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The attached video is the full special report, "ABC57 News Investigates: The Confession."
"His news story became an international sensation," said Jessica Stanley, Nicholas Stanley's sister. "Initially, I was ecstatic to see my brother get to tell his side of the story out and everything. But, when he dropped a certain bomb during the news segment, my stomach just was kind of like, 'Oh no, Nicholas, why would you say something like that?'"
The initial story was broadcast on ABC57's airwaves on July 2, and since then, it's gone viral. Going back to the beginning, the story begins with a shooting in Elkhart.
Elkhart police were dispatched to the Daylite Inn on Cassopolis Street just before 1 a.m. on June 24. Thirty-five-year-old Allen Cogswell was found shot and killed at the scene in room 251. Cogswell had been released from prison barely a month prior. It took investigators from the Elkhart County Homicide Unit about a day to identify and arrest their suspect, 35-year-old Nicholas Stanley.
Police quickly put the pieces together; Cogswell was in prison on charges from 2018 of child pornography and molestation. Stanley knew the victim; it was his relative.
As Stanley sat in jail after the shooting, Annie Kate got a Facebook message from his sister Jessica.
"There's my brother's mug shot plastered all over the local news stations," Jessica said in an exclusive interview on June 30 with Annie Kate outside the Elkhart County Jail.
She explained that Cogswell had been released from prison early, serving about six years of a 12-year sentence. Jessica says the whole family did not know of his release.
A few days later, Annie Kate logged on for a pre-arranged inmate video call with the suspect himself: Nicholas Stanley. She asked him on the record what happened on June 24, and he didn't hold back.
"Grabbed my gun, and I drove out to go find him. And then when I found him, I did what I had to. I took him out. I'm tired of pretending like I did something wrong. You know, I don't feel like I did anything wrong, and there are thousands of people out there who agree with me. I'm just tired of pretending that I have to be scared of the system when he obviously wasn't scared of the system."
At the very same time, Annie Kate was interviewing Stanley from behind bars, Jessica and other family members, along with the group "Bikers Against Predators," and others, gathered outside the former courthouse in Goshen. Standing up for Stanley, they were protesting what they call lenient prison sentences for sex offenders.
In his July 2 interview, Stanley seemed to understand the consequences he was facing.
"And now I'm going to get more time putting this piece of trash out than he ever got for hurting my family and the ones that I love," Stanley said on July 2.
The day after his story aired was Stanley's initial hearing. However, he still didn't have legal representation. In fact, the judge did not make Stanley plead; the judge entered a "not guilty" plea on his behalf. ABC57 spoke with Elkhart County Prosecutor Vicki Becker about this; she says that's common practice. The defendant needs an initial hearing to learn his charges and constitutional rights, but without a lawyer, the judge will automatically enter a not guilty plea.
That plea hasn't changed since.
"I get stopped by, you know, when I'm at the store and everything, by complete strangers. 'Hey, you're Nicholas Stanley's sister, aren't you? We saw you on the news. Tell him we're praying for him," Jessica Stanley said. "I just couldn't believe it hit Newsweek and everything. A small Indiana town, having this huge news story, I never would have thought it would have reached the likes of that."
Jessica Stanley was unable to hire a lawyer for her brother. She even tried crowdsourcing for legal expenses, but those efforts were all for naught.
GoFundMe has a policy against raising money for someone accused of a violent crime.
"So many people in the community were siding with Nic, and they felt, 'yeah, we'll put money forward to help raise money for his defense,' and it was just gone like that," Jessica said. "Yeah, we definitely lost any way of retaining one, for sure. We know a high-profile lawyer like that would run about $100,000, but you know, at least getting a retaining fee... Once that money was gone, I had no hope after that."
Chief Deputy Public Defender for Elkhart County, Bridgette Faulkner, is assigned to Stanley's case, but he wants a new lawyer.
Stanley sent ABC57 an email from behind bars saying in part, "She told me the plea deal is the difference between dying in prison or dying a free man, which is just a terrible argument and hopefully isn't reflective of her skills as a public defender. The only plea I have received is a 55-year sentence, so I might as well take it to trial to see how the jury feels..."
Stanley wants this to go to a jury and trial is currently set for March of 2026. In the meantime, his two children, safe with their mother, miss their dad. He has his sister Jessica, steadfastly by his side, keeping communication going multiple times a week.
However, this is a story about two sisters, both fiercely defending their brothers.
ABC57's Annie Kate met Allen Cogswell's sister, whom ABC57 is keeping anonymous at her request, and will call her Jane.
"I just thought that people should know about Allen's story as well before they judge," Jane said. "He's my biological brother. We have the same mom and different dads. We were adopted together. Grew up on and off together."
She said Allen had a rough upbringing.
"I got adopted at age eight, and he was 10, and when I was 12, he started lashing out," Jane said.
She said Allen Cogswell had clear signs of severe mental illness growing up.
"He would explain it to me like there were demons in his head telling him what to do, and he didn't have the power to resist," Jane said.
He was in and out of various programs as a kid, she said, but ultimately, his adoptive parents terminated their rights when he was a young teen after he allegedly got violent and threatened the entire family. And Jane lost contact with her brother for a time.
"I don't ever, I don't think he ever got the help that he needed," Jane said.
His 2018 prison sentence wasn't his first, but each time he was behind bars, Jane was there.
After Cogswell was killed, Jane says she read a letter from him, addressed to her, but never sent.
"His foster dad came to Elkhart and got his stuff from the hotel and brought me everything Allen well, not everything, but most of everything Allen had," Jane said. "And one of the papers that he had was a letter that had never been sent, explaining that he had suffered sexual abuse [...] so that's what he grew up knowing. And it wasn't just like one time, like he was forced over and over and over to do it.
Jane sees her brother as a victim who went on to continue the cycle of abuse.
"Yes, I feel like before they judge him, others should know that he was traumatized as well," she said. "And no, it doesn't give him the right to traumatize others, but they should, they should know before they judge."
She says she truly believes he understood what he did was wrong, and that he wanted to be better, and would have been, had he been able to live.
"...everybody just looks at they look at the cover and it's a child molester, and they're like, he's a bad person. He's awful. But what he grew up with was awful. He didn't understand what he was doing was wrong until he was older.”
She says she didn't believe the call she got from her bio-mom on June 24, sharing the news of Allen Cogswell's murder.
"I am a firm believer in god has a punishment for everybody. And I'm not sure if Allen was a believer or not, but it was not Nic's right to judge him and murder him. It was, it is god's right, and he took it upon himself. And taking a life is still murder. It's still murder, no matter what reason you have behind it."
The very next day after Cogswell's death, Jane said she was at church, where the lesson preached was forgiveness.
"Right there I felt I felt God putting his hand saying, 'You need to forgive him. You cannot be angry. You need to forgive him.' So I want Nic to know that even though he believes he did what is right, it was not right, but I forgive him," Jane said.
"You can forgive and forget, but the victim can't forgive. The victim can't forget," Jessica Stanley said. "And, you know, at the end of the day, should this have happened? No. Was there a different way that this approach could have been dealt with? For sure. Is it the extreme end of things? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, what happened, happened. There's no taking it back, but you know, it happens. And unfortunately, this was the end result. When somebody takes the matter into their own hands because the police and the law won't, extremes are definitely reached.”
Jessica Stanley tells me her brother Nicholas suffers from mental health issues and was off his meds. Not to mention, he lost his mother in February. Jessica says he took it very hard, and he lost his job.
"He lost access to his health insurance. And then he lost access to both his therapists and his medications. So, my brother had not been on any Medication when this incident occurred in June," she said.
Stanley told me he lost his mind when he discovered Cogswell was released.
"So, I was actually the one who did, in fact, find out that Allen had gotten out. Because that relative was terrified and having nightmares, I would call them 'premonitionary' nightmares. But, they were having nightmares that he was out, and so, to try and calm them down and quell it, I looked him up, and was taken aback by the fact that he was out."
Jessica tells ABC57 no one was notified of Cogswell's parole hearing, nor his release, meaning the victim didn't have a chance to make a victim impact statement in court.
"We wouldn't be here today if he had still been in prison. We would not be where we are right now if they had just kept him locked up."
Cogswell was released six years into his 12-year sentence.
"You know, these children are pretty much sentenced to trauma their whole entire lives," Jessica said. "Whereas these men and women get a slap on the wrist.”
ABC57's Annie Kate was able to get the mother of the victim Allen Cogswell abused on the phone, and she corroborates what Jessica said-- that they had no idea Cogswell was being released early.
"Nope, nobody was aware of the situation... It happened years ago, so I mean, I knew eventually he was going to be getting out. I'd obviously hoped that I would never have to hear his name again," the victim's mother said. "We swear that they said that we would be notified of what's going on."
ABC57 dug into this a bit. Turns out, Indiana implements a Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification, or SAVIN Program, to alert victims of such updates. But, the victim or victim's family must register to get these updates.
Annie Kate explained this to the victim's mother.
"What I found out was that to get these notifications, you had to be registered with this program. Were you registered with that program?"
"Nope, never heard of it," she replied.
"So, nobody was there to speak for the victim, and so, he just got out," Jessica said.
This means Jessica spread the news of Cogswell's release.
"'Hey, he's out, just letting you guys know this.' And my brother didn't say anything about it. He read it, left me on read, didn't say anything about it."
But Stanley told me he took matters into his own hands.
And now, he faces another charge on top of murder: illegal possession of a firearm by a domestic batterer. That charge is informed by Stanley's prior record, which he successfully expunged.
"So he actually had all of his record expunged earlier this year," Jessica said. "I was like, 'How did they unseal that if it was all expunged?' Like, I don't think that was right by the prosecuting attorney's office."
Elkhart County Prosecutor Vicki Becker cannot talk about the facts of Stanley's case in any way, shape, or form ahead of trial. So, she cannot discuss his criminal history.
But she did speak generally about how expungements work: "Expungement is not a situation where it goes away forever. It is a situation where if Certain conditions or exceptions apply, then the court can unseal the records."
It may be uncommon, but it does happen, she says.
So, where does this leave us?
Nicholas Stanley has a hard battle ahead of him, and he faces decades in prison. Despite the outcome of Stanley's case, he’s receiving an outpouring of community support. His sister Jessica is remaining firmly by his side.
Allen Cogswell isn't here anymore to share his side of the story, but his sister is here to remind us he was a person, too.
Two sisters are loyally defending their brothers.
"I know what he did was wrong, but he was my brother. He was my support, and I loved him for all it was worth," Jane said.
"I love him. He's my little brother. I'll always love him," Jessica Stanley said. "When everybody else is dead and gone, I'll be the one. If it happens to be, I'll be the last one there for him."