In the fog-laden woods near Riceboro, Ga, where logging trucks pass and hunters walk on tiptoe, a horrific find disrupted an idyllic silence in December 2022. Human remains, a torso here, a head there, surfaced among the trees, evidence of a horror unthinkable in anyone’s imagination.
It would be six months before the victim had a name: Mindi Kassotis, a 40-year-old woman who “always had a smile on” and died a life tragically curtailed. Her husband, Nicholas Kassotis, a former lawyer for the Navy, fashioned fantastic tales to obscure his guilt, but justice finally caught up with him in a 2025 trial that revealed his duplicity.
This is not a mere crime story; it’s a chilling visit to betrayal, lacerating at the heart as urgently as does a family’s never-ending grieving. As we celebrate its anniversary, October 15th, 2025, the plot thickens: a story of trust is woven into dangerous lies.
Mindi Kassotis was the type of person who sparked rooms. The oldest of three born to Betsy and Frank, she had a very special relationship with her parents. Curious and ambitious, she got a master’s degree in public service, thinking big in Savannah’s sweet bungalows.
There, she encountered Nicholas – a Navy veteran and JAG officer who’d served at the Pentagon. They married in 2016, a picture-perfect couple: him so purposeful and sharp-edged, her warm and steady. But rifts emerged behind closed doors.
There was Nicholas’s own chequered divorce from his first wife, Heather, amidst which he owed $1.5 million but insisted that he was secretly wealthy due to government projects and lie after lie leaked like storm clouds before the break in May.
The nightmare started in November 2022. Mindi disappeared, her final days shrouded in mystery. Nicholas informed her parents she’d died suddenly during hip surgery while they were out of town, promising a memorial that never occurred.
Instead, he vanished from their lives at a pace that was downright eerie. No one answered Betsy’s calls, and Frank grew increasingly alarmed. They did not know that Mindi’s body was strewn across the wilds of Liberty County, near roads little used beyond loggers and locals.
The first discovery occurred Dec. 7, 2022, when members of the Portal Hunting Club found a human head near a tree and disturbed soil that suggested an accelerated burial. Over days, more parts appeared — arms, legs, torso — in a trail spanning nearly three miles.
A black tote nearby contained a red-handled Milwaukee utility knife, and disinfectant wipes — some of the grim remnants of an earlier cleanup gone wrong. A team of forensic experts discovered nine skull injuries, the signs of arm defense cuts and stab marks, clear evidence of brutal dismemberment.
Bugs on the remains placed death in late November, when she vanished. No DNA matches were found; fingerprints and dental implants provided no instant identification. A sketch was released, tips rolled in, but it wasn’t until May 2023 that family DNA identified the victim: Mindi Kassotis.
It didn’t take long for investigators to focus on Nicholas. His 2022 Ford Explorer was caught on a water pump camera driving near the dump site on November 29 — the day experts have testified she likely died. He treated it like a regular trailer run, but his phone pings contradicted that.
Then came the lies. He informed the police that both he and Mindi had been “off the grid” for several years, taking commands from an FBI agent named Jim McIntyre. Nicholas said McIntyre had told him to prepare totes and leave for certain coordinates that day.
But a police check turned up no such person as McIntyre. The F.B.I. denied having made contact, and the Explorer’s data showed stops at hardware stores where Nicholas bought knives, totes, and cleaning supplies. His alibi died a slow death, piece by piece.
In the Airbnb in Savannah, investigators discovered blood on a futon that was consistent with Mindi’s DNA, indicating she had been attacked while seated. Nicholas denied knowing anything about it, telling her she must have hurt it earlier. Few believed him.
Days later, his car caught fire under mysterious circumstances, with Mr. Berk apparently insinuating that it contained an $800,000 cashier’s check — a lie that dovetailed with both the big delusion and the petty, Brett Kavanaugh-ish dishonesty he displayed in cooking up an excuse for not paying his legal bills after losing this case at trial. By February 2023, he was trying to seduce author Samantha Ksenik online and marry her that April.
He then confided that he would have died years earlier had he been in physics. told Samantha that Mindi had written “police showed up” on her arms in 2020. After the police arrested him, she had their marriage annulled and testified against him in court, describing his manipulative charm and bizarre behavior.
Nicholas was arrested in May 2023 on 12 charges – including malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and tampering with evidence. He pleaded not guilty, holding fast to his made-up FBI tale.
Georgia was riveted by the August 2025 trial. Prosecutors presented him as a narcissist who was an inveterate liar bent on control and image. They displayed his phony wealth claims, nonexistent pregnancies, and contradictions that suggested rage beneath the calm surface.
The defense countered that with a litany of circumstantial evidence — no murder weapon, no witnesses. Nicholas himself even testified that he simply took orders from “Agent McIntyre.” But on cross-examination, his story crumbled: no emails, no phone logs, nothing to substantiate any of it.
It took the jury just 45 minutes to return a verdict: Guilty on all counts. During sentencing, Mindi’s mother wept and said, “He took my daughter, my sunshine. Her voice broke the silence of the courtroom.
Nicholas’s own parents, estranged from him but adamant on his behalf, begged for mercy. The jury voted for death 11 to 1, but under Georgia’s law, the decision had to be unanimous. (The judge sentenced him to life without parole plus 25 years.)
Mindi’s loss still echoes. Friends like Morgan Paddock grieve her lonely withdrawal in those last months, and how Nicholas snuffed out her shining star. Her parents mourn the future she never received — the laughter, those children, the peace.
Nicholas now rots in a prison cell in Georgia, free of the Pentagon spit-shine. The town, still rattled, gathers for vigils for Mindi every December; her story is a testament to how love can be turned lethal beneath the guise of lies.
This saga is a wellspring of passion, rage at fraud, heartache for wasted talents, and an urgency to discern red flags before they become fatal. For children, it is a lesson in truth; for adults, a caution against the kind of love that leaves you stranded.
And while the woods take back their secrets in silence, Mindi’s spirit lives on. Her story is a whisper through the pines: Speak up, reach out for help, and never let lies snuff your light.
