Friends and family say goodbye, one year later
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Nici Pietz was found murdered last January, eleven days after she went missing. Her case remains unsolved. At a one-year remembrance memorial held in Bothell, her friends and family recalled the life of a young woman taken too soon. Nici seemed to touch all who met her.
"Her eyes twinkled at you when she smiled and you could always tell she was a person who really cared," said her friend, David Tilzer.
Nici disappeared from her new purchased condo in Lynnwood. She was due at a meeting with friends on an early Saturday morning, but never arrived. At the time, her husband, David Pietz, spoke with KOMO 4 News.
"Just trying to focus on tying to find her, so that your mind doesn't go to the bad places," he said then.
More than a week later, his wife's body was found dumped in Burien, strangled and naked.
This past Friday, Nici's mother Gael Schneider, went to that place for the first time.
"To think - my baby, she would just lay here for eleven days and it was so wet and cold and rainy last year," she sobbed.
Gael says she knows who murdered her daughter but can't talk about it.
At the remembrance memorial she told Nici's friends, "Please, I beg of you, keep her story out there. Keep it out there until an arrest and conviction is made and justice prevails. Nici deserves that."
Noticeably absent at the event was Nici's husband, David. He was not shown once in any pictures during a fifteen-minute slide show that chronicled her life from a toddler to her wedding day.
But many others didn't miss the chance to remember a woman filled with hope and promise. Now their hope is for her killer to be brought to justice.
"Her eyes twinkled at you when she smiled and you could always tell she was a person who really cared," said her friend, David Tilzer.
Nici disappeared from her new purchased condo in Lynnwood. She was due at a meeting with friends on an early Saturday morning, but never arrived. At the time, her husband, David Pietz, spoke with KOMO 4 News.
"Just trying to focus on tying to find her, so that your mind doesn't go to the bad places," he said then.
More than a week later, his wife's body was found dumped in Burien, strangled and naked.
This past Friday, Nici's mother Gael Schneider, went to that place for the first time.
"To think - my baby, she would just lay here for eleven days and it was so wet and cold and rainy last year," she sobbed.
Gael says she knows who murdered her daughter but can't talk about it.
At the remembrance memorial she told Nici's friends, "Please, I beg of you, keep her story out there. Keep it out there until an arrest and conviction is made and justice prevails. Nici deserves that."
Noticeably absent at the event was Nici's husband, David. He was not shown once in any pictures during a fifteen-minute slide show that chronicled her life from a toddler to her wedding day.
But many others didn't miss the chance to remember a woman filled with hope and promise. Now their hope is for her killer to be brought to justice.
