What is a Murder-Suicide? One Man's Journey Turning Pain Into Positivity.

Murder suicide is the kind of tragedy that leaves all of us asking why. That's what we're figuring out by talking to the people who've lived through it unlike the often-sensational coverage of True Crime in the media the aim of our podcast is to give our viewers and our listeners an up close and personal accurate account of murder suicide the risk factors the personal experience and the aftermath on our podcast the real expert is a person who's lived through it, the Survivor.

In our fifth episode, premiering April 15, Joni Johnston, a forensic psychologist and private investigator, and Jacquelyn Jamason, a mental health professional, are our hosts. 

Episode 5 - Dustin brings us the story of Dustin, who lost his sister in a murder-suicide perpetrated by her ex-boyfriend. Dustin and his family turned pain into positivity by creating a foundation to support other women trying to escape domestic violence.

Quotes from Episode 5: 

Meet Dustin:

My name is Dustin Meyer I reside in central Minnesota. I grew up in a small town called St Peter Minnesota, a small population, a small high school. My sister and I both graduated from the same high school. She was a few years younger than me, followed me to the exact same college I went because she had to follow and copy everything that I do. And ironically we graduated at the same time. [She was a] very, very smart individual was one of the rare people that got through college in four years in and out and landed a really great job.

What is a Murder-Suicide?

Nikki had a boyfriend for quite a few years. It's somebody that she had known in high school. Knew through college. Kind of right after she graduated from college they reconnected again. Dated for a couple years. He was a very successful engineer there was a little bit of age gap. He was quite a few years older than my sister but was very established with his career in engineering. Very high-paying job, liked to wine and dine her. Really treat her, you know, like the princess that she was. And like to spoil our family kind of the same way, you know, there's many times that he' reach out and say hey we're going to be in so and so, you know, I'd love to take you and your girlfriend, at the time, out for dinner and get everybody together. And, you know, he was involved with every holiday with my family. He was at my wedding, you know, so he grew to be very close to our family to, you know, conversation actually happening of maybe this is the one. Maybe this is who will be her future husband. Because it was very serious.

Then randomly one day I get a text message from her letting me know that they had broken up. She had moved out of their town home that they had rented together. So she was living in the basement of her friend's house, about a month later she had let me know that she was still paying the rent on the old property. The lease was only taken down to her name and not both of their names. And Jesse wasn't paying rent. And she didn't want it to hurt her credit score, so she continued paying rent for the old property. Follow up about two months later he had randomly reached out to her and said “He I feel bad that you've been paying rent for this, can you swing over after work I want to pay you back? I have a check waiting for you.”

So she went over to their old town home together to get this check from him of the money that he owed her for still living there, and that's when the murder happened.

On Mental Health:

Meeting with the investigators and the sheriff's department. After we met with them as a family. So myself my mom and dad and my girlfriend at the time who was now my wife. We were called in it was kind of here's what we found, you know, this took place a month after the murder-suicide occurred. So we had already had her funeral. We already buried her. A lot of questions sitting for 30 days and wondering what happened that led to this? is something that was… we were very excited to meet with the investigator, let's put that way. It was an opportunity for us to get her belongings that were at the scene, her vehicle was at the scene.

But they came back and told us there was numerous times that she had called the police to come deescalate the situation that took place there. And we had no idea that that type of stuff was going on. So it was arguments.

He was bipolar. A week before the murder-suicide took place he was in his office and breaking to other co-workers that “I'm not taking my medication anymore. I feel great. I don't need this medication anymore.” So that kind of LED them to thinking of maybe why this all happened. He wasn't in in the right mindset at the time. But yeah their relationship, and their friendship, though had spanned probably over 12, 13 years that they've known each other.

There was one situation where the police got a report from one of her co-workers at her job. That about a month prior she opened up and told the whole story to her, about “Oh I'm still paying rent on this old town home, he's still living there, I'm not.” and of course the coworker is like “You need to stop paying that, you know, it's not your responsibility. You're not even living there.” and then her concerns over having her name on the lease. But then she kind of opened up a little bit to him, he would get really verbal. Lots of shouting, a lot of yelling, had anger issues. Little things would set him off. But no conversations about any physical harm or anything like that. And even the police reports stated, majority of them were around it was all verbal, you know. “Can you please come and help deescalate the situation? He's upset over something. Can you please talk to him?”

But we never got into any depth on was it because he was off his medications at the time/ or did it have something to do with this bipolar disorder.

On Social Media & The Need To Appear Perfect:

My perspective on it is you have a 25, 26-year-old woman who, a lot of her friends are getting married, they already have children, they have the white house with the white picket fence. Right everything is so perfect. And now you have the inclusion of you look at 2010, 2011. That was kind of like the really big like social media slam of “Hey we got this thing called Facebook.” I joke all the time I hear about domestic abuse cases, and you go to their Facebook page and you're like “Look at this happy family. Everything is so picture perfect. They got their four kids. They got their dog. Everything is so perfect.”

So I think that still today I talk a lot about the “social media disguise”. They had everything perfect or you even hear about people getting divorced today and you're like “How? You guys are going on all these trips, and these fancy dinners, and you share your entire life on social media. And everything is so perfect.” So I think that probably had a lot to play with it. Is she wanted to be like her friends. And she wanted to be like her big brother, who's engaged and about to get married, and everything is perfect in our lives. And “I'm not going to say anything because why would I say anything to make myself not look happy?” Right? So I think that has a lot to do with it.

But I think the most recent case that really stands out is that YouTube Mom with her kids that got arrested because she was keeping them in dog kennels and keeping them all this stuff. But she's posting videos daily of their perfect life. And the kids are so happy. And things like that so not everything you see online is actually what is actually happening in real life. And I think that had a lot to do with it. Just because it was such a powerful impact at that time the introduction of Facebook, and people's profiles, and posting your job title on there. If you're married. And things like that it, you know, it basically categorizes you as the type of person that you are. And nobody wants to come out as a bad person.

I see a lot of cases nowadays though where people do speak up. “Hey Bob and I got a divorce, and I left him because he verbally abused me. And he was not a nice person to be around. And I got out and found a safe place.” And the positive feedback that comes with that nowadays is just phenomenal of “Good for you that's amazing! you could have been a victim.” you know, you just don't know. So yeah social media has definitely a large impact on what's happening in today's world.

That keeping the positive image of what's going on in her life I think was the most important thing that she wanted to portray to my parents. I'm guilty of it also, and there's things that go on in my life that I wouldn't openly talk to my parents about but, hey if I got a promotion at work or things were going really great, I'd make sure that I let them know. But the negative, again you have the stigma that you want to impress your parents. And she was definitely one of those people. She, like I said, she was a smart one. She was, you know, if you want to think about brothers and sisters and competitiveness that we had I'm like “Okay yep you got amazing grades, and you got out of college of four years. And I went to college for seven years, I should be a doctor. But I changed my major three times and I'm definitely not a doctor.”

So I think there was a stigma of “I want to be just perfect. I want everything in my life to appear perfect.” Like I said, she landed an amazing job right outside of school. Has this amazing boyfriend. They get a gorgeous town home together. Bought a brand-new car. Everything is just so perfect. My parents had no idea. Right so they were kind of in the same shock when we met down met with the private investigator and the sheriff's department. And here's what's been going down and here's our police records and the calls that we've taken, you know, to the residence and things like that it was everyone was just shocked. Nobody had any idea.

On The Perpetrator's Family:

We had a massive turn off for a funeral. Jesse didn't have a funeral at all. You know, he was quickly labeled on social media as a “monster.” what, you know, a lot of her friends attacked his page immediately. “You're such a monster. Why would you do this?”

I don't know what happened on the back end with if he was cremated or if there was actually a funeral or anything like that. But it was kept very silent. No obituary. No anything coming from his side. We had a massive turn off for my sister's funeral. It was simply amazing how many people came. When he killed her, we haven't really talked about the actual murder it itself, but he shot her point blank in the head, in the mouth. So it answered just right above her lip I believe. We still had an open casket. They did an amazing job with making her look great. And it was something that was really important to my parents, to make sure that they had open casket for all of her friends to see her one last time. It was a great thing, you know, but it it's something we look back, you know, today's 2025, this happened in 2011. My mom still has an extremely difficult time without having her daughter around. It's every holiday, every birthday, anniversary of her death. It's something that still affects us all, but to her it affects her so deep. My dad passed away unfortunately about a year and a half ago of cancer. You know, while he was getting ready to pass it I'm going to go see your sister. I'm going to go find Nikki. She's waiting for me, you know, so it was a really powerful thing.

We received a letter from his mom a few months after everything. Her apologizing to my parents. And she again it it was a weird letter of “My son's not a monster. I'm not sure what happened here. I am so sorry that he took your daughter and sister away from you. But I lost a son. I'm the one that went,” and we didn't even realize this, but she is the one that volunteered to go clean up the town home after it all happened.

So she wrote in-depth in a letter about cleaning up Nikki's blood. And cleaning up our baby's blood. And all this kind of stuff. It was it was very eerie, very, something was really weird about it. My parents never wrote her back. Never did anything back. But very strange. Right? And that's all that's the last that we had heard of anything. So, yeah. Definitely had had the creepy factor to it, with this letter. I'm not even sure what my parents did with that letter. My mom read it off to me and I said “This is crazy talk. This is just didn't feel normal.”

You think about the parent so that these mass shooters that are taking place. And it's just, what do you do? Did you, as a parent, now that I'm a parent, it's “What did I do wrong?” or “Where did I go wrong?” or “What did I not do a good enough job with for this to happen?” so I can understand that she’s probably, still today, having a very difficult time. But I don't know her personally, never seen her.

On Finding Support:

So now me as only child it's just my mom and I left. There is a lot of stress behind. My mom lives two and a half hours away from me. And I know that she goes through a lot a lot of deep thoughts and issues still flashbacks and everything going on today. They got into a grief counseling group immediately after it happened. This is parents of children who have passed away. Made some great friends with that. It was a great program for them. And they still talk to him today. But they would meet once a week and share their stories and just allowed them to talk about it. So that was definitely a plus in her life. But it it's still today it's still very difficult, especially with my dad passing.

There's tons of local groups every town has local groups right, you know, at the church, at City Hall, or the community centers locally. You could easily find one off of a quick Google search. But I'd highly recommend anybody to take advantage of it. It's something that, I didn't go to therapy, I didn't do anything after. Looking back now I probably should have. It was something that me being the big brother and having to fight through this newly married. I put on the tough man face and just kind of buried it. I think the only way that I'm unbearing what I went through is doing what I'm doing with you guys, right now. And being able to talk about it and try to make a change. Or do what we're doing on a local level with Annamarie’s Alliance here in town in the women's shelter. I think it's just it's kind of my therapy right? so find help. There's groups to help.

I think my best advice if we think about the year after. Again about the part of going from feeling like I'm just their oldest son to this caregiver role. That's what definitely helped. It was a lot just to help my parents. And try to do everything. I felt like I had this responsibility to try to make everybody as happy as possible. But my wife was just, my wife was a great support system. Amazing support system. Same with my mother-in-law, she had dealt with losing a sibling in their 20s. So it really came down to “I'm not the only one.” The first people that reached out to me my public speaking is our local church that we go to. And it was BKE Ministries. And that's where the video originated from that I shared with you guys. And to be able to talk publicly about it or try to figure out a way to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Or try to help somebody that's in an abusive relationship escape that abusive relationship. I think that's just that that was kind of my therapy. And again also being told about Annamarie’s Alliance, which, I've been living in this area for 25 years now. And at the time I had no idea that this woman's shelter even existed. Or what the demand was for this woman's shelter. And I think that's just kind of where I said “All right. I think I found my where, I need to insert myself here and try to do whatever I can to make sure this doesn't happen again.”

Just to continue putting it out there. I haven't touched base on this, but again my wife and I own this business, and it gives us the platform to really talk about domestic abuse. And try to help people. And to advertise on social media and get it out to the public. And even my wife having somebody sit in her chair and start crying and saying, “I'm in a bad spot.” that my wife is in a situation that she can help people also. So to me it's just I feel like there was also outreach to myself knowing people knowing of the situation that I went through of “Hey I'm in not such a good situation right now what do you think I should do? How do I get out of this?” and to be able to help people that way too. Never in a million years did I think I would be someone talking about “How can I protect women in abusive relationships?” but here we are. And I've kind of just put on that new hat and try to wear it with pride and do whatever I can to make things better for everybody.

[My wife] owns a hair salon in central Minnesota. And we use that hair salon as a platform to help raise donations for Annamarie Alliance. So to touch back on what this battered woman shelter is and what they do, you know, the biggest things that you hear in domestic abuse relationships, before a murder happens is “I didn't know what to do. I didn't know where to go. I had no place to go. We have kids, we have a dog. He makes all the money. I couldn't do anything on my own.” And this is a place that the women could literally grab their kids and their dogs, and walk out the house with nothing, except for what's on their back. And land at a place that has all the food you'll ever need, all the clothes you'll ever need, all the dog food you'll ever need, make sure the kids get to school, help you find a job, help you do everything on your own so you're not so reliant on being with this abuser anymore. And it gets to the point where they find their own place to live, and they're doing amazing. So to me that's, I feel like deep down, Nikki tried to do that on her own. “I'm going to go find this place” and unfortunately there was a bait and switch that occurred. And I wish you would have called and said “Hey Jesse has money for me I'm going to go pick it up.” because I would have said “No I'll go pick it up”, you know, we had no idea, you know, if it wasn't for what she had mentioned to her coworker that he finally had a check waiting for her, and she was going to go pick it up, we would have never known what was the actual purpose of her going there. They never found a check at the scene. There wasn't an envelope of money. There wasn't anything. So it would have been there, would have been a lot more what ifs, if she wouldn’t have shared that story with her coworker. But I just wish she would have called her big brother one more time and said “Hey I'm in this situation. What do I do?” And unfortunately she didn't. And that just something that still really bugs me today.

On The Nikki Foundation:

We start the Nikki Foundation early off. Basically a year after her death. My mom kept saying “We got to find a way to keep her spirit alive. How do we keep her spirit alive?” she loves kids, again I keep touching on the kids’ piece of it, she was just amazing with kids. So I started thinking “Why don't we start a nonprofit that starts college scholarships for any kids that are victims of murder-suicide?” So we're talking, you know, father kills mother, kills himself, or vice versa whatever it may be. And we started thinking, you know, how often does this actually happen? you know, is this going to be powerful enough? and it just kept appearing in the news and appearing in the news. And it was just non-stop.

So for many years we basically chased down the survivors of murder-suicide, these children. And it was kind of my mom's thing to do, of hey she'll send me a text message “Hey I just saw the news there was one that happened in this town I'm going to dig into it and figure out where they're at.” and then she calls the local banks and sets up a checking account for this child that they can't touch until they're 18 years old and puts money into it. And it was just something that was very therapeutic for her. And on our website for the Nikki Foundation we have some of those stories on there. Unfortunately it got out of out of control. There's so many cases that we couldn't help everybody. And that was hard. Also the amount of work to put together the silent auctions and the event itself got to be a lot of work. I have my dad going door to door to businesses and asking for donations for silent auction items and things like that. And just so we were able to do it for quite a few years. And we were able to really raise a lot of money. And we beat all quarters that we were hoping to. And we flipped it to a college scholarship at the high school that my sister and I graduated from. So they have the Nicki Meyer scholarship. And it's for a boy and a girl who are going to college for criminal justice. So that's how we're applying all the funds today.

You know, but now you're dealing with kids who have who have cell phones, and life is different. And I got to think about the online presence and, you know, making sure nobody reaches out to them that way, but it is a fear. I'm always going to have that fear it's a PTSD of what happened to Nikki. And make sure nothing happens to them, for sure.

On guns:

Oh I'm super mixed on it. So we haven't really got into the whole discussion of what went down. I didn't know that he owned guns, let alone, I believe there was six guns found at the scene. So he had guns hidden in couch cushions. Guns in the bedroom, kind of staggered all over the place. The way the murder happened, according to the forensic scientists, or the investigators, is it was an ambush. She had put her purse on the counter, walked in the living room, and that's where it occurred. They think he was coming down the steps into the living room. It was a two-story town home. And just put the gun right in her face and pulled the trigger.

So there was a there was a premeditative purpose to all this right? there was almost an hour in between the murder and the suicide. So did he think this through? did he, had this idea “I was going to kill her”? But then I don't think he thought about what happens after the fact. He had touched her face. There's handprints of blood everywhere. She died instantly, obviously, just because of the range and where to hit her. But he had gone up and down the stairs multiple times. They kind of follow the blood trail that he had on him. And then he took his own life about an hour later.

so my standpoint on guns… I’m an avid outdoorsman, hunter. I don't own any handguns. I don't see a need to have a handgun. I have a lot of friends that have handguns. I've always kind of had the mentality that “You're never going to shoot anyone if you don't have a gun”, you know, “You can't shoot someone if you don't have a gun.” so I my guns are for deer hunting and duck hunting purposes is only. They're shotguns right? we grew up, that's how Nicki and I grew up. My dad was a very avid outdoorsman, hunter, fisherman. You don't live in Minnesota if you don't shoot a deer, shoot a duck, or a goose, or something right? So the same with fishing. But that's really my standpoint. I can't get into any type of situation if I if I don't have the gun.

This mass collection, right? And that's kind of the police said, you know, these six guns they're not cheap. Again the guy had money. But he had this avid gun collection. And he thought he would hide them all around the house so that when she came in he was able to grab them quickly.

On Mental Illness:

Right? Yeah for sure. Yeah, especially with the bipolar piece of it too. And that's something that we didn't really fully understand. I didn't even know what bipolar really was, right? It's something that you don't really, you know, you hear autism get talked about a lot but bipolar is kind of its own different realm.

There is yeah. And we knew there was something there. I just didn't know what it was. It never came out and it said, “Hey Jesse has bipolar disorder, and he has to take this medication, he has to do this, this, this, just to do whatever.” And we had no idea.

It was brought up that he takes medication for something and, you know, we'd have times where I'd be with him and, you know, he wouldn't say a word. And then you have times with him where he was just a chatter box. So with the bipolar disorder, you have these highs and lows. And that's where the medication comes into play. But I just never thought twice about it, you know, I look at my friends today and for all I know they could have bipolar disorder too because they act the exact same way. But it's just kind of like “Okay you're different in in this aspect, but I'm you're super nice. And to me you were treating my sister well, and she loved you and everything was amazing.” so I just treated him with that respect.

There's always the thoughts that maybe his mental state at the time was “Well if I can't have you, nobody can have you.” type thing. Again that's just speculation but just the story line and how everything unfolded that's kind of how it appeared to us personally, anyways.

On Open Communication:

For sure as well yeah to have that open line communication that “You don't have to tell me all the good. You can also tell me the bad. And I'll help you the best I can.”

Don't be ashamed, you don't need to impress anybody on social media. You don't need to impress anyone in your family. Or your friends. Life's too short. Ask for help. There's so many people that want to help there's so many organizations that are out there and I know a lot of times they don't may not do a good enough job to advertise it or publicize it because maybe they don't have the funds to actually do that. But it takes one phone call to the National Domestic Abuse Hotline, and they'll put you in touch with the place that's closest to your house that you can escape to and talk to somebody in in a safe environment and get the help that you need. So I just really push, just make the phone call.

Jacque: Well I hope you keep doing this amazing work and advocacy. Thank you so much.

Dustin: Absolutely, I'll never stop.