Episode 293

Sword and Scale

Incongruity

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary, History

4 • 61.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1990, 11-year-old Robin Cornell and 32-year-old Lisa Story were brutally assaulted and murdered in their Cape Coral home. For over two decades, the case remained unsolved, leaving their families and community desperate for closure. Then, a single piece of evidence—a DNA match—finally brought an answer. But with that answer came an even deeper question: Are we all born free of evil, is it something that can grow within us over time?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.
0:06.3	Listener discretion is advised.
0:12.0	The last 30 years I'm violent. I'm unviolent, you know.
0:20.4	This is Season 12, episode 283 of a little show we like to do here called Sword and Scale,
0:28.8	a show that reveals that the worst monsters are real.
0:37.1	Music I'm very jet lagged after my recent trip to Belarus, so you might hear me pause in all the wrong places.
0:59.1	Flew in via Lithuania for a quick vacay.
1:02.8	That's near Latvia, by the way, if you're a big geography buff.
1:06.0	Anyway, we better get started on the story.
1:46.3	Yeah. assert on the story. The House on Byron Avenue was typical of the quiet North Fort Myers neighborhood in Florida,
1:54.2	a simple weather-worn home of only about 500 square feet. This quiet residential home is where Bonnie Nicely had been living with her boyfriend, Joseph Ziler, since 1990. Their 25-year-old son had also lived on the property. On the night of
2:05.0	August 26, 2016, the household erupted into an argument. Bonnie was used to the strained
2:13.2	relationship between Joseph and their son. Arguments between them had escalated recently, and she could hear them shouting at each other in
2:21.7	the hallway.
2:23.2	They had all three been drinking.
2:26.2	But Bonnie was plenty sober enough to know where this yelling was headed.
2:31.2	It was getting out of control.
2:33.4	Bonnie nicely gave her account of the night's events in her
2:37.1	recorded statement, which was taken at 33 a.m. on August 27, 2016. She said her 25-year-old son and his
2:46.3	girlfriend spent time drinking at a local pool hall, and after they got home, Joseph and their son began arguing.
2:54.5	According to Bonnie, the two men, both drunk, started swinging and grabbing at each other.
3:01.4	Bonnie's account was that Joseph followed their son to the bedroom,
	...

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