She had a great group of friends, like, super close.
We'd go to church together, Bible schools together.
But no matter what religion you are, somebody can turn on
you so easily.
You have the angel on one shoulder, the devil on
the other shoulder, saying, "You don't have to be
the good girl, because the good girl never wins."
[Ashleigh] They were almost devil-like.
She was their leader, the queen scorpion.
[Kristin] Girl-on-girl crime can be very, very cruel, but the violence in
this case was absolutely stunning to me.
I think absolutely the devil has a hand in this crime.
[heavy metal guitar playing]
[Man] Gotta have the first burger, huh? The first one off.
[Heather] It was Memorial Day weekend.
Every year, we would always have a party.
That was like a gathering place for people to spend time with
their family and catch up.
I never would have dreamed that that weekend would have ended
the way that it did.
[ominous tones playing]
[siren wailing]
When I first got the call from dispatch, it was around
10 o'clock that Sunday night.
[Douglas] A home had been broken into.
The house was ransacked, and we've got two
missing females.
[Richard] When I got to the scene, it was around midnight.
It was pitch dark.
We had the entire area roped off, the home,
the backyard, the woods.
We didn't want anybody coming in or out.
[indistinct radio chatter]
And then we found a body.
There was multiple stab wounds.
I've worked a lot of homicides over my 30-year career,
but I've never seen one quite like this.
You have to be up close and personal and right
in their face. There was a sense of evil.
Maybe the devil just came in and took over and did this.
[upbeat country music playing]
Max Meadows is a really small town of about 500 people.
-It's a rural area. -[Douglas] It's a picturesque hometown.
You don't lock your doors and you just feel safe.
[Richard] Max Meadows is part of what we call the Bible Belt here in
rural southwest Virginia.
We have a lot of churches that have a lot of people in them on
Sunday mornings.
There's very few that I would say don't go to church because,
I mean, it was a big deal.
[Kindra] In Max Meadows, if you didn't go to church on the regular,
they're gonna be like, loser.
you were loser number one.
[Bluegrass music playing]
♪ when the Lord says Jesus's calling ♪
♪ I'm 'a wait for him today ♪
[narrator] Piling into the pews at the Pentecostal Church are
Max Meadows' most faithful teens -- middle school besties,
Kindra, Heather, and Nakisha.
I was the cheerleader, the outspoken one.
Heather was the mom of the group.
She made sure we walked the line, and Nakisha,
she was kind of the follower.
[Heather] Nakisha Waddell grew up in a Pentecostal church.
I mean, it's hard to explain because I grew up in it too.
I think we're more, not necessarily weird,
but on the stricter side.
Drinking, smoking, premarital sex, you just don't do it.
Ask Kindra about Pentecostal.
[Kindra] It was always fun to go to Heather's and Nakisha's church
because it was so different than my church.
-[chanting] -Their church was very loud and rowdy.
Speaking in tongues, hellfire and brimstone.
If you needed to be prayed for, you were brought down front.
People laying out on the floor in the spirit, and Holy Ghost.
So, I mean, I feel like we became such good friends
because we shared the same --
the same beliefs.
Not stealing, not lying, not treating people bad.
Some people believe you can do whatever you want to on
Saturday night, as long as you go to church on Sunday,
you're good, and that's not me.
My goal was to please God.
I never thought I was better than anybody,
but...
[narrator] It's a well-known secret that many of the local teenage
girls are not exactly practicing what they preach.
But in this pious town, image is everything.
And the title for most perfect parishioner goes to...
13-year-old Nakisha Waddell.
Nakisha was very obviously standing out from other teenage
members of her church.
Nakisha was still pure and god-like.
[Heather] Nakisha and her mom, Vaughne Thomas,
they definitely were like a staple in the church.
[Ashleigh] Vaughne was always helping with dinners,
extra events, Bible schools, and of course Nakisha would be
there to help as well.
I feel like Vaughne was wanting her to live up to
a certain expectation.
[Heather] I think the motive behind it was acceptance.
That was the motive behind all of it.
[narrator] While Vaughne and Nakisha sit atop the church's
holy hierarchy,
their ascent wasn't easy.
[Heather] Nakisha was born in 1990.
Her family was different from the rest of us.
Her dad was never in the picture that I knew of,
and that isn't really something that you would expect in
a Pentecostal church.
Unfortunately, members of the Pentecostal faith can be
casting judgment upon you, which can sometimes be
quite harsh.
But Nakisha and her mother were a family unit unto themselves.
[Heather] Nakisha was a mama's girl. She was always with her mom.
When Nakisha was three, Vaughne met Bobby Thomas
and they got married and moved to Max Meadows.
[Douglas] Bobby did not attend church with Vaughne and Nakisha.
He went to another church, but Bobby helped raise
Nakisha with Vaughne.
They were a perfect, close-knit family.
[narrator] While mother and daughter take pride in their well-earned gold
status at their church, others at the church are
green with envy.
In Nakisha's church, there is a focus on family and faith,
but you also have an enormous amount of focus
on material possessions.
The more that you have, the more well-loved
and well-respected member of the community you became.
I wouldn't say that Nakisha was spoiled, but she definitely
didn't want for a whole lot.
She had pretty much whatever she wanted.
Clothes, cosmetics.
If she wanted a new computer,
she was gonna get the computer.
We all didn't have as much as Nakisha did.
[Ashleigh] People that live in Max Meadows can be insanely jealous.
And I know that I couldn't afford, and my parents couldn't
afford to buy everything they did for her.
That's -- that's crazy.
[crickets chirping]
[narrator] But as this godly girl enters her teen years, Nakisha faces
a hard truth -- money doesn't buy happiness.
[Heather] At that time, Nakisha was about six foot tall.
So she was quite a bit taller than
everybody, boys and girls.
She was bigger,
and I think it really held her back from a lot,
her size did.
In the summer, Nakisha and Kindra and I,
we would always have a sleepover.
We would do makeup and talk about boys, and watch movies.
If we were doing cheers, she kind of just sat
back and watched.
She was very shy, and I feel like maybe she felt
a little left out.
In eighth grade,
that's when boys kind of start noticing you.
Heather and I were getting attention from boys,
and being called pretty, and Nakisha really wasn't
getting the same attention.
[distant indistinct chatter]
Starting our freshman year at Fort Chiswell High School,
it's a whole new world.
Heather and I were a grade younger than Nakisha.
So when she went to high school,
we were in middle school.
So it was scary for both of us, really, because we were
being separated.
This is the Bible Belt but you always have some kids that
aren't raised in church so Nakisha tried to avoid people
who don't believe.
[thunder cracking]
[Ashleigh] Nakisha started out in the religious group being
the nice wholesome girl because people accepted
her in the church,
but somebody can turn on you so easily.
Girls can be very, very cruel to each other.
[Heather] Nakisha just wanted to be included,
but she didn't realize how dangerous that it actually was.
Fort Chiswell High School was very small.
It was maybe a hundred people in the freshman class,
and cliques were already kind of formed before you ever
even got there.
[Ashleigh] Nakisha just assumed that she'd be hanging out with
the religious group because church played a big part
in their lives.
But Nakisha wasn't very popular.
In her gym class,
she was always one of the last people picked,
or not picked at all.
[Kristin] There were girls who were members of Nakisha's church
who needed to feel better about themselves by tearing down
a girl like Nakisha with a lot of what I call
girl-on-girl crime.
They could be judgmental and you do one wrong move
or say one wrong thing, they don't forget it.
[Ashleigh] I remember there was an instance when Nakisha was
being bullied by another classmate.
The church group were silent,
they just let whatever happened happen
without raising their voice or anything.
So she was pretty much on her own.
And then suddenly, somebody came to
Nakisha's defense.
[narrator] Nakisha's protector is an unlikely ally,
fellow freshman, Annie Belcher.
[Kindra] Annie was bigger than all of the other girls.
She got made fun of for her weight as well.
However, she stuck up for herself.
[Kristin] When she saw Nakisha being bullied by other people,
Annie would refer to it as the Big Girl Code.
Big Girl Code is, if you mess with one of us,
you mess with all of us.
The big girls, we stick together.
And they began to bond with each other.
[Heather] They connected on the fact of they weren't the most
popular in the class.
They weren't gonna be homecoming queen.
And when I found out that, you know, Nakisha and Annie had
struck up such a good friendship, I was shocked.
[narrator] That's because Annie has a reputation.
[distant group cheer]
[Heather] Growing up, I was on the cheerleading team
with Annie.
Annie didn't have the foundation that we had
going to church.
She was the type that I was like, I am just not, --
I'm not even going there.
[Ashleigh] I met Annie in eighth grade.
She wasn't part of my friend group.
Annie's family was low class.
They lived in a trailer.
There were times when her mom was in prison.
It's...sad.
I think Annie's upbringing started to shape
her as a person.
Annie was very delinquent in school.
One year, she didn't even have her picture taken for
the yearbook because she was suspended.
She wore black a lot. She was just different.
[Kindra] So no one really messed with her.
I don't know... I don't want to say that.
Her mom come after me and...
[Ashleigh] In high school, Annie's group,
they were the outcast. They were against the church.
They would draw pentagrams everywhere, the number six
three times. And Annie was their leader.
[electric guitar playing]
The queen scorpion.
She had some type of power over those individuals.
And they were almost devil-like.
Annie found her own way to be popular in a sense of
it's popular to stay away from her.
Her scare tactic was, you know, to be the bully.
And it worked.
[narrator] While Annie instills fear in others,
she has a soft spot for Nakisha.
[Ashleigh] Nakisha found somebody who was going to protect her,
and she's suddenly feeling that she belongs somewhere.
She was starting to wear black clothing and dark eyeliner,
completely different than how she used to be.
[Heather] We'd still hang out after school, on the weekends.
I could see that Nakisha,
to a certain degree, was slowly changing.
I remember one day, all of a sudden, Nakisha takes
something from her pocket.
She said, "I stole this makeup from Walmart."
And I'm just like, I know she did not just do that.
That was my first
realization that Nakisha maybe wasn't the person
that I thought she was.
Nakisha went from being a straight-A student to making
D's and F's, skipping school and drinking alcohol,
which that's a big sin in the church.
So that was a big
"Wow."
Nakisha lived a double life.
You know, she would be friends with Annie at school and,
you know, get to be the bully.
And then she would go home to her mom and live
the church life again.
She was a good church girl on Sunday.
And I'm like, why is she there?
You know, why was she there at all?
[narrator] In a small town like Max Meadows,
secrets don't keep long.
So it's only a matter of time before Nakisha's double life
is exposed.
Everybody talks. Everybody knows their business.
Nakisha's mom, Vaughne, would get calls from the school
saying that Nakisha did not show up.
[Richard] The people that knew Vaughne Thomas told her that they had
suspected that Nakisha was using some alcohol and possibly
even some illegal drugs.
[Ashleigh] Vaughne made Nakisha get out a notebook and write
the Lord's Prayer over and over again,
thinking that it would help her.
She used the religion as a form of discipline to try to heal
her from the evil that she was now part of.
[narrator] Vaughne believes the devil has a vice grip on her daughter's
heart and she knows exactly who's to blame.
She saw this change in her kid from the time that
she met Annie,
and she knew that it was only progressively gonna get
worse if something didn't change, and Vaughne's only hope
was for God to remove Annie from Nakisha's life.
[narrator] And if not God, then someone else.
[Ashleigh] Vaughne told Nakisha to get rid of Annie.
Annie is not good for you. There was no stopping Vaughne.
She wanted that friendship to end.
In 2004, there's a pressure cooker atmosphere happening
in Nakisha's house.
Nakisha was still engaging in risky behavior, which was
causing more fights and arguments with her mother
because according to Vaughne, Nakisha was sinning.
[Heather] Her relationship with Annie was definitely pushing her further
and further from church, from her mom, from me.
I think the devil was motivating her life.
I know that Vaughne could feel the grip she was losing on
Nakisha because she actually told my mom.
She said, "I went in Nakisha's room and anointed her room
and prayed over it."
She said, "Because you just never know."
The more that Nakisha acted out, the more intense
Vaughne became.
In our faith, anytime something happens, you go to God,
that's where you find help.
But she was starting down a path that was not gonna end well.
[narrator] But the power of prayer isn't enough to stop Nakisha from
straying into even more dangerous territory.
[Heather] In 2004, that's really when chat rooms started becoming
a thing, and we all did it.
Nakisha's on-screen name was Sassy_N_Sweet.
She used that as almost like a fantasy life.
She was talking to older men, not anybody we knew.
[narrator] One of these older men seems to stand out as
Nakisha's soul mate.
Nakisha never had a boyfriend that I ever remember,
but she wasn't really, you know, the type that all
the boys were after.
Nakisha was talking to a 20-year-old sailor named
Victor from Portsmouth.
In our upbringing, you're taught,
you know, you save yourself for marriage.
It's hammered in your head from day one.
Her relationship with this guy, it was online, but there was
talk of, you know, physical things.
That in itself was not pleasing to God.
And she knew I wouldn't approve.
Those were just the rules.
But Nakisha was thinking that she did not have to follow
rules, and it's not fair.
For Nakisha, this was probably a sense of, look at this
forbidden fruit, and now let me go try to taste it.
[Heather] The attention she was getting from Victor,
you know, she loved it.
I was hurt because Nakisha was willingly sinning over and over
again, and I didn't really want anything to do with it,
because maybe now, she's not worthy of God's love,
so I just steered clear.
Annie was not a voice of reason at all.
Annie encouraged Nakisha to continue to talk to Victor.
The Pentecostal church population wanted her to be
good and pure.
[Heather] A lot of people were praying that God remove anything from
her life that's not good for her.
Basically protection.
She was going down a bad path and it was something that none
of us could stop.
[Heather] It was Sunday night, Memorial Day weekend.
It was probably 8:30.
My stepdad gets a call from Bobby, Nakisha's stepdad,
and he says, "Have you seen Vaughne or Nakisha?"
He said, "Well, I just got home."
And he said, "Nakisha and Vaughne aren't here."
He said, "And the house is trashed."
You can literally throw a rock to my house from hers.
And I'm thinking, is there somebody, you know,
in the neighborhood breaking into houses?
I was terrified, because, I mean, where are they?
[Douglas] That Sunday, it was a holiday weekend.
I get a call that we had a missing daughter
and a missing mother,
Nakisha Waddell and Vaughne Thomas.
And I know Bobby Thomas, because it's a small community.
I said, "I'll be there as quick as I can."
When I got to the Thomas home, walked inside, and the house
was totally ransacked.
Bobby said that Vaughne's jewelry was missing,
and he could not find Nakisha or Vaughne anywhere.
From the beginning, I said, "Something's not right."
[Richard] Most burglars are not going to go in and just ransack
the entire place.
They're gonna take what they're after,
and they're going to get out of there.
I told Mr. Thomas, "This looks staged."
[Richard] When I first arrived on scene, of course, we met with
Lieutenant Tuck and Bobby Thomas.
[Douglas] Bobby Thomas said that he had gone out to Texas visit one of
his sons in the middle of the week prior to this.
[Richard] He said the last time he had spoke with Vaughne was
actually Thursday night.
He tried to call her again on Friday night and could not get
a hold of her.
[narrator] It's been three days since anyone has spoken to
Vaughne or Nakisha.
With every passing hour, concerns grow, and the chances
of finding them safe dwindle.
And that's when additional staff began to respond to
process the crime scene.
Inside the kitchen area,
we spotted a small amount of blood.
[Richard] This was very shocking.
At this point, it was really clear that the crime
we're investigating is much more severe than a break-in
that looks staged.
[Douglas] A lot of things were going through my mind.
We had to figure out what happened and I was open to
every option from abduction...
to murder.
[indistinct radio chatter]
We've got two missing people, Nakisha Waddell and her mother,
Vaughne Thomas.
Looking at how the house had been ransacked, we're thinking
maybe there was some sort of violence within the home.
So we've got to look into Mr. Thomas.
We asked if there had been any arguments between them two.
He told us they had been a good home, they had a really
good foundation.
[narrator] While the Thomas' marriage is solid, Bobby explains
the relationship between Vaughne and her daughter, Nakisha,
has been on thin ice for months.
In spring of 2004, Vaughne learned about Nakisha's
relationships with a lot of adult men online.
And she was really appalled and horrified because Nakisha
was talking about sex.
This was not the behavior that she expected of her 14-year-old
daughter, who she had raised in the church.
As a result, Nakisha and Vaughne are fighting almost
all of the time.
Vaughne felt that the whole situation was pure evil.
Nakisha was on the computer a lot with these men at
an early age, and that's very dangerous.
We see cases all the time where these young 13- and 14-year-old
girls build these relationships online with men, and they end
up getting abducted, end up getting raped,
end up getting killed.
[Douglas] I said, "I got to look at the big picture."
Bobby turned over Nakisha's computer to
our investigative team.
[narrator] On Nakisha's computer, investigators discover
her virtual life as Sassy_N_Sweet.
[Richard] We had developed additional information that Nakisha had
started an online relationship with a guy named Victor.
He was 20. She's 14 years old.
The math just does not math like it should.
Nakisha was lying to Victor about her age and appearance.
She was telling him she was older.
She was acting older, and Victor believed it.
Nakisha knew that lying was a sin.
She knew it was wrong.
On top of that, she told him where she was living.
Victor may have actually showed up and done something
with Nakisha and her mother.
I had his last name,
and I did eventually make contact with Victor.
[narrator] Victor tells investigators he was just enjoying a little
online banter, but Nakisha convinced herself
they were planning a future together.
[Heather] She was living a fantasy life
online with this guy, but I didn't know that
she thought it was real.
In her mind, he was the one, and she was gonna quit
school and move up there to Portsmouth, and they were
gonna live happily ever after.
According to what was told to me by Victor,
on Friday, a friend drove Nakisha six hours down there to
Portsmouth, and she finally met Victor.
And it did not go her way.
He said that they got in a big argument.
And she hollered at Victor.
He said he made her leave when he found out her age.
The whole house of cards for Nakisha ultimately fell
because Victor is not expecting a 14-year-old girl.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[narrator] In this one-horse town,
police lights don't go unnoticed.
And while detectives continue speaking with Victor,
a neighbor calls the Thomas home.
Turns out to be a neighbor that Nakisha goes to high school
with by the name of Stephanie.
I said, "I'm looking for Nakisha."
She said, "I did see Nakisha Friday afternoon after school."
She gave me directions to a mobile home where Annie
lived, approximately three or four miles down the road.
I didn't know what I was getting myself into.
I knocked on the door of the mobile home,
identified myself, and a man came to the door.
He told me he was Annie's father.
I said, "I'm looking for Nakisha.
'"I'm looking for her mother.
Do you have any idea where they could be?"
He invited me in and led me to the back bedroom.
And Annie was there. I didn't see Vaughne anywhere.
I saw Nakisha on the bed.
The lights were very, very dim, and I could barely
see her face.
I didn't know if she was still breathing.
We know that evil exists.
We see it in the cases that we work.
I think absolutely the devil had a hand in this crime.
[Douglas] I was at Annie Belcher's mobile home.
And I walked back to the bedroom,
and I found Nakisha on the bed,
and she got up.
I identified myself to her,
and Vaughne wasn't there.
I said, "I found you, but I'm looking for
your mother. Where is she at?"
And she looked at me and said, "She's dead...
I killed her."
And that floored me.
And I said, "Can you say that again, please?"
And she said it again. I said, she's serious.
[Richard] Annie and Nakisha were taken back to the sheriff's office
where we can get a statement from both of them.
[Douglas] When I interviewed Annie, she said Nakisha called her on
the phone that Friday morning and told her she had gotten
into an argument with her mother.
[Richard] She said that Nakisha had gone to her house because
she needed a friend.
Naturally, you're going to go to your best friend and you're
going to talk about these situations.
When Nakisha said that her mom was dead, Annie was really
taken back, was really shocked.
She says she had no prior knowledge of
the murder whatsoever.
[narrator] In a separate room at the Wythe County Sheriff's Office,
a stoic Nakisha pens her confession.
Vaughne figured out that Nakisha was talking to
older men online.
[Douglas] Nakisha told me they'd argued all week,
and they started arguing again. Vaughne left to go to work.
Nakisha decided, I'm gonna skip school.
Vaughne came home around 12 o'clock.
An argument ensued.
According to Nakisha, something in her snapped,
and she took the knife, which was on the kitchen
counter, and stabbed Vaughne in the shoulder.
Vaughne then retreated out the back door.
I said, "What did you do then?"
She said, "I stabbed her several times to make sure
she was dead."
She looked at me with straight eyes and told me that.
She didn't show any emotion.
Being an investigator for 38 years, I see evil.
I do.
But I never had a 14-year-old girl killing her mother.
[narrator] But sometimes the devil is in the details.
And detectives notice an inconsistency in
Nakisha's statement.
[Richard] Nakisha's statement was all about her.
And then there was this transition of pronouns.
She transitions from saying "I" to saying "we."
I knew someone had to help Nakisha,
and the only one left was Annie.
So the second interview with Annie, I said, "I just want to
get to the truth."
Eventually, she admitted that she was at Vaughne Thomas's home
the day she was killed.
Annie watched Nakisha make the final blows to take
her breath away.
She just stood back and watched.
She said, "I was just trying to help a friend out."
I said, "You're under arrest."
[Richard] Nakisha tried to make it sound like that this was just
a spur-of-the-moment impulse crime.
But when we executed a search warrant, we located a large
hunting knife that had apparent blood.
We found notes, and we found a diagram sketch
of Vaughne Thomas's residence.
And the door that she normally comes in from work was marked.
They actually put a lot of thought into how they were
gonna carry out this crime.
[Douglas] Nakisha, she wanted to live free of her mother,
and she wanted to make her life with this guy named Vic.
[Ashleigh] Vaughne was on the ground, still warm.
And the first thing that Nakisha thinks is to get in
a car and to go see her boyfriend across the state.
And Annie was there to assist.
We were able to follow up with Victor.
We learned that he had nothing to do with this crime.
[Kristin] Nakisha now has a long ride home from Portsmouth if
you consider the fact that her fantasy relationship has
now broken up, and she has a dead parent waiting
for her at home.
[narrator] Annie and Nakisha tell police about their attempt to wash
away this mortal sin with their own Holy Trinity --
a shovel, a mop, and bleach, before staging
the scene to look like a break-in.
We're processing the crime scene when Lieutenant Tuck
calls one of our cell phones and tells us to walk to
the back right-hand corner of the yard,
we could see that they had buried Vaughne in
a shallow grave. Nakisha was telling the truth.
There was 43 stab wounds in Vaughne Thomas, 43.
[Ashleigh] 43 times.
There was at least
42 times that you could have stopped.
Nakisha decided that her mom was the enemy.
She was once considered to be a perfect person, but she could
no longer live up to that standard.
She wants to get away from the church and Vaughne's
upbringings, and do what she wants to do.
And it got to the point that Nakisha couldn't take anymore.
Nakisha was full of rage, but I do not feel that Nakisha
would have ever done something like this had she not
met Annie.
[Richard] You could just tell that Annie had more of a deviant mentality
than what Nakisha had.
I think Annie made her think that all this could go away if
she would just listen to her.
[Heather] Annie had a major influence on Nakisha, and Annie was jealous
of Nakisha's home life.
Nakisha had, you know, whatever she wanted
and everything she needed, and I think Annie was jealous
of that, and maybe...
thought, well, if I can't have it, I don't want her to either.
Because of the severity of the crime, both of these
juveniles would be tried as adults.
But in the end, plea deals were reached where Nakisha was
charged with first-degree murder.
She was sentenced to 70 years with 35 years suspended.
Annie was charged with second-degree murder,
and she was sentenced to 15 years.
And neither one of them showed any remorse.
[Heather] I thought we were close.
I thought, you know, if something
between her and her mom was so bad, why would I have not known
about it? I loved Vaughne.
Her mom was so sweet and so good to her.
She committed the ultimate sin.
[Ashleigh] Thou shall not kill, honor thy father and mother.
Both those commandments were broken.
[Douglas] To this day, I still think the devil got into her soul
and in the minutes that it took to kill Vaughne,
something inside her possessed her.
[Heather] If I was to speak to Nakisha, I would tell her I forgive
her and that God forgives her as long as she asks him to.
And that I hope and pray
that she lives a life that her mom would be proud of.