Jukebox Hero: Kevin was working his dream job in the music industry. Then he uncovered a grift and decided to speak up. Dangerous move, very dangerous.
One Night in Elkhart: An ambush at a traffic light; a teenager abducted. What awaits is a night of pure terror... at the hands of a particularly sick individual.
The Truth About My Murder: The body of a young woman is found in the trunk of her car. Several suspects emerge. One of them is the lead detective on the case.
Slaughter in Sitka: A young Californian goes missing while working in Alaska. Years later, the truth about his disappearance emerges. It’s a shocker.
Little Runaway: Donna had run away many times before. This time is different. This time, she’s run straight into the grasp of a depraved child killer.
The Bone Collector: A teenager goes missing from a small town. Then a man reports that his dogs have been bringing back strange bones from the woods.
Major Crimes:
Meet Bill Major. He’s a regular guy, the kind of man you might like if
you got to meet him. He’s also a pedophile and a cold-blooded killer.
Cold Cases: Solved! Volume 11
The Last Detective
Childhood wasn’t easy for Nici. At 13, she developed endometriosis, a painful gynecological condition that necessitated three surgeries over the next eight years. The pain of the recoveries, and of the condition itself, necessitated that she was permanently on prescription painkillers. And as often happens in these cases, she became addicted. By the time she went off the college, she was a full-blown addict.
But here’s the thing about Nicole Schneider. This was an exceptional young woman, a strong woman who was not prepared to play the victim. Rather than wallow in her addiction, she decided to fight it. At 23, she made the decision to go into rehab, to join AA, to get herself clean. Life started coming together then. Nici got a job as a receptionist at a health club, a job that suited her personality well. Those who knew her said that she was a real “people person.”
It was also at the club that Nicole met David Pietz, a tall, handsome salesman who showed an interest in her almost from the moment they met. Nici was attracted too. She accepted the offer of a date, and the two of them became an item. What Nici didn’t know was that David was a player. At the same time that he was declaring his love for her, he was also making moves on a young woman named Sabrina Strieck, who worked at one of the health club’s other locations. In such an insular world, it was always likely that Nici was going to find out about it.
Perhaps this should have been a warning to Nici, a glimpse into the character of the man she’d fallen for. But when you’re young and in love, such considerations often take a back seat to your emotions. Rather than sending the love cheat packing, Nici called her rival and warned her off. David, duly chastised, swore that it was over between him and Sabrina. He then proposed to Nicole. On April 20, 2002, the joyful couple exchanged vows on a beach in Maui, backdropped by the sun sinking into the ocean.
The marriage between Nici and David Pietz looked like a happy one, to outsiders at least. Nici had a new job at a cellphone company, she’d kicked prescription drugs and was looking forward to becoming a mother. To friends and family, she spoke glowingly of her husband, calling him “wonderful, brilliant, handsome.” Did she know at this time that David was cheating on her? We can’t say and will never know. That is because, on the morning of January 28, 2006, Nicole Pietz disappeared.
The first that Gael got to hear about her daughter’s disappearance was when she got a call from her son-in-law, telling her, “Nici’s missing.” Gael got on a plane that same day and flew to Seattle. There, she and her other daughter, Tonia, cross-questioned David, trying to get to the bottom of things. Had he and Nici had a fight? David said no. They’d had plans to meet up with another couple for dinner that night, and Nici had failed to show. Then he dropped a bombshell. He said that Nici had injured her back recently and had been given painkillers by her doctor. After she went missing, he’d found her recently filled prescription bottle. It was empty, all 56 pills consumed within a matter of days. He was afraid that Nici had relapsed.
David would make other perplexing and somewhat troubling comments over the days that followed. He said that Nici had recently stopped wearing her wedding rings. He also claimed that she had been wearing a gum guard. This was a device she usually wore to bed to stop her grinding her teeth. Now, he was claiming that she’d started wearing it all day. He couldn’t say why.
Meanwhile, the search for the missing woman went on. Gael appeared on Seattle TV, making a desperate plea for her daughter to get in touch if she was able. David made a public appeal, too. “We just want to know that you’re okay,” he said, “That you're loved and that everyone here cares about you.” Away from the camera, though, he seemed less concerned, almost matter-of-fact, when he spoke about his missing wife.
And then, on February 6, 2006, nine days after she went missing, the mystery of Nicole’s disappearance was resolved. Her naked body was found by a man who decided to take a shortcut through a wooded field near Sea-Tac Airport. The autopsy revealed that she had been strangled.
Several clues jumped out at the detectives who examined the scene. The first was that the soles of Nicole’s feet were clean. She hadn’t walked into the field; she’d been carried there. The second was that she was wearing her gum guard. This suggested that she might have been snatched from her bed in the middle of the night. But wait, hadn’t her husband been at pains to stress that she’d taken to wearing the guard during the day? That somewhat unconventional revelation now became a point of misgiving for investigators. Had David made the claim because he realized that he’d forgotten to remove the gum guard when he dumped Nici in the field? Detectives thought that it was a possibility. David would mention it again when he sat down to answer their questions.
He’d make other claims, too, including his idea of how Nicole might have died. She’d been using again, he said, and probably went out to score some pills. That had put her in the vicinity of the person who had killed her. Detectives had not discounted this possibility, of course, but it was contradicted by Nicole’s friends, who said that she’d been troubled by having to take painkillers again and had been very careful with them, only taking the meds when her pain became unbearable. Two opposing narratives were being offered, and the police were starting to lean towards one of them.
Nicole Pietz’s funeral was an emotional affair for everyone besides her not-so-grieving husband. At one point, he even told his mother-in-law that he didn’t realize she’d take it so hard. And his offbeat behavior continued after the funeral. After Nicole was cremated, he gave her ashes to a virtual stranger, the realtor who had sold them their home. Questioned about this, he said simply that he couldn’t bear to bring them home. Then he gave away Nicole’s beloved pets, to people she’d barely known, even though her friends would have been happy to take them.
All of these things might have been red flags, hints that all was not the way that David Pietz was telling it. But hints won’t make a murder case. The police needed evidence, and right now, they had none. As the months passed with no progress in the case, Gael Schneider’s grief started to harden into something else, into a determination to see justice done. Someone had stolen the life of her beloved daughter. That someone had a price to pay.
And so, Gael started applying pressure to the Seattle Police Department, phoning them constantly to demand updates. She also started what she called a campaign of psychological war against David Pietz. One time, she left a blond wig spattered with fake blood on his doorstep. If that was meant to pressure him into coming clean, it had no effect. Four years went by with no movement in the case.
Then, in 2010, there was finally some hope for Nici’s grieving family. That was when a King County detective named Mike Mellis called Gael and told her that he and his partner, Jake Pavlovich, had been assigned to the case. Detective Mellis made a promise that day. He told Gael Schneider that he was going to be the last detective assigned to the case. He was going to close it.
Pouring over the old files, the detectives quickly came to the same conclusion as the original investigative team. They believed that Nicole had been strangled in her bed while wearing her night guard. She’d been carried from there to a vehicle and driven to the field where her body was ultimately found. That put only one suspect in the frame. Looking at DNA evidence from Nicole’s car only strengthened their belief. Both Nicole’s and David’s DNA were lifted from the vehicle. That was to be expected. However, David’s DNA was more prevalent in the areas a driver would touch - the steering wheel, the gear shift, the turn indicator. It suggested that he was the last person to drive the car.
Was it enough for an arrest? The detectives didn’t think so. They needed at least one more piece to complete the puzzle. They got it from security camera footage at 24-hour Fitness, where David was working on the day Nicole vanished. The surveillance images showed David at the front counter at 11:48 in the morning. He then leaves the area and is out of camera range. Two minutes later, phone records show a call from Nicole’s cell phone. It lasts just 21 seconds. Then, David walks back in.
The theory that the detectives extrapolated from this was that David had made the call to make it look like Nicole was still alive. This was confirmed when they checked which cell tower the call had pinged off. David and Nicole’s phones had been in the same area. In March 2012, more than six years after his wife’s death, David Pietz was arrested and charged with her murder.
Pietz was brought to trial on September 9, 2013, charged with second-degree murder since prosecutors couldn't prove premeditation. He entered a not guilty plea. The prosecution theory was that Pietz had quickly tired of his marriage to his pretty, young wife. She wasn’t sexually adventurous enough for him. The defense countered that Pietz wasn’t really interested in sex and had a low libido.
But this turned out to be a foolhardy assertion to make. There were plenty of women willing to say otherwise. Sabrina Strieck, for example, testified that she and Pietz had carried on an affair while he was married to Nicole. Another witness spoke of a threesome she had with Pietz. Yet another woman said that David had once slipped Ecstasy into Nicole’s drink to try and get her to participate in a threesome.
Pietz had also been very active since his wife’s death, maintaining several relationships and having a child with one of his regular partners. Clearly, this was not a man suffering from libido problems. Pietz’s attorney was eventually forced to concede the point but still insisted that the case was purely circumstantial, with not a shred of verifiable evidence. He had a point. How would the jurors see it? The question was finally put to them on October 10, 2013.
Nearly eight years had passed since the day Nicole Pietz was murdered. The jury would keep her family hanging for at least a few days more. No verdict was forthcoming after a full day of deliberation. The jurors then left for the weekend with no decision yet. Finally, on Monday, October 13, the verdict was in. David Pietz was guilty of second-degree murder.
David Pietz was sentenced to 18 years and 4 months in prison, the maximum available under Washington state law. That hardly seems adequate for snuffing out the life of an innocent woman who never did him wrong. He will serve his time, earn his parole, walk the streets as a free man again. But David Pietz will always carry the stigma with him, the mark of a killer, the mark of Cain. David Pietz will always be known as the cold-hearted wife killer he is.
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