Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek

Lavasar. All right. Today we're diving into the second and final part of the Chad Ensel case. And as always, I'm going to

give you a quick recap about what we've already talked about because it's been a week. So on January 2nd,

2020, Nikki Ensel called 911 to report a fire at the Bismarck home she shared with her husband,

Chad. When firefighters went inside, they found Chad dead on the bedroom floor with two gunshot wounds.

Detectives quickly determined he had been murdered and that two separate fires had intentionally been set in an attempt to cover up the crime.

So as detectives began piecing together what had happened using security system data, phone records, surveillance

footage, and more. The focus turned to Nikki Ansel. They learned she was having an affair

with a Canadian man named Earl Howard. On December 27th, 2019, Nikki and Earl met up in person,

and by December 29th, they were staying together at a hotel in Bismarck.

So Chad, who was completely unaware of this relationship, continued following his routines,

still trusting his wife that she was on a business trip, and still believing his marriage was

intact.

On December 30th, Chad left his regular Monday night bowling league, and surveillance footage showed that while

he was gone, Nikki and her boyfriend Earl went to the Encel home and began removing belongings

before returning to the hotel where they were staying. Around two hours later, Chad came home from

bowling and he went to bed, having no idea what Nikki had been doing. After midnight on what was now

Tuesday, December 31st,

Nikki's login was used to access the Encel security system.

Privacy mode was enabled, camera settings were changed,

and video recording was shut off.

Though, unknown to Nikki, motion sensors continued logging activity.

...