02:03 PM EDT on Monday, September 8, 2003

BY AMANDA MILKOVITS
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Nicole Parsons-Bucki did not drown herself in her own bathtub.

She did not knock herself out and fall into the tub filled with water. She did not hold her own head underwater. She did not bludgeon herself in the stomach. She did not overdose and pass out, trip and fall, or do anything that would have caused her own death two years ago this week.

Nicole Parsons-Bucki

The person who killed 27-year-old Nicole on the eve of Sept. 11, 2001, wanted others to believe she'd committed suicide. But the bungled attempts to arrange the scene in her small apartment and cover up the truth didn't work, the police say.

The evidence collected at the apartment on Charles Street, interviews with people who knew her, and the autopsy of the young mother have put together a different picture of the last moments of Nicole's life than the killer intended.

What's missing, so far, is the suspect.

But the murderer may not be the only one who knows the truth about Nicole's death. The police and Nicole's loved ones believe that someone else heard something, some struggle in that thin-walled apartment. The killer may have had a conversation with someone and let some details drop. The family and police are waiting for the time when someone breaks the silence.

"All I want is for someone to see her picture and say, 'I can't live with this anymore. I'm going to make a call to the police,' " said Nicole's mother, Robin Parsons.

Journal photo / Gretchen Ertl TREASURED: Cynthia Haibon, aunt of Nicole Parsons-Bucki, holds her niece's robe. Though the garment has a shoe print on it and the police consider it evidence, she won't relinquish it. "It's the last thing I have, she says.

SOMETIME AROUND midnight of Sept. 10, 2001, the neighbor in an apartment across the hall grew worried about Nicole.

They lived in a drab brick-apartment building above a "Dollar Land" store on Charles Street in the city's North End. The neighbor had been up with Nicole for hours earlier that day, since the police were called about a fight between Nicole and her live-in teenage boyfriend.

Someone overheard them at around 1:30 that morning and called the police. As Patrolman George Smith drove up to the building, he saw two males walking away. They ran when he called to them, according to a police report.

Smith found Nicole inside her apartment, No. 1, a small one-bedroom place. She told him that she'd had a fight with her boyfriend the previous evening because he was upset that she'd been gone all day, according to the report. Her boyfriend had grabbed her by her arms, dragged her from the apartment, and locked her out, the report said.

Firefighters helped her get back into her locked apartment. The door stayed locked when the boyfriend returned at 1:30 a.m. and tried to kick it open.

The police arrested the boyfriend at his godmother's house and charged him with domestic simple assault. He was released to his family around 9 or 10 a.m. with a verbal no-contact order.

After the police left, the neighbor came over and stayed with Nicole until 9 a.m. Nicole was exhausted and planning to leave her boyfriend, the neighbor later told the family. She promised Nicole she'd come back later and check on her.

It was around midnight when she returned. The door to Apt. 1 was locked, the neighbor later told the police, so she used a screwdriver and pried it open.

The apartment was dark, save for the bathroom light, she said. Nicole didn't answer her. She was frightened -- she later told Nicole's mother that she was afraid the boyfriend was still there. She called for her own boyfriend, who discovered Nicole submerged, fully clothed, in the bathtub.

Journal photo / Gretchen Ertl HOPING FOR AN ARREST: Robin Parsons is waiting for the police to solve the murder of her daughter, Nicole Parsons-Bucki. Her death on Sept. 10, 2001, was made to look like a suicide, but investigators ruled it a homicide.

THE DETECTIVES said later that it was one of the strangest scenes they'd come across.

Nicole's death was called in at 12:22 a.m. as a suicide. But it didn't look that way, the police said.

Nicole was curled up in a fetal position, face-down in less than a foot of water. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a scrunchie. She wore a white shirt, dark pants and socks.

The shower curtain was ripped down. A blow dryer was by the bathtub.

Her knickknacks were wrapped in tissue paper and placed in suitcases. Her clothes were packed in bags. She had groceries on the counter.

The detectives with the Bureau of Criminal Investigations went to work. Although her death was reported as a suicide, the detectives were treating the case as a "suspicious death" and collecting evidence for a homicide investigation, said Maj. Paul Kennedy. The autopsy would tell them what killed Nicole, he said.

Sgt. Mary Day and detectives Mark Sacco and Roy Wells were called in at around 5 a.m.. They questioned the neighbors.

They called the boyfriend's family and asked to speak with him, Day said. A Providence lawyer returned their call and said the boyfriend wasn't going to talk to them without a warrant, Day said. The police didn't have a warrant and, two years later, still haven't questioned the boyfriend. (The boyfriend did not respond to requests by The Journal for comment for this article.)

They went to the apartment to see what it could tell them.

"You go to the scene," Wells said, "and try to think like the killer."

By morning, the detectives told Nicole's family that she was dead. "The hardest thing is that I couldn't tell them how or why she died," Day said.

The family was learning of Nicole's death as terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. But they were numb to the outside events.

"I understand the tragedy that happened that day," Parsons said. "But this is our personal tragedy."

Assistant medical examiner Dorota Latuszynski was beginning the autopsy on Nicole's body as the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed. The autopsy had to answer crucial questions for the police.

Nicole had battled an addiction to narcotics, primarily Vicodin, in the past. Day wanted to know whether she could have overdosed. The medical examiner found that Nicole had taken Welbutrin, an antidepressant, and diet pills, but not enough to overdose or cause her to pass out, Day said.

There was water in Nicole's nasal cavity, meaning she was still breathing when she was underwater, Day said. That helped determine that Nicole died by drowning, at the hands of another.

She had bruises around her neck and marks by her neck chain, as if someone had been holding her head under water, Day said. Nicole had suffered a blow to the stomach that caused a pancreatic hemorrage, she said. She had bruises on her arms from where her boyfriend had grabbed her and dragged her from the apartment. His nickname "Huggie" was marked in a homemade tattoo on her right buttock.

The medical examiner didn't determine the exact time of Nicole's death, Day said.

The police ran their own tests. The bathtub drain had a slow leak, so the detectives filled up the tub and timed it to see how long it took to drain water to the level covering Nicole's body. They determined that Nicole had been dead for several hours before her body was discovered, Day said.

They questioned the neighbors about what they saw and heard. They checked the laundry room and other areas in the building to determine whether people could have heard noises in Nicole's apartment, Wells said.

The police learned that the boyfriend and his family had knocked on the door at around 3 p.m. Sept. 10 so he could get his things. There was no answer. The boyfriend and his brother were also seen in the hallway outside the apartment at around 11 p.m., Day said. The detectives were told they were being chased by other youths from the neighborhood, including someone named "Jigger." The police believe Jigger could be a witness, but they haven't found out who he is.

The detectives interviewed and re-interviewed people, including Nicole's family, friends, neighbors, and relatives and associates of her boyfriend. They hit the streets, getting into the underbelly of the neighborhood and leaning on people who would want to exchange information for leniency from the police, Kennedy said.

They got some information, but not enough, the detectives admitted.

"We need someone to come forward," Kennedy said.

Journal photo / Gretchen Ertl Nicole Parsons-Bucki's purse contents included a photo of her daughter, Frankie, with a poem.

WHEN THEY collected her belongings from the apartment, Nicole's family also searched for clues.

Her mother, Robin, her aunt Cynthia Haibon and her cousin Ro-Lyn Parsons went together -- each carrying their own sadness and regrets. Their relationships with Nicole had been strained since she began dating her new boyfriend about a year before.

Mrs. Parsons disliked him and barred him from her house, where she cared for Nicole's young daughter, Frankie. Ro-Lyn, who'd been like a sister to Nicole, had stopped speaking to her because of the boyfriend's behavior. Haibon, who'd let Nicole live with her after Nicole ended her brief marriage, forced her out after a violent fight with the boyfriend at her house.

IN SOME WAYS, Nicole was a mystery, a beautiful and cheerful but private woman. She laughed things off and didn't share her problems with anyone, Ro-Lyn Parsons said. But when she died, Nicole was estranged from her closest friends and family because of her relationship with the boyfriend. They wished she'd confided in them.

The police mentioned suicide as a possibility, but Nicole's family didn't believe it. The three women found their proof at the apartment: receipts for $160 of groceries and $80 of body lotions, bought the day before she died; a hairbrush on the sink; her belongings neatly packed.

"Suicide? Why would you buy groceries and commit suicide? Why all the bath oils and beauty things? Why would you brush your hair to commit suicide?" Haibon asked.

They ruled out a robbery-gone-bad when they saw a bucket of change and an expensive watch that were left untouched. "If you're going to murder somebody, why not rob them?" Haibon said.

Nicole's personal papers were spread across the kitchen table, along with some photos the women had never seen. Some were recent pictures of Nicole.

She didn't look like the woman they remembered. Nicole was petite, beautiful, and meticulous about her looks. But in these photos, she is haggard, her face is bloated, and her dark hair appears unwashed. She wears baggy, shapeless clothes and little makeup. She looks as if she aged 20 years.

Two women who were neighbors came by as they cleaned out Nicole's things. The one who'd found Nicole's body told them what she'd seen, they said. But something she said made them believe she knew more than she told the police.

They wanted to know why she'd broken into the apartment. "She said, 'What was I supposed to do -- wait for the body to start smelling?' " Robin Parsons said. That told them she must have known that Nicole was already dead.

"Someone heard something," said Ro-Lyn Parsons. "When I was in that apartment, I could hear everything. I don't know how you couldn't hear a murder."

THE LAST TWO years have been a frustrating time of silences and half-answers from authorities, her family said. They are afraid that Nicole has been forgotten -- that investigators were too distracted or careless on Sept. 11 to thoroughly review her murder.

Kennedy and the other detectives say that isn't the case.

"We all have families. We feel for these people. We want to solve this case," Kennedy said last week. "I understand the frustration by the family. If it was my daughter, I'd push until the end of time. . . .

"Now, we're looking for help from anyone. With some help, this is solvable," he said.

What was left of the life of the 27-year-old woman has been scattered among her family.

Haibon has kept Nicole's old robe, which she found draped over the couch in the apartment. Nicole often wore her robe when she was home.

The police had left the robe behind. But when Haibon picked it up, she noticed what appeared to be a shoe print where the robe would have covered Nicole's stomach.

Haibon won't give the robe to the police, despite their insistence that it could be evidence. Sgt. Day said the robe would be returned when the case was solved. Haibon is afraid that day won't come.

"It hasn't been washed," Haibon said, as she pulled it out of a cardboard box in her kitchen and held it close to her. "She covered up with it. It's the last thing I have. It still has her smell. It's worth more than gold."

The police returned Nicole's purse to her mother last December, but it wasn't until this summer that she could bring herself to open it. She found dark-red lipsticks, some that Nicole had borrowed from her. Phone numbers of friends and coworkers from her job at Fleet Bank Boston, where she'd worked until a few weeks before she died. Two graffiti-style drawings signed by the boyfriend "Love You Always."

And, a school picture of Nicole's daughter, Frankie, and a crayon drawing with a poem: "Roses are red, violets are blue . . . "

Nearly every picture in the wallet is of Frankie. She was the best part of her mother's life, and the center of her grandparents' lives.

Frankie celebrated her 10th birthday last month. She's getting long legs like her mother and has her same long dark hair. She has her mother's infectious giggle and at times her expressions remind her grandmother of Nicole.

Robin and Alan Parsons have been raising Frankie since she was a baby. "If I didn't have Frankie, I don't know where I'd be today," Robin Parsons said.

When Nicole died, Robin Parsons told Frankie that her mother had fallen asleep and didn't wake up. Frankie was angry when she found out she'd been lied to, her grandmother said.

Frankie sometimes has nightmares and cries for her mother. So does Nicole's mother. She planted roses -- Nicole loved them -- and put a memorial stone in front of the family's small bungalow. She wants the person who killed her daughter brought to justice.

"Frankie needs this," Robin Parsons said. "I don't want Frankie to think we live in a world where you can kill someone, and there are no repercussions."

The Providence police ask anyone with information about the murder of Nicole Parsons-Bucki to call Sgt. Mary Day at 243-6373.