The Murder of Mindy Kassotis: Navy JAG, Dismemberment, and the Phantom FBI Agent

In December 2022, a horrific discovery in the woods of Rice Borough, Georgia, shocked the nation: the dismembered torso of 40-year-old Mindy Kassotis. The victim was the wife of Nicholas Kassotis, a decorated Navy JAG officer, Georgetown law graduate, and a man who lived a profound double life.

We trace Nicholas's decade-long descent into paranoia and control, fueled by a $1.5 million financial settlement from his first marriage. To avoid payment and manipulate his wife, Nicholas created "Jim McIntyre," a complete phantom FBI agent who he claimed controlled their lives. This lie led to Mindy Kassotis's complete isolation, as she was terrified to leave their temporary rental homes.

The truth about Mindy Kassotis's death was far darker than the stroke and pregnancy complications Nicholas sold her family. Autopsy revealed she was killed by blunt force trauma to the head and then dismembered. Evidence against Nicholas Kassotis was overwhelming: receipts for knives, shovels, and a Blue Star test confirming major blood loss in their rental home. We cover his frantic attempt to erase his identity—legally changing his name to Nicholas Killian James Stark and remarrying just weeks after the murder. The episode culminates in the guilty verdict on all 12 counts against Nicholas Kassotis, sending him to life in prison without parole.

Mandy: [00:00:00] In December, 2022, a hunter in Georgia thought he found a wild hog in the woods, but it was a human torso. The victim turned out to be the wife of a decorated navy lawyer with a secret double life. By the time her remains were identified, he had already changed his name, remarried and left behind a trail of unbelievable lies.

Marker

Mandy: Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a True crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. 

Melissa: Mandy. How are you? 

Mandy: I am doing well today. Actually. The sun is shining and I didn't think it was going to be on 

Melissa: Okay. Yeah, 

it, I didn't either and I was like planning to actually do like a water related thing today and then. Said to my husband, like,

go ahead and call

it, because there's, you know, it says 95% chance of rain on something. And I was like, not, I'm not risking that.

Beautiful day. Beautiful. 

Mandy: and I could not be happier. My, uh, oldest son has homecoming tonight, and we have been [00:01:00] so worried that the, uh, weather was going to just ruin everything, pictures and everything. but it looks like it's gonna be a great day. So, yeah, I'm very excited.

Melissa: That is very awesome. And yeah.

I will take a nice day. Any 

Mandy: Any day.

Melissa: get it. Yes, 

I'll take it. Yeah. 

Mandy: Yeah.

So we'll get into the story for this week. This is a wild one. On December 2nd, 2022 at the portal Hunting Club in Rice Borough, Georgia, a hunter was following the trail of a deer that he had just shot when he came across something that stopped him in his tracks.

At first, he thought it was a wild hog, which really wouldn't be unusual out there in the woods. But as he got closer, he realized it was something much worse. What he found was a human torso with the arms still attached. The hunter alerted other members of the club who in turn called the Liberty County Sheriff's Office.

Lieutenant Anthony Brown was the first officer on the scene, and within hours, the woods had turned into a massive search site. Over the next three days, [00:02:00] teams combed through remote back roads and thickets. On December 5th, a South Carolina canine specialist named John Murphy and his cadaver dogs discovered more remains.

They found both legs scattered in different areas of the woods, and eventually they found a buried head. Altogether, Mindy Coda's body had been dismembered and spread out across a three mile radius, and the body parts weren't the only thing they found near the torso.

Investigators recovered a fixed blade knife, a plastic storage tub, and Clorox wipes. The wipes had been used on both the knife and the tub, but testing still showed traces of blood. It looked like someone had tried to clean up. They just didn't do a very good job with no missing persons report to match these remains.

Investigators had really nothing to go on. On December 13th, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation put out a press release with a forensic sketch of the victim and a plea to the public. They wanted help [00:03:00] figuring out who this woman was. Forensic testing suggested that the body had been placed in the woods around November 27th, which was right after Thanksgiving.

But the big breakthrough didn't come from a phone call tip or a local sighting. It actually came months later When investigators turned to genetic genealogy. They uploaded DNA from the remains into public genealogy databases, and built out family trees until they narrowed it down and finally got a match.

In May of 2023, more than five months after the torso was first discovered, the remains were confirmed to belong to 40-year-old Mindy Tis at the time of her death, she and her husband Nicholas, were living in Savannah, Georgia.

Melissa: So now investigators had a name, and while the discovery was horrific, the story of Mindy and who she was before she ended up in the woods was really just as heartbreaking.

Mindy was born to her parents, Frank and Betsy in South Carolina. She was the oldest of three with two younger brothers who looked up to her. She [00:04:00] wasn't just the big sister though. She was the achiever. She earned a bachelor's degree from Armstrong State University and went on to get her Master's in Public and International Affairs from Virginia Tech. She worked for law firms and non-profits and nonprofits, and on the side she loved writing. Mindy's friends described her as kind and loving someone who really touched so many lives, and she was just a true friend to all. Even former classmates who hadn't seen her in years, wrote messages after her death about how much they'd missed her, how they hoped she knew she was loved, and how deeply they prayed.

She hadn't suffered. She was one of those people who left an impression wherever she went. Behind all of that. The picture of Mindy's later years was very different because in 2014, she met Nicholas CAUTIs through a dating site. Two years later, in October of 2016, they got married at Marvin Park in Virginia. And on paper, Nicholas was really quite a catch. But to Mindy's family, he was [00:05:00] controlling. And as the years went on, Mindy seemed more and more isolated. By the time of her death, Mindy's family believed she was eight months pregnant and due in January with a little girl. They were convinced her death had been some sort of a medical emergency, like a stroke or some other

complication tied to her blood

pressure because that's what Nicholas told them.

Mandy: on the surface. Nicholas looked like the kind of guy any parent would really brag about. He had a bachelor's from Boston University, a law degree from Northeastern, and he was even pursuing a master's in National Security Law from Georgetown. He was a decorated Navy JAG officer. He served two tours in Iraq and he worked at the Pentagon.

So that's the resume. But behind all those medals and credentials, there was really chaos. Nicholas had been married before, and when that marriage ended in 2015, he was ordered to pay his ex-wife a whopping $1.5 million settlement. He did not, and in fact, he spent years [00:06:00] dodging that order and he would make excuses.

And in 2019 he even testified that he had $32 million. He just couldn't get to it because according to him, Mindy was holding the funds hostage. 

Melissa: I'm sorry. Why are you gonna say you have that much money? 

I would just be like, don't have it. Can't get it. But not like, no, I

have like 30 times as much as

you need, but can't get it. Sorry. 

Mandy: Right. He literally did tell the judge that under oath, and the judge was absolutely furious, like you just said. Like, what, what are you talking about sir? Um, and warned him that his liberty was at stake and a bench warrant ended up following when Nicholas continued to ignore the order to pay that money.

This is when his life really started spiraling into something that kind of started sounding a lot more like a Netflix documentary than real life. So Nicholas started talking about a man named Jim McIntyre, and according to him, this man Jim was an FBI agent who had essentially taken over his in Mindy's [00:07:00] lives.

This guy allegedly told Nicholas that he and Mindy were being hacked, stalked, and targeted. And eventually it got to the point where Nicholas was like, we have to move. This guy, Jim McIntyre is telling us we have to relocate multiple times over. They moved again and again and again. They lived in Virginia, the Carolinas.

And finally, at the time of our story, they were living in Savannah. Sometimes they would stay in rentals just for a few weeks before they would leave again, and they spoke to each other in encrypted messaging apps like Signal, which deleted their texts. Shortly after sending Mindy's mom, Betsy remembered how her daughter was so terrified she rarely even left the house.

Nicholas told her they had a security team protecting them, though nobody ever saw any of these alleged security detail people. Uh, and Betsy said that she did believe Mindy's Sphere was very real. She said her daughter was absolutely scared to death to go anywhere. And meanwhile, Nicholas sat glued to his [00:08:00] computer from sunup to sundown.

He would claim that he was working for a Microsoft subsidiary, but nobody ever was able to see his computer screen or could confirm exactly what he was doing on the computer. He would claim that Jim McIntyre had been sent to protect him because his Microsoft job has put them in danger. And this is just a very elaborate web of what, what turns out to be lies really.

It's part paranoia, part control, and it's kind of also just this big con. And it left Mindy cut off from the outside world. And really she was completely dependent on Nicholas, who as we know now was already planning his next big thing.

Melissa: Thanksgiving of 2022 should have been normal Turkey football, family arguments over cranberry sauce, you know the drill. Instead, it became the last holiday that Mindy's parents would ever believe their daughter was alive. That weekend, Frank and Betsy left the Savannah rental house where Mindy and Nicholas were staying and they drove back to Hilton Head. [00:09:00] Frank had hip replacement surgery scheduled for November 30th, so their focus was really on his recovery. But when they returned to Savannah on December 1st, Mindy wasn't there. Nicholas told them she was at a military hospital being treated for blood pressure issues. He didn't say which hospital. He didn't name a doctor. He just vaguely waved it off as being high blood pressure complications. That same day, Nicholas came home and told Frank and Betsy that Mindy had suddenly died. He gave no details, had no paperwork, no death certificate, nothing. He told them that she had passed away in the hospital, but sometimes he would say it was actually a military hospital. Other times he said it was a birthing center. So he never really got that story straight. But every version of the story was suspiciously light on specifics and details. As you can imagine, Frank and Betsy were horrified. They had believed their daughter was eight months pregnant due in January, and so to them it did make sense that her death could be from [00:10:00] pregnancy complications, possibly a stroke or something else tied to her blood pressure. And because they trusted Nicholas, probably because Mindy trusted Nicholas, They were trying to make sense of the unthinkable, and they accepted his story, which of course you would because why would somebody lie about 

this? That's, that is crazier to start questioning that, you know, 'cause why would somebody do this? Nicholas went even further. He told them that Jim McIntyre, yes, the FBI agent we talked about before, said that they could actually not have a funeral or a viewing because it wasn't safe. Frank, who was actually a retired minister, accepted that he said later he believed that Mindy had gone to be with the Lord, even though he admitted that the circumstances felt strange.

But then again, grieving parents don't usually demand paperwork when they're in shock. They really just clinging to whatever explanation they're given. And Nicholas knew that and 

that's why he was able to do this. But what they didn't know was that while they were sitting in [00:11:00] Hilton head mourning their daughter, her body was already scattered across the woods of rice. 

Mandy: The truth about what happened to Mindy didn't even come from Nicholas or from the Phantom FBI agent that he kept blaming all of this on, but it came from the medical examiner. When her autopsy was complete. It erased every single lie that Nicholas had told her parents, Mindy hadn't died in a hospital bed at all.

She hadn't suffered some sudden stroke or pregnancy complications. In fact, she wasn't even pregnant. Despite Nicholas insisting that she was eight months along and was due in January. The autopsy revealed that Mindy had died from Blunt Force Trauma to the head. After her death. Her body had been dismembered using sharp tools and then scattered through the woods in an obvious attempt to conceal the crime. Toxicology didn't show anything unusual. There was no evidence that she'd been poisoned or sedated. What the autopsy showed, plain and simple was that this had been a homicide.

so as her family was in Hilton Head clinging to [00:12:00] this story that Nicholas told them, which was that their daughter slipped away quietly in a hospital, this brutal reality that she had been murdered in her own home, dismembered and dumped like trash was starting to come to light. And we have more to get into after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors.

Marker

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Marker

Melissa: And now back to the episode. Before the episode, we learned how hunters in Georgia stumbled across this torso that turned out to be 40-year-old Mindy Cotis, [00:15:00] who had been dismembered and scattered across miles of woods. We've also heard about her background and how she ended up being married to Nicholas, this decorated Navy lawyer who spun stories about a phantom FBI agent and really kept Mindy isolated. Thanksgiving of 2022. Her parents were told she had died suddenly of blood pressure complications, but the truth was far darker. So while investigators were trying to still figure out who this woman in the woods was, Nicholas Cotis was already busy reinventing himself, and he wasn't just hiding out.

He was actually building an entirely new identity and relationship. Back in late September of 2022, when Mindy was still alive, a Pennsylvania author named Samantha, posted a tweet offering signed copies of her horror novels A stranger calling himself KJ or Nick Stark slid into her dms and said he'd bought four of them. And of course, authors get these kinds of messages all the time, but this one didn't stop there. By October, the small [00:16:00] talk really had turned personal. This Nick Stark told Samantha that he was a writer too, that Hollywood had even sniffed around one of his short stories to prove himself.

He volunteered documents including a Georgia driver's license under the name Nicholas Killian Stark, and an employment letter from a company called APIs Limited. He communicated through Proton Mail and WhatsApp, which are both encrypted platforms, which didn't really raise any alarms for her at that time, but then came the sympathy play on October 18th, and again on October 22nd, he confided that his wife, an unborn child, had died in 2020, supposedly from blood pressure and heart complications in the hospital. So none of it was true of course, but Samantha obviously has no way of knowing that by November, the chats between the two had gone from casual to emotional, and then they were talking on the phone at some point when Samantha had a flat tire. Later that month, Nicholas swooped in like a white night. [00:17:00] After less than two months of online chatting, he actually arranged to have her car towed and paid more than $600 for four new tires and headlight bulbs. Samantha thought that that was quote a lot for someone she barely knew, and she even had to set boundaries with him. He apologized to her for, you know, doing too much really, and said he was just out of practice with dating. Then came December. On the 16th, just two weeks after a hunter found a torso in Georgia, Nicholas met Samantha in person at an Airbnb in Pennsylvania. At the end of that same month, he went a step further. He legally changed his name in Missouri to Nicholas Killian James Stark. in the court filing?

He claimed he was the victim of domestic violence at the hands of his father. He even managed to blame Jim McIntyre saying that Jim had conned him into believing his own dad was after him by early 2023, he was all in on this new life. In February, Nicholas and Samantha got [00:18:00] engaged. He told her he was debt free.

He was working as general counsel for a cybersecurity startup, which that can't be Microsoft. I've never heard of them as a startup in the last 50 years. And he was ready to buy a house in Pennsylvania On their marriage license application. He claimed it was only his second marriage, which had ended with the death of his wife on December 1st, 2020.

But in reality, it was actually his third. He even lied about who his parents were. He listed a Susan Fox in California and an Edward Williams in the uk and claimed he had

found his biological family later in life after an abusive upbringing. 

Mandy: By April, 2023, Nicholas and Samantha were married, but before that, there was one more wild story, and that's the story of the $850,000 fire. So according to Nicholas, he had put down money on a house and he was heading to close on it on March 20th, 2023. When suddenly his car [00:19:00] spontaneously burst into flames.

Melissa: Honestly, I hate when that happens. 

Mandy: Me too, me too. He told Samantha that he had actually just picked up that cashier's check for the closing

somewhere in the range of 800 to $850,000 worth of money in cashier's check. And this money literally just got burned up in this mysterious, spontaneous 

Melissa: Okay. At that point, if it was

more than $5, I'm going to the police department, getting, uh, like

getting a letter to go to my bank and say, I know you just ain't gonna be that 

check, and I know it's worth cash, but you have to re, re

resubmit it. Whatever. I'm going GoFundMe, I'm doing whatever I can. You're not gonna tell me that I lost up to

$850,000 in a random fire. 

Mandy: No 

way. No way. Yeah.

So Samantha even drove, Nicholas to the hospital that day and a wristband, you know, he had confirmed that he had checked in when she pushed him to call the insurance company and, photographed the wreck. Though he, he wouldn't do [00:20:00] any of it until she really was firm and insisted on it.

The whole lost check in the fire story really killed the deal on buying the house, but Nicholas spun it as just another stroke of bad luck weeks later, though his entire house of cards started to collapse on May 12th, 2023, just one day after Mindy was confirmed as being the woman whose remains were found in Rice borough.

Nicholas was arrested in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. That was the moment Samantha first learned that her widower story that she had heard from Nicholas was really a lie. The wife Nicholas told her, died in 2020, was Mindy and she actually had still been alive when he first found his way into Samantha's dms.

Yes. So she was absolutely horrified and she willingly turned over her devices, all of her messages and her belongings to investigators, and later secured an annulment from their marriage, because of the fraud. So for her, it was more than just a betrayal. It was [00:21:00] realizing, of course, that she's been married to this man who was indicted for murder and dismemberment and everything he's ever said has been a lie.

but by the time Nicholas was arrested, investigators already had a pretty solid picture of what had happened to Mindy. And it wasn't really just one smoking gun, it was a whole arsenal of them. So let's start with the car. Back in July of 2022, Nicholas had bought himself a brand new Ford Explorer that he paid about $45,000 in cash for.

And it wasn't just any SUV, it came with Ford Pass Connect, which allowed him to pair his phone, track the vehicle's location, and even control it remotely, which I don't, I don't like that at all. 

Um, 

Melissa: I don't know. I

know somebody with, uh, one of those kind of cars and it is cool to see that thing get out of a parking spot

and drive around to where they are if it's 

Mandy: cool. 

Melissa: lovely. 

Mandy: Yeah, I guess that could be neat.

Um. Yeah, it is weird. and it does have a lot of fancy features that probably [00:22:00] are very cool, but also this is a nightmare for someone if you're trying to hide your movements or if you don't want to be tracked by your husband who is doing all this crazy stuff.

So on November 29th, 2022, just days before Mindy's Torso was discovered, a security camera in Rice Borough picked up this dark Ford Explorer traveling down Jones Road, which is the very path leading to the Portal hunting Club where Mindy's remains would later be found. The footage showed the SUV at 12:12 PM heading toward the club, and then minutes later you see it heading back.

The driver couldn't be seen clearly, but the SUV matched Nicholas's Explorer and the timing lined up almost perfectly with the window of Mindy's death.

Melissa: Then there was the Savannah rental House on East 65th Street where Nicholas and Mindy had been living. Investigators searched the home in May of 2023, treating it as a potential crime scene. But of course, because so many guests had stayed there after December, visible stains weren't present.

So [00:23:00] the agents used Blue Star, which is a luminol based chemical that lights up in the presence of blood. They then darkened the house completely, and what they found was chilling on a blue futon in the den. They saw a reddish brown stain on the cushion that tested positive for human blood. Under the cover, the padding was saturated. They cut samples and sent them to the lab, and when they lifted the rug off the floor in front of the futon, the grooves in the vinyl plank flooring lit up with a wipe pattern, which is clear evidence of blood that's been deposited and then cleaned. This wasn't just a paper cut or a nosebleed. This was a major blood loss event, that was an all investigators trace Nicholas's shopping trips in the months leading up to Thanksgiving. on August 16th, 2022, he bought Clorox wipes, gorilla glue, latex glove, folding razors, and a putty knife from Home Depot. On November 4th, he bought an anvil digging shovel [00:24:00] and a fiberglass hammer. Security footage here caught him leaving this door with them. On November 28th, he bought a pursuit seven piece knife set from Bass Pro Shop, the kind that's used for deer processing. The very next day, November 29th, he picked up a Milwaukee insulin knife From Home Depot. Those weren't items for home repairs or holiday gifts. They were the exact kind of tools that would be consistent with dismemberment and cleanup. near the crime scene, investigators also found tubs and they believe that those have been used to transport Mindy's remains. That fixed blade knife that was recovered near her torso, it matched one Nicholas had purchased at Home Depot. Even the digital trail betrayed him Nicholas's phone, which he swore he had turned off for security reasons. Remember, Jim McIntyre is still out there. It pinged along the exact roots that matched where her body parts were.

Found. His Ford Explorer's data told the same story together, the SUV's black [00:25:00] box, his cell phone and security cameras tracked his every move piece by piece. This chain of chaos was becoming impossible to deny The only thing more unbelievable than the

evidence itself was the story that

Nicholas tried to sell the investigators when they finally sat him down for questioning.

Mandy: When investigators arrested Nicholas, they were ready with car records, store receipts, and that blood evidence they had found. They wanted to see how Nicholas would explain everything in true to form. He had a whole story. First, he flat out denied killing or harming Mindy in any way. He told them he had never put his hands on a woman and that he wasn't even good with blood.

He admitted though that he had lied for years about other things like money and where they lived, even about Mindy's supposed pregnancy. But he insisted those weren't lies meant to deceive or for personal gain. According to him, he was following instructions from Jim McIntyre. Remember, he tells him what to do and Nicholas just does it.

So Nicholas [00:26:00] claimed that Jim McIntyre, as we said before, was some kind of FBI agent who had been pulling the strings for years. He supposedly told Nicholas what to buy, where to go, and even when to move houses. Nicholas said he obeyed everything because he thought Jim was protecting him and Mindy from danger, He blamed every bizarre decision. Those encrypted apps, the constant moving, even telling people that Mindy died back in 2020. All of that was blamed on Jim when investigators pressed him more on Mindy's death. Nicholas stuck to his story. He said she died suddenly in a hospital or birthing center on December 1st, and why wouldn't you know where your wife was when she was giving birth or I, that that part is also confusing to me.

Like how? Why wouldn't he know? 

Melissa: Right. 

Mandy: Just makes no sense. But he said that he was never allowed to see her body. He didn't know the name of her doctor and he didn't even know the name of the facility, which again, very strange. He admitted he never got a death certificate or medical records, which is wild considering he had been a Navy [00:27:00] lawyer who really did this for a living and that's all he does is scrutinize paperwork.

So the fact that he didn't have any paperwork to show that Mindy had even been in a hospital or that she passed away was clearly, um, a red flag. But then he upped the ante even more with an even stranger claim that he had actually paid someone $5,000 in cash. Just a strange, random unnamed man that he met on the side of the road in Montgomery, Alabama gives him $5,000 and this man gives him Mindy's, remains, in an urn, and also gives Nicholas her wedding rings.

There was no receipt for this, no documentation, just like a sketchy roadside deal for human remains.

Melissa: That's wild. To just

meet somebody on the side of the road to get your

wife's remains and paying them.

I don't know. This whole makes no sense.

Mandy: Yeah, so investigators actually called the whole scenario elaborately crazy, and I think that's putting it very mildly. When they confronted Nicholas with the surveillance footage of his Ford Explorer near the woods [00:28:00] where Mindy's body was found, he did admit to being in the area, but again, he claimed it was because Jim told him to drop off these tubs full of Mindy's belongings, like toiletries, books, electronics.

He, Jim was telling Nicholas to go drop these things off with a stranger again, I guess, to keep them safe. So the fact that those tubs were later found with Mindy's body parts inside, Nicholas kind of brushed off and said he didn't know what the man did with those tubs after he gave it to, to them. Just kick the can down the road again.

Yeah. So it was excuse after excuse, just lie after lie. It was layered so deep that even the seasoned investigators just kind of had to shake their heads and figure out how to get through it. But throughout all of this, Nicholas stuck to his story that he wasn't a killer. He was just a man that was being manipulated by this phantom FBI agent.

Melissa: And I hate when that happens. It really can ruin your whole life But by the time Nicholas Cotis trial began on August 5th, 2025 in Liberty County Superior Court in [00:29:00] Hinesville, Georgia, The case had already drawn national attention. Not only was it a gruesome murder involving dismemberment, but the defendant was a former Navy JAG officer who had gone from serving his country to spinning this fantasy world of fake FBI agents and deaths. The stakes were huge. Nicholas was facing 12 counts, Including malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and removal of body parts. From the scene of a death, the prosecution didn't waste time. In their opening statement, they laid out a very clear picture. Nicholas had killed Mindy because he wanted out of his marriage.

He wanted to escape the financial noose of that $1.5 million judgment from his first wife, and he wanted to start fresh with another woman, Samantha, the Pennsylvania author. He had secretly married. They said that this wasn't a heat of the moment crime. It was planned, methodical, and motivated by self preservation and greed, which, yeah, the fact that he went to so many stores, like [00:30:00] just planning this like over several months, he was, this was not like a one and done thing.

It's not like when people go in and buy like a shovel everything at once. He was like doing it all at different times. Just setting the stage for this. Then they told the jury to look at the timeline. So just months before Mindy's death Nicholas's ex-wife had finally secured that $1.5 million judgment against him. And instead of paying for it, Nicholas and Mindy vanished. They started bouncing from rental to rental, cutting off contact, hiding behind these encryption apps and shadowy stories about FBI agents. And then in late 2022 with Mindy isolated and terrified Nicholas made his move. The defense led by attorney Doug Weinstein countered with their own narrative to them.

Nicholas wasn't a killer. He was just a man consumed by relentless fear. His attorney leaned hard into this Jim McIntyre story. He told jurors that Nicholas and Mindy truly believed they were in danger. and that Jim [00:31:00] controlled their movements and that Nicholas had only lied because he thought secrecy would keep them safe. He called Mindy's death, absolutely unthinkable, and he insisted the truth was more complicated then the prosecution wanted them to believe, but prosecutors were ready to dismantle that argument. They told jurors flat out quote, there is no gym. They dismissed the so-called FBI figure as a CIA style conspiracy theory,

and they said it was nothing more than a fabrication that Nicholas had invented to cover his lies and evade his obligations. 

Mandy: And then came, the witnesses. The first to take the stand was, oh.

Olin Lovett. He was the hunter who found the torso on December 2nd, 2022, and he described how he had been tracking a deer and he thought the torso was a hog at first, and then the horror of realizing that it was actually a human. Next came Lieutenant Anthony Brown from the Liberty County Sheriff's Office, and he recounted arriving at the scene and securing this remote property.[00:32:00] 

South Carolina canine handler John Murphy testified about returning on December 5th with cadaver dogs, which led to the discovery of both legs, the buried head, and that fixed blade knife and the plastic storage tub. Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Special agent Brent Dickerson followed with extensive testimony walking the jury through the forensic testing on all of those items.

He detailed how the blood traces the knife and the tub all connected directly to the homicide. His testimony alone stretched for hours, but some of the most emotional testimony came from Mindy's parents. Her mom, Betsy, took the stand and described how Mindy had been very intelligent and was not gullible, but she really was absolutely terrified in the months leading up to her death.

She told jurors about these constant claims of pregnancy, about Nicholas insisting that they changed their last name to Stark for security reasons, and about this phantom security team that she really had never even saw before, but just Nicholas was telling her [00:33:00] existed, and Betsy made it clear that she believed her daughter's fear was genuine, but she had also had come to believe that Nicholas was the one orchestrating all of it.

Her father, Frank, also testified and he recounted how Nicholas had moved them into his son's home in Hilton Head, and they had been required to leave the house during the day until they were cleared to come back. And they would, you know, sort all this out through messages on these encrypted apps. And he also testified about how Mindy rarely left her bedroom. He said Nicholas maintained control over every scrap of communication and information in that household. Um, he knew what everyone was doing, where they were going, what time they were coming back. It was just absolutely wild. then the jury heard from Nicholas's first wife, Heather Thomas. She told the jury about their early relationship and said that it had started like a friendship. They both really wanted kids, but unfortunately she had PCOS and eventually the marriage did fizzle out. But she also seeing Nicholas [00:34:00] After she was remarried when she was pregnant, she said when she saw Nicholas, he seemed visibly uncomfortable. She confirmed that she never saw proof of this supposed $32 million. He bragged about in court. And she testified that she believed the bank statements he once showed her were actually fabricated.

And she also dropped a bombshell when she saw the forensic sketch of the unidentified woman. She recognized the jawline and she knew that it was Mindy. And so she was actually the one who called the Georgia Bureau of Investigators anonymously to say that she thought she knew the victim's identity.

Wild. Wild. So piece by piece, the prosecution laid out their case and that included the bloody futon, the shopping receipts, the car caught on surveillance, those tubs in the woods. The phone data that showed Nicholas's every movement and looming over all of it was this Jim McIntyre story that prosecutors were calling flat out fiction.

And we have more to get into after [00:35:00] one last break to hear a word from this week's sponsors.

Marker

Melissa: And now back to the episode. So before the break, investigators tied Nicholas to his wife's murder with blood in their rental house, receipts for knives and shovels, and surveillance of his SUV near

the woods. at trial, prosecutors laid out the evidence piece by piece. While Nicholas's defense leaned on fear and paranoia, jurors heard from hunters, investigators, Mindy's parents, and even his first wife. With each of them adding to the picture of a man whose elaborate lies had finally caught up with him when it was his turn. Nicholas took the stand in his own defense, and if the prosecution had been hoping that he'd dig himself into a hole, they really didn't have to wait long.

He practically rented a backhoe and did it himself. He told the jury that his life had been one long nightmare of paranoia and fear orchestrated by this so-called FBI Agent Jim McIntyre. According to Nicholas, Jim controlled everything, their housing, their movements, and even their [00:36:00] finances. He said that from late 2019 to mid 2020, he and Mindy moved 15 to 25 times, sometimes with only an hour's notice.

because Jim said it wasn't safe to stay put. He claimed that Jim had even arranged a therapist for him, who confirmed he had this repressed abuse from his father and said his family was part of some larger plot against him. Nicholas insisted that Jim had told him that Mindy's involvement was blocking his ability to pay that $1.5 million judgment to his first wife, and that if Mindy were out of the picture. Then the problem would disappear, which is convenient, right? He said he believed the matter had been settled after Jim showed him fake wire confirmations and bank statements. Though of course, unfortunately he no longer had those records. He testified that Mindy had been sick, supposedly pregnant and and poor health, requiring nightly blood pressure checks and help just getting outta the bed. He claimed that over [00:37:00] Thanksgiving weekend of 2022, while Mindy's parents were away, she sent him signal messages saying she was going to a birthing center for medical care

on December 1st, he said he got a call that she had died suddenly after being disconnected from medical equipment to use the bathroom.

What? 

Mandy: No, absolutely not. Because if a person is truly in that state, they wouldn't be getting up to use the bathroom in 

Melissa: You get a catheter and you just sit there? Yeah. That is a

wild,

thing to be like, oh yeah, she just needed to go to the bathroom. She unplugged a few

things and that's what happened. That's crazy. 

Mandy: wasn't on life support. I mean, 

Melissa: Exactly. And if she's able to get up, 

is it, you know what I mean? Like all of this together is just crazy. He did tell jurors that he was denied the chance to see her body because of a pending autopsy. And then came the kicker. Nicholas admitted that he had picked up Mindy's ashes on the side of the road in Montgomery, Alabama from this unnamed man. He gave $5,000 cash to, but of course there was no [00:38:00] receipt, no certificate, just ashes in a container.

And her rinks, he

described himself as being pretty angry about the whole thing, but apparently not angry enough to demand proof. Why were you meeting him on the 

side of the road? 

Mandy: get that.

Melissa: That none of that makes any sense. And actually, I just think it's meant to confuse you because it's just another thing that's like what?

Mandy: Yeah, for sure. So the jury also heard how Nicholas explained away all of his purchases, the shovel from Home Depot. He said it was for working under the crawlspace after a mosquito infestation and the knife set that he got from Bass Pro. Suddenly that was supposed to be a Christmas gift from Mindy's brother As for the Milwaukee knife that he got from Home Depot, he said he bought that to fix a damaged window screen each purchase. He really insisted, had this innocent explanation, but under cross examination those explanations fell apart. Prosecutors pointed out that Nicholas had no death certificate from Mindy.

He had no medical records and he didn't even know the name of a single doctor that [00:39:00] she had seen. He admitted that he never asked any questions despite the fact that he was a trained attorney, which like there's no way you're not asking all the questions. And he also admitted he didn't ask about the baby, even though he and Mindy had supposedly been expecting a child in just a few weeks.

He was completely clueless about anything about the pregnancy. He gave conflicting stories about his name change and at one point he said that it was done in Delaware, and then at another point he said it was in Missouri. And he even blamed a DMV glitch. Um, that once issued him a license under the wrong name. And that fake name was

potus, which,

president of the United States. Is that what 

Melissa: Yeah. I, that is wild to to

say of all names. And the fact that he does

these like specific names like Stark and stuff is so

crazy to me. I think 

that's a superhero?

Yeah.

I think isn't it Tony Stark? 

Mandy: I think so. 

Melissa: Uh, I 

Mandy: Strange. Yeah.

So Nicholas really [00:40:00] could not produce a single tax document or pay stub to even prove his job, um, even existed.

And through it all, he circled back to this same defense that Jim McIntyre told him to do all of it. Jim told him to lie.

Jim told him to keep secrets. Jim was the reason for everything, but the problem was no one could approve there was any gym or that any gym ever existed. So for the jury, it was less like listening to a decorated Navy lawyer and more like watching a little kid try to lie their way out of something.

Melissa: Seriously. So when the trial wrapped up and the case was finally handed to the jury, it didn't take long, just over an hour later, and they had a verdict. And that sounds really fast, almost like they rushed it. But the jury foreman Kai Andrew later made it very clear this wasn't a snap judgment. They've sat through weeks of testimony.

They've looked at every gruesome photograph, every receipt, every forensic report, and every bizarre story that Nicholas told. And by the time they walked into the deliberation [00:41:00] room, The puzzle pieces had already been snapped into place. Kai explained that they didn't take an immediate vote.

They talked through the evidence first, and they talked about the Jim McIntyre story and how the total inability to prove that Jim even existed had gutted Nicholas's credibility. One juror described Nicholas's testimony as less like a man defending himself and more like a child denying that he stole cookies with crumbs still all over his face. They acknowledged that there was no direct DNA evidence tying Nicholas to the killing itself, and that was really one of the defense's, big talking points. But as Kai put it, You can't say someone is innocent just because there's no DNA lack of a test doesn't erase the rest of the facts. Of course, the circumstantial evidence when stacked together was overwhelming. They also considered Nicholas's background, his military service, his Georgetown law degree, his years as a Navy JAG officer, and said they [00:42:00] respected it and many jurors actually came from military families themselves, but Kai said, quote, what is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong. At the end of the day. Of course, his resume doesn't outweigh the mountain of evidence against him. They also said the autopsy photos had been really difficult to see. They said it was even stomach churning, but they reminded themselves that this was a human being, someone's daughter and sister, and they had to look at the photos with respect. They said they didn't let the photos decide the case, though the evidence did. So when it actually came time for them to vote, the decision was unanimous guilty on all 12 counts. Not one single person raised a hand for innocence for the jurors. The lies, the purchases, the surveillance, the scattered remains.

It all pointed one way. Nicholas CAUTIs was guilty. LT.

Mandy: On August 14th, 2025, The jury headed back into the courtroom after just over an hour of deliberations. Their verdict was unanimous. [00:43:00] Nicholas was found guilty on all 12 counts, including malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and dismemberment. Nicholas Cotis, who was once this decorated Navy JAG officer now was a convicted killer.

The sentencing came immediately after the verdict was read. Superior Court Judge Paul Rose, did not mince words. He told Nicholas, quote, you write fiction and your life was a fiction at least the last six to seven years. And then you carried out a brutal, horrific, gruesome murder of Mindy. He called Nicholas's, invented FBI handler Jim McIntyre.

Nothing more than a lie. He said it was part of a web of lies that had left Mindy isolated and terrified. Rose. Reminded Nicholas that he had vowed to love and care for Mindy, but instead he attacked her and then desecrated her body in such a vile way. Nicholas was sentenced to life in prison without parole, plus an additional 25 years, which was the maximum allowed.

Mindy's family did have their chance to speak and their statements made it [00:44:00] clear just how much devastation Nicholas had left. Behind Mindy's sister-in-law, Megan told Nicholas to his face, you are a pathological liar. You are a psychopath and a sociopath. You thought you were so much smarter than everyone else.

You have forever changed the meaning of trust for me and my family. She reminded the court that Nicholas and Mindy had lived with her and her husband for over a year, and Nicholas had never contributed financially to the household. She said he deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison with nothing but time to think about what he had done.

Another family member named Morgan said that Mindy was deliberately kept isolated from the people who love her. She lived every day in fear and isolation, and while this conviction did bring some relief, it definitely could 

not bring Mindy back. 

Judge Rose described Mindy as vibrant, smart, and beautiful, and told 

Nicholas that all her hopes and dreams were dashed in an instant 

for his part.

Nicholas chose not to speak during sentencing, but his parents did.

His mom, Linda, told the court, We know him to be a calm and gentle man,

that he could take [00:45:00] someone's life as unbelievable. He's a good and kind person. They got this wrong. I'm sorry. His father also insisted that they believe in his innocence, the jury's verdict still stood.

Nicholas CAUTIs was led from the courtroom to begin serving his life sentence with no parole.

Melissa: Okay. After the verdict, Nicholas's attorneys wasted no time filing an appeal. They argue that the jury had been swayed by a motion and that the circumstantial case hadn't proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. They also said the defense hadn't been given enough leeway to present this Jim McIntyre theory, But legal experts said the chances of a successful appeal are slim. The mountain of evidence, combined with his own bizarre testimony, made it unlikely an appellate court would see things differently. Jurors spoke openly after the trial about how disturbed they were by the case. They described Nicholas as being delusional and detached from reality and said his insistence on blaming everything on a phantom [00:46:00] FBI agent really only hurt him. One juror said, quote, we respected his military service, but that doesn't excuse what he did. At some point, you stop giving someone the benefit of the doubt when all they do is lie. For Mindy's family, the conviction was both a relief and heartbreak relief because they finally had answers after months of confusion and half truths. Heartbreak, of course, because no verdict could undo what Nicholas had done. Not just the murder, but the years of isolation, manipulation, and fear. Even in the aftermath, the lies that Nicholas spun still hung in the air. The FBI had no record of any agent, Jim McIntyre. There was no security team that ever existed. There was no pregnancy, no baby, no spontaneous car fire with an $850,000 check going up in smoke. It was all fiction. and fiction was what Nicholas had been best at. As for the people left behind Samantha, the woman Nicholas married under his new identity, [00:47:00] got her annulment finalized and of course cut off all ties with him. Mindy's parents continued to grieve for their daughter publicly, acknowledging how thoroughly they had been deceived and tragically one of the key figures in unraveling this case.

Special Agent Tracy Sands of the GBI passed away unexpectedly in early 2025, never seeing the case through to its final conclusion in

court today, Nicholas Cotis sits in a Georgia prison serving life without parole plus 25 years.

Mandy: Man, this case is wild because I always am fascinated by the crazy lies that people tell for a long period of time. Like they actually live this weird lie. but it's crazy to think that like an adult that is like. Intelligent enough to become a lawyer would think that anyone would believe any of his story,

Melissa: See, that's why I think he thought that they would, because he is an attorney. And why would you say these things? 

That's, [00:48:00] it's crazy. The thing that made me really

sad is, um, October is domestic violence awareness month. And the thing that was so prevalent in the story was how isolated Mindy was, 

how she was even isolating herself due to fear.

But that was obviously a way of him, of abuse for him to keep her quiet and not to have people around to ask questions. it was really, really sad. I can't imagine the family hearing this 'cause I mean, honestly, why wouldn't you trust 

him? Really? Like why

wouldn't you? 

Mandy: All right guys, thank you so much for listening. That was our story for this week. We will be back next week. Same time, same place. New story. 

Melissa: have a great week. 

Mandy: Bye. 

Marker

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