48 Hours - Dead Again | The Woman in the Woods

Episode 1: Mindi Mebane was a romantic, and when she met and married Nick Kassotis, her best friends believed she had finally found her match. Nick was handsome, well-educated, and worked as a Navy lawyer. But Mindi started sending her friends fearful messages: she and her husband were receiving threats related to her husband's work. Mindi and Nick seemed to be on the run but then Mindi messaged that things were looking up: she was pregnant and might soon come out of hiding. So when Mindi's friends learn that she died, and soon after hear that Nick is also dead, they wonder: had whatever Mindi and Nick were running from caught up to them? Enjoying this series? The next episode of The Woman in the Woods is available now wherever you get your podcasts. With 48 Hours Plus, you can listen to this and other limited series from 48 Hours early and ad-free.

Duration: 23m
Broadcast on: 28 Sep 2026
Audio Format: other

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 Nguyen had gone years without seeing her dear friend Mindy Cassotas. Mindy 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 gonna have her husband, they'll have the baby, they'll be, you know, she was coming to see me. Mindy 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 for Mindy. That's when Angela messaged Mindy's husband Nick. She got a response on Instagram when 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 and that's when he told me that Mindy was gone, gone, that she had died, the 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. It 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 in the hospital. Now 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 and 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 Stans. Some enforcement had found human remains in the woods outside of Savannah. They believed it was Mindy Cassotas. I honestly wasn't a bit of disbelief. How was it possible that Mindy Cassotas could have died not once, but twice? I've 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

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