Nikki Addimando Murder Case Analysis

hello this is dr grande today's question asks so i can analyze the nikki arimando murder case just a reminder i'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoyed this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video so here i'll be looking at the background of the individuals involved in this case i'll move to the crime and then i'll offer my analysis this incident took place in poughkeepsie new york it primarily featured two individuals christopher grover and nikki arimando the two would meet in 2008 when chris was 21 and nikki was 19. in 2012 the two would move in together and nikki became pregnant chris worked as a coach at a gymnastics business and nikki stayed at home with their child they would have another child not long after this several reports indicated they were both great parents affectionate attentive they took that role seriously because only chris worked they did struggle financially some of nikki's friends noticed that nikki would sometimes have odd bruises or other injuries this kept occurring over a long period of time nicki never reported any type of domestic violence to the police but she did tell therapists medical professionals and friends that chris had injured her and was aggressive in a sexual manner on the various occasions when she sought medical attention several different types of injuries were noted for example it appeared as though she was burned with an object like a spoon there were injuries on her wrists that looked like rope burns and she had a number of bruises on september 21 2017 an anonymous tip came forward to child protective services cps the tip indicated that nikki had visible bruises on her face and chest on a weekly basis september 27 2017 cps sends two caseworkers to the apartment of chris and nikki where they talk to the couple and their children nikki denied that chris was violent and she denied there were any weapons in the house when in reality she knew that chris had a firearm chris denied being violent he said he had no criminal history the couple's son ben said their parents yelled about adult things and his father grabbed his mother before the caseworkers could talk to anyone else nikki texted her sister saying mention no injuries she indicated she was a good mother and that chris was a good father now moving to the homicide in the early morning hours of september 28 2017 the next day after the cps visit the police approached nikki's vehicle as it was stopped at a green light her two children were in the car she exited the vehicle and told the officers she had shot chris she said it was self-defense she asked one of the officers what was going to happen he told her as of right now you're not in any trouble i guess he forgot about the murder part nikki was taken to the police station where she talked to the police without a lawyer she was arrested for murder she would eventually be represented by two private attorneys after some brief dealings with public defenders the case went to trial after nikki turned down a plea agreement the nature of that offer wasn't clear but if she had accepted it it would have resulted in a sentence less than what she ultimately received here's what nikki said happened on the night of september 27 and the early morning hours of september 28th chris and nikki watched a movie with their kids she took the kids to the park and then put them to bed chris was behaving differently than usual he was calm and being nice nicki thought maybe the cps visit caused him to rethink his behavior nikki then realized that chris intended to kill her she could tell by the look on his face chris retrieved his firearm and loaded it even handing nikki one cartridge to load into the magazine herself on chris's phone the police would find 15 minutes of internet searches right around the time of the homicide essentially the searches were designed to find out the police would know if someone had been shot in their sleep and where in the head to shoot someone to cause death the pronouns in the searches made it seem like the victim would be female but nikki did have the passcode to chris's phone so she could have conducted the searches and just used pronouns to make it seem like he was the one who conducted the searches now after retrieving the firearm chris committed an assault of a sexual nature against nikki she alleged that chris did this frequently throughout their relationship after this she tried to slip away but he produced the semi-automatic pistol there was a struggle and the gun fell to the ground she picked it up and pointed it at him they were standing between the children's room and the front door so nikki felt as though she could not safely escape with her children chris told her that he was going to kill her before bringing an end to his own life nikki lunged and pulled the trigger shooting chris once in the head so let's look at this case from the perspective of the prosecution and the defense on the prosecution side they would say that nikki was not a victim the medical examiner established that the gun was touching chris's head when it was fired nikki threw chris's laptop in the bathtub to make it look like chris was trying to destroy evidence nikki had sent texts to chris a few days earlier calling him a man-child and stupid the prosecution argued those internet searches right before the homicide must have been conducted by nikki nikki had sent a text to a friend six weeks earlier in that text she said i haven't figured out how to kill him so i am still here followed by a grimace emoji the defense argued that this emoji clearly shows that she was joking at the trial there was this debate about whether the emoji was really a wry smiling face instead of a grimace i guess this was an effort to improve the image of splitting hairs as it turns out there is a way to engage in a more meaningless and tedious activity debating emoji faces nikki made accusations against a police officer who she had a relationship with and against a maintenance worker she had some difficulty remembering the timeline the prosecution suggested this showed a history of making false claims the medical records were not entirely clear for example on one occasion she answered no to a number of types of abuse she came back a few days later and then endorsed those items the prosecution suggested that nikki's injuries were self-inflicted or they could have been inflicted by somebody other than chris now as far as the timing of the murder the prosecution believed that it was really all about cps nikki was afraid that they would realize she was falsely claiming that chris was violent so she decided to commit the murder now looking at the defense side the defense argued that the way nikki described the shooting was consistent with the evidence suggesting that perhaps the gun was not actually touching chris's head nikki had no criminal history she was in fact the victim of several assaults of a sexual nature in her lifetime including one when she was five years old they argued her behavior saved her life it was self-defense they also said some of her injuries could not have been self-inflicted for example she had a bite mark on her shoulder to address the issue of those aggressive texts that she sent to chris they said that she was trying to stand up to him and she would pay for those texts later they said that chris would try to recreate pornography that he had seen the jury was not allowed to hear about a website account that was set up with terms that appear to be associated with chris someone had uploaded explicit videos and images of nikki onto that website it was excluded because there was no way to prove who actually performed the upload nikki arimando's trial concluded after 14 days of testimony she was convicted of second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon one juror indicated that the jury simply didn't buy her story they wondered why she didn't just leave why kill somebody in their sleep for the most part they did believe she was a victim of violence in that relationship but they also thought she was a master manipulator before sentencing the judge considered the application of a law called the domestic violence survivors justice act essentially this law allows for a wider variety of sentences when a convicted party can show that domestic violence played a role in their crime the judge found that nikki had an undetermined and inconsistent abuse history and tremendous access to resources therefore the law would not apply she was sentenced to 19 years to life and would be eligible for parole in 2036. so now moving to the next questions was she guilty of murder in a legal sense and did she really do it so the law versus reality i'm going to divide this case into two questions was she really the victim of domestic violence and did she believe that she was under lethal threat at the time she pulled the trigger which is the standard in new york for self-defense she could have been the victim of violence and still be guilty of murder but these questions are still tied together one does inform the other in looking at all the evidence for and against i find it reasonable to believe that she was the victim of domestic violence that argument simply requires fewer assumptions it's a simpler explanation chris was violent nikki was injured people saw those injuries she was afraid of chris she did not want to lose that relationship there was a lot of risk in ending that relationship including losing her children again a pretty straightforward set of circumstances it all does seem to make sense of course it is possible that she made everything up but what would be her motive so she inflicts injuries on herself perhaps as part of some pathology and she tries to explain them away by saying that chris inflicted them when it seems like people were onto her scam she murders chris it just doesn't make sense yes there are certain types of pathology where people harm themselves and this has been brought up as a possibility in this case but here's the problem with those theories the disorders associated with that behavior like factitious disorder borderline personality disorder and depression don't seem to be part of this case there's no evidence that nikki had any of these disorders outside of this theory that she hurt herself which of course was not proven another possibility of course is that this was some master plan which apparently is what the jury thought she hurt herself in a way consistent with psychopathy in order to play the long game she wanted to kill chris but not go to prison here we run into the same problem behavior like that would likely require psychopathy and the evidence doesn't support that she was psychopathic additionally before the time of the incident chris had some searches on his phone consistent with nikki's story like searches including the word sex and the word forced again did nikki plan this out for years she used his phone to make these searches hoping she could reap the benefits later on as i mentioned the prosecution argued that there was a text that she sent saying she hadn't figured out how to kill chris but messages like that are sent all the time regardless of whether the emoji was a grimace or a wry smiling face the emoji could have been an intensely serious face and she could have still been joking another item with all those injuries that nikki had some of which were on her face and neck if chris were innocent why wasn't he more proactive like why didn't he go to friends and relatives and say look you're going to see a lot of bruises on her i just want to let everybody know i'm not involved with that i didn't do anything the analogy here would be if somebody borrowed a car and they brought it back with one of the quarter panels smashed in even if the person borrowing the car didn't do the damage wouldn't they say to the owner hey i just want to let you know i didn't hit anything some circumstances necessitate an explanation my last point for this question the children had seen things consistent with nikki's story of an ongoing violent relationship with chris so there is further corroboration for her narrative so on that first question was she the victim of violence again i would say it makes sense that she was but what about the next question in her situation would a reasonable person believe they were under lethal threat in my opinion this hinges on whether the gun was really in contact with chris's head and whether or not he was asleep i know there was expert testimony saying the gun was touching his head but i'm reluctant to put too much stock in any one bit of testimony especially when it could have been inaccurate what's more unbelievable to me is the idea that he produced this gun there was a struggle and she happened to be the one who retrieved it when it fell to the floor that almost seems like something we would see in a movie i think that nikki did have the ability to leave and she should have left leaving comes with a lot of downsides it can be dangerous miserable uncomfortable uncertain painful but shooting somebody is still not an acceptable alternative going back to the overarching question i do not think that nikki was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt even though i am suspect about that final confrontation now how about in reality like did i think she really did it yes i think she murdered chris grover what really convinced me was not only the gun touching his skin but those searches on his phone if he was really planning on killing her and ending his own life the issue of whether or not the police would know his victim was sleeping would not be important to him there's no reason he would have searched for that information it only benefits her to find the answer to that question so i think she committed murder but i don't think she was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt with this opinion the mystery becomes why did she do it that's what really doesn't make sense in this case if it wasn't self-defense why commit homicide only she knows the answer in terms of lessons learned nikki said that if chris was violent in the beginning of the relationship like he was later on she never would have stayed i've heard this many times from people involved in domestic violence the lesson here is this boundary crossing is not okay perpetrators often start with small boundary violations and then move to more significant violations once two people are intertwined once we see financial dependence emotional dependence friends and family look at the couple as happy and the victim doesn't want to disappoint them so the perpetrator is manipulative they put the person in a position where leaving is difficult there's no sense in having boundaries if there are no consequences to violating them those are my thoughts on the nikki armando case please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 87,877

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Id: A8Dz2ZeFJpo

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020