TRUE CRIME The unbelievable case of Teri Jendusa-Nicolai
REDRUM true crime
redrumpodcast
4.6 • 532 Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2026
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In January 2004, what should have been a routine child handover turned into a calculated, near-fatal act of violence that would shock the United States and expose the terrifying realities of domestic abuse...
Teri Jendusa-Nicolai, a mother of 2 from Wisconsin, had already endured years of control and violence at the hands of her ex-husband, David Larsen. But nothing could have prepared her for what was waiting that day. As she stepped inside his home to collect their children, she was ambushed... beaten repeatedly with a baseball bat in a sustained, brutal attack that left her barely conscious.
What followed was not just violence, but methodical cruelty.
David bound Teri with duct tape, forced her into a plastic bin, packed it with snow, and sealed her inside. Then, as temperatures plummeted well below freezing, he loaded the container into his truck and began driving across state lines. Trapped in darkness, gravely injured, and slowly freezing, Teri somehow managed to access her phone and make a desperate 911 call... but when the 911 operator didn't take the call seriously, it was only a matter of time, before things got even worse.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Her ex-husband beat her with a baseball bet, bound her, gagged her, stuffed her in a garbage bin, |
| 0:04.6 | locked her in a storage unit, and left her for dead. A 911 operator receives a call from someone |
| 0:10.5 | saying, quote, my ex-husband is trying to kill me, but the operator isn't taking it seriously, |
| 0:18.4 | asking, quote, does he have you handcuffed or what? |
| 0:22.8 | When the caller replies that he's tied her, the operator asks how she's calling if her hands are tied |
| 0:28.7 | up. The operator seems to think it's a prank call, but it's not. It's a life or death situation. |
| 0:36.0 | This is Red Rump, stories about the true victims of crime. |
| 0:39.3 | I upload episodes on Mondays and Thursdays. |
| 0:42.3 | Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. |
| 0:48.3 | The person who has kidnapped her is called David Larson, |
| 0:52.3 | and the address is 26841 Oak Ridge Drive. |
| 0:58.0 | This essential information may save her life but the caller is worried. |
| 1:02.7 | She just doesn't know if the 911 operator has taken the call seriously if she's actually |
| 1:08.7 | sending someone. |
| 1:10.0 | So she calls another number, the number of a man called |
| 1:14.2 | Nick Nik Nikolai. Nick answers the phone and I don't know if he has caller ID because we're back in |
| 1:20.3 | 2004 but he certainly wouldn't have been surprised to hear the voice on the other end. It's his |
| 1:26.5 | wife, Terry. But when she tells him what's |
| 1:29.1 | going on that David, her ex-husband has abducted her, that he's trying to kill her and that |
| 1:35.1 | she's in the back of his green pickup truck right now, Nick can't quite believe what he's hearing. |
| 1:41.4 | He tells her, he loves her, and he's going to call the police straight away. He doesn't want to stay on the phone too long because essentially he's hearing. He tells her he loves her and he's going to call the police straight |
| 1:44.5 | away. He doesn't want to stay on the phone too long because essentially he's worried. He |
... |
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