I'm Emily Rowney, and I'm Alicia Holland.

This is Bill Camp, the voice of forensic files too on HLN, and you're listening to murder

in the rain.

When a young trans woman went missing in Vancouver, Washington, her mother and friends knew something

terrible had happened.

Naturally, investigators narrowed in on a suspect, but he claimed to have simply left Nikki

Kuhnhausen standing at the side of the road.

That was until he was taken to court and his story changed, from one of dismissal to

self-defense and trans panic.

Today I'll be telling the story of the inspiration for the newly signed Nikki's law, Nikki Kuhnhausen.

Part of the work we do on social media is to follow Pacific Northwest pages for missing

people, unsolved murders, and cases that the loved ones of the victim are desperate

to get media attention on.

And so often we see case after case involving teens, especially in the LGBTQIA-plus community,

dismissed as runaways.

Suddenly the people that are outraged when a 17-year-old is a victim of a pedophile

or murderer, see them as adults that have made a decision to run away, even when the

family swears that isn't the case.

Sadly, that was the scenario for the family of 17-year-old Nikki Kuhnhausen of Vancouver

Washington.

Lisa Woods, her mother, knew something was wrong when she didn't hear from her daughter

on the morning of June 6, 2019.

...