KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Months of forensic testing finally gave Ray County investigators a starting point to solving a homicide.
They identified the skeletal remains found in a rural part of the county back in April 2022 as belonging to Nicole Kasch, who also went by Colette Greene.
A mushroom hunter found Kasch's remains in a wooded area off Missouri 10, about five miles north of Henrietta, Missouri.
Investigators want anyone who knew her or hung out with her to help them piece together what happened to her.
"Right now, we are trying build a profile on her and are going through any Facebook or social media accounts she has," Ray County Sheriff Scott Childers told KSHB 41 News.
Childers said they filed search warrants to go through her social media accounts. They want to see who she was talking to, where she might have been last, and if she had any arguments with anyone.
"Hopefully, there's going to be a treasure trove of information come out of that social media," Childers said.
He said they did not find a phone belonging to Kasch, who was 25 when she died.
This investigation is difficult because Childers said Kasch didn't leave behind a very big footprint.
She didn't have a steady job, own a car or rent an apartment. She was staying at different locations around Jackson County.
No one reported her missing and the sheriff believes that was likely due to her transient lifestyle.
"We do believe social media will give us a lot of information of what she was doing, who she was with," Childers said.
Forensic anthropologists said Kasch's body had been in the woods between six and 18 months, which puts the date of her homicide in 2021 or late 2020.
Childers said there were "obvious signs" her death was a homicide, but he declined to go into detail about the crime scene, except to say that Kasch's bones provided an indication of how she was killed.
"There was some trauma indicated. Once again, I don't want to release exactly what that trauma was," Childers said. "Some of it was old trauma, some of it looked to be fresh trauma."
Childers is keeping the crime scene details close because only the killer would know that information.
He said they don't believe her case is tied to any others in the area.
Childers said he's confident they'll find the killer as they gather more details from Kasch's social media accounts.
"She gets justice but also, if there's somebody out there that could do this again, that we could stop them and possibly save someone else's life in the process," Childers said.
Kasch was adopted and lived in Connecticut and New York when she was younger. Her adopted name was Colette Greene, but she'd been going by her birth name when she was killed.
She has biological family in the Kansas City area and had been staying in the Jackson County area for the last six to seven years.
Kasch was likely experiencing homelessness and struggled with substance abuse and mental-health issues.
The sheriff says none of that matters. She has adopted and biological family, as well as friends, who care about her.
"We don't want her name to be forgot," Childers said. "We don't want people to think that just because she wasn't prominent in society, that it doesn't matter. Matter of fact, it pushes us harder sometimes to get those people justice, because there's hundreds of thousands of people just like her in this area that we want to show them we care about you no matter what your last name is or your economical status is in society. You do matter to us."
Anyone with information should call an anonymous hotline to reach Ray County investigators at 816-470-0156.
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