The Murder of Amanda Ross | Show Notes

2 Episodes | Publish Dates: November 17, 2020 & December 1, 2020

In 2007, Amanda Ross began dating Steve Nunn.  The next year they moved in together and by December 2008, she asked Nunn to move out, due to domestic violence issues.

In 2009, Nunn murdered Amanda outside of her residence, despite a Domestic Violence Order he had been served with, and, the fact that years early when Nunn was a Kentucky law maker, he successfully co-sponsored a bill making a murder while a Domestic Violence Order was in place, a Capital Offense,

Retired Lexington Kentucky police Sergeant Todd Iddings details how the case against Nunn was developed with all the challenges of a high-profile case.  Though this case has been the subject of national broadcasted television shows and news articles, none of those offer the nitty gritty that is, a homicide investigation.

If you believe you have been a victim of domestic or interpersonal violence, help is available for you.  Contact your local police or sheriff’s department, or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE.  You can also access help though a secure web portal located at https://www.thehotline.org/.

In the wake of this senseless and horrific deed, Fayette County Sherriff Kathy Witt worked with Amanda’s family and established Amanda’s Center in Lexington Kentucky, where Amanda lived and was murdered.

As found at Sheriff Whitt’s Domestic Violence Division website:

Amanda’s Center for Local Resources was opened in October 2012. It was named for Amanda C. L. Ross whose life was tragically cut short by an act of domestic violence. Amanda was a tireless crusader for victims’ rights and wanted nothing more than to use her life to help other victims in their time of need. In this spirit, Amanda’s family and friends have partnered with the Office of the Fayette County Sheriff to create a place that will act as both safe place and a guide to those dealing with domestic trauma.

http://www.fayettesheriff.com/?page_id=12

Transcripts

Copyright Protected, please cite source if used.

Part 1 or 2:

David (00:00):

Warning: The podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent acts and injury. Listener discretion is advised.

Wendy (00:08):

Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast.

David (00:15):

Okay, Wendy, do you want to tell the listeners what we have in store for them today?

Wendy (00:48):

Yeah, this is going to be part one of a two-part series of the 2009 murder of Amanda Ross. Retired Lexington police sergeant, Todd Iddings, was the lead investigator, and he will take us through this domestic violence murder.

David (01:04):

You’re right, that’s a domestic violence case. We haven’t done one yet, and I think we will probably wind up doing more because they just tend to happen way too often.

David (01:13):

I personally investigated several of these when I was in a homicide, and on some, I was the lead; on some, I was on the support team part of it with the homicide unit.

David (01:23):

What’s interesting about them is they’re not typically the whodunits that we deal with a lot of the time. It may take some time to identify who the person is, but you’ll hear in this case that it happened very rapidly because of some of the documentation that existed.

David (01:37):

The thing that I wanted have the listeners pay attention to right now is these cases, like all other cases, are pretty graphic in nature. On a domestic violence case, it can be a lot more personal for a listener.

David (01:51):

So if you’ve been a victim, if you recognize you may be a victim now, or you know somebody that’s been a victim, just listen to this cautiously, and be aware of the fact that it could really bring up some emotions for a listener. That said, if you are a victim or know someone that’s a victim, there are resources available.

David (02:10):

And the first thing to do is to call 911 or your local police or sheriff’s department. On a national level, you can contact the national domestic violence hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE.

David (02:24):

That’s S-A-F-E. They also have a fantastic website with resources and to be able to make contact at, and that’s at www.thehotline.org, a very safe website. You can actually scrub your information as you leave that website so nobody knows that you’ve been there.

David (02:43):

Some of the other things that Todd dealt with in this case was not only the fact it was the domestic violence case; it was a high-profile case. This has been covered on national television, and it’s been covered in several national newspapers for some time.

David (02:56):

That’s because the suspect was Steve Nunn. Now, he had political clout because he was the son of a former Kentucky governor named Louis Nunn, who was the 52nd governor of Kentucky in 1967.

David (03:10):

Steve himself had been in other relationships before. He had been married and divorced twice and actually had three children from a first marriage.

David (03:17):

His own political clout came from the fact that he was a state representative for the 23rd district in the Kentucky house from 1990 to 2006 and actually ran for governor in Kentucky in 2003. Pay attention to what this political clout means and the pressures it put on the investigation, and listen closely for an incredible irony that developed out of this. With that, let’s get into the show.

Wendy (03:41):

Hi, Todd. Thanks so much for joining us today. How are you?

Todd Iddings (03:44):

I’m good. Thanks for having me.

Wendy (03:46):

David, how are you?

David (03:48):

Doing real well. I’m just excited about getting this case together and getting it told, because there’s a lot of fantastic details on this thing.

Wendy (03:55):

Well, great. Well, with that being said, let’s dig right into it. Todd, why don’t you start with telling us a little bit about yourself?

Todd Iddings (04:03):

My name’s Todd Iddings. I was a police officer for 25 years.

Todd Iddings (04:06):

I worked in Ohio for five years in a little small town and then did 20 years with the Lexington Police Department. In that 20 years, I spent 14 years of my career assigned to various roles within the Bureau of Investigation.

Todd Iddings (04:19):

I started out in what was called the ROPE unit and then robbery homicide, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, major violator unit. And then I spent the last six-and-a-half years of my career as a supervisor, as a sergeant, over the forensic services unit, which is the crime scene unit.

David (04:38):

Man, that’s a lot of variety.

Wendy (04:39):

It is.

David (04:39):

Step back a minute, and tell me what ROPE stands for, where that was, and what you did.

Todd Iddings (04:44):

Okay. It stands for Repeat Offender Prosecution and Enforcement. And basically, the gist of this position with the police department is it’s somewhat of a liaison role with the Commonwealth attorney’s office.

Todd Iddings (04:56):

One of the things that that position does is it conducts follow up on cases. A police officer that gets a call or makes a felony arrest, they can do everything they can that day, but three weeks from now when something new comes up, or a defense attorney says, “Hey, we’ve got additional witness,” that position is somebody to go out and do that follow up.

Todd Iddings (05:17):

And really, what it was kind of meant to do was shore up cases to make better prosecution, particularly in repeat offenders. In Kentucky, there’s a law called a persistent felony offender, which enhances penalties the more felonies that you commit and are convicted of, so that’s kind of the original reason that position was created.

David (05:42):

So I guess you had a really strong working relationship with a Commonwealth attorney at that time.

Todd Iddings (05:48):

I did, yes.

David (05:48):

Well, the next thing too is that Joint Terrorism Task Force that you mentioned. Tell us what you can about that that you don’t have to kill us when you’re done.

Todd Iddings (05:58):

So in the wake of the terror attack on September 11th, 2001, the 10,000 foot view of terrorism in the United States was that there wasn’t a very good effort between the FBI and… Before that, it wasn’t even Homeland Security.

Todd Iddings (06:20):

Customs and Border Enforcement and the CIA and local law enforcement, they created these Joint Terrorism Task Force all over the nation to have a codified effort in investigating terrorism cases. Actually, in Kentucky, there’s actually three Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Todd Iddings (06:37):

There’s one in northern Kentucky, one in Lexington, and then one in Louisville. It was a neat position, but I spent a couple years there and wanted to go do something else, so I ended up leaving there and coming back to be a regular detective at the police department.

David (06:51):

Gotcha. And then finally, because this is really interesting, we have a lot of people that listen to the show that are big CSI fans and Forensic Files fans. To supervise that unit, what was that like? Because that’s an incredibly busy place with a lot of highly skilled people in it.

Todd Iddings (07:07):

It was a pretty seamless fit for me. Even as a homicide detective, I was always kind of a scene guy.

Todd Iddings (07:13):

I always wanted to be on the scene and be working with the crime scene folks and kind of getting a feel for what they’re seeing as I conduct investigations. As science and technology improve the ability to use fingerprint science, DNA science, digital photography, it enhances the investigative efforts of the police department, enhances the abilities of the prosecutor’s office to make a more effective prosecution.

Todd Iddings (07:45):

My folks were really good at fingerprints. I shouldn’t say was.

Todd Iddings (07:49):

They still are fantastic at fingerprints. They get fingerprints that solve crimes all the time, and it’s nuts. Everything from a car break-in to homicides, they get fingerprints and solve crimes.

David (08:01):

That was my experience before I left is that it seemed like for years, that kind of went into a lull. And I think maybe sometimes, we all got more interested in the high-tech stuff to where we almost forgot about fingerprints.

David (08:11):

But it was amazing what they were doing with that. The technology advances are incredible too, because when you’re old murder police like me from back in the stone age, I remember touch DNA might as well have been George Jetson’s car.

David (08:23):

It was something that they were talking about possibility-wise, and we weren’t even, when I started, in mitochondrial, so it’s fantastic with those advances. Wendy, did you have something you were going to ask him?

Wendy (08:33):

No, I’m just thinking about your stone age, realizing that I’m sitting here with a husband that was archaic back in the day. No, I agree.

Wendy (08:42):

That’s just amazing. And I think a lot of people probably who watch this enjoy… I know I do… Forensic Files. I’m not necessarily a CSI fan, but I do like a lot of the true crime bios and this type thing, so yeah, very impressive, your history there.

Wendy (08:58):

Why don’t you lead us into this case? And just before we dig into it, tell us a summary of who’s the victim, the suspect, a little bit about this generalized case.

Todd Iddings (09:08):

Okay. The victim in this case is a young lady by the name of Amanda Ross. She was 29-years-old at the time of the homicide.

Todd Iddings (09:17):

The homicide occurred on September 11th, 2009 at approximately 6:34 AM. The Lexington Police Department received a shots-fired call at the Opera Square Townhomes, which is on West Short Street in downtown Lexington.

Todd Iddings (09:32):

They arrived two minutes later, and they located Ms. Ross lying in the parking lot in front of her townhome with multiple gunshot wounds. She was transported to the University of Kentucky Medical Center, where she was pronounced deceased.

Todd Iddings (09:49):

The scene is a townhome community one block from Rupp Arena. It’s a gated community.

Todd Iddings (09:57):

You either had to have a key or a code to get through the gates to get into it. Amanda’s residence, her unit was number 35, and as you come in the main gate, it was in the back right corner, and it had kind of had its own little separate parking lot around the side of a building that was surrounded by bushes, trees, vegetation, fences.

Todd Iddings (10:23):

It was somewhat dark that morning. So as officers start talking to the callers and whatnot, they learned that basically, folks heard gunshots, a female voice crying, pleading for help, and then more gunshots.

David (10:40):

Yeah, before we dig down into the weeds with it too, because this is a good time to get to it, what about Amanda? Can you tell us about who she was and the circumstances in her life at that time?

Todd Iddings (10:50):

Sure. So Amanda was currently employed at that time as a director with the Department of Insurance and with the Commonwealth of Kentucky in Frankfurt. She was somewhat of a political animal and heavily involved with the Democratic Party of Kentucky.

Todd Iddings (11:07):

She was the daughter of Terrell and Diana Ross. Her father started a company called Ross, Sinclaire & Associates, which is a public financier company.

Todd Iddings (11:17):

She was also involved with the Humane Society of Fayette County. I believe she was on their board. Her father passed away.

Todd Iddings (11:27):

Her mother was still alive and lived just a couple blocks away from Amanda. But the morning of this crime, her mother was up walking the dog and walked by the townhome, saw the police cars and the crime scene tape and everything, and knew in her heart that something had happened to Amanda.

David (11:45):

Wow, that’s sad. And obviously, that’s where this story’s going to go, for her to have that feeling and what led up to that too, so thanks for sharing that. We always like to get a little information on who the victim is, and probably to mention now too that today’s date that we’re recording this is actually her birthday, if I remember correctly.

Todd Iddings (12:02):

It is, yes. She was born on October 10th, yes.

Wendy (12:06):

Yeah, she would’ve been 41 today.

David (12:08):

Yeah, what a way to commemorate that and keep her in our memories. Well, thanks for that background bio on her, and if you want to, go ahead and just take us on through the case.

Todd Iddings (12:16):

Okay. I was the on-call detective for the homicide unit that morning as well as the next step to catch a homicide, so kind of to explain how that unit works is you have a rotation for catching homicide cases. And I just happened to be next step for the next homicide case as well as being the on-call detective.

Todd Iddings (12:38):

So the on-call detective gets called out for shootings, robberies, not necessarily homicides. I mean, at that time, I believe we were still investigating sex crimes, so we got called out for sex crimes cases as well.

Todd Iddings (12:50):

I responded from home and, upon getting to the scene, kind of did a walkthrough of the scene with the initial patrol officers that got there, and the crime scene unit was already there. Forensic services was already there starting to take photos to document the scene as it was.

Todd Iddings (13:07):

And so things I observed right off the bat were Amanda’s car was still in the parking spot. Her car keys were sitting there.

Todd Iddings (13:16):

Her purse was sitting there. Her purse was partially opened.

Todd Iddings (13:19):

And I could see into the purse where I saw her wallet, a handgun, I believe it was an iPhone, and a Blackberry. So at that time, I kind of ruled out robbery as a motive because all those valuable things had been there.

Todd Iddings (13:35):

Officers did make entry into her townhome. When they were able to identify her, they made entry to do a protective sweep of her townhome, make sure there was nothing in there, and their observations in there, they didn’t see anything out of place, didn’t look like any signs of struggle, no windows broken, no doors broken or anything like that.

Todd Iddings (13:53):

One of the things we do with victims, obviously, we have a record management system with the police department that we run an inquiry to see what kind of contact we’d had with them, as well as run them to check through and get their driver’s license information and whatnot.

Todd Iddings (14:08):

And the thing that popped up is that Amanda was a petitioner and had an active domestic violence order against an individual by the name of Steven Nunn. And what a domestic violence order is is folks that are involved in a domestic relationship who have some violence in that relationship, they can petition the court to get a restraining order.

Todd Iddings (14:29):

And Amanda had done that and had an active restraining order against Steve Nunn. Obviously, our first thoughts were, who is Steve Nunn, and where’s he at?

Todd Iddings (14:42):

We need to talk to him, so we start researching Mr. Nunn. Some things we kind of knew.

Todd Iddings (14:47):

He was a recognizable name in the state of Kentucky. His father used to be governor.

Todd Iddings (14:52):

He was a former state representative, so some things were kind of on our radar with him. While we’re kind of getting this rolling, my sergeant of the homicide unit received a phone call from a local attorney who happened to represent Mr. Nunn in the domestic violence case with Ms. Ross and kind of provided some information that Mr. Nunn’s ex-wife had spoken with him yesterday.

Todd Iddings (15:20):

Some things just didn’t seem right, and so you got kind of an ominous text from him late the evening before. I reached out and made contact with her and got a statement from her.

Todd Iddings (15:32):

Basically, her and Mr. Nunn, even though they were divorced, maintained a very close relationship as friends. The domestic violence incident that led to the domestic violence order had really affected Mr. Nunn, in her opinion.

Todd Iddings (15:49):

And she learned that there was an incident where he went to his daughters and switched cars with one of his daughters the day before; that he’d been to a monument store, a tombstone retail establishment, in Glasgow, Kentucky, and wanted to look at a sketch of his tombstone and was very insistent on doing this and had put his date of death on the tombstone.

Todd Iddings (16:23):

So she was concerned and contacted a couple of his friends who went to him and took him out to dinner and spent a couple hours with him. And at the end of it, they felt that they kind of cheered him up and that everything was fine.

Todd Iddings (16:37):

And here in a little bit, I’ll kind of explain a timeline that kind of led us to why some of these things happened. As I’m speaking to the ex-wife, I’m trying to figure out if I can find this guy.

Todd Iddings (16:49):

She thinks that if he’s anywhere, he’s either going to be at the old family farm or the cemetery where his brother and father and mother are buried. But she wasn’t from that part of the state, so she couldn’t give me a specific of where I needed to send folks to.

Todd Iddings (17:05):

I ended up making contact with Mr. Nunn’s estranged sister, who provided me the name of the farm and the location and the name of the cemetery location. This information was relayed to the state police as well as the information about the daughter’s car that he switched with the day before.

Todd Iddings (17:25):

And we also, at this point, kind of learned that he’s been in contact with his daughters. I learned that from the estranged sister, because the estranged sister had been in contact with Mr. Nunn’s first ex-wife, who is the mother of his daughters.

Todd Iddings (17:42):

So I’m also trying to make contact with the daughters and not being very successful. In 2009, we tried to ping his phone, which basically, we contact the phone company, explain what’s going on, and say, “Can you give us the geographical location of the phone based on tower information?”

Todd Iddings (18:01):

His wireless carrier at the time wasn’t a very big wireless carrier, and the person that knew how to use that technology happened to be on vacation, so we kind of struck out on that aspect. But a short while later, the Kentucky state police go to the Cosby Cemetery in Hart County, Kentucky.

Todd Iddings (18:26):

And this is where former governor Louis Nunn and his wife, Beula Nunn, are buried. And when they get to the cemetery, on the right side of the cemetery is a little church, and they find the daughter’s car behind the church.

Todd Iddings (18:41):

So they start working their way through the cemetery and, when they get to the former governor’s grave site, find a empty pistol holster, a bloody knife, and a fanny pack. So their kind of senses are up, and as they’re kind of working through the cemetery, the back of the cemetery goes down a little hill into a tree line, and they’ve got movement in the tree line.

Todd Iddings (19:04):

So they challenge the movement, and Mr. Nunn steps out of the tree line with a gun in his hand and points the gun to the side and fires a round off. Then he drops the gun, flops to the ground, and acts like he’d shot himself.

Todd Iddings (19:18):

He’s covered in blood because he’s cut his wrists, which is why the bloody knife is up by the grave site. However, the medical records called the wound superficial and indicated that he was on blood thinners.

Todd Iddings (19:32):

Really, the blood was more indicative of that than an actual effort to probably harm himself. At that point in time, he’s taken into custody and transported to the Bowling Green Medical Center for treatment.

Todd Iddings (19:47):

I’m still in Lexington doing interviews by phone, and we’re knocking out search warrants for the car and phone stuff and that kind of stuff when I’m notified by KSP that they found him and have him in custody.

Todd Iddings (20:04):

My intention is to try to get to him and get a statement from him but also get to the crime scene at the cemetery. We end up leaving Lexington and driving to the Cosby Cemetery in Hart County.

Todd Iddings (20:17):

It was about a two hour, two-and-a-half hour drive. And while we were trying to get there, Mr. Nunn’s being treated the Bowling Green Medical Center, and he’s under guard by the Kentucky State Police.

Todd Iddings (20:28):

And there’s a detective sergeant with state police who is with Mr. Nunn watching him, and Mr. Nunn initiates a conversation with the sergeant with the state police.

Todd Iddings (20:40):

And so the sergeant goes ahead and engages him in conversation. And during this conversation, Mr. Nunn keeps discussing the perceived wrongs that he had from Ms. Ross and that he wanted revenge.

Todd Iddings (20:59):

And during the statement, he would get himself all keyed up complaining about her and all this horrible stuff that she’s caused him. And then he would just say, “I wanted to revenge.”

Todd Iddings (21:09):

And so the sergeant would do the thing that most cops would do and go, “Well, is that why you killed her?” And he would immediately change the subject, and they would talk about other things.

Todd Iddings (21:22):

And then he would come back up, get keyed up again. After I think maybe the second or third time, he said something about a lawyer, and initially, they continued to talk.

Todd Iddings (21:31):

And then finally, he actually did lawyer up, and the statement ended at that time. So when I got down to Hart County to the cemetery, they had recovered a five shot Smith & Wesson .38 Special, a little snub-nosed .38, from Mr. Nunn.

Todd Iddings (21:51):

And when I went over to where the car was parked on the other side of cemetery behind the church, a couple things kind of popped out to me as odd right off the bat. In Kentucky, on a regular license plate, the county that you live in or the car’s registered in, the county name is a little sticker on the bottom of the plate.

Todd Iddings (22:10):

Well, for some reason, that sticker on this car was covered up with masking tape. The other thing that was interesting to me is the little dealership decal that was on the back bumper was covered up with black electrical tape.

David (22:24):

Like he’s already using the car that’s not his own, which is kind of strange, and then you think that he’s obscuring parts of those identifiable pieces of the car he’s in?

Todd Iddings (22:32):

Correct. One piece of evidence that we had in Lexington, adjacent to the townhome complex in downtown Lexington was a elementary school called Harrison Elementary School, and the street that runs between the townhome complex and the school is called Bruce Street. We noticed that there were video surveillance cameras on the outside of the elementary school and were able to obtain the surveillance system from the school where, at 6:37 AM, three minutes after a call comes in, a small, dark color passenger car is driving up Bruce Street.

Todd Iddings (23:13):

And this car had a spoiler on it, and the car we found at the Cosby Cemetery has a spoiler on it as well. So at this point in time, we can’t say it’s definitely the car, but it’s certainly another little piece of circumstantial evidence in this case.

Todd Iddings (23:31):

In your previous podcasts, the types of cases you had are what we would call whodunits, and this one we would call a dunker. We were pretty fairly confident that Mr. Nunn had caused Amanda’s death.

Todd Iddings (23:47):

So the other cases that you covered on here, it took investigators months and months and months to figure out who the perpetrators were. This one, right off the bat, we knew.

Todd Iddings (23:59):

However, there still was a ton of work to go into this case. Back to the cemetery, besides the stuff on the back of the car, on the front passenger seat was a manila envelope, a folding legal envelope.

Todd Iddings (24:15):

And on the outside of that envelope was the words “psycho bitch file.” Upon examination of that, there was this seven-page letter that was dated September 9th, 2009, where Mr. Nunn had basically laid out his manifesto and reasons that he needed revenge on Amanda Ross.

Todd Iddings (24:39):

He, in the letter, never actually admits to killing her, but it’s all this history between the two of them. And his view of their history, his attempts to get even with her that failed, it just left him at a point that he needed revenge.

Todd Iddings (24:59):

Also in that folder was a letter that was addressed to Amanda’s mother that was another four pages long, and it actually listed… Probably at some point in time in their relationship, they discussed how many people that they had been with sexually, and so he has listed every person that Amanda has been involved with romantically.

Todd Iddings (25:26):

I don’t know the intent of it. I don’t know why he did it.

Todd Iddings (25:32):

I don’t know why he would send that to her mother, but this was in that folder. So while we were still down in Hart County, the Barren County sheriff reached out to me, and he actually rode in the ambulance with Nunn from the cemetery to the hospital.

Todd Iddings (25:51):

And Nunn kind of makes some statements to him basically saying, “Hey, sorry I put you all through this. I should have been a better shot. I had a cheap gun,” stuff like that that just weren’t real consistent with somebody that hadn’t done something wrong.

Todd Iddings (26:08):

And then the sheriff also tells me that they had recovered a box of Nunn’s personal items from an individual in the town of Glasgow, so we swung by the sheriff’s office to get that and learned that, on the day before, Mr. Nunn had contacted one of his friends and said, “Hey, I need you to hang on to something for safekeeping. I’m probably going to go away for a while.”

Todd Iddings (26:34):

And so this gentleman didn’t really know what was talking about or whatnot. He was actually at the country club and said, “Hey, just drop it off. My car’s sitting outside the club. Just drop it off.”

Todd Iddings (26:46):

So Mr. Nunn puts it in the car, and this box contained a rather large amount of amateur pornography that Mr. Nunn had possessed involving… Pretty much, it seemed anybody that he had a romantic relationship with and got intimate with, he would take compromising photos of. Later, we learned that at the country club late at night when they’ve all had some drinks, he liked cracking it out and showing it off to people in the bar and bragging about his prowess, I guess would be the best way to say it.

Todd Iddings (27:19):

At this time, I know who did it. I just can’t prove it.

David (27:23):

Let me jump into… Because this is something that I think you see different in cases. You’re dealing with a guy that’s a high-profile individual.

David (27:30):

Would you agree? When you get a case, and you see something that’s going to definitely going to get the media’s attention, maybe more than other cases, which can be sad because a lot of cases just don’t get front page because it’s not people that everybody knows, does it feel different approaching it?

David (27:47):

I guess what I’m saying is, do you worry about the fact that you’re going to walk into this thing with a high-profile guy, and now you’ve not only got him suspected probably in a murder but bizarre behavior? And is there a different approach to that case?

David (27:59):

Does it affect you differently? Or tell me a little bit about that.

Todd Iddings (28:01):

Me personally, no. However, from my supervision, from the police department administration, from City Hall, from the Commonwealth attorney’s office, yes.

Todd Iddings (28:13):

They were all spun up, and the reason it didn’t affect me, when you do investigations, you do the same thing every time. You make the same case.

Todd Iddings (28:24):

You’re just as thorough and diligent on every case. To me, this case, I didn’t care that the suspect in it was somebody of prominence or that the victim was somebody of prominence.

Todd Iddings (28:36):

It was another victim to me, and it was just another suspect. So my approach didn’t change.

Todd Iddings (28:43):

I had a lot more scrutiny and oversight than I typically did on it. But ultimately, in the end, it didn’t really affect me much, because I still did my job.

Wendy (28:56):

I think also, looking at some of the notes of this case and listening to what you said about his folder that contained a letter, almost a letter sounding like he was justifying why he was about to do what he was about to do two days after you found it, there had been previous domestic violence episodes between these two.

Todd Iddings (29:19):

Correct.

Wendy (29:19):

Right?

Todd Iddings (29:20):

Correct. And so at this point in time, I don’t have enough to charge Mr. Nunn. So my thought process is, I’ve got to figure out a way to establish probable cause. I have a saying I always use in investigations: what I know and what I can prove.

Todd Iddings (29:34):

At this point in time, I felt pretty confident that he was, in fact, the person who murdered Amanda Ross. However, I don’t think I could prove it at this point in time.

Todd Iddings (29:44):

So the state police end up taking him into custody and placing charges on him for him discharging the firearm in close proximity to them. It’s a charge called wanton endangerment in Kentucky.

Todd Iddings (29:56):

So they end up taking him into custody for that to kind of give me a little bit of time to work. One of the first things that I did was I took the gun, and I get back from Barren County in the Glasgow area at three in the morning.

Todd Iddings (30:12):

And so I have all this evidence from down there that I got to take to the police department and secure, because it’s evidence. It’s got to be secured.

Todd Iddings (30:21):

I can’t just take it home or leave it in my trunk. I take it to the police department and secure it, and then I get up the next morning and start making phone calls and end up getting the firearms examiner for the Kentucky State Police to do me a solid and come in on a Saturday, take a look at this gun, because by this time, Amanda had been to the medical examiner’s office, and an autopsy had been completed on her.

Todd Iddings (30:44):

She was shot once in the torso and twice in the head, and I had projectiles recovered from autopsy that I wanted to compare to the gun that KSP found Mr. Nunn with. I sweet-talked this firearms examiner, who graciously came in on his day off and spent about six hours with me at the lab doing a forensic analysis on the guns to the projectiles.

Todd Iddings (31:07):

In the end, it was an inconclusive decision. Basically, when you’re looking at scientific evidence, such as firearms, it’s basically toolmark evidence, and they’re looking for points of minutia that they can match up from as a characteristic from the inside of the barrel to the projectile that came out of the victim.

Todd Iddings (31:33):

They had some similarities on several, but they just couldn’t get to a point where they felt comfortable saying that it was the firearm. The only thing that was of comfort to me was the projectiles removed from Ms. Ross at autopsy were .38 Special, and Mr. Nunn was in possession of a .38 Special at time of arrest. Now-

David (31:56):

For our forensic people and our CSI people, let’s talk about this, and you’ll understand what I’m about to ask. Did you find shell casings back at the scene of the shooting?

Todd Iddings (32:05):

I did not, and it’s because he had a revolver, right? So the shell casings were still in the revolver.

Todd Iddings (32:11):

I had witness statements from the townhomes that thought they heard four shots, three to four shots, and then when he fired a shot down there, there were five empty shell casings in the revolver. So he basically shot all his rounds out in the course of from killing Amanda to being apprehended by state police.

Todd Iddings (32:32):

So there were no shell casings. Just because the gun was inconclusive doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the gun, and it didn’t really give me probable cause.

Todd Iddings (32:42):

However, it was just another little piece. I mean, this case was all built on circumstances. I never really had any good direct evidence.

Todd Iddings (32:51):

It was a whole lot of putting the little pieces together to make this case. Basically, without the firearm, I just stay working on it.

Todd Iddings (33:03):

I’m interviewing people, making phone calls, and so Monday morning, the first thing we do is have a little sit down team meeting. And Dave, you’ll appreciate this coming from you retiring as a commander.

Todd Iddings (33:15):

So obviously, you have these homicides, and maybe the commander or the assistant chief shows up to one of these meetings. I had pretty much the entire command staff, half the Commonwealth attorney’s office, and the public safety commissioner and mayor in my damn meeting.

David (33:31):

I can tell y’all that usually doesn’t happen. As a matter of fact, as a commander, one of the first things you learn to do is stay out of everybody’s way, because if we enter the room, it’s like EF Hutton.

David (33:44):

Nobody talks, so God bless you. I’m glad you survived that.

Wendy (33:47):

Do you think that was contributed to who he was?

Todd Iddings (33:52):

Oh, absolutely.

Wendy (33:52):

Yeah?

Todd Iddings (33:53):

Absolutely.

Wendy (33:54):

Because that’s not a normal, everyday thing, to have all these people breathing down your back, is it?

Todd Iddings (33:59):

No. I mean, obviously we wanted the prosecutor’s office there so I could walk them through what I had and what they wanted. That didn’t surprise me.

Todd Iddings (34:11):

And even a commander or the assistant chief of investigations wouldn’t have surprised me, but the fact that it was pretty much the entire staff that held the public’s safety commissioner at that time, we never see that guy, and of all people, the mayor is sitting in my meeting.

David (34:29):

Let me, because this is important too, because people listen to these podcasts because they’re interested in how this stuff works, but I’m going to say this. Those huddles in that bay are probably repeated all over the country… I’m sure it happens the same way… and I can remember when I was there are some of the most amazing teamwork meetings I’ve ever seen in my life, where everybody’s got a high degree of humility.

David (34:55):

They pick a case apart. It’s one of the healthiest things I’ve ever seen.

David (34:59):

And I can tell you now, to be a fly on the wall in one of those is actually remarkable to watch, but yeah, I think what people need to understand is that usually in our business, the supervision runs out front and tries to run interference on all those political media things so that the detectives can stay on the case. But yeah, I never had a meeting that had that kind of heaviness in it, so you did pretty good.

Todd Iddings (35:21):

So really, at this time, we have this meeting to kind of run through everything. We talk about the DVO, and one of the things that, at this time, we kind of had to do was Amanda’s current boyfriend, we had to get ahold of him and rule him out as a suspect.

Todd Iddings (35:40):

Sure enough, when we go interview him, he also owns a .38 Special Smith & Wesson snub-nosed revolver. So now, we’ve got a priority of, “Oh, gosh, he’s got the same gun too.”

Todd Iddings (35:52):

Again, the wonderful people at the Kentucky State Police central forensics laboratory firearms examiners bent over backwards to make sure that we could get that gun examined, and they were able to conclusively say that that wasn’t the weapon, which was fantastic. One of the things in our meeting that the Commonwealth attorney said is, “Put him in Fayette County,” because we had all these little pieces.

Todd Iddings (36:16):

We had the video that showed a car very similar to the one that was located at the cemetery, basically his daughter’s car. We had no witnesses at the townhomes.

Todd Iddings (36:25):

Nobody saw anything. They just heard the gunshots, heard Amanda screaming, and then more gunshots, and a lot of it was that they were scared.

Todd Iddings (36:37):

They heard gunshots. They hit the floor.

Todd Iddings (36:39):

They took cover, so they didn’t look out the window, and I don’t blame anybody for that. And that’s somewhat unusual in that area of downtown, to have gunshots at 6:30 in the morning, so obviously, it scared a lot of people.

Todd Iddings (36:55):

We tried via phone records and cell tower information to put him in Fayette County. We were able to determine that he made his last usage of his phone at 11:30 PM on September 10th.

Todd Iddings (37:08):

And he didn’t turn his phone back on until 8:39 AM on the morning of September 11th, so we can’t use cell tower information to put him in Fayette County. So we end up doing a search warrant for his financial records.

Todd Iddings (37:25):

And looking at his bank cards and his credit cards, we discover that at 6:50 AM, he used a credit card to purchase gas at a Chevron station located on Versailles Road, US-60, just outside Fayette County in Woodford County.

Todd Iddings (37:43):

And the reason this is significant is this gas station is at the intersection with the Bluegrass Parkway in central Kentucky. And you take the Bluegrass Parkway to get towards Glasgow, Barren County, Bowling Green.

Todd Iddings (37:57):

Within, really, less than 15 minutes after the homicide, he’s made it to this Chevron station to get gas. And at that point in time, I was like, “I got him in the county.”

Todd Iddings (38:08):

So at that point in time, I felt that I had probable cause. I typed up what I had at that point in time, presented it to a judge, and they issued an arrest warrant for him for murder and violation of a protection order.

Wendy (38:20):

Wow. So yeah, and you’re right. Right at that exit as you approach BG Parkway, that’s certainly ample enough time to get from where that occurred, certainly at 6:50 in the morning, not a lot of traffic.

Wendy (38:35):

But so I’m thinking at that point, he’s probably headed down to the cemetery to make law enforcement at least think he’s going to commit suicide. Do you [crosstalk 00:38:50] his reason for going down there?

Todd Iddings (38:52):

Oh, absolutely. Well, let me qualify that by saying this. I don’t think his intent was to kill himself.

Todd Iddings (39:01):

I think his intent was to get law enforcement to kill him, to commit suicide by cop. His wounds were superficial.

Todd Iddings (39:08):

As I learned through this investigation, he loves himself way too much to kill himself. I think his intention was to step out of that tree line with that gun in the hand and the state police shoot him.

Wendy (39:22):

Well, and certainly, he’s lucky that didn’t happen since he actually discharged it as he stepped out of that tree line.

Todd Iddings (39:30):

Sure, and talking to the troopers that were on scene at that point in time, I mean, it happened, number one, pretty quick; but number two, it really wasn’t even pointed at any of them or Mr. Nunn.

Todd Iddings (39:48):

They said he kind of pointed it out to the side towards the ground and cranked a round off. It is amazing, and then he immediately drops the gun and starts flopping around on the ground, so honestly, I don’t really know if the police had time to shoot him, to be honest with you.

David (40:07):

When you talked about him being in our lawmaking body with Kentucky, was there anything that did he had done in his time in that service that was related to domestic violence or criminal behavior or anything that you’re aware of?

Todd Iddings (40:20):

Dave, I’m glad you asked that question. Here’s the most ironic piece of this whole investigation. When Mr. Nunn was a state representative, he was a co-sponsor on a bill that made the murder of a victim who had a domestic violence order against their perpetrator a capital offense in the state of Kentucky.

David (40:45):

And what’s capital mean in [crosstalk 00:40:47]?

Todd Iddings (40:47):

It’s a death penalty offense, and in Kentucky, there’s a number of qualifiers to meet a capital offense statute to seek the death penalty for a prosecutor. In 1998, he co-sponsored this legislation that made a violation of a domestic violence order resolving in death a capital offense.

Wendy (41:09):

He went right on out and did what he was trying to make a law to prohibit.

Todd Iddings (41:16):

Correct. Correct.

Wendy (41:17):

How’s that for irony?

Todd Iddings (41:19):

Yeah. In 2007, he publicly backed Democrat Steve Beshear for governor. Governor Beshear ended up winning that election and placed Mr. Nunn on his transition team and gave him a sweetheart job as the deputy secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services within the state of Kentucky.

David (41:41):

Okay, you got to dig on that [inaudible 00:41:44]. This is just full of irony and craziness. What do they do in that case?

Todd Iddings (41:48):

Well, one of their primary re responsibilities is domestic violence, so he’s in charge of these programs to help victims of domestic violence and get legislators to make better laws for domestic violence victims, and he’s the number two guy in that cabinet in the state of Kentucky.

Wendy (42:07):

And he’s the number one guy in this case, doing exactly what he’s trying to help prevent for the rest of the Commonwealth.

Todd Iddings (42:15):

Correct. Correct.

Wendy (42:19):

Hey, you know there’s more to the story, so go download the next episode like the true crime fan that you are.

David (42:27):

The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. This podcast is produced, recorded, and edited by David Lyons.

David (42:39):

The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform as well as @murderpolicepodcast.com, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more, and give us a five star review on Apple Podcast or wherever you download your podcasts from.

David (42:57):

And please tell your friends. Lock it down, Judy.

Part 2 of 2:

David (00:00):

Warning: The podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent acts and injury. Listener discretion is advised.

Wendy (00:08):

Welcome to The Murder Police Podcast.

David (00:15):

Okay, Wendy. Now that we’re about to listen to part two of the murder of Amanda Ross, what did you think about when we were doing the interview for part one? Was there anything that stood out for you?

Wendy (00:55):

Yeah, the irony that Steve Nunn co-sponsored a bill that became a law that made killing someone a capital offense if they had an act of domestic violence order in place. And he co-sponsored this bill and went out and did the very thing that he co-sponsored and wrote a bill on.

David (01:13):

I thought the same thing. That was just off the hook crazy, just nuts. A sad irony. A really disgusting irony, is probably the way the put it best. I think for me, one thing that I thought about when I was recording and editing and going through this and thinking [inaudible 00:01:32] that I had over the years is this. That in a case like this, sometimes you’ll hear people say, “Well, the victim had a domestic violence order, but it was just a piece of paper.” And sometimes that can be true when these come to a tragic end, but those are the outliers. I think people need to remember that most of the time, the system works and it works well. So when we hear a case that has an outcome that we didn’t desire, it’s important not to abandon faith in the case and to continue pressing your case to make sure that you’re … get the safety that you need and make sure that the offender is punished appropriately. So I want people to pay attention to that, to make sure that they know resources are available.

David (02:12):

And again, like we talked about last time, if you’ve been a victim or know somebody that’s a victim, just be careful listening to this, because it can really be personal to listen to on the activities of a suspect and what happens to a victim. And again, for resources, if you believe you’re a victim, then make sure you call your local police or sheriff’s department or 9-1-1. And on a national level, there are some resources that are easily available to you by calling the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE. That’s 1-800-799-SAFE, S-A-F-E. They also have a very resourceful website that you can reach. And the cool thing about this website is, if you go there, you can actually clean your tracks as you leave so nobody can follow you on your computer and realize that you are searching for this or interacting with them. That website is located at www.thehotline.org. So remember those resources are there for you. Was there anything else you took from the case as we move in to episode two?

Wendy (03:14):

No. I think I was just blown away by you … Most people feel like a person of certain stature in their community, you would never imagine that they would do something as horrendous as this. I know that it can happen to anybody, and any domestic abuser can be of any stature, but it just blew me away still that he wrote this law, co-sponsored it, and was the very abuser that he was trying to protect people from.

David (03:46):

You make a fantastic point. And maybe the listeners are aware of this because they’ve listened to us a few times. You can’t judge a book by its cover. One thing after 28 years in law enforcement taught me is that these evil acts, these bad acts, the things that happen, they don’t know economic or social guidelines. They don’t know any of that. They can be anywhere. I’ve seen incredible drug dealing in multi-million-dollar homes. I’ve seen the same thing with crazy weapon possession and trafficking. It doesn’t matter that just because somebody has stature, doesn’t mean that they’re immune to behaving this way. That’s an important thing to remember as we move on. So let’s finish up with part two of the murder of Amanda Ross.

Wendy (04:28):

All right, let’s do it.

Todd Iddings (04:30):

In 2007, he publicly backed democrat Steve Beshear for governor. Governor Beshear ended up winning that election and placed Mr. Nunn on his transition team and gave him a sweetheart job as the deputy secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services within the state of Kentucky.

David (04:51):

Okay, you got to dig on that, then. This is just full of irony and craziness. What do they do in that cabinet?

Todd Iddings (04:58):

Well, one of their primary responsibilities is domestic violence. So he’s in charge of these programs to help victims of domestic violence and get legislators to make better laws for domestic violence victims. And he’s the number two guy in that cabinet in the state of Kentucky.

Wendy (05:17):

And he’s the number one guy in this case, doing exactly what he’s trying to help prevent for the rest of the commonwealth.

Todd Iddings (05:25):

Correct. Correct.

David (05:27):

It’s laughable in the irony of it, because on the other side of it is that thankfully, it seems like we continue to progress in the avenue of domestic violence, especially from the old days, is that we are getting better at moving forward on protecting those victims. But it’s just beyond irony that one of the guys that was in charge of handling that was actually a very violent perpetrator himself.

Todd Iddings (05:50):

Absolutely. Now that I’ve got him in custody for murder, the real work now begins. Because now I got to take this case from probable cause … Which for the layperson, probable cause really means, yeah, he probably did it. I mean, it’s as simple as that. I mean, it’s not a very high legal standard. And obviously, to take something to trial, you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I had a lot to work to do, and my unit had a lot of work to do, and that’s one of the things that I need to emphasize in this is homicide investigations are a team sport.

Todd Iddings (06:30):

At this point in time, just three days into this investigation, I had three different state police posts in Kentucky assist me, the Bowling Green post, the Frankfort post, and the Pikeville post. I had the Versailles Police Department, the Barren County sheriff all providing me assistance, on top of the ATF, the state police forensic laboratory. Then when you get to the number of Lexington police detectives that are involved in this case, the homicide unit, robbery unit … I had special victims, because there was a domestic violence angle, assisting with it. The intelligence unit was running down information for me. This is not all me. This is a team sport. Basically, I’m the starting pitcher. Hopefully, I can go nine innings and close it out.

Todd Iddings (07:22):

One of the things that we sit down and have meetings and get together to-do lists and kind of divvy up assignments and whatnot, and we interviewed like 105 people in this case. And this was over months and months and months, and going through data … I think the last really big, significant interview that I did in this case was almost nine months after it, and it was going through the results … I took his home computer from his house in Glasgow, Kentucky on a search warrant and I had it forensically analyzed. Tons and tons of data, and as I’m going through all this data, I stumbled across another … it ended up being a really good witness for us, because one of the things that we ran into in the prosecution of this case was we wanted to prove that this was a cold, deliberate, premeditated act. Mr. Nunn’s defense was that Amanda had driven him to a state of extreme emotional disturbance, that he shouldn’t be held responsible for murder, more like manslaughter.

Todd Iddings (08:32):

That’s one of the things in Kentucky, they have this extreme emotional disturbance defense. Well, really, what it’s made for is, I come home from work and my neighbor’s in bed with my wife and I kill my neighbor. It’s a heat of a moment, a passion. That’s what that law is created for. But as with anything in law, it’s been perverted and diluted and now it gets used for … Everything can be ED. It is what it is. I’m not a lawyer, and unfortunately, I’ve had to experience a lot of this kind of legal stuff as a detective taking cases to court.

Wendy (09:08):

So he was trying to justify his actions by saying that she caused his actions.

Todd Iddings (09:15):

Yep.

Wendy (09:15):

So basically, it was her fault that he had to shoot.

Todd Iddings (09:18):

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. See? You got it. Some interesting things that happened with this … He ended up hiring some pretty heavy gun attorneys and basically signed over his house and all his belongings to these attorneys. One of the things that we ended up doing is we really had to take an examination of Amanda and Steve’s relationship back from the start, all the way up to the day of the death.

Todd Iddings (09:42):

How they met was Steve actually was hired as a lobbyist at Ross, Sinclaire, & Associates. Former Governor Nunn had passed away recently, and Amanda’s dad had passed away recently, so they kind of had a bond that they kind of commiserated over the loss of both their fathers. And so they began dating in August of 2007. The relationship progressed into where he moved in with her at her townhome at the Opera Square Townhomes in March of 2008. He actually proposed to her on her birthday in 2008, so October 10th of 2008, and then she decided to call off the engagement on October 20th of 2008, so 10 days later. And from what I understand, she probably just wasn’t ready to get married. She had been married once before and she was much younger when she was married, so she was a little bit more cautious this time.

Todd Iddings (10:37):

In December of 2008, she had asked Mr. Nunn to move out of her residence, and they actually had a little domestic violence incident during this him moving out phase. But they stayed together, because in early 2009, they went on vacation to Mexico together. And so I guess they come back from vacation and Amanda has to call the police in regards to a domestic violence incident. She tells the Lexington police she was slapped with an open hand to the face, and basically, he wanted to leave, she wouldn’t let him leave, and he slapped her. Mr. Nunn also calls in on the same incident and claims that he’s the victim. Well, there’s no injuries. Neither party really wanted to press charges. What the officers did was they took what was called a JC-3 report, which is a report that goes to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.

Wendy (11:32):

Which he worked for.

Todd Iddings (11:34):

Yeah. But it kind of provides some social work opportunities that makes them aware that maybe there’s some opportunities for social work to intervene on this versus police contact. And the next day, Amanda and her mom end up leaving town and they go on vacation together. So really, where everything kind of really falls apart in their relationship is February 17, 2009, Amanda called the police to report domestic violence. She had stated that she’d been struck in the face four times with a closed fist and she had visible redness and bruising on her left cheek. Basically, they were together this evening, trying to work on their relationship. They’d both had some drinks. They get heated. Nunn gets upset and damages property. Amanda confronts him about the damaged property, and he punches her. Now, in the course of him punching her, she punches back. He has a cut on his face where she had a ring on. Amanda was escorted to district court an obtained an emergency protection order against Mr. Nunn, as well as filed an assault fourth domestic violence charge against him … or complaint against him, which turned into a charge.

Todd Iddings (12:46):

So what an EPO is, it’s an emergency restraining order that basically, a judge says, “Hey, this allegation is out here and to keep everybody safe, you’re not allowed to do certain things.” And so those conditions are stuff like no further acts of violence, no destruction or damaged property, no contact, and that kind of stuff. Usually, those last for about 14 days when there’s a hearing before a family court judge. Two days after this incident, he’s served with the emergency protection order. They get a court date of March 4th for the domestic violence hearing.

Todd Iddings (13:22):

In the course of the domestic violence hearing, the judge ends up determining that this is a violent relationship involving a domestic relationship. He issues a domestic violence order, a restraining order if you will, for Amanda against Steve Nunn with the conditions that there are to be no further acts of violence. Steve is not to have any contact with Amanda, no damaging or disposal of property. And he also adds a little caveat on there. It’s what we call a gun stamp. He orders Mr. Nunn not to possess firearms. Obviously, he had a firearm the day that he killed Amanda.

Wendy (14:00):

Well, I have to say also, these cases, the two domestic violence cases … or episodes, rather … they were a mere three weeks apart when he struck her the first time and then the second time.

Todd Iddings (14:12):

Yes.

Wendy (14:13):

Now, I want to ask, is that no gun stamp … do you think that’s because the judge suspicion that may be an issue, or is that typical that they say, “No guns”?

Todd Iddings (14:25):

It’s usually pretty typical that in domestic cases, and especially if they see any kind of physical violence, that a judge will issue a no gun order on there. It’s something that happens quite frequently. So I don’t think there’s anything specific in this case that would have led the judge to believe that guns would have came into it. I think it’s just his standard operating when he actually sees that there’s physical violence in a relationship. In this case, the judge put that on there. I don’t think it was anything out of the ordinary for the judge, but he saw actual physical violence in the relationship, so he put the order not to possess a gun on there.

David (15:09):

That was a fantastic question, too, because fortunately, most people aren’t exposed to this. The people that are exposed learn very quickly … too quickly, probably … which brings me to something I want to point out, that so far, she has reported … When we would say we want people to report, the system has engaged back and it sounds like it’s engaged commensurate with the reporting and the elements and the protections are in place. I just want to point that out, that she’s doing what I think we say is ideal. Because a lot of unfair criticism of domestic violence victims sometimes is, “Well, he or she didn’t report this, which means it may not have happened.” But right now, it sounds like all the cogs in this system are clicking the way they’re supposed to, and I just wanted to point that out.

Todd Iddings (15:52):

Obviously, on March 4th when he has this hit with his DVO, Mr. Nunn is forced to resign his position with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services within the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Wendy (16:05):

Yeah, I would imagine you can’t write that law …

Todd Iddings (16:07):

Correct.

Wendy (16:08):

… or support that law …

Todd Iddings (16:09):

Correct.

Wendy (16:09):

… and go out and break the law that you worked so hard to create.

Todd Iddings (16:13):

Correct. In fact, one of my favorite quotes in this case was somebody I was interviewing that was within the administration of the Commonwealth of Kentucky at that time, said, “The governor can’t have no woman beaters at the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.” So I found that rather amusing and kind of stuck with me for a while.

Todd Iddings (16:34):

So Mr. Nunn now begins a path seeking retribution and revenge on Amanda. He’s lost his job, but she still has a very good job with the state. So he takes off on things that … doing things and committing acts that lead to this awful tragedy happening. Amanda, at this point in time, is terribly scared of this dude, and this comes from talking to all her friends and her family. She ends up getting a gun from a family friend, carrying it in her purse. She had a carry and conceal permit, and she carried a gun specifically because she was scared of Mr. Nunn.

Todd Iddings (17:15):

Her townhome to the left of it had this little cobblestone sidewalk walkway that went around to the back of her back patio. She referred to that as “OJ alley.” The reason is, is that that time period in the fall of 2008 from when they get unengaged and they’re kind of off again, on again, she catches him out staring at her windows in this little walkway around to the back of her house. So she called that “OJ alley,” and in fact, she had a former brother-in-law of hers come over and put security lights out there for her, because she literally caught him out there staring in her windows prior to them officially breaking up.

Todd Iddings (17:57):

Mr. Nunn’s first attempts to get retribution and revenge … He starts contacting her friends and family, trying to get them to get her to drop the issue on him and drop the domestic violence order. So this actually causes another hearing for Mr. Nunn for domestic violence purposes, because Amanda had to file a police report because he’s violated the no contact using that third party.

Todd Iddings (18:23):

Then we learn that in April of 2009, Mr. Nunn goes to the Keeneland horse racing track and he’s walking around with a racing program, and inside the racing program, he has several 8.5×11 flyers that he has created, handbills if you will, that contain a pornographic image of Amanda. He has little vile statements written on those. Probably the only one that I’ll halfway repeat, because it’s … He basically said something to the effect of, “Psycho bitch alert. If located, contact Eastern State Hospital,” which is our mental health facility here in Lexington, Kentucky.

Todd Iddings (19:05):

The rest were all very vile and lewd in nature. He had her phone number listed on there, kind of like … He’d say something completely vile and lewd and then put down at the bottom, “For a good time,” and have her phone number listed. And he’s running around Keeneland showing these off to people, and a lot of the people he’s showing them to are mutual acquaintances between the two of them. Both Amanda and Steve are blue bloods, and he’s showing these off in the dining rooms in the clubhouse area of Keeneland where a lot of blue bloods are at.

David (19:41):

What’s a blue blood in Kentucky? Because people are going to wonder what that is.

Todd Iddings (19:46):

Well, it’s going to be somebody of political prominence or somebody with money. It’s kind of the movers and shakers of the state, if you will.

Wendy (19:55):

So it sounds like he was just trying to make every effort to embarrass and demean her with mutual friends. I guess the old, “Misery loves company,” comes into play here.

Todd Iddings (20:07):

Correct. He’s also contacting her ex-spouse, her sister, ex-boyfriends, and friends of hers trying to dig up dirt for his domestic violence case. She finds out about the flyers in June and has to file another violation of the domestic violence order. So they actually have to go to court in July of 2009, and the judge orders Mr. Nunn to return all images of her and not to engage in any more conduct like this or he’s going to find him in violation.

Todd Iddings (20:40):

In the meantime, Mr. Nunn’s hospitalized a couple times during this time period for blood clots, which is why he’s on blood thinners. Then in early August, he ends up getting a plea deal for the domestic violence case. He takes what’s called an Alford plea and pleads to criminal mischief third degree, and he gets diversion. Basically, what the diversion is is if he goes and does community service and gets an alcohol assessment, it all disappears. And so when an Alford-

David (21:07):

Yeah, what jurisdiction did that happen in before … I hate to interrupt. Where was that at?

Todd Iddings (21:12):

Fayette County’s district court.

Wendy (21:15):

Is that typical? I mean, I’m just kind of confused because …

Todd Iddings (21:18):

Oh, hell no.

Wendy (21:20):

So I’m guessing because of his political stance and who his father was, he’s given this, which is really a slap in the face to the victim. And what it says … what I would feel like if I were in her shoes, or any victim’s shoes … if that person just goes and does some community service, their record is wiped clean as though it never happened, which means that he then in turn is going to go seek out another victim or possibly come back for her again. I just find that really utterly ridiculous.

Todd Iddings (21:51):

It was. Now, I do believe the county attorney’s office probably spoke with Amanda and got some input for him to be able to get this. Because typically, the county attorney or the commonwealth attorney … See, in Kentucky, your prosecutor’s office, you have two prosecutor’s office. You have a county attorney, which basically is primarily responsible for misdemeanor cases and assault fourth domestic violence is a misdemeanor case. Then you have the commonwealth attorney’s office, which prosecutes felonies, basically. From my experience, the county attorney and their victim advocates and the commonwealth attorney and their victim advocates, they’re all pretty good about working with victims. Amanda … I don’t know if she approved of the deal or not, but I’m fairly confident she was made aware of it.

Wendy (22:39):

What kind of community service are we talking? Out on the road picking up trash like-

Todd Iddings (22:43):

Oh, oh. Much worse than that.

Wendy (22:46):

What are we talking here?

Todd Iddings (22:46):

He worked with his best friend at the Barren River Lake state resort park golf course.

Wendy (22:51):

Wow. Some punishment for community service.

Todd Iddings (22:56):

Yeah. Yeah. As I’m working through this case … Earlier, I mentioned that in that psycho bitch file, there was a letter to Amanda’s mother. Where I was talking about earlier that nine months down the road, I find some information on his computer … I actually found that letter in an email that he sent to a former coworker all the way back in April of 2009, and he never sent it. And so I immediately called Diana, and I actually had shown Diana this letter and said, “Hey, did you ever get this?” “No, I never got it.” So that was kind of … We’re trying to show that all these little petty attempts of him to demean and destroy Amanda’s reputation aren’t working. I also found a letter that was in with all his documents and property that was dated August 14th of 2009, and it was addressed to his daughters. There was a line in it that said, “If I can’t fulfill my one wish/goal/revenge/retaliation, then I will have failed.” That’s about a month before the homicide, and he’s talking revenge/retaliation to his daughters.

Todd Iddings (24:13):

So really, the key thing with this investigation is the timeline of the week of the homicide. So it kind of boils down to really taking a heavy examination into that week. The murder happened on a Friday morning. On Monday of that week, he has dinner with his daughters at his home. They help him update his resume, and they think he’s coming off his depression that he’s been in and think everything’s going to be fine. So he goes the next day to a car dealership in Glasgow and he drops off his SUV for repair, and the owner of the car dealership gives him a ride home. He asks the owner of the car dealership to fax his community service paperwork showing where he’s completed his community service back to Fayette District Court, and he asks the owner of the car dealership to do lunch.

Todd Iddings (25:08):

They don’t end up having lunch, but later in the day, Mr. Nunn shows back up at the dealership with his own lunch. They’re sitting in his office and Mr. Nunn’s still bellyaching about Amanda and saying that it cost him $130,000, he had to do all this community service, that she ruined his life. The owner of the car dealership kind of cuts him off and says, “Hey, you ruined your own life when you laid your hand on a woman.” So Mr. Nunn makes a statement like, “I don’t know what I have to live for,” and the owner of the car dealership’s like, “Your family. Your daughters.” So then we later learn that he leaves Glasgow that day and comes to Lexington where he meets up with two prostitutes and pays them $400 for one hour and has sexual relations with them.

Wendy (25:54):

Wow. He was trying to certainly work out his misery, sounds like.

Todd Iddings (26:00):

And we end up tracking the … We discover this through going through his phone, his phone records, and his computer. He spent a lot of time and money and energy seeking out the comforts of women for pay, basically throughout that summer. He joined a website where he became a sugar daddy and he sought out sugar babies for relationships. And so we had to go through all this stuff and get that stuff from the sugar daddy websites and that kind of stuff.

Wendy (26:34):

Sounds like he was looking for more victims.

Todd Iddings (26:36):

I don’t necessarily think he was looking for more victims. He had some … Well, hell, I’ll just say it. He was a creep. He was the kind of a creepy dude that you wouldn’t expect somebody of his lineage to act like that. But honestly, probably the biggest, most important day in this case is Wednesday, September 9, 2009. Mr. Nunn’s in Lexington the night before. He gets up and he goes to Frankfort, which is the state capital. He starts hobnobbing in the state house and the governor’s office and what’s called the Legislative Research Center. He ends up running into the governor’s chief of staff and communication director and they engage him in a few minutes of small talk.

Todd Iddings (27:21):

The thing that’s interesting about this is the letter that is the seven-page manifesto and the psycho bitch file is dated September 9, 2009. He basically complains that while in Frankfort, he’s treated like a leper and people keep their distance. Basically, he’s running around Frankfort saying, “Hey, look. I completed my community service. Give me a handout,” and that’s not happening. But all the folks I interviewed in Frankfort said, “Yeah, we had a pleasant conversation with him, said it was good to see him back, wished him the best of luck.” And in this guy’s warped mind, he thinks that he’s being treated like a leper. Also that day, he makes a phone call to a friend in Lexington and he makes a comment to him that he doesn’t know whether he should murder somebody or go get a job.

Wendy (28:11):

Decisions, decisions, huh?

Todd Iddings (28:12):

So I learned that Mr. Nunn, while in Frankfort, is getting ready to head back to Glasgow, and at that time, you couldn’t purchase alcohol in Glasgow. He calls a couple friends to say, “Hey, I’m going to stop at the Rite Aid and pick up some alcohol. Do y’all need anything while I’m up here?” kind of thing. And he just happens to have a chance encounter with Amanda at this Rite Aid in Frankfort. He’s there to buy liquor. He’s walking out and she’s pulling up to the store. She ran to get vitamins or something on her lunch break. They see each other, she takes off.

Todd Iddings (28:47):

Now, Mr. Nunn tells KSP that he saw her there and that she tried to run him over. However, Amanda comes back to work, she’s scared to death, she’s visibly shaken, and her boss ends up sending her home for the rest of the day because she’s so upset. In my professional opinion, at that point in time, he’s decided she’s dead. He’s tried all these other methods to get revenge, to take her down. They’ve been unsuccessful. He’s been unsuccessful, and that’s why that letter was dated September 9th. That’s why he started to lay his plan out on that day.

Todd Iddings (29:22):

Because what’s interesting is … So the next day, Thursday, September 10th, he starts texting his second ex-wife and asked her to call. He basically asks her to go to his house in Glasgow and take care of his girls. She asks him if he’s going on a trip. He chuckles and says he has to sort some things out. He then drives to Bowling Green, where his daughters live, and he exchanges his Lexus with one of his daughters to get her black Honda car. It’s a two door with tinted windows and a spoiler. He tells her he’s borrowing her car to take a road trip, and her car has more miles than his Lexus does, so she found it odd. But in her mind, she was an early 20-something that’s getting to drive a Lexus while Dad’s taking her car on a trip, so she didn’t think much about it.

Todd Iddings (30:10):

Then the other odd thing is … I brought this up earlier … he went to a business called Borders Monument in Glasgow and he was very insistent on seeing the proprietor of that store, the owner. What happened is, when his mother passed away, she initially was buried in a different spot and he wanted his mother with his father. He paid to move Mom from where she’s buried at to the cemetery beside her father and he kept his mother’s original tombstone at Borders Monument, and it was going to be his tombstone. So they had a little 8.5×14 sheet of paper that had a sketch of how he wanted his tombstone, and he was very insistent on seeing that, wrote his date of death on there. So it had his name, Steven Roberts Nunn, his date of birth, and then Mr. Nunn adds his date of death as September 11, 2009 on this.

Wendy (31:07):

Does the owner question that? That just seems crazy.

Todd Iddings (31:11):

Absolutely. Well, he doesn’t know Mr. Nunn all that well, so he actually makes some phone calls to some people who do know Mr. Nunn. A couple of Mr. Nunn’s friends … They have this incident at the monument store and then he called and said some strange things to his ex-wife. So both those people get a hold of a couple of his friends. They go over to the residence and sit there with him, and then they take him out to dinner. They spend several hours with him and they think they’ve kind of got him over the hump. They think that everything’s going to be okay, and then they get up the next morning and turn on the news and realize their worlds are kind of shook up and turned upside down at this point in time.

Todd Iddings (31:53):

Another really neat thing that happened in this case forensic-wise, if y’all honor me and let me talk about it … One of the things that we did in this case … One of my partners in the homicide unit, Dave Richardson, had been to some training and saw a presentation on video forensic analysis, thought that it would be useful in this case. So we ended up hiring a company out of Washington state called Video Forensic Solutions, I believe is what it was. They ended up coming into town, looking basically at the car and at the school, and we went out and we got a couple very similar cars and they did a forensic analysis of the videotape compared to the car, compared to other cars, and they were able to positively identify the car on the video from Harrison Elementary as being Mr. Nunn’s daughter’s car and the car that we see on the video three minutes after the shots are fired on the morning on September 11, 2009.

Todd Iddings (32:51):

So that was kind of really neat evidence that added just another piece to this puzzle. Because ultimately, I still don’t have any really direct evidence. I’ve got Mr. Nunn on … I’m monitoring his jail phone calls at this point in time and I’ve got him saying stuff to … He’s talking to his ex-wife or his daughters, he’s talking to them and he makes statements like, “I’m sorry that it happened, but I’m glad she’s gone.” Or he’s talking about writing a book and he’s going to name the title of the book She Killed Me First. But he doesn’t actually say, “I did it,” but he’s saying stuff like this, which is just another little piece, very good piece. In front of a jury, they’re going to look at that and go, “Oh yeah, this guy’s raw.”

Todd Iddings (33:35):

Another thing that I did was we ended up contacting the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. At that time, Kentucky did kind of an archaic method of obtaining gunshot residue. We knew Tennessee had the newest tests, and we reached out to them and they provided us a sample kit, because I wanted gunshot residue testing done inside of his car. Because in my thought process, he’s just shot Amanda, he jumps in his car and he’s gone, he’s got to transfer that gunshot residue to the steering wheel, gearshift, driver door handle. We end up getting this test kit. Forensic services unit processes the car for me and uses this test kit. I send it down to Tennessee and sure enough, we end up getting gunshot reside off the steering wheel, gearshift, and the door handle. So that was another nice little piece of evidence.

Todd Iddings (34:24):

So as this case is progressing through the court system, we see that this is going to be a … They’re not going to deny that he did it. They’re going to basically try to say she forced him to do it by filing domestic violence order on him and all that kind of stuff. Everything that I’ve talked about and that I’ve done has kind of been our counter to it, is, yeah, he spiraled out of control after he lost his job, but this wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. He had planned it. He had taken very deliberate steps to get to the homicide.

Todd Iddings (34:58):

If you go back and remember my initial description of what the 9-1-1 call was and what the witness statements were, “We heard gunshots. We heard a female pleading for her life, and we heard more gunshots.” So it’s dark when she comes out to get to her car. He shoots her in the torso and then walks up on her and she’s pleading for her life and he shoots her two more times in the head. This is not an extreme emotional disturbance. This is cold blooded murder. It’s premeditated.

David (35:28):

I think it’s important, because you hit this earlier for the listeners, because it’s different in different states. In Kentucky, in a murder, we don’t have to prove motive.

Todd Iddings (35:36):

Correct.

David (35:36):

A lot of people probably think it’s on that. What’s more important in Kentucky is that mindset and where that intent is, and that’s why you’re hitting that so well, is that motive is nice because you can manage a case with it. Motive is really clear in this, but I think you’re hitting the information so well on why this intent thing matters and what it takes to prove that, so thank you for doing that for the listeners.

Todd Iddings (35:58):

Ultimately, what ends up happening in this case … The defense ended up filing a motion to suppress on 28 different issues. And so we end up having a very lengthy, multi-day suppression hearing, which is really a mini trial in itself. I spent the better part of one day and part of another day on the stand as the lead investigator going to all this stuff. We had the detective sergeant from KSP come in and talk about the statement. They tried to suppress little things. The initial troopers that found him in the cemetery, they tried to get their statements suppressed. It’s a defense tactic. The more stuff that they can file suppression issues on, it helps them in their defense of their client.

Todd Iddings (36:40):

So out of 28 issues, we ended up winning 25 of them. We did lose part of his statement because he does make a statement as he’s talking to the trooper. He gets keyed up and he talks about he just wanted revenge, and the trooper says, “Hey, is that why you killed her?” And he makes a statement like, “Well, I don’t know. Maybe I should talk to an attorney.” And the trooper’s like, “Well, do you want an attorney?” “No, no. Let’s talk about something else.” So they go back to talking about something else, and then later on, he comes back, gets keyed up again. So we ended up winning 25 of these suppression issues, so we kind of really shot down a lot of their case, a lot of what they were going to try to do.

Todd Iddings (37:18):

In June of 2011, our commonwealth attorney’s office received communication from Mr. Nunn’s legal team that he was willing to plead guilty to this, and so a plea agreement was put together with the blessing of Amanda’s mother that he was going to plead guilty to murder and avoid the death penalty and accept life in prison without the possibility of parole as a punishment. So he ended up pleading guilty June 28, 2011, admits that he killed Amanda in open court.

David (37:54):

So he actually verbally admitted that he killed her in court?

Todd Iddings (37:57):

Yes. Yes.

David (37:58):

That’s powerful in and of itself. That’s something the victim’s families and all surviving friends need to hear often.

Todd Iddings (38:03):

One of the other things that happened … This case went on forever with me. There was a civil trial after the criminal trial in regards to wrongful death that I had to participate in. The wrongful death suit was filed while the criminal case was still open and my investigation was still ongoing, so I would get contacted by Amanda’s family’s attorney asking questions and I didn’t know if I could answer the questions or not because of my criminal case. So I would have to go back and forth with the commonwealth attorney, “Hey, they called and asked me this. Can I answer it?” And so it kind of … a trying situation there for a little bit. But once the criminal case was over, then I was free and clear. I went and met with them basically for an afternoon. We went through everything and they had everything that they needed.

Todd Iddings (38:50):

Here’s another interesting little thing. In Kentucky, if you take a case to trial and you get found guilty by a jury, you pretty much can file unlimited appeals for the rest of your life. However, you take a plea deal, you’re not entitled to an appeal except on one special circumstance, and it’s called an 11.42. What that is in Kentucky is ineffective counsel. And so within three years of your plea deal, you have to have an ineffective counsel appeal filed. Sure enough, almost three years is coming up, so in May and June of 2014, there was another hearing in this case that was involving ineffective counsel. Ultimately, the judge in the case ruled that she felt that Mr. Nunn’s legal team adequately represented him and provided him all the facts and information that he needed prior to pleading guilty. But there were just all kinds of things that came up from time to time.

David (39:54):

I think on that 11.42, what’s interesting for people that aren’t around it is you have to remember that he probably did have excellent representation. He was probably able to afford it if he sold his assets to get it. And in 28 suppression items, that is not ineffective counsel. That’s somebody that is really advocating for their client. There’s another thing called protecting the record. They are actually building in a record that they’re effective, so it’s kind of astonishing they’d even go for that ineffective counsel thing. Clearly, he was represented very well, maybe more than other people are. But that’s an interesting thing that you hit on with the 28-

Todd Iddings (40:30):

Yeah. I do recall as they were preparing for the ineffective counsel, I remember I had to go to a hearing in regards to … Obviously, when he was indicted, we provided his defense team with discovery and they got to have everything that I had. When I talked about that box of pornography that he had, they didn’t have copies of that, but they came over and sat down in a small room with me and they were able to open the box up, look at every bit of it, take notes of it, that kind of thing. It wasn’t something we were going to give … certainly weren’t going to give to anybody. But in my case file, I had those flyers that he created of Amanda, and I had a couple other photos of her in the case file that were relevant. It was an investigative memo that I typed that I referenced one of those pictures, so I put that picture in there. He wanted those pictures in prison. We thought that was a terrible idea.

David (41:32):

People can’t see it, but I just jaw dropped and rolled my eyes like I haven’t in a long time.

Todd Iddings (41:37):

We legit had a hearing. And hell, I mean, even the Department of Corrections sent somebody into this hearing. They thought it was preposterous. Where’s he going to be able to store 3,000 documents and that kind of there? There was some sort of compromise that was made, but he didn’t get any of the photos. We were able to go in and redact and cut and take out the photos, but he could have all the other pertinent documentation, because that’s his right. Can you imagine him having these obscene photos in prison? He’d be a popular guy.

Todd Iddings (42:09):

Because of the circumstances around this case, I think there were three TV shows done on it. It’s all because of the revenge … I mean, it’s pretty salacious details with the revenge aspect of it, the fact that he’s the one that created the legislation that made killing somebody with a domestic violence order a capital offense. On the flip side, there were some positive things that came out of this case. Amanda’s mother became a advocate for domestic violence issues. She was able to use her connections and go to Frankfort and lobby. There was a law passed in Amanda’s name that’s known as Amanda’s Law that passed basically what the law is, that it allows for GPS monitoring of offenders in domestic violence cases. Amanda’s mother always told me that she didn’t know that this would have qualified it further than that. But certainly, if Amanda was able to pull up on her phone or computer and look at the location of Steve Nunn, she sure as hell wouldn’t have walked out of the townhome that morning. There was this law created in Amanda’s memory.

Todd Iddings (43:15):

Then the Fayette County sheriff, Kathy Witt, developed a really strong relationship with Diana, and Kathy Witt is a very nother staunch advocate for domestic violence victims and has a lot of programs in the sheriff’s office for domestic violence victims. So she created what she calls the Amanda Center, which provides services and helps domestic violence victims in Fayette County. In this tragedy, there is some silver lining.

David (43:42):

Yeah, you don’t want to have to develop laws and put them in place because of a tragedy, but sometimes, they’ll demonstrate the need. I think what’s unique about Amanda’s Law is like we talked about before is we get better with domestic violence laws, but there’s still gap filling that has to happen because protective orders themselves sometimes are just not enough. They get the process started, they get it recognized, and they potentially offer protections, but I love the idea now that there’s more motion forward on filling those gaps for protecting these people.

David (44:15):

I’ll say, too, that Sheriff Witt … I got to work with her for years … is a passionate victim’s advocate across the board. In our show, we have show notes, and I’ll post links to a lot of these things that we’ve talked about today during these episodes that people come back and reflect on.

Wendy (44:32):

Todd, thank you so much for sharing this case. It’s certainly sad and we appreciate your time and the time and dedication you put forth to get justice for Amanda Ross.

Todd Iddings (44:45):

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Wendy (44:47):

Absolutely. David, thank you.

David (44:49):

No, this was a fantastic case, and it’s a testament to how wonderful Todd is as an investigator. Because when you have that much detail and that much work, that’s a testament to how well he performed in that position, and that’s what brought justice to this young lady.

David (45:05):

The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. This podcast is produced, recorded, and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at murderpolicepodcast.com, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you download your podcasts from, and please tell your friends. Lock it down, Judy.