August 27, 2024
I was exhausted — already on my third coffee of the day. Deep in the weeds writing about serial domestic violence offenders for an upcoming conference in Chicago, I found myself tracing the origins of the term “serial killer” — possibly first appearing in The London Daily Post on November 9, 1898. The headline: “’Jack the Ripper’ Claims 5th Victim, Woman Brutally Hacked to Death.” Investigators, the text noted, hoped forensic evidence would lead to the capture of the “Whitechapel serial killer.”
It was dig, dig, and more digging through police records and endless reading. While sifting through victim profiles that fit this pattern, I ran across an online news article about a woman named Nikki Lyn Forrest. She was a missing person, but since she wasn’t from Springfield, I didn’t continue the research. I went right back to my digging.
March 2025
I don’t recall the exact date, but I remember it was early March. I had begun writing my first book about generational crime in Springfield from 2021 to 2025. Nikki’s name came up again as I was researching missing women in the area. I still hadn’t investigated her full story, but I told myself I eventually would.
June 10, 2025
It was a weekday. I received a call from a reporter wanting to discuss domestic violence in Springfield. I had been railing against city hall and was becoming quite a problem for the mayor — which, at that point, felt like progress.
I met her at the Panera Bread in Springfield. Her name was Vicky Forrest. I told her the name sounded familiar and asked if she knew Nikki Forrest or if there was any relation. She said no, but then she told me about a young pregnant girl who had disappeared from Troy, Ohio. I mentioned I thought she might be from Enon, or maybe I was thinking of someone else entirely. I made a mental note to look into her.
I didn’t get around to it until July.
July 2025
I’m not sure of the exact date — sometime after the 4th. I had been gathering information on about twenty women from this area who had been reported missing when I came across Nikki Forrest again.
I began to read and — what the heck? The first story had no information. None.
This can’t be right. I dug and dug and found nothing. The media said she was at her boyfriend’s house — okay, but where? What was his name? What time was she there? What was she wearing? Nothing.
The police claimed she walked eight miles from Piqua to Troy in the blistering sun while pregnant. Who does that?
They said she went to visit a friend — but which friend? Where? I have never seen a missing persons case with so few details. Every disappearance has at least some scattered information, fragmented timelines, old newspaper clippings. Here, there was absolutely nothing. It was as if someone had decided, from the beginning, that Nikki Forrest didn’t warrant the effort.
August 5, 2025
This date remains etched in my mind as the worst nightmare imaginable.
A mob of 50 to 60 people gathered outside my home — people connected to the criminals and murders I had exposed in my first book. They weren’t there for a civil debate. They wanted my book banned and my voice silenced. Because I had documented the interconnected crimes of Springfield, they chose violence to protest my First Amendment rights.
The attack left both me and Jimmy reeling. For my safety, I had to flee to Florida to stay with my daughter, while Jimmy stayed behind to maintain our home and coordinate our departure from the city my family had called home since 1871. During that time away, I poured my energy into writing The Killing Fields of Springfield and began digging deeper into the criminal records of the people who had once surrounded Nikki Forrest.
The investigation into Nikki continued from a hotel room in Florida. It did not stop.
February 9, 2026
Jimmy and I were deep in the digital trenches — gathering every record we could find and reaching out to the community online. We started with the Nikki Forrest Facebook memorial page, which has over 800 members. Of the three administrators we contacted, only Rinda Bell responded.
There is a fundamental rule in crime research: never ask a question unless you already know the answer. The responses we received were still jarring — names of former boyfriends, details of early police work, three leads we hadn’t had before. I felt a sense of progress. I also felt a profound sadness. Rinda’s account triggered memories of my own teenage experiences with sexual violence. Some cases get under your skin before you realize it. This one had been there for months.
Late February 2026
Near the end of the month, we accidentally discovered a 2005 subpoena for Nikki buried deep within court filings.
As I read through those documents, I broke down.
I told Jimmy I couldn’t write for a few days. Seeing how the people she trusted — and the systems that should have protected her — had failed her so completely was almost more than I could hold. This wasn’t just a cold case. This was a thirteen-year-old girl who had been left alone in the world and a nineteen-year-old woman who had disappeared into a silence that no one in any official capacity seemed particularly interested in breaking.
There are cases you research and then there are cases that follow you home. Nikki Forrest is the latter.
I can’t let go of her. I don’t intend to.