Dead Again | The Woman in the Woods

0:00Hi, listeners. It's 48 Hours Correspondent, Erin Moriarty. This week, we're introducing 48 Hours listeners to the first two episodes of our new six-episode miniseries, The Woman in the Woods. Episode three releases this Wednesday, September 30th, on The Woman in the Woods podcast feed. Follow the series, if you haven't already, so you don't miss an episode. Here's episode one. They say that some people kind of have that light that just attracts you to them. That's how Mindy was. It was just hard to believe that someone we loved, you know, was in this type of situation. Angela Wynn had gone years without seeing her dear friend Mindy Kasotis.

0:53Mindy had told her friends that she and her husband were on the run from a threat connected to his high-security, top-secret work. She was exhausted. She was tired. She was just ready for everything to be over. But in the summer of 2022, Mindy told Angela she might finally be able to come out of hiding, and they could celebrate some good news. Mindy was pregnant, she said. She and her husband, Nick, were expecting their first child. and maybe, just maybe, their lives could finally go back to normal. She's going to have her husband. They'll have a baby. They'll be, you know, she was coming to see me.

1:37Mindy was 40 years old, a striking brunette with beautiful eyes and a boisterous laugh. Angela couldn't wait to catch up with her old friend and her husband. They were both very happy to be expecting. When is the last time you had contact with her, Angela? That October. But weeks passed without any word from Mindy. That's when Angela messaged Mindy's husband, Nick. She got a response on Instagram. He was like, hey, can I call you? And I'm like, you don't have to ask that. Just pick up the phone and call. And so he called me.

2:18And that's when he told me that Mindy was gone. gone? That she had died in hospital. He was crying. Nick told Angela that Mindy had suffered a brain aneurysm and that they'd lost the baby. There would be no funeral arrangements, he said. Angela offered to help him organize any celebration for Mindy, but didn't hear back from him. He just dropped off the face of the earth. Angela couldn't let it go, and reached out to Mindy's family. What was happening? She received a message from Mindy's mom in February 2023. And her mother tells you what? He had gotten into an accident and succumbed from his injuries two days later at the hospital.

3:10Now Nick was dead too? The idea that Mindy and her husband had died within months of each other just didn't add up for Angela. I'm going to be perfectly honest in saying that at that point, I did not feel comfortable with what I knew. And I said to myself, like, what do you do? When you're in a situation and you feel like something is wrong, but also the entire story is so crazy, who's going to believe you? And then a month later is when I got a call from Detective Stanz. Law enforcement had found human remains in the woods outside of Savannah. They believed it was Mindy Kassotas. I honestly was in a bit of disbelief.

4:01How was it possible that Mindy Kassotas could have died not once, but twice? I had been lied to for years. We had all been lied to for years. I'm Erin Moriarty from 48 Hours. This is The Woman in the Woods, a strange mystery where the dead reappear, the living disappear, and at least one man may have never existed at all. Episode 1, Dead Again.

4:40I met Mindy in high school. in about 1996-ish. Morgan Paddock first met Mindy when they were teenagers. She had moved to Louisiana, and we went to rival high schools, but we were in the same youth group together. Mindy and Morgan were part of the same church youth group in Covington, Louisiana. Morgan remembers that Mindy never missed Bible study. She was raised in a Christian home. Her dad was a music minister. We sang in youth choir together. She loved to sing. She had a beautiful voice. One of the things I remember about her, Mindy, if you heard her laugh, you knew it was her. Like, she had this incredible laugh.

5:28Before moving to Louisiana, Mindy had grown up in Florida. She was the oldest of three, a big sister to two brothers. I always say Mindy was the thread between high school and college, my high school friends and my college friends. Morgan was about a year older than Mindy and in some ways felt like her big sister. I moved to Savannah after high school. Mindy came to visit and she loved it and she ended up moving here. Mindy received a bachelor's degree in Savannah, Georgia at Armstrong State University. before she moved to Washington, D.C. to work as an assistant at a prestigious law firm. And that's where she met Angela Wynn.

6:17We met on the first day of our very first jobs right out of college. In 2025, Angela, Morgan, and I sat down together in Savannah as they shared memories of their friend. She was this Southern belle who was excited to be moving to the big city. And I was a single mom, grateful for a job that allowed for me to be able to take care of my kids. But they connected. Mindy would step up whenever Angela needed her. When I was pregnant with my son, she threw me a baby shower at work, my work baby shower. and she called it a ducking good shower because she knew that she couldn't say what it actually was and she had like little ducks all over the place and stuff.

7:04So, I mean, that's just the type of person that she was. You said at first she didn't want kids, but did she want to get married? Yeah, yeah, she absolutely wanted to get married. Mindy was the consummate romantic for a while there, right? Really? What do you mean? Well, I mean, she was... I mean, which... Yeah. What? So I was with a lot of, I met a lot of the guys that Mindy dated. They were all kind of the same, right? Well, except for one. But they were all lawyers, you know, all very well established in their careers, right? Like, she wanted someone that was going to kind of match her vibe.

7:49In 2015, Mindy did find someone who matched her vibe, Nick Kisotis. He was a military lawyer, and there was something about him that made her feel she had finally found the one.

8:09How did she meet him? On a dating app. Nick and Mindy's first date was at a restaurant down on the waterfront in Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac River from D.C. I mean, their first date was like 48 hours. See, she was smitten and he seemed to be equally smitten with her. Nick was a naval officer and what is known as a JAG, a lawyer in the Navy's Judge Advocate General's Corps. He had been deployed across the world, Iraq, Italy, and handled sensitive cases involving Afghanistan. Morgan and Angela told me he was the total package. Oh, man, he was tall and handsome and Navy Jag and George Town Law, Boston University.

9:04Like every checkbox that you can think of, just check, check, check, nice family. Did he seem to love her? Oh, my God, yes. Oh, my God, yes. Morgan was especially excited since she had witnessed Mindy's search for love going all the way back to high school. And so I was thrilled for her because I thought, here is a stable, good man who, you know, Mindy being larger than life, felt like Nick allowed her to be who she was and could support her. because he wasn't as, like, outgoing and boisterous as she was. And so it kind of felt like a good match of, you know, the two of them together. Him just letting her be her.

9:46Yeah, letting her be her. Morgan and Angela clearly respected Nick, and the feeling seemed mutual. Nick even called Angela for advice when he decided to propose. And I remember me telling him exactly, like, what carrot that he should get her. And what was that? Oh, at least two because she was worth it.

10:11And so for me, like, I mean, the way he proposed, you know, they went to... How did he propose? He took her to a winery and they had this amazing day together. And then they had a private dinner just to themselves. And that's when he asked her. Mindy announced their engagement by sending a picture of her hand showing off the ring. The wine barrel with her ring, which is gorgeous. It was everything that we thought that she deserved and was going to have. I mean, we went to Atlanta to find her dress. The dress was an elegant white gown with a long sweeping train and a delicate veil. Just a little over a year after meeting, Nick and Mindy became husband and wife on October 9, 2016 in Leesburg, Virginia.

11:05Angela was the maid of honor. At their wedding, the speech that I gave, I thanked Nick for, you know, helping Mindy believe in romance again. I was looking at the picture of their first dance and just seeing them together, you know, you could really feel like these were two people who were just crazy in love with one another. Mindy's married life appeared to be bliss. The two started making moves in their professional and personal lives. I mean, at one point, they were shopping for houses and things. And, you know, because in his mind, he had this great job. He was going to be coming into a certain amount of funds at a certain point.

11:45And so that's what she was looking forward to. I mean, she would show me pictures of houses. Yeah, me too. She would send house pictures and say, these are the places we're looking at. A year after the wedding, Nick left active duty. He told friends he was involved in a cybersecurity startup. but he didn't share a lot of details. I remember him being a little bit quiet, but very kind. He was conversational, but it wasn't like he was overtly conversational, right? Like when you're next to Mindy, you kind of just sit and let her do her thing, right? And Mindy's thing eventually took shape as a podcast.

12:29Angela said the plan was to use the podcast and scale it up into an organization that helped women. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Compelling Women podcast. I'm Mindy, your host, and I'm really excited to share with you another thought-provoking interview with a different compelling woman. She just wanted to find the stories of women and elevate them, so she created this podcast. And it wasn't people that were in the news all the time. In early 2018, Mindy went back to Savannah to record an episode of her podcast featuring a special guest, Morgan Paddock. They got lunch in the very spot where I was sitting with Angela and Morgan.

13:15I've learned so much from Morgan in the two decades that I've known her. But the principal thing that I've learned is this, how to put your money where your mouth is. Morgan didn't know it then, but that podcast taping would be the last time she would see her friend. Around the time they recorded that episode, Mindy mentioned that some weird stuff was happening around her, and it might be connected to Nick's work. I remember her saying that when she got home at some point, she said, I may have had a tail when I was in Savannah. And so... Someone following her. Yeah, yeah. It ramped up after that.

14:04Something or someone was making Mindy fear for her life. Nick had been involved in a case that kind of went not so well for him. Mindy started describing unsettling incidents to Morgan and Angela. There was a security breach at Nick's work, she said. Hackers had completely frozen their bank accounts, which she claimed put a target on their back. Mindy said the couple even needed a security detail. Did she sound scared? She was scared.

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15:52Morgan remembered one particular conversation with Mindy on the phone and she could hear Nick's voice. Nick was taking a call in the background and he was on the phone with the security team. And so she was like, hold on just a second. and then she came back on the phone with me and was saying they had had a tree fall in their backyard and had had at some point people come were supposed to like cut it up and that kind of thing and she said Morgan the security team has reason to believe that the tree guys actually put cameras around the house to try to pick up video or audio from inside their house so at that point she's like I don't even know if anyone can hear our conversations now.

16:31By early 2020 Mindy and Nick started moving around a lot. Their friends didn't know their exact whereabouts, but said Mindy rarely ventured outside her own home. Mindy had said she had to be careful about any communication, with Nick encouraging everyone to message on Signal, an app which encrypts data. I got a picture from her one day. They had a picture of Nick's shoe with a slice in it. in the side of his shoe, and said that Nick had tried to go out to the bank, and he was with another guy, and someone attacked the other guy, and Nick had kicked the knife away and had a slice in the side of the shoe and, like, sent me that picture.

17:18She once told me, Morgan, if you knew everything that was going on, like, this is something that would be a, like, best-selling novel or a best-selling movie. And you believe it. Yeah. It sounded crazy. But again, you're talking to Mindy, whose husband is a JAG, who has all of this military clearance. Yeah. You know? Mindy wasn't the kind of person who would overreact, her friends say. She was smart. She didn't pull one over on Mindy. She would see right through it and call it out even. At one point, Mindy told her friends that she might have to disappear entirely. Mindy had always told me that there might be a day where she would have to go dark.

18:09She and Nick would have to go dark. And she would have to cut off communication, but it would only be for a small amount of time for them to get settled. And when it was safe, that she would reach out to me and make plans to come, like I could come and visit where they were. And so I trusted that. And Mindy did go dark. Morgan said that she stopped getting messages from Mindy in late 2019 or early 2020. Just stopped communication. And there were times every now and then that I would take a big deep dive on the Internet and try to find anything that I could with her next names to find out there was anything out there.

18:51And then I would feel guilty because I would feel like, am I putting them? I shouldn't be looking for information. Like, they want to be dark right now. They need to be dark right now. Mindy stopped messaging Morgan, but she did occasionally reach out online to Angela. Mindy had told Angela that she and Nick wanted to have kids, which surprised Angela. When I first met Mindy, the thought of having kids was just thoroughly disgusting to her, right? She did. The idea of growing something inside of her and then it coming out, she was just like, that is not for me. He loved everyone else's kids. Yeah, I thought, wow, you really love this guy if you want to push out kids for him.

19:33But then in 2021, Mindy told Angela she had suffered a miscarriage. I think they were both disappointed. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary other than they were devastated that it happened. But the following year, Mindy shared good news. She was pregnant again. As things were going to, they were going to get better, were going to come out on the other side. As a matter of fact, like that maybe June or July, she was talking about them, you know, being able to go back to their normal lives again. Angela really wanted Mindy to come stay with her. I mean, I would literally say, I'll come get you.

20:17Just tell me where you are, I'll come and get you. And she wanted Mindy to stop living in fear. I just didn't want her to have to do it. It wasn't her. It was him. Let him deal with that. You don't have to go through that. Just come and be with me. Mindy never took her up on the offer. And Angela stopped hearing from her entirely. It wasn't until she got that call from Nick in early December 2022 that she finally knew why. Mindy had died. He had taken her to the emergency room. They admitted her. They were supposed to be, you know, doing the monitoring, whatever, whatever. And he said that, you know, she seemed to be fine.

21:00He went back to the hospital. And that's when they advised him that she had passed. And then Angela also lost contact with Nick. She wasn't sure who to talk to for more details. But Angela just couldn't let it go. She wasn't speaking with her family. And when your friend told you she didn't talk to her family, you're not talking to her family either. But with Nick's silence, Angela felt she had no other options. I just reached out to her brother. I reached out to her sister-in-law. And I'm like, I'm not hearing anything from anybody. And I need to know what the hell is going on. By early 2023, when Mindy's mom told her that Nick had also died, Angela felt something was off.

21:47Morgan, who was living in Savannah and had also heard that Mindy had died, was equally stumped. How does a person die without a trace? I'm looking for a death certificate. I'm looking for obituary something to say that she's gone, I can't get in touch with her family, you know. But Morgan couldn't find anything. So in December, there were stories about a woman who was found in rural Georgia. Do you remember that story? Yeah, I remember seeing it because it was on the local news here in Savannah, where I live. Investigators are continuing their search for answers after hunters found a woman's body in the woods near Riceboro on December 2nd.

22:36Members of law enforcement still haven't been able to identify her yet. And so, I mean, I just remember thinking it was tragic and devastating, but I had zero reason to connect it to Mindy. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation publicly circulated two sketches of this mystery woman to see if anyone could help identify her. But even then, I didn't personally feel like it, I wouldn't have looked at it and thought, oh, that's Mindy. Morgan didn't recognize her friend in the sketches, but someone did. Her name was Heather Thomas. That looks like Mindy. That looks like Mindy. And I just froze. I was like, we have to say something.

23:24I want to be wrong. I've never wanted to be wrong like this in my whole entire life. And how did Heather Thomas know what Mindy looked like? She had also been married to Nick Casodis. Heather was Nick's first wife. I would regret it if I didn't say something.

24:03I'm your host, Erin Moriarty. Judy Teigart is the executive producer of 48 Hours. Special thanks to 48 Hours producer Chuck Stevenson and associate producer Chelsea Narvaez. Maura Walls is the senior story editor, and Jamie Benson is the senior director of podcast operations for CBS News. Mixing and sound design by Alan Pang. The Woman in the Woods was written and produced by Alex Schumann. Our associate producer is Zoe Colgan. Shara Morris is the executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment. Tamika Balance-Kolasny is the production manager.

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