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She tried calling. It would ring a couple and then it would go straight to voicemail.
When authorities discover an abandoned car in a beachside community, everything changes. What happened in the car, it's a mystery. It had dirt all over it. The electronics had been ripped out of the center console. My reaction when we actually opened the door was, we have a problem. You could see blood all over inside the vehicle. Somebody had been killed inside that vehicle.
Who does all this blood belong to? Anytime you have a homicide, you're never 100% sure of really what happens. When a surprise suspect emerges, the case takes a frightening turn. They are just friends. It was a lot of minimization. I don't see her as being a mastermind of planning a vacation, let alone a heinous crime. The strangest aspects of this case was what they did afterward. It was all just really bizarre.
I'm a pageant girl. I don't do things like this. On the evening of October 13th, 2017, 911 dispatchers in Lee County, Florida, receive a concerning call from 32-year-old resident Francesca Sakulich.
She called and stated that her boyfriend had not returned home.
I was dispatched to the house to take the initial missing person report. When Deputy McMenamin arrives at the residence, he learns Francesca's boyfriend, 31-year-old Matthew Collins, had borrowed her car around 3 o'clock the previous afternoon. She said that Matthew was going to be going to a haircut in Fort Myers, South Palm Beach Boulevard. From her house to where he went for the haircut, it's probably a 30, 40-minute max drive.
He had texted that he got stuck in Fort Myers, which really didn't make sense. How did you get stuck? Did your car get stuck? Did you run out of gas? And come 8 o'clock, he didn't return home. According to Francesca, by the following morning, Matt still hadn't returned. She tried calling him, and it would ring a couple, and then it would go straight to voicemail. It was definitely alarming to her.
Authorities immediately release a bolo on the vehicle Matthew Collins was driving at the time, a maroon Chrysler 200. The first step of a missing persons investigation is, of course, to verify the person's actually missing. See where they were, see where they were last seen. Kind of just do a lot of background information on them. Authorities spend the next few days speaking with Matthew's friends and family.
who confirm that no one has heard from Matthew since he was reported missing. Then, on October 18th, Lee County Dispatch receives a seemingly routine phone call. The car was found abandoned in an area of Lehigh Acres. It's not very populous. It's a dead end with not really any houses around it.
The lady that called in, she said basically she walks this same path every day. After several days of seeing the vehicle there, she thought maybe it was stolen. Deputies were sent to kind of figure out what was going on with it. Deputies run the vehicle's VIN number and discover the car is registered to Francesca Sakulich. When Matthew Collins was originally reported missing, Francesca had reported her vehicle missing with him.
As detectives arrive and begin to examine the vehicle more closely, they make a disturbing discovery. There's this hole in the windshield with some tape over it. After looking at it, they realize that there's a bullet hole in the windshield. My reaction when I first saw the car was, we have a problem. We have a missing person. And we have what appeared to be a bullet hole in the windshield in a vehicle that he was less known to be driving.
For Matthew Collins, life began 1,200 miles north in Williamstown, New Jersey. I met Matt just from living in Williamstown. Matt was a little bit older than me. He was always a good kid. He loved his family. He did have a lot of friends. He was always trying to make people laugh. A few years after high school, Matt traded the cold New Jersey winters for the year-round sun and sandy beaches of South Florida. ♪
There was a relative or somebody that he knew out there, so that's why he went to Florida. Matt worked a variety of jobs, including construction and landscaping. And when the 20-something wasn't working, Matthew liked to have a good time. Eventually, being the life of the party took its toll. In his early 20s, he got into the drugs and got addicted.
When I knew him, I could say we all partied a little bit here and there, but I don't really know what kind of drugs he was using. In 2014, Matt was arrested for burglary and trafficking in stolen property. Matt was known for committing home invasions. He would commonly brag about the amount of money he would get from these home invasions. It would kind of sustain his lifestyle.
He had his own issues going on and just got involved with the wrong people. After spending a year and a half in prison, Matt was released in 2016. When he got out of prison, he really tried to turn his life around and live a clean lifestyle. Being in prison, it's a good wake-up call. After he was in prison, he was a really, really hard worker. His family and even his friends said he was trying to do the right thing.
A few months later, in early summer of 2017, he met 32-year-old Francesca Sakulich through an online dating site. And he was with Francesca. They were good together. Matthew wanted to do better, and he was in a relationship that seemed to be good for him. Francesca herself is a very successful person. She works in the medical profession.
After four weeks of dating, Matt and Francesca moved in together. Matt and Francesca were living in Lehigh Acres. He had introduced her to his family. Francesca was wanting the same things he was wanting, settling down. They were kind of working toward that goal together.
But all that progress comes to a grinding halt in October 2017 when Matthew Collins never returns home and the couple's car is found abandoned with a bullet hole through the windshield. When we first saw the car and it was all sealed up and looking through the windows, you couldn't really discern how much blood was actually in the vehicle. Once we opened the car up, you could definitely tell something had happened.
It had dirt all over it. The electronics had been ripped out of the center console, and the license plate had been removed. - You could see blood all over inside the vehicle. There's a crime that's obviously occurred. Is it Matthew? Is he the victim, or is he the suspect here? And who does all this blood belong to? - It was time to go and look a little deeper at this and the aspect of it possibly being a homicide.
This vehicle, it was immediately towed to our forensics facility where everything was kind of done in a controlled environment. So at this point, they're doing fingerprints, photographing all over the vehicle, inside and outside of it. We noticed blood on the back bumper of the vehicle and drag marks on the back bumper. I'm like, okay, somebody's in there. Coming up, detectives uncover more troubling evidence.
We find out that he was involved in narcotics use and narcotics abuse. And Matthew's love life raises suspicions. Do you have the text messages still? No, I deleted the text messages because of my sanity. October 19th, 2017.
While processing the vehicle, 31-year-old Matthew Collins was reportedly driving on the night he went missing. Detectives make several disturbing discoveries. There's blood in the front seat. There's a bullet hole in the windshield. So it was definitely concerning. What I could see on the bumper definitely shows that somebody had been placed in the vehicle or drug out of the vehicle.
Investigators braced themselves for what might be inside. We opened it just to make sure. However, Matthew was not located in the vehicle. There's nobody in the trunk, but the trunk did have an extreme amount of blood in it. The blood that was located both inside the trunk area, inside the passenger compartment, and what I could see on the bumper definitely shows that somebody had been killed inside that vehicle.
There was dirt in the trunk of the vehicle. It didn't look like your typical, you know, dirt that you would get if you put some pots from Home Depot in the back of your car. That's about all that was found in the vehicle. We had very little to go on. We had a car with blood in the front seat and the trunk and a missing person. And we didn't know, did Matthew take the car and was he involved in some kind of crime? Was he the victim of a crime?
Now that a bloody car has been located and seven days have gone by with no sign of Matthew, investigators reach out again to Matthew's father, Mike Collins, hoping to learn more. He admits his son has a troubled past. Yeah, he got himself in some trouble. He's had a rocky road. He's got a checkered past that would be concerning to some people.
And that's when we find out that Matthew has been to prison before. We find out that he was involved in narcotics use and narcotics abuse. Has he always been that way? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, he can scrap. He's a scrapper.
It was out there that Matt kind of had a temper and he would not be afraid to fight anybody. There were a lot of theories at that point. You know, maybe he committed a home invasion. Maybe he got mixed up with the wrong person. Did he have any drug issues? It's hard to spot him if he was using, you know, maybe he was very kind of in the closet maybe with it, you know, real. Like if there was something going on, it was hard to tell? Yeah.
His dad had seen some behaviors in Matthew that were concerning. The concern for Matthew being back on narcotics was it was out there. His family was reporting that in the days leading up, he was not feeling well. They were worried that it may have been drug withdrawals.
When investigators ask Matt's father about his son's relationship with Francesca, he voices some concern. Francesca's the one that's been telling me, they call me, telling me things. And every time, it's something different. Ever since the second day he's been gone, she's made remarks like, oh, he's probably being held against his will somewhere, or he's dead. You know, just little stuff like that. Personally, I don't trust this girl.
Francesca, she had kind of made her mind up that something bad happened, and she did talk about him in the past tense a couple of times. That was a red flag. On October 19th, investigators conduct a formal interview with Francesca. All right. How do you know Matt? I met him off POF in the beginning of July. It's a dating website, Plenty of Fish.
Francesca again shares details about the night Matt went missing.
So the last time Francesca saw Matt was at her house, and he had made the comment that he was going to go get his hair cut at a local barbershop. I waited about two hours. I called him. I said, I'm going to go get food. What do you want? That was probably like 6 o'clock. I had worked that night. I worked night shift. So I went. I got the food. I got a text. I want to say 7.15 saying I'm about to be home. So I text back.
I'm going to take a nap because I usually take a nap before I go into work. And then I woke up. He wasn't there. And it was like nine something. So I called. He didn't answer. But there was a message saying I got stuck in North Fort Myers. The phone charger broke. So I don't know if he was covering up something. Maybe he did get into trouble and he didn't want to tell me.
Francesca says she went to work that night and continued trying to call Matt, but it seemed his phone had been turned off. On Friday, I got a text message, and it said, this is Tiffany, he's with me now. So I said, answer the phone. I got a message back, something along the lines of, I've been cheating on you. I can't change the person I am.
I call back, I text back, but the phone was already off again. And it's been off the whole time. When did you get the text? That Tiffany one, I think, that was definitely Friday night. At the same time, I'm reporting him missing. Francesca claims she doesn't know anyone named Tiffany, but this new revelation gives detectives pause. There was a reason for her at that point to have a broken heart and maybe have some animosity towards Matthew.
Not only that, when detectives try to check her story, there's a problem. Do you have the text messages still? No. I deleted the text messages 'cause of my sanity. I'm thinking, "And now you're deleting messages, so how do we know what's going on? Are you involved now?" Coming up, new details emerge about Matt's last known conversations.
We get the cell phone and notice that he had made several phone calls to this one number. And can technology bring investigators any closer to the truth? The data retrieved told us a lot. It told us his call history. It showed us his location. None of the GPS coordinates put him anywhere near where she lived.
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Want more? Check out at shopify.com slash wondery, all lowercase, and learn how to create the best retail experiences without complexity. Shopify.com slash wondery. On October 19th, 2017, Francesca Sakulich tells Florida investigators that the day after Matthew Collins disappeared, he sent her a heartbreaking text stating he had left her for a woman named Tiffany.
Francesca did not know who Tiffany was, but it came from, obviously, Matthew's phone. We also learned that some of her text messages had been deleted. It was a little suspicious at first. After Francesca's interview concludes, investigators file a search warrant to obtain Matthew's cell phone records. The phone records triangulates, pings the phone, you know, where it hits off the towers, and it confirmed that report from Francesca.
The timeline and text messages that she was getting from him matched exactly with what she had told us. With her story and cell phone records lining up, investigators eliminate Francesca as a suspect. There was nothing on her end that would make us look at her as being involved in this. The phone also unlocks a lead on Matthew's last known contact. We know that one of the last messages that were sent says he's with Tiffany.
When we get the cell phone information from his cell phone carrier, we had noticed that he had made several phone calls to this one number, and that phone number came back to a Tiffany. We made contact with her and learned her side of the story. Tiffany told the police that she had met Matthew on a dating site approximately a year earlier, and they had been in touch, but they had never actually met in person.
According to Tiffany, the two were supposed to meet for the first time on the night of the 12th, the same evening Matthew went missing. She's like, he never showed up. It was suspicious that there was this girl in his phone that he had been communicating with. And then they tell her, you know, Matthew's gone missing. And she's like, well, I've never even met him. We had asked her, you know, one of the last messages that were sent says he's with Tiffany.
She was like, I don't really know why. It wasn't me that sent that message. In an effort to confirm Tiffany's story, investigators study Matt's cell phone GPS coordinates for October 12th. She actually lived down in Naples a little far away, and none of the GPS coordinates put him anywhere near where Tiffany lived. There was no connection, we believe, what she was saying, and we didn't have anything to say differently at this point.
The coordinates show Matt never visited Tiffany nor returned home on October 12th. But he did stop at an area convenience store northeast of Fort Myers. So the homicide unit went out there and we recovered surveillance video from the time that the cell phone was at this gas station. The video wasn't that good, but it did show Matthew again, the passenger of the vehicle, who was definitely a male.
and he was taller, get out of the car, come in, and they purchased something. And then they got back in the car, and they acted like friends. Our main task was to figure out who this random guy is that's riding around with Matt.
Following the breadcrumbs that they're leaving behind from the GPS locations, they lead us to this house. When detectives arrive at the home, a man greets them. He claims he is a friend of Matt's, but not the same friend from the gas station's CCTV footage. He had said that he saw Matt that day, and there was a passenger in the car, and the name he brought up was Nasty Nate.
There was no arguments. There was no against anybody's will. It was a friendly relationship. The gentleman, I only knew him as his alias. Nasty names. Investigators continue following Matthew's GPS trail until it suddenly drops off. Our homicide analyst located a subject that lived right in the area where Matt's phone went dead.
Right where one of those breadcrumbs was, was the address of Nathan Ortiz. When we did background on Nathan, he resembled the person that was with Matthew at the gas station. Once we find the identity of Nathan Ortiz, we also learn that he had a girlfriend named Aria. They live at a house right in the area of where Matt's phone went dead.
When investigators knock on the front door of the home, they're greeted by a middle-aged woman. We actually made contact with Nathan's parents. They give us statements and they pretty much tell us that Nate and Aria, his girlfriend, do live there, but they hadn't been home in a couple of days. According to Nate's mother, 19-year-old Aria moved in with their 20-year-old son earlier that year.
That's when mom had told us about the girlfriend and gave us her information. Mom's talking and we're looking into both of them. I'm sending all this information to our analyst. Hey, start researching this person because this is his girlfriend and see what we can get on her. Nathan Ortiz and Aria Armstead met in 2014 and Nathan was easily attracted to Aria's bubbly personality. Aria was a ball of energy at all times.
I met Aria at a local costume shop. She was working there and the store owner was my friend. She was giggling and kind of jumping around and wanted to be friends with everyone she met. Aria's effervescent personality was a natural fit in the competitive world of teens and tiaras. She's going around doing all these pageants.
She was even voted Miss Congeniality in the Little Miss Florida pageant. Aria loved the experience and she really loved getting to dress up and play a part. But over time, Little Miss Congeniality grew disenchanted with life in the spotlight.
I believe that she kind of had a teenager, angsty relationship with her mother where mom kind of wanted her to do pageants and go a certain path. She would talk about how she didn't like the pressures of performing or potentially being a failure in her mom's eyes. In time, Aria began to rebel. She's going around doing all these pageants and then she stops.
maybe around like the age 16. And I know that she met Nate Ortiz when she was 16. So kind of have to speculate if he had something to do with her change. Aria loved the attention from Nathan and she was giddy to be around him. He would convince her to sneak out of the house. He would tell her that he needed her or something bad would happen.
For Aria's friends, the more they learned about Nathan, the more concerned they became. Nathan also would try to tell her that she didn't need to talk to her mom. And that led to her not taking responsibility for herself and not wanting to complete high school or not showing up at her job.
In early 2017, when Aria was 18 years old, she moved in with Nate and his parents. She was her eye, head over heels for the guy. And it kind of was exciting for her. And she was just along for the ride. That ride has now led Lee County investigators to Aria and Nathan's front door.
As we're talking with Nathan's mom, I'm really intrigued by this area by the side of the house. It's a freshly dug dirt area. It just looked very awkward and very out of place. Now I'm like, okay, so now this is really involved. Now we've really got something here. Coming up, a grim discovery points to a possible final resting place. I thought we had found Matt.
And later, investigators come face to face with Aria and Nathan. I'm freaking out in the backseat. I don't know what's going on. October 26th, 2017. 31-year-old Matthew Collins has been missing for almost two weeks. Investigators have just made a concerning discovery at the home of 20-year-old Nathan Ortiz. Nathan Ortiz lives close to the last location in
of Matthew's cell phone. And one of the things we noticed is right next door, there was earth that was disturbed. Like something was either dug up or buried, and it was recent. Authorities procure a warrant for the property, and a forensic team is called in to search for evidence. I thought we had found Matt. I thought we had found the people responsible for it, but it turned out not to be the case.
The clandestine gravesite is nothing but a dirt-filled hole. Next, detectives execute a search warrant inside the home and the garage. The most important evidence that we found in the house was the shovels and wheelbarrow that had dirt still on them. The soil, it was definitely consistent with the elements out in that area. The sugar sand, the clay.
Investigators send the dirt samples off for testing and make a stunning connection. The dirt on the shovels and the wheelbarrow matched the dirt that was found in the dug-up area and also the same dirt that was found inside Matthew's vehicle.
After wrapping up the search at his home, detectives know they need to sit down with Nathan. Nathan's mom calls him and says, I have two deputies here. They want to meet with you and talk to you. You're meeting with them tonight. Mr. Ortiz met with law enforcement, brought his girlfriend along with him, and they both gave voluntary statements. Mario was interviewed first.
Detectives start by asking who she and Nate typically hang out with, and Aria casually mentions Matthew's name. What'd you guys do when you all hung out with him? All we do is literally just drive around, that's it. When Nathan and Aria came in that night, it was a lot of minimization. They were just friends of Matthew. But when investigators press Aria about the last time she saw Matthew, she makes a surprising confession.
- When was the last time you hung out with anybody? - I'd say October the 12th. - Okay. And so did that night, did he just stop by or? - He stopped by. - Aria claims Matthew stopped by on the very night he went missing. - Matt just kind of showed up out of the blue. They went driving, listened to music. - Aria says that as the night wore on, Matthew began using drugs. - Conversation broke out. Matt was like, "Oh yeah, you know, the gang bang, whatever."
He was like, I wish you could do that. He was like, no, I don't do that. No. He was like, what? And he took it offensively. He got really mad and, you know, a fight broke out between the two. According to Aria, the fight between Matthew and Nathan escalated quickly. He pulled a gun out. He said, F you. I'm going to take your girlfriend. I'm freaking out in the backseat. I don't know what's going on. The gun was cocked and he was pointing it at me.
And, like, I saw it, and I was like, holy s***. I'm trying to de-escalate the situation, trying to get him to just calm down. And then, like, all I saw was Nate just slap out of his hand. Aria reveals to detectives that as things in the car got out of control, she was not in a normal state of mind. So, I'm pregnant, and it's a very serious, and I'm very hormonal and emotional. My boyfriend's life was in danger. I was panicking. I'm pregnant. And in that split second, I just...
I didn't even, I just went like that and that was it. Just tell me what happened. I ended up blowing the trigger. What happened? Aria kept saying because of her fear for herself and her unborn child and for Nathan's safety because this guy pulled the gun out and said, I'm going to kill you. She felt like this was the only safe thing that she could do.
In Florida, we have the Stand Your Ground law, where you have the right to use deadly force if you truly believe that you or another is in grave danger. I freaked out. I asked Nate if he could drive us back home. He went inside. He was freaking out. I'm listening to her tell this story. There was no, like, sense of remorse or guilt whatsoever. I thought, there's no way that this is the true story.
Detectives leave Aria and move to another room to talk to Nathan. Nathan pretty much gives us the same story to the details of the song being played and then Matthew points the gun at him and he punches the gun out of his hand and he said like, "All of a sudden I just heard this like gunshot." When we get to the part where Matthew gets shot and Aria shoots him, it's very quick. There's no detail in it whatsoever.
Based upon some interviews with family, Matthew had some medical issues with his right hand that would have caused him not to be able to articulate it in a way that at least gave us a clue that Nate and Aria weren't very truthful about the altercation that took place inside the vehicle.
While skeptical about their account of Matthew's murder, investigators demand to know what followed. We need the entire truth. But it's the bigger s***, like, when we get deeper into the story. All right? Yeah. They said after they had killed him, they decided to dig this grave right next to the house, which is the area that I had noticed earlier.
It was like not deep enough and it was very, very obvious. They ended up going back out there that next night and then they decided we need to move this. Where do you put him when you pull him out?
Aria and Nathan then drove across the street to a wooded area to bury Matt a second time. After he's buried, what happens? I put a couple trees on him. It wasn't until, like, later, I decided to burn him.
Once they buried him, they were like searching how to get rid of the body. And so they decide, oh, well, it says burn the body. So a couple of days later, they go out there and unbury him again and light his body on fire. I thought burning him would be faster. But then I stopped because I was like, I'm a passionate girl. I don't do things like this. They're sitting there realizing how bad burning flesh smells. So they ended up, you know, putting out the fire and then burying him again.
At this point, we didn't know where Matthew was. So we'd asked Aria if she'd be willing to show us. Aria agrees to take investigators to the unmarked grave, just steps away from Nathan's parents' house. Right there? And that's where you guys dug out? Okay. And then you guys placed him in there? So you're saying that his body was burned a little bit? Yes.
We had just locked down the area and the next morning they came out with an excavator, at which point they were able to find human remains with the medical examiner. The medical examiner confirms Matthew died of a single gunshot wound to the head. Nathan and Aria were arrested for trying to destroy a corpse and tampering with actual physical evidence. Aria was obviously charged with the murder.
Coming up, a former beauty pageant contestant faces the fight of her young life. When I found out that Aria was arrested, my stomach sank. It really didn't feel like the Aria that I knew.
On October 28th, 2017, former teen beauty pageant contestant, 19-year-old Aria Armstead is charged for the murder of Matthew Collins. She and her boyfriend, 20-year-old Nathan Ortiz, also face additional charges of tampering with evidence and desecration of a corpse. ♪
Nathan Ortiz was not charged with murder because she pulled the trigger. He actually had done nothing wrong at the time until he agreed to help dispose of the body. When I found out that Aria was arrested, my stomach sank. I felt wholeheartedly that Nathan was at the root of all of it because it really didn't feel like the Aria that I knew.
As the trial approaches, investigators work to understand the real motive behind Matthew's murder. There's a lot of theories on why Aria had to pull the trigger that day. One of the things that came up later during the investigation about the motive was that this probably was a setup. Matthew wasn't wealthy, but he probably had access to narcotics.
And it's a possibility that Aria and Nathan were trying to rob Matthew of whatever narcotics he had on him. What detectives eventually prove shoots a hole in an important detail in Aria's story. Once we had booked her in, that's when they had made her do a pregnancy test and learned that she wasn't actually pregnant.
She was never pregnant. I think it was just part of her story that she wanted to fabricate to make it seem like she was, you know, so scared for her life. What happened in the car, it's a mystery. We got to go on the facts. Matthew Collins died in a way that somebody else was responsible for it. And the person who was responsible for it was in the backseat of that car. The only person in the backseat of that car was Aria Armstead. You'd be able to figure the trajectory out.
is based on where the bullet left the windshield. My personal belief is, after talking to Mr. Ortiz for hours and hours on end, is that it happened, but it was typical secondary murder. You don't have pre-planning
Mr. Ortiz, we actually, after 9 to 12 months of negotiating with the state attorney's office, we had come up with a plea agreement of 36 months, 3 years in prison, followed by 10 years of probation. But he did have to agree to testify truthfully against RAF.
The gun was not found originally. They ended up interviewing Nate again later on after he'd already been sentenced to prison. And he told them they tossed the gun into the river and the dive team went out there and ended up finding the gun out there in the river. The attorney that we worked with for the state, you know, basically presented all this to Aria. In the end, Aria Armstead accepts a plea deal.
On August 20th, 2018, she pleads guilty to first-degree manslaughter, tampering with evidence, and abuse of a corpse. Aria got 40 years with possibility of parole. She did shoot somebody. You couldn't tell if it was premeditated or not. After she got to trial and loss, she could have looked up to life. Still to this day, I try to ask myself, like, what really happened? I wish we had Matthew's side, but unfortunately we don't.
I know that Aria has attempted multiple appeals at the court and all of them have been denied. I do not know if she's taken any responsibility. I don't think that it is clicking for her other than I'm in prison and I can't go home. I think maybe the grips of addiction could have came in play and he could have possibly been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that doesn't define him as a man.
I'm just glad that he got justice and the people that did it are behind bars. Aria Armstead is serving her sentence at the Lowell Correctional Facility in Ocala, Florida. Her current release date is 2036. Nathan Ortiz was ultimately sentenced to 42 months in prison. He was released in October of 2020. Oh, yeah.
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