The Suspicious Death of Nicole Parsons-Bucki (Rhode Island)

Kylie Low (0:01)

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On a morning when the country's attention was fixed on unimaginable tragedy, a Rhode Island family was learning that someone they loved was gone.

In the hours before Nicole Parsons-Bucki died, there had been violence, a police response, and a relationship already under strain. But 25 years later, no one has been charged. That could be because the deeper you look at Nicole's case, the less simple it becomes. We're dealing with an uncertain timeline, evidence that disappeared, unanswered questions about who was actually with her, and the possibility that what has seemed obvious for years may not tell the whole story.

I'm Kylie Low, and this is the case of Nicole Parsons-Bucki on Dark Downeast.

In the first hours of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the date didn't mean anything yet. Providence, Rhode Island was still hours away from a morning that would permanently divide time for the entire country into before and after. But at one address on Charles Street, something had already happened that would leave one family measuring their lives in the same way.

A little after midnight, police were called to 607 Charles Street, apartment number one. When a Providence patrolman arrived at 12 22 a.m., a witness at the scene told him that 27-year-old Nicole Parsons-Bucki was dead inside her apartment. The dispatch information for Providence Police Department case number 2001-00133950 was brief. Suicide attempt. Blow dryer. In tub. According to Amanda Milkovitz's in-depth story for the Providence Journal published in 2003, Nicole was found fully clothed with her hair in a scrunchie and partially submerged in the bathtub. She was face down in a fetal position with less than a foot of water beneath her. As the initial report had already indicated, somewhere near the bathtub was a blow dryer connected to an extension cord. In later reporting by Sarah Baden and Kim Colounian for WPRI, Providence Police Major David Lepaitin described the dryer as actually being inside the tub. At first glance, those details seemed to offer an explanation for what police had been called there to investigate, but the scene didn't tell such a simple story. For one, the shower curtain appeared to have been ripped from its rod, a detail that suggested there may have been some kind of struggle. Nicole's body was taken from the apartment and transported to the Medical Examiner's Office for an autopsy. And then morning came. Within hours, airplanes would strike the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another would crash in Pennsylvania. Television screens would fill with smoke and fire. Newsrooms would abandon nearly everything else, and September 11th would become a date inseparable from loss. But before any of that happened, Nicole Parsons-Bucki was already gone, and the first explanation for how she died was already beginning to unravel.

Nicole was born and raised in Cranston, Rhode Island. She graduated from the Sawyer School of Business and went on to work for Fleet Boston Financial Group in Providence. She was also a mother. Nicole had an eight-year-old daughter at the time of her death, who had been raised by Nicole's parents since she was a baby. Nicole's life had not been easy. Her family later spoke openly about her struggles with narcotics, including Vicodin. She had also been married briefly, but by 2001, that marriage had ended in divorce. For about a year before her death, Nicole had been seeing someone new. He was considerably younger than she was, less than a month away from his 18th birthday at the time of Nicole's death. When police arrived at Nicole's apartment on September 11th, that relationship was already part of the story surrounding her suspicious death. Because the day before Nicole was found in the tub, police had already responded to Charles Street for an incident involving her boyfriend.

At around 1:30 a.m. on September 10th, 2001, Providence Police responded to 607 Charles Street after someone heard Nicole and her boyfriend fighting. Amanda Milkovitz is reporting for the Providence Journal is really the only reason why we know so much about this incident. No matter how many times I requested the records or changed my request parameters, these records weren't part of what I received. That could be because the suspect in the incident was a juvenile at the time, or because the case is related to another case that is still open, but I'm not sure.