On October 8th, 2000, a pair of duck hunters were walking in a field near the Saltair resort in Salt Lake City, Utah when they happened upon a set of skeletal remains. The hair on the skull was waist-length and blonde, and items found near the bones included a blue shirt and a blue, choker-style necklace. The female victim, unable to be identified at the time, was given the name “Saltair Sally.”
For more than a decade, attempts to identify the remains proved fruitless, though isotopic analysis of the skeleton suggested that the individual had been traveling between Utah and the Pacific Northwest in the months prior to her death.
Finally, in 2012, authorities were able to identify the young woman as nineteen-year-old Nicole Bakoles, originally hailing from Washington State. According to relatives, she had moved to Utah in 1998 with her boyfriend Joel Chaudoin, and the couple eventually had a daughter together.
However, it seemed Nicole and Joel had issues with drugs and were involved in other minor criminal activity, and subsequently had their child taken from their custody. The pair moved around a great deal, and Nicole’s family claimed they often didn’t hear from her for months at a time. Because of this, they hadn’t reported her missing until 2003.
When Joel Chaudoin was interviewed about his girlfriend’s death, he stated that he had argued with her in March of 2000, and that they had gone their separate ways. He said he hadn’t seen or heard from her after that point. At the time he was interviewed, he was in prison in Washington State for an unrelated property crime. Police have not publicly named him a suspect or a person of interest in the case.
Shortly after the identification of the victim was announced, Jason Jensen of the Utah Cold Case Coalition reported that he’d received an anonymous phone call from someone claiming to have murdered Nicole. The caller remains unknown.
Nicole Bakoles’s exact cause of death has never been revealed to the public, but her case is being investigated as a homicide. Detectives are still fielding tips, and hope that her murder can eventually be solved.
Crime Immemorial 