Want to give Julia a big shout out. She did this post super quick. And its really one of the best posts I have ever read. She is such a good writer. It takes me forever to get a post done. This post is so good I felt I had to share it before Valentines Day. Also, Julia's work on a case was featured on the podcast The True Crime Enthusiast. Please give it a listen to.
Shurlock
Valentines Day Post
In
April 1999, two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered
12 of their Columbine High School students and a teacher. Ten months
later, tragedy struck the school again when two students were
murdered, but this case is still unsolved.
Stephanie Grizzell and Nick Kunselman
had been dating for two years. They were sophomores (aged 16 and 15,
respectively) at Columbine High School, and became especially close
after the tragic shooting in 1999. They both liked sports, Stephanie
was on the swim team and Nick was
a Colorado junior disc-golf champion. They were
in love.
February
13, 2000 was a Sunday. Stephanie had spent most of the day at home,
doing homework and spending time with her mother. Later that evening,
Stephanie snuck out to the Subway sandwich store where Nick had
worked for the past month. Nick was in charge of closing the store at
10pm, and Stephanie came to pick him up and waited for him in the
store.
Nathan
Grill, a former Subway employee, was at the shop Sunday night with a
friend. He left at 10 p.m. and said Nick was waiting on a customer.
A
female co-worker passed by the store at 12:40am. The lights where
still on after the 10pm closing time. The woman decided to check in
on the store because this was highly unusual. She saw a young man
walking away from the store, dressed in
a red jacket and flared pants.
Stephanie
and Nick were found dead inside. They had been shot in the early
hours of Valentine’s day. Their bodies were found behind the store
counter.
Stephanie’s
mother Kelly found out about her daughter’s murder on the news in
the morning.
“It said breaking news and it said there's been a man and a woman shot at a Subway sandwich shop in Littleton,” she said.
Kelly saw Stephanie’s car on the television and rushed to the scene. When
she arrived, investigators informed her what had
happened. “I just remember lying on the ground, on the
cement and just hoping that that wasn't true, that I would wake up from this nightmare,” Kelly said.
Nothing
was taken from the store, indicating this crime was not a robbery, as
was the first thought of the investigators. Police widened the net of
what this crime could be.
Subway offered a reward of up to $10,000 in the case. A
drug ring (mostly cocaine, some marijuana) was uncovered which
operated near the store. Police also found that drugs were
occasionally sold at the Subway location, and buyers would come in
through the back door. Investigators’ lead theory was that
Stephanie and Nick’s murders was a drug deal gone bad.
A
year after the murders, Kelly filed a wrongful death suit against the
Subway store. In the suit, she alleged that ‘the owner knew about
drug use at the store but did nothing about it, and that nonemployees
often entered through a back door where they bought and sold drugs.’
It
was further claimed that a surveillance camera in the store was known
to be inoperative. "They turned it off so they wouldn't capture
the employees' drug use," Kelly’s lawyer said. "Just
about everybody who worked there was on drugs."
Other
theories include gang activity or a jilted lover driven by jealousy.
But to this day, 18 years later, the case remains unsolved, with few
leads. Police never identified the man who the witness saw leaving
the store. He is considered a person of interest. Police still
maintain that drugs were involved in the murder.
The
Suspect
A
man was seen exiting the store by the female employee who found Nick
and Stephanie’s bodies. The man is white, 16 to 18 years old,
5-foot-7 to 5-foot-8 inches tall, weighing 150 to 170 pounds, clean
shaven, with blondish hair. He was wearing a black ball cap, a black
coat with a red lining or a red shirt or sweater, black or blue
flared jeans and white tennis shoes. He left the area on foot.
Drug
connections
Rumours
have long swirled that the Subway store was a hot-spot for drug
activity. Police have stated that they believe there is a drug
connection to the murders.
Were
Stephanie and Nick involved in drugs? As part of her lawsuit,
Stephanie’s mother Kelly said that Nick ‘may have used
marijuana’. Stephanie and Nick have been described as
“refugees of the '60s, for whom peace and love were goals, even though both were born in the 1980s”.
They sound like your typical pot-smoking hippie teenagers. They
certainly don’t sound like they would be involved in dealing drugs.
But could they have been murdered buying drugs? Drug dealers can be
dangerous individuals, but I still don’t see why someone would
murder a 15 and 16-year-old in relation to drugs… How far into the
drug scene could kids that age be, how could they have any drug debts
worth their life, it just doesn’t make sense to me.
Police
have investigated the drug ring
thoroughly: The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration were
involved, wiretaps and polygraphs were used, 35 people were
arrested on drug charges but no one in connection with the murders.
Police
seem to have good reason to think the murders are drug-related.
That’s still possible, but I don’t see how Stephanie and
Nick would be killed buying or selling drugs. They were just
teenagers and I don’t really see a motive.
Wrong
time wrong place?
I
have a hard time believing a 15-year-old boy would be a target for
murder and wonder if the killings of Nick and Stephanie were a tragic
wrong place, wrong time scenario. It has been established that the
Subway store was a place where employees did drugs, and drugs were
bought. It’s possible that the killer went to the store looking for
someone else but unfortunately Nick and Stephanie were there instead.
But still it doesn’t really make sense to kill Nick and Stephanie,
why not just come back another time looking for the intended target?
Was
the Columbine massacre a factor?
Stephanie
and Nick attended Columbine High School, where 12 students and a
teacher were murdered by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who then
killed themselves.
The
Subway where Stephanie and Nick were murdered was only three blocks
from the school.
Is
this just pure coincidence? Some people online think the murders of
Stephanie and Nick are connected to some sort of Columbine conspiracy
theory, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Is it possible
that the murderer was also a student at Columbine who was there that
day? Could they have been inspired by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold?
It
sounds far-fetched. But sometimes cases go cold because the actual
solution is so far-fetched. Something that doesn’t have a clear
connection, or an obvious motive.
The
suspect seen leaving the Subway shop was described in a way that
sounded a lot like a high school student. If the killer was a
student, maybe they had a score to settle with Nick. Nick would be
the target in this scenario. The killer would probably know that Nick
worked at Subway, and what time he would be closing the shop. If
someone wanted to kill Nick, Sunday night at a deserted Subway would
be a good opportunity. Stephanie would have just been unlucky; not
even her mother knew she was at the Subway that night.
Another
coincidence is that one of the April 1999 Columbine victims, Rachel
Scott, worked at the same Subway store when she died. Her and Nick
were friends; Nick once drew a pencil portrait of her and this was
given to Rachel’s mother after she was murdered.
Maybe
one day we will find out the motive for these crimes. I’m guessing
whatever it was, was nowhere near worth the lives of these two kids
or the pain and suffering of their families. Looking at their
pictures and reading about Nick and Stephanie, I just can’t
comprehend what would make someone want to hurt them. RIP Nick and
Stephanie, a young couple killed on Valentine’s Day, who were
buried together.
Considering
Cold Cases would like to give a big thank you to CrimeBlogger1983 for
having me as a guest blogger on his fantastic blog.
