00:00
The following is a true story that happened in Lake Crystal, Minnesota. Population 2,539. A town a lot like any other. A town a lot like yours.
00:13
Crystal is a smaller community. We have lake activities and fishing and hunting.
00:20
It's a southern Minnesota farming community. People are family-oriented. They're used to eating meals together. They're used to borrowing from their neighbor. It's that little slice of heaven.
00:31
People are very empathetic, very kind.
00:34
Everybody found themselves wondering how they would cope with murder.
00:39
Blue Ridge County 911.
00:41
Oh my God, please help us. Please on the ambulance, please. Somebody shut up my eyes for you.
00:48
It's hard to imagine that there's somebody within our small communities that's that dangerous. Nobody had any answers.
00:57
Nobody really knew what was going on. It could be that somebody may have arranged for someone else to commit this crime.
01:03
I didn't want to even look into it. Nothing was the same after that. It's changed all of us.
01:10
My job as his older sister was to protect him, and I had done it his whole life. And I didn't protect him. I didn't protect him.
01:21
This is the story of James Nib, also known as Jim, a goofy, fun-loving brother to three siblings. He was recently married, had career goals in reach, and was always ready with a warm smile and a friendly word. In this small town, James' circle stretched far and wide. But friends and family couldn't protect James from a dark evil that cut his life short and changed his community forever.
01:46
From ID and Ample Entertainment, this is Murder in the Heartland.
01:54
On August 31st, 2010, Jennifer Nib makes a frantic call to 911.
02:01
Blue Earth County 911. What's going on?
02:03
Somebody shot your husband? Is the person still there that shot him? I don't know. He left.
02:23
Sheriff Brad Peterson of the Blue Earth County Sheriff's Office responds to the call.
02:45
It was a Tuesday, August 31, 2010. It was about 5.45 in the morning. I left my home, heading into work.
02:56
I was a couple miles out of town, and dispatch gave a call out of what I thought to hear was an intruder just south of Lake Crystal, where I live.
03:10
They gave me the physical direction and the name of the people at the residence. And as soon as they did that, I knew exactly where I was going because I knew them.
03:19
James Nibbe and Jennifer Nibbe.
03:22
So I turned around and started heading that direction.
03:28
As I pulled up the driveway, I let dispatch know I was out. They still had the wife, Jennifer, on the 911 line and had her come to the door.
03:40
When I entered the home, she had her teenage son with her, Brady.
03:46
Detective Jerry Billier is one of the officers to respond to the scene.
03:50
I was just getting ready for the day, so you're just getting up in the morning, brushing your teeth, and then you get this phone call.
03:58
It's 6.30 in the morning when I get there.
04:01
Jen's on the phone with 911.
04:04
She goes downstairs, wakes Brady up, informs him that Jim had been shot, that she had been assaulted. You can hear Brady's just shock at that point.
04:15
The following is a recording of Jennifer's 911 call. At this point, she's with her son, Brady.
04:21
Where in the house are you right now?
04:22
I'm in the basement right now.
04:25
Is your son in the basement with you too?
04:27
Yeah, my son is in my basement too.
04:37
Brady is confused and asks his mom if she's okay.
04:41
Jennifer tells him, he cut me.
04:52
At this point, Detective Jerry Billier arrives on the scene.
04:56
I had her take me back to the bedroom. And as we're going back, I'm seeing different parts of the house and how furniture was kind of disrupted and different things laying here and there.
05:10
And we went back into the bedroom, and I saw her husband, James Nibbe, laying in the bed with a gunshot wound to the back of the head.
05:19
And his hands were on each side of his head like he had been laying on his stomach sleeping.
05:25
And I checked for a pulse, and I could not get one.
05:30
Sheriff Brad Peterson describes the scene as he pulls up to the property.
05:35
The ambulance crew is just arriving, and my partner's walking out of the house with a female with blonde hair, and she's wearing one of our coats. Jennifer tells us that she was getting ready for work. She got up, she took a shower, she was brushing her teeth, and she heard a loud bang.
05:54
She opened up the door and she sees that her husband had been shot.
06:00
and there was a guy there with a gun. He's a dark figure wearing dark clothing with nylon over his face. This intruder attacked her with a knife and had rope, and he cuts her on her legs.
06:15
Jen showed me some cut marks on the inside of her thigh areas.
06:20
The dog starts barking, and he says, you're lucky, and gets up and flees.
06:29
Jennifer said the rope came from their garage, where they have this for kayaking, and so the suspect must have come in, been in the garage to get this rope.
06:39
And she recognized the knife as one of their knives.
06:43
Jennifer talked about the shotgun. She said that Jim had purchased the shotgun because they were going to go deer hunting. And the night before, they had went into the backyard target shooting.
06:55
The only two people in the house was Jennifer, his wife, and Jennifer's son, 16-year-old son, Brady. Brady was not James' son. He was a stepson, Jen's son from a previous marriage. But what I knew is that they got along really well.
07:13
When I got there, I mean, he had a shotgun, and he just seemed like, what the heck's going on here? And who would come in here and shoot James?
07:23
Brady just kind of seemed like he'd just woken up. He was confused, a little bit in shock.
07:29
He agreed to come out and talk with me.
07:32
So I interview Brady in the front seat of my car.
07:36
The following is a recording of Detective Billiard's interview with Brady moments after the crime.
07:41
Can you tell me what happened over here today? Well, I was downstairs sleeping, and my mom came in at about 6 o'clock or maybe a little earlier, and I slept right through the gunshot, I guess.
07:55
Then he went kind of into panic mode.
07:58
I had a gun downstairs. I have a .22 for hunting and stuff. And so I grabbed that and put some shells in there because I didn't know where he was at or anything like that. So I go upstairs, and she told me to wait down there. But I went upstairs, and I just sat in the entryway. And then she was crying and stuff. And then we waited until the police got there.
08:23
Special Agent Mike Anderson arrives at the scene to assist.
08:28
So the call came in at 6.11 a.m., got dressed, and responded directly to the scene in Lake Crystal.
08:34
I've known Detective Billiard since about 1991, when I was actually going to college for law enforcement. He was an officer in my hometown, and I had spent some time doing ride-alongs with him when he was a patrol officer in that town.
08:51
We sent Jennifer to the hospital to have her injuries treated.
08:55
Because there was an intruder, we also started a ground search of the area. So deputies started searching the surrounding area for any persons that may have been hiding. It was corn that was planted around the farm at that time or around the residence. So they started searching the cornfield by foot.
09:15
It was a beautiful morning. I was super excited because I had bought a horse for my daughter the night before and my dad was gonna work with the horse and my daughter while I was at work.
09:25
Before I left,
09:29
My dad called, and he said, hey, Jim's neighbor just called mom and said that there are police cars all up and down Jim's gravel road and police tape stretched across the end of his driveway.
09:44
We called the house and didn't get an answer. He said, would you mind pulling in there and seeing what's going on?
09:52
Immediately, I feel panic, but I'm trying to suppress the panic.
09:57
I had that rising feeling that something was awfully wrong.
10:04
I drove to Jim's house as fast as I possibly could.
10:10
When I got there, I couldn't get to the house.
10:13
And I said to the officer, that's my little brother.
10:16
And the officer looked at me and he said, are you Leslie? And I said, yes.
10:21
And he said, I'm sorry, there was a shooting this morning and your brother is dead.
10:27
And I couldn't, I was so in shock with what I had just heard and trying. I mean, I can't even explain everything that goes through your mind in that moment.
10:38
I mean, you're looking at living the rest of your life without your brother and what possibly happened to him, who shot him and why would they shoot? I mean, all these things are going through your head.
10:53
I was at work. My sister had called me and told me the news. Jason Nib is Jim's brother.
11:01
I sat in the car for a while and didn't really know what to do.
11:05
Everybody loved him. I mean, he was just always had the big dumb smile. He has big buck teeth, just stupid grin.
11:16
If Jen was working at the hospital working nights, Jim would come over after work and we'd throw darts.
11:25
Listened to music, got the stereo in there, speakers. Dennis Nibb is Jim's other brother. I thought that it was weird that somebody broke into the house when Jim didn't owe anyone money that I know of.
11:35
Detective Billier agrees that money did not seem like a motive.
11:39
This event did not seem like our standard burglary. You don't have items that are missing. There's no forced entry that was observed. Is there an issue with Jim? Was he specifically targeted?
11:52
Special Agent Anderson also rules out burglary. I don't know the truth about what happened to Jim. However, it was very clear in my mind that this wasn't a burglary.
12:00
Jim's stepson Brady was just in shock and just scared.
12:07
He went into protection mode. It was weighing on their minds too.
12:13
There are many questions. What is your involvement in this? What do you know?
12:19
We need to find more about the victim. We don't know what Jennifer's relationship is with her husband.
12:25
What is Brady's relationship with his stepdad?
12:37
Darren Deluge is Jim's boss. He proudly shows off a long wall of electrical panels inside a local grain mill that he and Jim worked on.
12:46
So this is the main electrical. All the power comes from here and is distributed around the whole site.
12:53
Everything you see here is what James and myself installed.
12:59
When I didn't hear from him at 7.30 in the morning, I thought, this is really odd.
13:06
I kind of was worried.
13:10
He would always call. He always called. And he didn't show up.
13:18
He had worked for us for five years.
13:21
I was Jim's boss. I'd like to think I was a good mentor for him. He was determined. His goal was to become an electrician.
13:33
It was so damn close.
13:38
The potential that he had, he didn't make it.
13:44
You run all the scenarios through your head. Why? Who?
13:49
What?
13:50
There's always rumors.
13:52
Despite the rumors, Jason, Jim's brother, was at a loss for how to make sense of the murder.
13:57
Well, who could have done this? Who could have done this? And they kept asking questions, and none of us knew because who could have done it? I mean, he didn't have any enemies.
14:07
I don't know. It was just like a random, random break-in.
14:12
Mark Purvis is one of Jim's close friends.
14:14
Jim was one of my best friends for pretty much my whole life.
14:19
A lot of sleepless nights just thinking about this stuff.
14:22
You're thinking, is there somebody that we don't know about? Is there something else we don't know in Jim's life?
14:29
Tom Massa, the grain elevator manager, asked the obvious question.
14:34
You know, people were asking, could it have been his wife, Jennifer?
14:39
She was in the house at that time.
14:43
Initially, I believed that it had to be one of the two, Jen or her son.
14:51
But, you know, that was an initial thought.
14:56
On September 1st, 2010, 20 hours after James' murder, Sheriff Brad Peterson has trouble squaring his image of Jennifer with the possibility that she may be involved.
15:06
It might have been committed by somebody in the house, either Jen or Brady, But Jennifer is a very nice person. She has a good career.
15:17
You know, she was my kids' age, so when she was a smaller girl, she came to our church.
15:23
Even Leslie, Jim's sister, has a hard time reconciling the two versions of Jennifer.
15:28
When he met her, Jim was probably 22 years old.
15:32
She was seven years older than he was. And I mean, there was an allure. She was very pretty. She was very outgoing. She was very hardworking. She was very successful. She's a very successful surgical nurse.
15:46
She, by all accounts, would be a catch.
15:51
I was very happy for Jim when they got together. I thought he'd won the lottery too.
15:58
Jim's best friend, Mark Purvis, was quick to dismiss Jennifer as a suspect as well.
16:03
Jim and Jennifer got married. You know, I was in their wedding. I was one of the groomsmen.
16:09
Jim was in love with Jennifer. From the time they were dating, I remember how excited he was to moving in with her, to getting married.
16:17
I went into the sheriff's office and was interviewed by a PCA agent.
16:23
He asked if it would be anybody in the household.
16:26
In my mind, there was no way it could be Jennifer.
16:29
There was no way that Brady would have done it or could have done it.
16:33
Everything seemed good.
16:34
He was happy. He was excited about being a stepdad. He had talked about Brady learning to ride his snowmobile.
16:43
We subpoenaed phone records from Jim, Jen, and Brady.
16:48
We learned that Brady had also called 911 once he had been made aware of the assault and the incident.
16:54
The following is a recording of Brady's 911 call on the day of the murder.
16:59
Okay.
17:15
I don't know if they're still here.
17:16
Okay. Well, we have your mom on the line, and my partner's getting everything that we need to get from him.
17:21
Okay, thank you.
17:22
From your mom. So we're going to get people out there as soon as we can for you, okay?
17:26
Okay, thank you very much.
17:27
You're welcome.
17:29
So when I interviewed Brady, he did not tell us that he called 911, but later we find out, listening to the 911 call, that he actually called into 911 while his mom was on the phone as a dispatcher. And I don't know why that detail didn't come out in the interview, but it was just a little conflicting story in his statement.
17:50
Detective Jerry Billier files this missing detail away while the investigation continues to unfold.
17:56
Special Agent Mike Anderson also notes the discrepancy.
18:00
All of those types of things are things that we asked about and gathered information about. It is in conflict to the initial information that we're getting.
18:10
Jennifer and Brady had kind of been on their own for so long, and then now Jim's in the picture too, was also I'm sure a big change for everybody, and I'm sure it was a big change for Brady. And I couldn't even imagine how much patience it would take, I mean, to raise a teenager.
18:28
According to Darren, Jim's employer, nothing seemed out of the ordinary in Jim's and Brady's relationship.
18:33
Jim liked Brady. He wanted to be part of their family and wanted to be someone important in Brady's life, too.
18:41
He wasn't his father. He wasn't trying to be his father. But, you know, there were some disagreements about different things, but it seemed like they got along.
18:51
Dennis, Jim's brother, tells somewhat of a different story.
18:54
I know Jim got frustrated because he couldn't get him to mow the lawn or do anything. And she would be like, well, just leave him alone.
19:01
We grew up working and doing stuff. So Jim was, you know, well, you know, you could, you know, do something.
19:10
Brady didn't want to. And she just like, well, don't, you know, Jim would just say that he couldn't get him to mow the lawn or do anything. He just wanted to stay in his room and play video games or whatever.
19:20
At this point, neither Brady nor Jennifer are ruled out as suspects. Special Agent Mike Anderson decides to follow these threads and see where they lead.
19:28
Everybody has disagreements or disputes or difference of opinion, whatever it may be. There's certainly going to be some times when there's conflict. Is it a potential motive to do this attack?
19:39
We knew we'd need to investigate that.
19:41
Now we need to talk to Jennifer, try to find out what she knows.
19:49
Leslie, Jim's sister, thinks Jennifer's description of the attacker seems familiar.
19:54
She said, who do you think would do this? When she was describing the person that came into their house and shot Jim, she described Paul to a T. She had a prior relationship with Paul.
20:08
Paul and Jim were friends.
20:10
Detective Billiard questions Jennifer further. She recognizes his voice, his stature, any mannerisms, and she reports Paul Hallberg.
20:23
That he could have been jealous over Jennifer and Jim. She was kind of pointing the finger that maybe we should take a good hard look at him.
20:35
He would have known the residents...
20:40
He was really close with Jim. They were like best friends. And then Jim takes his girlfriend and they got married and now they're not friends anymore. This is a definite motive.
20:53
So we had to locate him and sit down with him and do that interview.
21:05
It's a small, small town.
21:07
Everybody knows everybody, so. Jim's brother, Jason, talks about the aftermath of Jim's murder.
21:12
It's amazing how many people, like, well, how did you know James Nibbe? Well, that was actually my brother. And what do they say?
21:20
Like, they're not expecting that, you know?
21:23
But yeah, it was a big, kind of a big deal for around here.
21:33
I was, like, shut down for a long time. Like, I couldn't wrap my head around that he was gone.
21:41
Nobody had any answers, really, so nobody really knew what was going on. I was still thinking, like, who could have done it? Like, who, like, why, you know?
21:51
They interviewed a lot of people.
21:53
I do remember him asking me about if I knew Paul and if I thought he was involved in any way.
22:03
Jen had kind of tried to blame it on him.
22:06
I knew that he had dated Jen.
22:09
I've known him forever. I'd met him at a bunch of parties and we'd kind of hang with the same people.
22:18
He'd help me bail hay out here.
22:21
Mark, Jim's friend, remembers Paul being part of their circle of friends and then drifting out of that circle.
22:27
So Paul would have kind of ran in sort of the older side of our circle of friends. He was just always the guy that was cracking jokes and doing funny stuff.
22:38
I don't know how long the split was between Paul and Jennifer to Jim and Jennifer, but when Paul and Jennifer were dating was honestly probably the last time I really remember seeing Paul around.
22:51
At this point, Special Agent Anderson treats Paul as a credible suspect. We talked to Jen's ex-boyfriend, Paul.
22:59
He had fit the height and weight description of the intruder and could be a person that we should consider as a suspect.
23:07
We're able to get in touch with Paul Halbert. He's in his late 20s, cement worker, and we had to drive out to Medelia and meet with him.
23:18
Detective Billiard tracks Paul down and interviews him. The following is a recording from that interview.
23:24
I'm guessing, you know, on the phone you kind of mentioned you kind of heard about things that had happened.
23:27
What do you know about what happened? I guess what I have heard is that, well, initially there was a home invasion and it was a murder.
23:37
How did you find out about this tether? The news. Okay.
23:41
When were you involved in a relationship with Jim?
23:45
I think it was like a year before they were married. Before she married Jim? Yes. How long was that relationship? Two, three years. Did it end well? Not very well, no.
23:57
He said they lived together, that we lived in the home. It's important because he knew the house, he knew Jennifer's schedule.
24:06
Is there jealousy for Jim dating Jennifer?
24:09
She certainly pointed a finger at Paul. She had said Paul or Paul's family owed her money and could be after her.
24:30
He confirms that there was some money that was loaned to his father from Jennifer.
24:35
Tuesday morning, do you remember where you were at?
24:39
Not exactly. I know I was, I believe I was at work.
24:43
Even Jen had mentioned, you know, in her statements, well, you really should go and talk with my ex because, you know, I think he's somebody that you should really look into. And what I'm trying to do with you, too, is if there's a surefire way that we can verify where you were at that morning, It makes life a lot easier for everybody, you know what I mean? Right, yeah.
25:05
He reported that he was working in St. James, Minnesota, which is a considerable distance from where we were at.
25:12
It is possible that he could have done it in that timeline, because he says he's there at 7.30. The crime occurs just prior to 6 o'clock.
25:24
You're dealing with an hour and a half window.
25:26
You have to look into it. We need to explore this option to find out if he is a legitimate suspect at this point.
25:37
My main focus is get as much information as we can.
25:40
What are our next steps?
25:45
You got to keep your mind open to all possibilities.
25:48
On December 2nd, 2010, 48 hours after James Nib's murder, Detective Peterson digs deeper into the evidence.
25:56
So one of our investigative techniques is to retrieve phone records, computer records. And to do that, we recovered phones from the scene. Completed a search warrant on her phone, Jim's phone.
26:12
Her phone was a wealth of information.
26:18
A couple things that we learned from them phone records is that she was having communications with another male outside of her marriage.
26:27
We determined that this male is Greg Nielsen and that Jen and Greg had dated in the past prior to her dating Jim.
26:42
There were text messages sent back and forth and some pictures sent back and forth.
26:48
The exchanges between Jennifer and Greg add a new layer to the investigation. Special Agent Mike Anderson doesn't have to dig too deep to uncover some lewd secrets.
26:58
The nature of the texting was there was conversations about engaging in a romantic relationship.
27:05
Jen Nibby had also sent some explicit photos to him, either nude or semi-nude photos in lingerie that he had acknowledged receiving from her.
27:16
One of the messages that was sent prior to James' death was they were arranging for Jennifer was going to meet him on Thursday of that week, and Jennifer was going to give him a or perform oral sex on him.
27:30
With this newly discovered evidence, Sheriff Peterson wonders whether Greg's relationship with Jennifer was a motive for murder.
27:38
finding out that she had sent some explicit photos to him. It comes to your mind, you know, what's going on here? Are they trying to get back together and they got to get the husband out of the picture? So was Greg part of the scheme to kill Jim?
27:58
We're always looking for more information. Who are the potential suspects? We have a very violent and dangerous person that's out roaming around, so you certainly start to worry about other attacks or other offenses, but it's pretty rare to have a random person do that.
28:15
Not saying it doesn't happen and can't happen, we always consider it, but that's definitely statistically more rare. There's usually a motive or a connection to the family.
28:32
At this point, Sheriff Peterson has more questions than answers.
28:36
We didn't really know what happened. It was clear that this was not a burglary. Who shot? Was it their boyfriend? Was it Brady that shot? Who knows?
28:48
But these text messages were very suspicious.
28:51
It looks like there could be a new boyfriend or a person she was involved with.
28:58
Most of our investigation starts pointing right back to maybe there isn't an intruder. Maybe there's something more here that we need to dig into.
29:09
People of interest were Greg Nielsen. This is a person that Jen Nibbe had intimate pictures being sent back and forth through text.
29:18
And we have previous boyfriend, Paul Hallberg.
29:22
It makes you wonder, was somebody doing something for Jen?
29:27
Did she set either one of them up to do this?
29:30
To start answering these questions, Special Agent Anderson sets up an interview with Greg.
29:35
I made contact with Greg and asked him to come to the sheriff's office for an interview.
29:40
It was a standard interview. One of the things I wanted to know was where was he earlier that morning during the time of the murder. He stated in his interview that at the time of the crime he was home with his girlfriend and his newborn baby and that he was feeding the child. I asked him if his girlfriend knew about the communications he had been having with Jennifer Nibbe and those types of relationship conversations he was having with her, and he indicated that she did not know.
30:11
I also asked him about the nature of his relationship with Jennifer Nibbe, and he explained that he had dated her, that he'd been involved in a romantic relationship many years earlier, but that he had not had any kind of a physical relationship with her since then. However, this is somebody who's clearly having some type of a secret relationship with Jennifer Nibbe, whose husband, who she is reporting was just murdered by an intruder.
30:36
Leslie draws connections between Jennifer's former love interests.
30:39
She was obsessed with any man that would pay attention to her.
30:44
I think she looked for people that she could manipulate.
30:47
I know several of the people that she had lived with and dated, all very, very nice, very caring, very generous people that were easy to manage.
30:58
As details emerge, Jennifer seems to be less trustworthy than Jim's friend Mark first imagines.
31:04
At first, I never thought Jennifer could have done something like that.
31:09
And then maybe started kind of wondering, like, maybe she had a connection to somebody that did or, you know, started kind of going down that. Maybe that's what happened. I mean, just tons of questions about no one really knowing what was going on. It felt like it had to have been someone that was connected or known or something like that.
31:29
another friend of ours that is a friend of mine and Jim's that was in law enforcement I remember at some point he had called me and said like hey I think maybe Jennifer has something to do with this and my mom kept saying no that can't be right my mom loved her and she was part of our family
31:49
At this point, Detective Billiard narrows his focus on Jennifer.
31:53
So we get a search warrant to search Jennifer's residence. Now we're looking for documents, any other items that may be important.
32:04
We find financial documents showing that they're behind on the house payment. They're behind on the credit card bills. So when we're conducting the search warrant at the house, one of the things we come across is John's personal diary.
32:21
In reading it, we find that there's struggles in their family that she's having feelings for this other man, Greg Nielsen.
32:31
She's documenting should she leave Jim, but she wants to stay.
32:35
And she talked about how her husband was a good man, but she just didn't want to be with him anymore.
32:44
And that she was interested in pursuing a relationship, I think, with this other individual.
32:50
Nothing would be impossible that she could have had some role in this.
32:56
Back at the grain mill, Jim's employer, Darren, has a realization.
33:00
We wanted to see this solved and try to make sense of this, why this happened.
33:09
I thought I had something that could be a vital piece of information.
33:16
something that i thought the investigators should know if they hadn't already come across it on september 3rd 2010 three days after james nib's murder darren reaches out to detective billiard jim's boss darren wanted to speak with us darren had said that jim had talked to him about a month or two prior to his death darren felt that was important so we went met with Darren.
33:49
It was a gut feeling from day one.
33:54
So I told investigators, you know, what Jim had relayed to me. He himself told me that they were getting a $250,000 life insurance policy.
34:07
This is something that was initiated by Jennifer. He thought it was a good idea to get an insurance policy.
34:17
And he took that out. The timing of the life insurance policy in Jim's death give Detective Billy a probable cause to close in on Jennifer.
34:25
A new life insurance policy in close proximity to the time of the death could be a very important factor.
34:32
It was time to bring Jen in, to make an arrest.
34:40
On September 10, 2010, investigators arrest and interview Jennifer Nibb.
34:45
Once we arrest her, Detective Barta and I transport her to the Justice Center. We bring her into this building here and we go right into this interview room right here.
34:54
I'm excited because how we solve cases and how we get truth and how we get justice is when people talk to us and tell us the information that they have.
35:02
I hope you can look me in the eyes and believe that I'm not going to lie to you, okay?
35:06
You said yourself, you've always been an honest person. You are a good character, okay? You have no criminal record.
35:13
have worked hard to make something of yourself, and you've worked very hard to make something of Brady, and he's a great kid. He's number one in his class.
35:21
He's a good kid. Oh God, he's a good kid.
35:24
I know you want to have the truth out there. Exactly the truth.
35:28
Okay? From start to finish, one time.
35:35
Oh, this is horrible.
35:36
I know.
35:36
It's horrible, though, you guys.
35:38
I know.
35:41
I just can't live with this lie.
35:44
Is it kind of a secret you were keeping, too, or did other people know about it much?
36:02
Nothing about it.
36:04
The biggest question right now that the people we talk to have is they want to know how and why, you know?
36:13
They just want answers, you know. They want something that makes, that they can kind of wrap their mind around and, you know, say, well, okay, this is why this all happened.
36:22
And we kind of got a little bit of a window into things through our investigation, too, you know. But, again, you know, we weren't there, so.
36:31
I mean, I can't bring him back, but I need to make this right somewhat.
36:37
I woke up at 5.30 in a panic.
36:45
That's when I went out and I got the gun.
36:50
And I loaded one shell. And I came back into the bedroom and there was a throw blanket laying on the end of the bed.
37:02
So I took that and kind of rested the gun on this shoulder.
37:15
Did I pull the trigger? Oh God.
37:21
It's okay.
37:22
After confessing to getting the gun, laying it on James' shoulder and pulling the trigger, Jennifer curls into a fetal position and breaks down.
37:30
She had talked initially about how she had an addiction to pain pills and how she had been forging prescriptions and abusing pain pills and that it had really had a big impact on her and that she wasn't doing well.
37:58
She talked about how Jim was a good man and that he didn't deserve this. Without verbally saying it, she was expressing remorse about having taken somebody's brother, having taken somebody's son.
38:13
It was horrible. What could happen? I thought, oh my God, what did I do? What did I do? And that's why I made it look like someone tried to hurt me and came in.
38:31
The cuts on your legs, you inflicted?
38:33
Yes.
38:34
The marks on your neck? Yes. You inflicted, right? You didn't help you inflict any of those things or do any of that?
38:39
No.
38:41
I want to make sure on a couple things, though, that are important, okay?
38:45
Brady had nothing to do with any of this.
38:47
No.
38:47
Swear.
38:48
I swear to God. No, I swear to God.
38:50
He doesn't know anything about it. He didn't help you set the scene up or anything.
38:54
Oh, God, no.
38:55
You truly didn't wake him up until afterwards.
38:59
I swear to God. I swear. I swear on my life. I swear.
39:02
And that ex-boyfriend. No. You two never actually slept together. No. It was all just texting. It was all texting. So it was just flirting. Absolutely. But there was never anything physical?
39:12
Absolutely not. Okay. Nothing physical ever. Okay. No.
39:18
So he knew nothing of any of this?
39:21
No, absolutely not. Oh, no.
39:23
No. Didn't say, get rid of your husband?
39:25
No, no, no.
39:26
No, no. Nothing like that? No.
39:27
So he's not involved in this anyway?
39:29
No, he's not. No, he's not. Okay. Okay. No.
39:33
The investigation concluded that Jennifer acted alone and that none of the other associates or family members or friends or anybody else was involved in this crime. It feels good to get a confession. It feels good to get the truth, right? And so when we get to that point and we get that confession, we get that truth, it feels really good. It feels like we're doing our job and doing it well.
39:57
I was like...
40:00
Blown away. My mom and dad were in shock.
40:06
I assumed that she was cheating.
40:11
I never thought in a million years she would put the barrel of a shotgun on his shoulder and pull the trigger.
40:18
That's diabolical.
40:23
On March 30th, 2011, Jennifer Nibb is indicted on first-degree murder.
40:28
Sitting with her hands folded over a Bible in court, Jennifer Lee Nibbe dabbed tears from her eyes saying, quote, I understand the Nibbe family cannot ever forgive me. There is no such thing as justice in a case like this. In the courtroom today, multiple victim impact statements were read after Nibbe's attorney spoke in defense and outburst ensued. After today's hearing, James's sister, Leslie Nibbe Johnson, spoke to the press.
40:52
Jen's lack of remorse and her inability to look my family in the face and simply say, I'm sorry for killing your son. Your brother, your uncle, is disgusting.
41:04
With the weight of the evidence and public opinion against her, Jennifer Nib enters a plea of guilty and is sentenced to 25 years in prison.
41:12
We didn't get justice. We got an agreement between lawyers.
41:16
It makes me angry.
41:19
And I miss Jim.
41:22
Yeah, it's changed me.
41:26
His passing impacted people in town here that I didn't know he knew.
41:33
We got the job at the elevator, and he was only 200 hours from being able to test out to get his journeyman's license. So it was really sad to know that.
41:53
Is it really ever justice? You know, I mean, when you take him out, she still gets to live her life.
41:59
And in my mind, it doesn't bring him back. So if she sat in prison the rest of her life, it doesn't change the fact my friend's not here.
42:09
It's just tough, tough to...
42:20
Keep on living your life without him. He's just gone. Not coming back. No more memories.
42:31
No new memories. Got a lot of old memories, but no new ones.
42:41
She took Jim's life from him, his entire life. She took his dream of having a big family and being a successful electrician that wanted to have his own business one day away.
42:55
She erased him from existing here. He never had a chance to be a man, to be a father, to be everything that his potential was set up to be.
43:13
Hi, it's Janice from Warner Brothers Discovery. I want to take a moment to recommend a podcast called Death of an Artist from Pushkin. In the early spring of 2024, Petra and Michael Mathers took their own lives in their Oregon home. She was a beloved children's book author and illustrator. He was a documentary photographer. They remained madly in love for nearly a century.
43:36
Before they died, they mailed out dozens of letters to friends, family members, and local business owners, explaining that they had always planned on leaving the world together, that neither wanted to live without the other, and that they wanted to go out on their own terms.
43:51
Hosted by journalists and married couple Leon Nafak and Alice Gregory, Death of an Artist tells its story entirely through intimate conversations with friends, family, and neighbors left searching for answers. Why did the Mathers choose to die when they did? Was it an act of courage or cowardice? Had there been clues all along? So go check out Death of an Artist wherever you get your podcasts. We hope you'll enjoy it as much as we do.
