Son Charged After Roasting Mom's Corpse in Fire Pit| Crime Alert 6AM 10.23.2025
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace
iHeartPodcasts and CrimeOnline
4.2 • 8.1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 October 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
A son is behind bars, after he allegedly bludgeoned his mom over bills, then tried to burn her body in a fire pit; that's where cops found her charred spinal cord. A dad drives into a flood zone, despite warning, killing his toddler. Now, he's facing felony charges. Plus, a cheerleader fatally shot at a bonfire - will live on...in others, thanks to her monumental gifts. Jennifer Gould reports.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Crime Alert. I'm Nancy Grace. Breaking Crime News now. When Nicholas Yates's mom went missing, |
| 0:06.9 | he described her as the sweetest person ever. Now, Indiana police charge him with her murder. |
| 0:13.6 | Human remains found in the burn pit in the backyard. Wow, that's original. The county coroner's office |
| 0:20.6 | working to identify the remains, but police believe they do belong in the backyard. Wow, that's original. The county coroner's office working to identify the remains, |
| 0:22.7 | but police believe they do belong to Cheryl Yates, reported missing by her 20-year-old son. |
| 0:31.4 | Jennifer Gould has the details. Nancy, Nicholas Thomas Yates, is now charged with murder after police say he brutally killed his own mother, Cheryl Yates, then spent an entire day slow roasting her body to ash to cover the unthinkable crime in Clinton, Indiana. |
| 0:52.1 | Yates 20 triggered instant suspicion when he reported his mother missing. |
| 0:56.8 | During the call to cops, the calculating son made a fatal verbal slip telling detectives, quote, |
| 1:04.4 | she was the sweetest person, end quote. |
| 1:07.1 | A chilling use of past tense that immediately flagged him as the prime suspect. |
| 1:14.1 | The lies mounted as he offered bizarre excuses for why her phone and computer had been left behind, |
| 1:20.9 | later confessing he sold both electronics at a local electronic store for quick cash. |
| 1:27.3 | The horrific motive, Cheryl, had told |
| 1:30.5 | coworkers she was furious with her son for wasting money while she paid his bills, and she planned |
| 1:36.6 | to make him move out. This argument over his tenancy and finances unfortunately escalated violently. Yates allegedly confessed he struck his mom in the |
| 1:47.1 | throat, causing her face to turn blue. She reportedly fell backward, hitting her head first on a metal |
| 1:53.4 | bed frame, then a wooden chest, and became unresponsive. In a macabreempt at disposal, Yates admitted to stuffing her body in a |
| 2:03.0 | wooden box, leaving it overnight before spending the entirety of the next day burning her remains |
| 2:09.5 | in that outdoor fire pit. After the murder, he brazenly moved new roommates into the victim's |
| 2:16.4 | bedroom, telling them his mother was, quote, moving out, and he was, quote, afraid to be alone, end quote. |
| 2:22.8 | Police searched the backyard, discovering the bones in the burn pit, including a charred human spinal column, |
| 2:31.3 | confronted with the grotesque evidence, Yates allegedly admitted to the slang. |
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