Important Corrections to the Documentary Transcript
The victim’s name was Nicole “Nikki” VanderHeyden, not Nicole Vanderheiden or Vanderheyden as it is sometimes inconsistently written. Her boyfriend’s full name was Douglass Detrie, not Doug Deeter or Doug DeGroot. The man convicted of killing her was George Steven Burch.
The documentary also overstates the Fitbit evidence. At Burch’s trial, the court admitted step-count information showing that Detrie’s device recorded only 12 steps during the relevant period. The judge excluded the Fitbit’s sleep-monitoring data, so it is inaccurate to say that jurors were shown scientific measurements proving “deep, uninterrupted sleep” or detailed heart-rate evidence.
The description of Burch’s earlier murder case is also incorrect. He was not released because two jurors caused a mistrial. In 1998, a Virginia jury acquitted him of charges connected to the 1997 shooting death of Joey White. That earlier acquittal was not presented to the Wisconsin jury deciding the VanderHeyden case.
Nicole VanderHeyden’s Life Before the Murder
Nicole D. “Nikki” VanderHeyden was born on March 29, 1985, in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. She graduated from Denmark High School in 2003 and later attended the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, where she earned a bachelor’s degree with a double major in science and education in 2010.
Nicole worked as a substitute teacher in elementary and middle schools within the Green Bay Area Public School District. She had served the district for several years and was remembered by relatives as a devoted mother who placed her children’s welfare ahead of her own.
By May 2016, Nicole was 31 years old and raising three children. She lived in Ledgeview, near Green Bay, with her boyfriend, Douglass Detrie, and their six-month-old son. Her two older children were from an earlier relationship.
Nicole and Detrie had met in January 2015. Their relationship progressed quickly, and they soon learned that they were expecting a child together.
The arrival of the baby placed new responsibilities on Detrie. He was not only becoming the father of an infant but was also living in a household with Nicole’s older children.
According to testimony and evidence later discussed during the investigation, the couple’s relationship was troubled. They argued over jealousy, trust and Detrie’s communications with other women.
Those problems would become extremely important after Nicole disappeared. Because intimate partners are frequently examined first in homicide investigations, the unresolved conflict between Nicole and Detrie immediately gave detectives a possible motive.
George Burch Arrives in Wisconsin
While Nicole and Detrie were struggling with their relationship, George Steven Burch was rebuilding his life hundreds of miles away from Virginia.
Burch moved to Green Bay on March 1, 2016, less than three months before Nicole’s murder. A longtime friend allowed him to stay at a residence in the area, helped him find employment and permitted him to use a red Chevrolet Blazer.
Burch found work as a cook and presented himself as a man looking for a fresh start. However, he had unresolved legal problems in Virginia.
He was on probation for grand larceny and faced a pending heroin-possession case. He had also left Virginia despite legal restrictions that could have exposed him to additional imprisonment if authorities discovered where he was.
Burch had previously been accused of murder. In 1997, Joey White was shot and killed in Newport News, Virginia. Burch was charged but was acquitted by a jury in 1998.
That acquittal meant he could not legally be treated as guilty of White’s death. The Wisconsin jury would not be told about the earlier case when Burch later stood trial for Nicole’s murder.
By May 2016, Nicole, Detrie and Burch were living in the same general region without any publicly known connection between them.
Their lives would intersect during a night out in Green Bay.
The Steel Panther Concert
On Friday, May 20, 2016, Nicole and Detrie arranged for their children to be cared for while they went out with friends.
They attended a Steel Panther concert at the Watering Hole in Green Bay. Approximately a dozen people from Detrie’s social circle were reportedly part of the larger group.
Nicole did not know all of Detrie’s friends well, but she was described as outgoing and capable of socializing easily with new people.
Guests at the concert wore paper admission wristbands. Nicole still had a pink wristband around one wrist when her body was found the following day.
The concert ended late that evening. Instead of remaining together, Nicole and Detrie became separated as members of the group moved between different downtown establishments.
Detrie remained with friends he knew, while Nicole went with other members of the group to the Sardine Can, a bar in downtown Green Bay.
The plan was apparently for Detrie to meet Nicole there later.
The Argument Through Text Messages
After arriving at the Sardine Can without Detrie, Nicole became increasingly upset.
She sent him messages accusing him of spending time with another woman. Their unresolved trust problems quickly developed into another argument.
Detrie initially responded but eventually stopped engaging with the messages. Nicole continued calling and texting him.
According to the documentary’s reconstruction, Nicole became especially angry when Detrie answered a call from one of her friends after ignoring her attempts to contact him.
Witnesses later described Nicole as heavily intoxicated and emotionally distressed.
One friend tried to persuade her to accept a ride home, reminding her that her infant son was waiting there. The interaction became confrontational, and the friend eventually left with the others.
Nicole remained in the downtown area without Detrie.
The exact details of every argument and confrontation differ slightly across retellings of the case. What is established by court records is that Nicole and Detrie became separated, argued through calls and messages, and did not return home together.
Nicole’s Last Known Movements
Detrie reached the Sardine Can after Nicole had already left.
He called her telephone. According to his later account, the call connected, but Nicole’s speech was extremely difficult to understand. She sounded heavily impaired.
Detrie asked her to return to the bar, but the connection ended.
Nicole’s telephone stopped producing normal communication or location activity shortly afterward. Trial reporting placed the loss of useful telephone activity at approximately 12:30 a.m.
For some time after leaving the Sardine Can, Nicole’s movements were unclear.
George Burch later admitted that he encountered Nicole at another bar called Richard Craniums. He testified that the two flirted and eventually left together after closing time.
The prosecution accepted that Burch and Nicole came into contact that night but rejected his description of their encounter as voluntary and consensual.
Detrie Returns Home
Detrie eventually left downtown and returned to the Ledgeview house alone.
He arrived home during the early morning hours. Nicole was not there.
Believing she was still angry and might be staying with a friend, Detrie locked the house and went to bed.
Their six-month-old son was at the house with a caregiver. Detrie woke the following morning when the baby cried.
Nicole had still not returned.
Detrie began calling friends, acquaintances and hospitals. No one reported seeing her after she left the downtown bar area, and no unidentified injured woman matching her description had been admitted to a hospital.
He did not immediately contact police.
Detrie later explained that Nicole had left or stayed away after arguments in the past. He initially believed she was deliberately avoiding him, possibly to make him worry.
As the day continued and no one heard from her, the explanation became increasingly difficult to accept.
Detrie formally reported Nicole missing during the late afternoon of May 21.
The delay would later become one of the first reasons investigators viewed him with suspicion.
Nicole’s Body Is Found
Nicole had already been found by the time Detrie contacted authorities, although police had not yet confirmed her identity.
On May 21, a farmer working near Hoffman Road in Bellevue was clearing stones with his grandson and another boy when they noticed something in a field.
At first, they thought they had found a dead animal. When they moved closer, they realized it was the body of a woman.
Nicole was unclothed except for her socks and the paper wristband from the previous night’s concert.
She had no identification with her. Her telephone, purse, clothing and other personal belongings were missing.
Her injuries were so extensive that relatives could not identify her visually. Investigators eventually used dental records to establish that she was Nicole VanderHeyden.
The field was roughly three miles from her Ledgeview home.
Investigators quickly determined that she had not been killed where her body was found. She had been attacked elsewhere, transported to the field and abandoned in the grass.
Evidence Near Nicole’s Home
As investigators examined the area around Nicole and Detrie’s house, neighbors reported disturbing evidence.
Blood and clumps of blonde hair were found outside a neighboring property approximately 118 feet from the couple’s front door.
Investigators also recovered pieces of a black electrical or charging cable. The cable was stained with blood and was later identified as an object consistent with the ligature used to strangle Nicole.
The presence of Nicole’s blood, hair and the cable established that the primary assault had occurred near the residential street rather than in the field where her body was found.
Evidence suggested that someone had attempted to wash or clean part of the area.
Nicole’s clothing, telephone and other belongings were later found discarded near a freeway entrance ramp.
The evidence created a geographical sequence: the assault near the residence, the transportation of Nicole to the field and the disposal of her belongings along the roadway.
At first, investigators believed Detrie might have been responsible for every part of that sequence.
Police Secretly Observe Detrie
When an officer arrived at the Ledgeview residence to question Detrie about Nicole’s missing-person report, the interaction was recorded on the officer’s body camera.
By then, investigators knew that the unidentified woman found in the field closely matched Nicole’s physical description.
The officer watched Detrie carefully for scratches, bruises or other signs that he had been involved in a violent struggle.
Nicole had fought intensely. Detectives believed her attacker might have visible injuries.
They also considered Detrie’s behavior, his delayed report, his recent argument with Nicole and the fact that the attack had occurred extremely close to their home.
A search of the house, garage, vehicles and personal belongings produced what initially appeared to be overwhelming physical evidence.
The Evidence Against Douglass Detrie
Investigators found a substance resembling blood on the garage floor.
They found apparent blood and dirt inside Nicole’s vehicle.
They also located stains on clothing, household materials and footwear.
A patterned impression had been left on Nicole’s body, apparently when the attacker forcefully stepped on or pressed a shoe against her.
Investigators found footwear belonging to Detrie with a tread pattern that appeared similar to that impression.
The combination seemed devastating.
Detrie had argued with Nicole. He returned to the house during the period in which she was believed to have died. Her blood and hair were outside a nearby home. Possible blood was inside the garage and vehicle. A shoe in the house appeared consistent with a pattern on her body.
Detrie declined to voluntarily provide certain samples and did not sign unrestricted consent forms for every search police wanted to perform.
Although people have a legal right to refuse voluntary searches or request an attorney, detectives interpreted his resistance within the context of the other evidence.
Two days after Nicole’s body was discovered, Detrie was arrested.
He was held on a $1 million bond even though prosecutors had not yet formally charged him with murder.
Investigators initially believed they had identified Nicole’s killer.
The Case Against Detrie Collapses
Detrie remained in jail for 18 days while the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory examined the evidence.
The results systematically dismantled the theory against him.
The apparent blood inside the vehicle did not belong to Nicole. Reporting connected it to one of her children.
The substance in the garage was not human blood. It was associated with a turkey from a hunting trip.
Other blood traces inside the house were connected to an ordinary nosebleed suffered by Nicole’s sister.
The suspicious material on Detrie’s footwear was not Nicole’s blood. Some of it was not blood at all.
Although the shoe tread appeared similar to the impression found on Nicole, investigators could not scientifically establish that Detrie’s shoe had made the mark.
Unknown male DNA recovered from Nicole and the cable excluded Detrie.
An insurance tracking device installed in Nicole’s vehicle also established that the car had not been driven during the night. This contradicted any theory that Detrie used her vehicle to transport her body.
The evidence that had once appeared to form a complete case had innocent explanations.
On June 10, 2016, prosecutors announced that they did not have sufficient evidence to charge Detrie. He was released from custody after approximately 18 days.
Detrie returned home to care for his infant son while Nicole’s older children stayed with their biological father.
He had lost his partner and spent nearly three weeks jailed under suspicion of killing her.
The investigation had to begin again.
The Fitbit Evidence
Detrie had been wearing a Fitbit Flex during the relevant period.
The device counted his steps and synchronized the data with an associated account.
The records showed only 12 steps during the hours investigators associated with Nicole’s death. That small amount of movement was consistent with Detrie remaining inside the house rather than walking outside, confronting Burch, moving Nicole’s body and returning home.
Contrary to the documentary transcript, the jury was not permitted to consider Fitbit sleep-monitoring information. The trial judge specifically excluded the sleep data while allowing the step-count records.
The step count was not the only evidence clearing Detrie. It worked alongside the DNA exclusion, the vehicle-tracking information, phone records and the laboratory results from the supposed blood evidence.
The Fitbit became famous because it provided an independent digital record that supported his account.
It did not single-handedly solve the case, but it became an important piece of evidence when Burch later tried to accuse Detrie of the murder.
The Investigation Stalls
After Detrie was released, detectives had no identified suspect.
They reviewed surveillance video, re-interviewed witnesses and retraced Nicole’s movements after she left the Sardine Can.
Forensic analysts continued examining more than 70 pieces of evidence.
An unknown male DNA profile had been recovered from one of Nicole’s socks. Similar male DNA was also associated with other areas of her body and the cable believed to have been used during the attack.
Initially, searches of available databases did not produce a name.
Weeks passed.
The investigation continued through June, July and August 2016 without a publicly identified killer.
Then the DNA profile produced a match.
The name attached to it was George Steven Burch.
The Unrelated Vehicle Investigation
The reason Burch’s information became accessible to investigators involved an apparently unrelated vehicle case.
The red Chevrolet Blazer Burch had been permitted to use became connected to three suspicious events: a report that it had been stolen, a hit-and-run collision and a later vehicle fire.
Burch denied causing the collision. While speaking with Green Bay police on June 8, 2016, he claimed he had been at a bar and had been exchanging messages with a woman.
To support his account, Burch agreed to let an officer examine the text messages on his Samsung phone.
The officer explained that it would be easier to download the information than photograph individual messages. Burch signed a form authorizing the officer and assisting personnel to search the device.
A forensic examiner performed a physical extraction of the phone’s contents and stored the data in a police database.
When Nicole’s DNA evidence later matched Burch, Brown County investigators searched law-enforcement records for prior contacts with him.
They found the vehicle investigation and the preserved phone extraction.
The unrelated hit-and-run inquiry had unintentionally provided detectives with access to a detailed digital history connected to the man whose DNA was found on Nicole.
Burch’s Obsession With the Case
Investigators examining the extracted phone data discovered that Burch had repeatedly viewed news stories about Nicole’s death.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court later noted that his browser history contained 64 viewings of reports concerning the case.
Burch had never contacted authorities to say he knew Nicole, had encountered her that night or had information about the disposal of her body.
He publicly behaved as though he had no connection to her.
The repeated searches suggested that he was closely monitoring the investigation.
Detectives also identified an email address connected to a Google account.
They obtained a search warrant for the account’s Google Dashboard information.
That data provided a location history created through a combination of device, GPS, wireless-network and cellular information. It was more complex than the documentary’s description of a telephone being continuously followed by “location-tracking satellites.”
The Google Location Trail
The Google records placed Burch’s telephone at a bar Nicole visited on the night she disappeared.
The device then traveled to the area near Nicole and Detrie’s home.
Later, it appeared near the field where Nicole’s body was found.
It also traveled past the freeway entrance ramp where her bloodstained clothing and other belongings were recovered.
The route was remarkably consistent with the physical evidence.
Nicole left the downtown area.
The assault occurred near her home.
Her body was transported to the field.
Her clothing and belongings were thrown near the highway.
Burch’s Google account placed his phone near each of those critical locations in the same sequence.
The location information did not operate alone. His DNA was already connected to Nicole and the cable.
Together, the DNA and digital route transformed Burch from an unknown stranger into the central suspect.
Burch Is Arrested
Authorities placed Burch under surveillance and continued examining his background.
He was arrested in September 2016 and held on a $2 million bond.
Burch initially denied knowing Nicole or having any involvement in the crime.
Because he had willingly allowed police to download his phone during the unrelated vehicle investigation, he apparently believed he had removed anything obviously incriminating.
Deleting calls, messages or browsing history from the visible interface of a telephone does not necessarily erase forensic copies, account records or remotely stored location histories.
The information connected to his Google account remained available.
When detectives confronted him with the evidence, his account changed.
He eventually admitted that he had been with Nicole during the night she died.
He did not, however, admit killing her.
Instead, he accused Douglass Detrie.
The Prosecution’s Reconstruction
Prosecutors argued that Burch encountered Nicole while she was alone and intoxicated after the argument with Detrie.
He took her in the Blazer to the residential area near her Ledgeview home.
Burch claimed they engaged in consensual sexual activity. The prosecution argued that Nicole resisted him and that the encounter became a violent assault.
A jury convicted Burch of intentional homicide, but he was not separately convicted of sexual assault. Therefore, the prosecution’s sexual-assault theory should be identified as its interpretation of the evidence rather than a separate proven conviction.
Nicole was attacked near the sidewalk outside a neighboring residence.
She was struck repeatedly with extreme force.
Her blood and hair were left near the property. The cable used around her neck was abandoned nearby.
Burch removed much of her clothing, placed her body inside the borrowed Blazer and transported her approximately three miles to the field near Hoffman Road.
He left her in the grass wearing only her socks and the concert wristband.
On the drive away, he discarded her clothing, purse, telephone and other belongings near the highway.
He then cleaned the vehicle and continued with his normal activities.
The following day, while police and Nicole’s family were trying to understand what had happened, Burch went fishing with friends.
The Autopsy Findings
The autopsy documented 241 internal and external injuries on Nicole’s body.
Dane County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Agnieszka Rogalska determined that Nicole suffered fatal blunt-force injuries to her head and fatal ligature strangulation.
The medical examiner could not determine which fatal mechanism occurred first. Evidence showed that Nicole was alive when both types of injuries were inflicted.
Her jaw was badly fractured, and the injuries to her face were so severe that visual identification was impossible.
Defensive injuries on her hands, arms and feet showed that she fought against her attacker.
The cable had been tightened around her neck while she was alive.
A patterned injury on her body was consistent with force from the sole of a shoe.
Nicole’s body also contained male DNA associated with Burch. His DNA profile was found on her sock and was consistent with male DNA recovered from additional evidence, including the cord.
The violence demonstrated that Nicole had not simply been rendered unconscious and transported by an uninvolved witness.
She had endured a prolonged and extraordinarily brutal attack.
Burch’s New Version of Events
After the digital evidence made it impossible for Burch to maintain that he had never met Nicole, he developed a new explanation.
He admitted meeting her at Richard Craniums.
He said they flirted, left together and drove near her house.
According to Burch, they began having consensual sex near or inside the Blazer.
Burch testified that he was suddenly struck and lost consciousness.
When he woke, he claimed, Detrie was standing nearby with a gun and Nicole was lying on the ground covered in blood.
Burch said Detrie forced him at gunpoint to place Nicole in the vehicle, drive to the field and carry her body away from the road.
He claimed he eventually pushed Detrie, escaped in the Blazer and drove home.
Burch acknowledged throwing Nicole’s clothing from the vehicle but said he did it in panic after discovering the items were still inside.
He explained his silence by saying he feared retaliation and did not want authorities to discover that he had violated probation by leaving Virginia.
For months, however, he had watched news reports, allowed Detrie to remain publicly suspected and never told police that he had supposedly witnessed Detrie commit murder.
Why Burch’s Story Was Difficult to Believe
Burch’s DNA did not appear in only an incidental location.
It was associated with Nicole and with evidence connected to the attack.
His Google location history followed the route from the bar to Nicole’s neighborhood, from the neighborhood to the field and from the field to the location where her belongings were discarded.
He admitted transporting Nicole’s body and disposing of her clothing.
He went fishing the next day and remained silent while investigators arrested Detrie.
He viewed news reports about Nicole’s death dozens of times.
His version also required jurors to believe that Detrie had somehow left the house, confronted a much larger man, killed Nicole, held Burch at gunpoint, traveled to the field and returned home without creating the physical and digital activity expected from such actions.
Detrie’s Fitbit recorded only 12 steps during the relevant period.
Telephone data, vehicle records and forensic exclusions also supported Detrie’s account.
The defense attempted to portray those technological records as incomplete or unreliable, but the prosecution argued that Burch’s story could not be reconciled with the combined evidence.
The Trial
George Burch’s trial began in Brown County in February 2018.
The prosecution presented testimony concerning Nicole’s final night, the discovery of her body, the original investigation of Detrie, forensic testing, DNA, the Google records and the Fitbit step count.
The defense openly accused Detrie of committing the murder.
Burch took the stand and repeated his claim that Detrie killed Nicole and forced him to dispose of her body.
The prosecution challenged him on why he never called police, why he monitored news coverage, why his DNA was connected to the evidence and why his location trail followed every significant site.
Prosecutors argued that his account was constructed after he studied publicly available information about Nicole’s relationship problems and Detrie’s original arrest.
The defense maintained that convicting Burch would amount to a wrongful conviction and argued that Detrie possessed jealousy, motive and proximity.
After approximately nine days of testimony, the case went to the jury.
The Fitbit Dispute at Trial
Before trial, Burch’s attorneys attempted to exclude Detrie’s Fitbit evidence.
They argued that prosecutors should have been required to present an expert who could explain the reliability of the device’s technology. They also questioned whether the records had been properly authenticated.
The circuit court allowed the Fitbit step-count records but excluded sleep-monitoring information.
The court concluded that the step records could be authenticated through Fitbit’s business records and understood by jurors without requiring specialized expert testimony.
This distinction is important.
The evidence presented to the jury was that the tracker recorded only 12 steps during the critical period—not that it medically established Detrie was in deep sleep or continuously measured a sleeping heart rate.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court later upheld the trial judge’s decision to admit the step-count evidence.
The Verdict
On March 1, 2018, the jury found George Steven Burch guilty of first-degree intentional homicide.
The jurors deliberated for approximately three hours before reaching a unanimous decision.
The verdict rejected Burch’s claim that Detrie had killed Nicole.
Although Detrie was not formally on trial, the decision publicly cleared him of the narrative Burch had presented.
The evidence established that Burch was not merely an unwilling witness forced to move a body.
The jury found that he intentionally killed Nicole.
Sentencing
On May 4, 2018, Brown County Circuit Court Judge John Zakowski sentenced Burch to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Judge Zakowski described Nicole’s killing as the most brutal murder committed by one person in Brown County’s history.
He said that if Wisconsin permitted capital punishment, the case would have justified it. Because Wisconsin does not have the death penalty, the judge ordered Burch to die in prison.
The court also ordered that Burch should not profit from books, films, television programs or other commercial works connected to the murder. Money derived from such projects was directed toward Nicole’s and Detrie’s families.
Burch continued to insist that he was innocent.
The Appeal Over the Cellphone Search
Burch appealed his conviction, focusing primarily on the cellphone and Fitbit evidence.
He argued that Green Bay police had exceeded his consent when they downloaded all the data from his telephone during the unrelated vehicle investigation.
He also argued that police should not have retained the data or shared it with Brown County investigators without obtaining another warrant.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court acknowledged the constitutional questions created by the phone extraction.
However, the court concluded that even if a constitutional defect had occurred, suppression was not justified because the homicide investigators had not engaged in deliberate or sufficiently culpable misconduct.
The detectives had found a signed consent form and an existing police record. They reasonably believed the stored information had been lawfully obtained and could be reviewed during the murder investigation.
The court therefore allowed the cellphone and Google evidence to remain part of the case.
The Appeal Over the Fitbit
Burch also challenged the admission of Detrie’s Fitbit step records.
He argued that the evidence should not have been admitted without expert testimony explaining the internal operation and accuracy of the device.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court disagreed.
It ruled that the trial court had properly exercised its discretion. The records had been sufficiently authenticated, and jurors did not need an expert to understand the basic concept of a step-counting device.
On June 29, 2021, the Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed Burch’s conviction.
Burch later petitioned the United States Supreme Court, but the petition was denied. His conviction and sentence remained in effect.
What the Technology Actually Proved
The case is often simplified into the claim that a Fitbit solved a murder.
The reality was more complicated.
Detrie’s Fitbit helped demonstrate that his movement during the critical period was minimal. It supported his statement that he remained inside the house.
An insurance device showed that Nicole’s vehicle had not moved.
Cellphone records supported parts of Detrie’s timeline.
DNA excluded Detrie and identified Burch.
The extraction from Burch’s phone revealed his repeated interest in news about Nicole’s death and identified his Google account.
Google location history placed his device near the bar, Nicole’s residence, the body-disposal site and the location of her abandoned clothing.
None of those records alone contained a complete account of the murder.
Together, they exposed contradictions, tested competing stories and connected the physical evidence to Burch.
Technology did not replace traditional forensic work. It strengthened the blood, hair, DNA, witness and crime-scene evidence.
The Failure of the First Theory
The investigation also demonstrated how quickly circumstantial evidence can create a persuasive but incorrect theory.
Detrie had a possible motive because of the argument.
He delayed reporting Nicole missing.
The attack occurred close to his home.
Apparent blood was found in his garage and vehicle.
He owned footwear similar to the patterned injury on Nicole.
He initially resisted some voluntary police requests.
Viewed together, those details appeared damning.
Laboratory testing revealed that the evidence did not mean what investigators first believed.
The supposed blood came from ordinary family events and hunting activity.
The car did not move.
The unknown male DNA was not Detrie’s.
The Fitbit and other digital records supported his movements.
Detrie’s case is an important reminder that suspicion is not proof and that forensic testing must be completed before an apparently convincing narrative is treated as established fact.
Nicole’s Legacy
Nicole was not only the victim at the center of a technologically unusual murder investigation.
She was a mother of three, a daughter, a sister and an educator.
She had earned a degree in science and education and spent years working with children in Green Bay-area schools.
Her obituary emphasized her devotion to her children and the sacrifices she made to care for them.
Her murder left an infant without his mother and forced her older children and relatives to rebuild their lives around an act of extreme violence.
The case became widely known because of the Fitbit and Google evidence, but the technology mattered because it helped establish accountability for what happened to Nicole.
Current Legal Status
George Steven Burch remains convicted of first-degree intentional homicide.
He is serving a sentence of life imprisonment without eligibility for parole.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed the conviction in 2021, rejecting his challenges to the use of cellphone and Fitbit evidence. His later attempt to obtain review from the United States Supreme Court was unsuccessful.
No court has accepted his allegation that Douglass Detrie killed Nicole.
Detrie was never charged with her murder.
Conclusion
Nicole VanderHeyden disappeared after becoming separated from her boyfriend during a night out in Green Bay.
Her body was found the following day in a field three miles from her home. She had been beaten hundreds of times, strangled with a cable, stripped of most of her clothing and abandoned in the grass.
The first investigation focused on Douglass Detrie.
His argument with Nicole, delayed missing-person report and the apparently incriminating evidence near their home made him seem like an almost perfect suspect.
Forensic testing proved that the theory was wrong.
The blood did not belong to Nicole. The car had not moved. The unknown DNA excluded Detrie. His Fitbit recorded only minimal movement.
Months later, DNA from Nicole’s sock identified George Burch.
Burch’s own phone then revealed that he had repeatedly followed news about the murder. His Google location records traced a route connecting him to the bar, Nicole’s neighborhood, the field where her body was left and the highway ramp where her belongings were discarded.
When Burch could no longer deny being with Nicole, he changed his story and accused Detrie.
The Fitbit step count, location records, DNA and physical evidence contradicted that accusation.
A jury found Burch guilty, and the judge sentenced him to spend the rest of his life in prison.
The case did not prove that electronic devices are infallible.
It demonstrated how independently collected information can test a human story.
Detrie’s tracker supported an innocent man’s account. Burch’s phone exposed the movements he had tried to hide.
In the end, the physical evidence and digital records converged on the same conclusion: George Steven Burch killed Nicole VanderHeyden and attempted to conceal his responsibility, but the data left behind by everyday technology preserved a timeline his changing explanations could not erase.