Page 4 - Inside Nick News Today

River. and nick had been strangled and dumped in the river at another time. in a search for suspects, investigators first questioned who would benefit from nicks death and learned that nick had several large life insurance policies. >> we found a life insurance policy that had an accidental death benefit rider on there, making the life insurance policy worth $850,000. now, a 18-year-old kid having an $850,000 life insurance policy is a little bit unusual. >> nicks family believed they were the b...

Would be involved is what breaks your case open. >> prosecutors believe ralph marcus was angry with nicks mother for the years of rejection going all the way back to high school. >> ralph marcus believed that he and patty should have been star-crossed lovers. she had turned him down from the outset. and toward the time when nick howard was killed, hed actually gotten to threatening her by saying things like, you should know what its like to lose a child. >> ralph marcus plan, according to prosec...

>> photogrammetry was the key element and it was used to solve the case. without photogrammetry this case would have gone unsolved. a car runs off the highway a car runs off the highway into a river. yet the driver is nowhere to be found. for answers, investigators recreated the crash and the evidence revealed a plan almost 20 years in the making. the result of a deadly obsession that ended in tragedy. nick howard was just 18 years old, fresh out of high school and working in his fathers c...

On the night of the murder, prosecutors believe marcus and nick met on the dock to plan the car crash. either nick tried to back out or marcus had planned to kill him all along. at some point, marcus strangled him until he was unconscious, then threw him into the river where he drowned. he kept nicks glasses, bent them in half, and threw them on the floor of nicks car to make it appear nick was in the car when it crashed. marcus opened the windows, used the cap from his motor oil bottle, placed ...

>> it was very odd that he wasnt there. he had never not been in his room. it let us know right away something was very wrong. >> the howard family called police to report nick missing. the search began at the restaurant where nick had stopped the night before. it was on a treacherous road that ran parallel to the sacramento river. >> you make a mistake and drift off of the roadway, youre liable to go to the bottom of the levee. on one side, its a river. on the other side, its a 30-foot drop. >>...

Water, it was moving at only 15 miles per hour. nicks glasses were found in the car. and investigators wanted to know if nick had been wearing them when the crash occurred. so they created a styrofoam facsimile of nicks head. >> i weighted the styrofoam head so that it was approximately the same weight as nicks head would have been in that same situation.

Proof. >> we examined the carburetor. i found an oil bottle cap holding the throttle open, which was remarkable by its uniqueness. never seen it before or have never seen it since. >> the cap was marked with a "v". it was the top to the valvoline motor oil bottle in the trunk. >> the bottle cap was a big indicator right off the bat, the car had been rigged. something wasnt right. >> the bottle cap would be put in there in lieu of a person to hold the gas pedal in position so the vehicle could be...

This loose piece of -- it was an application for change of beneficiary. it was an ncr copy. you could see where it had been crumpled and it had been folded at one time. it had ralph marcus name on it. and i was a little shocked. >> 37-year-old ralph marcus was an unemployed laborer who had a strained relationship with the howard family. he also had a police record. >> well, we did a little checking on mr. ralph marcus. in addition to his gambling and his flashy lifestyle, he never really had the...

Stranger to insurance fraud. >> it was said that ralph marcus decided pretty early on in his life that only fools worked for a living and rather than get a job, he supported himself gambling and insurance scams. supposedly, he had burned down his own house to receive the insurance proceeds. and then another time had arranged for the theft of a car and a boat to make money off that as well. >> with no forensic evidence linking marcus to the crash, investigators had one last idea. they noticed a l...

He was starting to get a little bit lackadaisical about that. >> nick was a night person and often stayed out late with friends. on a february night in 1997, nick stopped by a local restaurant to pick up his drivers license he had left there earlier. but the restaurant was closed so he left a note for the owner. >> it was in his handwriting. we knew that he had gone down there. >> later, he called his parents answering machine and left a message. >> im on my way home. i had a little bit of car t...