Tuesday, Apr 20, 2021 • 17min
A Crime to Remember: The Case of Nicole Gordon (Short)
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Simon Whistler
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Simon Whistler
01:33
Hello everyone welcome back to another brand new episode of The Crowsul Criminalist. What was that? Casual Criminalist! My voice apparently is not working today. This is going to be a brilliant one! This is one of our short episodes "A Crime to Remember: The Case of Nicole Gordon" What happens here as always if you are new is I am sitting here.
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01:50
This show, if you're listening to it on a podcast, it's as a podcast. It also goes out on YouTube. If you're watching it on YouTube, why not subscribe to the podcast? Probably don't do both. Just consume it however you prefer. But I'm sitting here with a script in front of me that has been written by our fine script writer Callum.
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02:07
I'm going to read it and then afterwards the music, the ambience is going to be added by Jen so let's just jump in shall we. Did I say this is a short one? We do both short and long episodes, generally one of each a week.
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02:19
This doesn't feel so short thought. It's a good five or six pages but the last page is short. Let's jump in shall we?
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02:27
And if I can just jump in again, if you're enjoying this show, the like button is to be used if you're on YouTube and if you're listening as a podcast and if you can leave us a review that is very much appreciated. I see those reviews going up and I'm an Apple person. I look in the Apple podcast app and I see those reviews going up and I'm grateful for it. So thank you.
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02:45
Memory
can be a fickle thing. A lapse in the hippocampus is a minor annoyance when you misplace your car keys, but the stakes are little higher when it comes to crime and punishment. When so many convictions rely on the testimony of victims and witnesses, we’d like to think that their recollections are accurate enough to decide the big questions of justice and freedom. Of life and death.Share
03:12
I don't know anything about this. Again, if you're new I've never read this before, I have no idea what this story is about. That's kind of how we do things here. Keeps it interesting for me. Maybe it makes it interesting for you.
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03:23
But I believe that, wasn't there even a movement to throw out eyewitness testimony in court as a generality, just because it's been so unreliable and we should just be relying on forensics and actual more quantifiable things rather than, because human
Memory
is a joke. It's just absolutely terrible.Share
03:40
However, neuroscience and psychology continue to prove that the mushy meat computers in our heads are actually prone to severely distorting the past, and even cooking up fake memories from scratch. That raises a few awkward questions that the legal system has yet to find a satisfying answer for.
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03:54
Thankfully nowadays, the hard science of criminal investigation can often compensate. We now have more cold hard facts at our disposal, to pick up the slack where
Memory
fails, at times catastrophically. Today we’ll be looking at a case in which the evidence told the shocking story of crime which the victim had no idea even happened.Share
04:14
Ooh, it's like a mystery. Yes, it was firmly embedded in her mind, just not in the way you might expect. Oh, is something going to be firmly embedded literally in her brain, causing her to to forget things. Well, let's find out shall we Callum.
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04:28
In Search of Lost Time.
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04:33
That evening in late May of 2017 had been shattered to pieces in the mind of Nicole Gordon. She remembered the argument. She remembered a loud noise. She remembered the smashing of glass, and the impact of shards against the side of her face but after that, it all was blank.
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04:46
The 40-year old regained consciousness some time later, she didn’t know how long, to find she was now in the back of her boyfriend’s car. Despite her blurred vision, she could make out his form sitting in the driver’s seat. This was Jerrontae Cain, himself in his late 30s. After a few seconds, she faded out of consciousness again.
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05:04
The next time Nicole awoke, she was at Cain’s mother’s house, propped up in the spare bed with pillows at her back. She asked what had happened, and Mrs Cain explained that Nicole had crashed the car while she and her son were locked in a shouting match. The impact had knocked her out, and sent shards of the driver’s side window flying into the side of her head.
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05:19
While she slept, Mrs Cain had cleaned up a pretty serious glass wound on the left side of her head. A deep cut right above her left eyebrow. I mean, thanks Mrs Kane, but is there a reason I'm not in, y'know, the hospital?
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05:31
Nicole looked down to find her shirt soaked in blood. Over the next few days, the elderly Mrs Cain continued caring for her son’s girlfriend, rather than letting her leave and get professional medical help. Yes, this would immediately set my alarm bells ringing. It sounds like something out of that Stephen King novel. Is it Misery where the the writer is kidnapped by one of his fans? Some scary sh-t.
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05:51
Nicole was used to that sort of argument. Over the course of her relationship with Jerrontae, she had learned that going to the hospital simply wasn’t an option. If the nurses were going to report her bruises and black eyes to the police, it would only incur further violence. Better to just keep quiet, and let the wounds heal by themselves. So that’s just what she did.
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06:08
These are always so sad because you're always immediately in the mind, why don't you go to the hospital? Why don't you go to the police? And obviously it's way more complicated than that. And yeah, that's a - situation.
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06:21
Whenever Nicole tried to piece together the memories of what happened to her that day, she came up short. The fragments were there, but she couldn’t quite piece them together into a coherent timeline. With her memories hazy at best and blank at worst, all she had to go on was the accounts of her boyfriend and his mother.
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06:34
And that wasn’t her only problem. The crash had left some lasting issues which only got worse over the following weeks. Her short-term
Memory
and speech were deteriorating, and her days were plagued with unbearable headaches.Share
06:44
When a friend came to visit her at home around a month after the incident, she was shocked at her condition. Nicole’s slurred speech and trouble following a conversation proved that her problems were beyond the medical powers of an old lady with some chicken soup and rubbing alcohol. She demanded that Nicole come with her to the hospital.
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06:57
On June the 25th, 2017, she was admitted to
Atlanta
Medical Center
. What the doctors there would find would turn her world upside down. There's got to be something in her brain right like a piece of glass or did he shoot her? Something terrible happens and it's screwing with her brain really bad.Share
07:16
A Ballistic Bombshell.
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07:20
When the technicians administered a brain scan on Nicole, they found something shocking, a dark mark right at the back of her skull. It appeared to be a small shard of metal. After consulting with multiple doctors and nurses, they had a good idea what it might be. Analysis of the wound above Nicole’s eye confirmed their suspicions: her injury wasn’t caused by a shard of glass at all.
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07:37
This physical evidence told a very different story to the one Nicole had been led to believe. Yes, she and Jerrontae had been arguing in the car, but there was no crash. During the argument, he had pulled out a handgun, and shot her in the face. The black mark on the scan was the
Bullet
, still lodged deep in her brain.Share
07:54
Realising that he hadn’t managed to kill her, the abusive boyfriend panicked, and ran to his mum for help. He bundled the grievously injured Nicole into his own car, while cooking up a story to explain the incident if she ever woke up. He could only pray that she wouldn’t remember the
Gun
in her peripheral vision, or the sound of it firing next to her head.Share
08:10
I mean, I don't want to get too dark here, but dude. I'm assuming when you shot her in the head, you intended to kill her? I mean, I really don't want to say it, but didn't you consider finishing the job because what if she does remember and you already basically were okay with being a
Murderer
. I'm just wondering why you didn't?Share
08:30
Unfortunately, the
Bullet
had done enough damage to Nicole’s brain that she couldn’t challenge her attacker’s story. Jerrontae thought that he had caught a lucky break, and resolved to let her go on living the rest of her life none the wiser after she left his mother’s house. As a result, Nicole wrote off her deteriorating mental condition as the result of a concussion.Share
08:46
Although, dude, if I'm like weeks later and I'm like, my speech is getting worse, I'm gonna be like, "Mmm, I should probably get that concussion checked out a bit more".
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08:54
That’s why she was so dumbfounded when the
Atlanta
PD detectives arrived to quiz her on the Bullet
in her head. She was as stumped as they were! Surely there had been some kind of mistake. Nicole told them about the argument and crash, but it took a while longer before she could come to terms with the real story, as reflected on her medical charts.Share
09:09
The cops then went to speak to the suspected gunman, who admitted that he was there at the time of the accident, but stuck to his original story. He elaborated that Nicole was a hysterical alcoholic who went into a frenzy during the argument, scraping her car against a gate, another car, and eventually ploughing into a tree. He even asserted that she refused to go to the hospital, against his advice.
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09:27
But again, the physical evidence told a very different tale. There was no proof of a crash occurring in the way he described, and Nicole’s injuries were inconsistent with the account. For one, she had no whiplash, no seatbelt injuries. And wasn’t it strange that a shard of glass had fired out with enough force to lodge above her eye that deep?
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09:44
What her injuries did suggest, however, was a single gunshot to the head. That kind of thing is generally quite bad for your health, although not always as fatal as movies and video games have led us to believe.
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09:54
Indeed, I always thought that a
Bullet
to the head, you know, that is always fatal. But then, I don't know, one of those like urban legends or rumour story, you know, like a kid at school will tell you a story of, "Yeah, this guy, he shot himself in the head and he just ended up blinding himself" and you're like, "Oh my God, that is so scary" for a twelve year old.Share
10:12
And then there was that movie, it was a James Bond movie with Peers- I want to say Piers Morgan but definitely not with Piers Morgan with Pierce Brosnan where the bad guy gets shot in the head and then he can't feel pain anymore or something, which is I mean perfect for a Bond villain. That was a really good one. Was is The World Is Not Enough? I think that's an underrated James Bond film.
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10:31
Arrest and Trial.
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10:36
At this point it was a case of ‘he said, she said’. He said "she crashed the car", she said “I have a literal
Bullet
in my head ". Obviously, the authorities sided with Nicole and issued a warrant for Jerrontae’s arrest in July of 2017. He unfortunately managed to give them the slip, and went on the run for the next year and a half.Share
10:54
It wasn’t until an anonymous tip came in through
Crime Stoppers
that the cops were able to track down the fugitive. He was hiding out at a house in College Park
in Atlanta
. In January of 2019 the Atlanta
Metro Major Offender task force, a joint venture between local police and the FBI
, descended upon the suburban neighbourhood. Jerrontae refused to go quietly, and initiated a two-hour standoff with the SWAT team
.Share
11:13
The Boyfriend of the Year was savvy enough to avoid a
Bullet
to the head for himself, and eventually surrendered to the police. Officers entered to find him hiding in the attic. It's like, dude, if they're entering your house. What?Share
11:24
Yeah, I'm gonna run upstairs and hide in the attic. They're just going to go up there. They're gonna find you. Although in a previous episode of The Casual Criminalist, I'm just realising now, the police did search the house of someone where there was a dude literally hiding in the attic for months and they didn't find the dude hiding in the attic. So maybe this wasn't such-
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11:41
So maybe he was listening, maybe he'd heard of that case. Maybe he'd listened to this podcast if we aired it in 2017, which we didn't.
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11:47
Jerrontae was charged with aggravated battery, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
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11:56
Oh, this guy's a bad dude. I mean, he's convicted of stuff before and he just, I mean he's a bad dude because he shot someone in the head, allegedly at this point? I'm just going to say allegedly in case he gets off because I don't want to get sued. Allegedly is like the magic, the silver
Bullet
. It's like "allegedly"! If you watch my Business Blaze channel, which is another Youtube channel that I do, I use allegedly all the time because I don't wanna get sued by giant corporations.Share
12:20
Also, this guy's getting charged with all of these crimes. Is he not going to get charged with attempted
Murder
? He shot someone in the head! I mean if there's any clear case of like, yeah, no, I intended to kill them. I mean shooting in the head is kind of what you'd do, right?Share
12:32
That’s a lot to add to an already hefty criminal record, as it was revealed he already had thirteen arrests to his name. One of those arrests back in 2010 led to a conviction for sexual battery. Quite the gentleman he’s turning out to be.
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12:44
When the case went to trial later that year, a guilty verdict was pretty much inevitable. Cain’s poor beleaguered defence lawyer Ed Adams gave it his best shot nonetheless. His argument was basically that since the fragment in Nicole’s brain was too deeply embedded to be examined, there was no proving what it really was. He later told an online news site, "They just did an X-ray and it looked like a
Bullet
but there was no certain proof it was a Bullet
"Share
13:06
I have to say that's quite a clever defence. That's quite good. I mean, it's obviously going to be a
Bullet
and if they could take it out, I'm sure they'd matched to his Gun
or whatever, but they can't. And with, you know, law and the courts and stuff it's beyond all reasonable doubt. All that defence lawyer needs to do is just season a little bit of reasonable doubt in there, which maybe this will establish. I somehow doubt it, but maybe.Share
13:31
Oh yes, of course. There’s every chance that
Bullet-shaped
piece of metal was already there before the incident, that makes total sense. After all, the cops never even managed to find any Bullet
casings at the scene, or the Gun
itself, so why should we even believe the shooting took place that day, when not a single person involved reported one?Share
13:47
Like I say, it's not a bad defence. I mean, considering what you've got to go on here. It's not bad.
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13:53
Well, once again,
Bullet
in the brain. People don’t just get bits of metal lodged in their heads by accident. But also, Nicole revealed that her own 25 caliber pistol had been stolen shortly before the incident, and Jerrontae knew where she kept it. It was also revealed that, during a call with a relative talking about what he had done, he shouted down the line, "It was her Gun
though"!Share
14:11
Dude, like that's a defence? It's like, "No, no, no. It was her
Gun
. I shot it with her Gun
so I'm innocent"! It's like Jerrontae, what is up with you mate?Share
14:20
That sounds like case closed to me! The jury agreed. In September 2019, the serial abuser was convicted on all counts and slapped with a thirty-year sentence, twenty five years behind bars, with the final five to be served on probation. A pretty satisfying conclusion to an otherwise awful story.
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14:36
Wrap Up.
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14:37
In summing up this outlandish case to the press,
Fulton County
District Attorney Paul Howard Jr tried to impress upon them how depressingly commonplace it actually was. He was quoted as saying:Share
14:46
"This case serves as a horrifying example of the kinds of incidents we investigate and prosecute on a daily basis.
Domestic violence
victims do not deserve to endure the pain and the suffering that results from these violent incidents, that in some cases lead to senseless and tragic deaths".Share
15:01
Thankfully death wasn’t the outcome for Nicole, but it’s depressing that it even got to this stage at all. Plenty of friends came forward during the trial to testify to the black eyes and bruises they’d seen her with over the years, and the violent temper of her abusive boyfriend. So you have to ask, why did she have to end up with a
Bullet
through the skull before she got the help she needed?Share
15:18
Too often, victims of abuse don’t have their stories explored in courts until after their abuser claims their lives, or attempts to. As a result, Nicole will continue suffering from Jerrontae’s abuse for the rest of her life. The
Bullet
is lodged too deep for surgeons to remove it without a high risk of killing her. That little fragment of metal will remain where it is, a grimly ironic reminder of an attack which is still absent from her Memory
.Share
15:38
Maybe for the best in that case though? I mean, if I had been shot in the head, I'm not really sure I'd want to remember it.
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15:44
Jerrontae on the other hand will have plenty of time to reflect long and hard on the events of that day, over and over and over. By the time he's released, here's hoping the rest of the world will have forgotten that he ever existed.
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15:55
I have to say that was a bit of a depressing one, but I'm glad she survived and yeah, domestic abuse is a piece of sh-. Yeah, on that cheery note, this has been a short episode of The Casual Criminalist.
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16:07
If you, I don't want to say enjoyed it. But if you did find it interesting, if you did, no you didn't enjoy it. But if you, please do consider leaving a review, a like if you enjoyed this video and subscribe, you can do that on podcasts and on YouTube.
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16:23
And as always, thank you for watching.
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