking from what I'm hearing here is whenever I hear a gun goes off during an argument, a lot of times you're just like, explain to me the mechanics of that.

Because you've shot a gun, right? I have. I've never shot a gun. You have to pull the trigger.

I haven't shot a lot of guns. And it's like, but from what I actually did, it takes a lot of pressure to shoot a gun. I think I'm just confused how this happens, how you're struggling in somehow somebody's finger goes on the trigger. Because you have to get your finger into the trigger.

Although it can happen. Well, not only that, but guns can misfire, right? If you drop it or something like that. Yeah, I'm sure.

I don't know enough about guns to say definitively, no, this could not happen or yes, this could happen. But we've seen it happen both ways. I think it always is more me being like, how does it go off by accident? I always question it, at least. Just need to see the mechanics of it.

Yeah, it's true.

But again, I'm not saying that it happened or didn't happen here.

I'm just questioning. Just questioning. Well, here's the thing. To the crime scene technicians, the evidence seemed to match the description of the events that Russell Peterson I described. And remember, we're at the very beginning here.

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Which is by both of them. Which is pretty regular in an American home. In the living room wall, just to the right of the front door, they discovered a bullet and a bullet jacket lodged in the wall, which did support Russell's claim that Stephanie had fired one round at him. But before they went back in the bedroom. And the evidence collected from the bedroom also seemed to support Russell's description of that night. But again, he was still in custody. So the next morning, he placed a call to his boss at, I think it's Pietro's Restaurant. And his boss was Peter Corn. And he asked Peter to come down to the station. Peter came down. After talking to Russell for a short time, he agreed to take a temporary custody of the children.

Oh, wow.

Which is very sweet. I hope he was a good guy. What a dude. I don't know anything about him. I hope he was. But then he left the station. About an hour later, though, Peter Corne called the station and asked to speak to Chief Bob Irish. And that was the first of two calls between Corne and Irish that morning. Now, according to Peter, Peter Corne, he knew both Stephanie and Russell very well because they both worked for him at the restaurant. He confirmed Russell's statement to the police about Stephanie having been in distress in recent weeks about Russell probably going away, Russell leaving. And he said, yeah, she was very particularly upset about Yeah, which I can understand that.

Yeah.

It was going to be a 10-day seminar in New York.

And it sounds like it was not exactly like, from the sounds of it, it sounds like it was not exactly decided on together or discussed in a way where she felt like she had a lot of say in it.

Exactly.

And It's hard when you have a family. Yeah.

And just to clarify, they live in Arizona. New York is across the country. Long time. Yeah.

Long way away.

That's 10 days by yourself. That's 10 days trying to figure out how you go to work and the children are taken care of. Who knows who is around to support the kids. Exactly.

That's a lot.

Like, that's. Yeah. So during the calls, Peter also revealed some important information about Stephanie and Russell's relationship. Basically, that it was always somewhat strained. Okay. In an interview with another co-worker, Katherine Dindler, investigators learned that Stephanie had a really difficult childhood. And this is awful. She had been abused in many ways by her mother and her stepfather. Why did people...

I'll never understand this. Yeah. It's like, why? Like, why? Why a kid? That's what I don't get. It's like, it just will never... I'm glad it doesn't make sense to me, but it will never make sense to me that I'm like, why are you picking on a kid?

It's broken people who have never taken the time to heal themselves.

No. And then they just pick on the... And it's like a kid nine times out of 10, you created.

Well, that's the thing.

It's like- That's your flesh and blood right there.

You, most people in their lifetime are going to have to heal from something, and you should do that before you have children.

You absolutely should.

If you need to do it while you have kids, by all means, at least you're doing it.

Make a valiant effort.

But you got to heal yourself when kids enter the picture.

Because you can't heal yourself by inflicting the same terror on your children that you possibly went through.

That's where generational trauma comes in. Trust me, it sucks.

You should be like your parents. You should be your kid's safe place 100 % of the time, 100 % of the time. 100% of the time. And not be your kid's safe place. And again, we're talking about Stephanie's childhood here. Like, that's fucked up. And it's like, and you're going to put them in a situation where they're going out into the world disadvantaged because they never had that safe place. So they're going to have to work to figure out, one, how to be that safe place for someone else.

And what that even is.

Which she sounds like she figured out how to be that safe place for her kids.

She sure fucking did.

But she's also going to have to find that safe place other people. And sometimes that's where the problem comes. Oh, my God. So true. Because you end up going and finding it. You don't find it. You find it. You find somebody that's like your parents who treats you terribly. I'm not saying that's 100 % what happened here. I'm just saying, you know.

It happens. It's so sad that that's most often the case when you look for your safe space in somebody else. Like, there are obviously times where you do find your safe space in somebody and you could be that lucky. But for sure, it doesn't happen often. Yeah.

And that's the thing. It's really sad because, again, you disadvantaged them to picking another safe place.

Yeah, exactly.

Out in life.

Well, so according to this coworker, Katherine Dindler, Stephanie said that her previous relationship with the father of her oldest daughter, Nikki, had also been physically and emotionally abusive. So it does seem like she looked for that safe space, and unfortunately, she got prey upon again. Yeah.

She looked for a safe space, and she looked to the only thing she was used to, which was somebody treating her poorly. Yeah. And that sucks.

It's cycle. Because according to Stephanie's sister, Kathleen, Stephanie confided in her that Russell had also been physically abusive to her. Again, I'm not stating that as a fact. I'm just saying that that came up in a conversation that Stephanie's sister had with somebody. Yeah. So who we were able to speak to, as I'm sure you know at this point, was Stephanie's daughter, Nikki. And that's when we really got a closer look into who Stephanie was and what she meant to her family, specifically her two daughters.

And why I can so confidently They say that Stephanie figured out how to be that safe space.

One hundred thousand gajillion %. This will bring you to tears. And these are Nikki's words. I'm reading directly from what she wrote us. Nikki said, I had my mother in my life for only 10 years. While investigating her cold case murder after 28 years, that's when I finally discovered who my mother was as a person. But let's start out with what I remember. My mother was a 10, an absolute model, gorgeous, beautiful inside and out. She's gorge.

Nikki is spitting Ruth's hair because her mom was a hard 10.

We saw a picture of her and I was like, that woman is- She's gorgeous. She's gorgeous. And she just radiates. I feel like people like that are kind inside because it radiates out of them.

I was going to say the outside was definitely showing what was on the inside.

Nicki said, She took great pride in her appearance and grew her hair out all the way down her back. That's one of the things I will always remember is her gorgeous long hair and how much care she took in her upkeep. My mother enjoyed holidays. She would dress up and decorate the home for the big holidays and the little. She lived for the small moments, and she really did live for the moments with her children. My mom was a hands-on mom. She enjoyed dressing up her girls and taking family photos every Christmas. She was proud of the family that she created. My mom would keep up with the trends of the '90s, and I remember her buying my clothes to match Sabrina the Teenage Bitch. Oh, hell, yeah. And I love because she just thought Melissa Joan Hart was the cutest, and she wanted her daughter to look the same.

For her to choose Sabrina the Teenage age witch as like, I'm going to dress my girls like that. I'm like, game, see game. That's my girl right there.

I think we share a kinder spirit.

Immediately we're like, Stephanie.

She's a Nicki said, I remember my mom encouraged me to read. She would buy me the newest RL Stein Goose bumps or Furious Street. I would come home from school and a new book would be on my bed, encouraging me to learn. My mom loved family gatherings at Grandma Bee's. Lots of memories in that house. I took out the address. I remember one time we were swimming and my My mom's friend yelled over, Stacey, what's your favorite color? By the way, people called Stephanie Stacey, too. Like a nickname. So she said, Stacey, what's your favorite color? Nikki said, she took a drag off her cigarette and responded very cooly, green, because it's the color of weed and money. I don't know if green was actually my mom's favorite color, but I know that when I was five years old, I heard her say that. And 35 years later, I still remember my mom's answer as she took that drug on that cigarette and answered back green. What about I think that's just hilarious.

That's just such a funny way to answer.

And just like such a '90s cool girl moment. She said, Growing up, I knew that my mom had a hard life. So when she was an adult, all she wanted was to create a family of her own. I got that. My mother had no great aspirations of going to college or pursuing a career in medicine or a law degree. She just wanted to have a family. And that's what she did at the age of 19 when she was born. Seven years later, my little sister would be born. Four years after that, my mother will be taken from us, leaving two young children alone, which is just awful.

She sounds like such a cool... Like the goosebumps of it all. The Arl said, Leaving the book on the bed when she would come home.

That's the best.

Like that shit.

That's the shit you do that I'm like, I wish that I had that. I love that.

That's such like...

It's those little... And obviously, look, it's those little things you do for your kids that they remember.

Leaving a book on their bed for when they get home.

Something so simple like that means that has shaped Nikki's entire life. Like, those are the main memories that she has of her mom. And obviously because her mom was taken from her at such a young age. But those little things have an impact.

Because I vividly remember, and it's always going to be like very vivid, I can smell them, memories. My mom would leave little decorations for holidays on my bed. Yeah. So for Halloween, if she went to Homegoods while I was at school, she would pick me up a couple of things and leave them on my bed so I could decorate my room. It's so cute. And I can I can literally smell the environment when I walked in and saw those. It's that really fresh memory. I think that's what Nikki's talking about with that green comment. That you can just... Those are the memories that you literally can touch.

They're imprinted on you. Yeah.

She would leave beanie babies on the front porch when I would come off the bus.

I love that. I love that. Yeah.

It's like those things your kids will never forget those things. Oh, yeah.

And they're little. When I was in high school, I was in high school when I moved in with my grandparents. My grandpa Every Valentine's Day would leave me a mug on the counter from a really good candy store and put all this yummy candy in it. Every single Valentine's Day, he'd get one for Halloween, all the fun holidays. He'd give me something little like that. It's like, those are truly the things that last.

They're little, but they're huge.

I just remember you were just saying walking home, walking into the kitchen, I can literally smell what was cooking for dinner and just being like, aw. You thought of me. Like, oh, man. So back to the case. While investigators were conducting, obviously, a large number of interviews with friends and family, just trying to get the bigger picture of who Stephanie was that we now have, thanks to Nicki, and of course, how she ended up shot in her own bedroom, the county medical examiner, Dr. Philip Keen, performed the autopsy on Stephanie. Now, obviously, he determined that the cause of death was the gunshot wound to Stephanie's neck. But he had some questions when it came to Russell Peterson's description of the incident. Because in his opinion, it was not entirely supported by the evidence.

Interesting.

So remember, in his statement to the police, Russell said that the gun had been in Stephanie's left hand when it went off. This was supported by the presence of gun powder residue on her left hand. But by all accounts, Stephanie was right-handed, so it wouldn't have made sense for her to hold the gun in her non-dominant hand.

Oh, yeah, you're right.

It could happen, but it'd be weird. And beyond that, in order to inflict the contact wound that she got in her neck, she would have had to have been holding the gun at a very awkward angle, which would have been like, unnatural under the circumstances. Like, her arm wouldn't have really been able to move that way.

And that's where the questions of when a gun goes off like that come into play, where you need to lay out exactly what would have needed to happen for that injury to happen. Yeah. And sometimes you're like, oh, it doesn't find up.

So in his summary, Dr. Keen wrote, The character of the wound is such that it is a contact wound, which is awful. And he said, And the presence of gunpowder residue on the left hand is more consistent with the deposition in a defensive posture than with any self-inflicted injury, whether intentional or otherwise. Oh. So as a result of his findings, he did list the death as a homicide.

Interesting. Very interesting that the gunpowder on the hand, because I didn't even think of that, that it could be a defense thing, like that it was a contact thing. Right. Like, that's wild.

It is interesting. Based on the evidence initially presented and the statements collected from those who knew the couple, the case, initially, seemed to be pretty straightforward. It was tragic, but at the end of the day, pretty routine. Now, the coroner's report was definitely a catalyst to a lot of questions because now that indicated that there was way more to this story, and now this death is a homicide. But That wasn't the only thing complicating what investigators what investigators thought was going to be an open shut case. Not long after Stephanie's death, Detective Walt Spokes sat down with the couple's younger daughter to find out if she had seen anything that evening because remember, she was awake when they got in the room.

She was in the infounder.

And They just wanted to see if she could add anything of value to the narrative. And throughout the interview, he did his best to avoid leading questions, of course, just really stuck to broad questions about what she remembered. And he asked her, What happened at home tonight? And she just looked at him said, My mother died. My dad killed her.

That wrecks me.

Yeah.

That must have wrecked those investors. Like, to hear a little sweet little baby who has been through hell say that to you would wreck me.

I don't know how you- I don't know how you recover from that. Obviously, your job is a part of your life, but then you just go back to your personal life after that.

I have to just carry that.

That's heavy. Like, damn. That's heavy. Yeah. The interview with Stephanie and Russell's daughter, it's pretty brief, but there are certain revelations made during that discussion that would be pretty significant going forward. The most important being that after she heard the commotion in her parents bedroom, she went to see what was happening. And not Only did she see her mom lying on the floor while Russell appeared to be retrieving the gun from the closet. It wasn't out yet.

Oh.

But that meant that directly after the shooting took place, Russell not only handled the weapon, but also appeared to have moved it from where it had fallen from Stephanie's hand. Oh. Yeah.

Interesting. And again, this is from the discussion with Nicki's younger sister.

Exactly. So given the new information in the coroner's report, Detective Spoke sat down with Russell for another interview and was like, whoa, what's going on here? Lots of new information here. And that's when he changed his story in some very significant ways.

Oh.

When he was initially interviewed immediately after the shooting, he told investigators, We said Stephanie had argued. They struggled with the gun. It went off. Stephanie was killed. But now, all of a sudden, he claimed that to the best of his recollection, Stephanie fired the gun at him while he was on the couch, then went in the bedroom. He followed her, and when he reached the bedroom, he arrived just in time to witness Stephanie fall to the floor after she shot herself.

What?

Yeah. Which she would have had to have done with her left hand, which is At a very unnatural angle. At a very unnatural angle. Yeah.

In the neck?

Yup. Like, right on the neck.

Okay.

So the previous explanation of an accidental shooting during a struggle would have accounted for the presence of gunpowder on his hands. But if Stephanie shot herself like he was now claiming, they asked him, How did he get gunpowder on his hands?

Yeah.

Because now you're removing yourself from even holding the gun at all. Yeah. And they said, For that matter, why did their daughter tell police that she saw him taking the gun to the closet? When did that happen throughout the evening? For the most part, his second interview matched the contents of his initial statements. He claimed he got home from work, he found Stephanie drunk, agitated. Their conversation was calm, things got heated, and He said he did his best not to become angry. He told detectives, I don't have the buttons that you can push to maybe want to put me into that mode. Which is like, everybody has buttons.

Everybody has a button, but like not to be pushed into a mode of handling a gun. Yeah.

And then eventually things escalated to where Stephanie got the gun, fired a shot at him, and then that's where his story changes again. According to him, after the shot was fired, he fell over on the couch, and it took him a few seconds to collect himself. And that's when Stephanie went into the bedroom. He said, I go through the hall and the door is three quarters of the way closed. I know I told you guys of this confrontation, of this struggle, and I'm not excluding that maybe it did or did not happen. And that's the point of darkness for me.

So now it Maybe did happen, maybe didn't happen.

And now you don't remember anything?

It's when people claim the blackout happens that I'm like, oh.

And it's like, so that's your third story now.

And now we're including a complete blackout. A blackout.

Yeah. Which if you can't account for that time, that's not good.

Like, Uh-oh.

Essentially, he was recanting his previous statement now that they had struggled over the gun. And now, apparently, the one where he immediately walked in and found Stephanie on the floor. And now that we were just left with this blackout. And he said he didn't regain full consciousness until he saw her fall to the floor. He said, I don't know what happened. I may know. It'll come to me. I never, I don't think I ever put my hands on her. It's like now you don't know what happened?

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And it's like, okay, I'm playing devil's advocate here for sure. Yeah. Traumatic events can make you black out. But you already definitively told one story, and then you said, oh- That has all the pieces. Actually, that's wrong. And then you definitively told another story where you remembered everything. And Now all of a sudden you don't remember. If you blacked out, you got to say that from the jump.

That's the thing. No matter what, whatever outcome actually happened here, whatever process happened here, you're not making yourself look good here. No. By changing the story up 100 times.

The second you start changing your story is the second people are suspicious. People are suspicious. Exactly. So he claimed that after he regained his composure in the bedroom, he saw the gun on the floor, and his instinct was to pick it up and to move it out of the way. So he grabbed it, he put it back in its leather holster and placed it on the shelf in the closet. But then he said, Something clicked off in my mind that said, No, you can't do that, Russell. Meaning he realized he shouldn't move the weapon. He went over to the closet and he took it out again and put it back on the floor where he'd gotten it from. He said, That's when their daughter appeared at the bedroom door. So now that accounted for her seeing her father move the gun. Come back out. So now we're accounting for a story that we know the daughter told.

Which, again, if that is what happened, why wouldn't you just say that? Initially. From the jump. Right. Just say like, yeah. And there was this moment where I went to put it back and I was like, oh, shit, that could look suspicious. So I took it back out. And I think my daughter appeared there. Why wouldn't you just say that story? Why is that suddenly coming to you now?

You got to just say things initially. You got to just say the story. When you're in a situation like this, obviously, people get scared. So many things can be true, but no matter what, it looks us when you start changing your story. It doesn't look good. Yeah. So throughout the course of the interview, Detective Spokes did his best to push Russell for any additional information, especially by pointing out the contradictions between the story and what they now knew from the evidence. For example, now the coroner's ruling indicated that the death was a homicide. But Dr. Keen was very careful to point out the angle of the entry and exit wounds and the contact burns made it very unlikely to It would have been a suicide. So he's sitting there. The Detective Spokes is sitting there telling Russell like, Okay, so now your story is that Stephanie shot herself, but the autopsy is not showing us that.

That's the thing. The autopsy isn't going to lie.

And They reenacted the shooting and the facts of what the findings were in the autopsy were verified. Yeah. It confirmed it would have been very, very extremely difficult, if not completely impossible for Stephanie to have bent her arm in the position that she had to have to shoot herself that way.

Autopsies don't lie. You cannot fuck with an autopsy. They're going to tell you what happened there or what didn't happen.

That's the thing. And it's like not only that, but then they went to the trouble of reenacting it. In the work of reenacting it and it confirmed the findings. Yeah. That's like a double down.

And that it's next to impossible for it to have happened, for her to bend her arm that way. Like, come on, man. And I'm sorry. That just When you change your story from there was a struggle and the gun went off to then they shot themselves, my haunches are immediately up. It's weird. I'm immediately like, what? Now it's completely removed you out of the situation?

And then you find out you can't be completely removed because you have gun powder on your hands and somebody saw you with a gun. Like, hello? So, Detective Spokes in the interview room explained to Russell that he was pretty much losing all credibility, especially because now he had changed his story four or five times at this point. That's not great. And to make matters worse. While he was initially pretty cooperative and forthcoming, after about a week or so, he stopped returning investigators' phone calls and just seemed to be avoiding detectives because they couldn't continue to hold him after a certain point. So he did get let go. Of course. But then he kept getting called in for interviews, but then he just eventually stopped participating in them. Damn. So eventually, Spokes and his partner presented Russell with what they believe to have happened that night, which was more or less the original version of events. They said, Sure. I think a fight escalated to a struggle over the gun, and during that fight, Stephanie was shot. Detective Spokes said, I'm trying to give you an opportunity to respond and to help us. I mean, if this was an accident, we just want to prove it was an accident.

Yeah. But at that point, Russell was immoveable and just continued to say, Nope, Stephanie shot herself, and I blacked out during it.

No.

I don't believe that. That's the story that makes the least amount of sense.

And the story that the forensic evidence and the autopsy proved wrong. Right. So it's like you can't keep hanging on to that one.

And they're literally sitting here being like, We'll give you the initial story that you gave us back.

We're giving you the opportunity to just tell us this was an accident. If it was an accident, tell us. It's an accident. We'll move from there.

But don't change your story.

But to take yourself completely out of it now when the forensics is telling us you were in it?

Come on. And don't get shoddy and start avoiding people. Yeah. Investigators in the law, like hello.

Not good.

Based on the number of times that his story had changed and the various pieces of contradictory evidence, a detective, Spokes, and the other investigators felt pretty strongly that Russell Peters was not being entirely forthcoming about what happened on the night of Stephanie's death, but they didn't have any evidence or eyewitness testimony to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he wasn't being truthful. The coroner's report indicated that it seemed unlikely that Stephanie shot herself, but that didn't mean that she couldn't have. It was just only that it would have been awkward, given the evidence, and close to impossible. Yeah. But not impossible.

Yeah, of course.

And unfortunately, the only witness that they did have who saw anything that night, aside from Russell, obviously, was a small child who, in addition to experiencing a considerable trauma, is a child.

She's three or four years old. That's Like, she's so little. Exactly. And again, she's been through so much drama. And you don't want to keep dragging her through this trauma.

You don't want to keep dragging her through it. She's a child, so she can't be your only witness that you can throw on the stand. No, unfortunately. Because unfortunately, a jury isn't going to put a man away for life or for a considerable amount of time based on a three-year-old's word. Yeah.

That's just unfortunate reality.

So they didn't believe what Russell was telling them, but they couldn't prove that he wasn't. So they were at a standstill. In the months that followed, new information and leads just started to dry up because, I mean, there's only one person involved here. You're not really going to get any tips or leads. Yeah. And there just wasn't enough evidence for the prosecutor to the case to a grand jury. So everything just petered out and the investigation was shelved so that detectives could, you know focus on more urgent matters. But in the year since Stephanie's death, her family has never, ever lost hope, and they still want to get justice for her. They still continue to push Sedona law enforcement to resolve the case. Yeah. In the summer of 2020, almost a full 27 years since Stephanie's death, her sister Wendy met with Sergeant Michael Dominguez from the Sedona Police Department to to talk about the case. Wendy stated her strong belief that Russell was definitely responsible for Stephanie's murder and was like, Hey, can you just continue this investigation, please?

Yeah. Can we not just let this go?

Yeah. Can we take this off the shelves?

Which I think this is Arizona, correct? Yeah. This is also where Sarah Turney's sister, Alyssa, her case is ongoing. So it's just like an interesting.

But got shelved at a certain point. And then she was told just put enough pressure on, Like, just never stop talking about it.

Never stop talking about it.

Always, like make the public aware, get the word out.

So that's exactly what we're doing here and what Nikki's trying to do.

And what everybody else in Stephanie's family was trying to do and is trying to do. So Wendy was urging the department to continue the investigation. And Sergeant Dominguez explained that they would continue to pursue the case to the best of their abilities, but suggested that they might be able to make more progress if the family could aid them in the investigation. Which is what Sarah was also told. Yeah. Specifically, he spoke with Stephanie and Russell's daughter and asked her to cooperate with them on a confrontation call, and she agreed. Wow.

A confrontation call? And to be able to agree to that?

Yeah.

Damn. Yeah. That's so scary.

I can't imagine being involved in something like that.

That takes some badassery.

But as of July 20th, 2020, there doesn't appear to have been any additional contact between the Sedona police and the family. It's unclear whether that confrontation call took place or not.

Interesting.

So around that time that Dominguez was communicating with Wendy Wasalyshin, he also spoke to the press about his taking another look at the case. He told a reporter from the Sedona Red Rocks news, There was no witness other than Russell and the deceased. The children were in bed sleeping in other rooms when the incident occurred. Not true, necessarily. The autopsy report from the medical examiner at the time it a homicide. But with the advances in technology and criminology in the year since Stephanie was killed, both the investigators and the family hoped that maybe they could make some progress here. So he said, Can I tell you it's a homicide with 100% certainty? No. But based on the evidence I see, there's more to the story than that of a suicide.

Yeah, it just doesn't, doesn't read that way at all.

Yeah. So he was on board to continue this. But within just a few weeks of restarting their investigation, the note of optimism seemed to leave his voice. At the time that Stephanie was killed, a lot of focus was put on her having held the gun in her non-dominant hand, which would have been pretty counterintuitive under the circumstances. But he said, and this is a quote, he said, The family has over-focused on the fact that she was right-handed, and she could have only done this with her right-hand. But it's like, I think I would over- Why? It's not over-focusing. It's just a big... It changed everything. Yeah.

That's when- You have a dominant in hand.

Well, and that's when investigators went to him and said, Hey, here's what's in the report. And that's when the story started changing. So I don't think that's over-focusing.

I think that's- I think that opened up a little bit. Yeah, exactly. I think them focusing on that at all may Made him change his story a little bit, it seems, because they brought it up and the story changed. So it was good that it was brought up.

That's the thing. If the coroner's report is the initial reason that caused doubt and it caused him to change his story, I get pretty fucking hung up on that, too.

Well, and also it's like, don't say that they're over-focusing on it. You have a dominant hand, and you do things with that dominant hand. And if you're trying to kill yourself, you're not going to want to fuck it up by using your non-dominant hand. I mean, that's a very, forgive the word I have to say, but morbid thing to say. But it's true. It's just that doesn't make sense. And you do have to think about the logics involved here. You're right. And to say they're over-focused on it, no, I think it just is a piece of the puzzle that makes sense. Exactly.

Well, he said, and he did say, it seemed unlikely that anybody, like you just said, would take the time to switch hands before shooting themselves. But at the same time, he said it wasn't out of the realm of possibility.

Okay. And I can agree with that. Yeah.

So he took the original coroner's report to a new medical examiner to get a second opinion, and the second opinion turned out to be inconclusive, which is infuriating. Infuriating. And also, I don't know that this is the case, but it's like, I don't think that one medical examiner is going to want to step on the toes of another one.

I'm sure that who knows if there's like some, you know? You don't want to be the one that overturns that. Yeah. It's also like, I wish you could be brought to several.

Yeah.

Right. Have them all like brain trust it. Exactly. Even have them all, like a few of them work together to figure out. Because when you have a few of those great minds together, you could probably come up with a better way to do it.

You could get somewhere. Well, Dominguez said about the medical examiner. He said, he told me that based on what he had in front of him, he was not able to make an assessment in terms of manner, manner being suicide or homicide or unknown. I think that was a fair assessment, and I trust Dr. Nine because he's been doing autopsies for a very long time. But I think it also holds weight that he couldn't make a decision. That's the thing. If somebody who's been doing autopsies for many, many years can't really conclusively come up with what happened, that's big.

Yeah. And can't say that that was a suicide, then that tells you something.

Right. So obviously there's challenges here. But the good thing is that Sergeant Dominguez restated his intention to pursue the investigation as far as it would take him, but he was pretty careful to avoid making any promises. Basically, he echoed what the original investigators felt. They really couldn't prove anything from a legal standpoint, and there just wasn't enough evidence. And despite his best efforts, the renewed interest in the case didn't come up with any new leads. There was just nothing to go off of. And within a short time, he found himself at another dead end.

So infuriating.

So it just... They feel like there's nowhere left to go. But that is where the family steps in. And it's always where the family steps in. It always is. And usually moves things along. So in the year since the second investigation just stalled out, Stephanie's family have just been working tirelessly to keep her memory alive and achieve any justice for her case. In 2022, they worked with the local Fox affiliate in Phoenix to produce a two-part news story on the case, which obviously celebrated Stephanie's life, but also highlighted a lot of the unresolved questions in the case. We said, most recently, Stephanie's daughter, Nikki, has started a multi-part podcast, Bobby Killed Mommy, where she's exploring the case from her perspective.

Which I think is a very important perspective.

Yes. And we urge you, urge you, urge you to go listen to that. Yeah.

We gave you the story here.

We gave you the cold, hard fact.

You need to hear it from her, her mouth. That's the thing. You got to... She was there. She was part of... She knows Stephanie. She knows Russell. She knows all of this.

And like you said, you got to hear it from her mouth. So to end this on Nikki's voice before you go check out her podcast, again, it's Bobby Killed Mommy. Here's what she told us in relation to the investigation now and what she hopes moving forward. She said, It'll take me 28 years to become involved in my mother's cold case murder. I will wait for the police to do their job all my life, but I will wait in vain. At the age of 38, I request my mom's case file and I read what happened to her and I'm blown away. I'm just blown away. One of the questions you asked me was what I feel like I carry today from her and her influence. I know that I carry her rage and her anger. I'm mad for the life that was taken from her and her children. I feel like I've become her warrior in my 40s and my mid life. I'm finally looking back at my childhood and seeing my mother in such a different light. I know that my mom's case has made me obsessed for some justice. The influence that she has given me is to never give up, and I never intend to.

I've contacted the police, and they're telling me it's been too long. I've contacted Ronquville Death Attorneys, and they're telling me the statue of limitation has expired. I'm not even sure what justice looks like anymore, but I will not stop until there's some accountability. Thank you for taking the time to listen to the daughter of a miracle woman. Damn. Which just gives you chills.

I'm telling you guys, go listen to Nikki. She's going to do it. She'll blow you away.

She's going to do it. There's going to be some justice here.

And she reminds me very much of her and Sarah have that same- Sarah termination. Have that same just badassery. Like, I'm just not going to stop until... It's like just getting something, some justice.

When you love somebody that much and they make such an impact on your life, being your mom, your sister, your friend, no matter who it is, you will fight to the death for them.

It's so true. It It's really true. And honestly, definitely support Nikki here just to get answers. That's all she's looking for. She's looking for answers.

It's like we always say a cold case is never cold.

It's never cold. That's why when they say it's been too long and it's like, no, it hasn't. Look at the boy in the box was solved. Yeah. The Somerton man. The Somerton man was solved.

Years and years and years and years.

They figured there's so many cases that have been solved later.

The Golden State killer.

Yeah. The Golden State killer. I mean, they thought they I have Jack, Jack, the Ripper. They didn't. But they're still trying. Don't get her started. So there's that. Don't get me started on that. But they're still trying. And you don't give up.

I have full hope. And I hope that Nikki does, too. I think she's going to get this shit done.

Yeah.

And also because we know you guys can crank out the signatures on a petition. Hell, yeah. If you do see fit, which I think you will hear. There is a petition on change. Org. It is a demand of a complete homicide investigation for the murder of Stephanie Marie Wausalishin. We're going to put the link in our show notes. We'll put it on social media. It has 12,000 signatures right now.

And Nikki was the one who made it. Yeah, Nikki made this. Yeah.

So go sign that for Nikki. Share the word. Spread the word. Support her podcast. Support the change. Org petition. And let's crack open this cold case.

Let's do it. Let's find out what happened here.

All right, guys. So we hope that you blow this case wide open. We're all going to. And of course, we hope you keep listening.

We hope you keep it weird.

But not so weird that you don't go check out Bobby Killed Mommy by our girl Nikki. Nikki. And sign that petition. You guys are so good at petitions.