Original subtitles

A fatal fall from a remote mountain trail.

A young woman's life erased in an instant.

When I found out, I practically collapsed

on the floor right there.

Was it just a tragic accident--

Steve's account of what had happened

was that Rhonda had slipped and fallen because she was

pretending to be Supergirl.

- or could the prosecution--

One, two, three.

- prove it was murder?

If she ran off the edge,

she would never have landed that far from the cliff.

Everybody needs to have someone in their life

that believes in them.

And that was Rhonda.

Rhonda Casto was born in 1985, in Texas,

and she was known for being attractive woman.

She had a really outgoing, bubbly personality.

Friends and family described Rhonda as just so

easygoing, great to be around.

She had this really infectious personality

and she was really fiercely loyal about the people

that she loved.

Rhonda was a very loving, caring, non-judgmental person.

Really kind of goofy sense of humor like mine.

Very outspoken, super loyal to her friends and family.

You know, it's cliche to say it, but it's true,

she's my best friend.

You know, we were close.

She's the type of person who lights up a room or energy

when she comes into a room.

20-year-old Rhonda moved to the Portland, Oregon

area with her mom, Julia.

The two had a really close relationship.

Julia was looking to move house and

she saw an ad online for a man advertising his spare room

in his three-bedroom house.

And that's how she found Steve.

Not long after Julia moved in,

she introduced her daughter to Steve.

She thought that the pair would get on really well, and before

long, they were an item.

Steve, he had the ability to be very charming.

He's well-spoken, physically fit,

and he shared a lot of similar interests.

I think that there was genuine attraction there.

It seems that Steve had all of the attributes

that Rhonda was looking for, and

he was willing to really splash the cash on her

and impress her.

On the night that she had first went on a date with

Steve, she came home and she had this little-- dainty

little tennis bracelet on.

You could tell it was real.

It was-- it was nice.

I mean, not like $1 million bracelet,

but certainly, you know-- within, you know,

low four-figure range.

Rhonda then moved in with Steve,

and eventually the two moved out

and got their own apartment.

Three years later, Rhonda was pregnant,

and in 2008 they had a baby daughter.

She doted on her daughter.

It's hard to put into words.

She was meant to be a mom.

Her daughter was her world.

Our childhood was not the greatest,

and so she wanted for her daughter

to have all those things that we didn't have.

You know, the structure, the stability, the parent

to dote on them and show them the way

and how to make it in the world.

This is what she'd been waiting for.

And she really grew into that role as a mother.

Before starting a family with Steve,

Rhonda was a rising star on the Portland modeling scene.

Rhonda was a beautiful woman, really naturally attractive.

She actually did get involved with a modeling agency,

and she had a portfolio and headshots and all that stuff.

And she had a really successful career

modeling for brands like Nike.

After giving birth, Rhonda was really keen to get

back to her modeling jobs.

She had a potential job lined up

as a Maria Sharapova lookalike, so she really

wanted to get back into shape.

Steve was telling his friends that Rhonda

was keen to lose some of her baby weight

to bounce back into her job, and so they'd

talked about going hiking.

But Rhonda believed there

might be another reason for their hiking trip

into the mountains.

I remember Rhonda telling us about it.

He's going to propose to me.

And they had literally looked at rings,

and so she was legitimately excited about this hike.

On March 16, 2009, Rhonda and Steve

set off on a hike on the Eagle Creek Trail

in Oregon's Columbia River Gorge.

It's an area that local investigator

Dardie Robinson, who's lived in Oregon for more than 20 years,

knows well.

The Columbia River Gorge is a beautiful historic and

natural scenic area.

It's known for rugged terrain, gorgeous views, sudden weather

changes, and it's quite desired by hikers, climbers, anyone who

loves to go out and recreate.

The Eagle Creek Trail quickly goes

from being no elevation up to a couple of hundred feet

at places above the creek.

Eagle Creek Trail is known for having

really narrow pathways.

Some of them you can only go one at a time,

and there's some sheer drops of up to 150 feet.

It's considered to be advanced because, you know,

the drop offs and there's places where there's

not guardrails, but just rope.

It's beautiful, but also very dangerous,

especially if you're not familiar with it

or not extra careful and know what you're doing.

The weather started out pleasant that day,

but then things took a bit of a turn.

It really started to pour down with rain,

and the conditions became quite treacherous.

As the bad weather closed

in on the couple's remote hike, at 6:09 PM,

a frantic call was made.

He said that he tried to call 911, but there was no service.

So then he'd had to climb back up again to make the call.

Around 20 minutes after Steve made the 911 call,

first responders and police arrived.

They found Rhonda's body, and they pronounced

her dead at the scene.

On the same evening, Rhonda's family

started to become concerned.

Her mom, Julia, was babysitting their daughter,

and she hadn't heard from Rhonda for hours.

I thought it was weird

that she wasn't answering her phone,

so I just figured, oh, they're out of service.

But as afternoon turned into early evening,

I started getting really concerned.

This is not typical.

Like, she wouldn't want to leave their daughter that long.

Family members were calling.

They were texting Rhonda, and they really started to get

alarmed as the hours went on.

Around 8:00 PM, there was a knock at the door.

A local chaplain had been sent by the fire service

and he told Julia that her daughter was gone.

Meanwhile, Rhonda's brother,

Jeff, was still awaiting news on his sister's whereabouts.

Once it got past dark,

I was starting to feel kind of panicky,

and so I called my mom again and my mom's boyfriend answers,

and I was like, did you guys get a hold of her?

And he's like, yep, it's done.

And I was like, what do you mean?

What's done?

He's like, done, dude, she's dead.

Like, that's literally how he told me.

No exaggeration.

And I just collapsed.

You know, I didn't pass out, but I just dropped the phone

and was like, oh my god, you know what I mean?

I was just stunned.

I didn't know what to say or do or whatever.

Steve also phoned his family with the tragic news

about Rhonda.

Steve Nichols called his own father to break the news

about what had happened.

He was so overwhelmed with emotion and floods of tears

that his dad could barely understand what he was saying.

He was hysterical at this point, saying, Rhonda's dead,

she's fallen.

She slipped on ice and fell off the edge.

Reeling from the devastating news

about his sister, Jeff headed over to his

and Rhonda's mother's house.

Everybody was there, and she had Rhonda's daughter,

and I was trying to focus on being

strategic and staying level-headed because everyone

was super upset.

They were just distraught.

I mean, they were in disbelief.

And so the sheriff's department came

and was telling us a little bit about what had happened.

Yeah, that was, uh, how I found out that night.

In March 2009, after Rhonda Casto had fallen 150

to her death while hiking with her partner Steve Nichols,

Steve talked to police about what had happened.

Steve's account was that Rhonda had slipped and fallen

because she was running around pretending to be Supergirl

with a towel around her neck.

But other aspects of Steve's story

began to arouse suspicion.

His calm demeanor, the way

he was answering questions about what happened on the day

and in the build-up just weren't quite adding up.

After Rhonda had fallen, it took Steve an hour

and a half to make the call to 911.

Steve said that it took him over an hour to scramble

down to where Rhonda's body was,

and then he began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation

on her.

He claimed also that he laid down on top of her

and took a nap.

Can this be explained by--

by him being in a state of shock?

In a state of shock, yes, you're

confused, trying to work out what's happening,

but you would also be overwhelmed by the need

to get emergency help as quickly as possible.

The idea that you might just be stuck

in a state of absolute inertia for an hour and a half

when a loved one is desperately needing assistance

makes no sense.

Another detail that jumped out about this 911 call was

that Steve seemed more concerned about his own

well-being, that he had deemed Rhonda was already dead,

and he was more concerned about the authorities

coming to help him.

Police arriving on the scene

were struck by how Steve seemed to be relatively calm, and

more concerned with needing a blanket for himself

than what had happened to Rhonda.

Here we have someone whose focus is utterly egocentric,

even in this moment of Rhonda's death.

He seems to have no sense that he needs even

to pretend to care about other people, let alone genuinely

showing any empathy for the situation.

There's an absence of-- of awareness

of anyone other than himself.

In emergency situations, yes, there's

a self-protective drive that comes to the surface,

but more powerful is the drive to protect those that you love.

So this bias he's showing towards his own comfort

rather than what has happened to Rhonda is remarkable.

Another detail that jumped out about this hike that day

were the conditions.

It was horrendous weather.

That time of year is known in the gorge for being

windy, rainy.

There was some ice.

Snow can come up suddenly.

Why would this couple go up on a really

advanced hike in such treacherous,

dangerous conditions?

Hood River County Police

also had questions over the positioning of Rhonda's body.

When the police arrived, Steve

had claimed that Rhonda's body was right next to the river,

but when they found her, she was around 100 feet away,

and it was really hard for them to work out

where exactly she had fallen.

He claimed that he gave her CPR.

Mr. Nichols couldn't have given her

CPR because she was found face down and in no realm,

in no world do you ever give someone CPR face down.

Also, there were no marks or tracks

found near Rhonda's body, and this suggested that her body

hadn't been moved.

Detectives questioned friends and family

about Rhonda and Steve, only to discover

that their relationship had been rocky from the very start.

When her and Steve first went out on an official date-date

with, you know, him and his friends and all that,

he ignored her the whole time, and his

friends picked up on it, and he ended

up making her cry that night.

He just was very condescending.

It was the constant undercurrent of manipulation

and being cold and distant and flirting with other women,

making her cry on dates, ignoring her,

being mean to her.

And things only got worse once their daughter was born.

He basically destroyed her identity internally.

He broke her down.

I'm aware of maybe two or three times where it got physical.

She actually did send me photos of bruises on her back

from him tackling her at their condo.

And I remember confronting Steve over it,

over the phone, and him basically laughing it away

and saying, oh, well, you know how she gets.

Steve's version of how the relationship was

was very different.

He said there was no discontent between the two of them,

and actually, he had been planning

to propose to Rhonda that day.

And when the police questioned him, well, where's the ring?

He suggested maybe it had fallen in the river.

But according to Jeff,

even Rhonda had her doubts about Steve's intentions

on the hike.

The hike was planned at least a week

or two in advance.

It stuck in my mind that Rhonda had said something

to me and my grandma.

She said it sort of irreverently,

jokingly-- but she's like, well, you know,

Steve's either going to kill me or he's going to propose to me.

After hearing conflicting reports

about the state of Rhonda and Steve's relationship,

detectives hoped Rhonda's autopsy report would

provide more information.

Two days after her death, Rhonda's autopsy results

were quite surprising.

Rhonda's pelvis was shattered.

This suggests that she had, in fact landed on her feet,

not headfirst.

These autopsy results seemed to support

Steve's version of events that Rhonda had fallen

or she jumped.

The injuries didn't show any signs

of an altercation between the two beforehand,

and no signs of foul play.

The autopsy also found traces of marijuana

and some prescription medication in Rhonda's body.

And although Steve had suggested she was acting high,

there wasn't enough traces of the drugs

in her system to suggest that she'd been out of control.

The coroner classified Rhonda's cause

of death as multiple blunt force

injuries, which were consistent with a fall from over 150 feet.

The manner of death was listed as undetermined.

Police suspected foul play, but without witnesses or

any physical evidence, Rhonda's case stalled and

Steve moved away with their young daughter

to live with his family in Bend, Oregon.

When Steve Nichols moved on with his life,

Rhonda's mother, Julia, was still

convinced that there had been a reason why her daughter died,

and she was convinced that that was because of money.

Julia claimed that Steve had lost a lot of money

in the 2008 financial crash, and

that he was trying to claim some of these funds

back by claiming life insurance money from Rhonda's death.

A few months before Rhonda died,

Steve had taken out life insurance policies for him and

Rhonda, worth $1 million each.

Steve claimed that Rhonda was the one pressuring

him to take out this life insurance,

but Rhonda's family disputed this.

They say it was Steve who put the pressure on.

I mean, Rhonda wouldn't even have known all the nitty gritty

behind terms and, you know, double indemnity,

accidental death clauses and all that.

So absolutely, Steve was behind the policy.

Just 10 days after Rhonda's death, Steve put in a claim

for the life insurance money.

The detectives found this suspicious,

so they asked for the money to be

withheld while the investigation was unfolding.

But due to the lack of physical evidence,

the case ground to a halt. Over the next two years,

Rhonda's mother grew frustrated at the lack of progress,

and in a bid to stop Steve from claiming the life insurance

money, opened a civil case.

In 2011, Julia contacted a law firm

and she managed to get a really tenacious

investigator known as Dardie Robinson, to take on the case.

The primary impetus for me to get involved in this

was that there was a baby of about a year and a half old

who was purportedly in the custody of the man

who had murdered her mother.

That deserved a look.

When Dardie began to investigate Steve's past,

she was astounded.

Nichols had been previously married.

I learned that he had given up custody of his prior daughter.

I learned that Mr. Nichols had attempted

to throw his prior wife off the balcony

of a high rise in China.

Investigators also discovered

he had sexually assaulted one of Rhonda's relatives, who

was a minor, and then tried to convince her that she could

become his baby's mother.

If this were true, this would be the kind of behavior

you would expect from somebody with a psychopathic

personality, somebody who is prepared to do

anything to achieve their own objectives.

Dardie felt convinced that Rhonda's death was

no accident, and that the civil case she was building

against Steve would, in fact, be strong enough to be tried

as a criminal case in court.

In 2012, three years after Rhonda's death,

Dardie took her findings to the district attorney's office.

In 25 years of prosecuting,

I had never been brought a case from a civil law firm.

Dardie and her attorney that she

was working with at the time presented us

with additional materials that he thought

would warrant a second look, and I agreed.

Getting the case reviewed by Carrie

was extremely important because while we couldn't do anything

for Rhonda, there was this vulnerable young child who

deserved protection, and she was

in the custody of the potential murderer of her mother.

The circumstances around Mr. Nichols,

I believe causing the death of Rhonda Casto,

assaulted my conscience when I would think

about him profiting off of the million-dollar

insurance policy.

I believed that his daughter needed protection from him

and that he was a dangerous person,

and that if I didn't try to at least find some justice, that

would hopefully lead to the protection

of Rhonda Casto's daughter, I wouldn't really

be able to live with myself.

I at least needed to try.

After Rhonda Casto had

fallen to her death in 2009, the investigation

into whether or not she was pushed by her partner Steve

had gone cold.

Four years later, the district attorney's office was

still looking into the case.

Meanwhile, Steve had moved with his daughter to China.

Steve soon established a new life in China.

He got a job teaching English to businessmen out there.

He met a new partner and they soon got engaged.

Back in Oregon, deputy district attorney

Carrie Rasmussen and her team were slowly building

a case against Steve Nichols.

For a prosecutor, it's always difficult to pick up

a cold case.

Part of it is you need to take a new look at the old evidence,

and then decide where follow-up work needs to happen.

When you have a small county district attorney's office

and small law enforcement offices,

the burden is even greater.

And so all of us had to put some of our own time

in to figure out what leads needed to be followed,

new interviews conducted.

So it's really rebuilding the whole case from scratch.

You're going to have to persuade,

you know, a jury of 12 people to find

beyond a reasonable doubt that a homicide happened.

And that's very difficult in a circumstantial evidence

case with no witnesses.

So what you're really looking at

are multiple circumstances that add up to a finding

that he was responsible.

Collecting testimony that

supported Steve's history of questionable behavior,

known as bad acts, was critical to the success of the case.

Detectives needed

to contact various partners and an ex-wife

and the family of Ms. Casto about what they experienced

at the hands of Mr. Nichols.

They had important information to give

us to consider whether or not we

could provide enough evidence to the grand jury to consider.

But as the new case began to gain momentum,

Carrie and Dardie came up against a surprising setback.

What materialized is that the lead detective on Rhonda's case

had intentionally wiped his hard drive.

This resulted in the loss of key evidence

like crime scene photos and autopsy photos.

The reasons the hard drive was wiped

have always remained unclear.

But what was very clear was that it

was going to have a huge impact on Rhonda's case.

The destruction of evidence by the first detective

from 2009 was a devastating blow.

That's almost impossible to surmount four a prosecutor.

But I was willing to try.

They took the hard drive and they

were able to resurrect some-- not

all, but some of the evidence.

Most importantly, pictures of the crime scene.

And we believed that given evidence of motive and intent

and the evidence that we were able to resurrect

from the deleted hard drive, that we had enough to let

a grand jury consider it.

Carrie presented the case

to a grand jury, who would decide

if there was enough evidence to indict Steve for the murder

of Rhonda Casto.

Proceedings were held in secret to avoid

alerting Steve to the investigation

and risk him never returning to the US.

On April 18, 2014, the jury made their decision and

Steve Nichols was indicted.

It was a total shock when I heard he was indicted.

I never thought that the case would be revived.

I had already given up on any kind of hope

for that to happen.

All the prosecutors had

to do was wait for Steve Nichols

to return from China so he could be arrested.

Towards the end of February 2015,

Mr. Nichols flew back to the United States

to California in order to renew his child's passport.

Steve and the child landed at San Francisco airport.

He was immediately arrested the minute they saw his passport.

It triggered the secret indictment.

The child was taken into protective custody,

and he was taken to the San Mateo County Jail charged

with first-degree murder.

Steve Nichols was arrested on February 2,

2015, almost six years after Rhonda fell to her death

in 2009.

He was interviewed by detectives

and detained at Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Facility,

awaiting a date to face charges in court.

When I heard that Steve had been arrested,

I was stunned and I was grateful that their daughter

was away from him.

It was a big mix of emotions.

I felt Steve facing trial for murder was justified.

I was cautiously optimistic, but really kind of skeptical

that he would be punished for it.

In May 2015, three months after Steve's arrest,

he appeared in court where he pleaded not guilty

to the charge of murder.

Bail was set at $2 million and he was detained to await trial.

Meanwhile, prosecutors continued

to build on their theory that he had

pushed Rhonda to her death.

But the lack of physical evidence

meant it wasn't going to be easy.

I was preparing

to deliver a murder case based on circumstantial evidence.

They're very tough.

It is not a slam dunk case.

There was no direct witness to him causing her death.

There's no physical evidence of him placing his hands

on her, for instance.

There's nobody hearing an argument.

So there are all sorts of circumstances

around that show motive, intent, maybe even planning.

The key elements were the circumstances

surrounding the death itself, statements that Mr. Nichols had

made at the scene, which were concerning,

statements that he made after the scene,

his behaviors towards others that pointed to his motivation

in the case.

Circumstances around the million-dollar insurance policy

taken out two months earlier on his girlfriend's life.

Circumstances involving his attempted assault,

if not homicide, allegedly in Shanghai.

And when you put the whole picture together,

that points to only one person who caused her death.

To strengthen their case,

Carrie and the investigators decided

to reenact the fatal fall at Eagle Creek

in the hope of providing further evidence

that Rhonda was pushed.

We conducted the reenactment

in March of 2015.

A reenactment with experts is something

that I routinely do in my cases to see in real-world terms what

happens, what is going to happen, what can be seen,

where something will land.

And in this case, you had somebody who's claiming

that there was just a fall.

I got two dummies, Laverne and Shirley,

that were the exact same weight as Rhonda was at the time,

and dressed them in exactly the same clothing

so that we would have the same types of drag.

OK, ready?

One, two, three.

We did several test runs,

replicating the weather, the season, the foliage,

the time of day, the trail conditions,

the force that it required to launch

a 140-pound person so that they would land in that area.

We had the Hood River County Sheriff.

We had sheriff's deputies, search and rescue.

We had FBI, people there filming,

you know, to documenting this whole thing.

Will help stand her up.

And then we're going to give her a deed.

Well, the overall findings

were if she jumped or if she ran off the edge,

she would never have landed that far from the cliff.

Number one.

Number two, it required a forceful

shove to get her out that far.

Number three, when she was out that far,

her leg broke open in the same way

that Rhonda's leg broke open.

It was just heartbreaking because by the time

we were done, you knew what happened.

Whether it qualified

as appropriate demonstrative or scientific evidence,

that was going to be yet another battle

about whether we could even assert that to a jury.

That was another uncertainty in the case.

In August 2015, Steve Nichols appeared in court

again for a bail hearing.

Every defendant

has the right to contest their bail,

and the judge reviewed the state of the evidence

as it was at that point in time.

The biggest dispute is always going

to be a circumstantial evidence case, and

the weight of those circumstances,

or how much weight should be given to those circumstances.

Steve Nichols' defense called into question

the scientific rigor of the prosecution's

crash test dummy experiment, claiming

the tests were inaccurate.

The evidence in the state's case was weaker,

and the judge, weighing everything in its totality,

agreed to lower his bail to an amount that he could post.

The judge lowered Steve Nichols bail to $250,000.

And after a 10% payment of $25,000 made by his attorney,

Steve was released from prison with an ankle monitor.

Steve continued to await his day

in court while pretrial disputes rumbled on.

Over the course of the next few months,

they went back and forth, arguing between the defense and

the prosecution about what evidence should

be included in this trial.

Carrie wanted evidence about Steve's past

to be included in the trial.

These are called prior bad acts,

and they helped paint a picture of someone's character.

These prior bad acts included an allegation

that he tried to throw his ex-wife

off a balcony in China, which was allegedly

witnessed by a nanny.

I hoped to present evidence

of the nanny in Shanghai.

We had a transcript of her interview by police in China.

I had hoped to bring her here from China

to explain to the jury what she saw and experienced.

His first wife was willing to come forward

and testify to that event.

These prior bad acts,

they also included allegations of domestic abuse

and sexual assault against a minor.

I believe Steve Nichols exhibited behavior

towards other domestic partners that

was critical to understanding why

he was responsible for the death of Rhonda Casto.

In February 2016, seven years

since Rhonda's death, the judge ruled which bad acts

could be admitted at trial.

After a prior bad acts hearing,

the judge decided that it would be

too prejudicial for a jury to hear about the incident

in Shanghai.

That was a huge blow in the case,

so a jury would never hear about his first wife.

So I lost all of that evidence of intent

towards domestic partners, his resorting to a plan of violence

that involved shoving off of a high ledge.

So that severely weakened the case.

But another key ruling

was about to make a big impact on the case,

regarding Steve's three hour interview by San Mateo Police

following his arrest in 2015.

Those transcripts record

all of his inconsistent statements,

all of his first one story, then another story.

He says, no, we didn't fight.

And then he later says, we fought.

The fact that he says, no, I didn't have my cell phone.

Oh, but you sent a text from the trail.

And it wasn't just what he said,

but it was his demeanor towards the victim.

His, I'll dare say, dismissiveness,

his lack of empathy, his attitude towards the victim,

a lack of care, a lack of emotion.

When you have a witness who's made

multiple different stories, that

should come before the jury.

The interview as a whole

was important for a jury to see his demeanor towards the event

and towards the victim herself.

After a long legal battle, after an appeal

to the Oregon Supreme Court, the prosecution

lost the ability to use evidence

from Steve's police interview.

The judge determined that the rules weren't followed and

said basically that the state couldn't

use any of that interview.

At this point, I was pretty concerned about getting

any sort of a conviction, given the losses

in court of various critical pieces of evidence.

And the state's case against Steve

was about to be struck another blow.

The first person who talked to Mr. Nichols

at Eagle Creek, that detective, was himself

indicted for sex abuse crimes.

I had one detective destroying evidence.

And then the jury was going to hear, likely,

that the first detective on the scene interviewing Mr. Nichols

was now he himself charged with felony sex abuse.

And so things just didn't get better for the state's case.

I think it was a difficult case at the outset.

It became much more difficult with rulings

that went against the state eliminated

evidence that I could use.

There is a cliche of death by 1,000 cuts,

and the criminal case suffered quite a few of those cuts.

With challenges to the state's case mounting,

Carrie and her team faced an uphill battle

to secure a murder conviction against Nichols.

After a number of significant pretrial setbacks

in the state's case against Steve Nichols for the murder

of Rhonda Casto, Carrie and her team

knew their chances of getting a murder conviction

were growing increasingly slim.

In early 2017, two years since Steve's arrest,

they reluctantly decided to negotiate

with Steve's defense team to see if they

could reach a settlement.

In all of the settlement conferences

I've ever engaged in, no one is happy.

The prosecution is not happy with the limited justice

that they obtain.

The defense is not happy because they

want a not-guilty verdict.

After a settlement conference that

was mediated by a judge in the spring of 2017,

we came to a resolution of the case.

Steve pleaded guilty to criminally negligent

homicide and coercion and was sentenced to 19 months,

plus three years on probation.

Criminally negligent homicide means

Steve was guilty of causing Rhonda's death, in this case,

taking her on that dangerous hike in dangerous conditions

and failing to protect her safety.

Coercion indicates that he may have illegally pressured or

coerced Rhonda, and may or may not

have tricked her into going on that fatal hike that day.

While there was plenty of suspicion and circumstantial

evidence, the state failed to reach

the high burden of proof needed for murder in this case.

Steve also pleaded guilty to sex abuse in the third degree

for sleeping with Rhonda's underage relation.

He was then placed on a sex offenders register.

Following his sentencing,

Steve received credit for the 19 months

he'd already spent behind bars.

With no time left to serve, he was released.

One of my great disappointments

is that Mr. Nichols did not receive additional prison time.

But some justice is better than no justice.

And so the energy that I put into the case,

while it wasn't the end result that I--

the outset was hoping for, I'm very

gratified that we got some justice for Rhonda Casto and

her family.

My family's reaction to the sentencing

was anger and frustration, you know,

and just a sense of helplessness and almost like

being retraumatized all over again, honestly.

I was angry and I felt offended,

and I felt like it was just another slap

in the face to the whole family and Rhonda's memory.

And I just felt like the whole thing was foul,

and not because he didn't get punished,

but because it was being framed as an accident.

In March 2018, a judge

terminated Steve's custody over his daughter.

She has since been adopted by a loving family.

Her mother's insurance money remains in a trust

to provide for her future.

So when the adoption was finalized for their daughter,

I was there the day they had the court hearing, you know,

and the full foster family was there, and it was celebratory

and all that.

I'm coming up the sidewalk and I'm at the corner

of the courthouse.

And who do I see standing at the entrance,

maybe 50 feet away from me?

Steve.

There he is.

I could charge at him and, you know what I mean?

It would have been over for both of us.

We're both going to jail or prison, hospital, whatever.

But I didn't do anything.

I didn't even speak to him, but we made eye contact,

and, you know, um, it still was surreal to me

even just being able to see him much less him walking free.

The only bright spot is that her daughter

is safe and, you know, has been with decent people.

This case has eaten 15 years of my life.

That's how long I've been involved with this.

Rhonda didn't get justice.

What we were trying to do, ultimately, was to protect

her child, her legacy.

This has been a mission.

A lot of blood, sweat, and tears

into trying to see that this young girl had a life.

We can't give her back her mom, but I hope that she

goes on to have a good life.

The victim's daughter is now in a safe home

and is growing up with a much different family

than she would have.

That's important to me.

So that alone makes it worth it.

Do I think that Rhonda got perfect justice?

Absolutely not.

I think she got the justice she would have wanted

for her daughter, that her daughter was not

raised by the man responsible for her death,

and also that it should only be her daughter that

benefits from the insurance money

due to her death, not anybody else.

And I'm hopeful that her loved ones saw that that result

was important.

Dardie and Carrie Rasmussen deserve a ton of credit.

They are the ones that blocked Steve

from getting his hands on the money

and got the grand jury hearing, and him indicted and all that.

So yes, I am grateful to them for sure.

They really put a lot of effort into all this

and really wanted to see justice

for Rhonda and her daughter, even though things

didn't turn out ideally.

After Steve was sentenced,

he continued to do lots and lots of TV appearances,

sit down at interviews, and his story just continued to change.

The TV appearances suggest a lack of-- of any kind

of remorse at all, or even understanding

of the suffering of Rhonda, of her family, of his daughter.

It illustrates somebody who is utterly egocentric,

somebody who really sees things purely

from his own perspective, who is

prepared to turn any circumstances

to his own advantage.

Even a criminal conviction he's using as a platform

to-- to become a celebrity.

It's like he's living his own big adventure.

And what happened to Rhonda was-- is a footnote in--

in his big life story.

Today, 16 years on from Rhonda's tragic death,

Jeff's memories of his sister still shine bright.

It's hard to put into words what

a phenomenal individual that she was

and what an impact it's had her being gone.

The last time I spoke to Rhonda, she was at my house

with her daughter being silly, goofy humor

and playing with the kids.

Rhonda was a great person.

We all loved her and she really was the glue in our family.

What's important going forward right now

is that people know the truth, that Steve Nichols

is a dangerous person, and that Rhonda's daughter

knows the full truth about what happened.

But I feel almost more importantly

to know how much Rhonda loved her and was dedicated to her.

Rhonda loved her with everything she had.

It was her life.

It was her anchor.

It was her newfound purpose in life.

Ultimately, that's probably the most valuable thing

that I could do to honor Rhonda's memory,

is to be as active in her daughter's life as I can.

I am by no means a religious person,

but, you know, when you see something glimmer for a second

or like a light bounce off something or whatever,

or like you see a shiny object and just for that split second,

you see that little, sort of sharp edge of light

or glimmer or whatever.

And I like to tell myself sometimes

that that's where she's at.

She's just right there for a second.

Sometimes I let myself go there and be sad about it.

But I also feel like, you know, she's with me.

And so part of how I deal with it is I just

try to honor Rhonda's memory.