Two days later, Heather still hadn't heard from him. Then a friend who lived across the street from Jacob called to tell her his place was swarming with cops. "I prayed that he hadn't been arrested," she says. Then an officer came to her house. "I have bad news," he said. "Jacob is dead. He shot himself."
Upon hearing those words, Heather dropped to the floor, screaming and crying. "I was in so much pain, I wanted to die myself," she says. "I couldn't believe Jacob would do something like that. Why didn't he talk to me?"
COURTESY OF HEATHER NASAKAITIS
THE SICKENING TRUTH
The day after Jacob's suicide, his friend Michael Keyser, then 23, turned up at the police station. He had just received a disturbing phone call from Jacob's dad: Apparently, on the night Jacob killed himself, he had told his parents that he had been at a hotel with Michael and Kim and passed out from alcohol and marijuana, and when he woke up, Kim was dead. In a panic at hearing this, Michael went to the station—assuming he was about to be picked up—and told police what had really happened.
According to Michael, he picked up Kim at home around midnight on September 29 and drove her to a nearby motel, as instructed by Jacob. On the way, Kim told him that she and Jacob were in love and he was finding her a new place to live. When they got to the motel, Jacob had already checked in. They went up to the room, and Michael watched while Kim and Jacob had sex. Afterward, Michael had sex with her too.
Kim showered afterward, and when she emerged from the bathroom, Jacob suddenly grabbed her, threw her onto the bed, and tried to smother her with a pillow. Kim wriggled away and ran for the door, but Jacob tackled her. "Please don't kill me!" Kim shrieked. Jacob put his hand over her nose and mouth, and then planted one knee on her throat and the other on her forehead.
As Kim thrashed desperately, Jacob ordered Michael to hold her down, and he did. Soon she stopped moving, and Jacob said, "It's almost over." A few minutes later, he checked her pulse and verified that she was dead. Michael said the two men then wrapped Kim's body in a blanket, secured it with duct tape, and stuffed it into the trunk of Jacob's gray Chevrolet Lumina.
Police say that Jacob bought a chain and cinderblocks from a building-supply store the next day. After wrapping Kim's body in the materials he'd bought, he chartered a small plane from a local airport and flew out over the Atlantic to dump the body.
PAINFUL RECOVERY
No one knows for sure why Jacob did it. Since both he and Kim are dead, there is no way to verify that they had an ongoing relationship (as Kim implied), and Michael has maintained that he doesn't know.
As for Heather, she doesn't believe they were ever together. "I heard rumors that Jacob had sex with Kim that night, but there's just no way," she says. Heather believes Jacob got rid of Kim in the misguided belief that it would make Heather happy. "I was always telling him how Kim made my life miserable," she admits.
But criminal experts say it's rare for someone to commit murder strictly for someone else's benefit. They say Jacob must have had hidden, violent impulses—and a motive—that led him to kill her. He may have even been excited by the challenge of getting away with murder. Or if Jacob and Kim were in a sexual relationship, it's possible that he may have wanted to cover it up.
COURTESY OF HEATHER NASAKAITIS
After Michael's confession—which led to his conviction for first-degree murder and conspiracy in November 2004—police circled back to a nagging question: Did Heather have anything to do with Kim's death? They questioned her a second time. "It was a nightmare," Heather says. "For the next year, I was paranoid that I was going to go to jail for Kim's murder, even though I had absolutely nothing to do with it."
Eventually, Heather was cleared of any involvement; a few months later, she moved to Colorado to begin a new life. "It took me a long time to cope with the fact that somebody I loved and trusted took my sister's life," she says. Regular therapy has helped ease her pain and anxiety; she's now studying marketing at a community college and has a new live-in boyfriend. "I tell myself that Kim's at peace," she says. "That's helped me move on."
@MsSarahPaulson
