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We begin with the case against a Florida grandmother convicted of leaving her seven-month-old granddaughter alone in a hot car for hours. Tragically, the infant died. And it isn’t the first time one of Tracy Nicks’ grandchildren would die while in her care.
Tracy Nicks was more than happy to help out her daughter, Kayla, when she needed a babysitter. It was a chance to spend some time with her seven-month-old granddaughter, Uriel. But after picking her up and taking her to a pre-arranged Bible group lunch in this Florida restaurant, the grandmother drove back home.
Then a few hours later:
“My niece on the clock. I don’t know. I just pulled up, but we need EMS.”
Tracy’s other daughter, Rebecca, pulled up to the house with her son and noticed her niece was still in her mother’s car. Uriel’s grandfather was called over to start CPR.
“Her eyes are open. She’s not breathing.”
Tracy had gone inside the home, practiced on her piano for some time, and completely forgot that her granddaughter was still in the car with temperatures hitting 90 degrees.
“How long was she in the car?”
“A while.”
“When I picked her up, I could feel through my gloves. She was just hot to touch.”
“Did you notice anything about the onesie she was in?”
“Yes, it was very damp from sweating.”
The heat was too much for Uriel. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Police were left to notify Kayla that her seven-month-old daughter died.
“He showed up at my door to notify me that my child was deceased. His words were, ‘Your baby is dead, your daughter is dead, your child is deceased, and we need you to come with us.’”
Uriel’s parents met at the hospital and had the heartbreaking task of identifying their own seven-month-old daughter.
“And so as soon as we found each other in that parking lot, which was sheer hell, then we went in together to look at our daughter and identify her body.”
Tracy Nicks was charged with aggravated manslaughter and leaving a child in a motor vehicle after it was determined that Uriel had been left in the car for several hours, dying of hyperthermia.
“I can’t forgive it. Absolutely not. As a father, I can’t. I don’t even know if I can do it as a Christian.”
Drew Shock says he can’t forgive because unbelievably this is the second time he and Kayla have lost a child in Tracy’s care. Over a year before, their 16-month-old son Ezra also died after he opened a door and wandered into this pond outside his grandparents’ home while Tracy fell asleep.
“I was believing that I was leaving my children at any point with a master’s degree-holding, well-educated, well-respected, Sunday-school-teaching, choir-singing social person.”
The judge wouldn’t allow Ezra’s death, which was ruled accidental, to be mentioned in Tracy’s trial, and members of the Bible group that met for lunch that day testified that she was a loving grandmother.
“What types of things was she doing?”
“Well, she was holding her and putting her up on the table because the baby was bouncing around and everything.”
“And was she paying attention to her?”
“Oh yes.”
“Feeding her or giving her at least something to drink?”
“Stuff like that, yes. We were all getting a kick out of her giving the child something to drink from a straw.”
Tracy’s attorney argued that what happened that day was a grandmother who loved her grandchildren, but she was distracted and simply forgot that Uriel was in the back seat.
“No one’s going to tell you this wasn’t a horrible, horrible situation. What happened was a family tragedy, but again, it was a tragedy that does not amount to a crime under Florida law.”
After two and a half hours of deliberations, with Tracy’s daughter in the courtroom, the jury returned their verdict.
“The defendant, Tracy Howard Nicks, is not guilty.”
The jury found Tracy Nicks not guilty of aggravated manslaughter, but guilty of the lesser charge of leaving a child unattended in a vehicle, and she is facing almost seven years behind bars when sentenced in the spring.
Left out of the trial was that Tracy was taking twice the amount of Ambien prescribed.
“I’m remanding you under custody, Miss Nicks.”
Tracy’s daughter, Kayla, says she’s satisfied with the verdict against her mother.
“Relieved to hear that there was going to be accountability and ownership and a conclusion to this part of this story.”
Uriel’s father says they struggle without their two children, but have to find a way to move forward.
“We got our son Asher and we just had a newborn. She is fixed to be five months old now. And so we focus on those and we focus on building. We are always going to be thinking of our children.”
“It’s one of the most baffling cases of all time.”
Pam Ionetti was found lying in a pool of blood with 47 stab wounds. At first it would appear that she was murdered. Cops pointed the finger at her husband, but he claimed it was suicide. And he was not the only one saying that.
“Thirty-seven years. Forty-seven stab wounds. The weapon used was a large kitchen knife. The blade was 12 inches long. But something wasn’t adding up.”
Did this man murder his wife in a fit of rage? Or was he pressured into taking the rap?
“This was a perfect storm leading to a false confession.”
“It had to be me or the butler. We didn’t have a butler.”
Valentino Ionetti, a man accused of stabbing his wife Pamela to death on a cold night in New Jersey. But the grieving widower and father of three had quite a different version of events. And it turns out there was a case to be made for each depending on who you asked.
“The manner of death is suicide.”
“A lot of it points to a potential homicide. So I can fully understand why authorities went in that direction.”
“Why am I being charged with murder if it’s a suicide? I lost four years of my life. I lost my standing in the community. I lost my standing in the business world. I lost my children.”
Pam Ionetti was a devoted mother and dedicated nurse. But according to her husband, there were deeper problems starting with 20 years of alcohol abuse.
“When she gets drunk, when you look into her eyes, they’re black.”
That was followed by serious and painful medical issues, then ultimately a pill addiction.
“She was on OxyContin, Percocet, Percodan. Before we got married, she was in mental health outfits. When we were married, she was in the psych ward a couple times, two or three times.”
But Valentino was admittedly no prince charming either.
“And I was a wise guy. I drank a lot when I was younger. I had a very bad temper.”
Yet somehow they always found their way back to each other, even reconciling near the time of her death.
“Right near the end, it was the best that I had seen it the whole time that I had known them.”
Until it wasn’t.
“My wife just stabbed herself!”
One December night after falling asleep on the couch, Ionetti said he woke up to a horrifying scene.
“I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, walked past the bedroom door, and there was a shadow on the floor. I backed up and I found my wife on the floor.”
Pamela was lying in a pool of blood, a long kitchen knife on the floor near her body. She was still alive.
“She started reaching behind her and behind her was the knife. So I thought she was grabbing for the knife. I didn’t need her grabbing the knife and doing something else with it. I grabbed the knife, held it in the back of the handle, and went to the kitchen.”
Ionetti says he put the knife on the counter and returned to his wife.
“I went over there to give her CPR and I knew it was past my capabilities. So I called 911.”
“He sounds almost like a wounded animal. There was just a lot of emotion in his voice.”
“I had no inclination that she stabbed herself or if somebody else stabbed her. I know I woke up and didn’t stab her. I didn’t even know she was stabbed that bad. I had no idea, no clue what was going on. I just woke up into this nightmare.”
And when police and paramedics arrived, it wasn’t quite the entrance he had expected.
“I remember the cops knocking on the door, guns drawn, and then ordering me down on my knees.”
“I don’t know what happened. I woke up and saw her bleeding.”
Valentino Ionetti says his wife of nearly 40 years took her own life with a butcher knife. But when cops secured the scene and discovered 47 stab wounds, they believed he was lying.
“Valentino, please. That’s worked thus far in your mind. Put that to rest. That’s not what happened.”
“Any lay person is going to look at that and say it’s laughable, this argument that she could have done this to herself.”
“In any previous arguments with your wife, have you ever struck her at all?”
“No.”
“Well, you noticed the kitchen cabinet dented.”
“I managed to hit walls and things instead of her.”
Friends don’t deny there was trouble in the home, but nothing that would lead to murder.
“There was a very deep love between them that had gone back to when they first got married and that had been there underlying all the difficult times that they had been through.”
Through uncontrollable sobs, Ionetti stuck to his story. He found his wife alive and bleeding, moved the knife, and called 911. He insisted Pam was a serious addict in physical and emotional despair, leading to her suicide.
“She was depressed. I did not know how to handle it.”
For 21 grueling hours, police tried to lure their suspect into a confessional trap.
“You can’t be man enough to discuss what happened? Pitiful. I have no respect for that.”
Through a series of police interrogations, cops seized on Ionetti’s apparent weakening.
“What did I do? What did I do?”
“You lost your cool. You got pushed too far and you snapped.”
“How? Why? Why?”
“I don’t know why.”
“Yes, you do. You do know why. If you explain to me what happened, maybe I can figure out the truth.”
“They created a scenario where the only rational answer for somebody when they’re told all these lies is to say, ‘I must have blacked out.’”
When detectives left him alone, Ionetti seemed headed for a breakdown.
“Did I do it? Lord, please tell me. Please help me. Help me, Lord.”
Detectives took those words as an admission, but Ionetti would later say he came to his senses.
“I wasn’t confessing anything. They had one agenda on their mind: convict me.”
“After 15 or 18 hours, people telling me I’m doing it, I’m doing it, I’m doing it, I started getting in doubt.”
“Somebody described to me it was like having a Mack truck sitting on their chest. That’s how much pressure these people are under.”
“He never really admitted to it.”
“I must have blacked out. Dear God, I can’t remember.”
And that’s exactly what the Sussex County District Attorney had in mind. So did the state’s medical examiner, ruling the case a murder.
“The medical examiner’s ruling was sort of a pivotal point in this case and sealed Mr. Ionetti’s fate. You don’t have a homicide unless you have a medical examiner saying that this person was murdered.”
At the age of 60, Ionetti was charged with killing his wife and sat in jail for nearly four years awaiting trial. His own children turned their backs on him.
“Everybody has lied to my children, their husbands, their children, their teachers, their doctors, everybody.”
He was left behind bars to grieve his loss alone.
“Every time I visited him, he would break down in tears because he missed her so much.”
But then, a meticulous public defender’s own independent medical expert made some intriguing discoveries about Pamela on the night she died.
“She actually had enough painkillers in her system to kill her. She had enough in her system to numb the pain of any stab wounds.”
And according to reports, all 47 wounds were actually in reach of Pamela’s own hands and arms, and none were defensive wounds.
“The crime scene was not in disarray. There wasn’t a lot of evidence of any kind of struggle that was going on.”
A pathologist’s report showed Pamela suffered from cluster wounds with three fatal wounds to the liver, left lung, and heart.
“There were no handprints, fingerprints, shoe prints to indicate someone else was involved.”
The defense team gave its findings to the Sussex County DA, who in turn did something quite rare for a prosecutor’s office. They got a second opinion, and it came from Dr. Mihalakis.
“I don’t believe that a perpetrator was there or could have done it. She would have a different pattern of wounds.”
Dr. Mihalakis believed the combination of pills and a knife was Pamela’s insurance. If one didn’t do the job, the other would.
“My final conclusion is the manner of death is suicide.”
In a stunning reversal, the DA’s office dropped the charges. But Ionetti’s freedom was bittersweet. The state’s medical examiner and the police refused to change their conclusion of murder, and the prosecutor’s office left itself open to recharge Ionetti in the future.
“The prosecutor is not saying based on what I’ve read that the person is innocent. They’re just saying they can’t prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. And there’s a huge difference between those two things.”
Ionetti did eventually attempt to file a claim on Pamela’s life insurance policy, but after a legal battle, he was denied.
“The minute they start googling your name, they find out that I was arrested for murder. They don’t want me around.”
Then just this past year, Valentino died from natural causes, never getting the chance to clear his name, at least in the eyes of the law.
“I did not murder my wife.”
