Christi Jo Williams married Mark Lane Nichols when she was 19. They had two children together – Lindsey in 1984 and Preston in 1986.
The family resided in Gothenburg, Nebraska, a small community along Interstate 80 about 200 miles west of Lincoln.
Christi worked part-time at a local bar owned by Mark’s uncle called Pete’s Place in Gothenburg. Mark was employed at a gas station.
On Dec. 10, 1987, Mark, 26, and Christi, 22, took their children Christmas shopping and then to Pizza Hut. They hired teenage babysitter Diane Janssen for the rest of the evening and went to Pete’s Place.
After leaving the bar, Mark and Christi stopped at a 24-hour Jack & Jill convenience store, where Mark bought some milk and breakfast items. The store clerk said Christi appeared nervous and stayed near the clerk, chatting with him. The couple left the store at 12:30 a.m. and headed home.
No one has seen Christi since.
Mark returned home alone between 12:30 a.m. and 1 a.m. Janssen never saw Christi. She said that Christi was the one who always paid her and paid with a check. But on this night, Mark paid her in cash.
Mark claimed that Christi was home and had gone straight to the bathroom when they returned; the babysitter did not see her.
Between 8 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. (accounts vary on time) on Dec. 11, 1987, Christi’s mother, Connie Stanley, who lived 100 miles away in Big Springs, called the Nichols home for her daughter. Mark told her that Christi was still in bed and later admitted he lied because he did not want to worry Connie.
At 11 a.m., Mark dropped the kids off at Christi’s grandmother’s home but never asked if Christi was there or if she had seen or heard from her granddaughter, only saying that Christi was missing. Mark claimed he drove around for two hours looking for his wife, but police could not find anyone to corroborate his story.
Mark filed a missing person report later that afternoon. He told the police after he and Christi returned home from the bar and Janssen left, he went to sleep at 2 a.m. At 7 a.m., Lindsey and Preston woke him up, and he realized Christi was gone.
Mark said Christi had left of her own accord and took her purse and suitcase with her, yet both vehicles were still there. Even though he claimed he had not seen her since their argument at 2 a.m., he knew precisely what Christi had allegedly packed in the suitcase: a sweatshirt, jeans, bra, and jacket.
According to The Charley Project, Mark also knew the contents of her purse: a hairbrush, lighter, lipstick, matchbook, mirror, a nail file, Neutrogena cream, and a piece of gum.
Christi’s diamond jewelry and driver’s license were left behind. She never retrieved her final paycheck from Pete’s Place.
Miraculously, in March 1988, three months after Christi vanished, police found the purse and suitcase, with everything still inside, at an I-80 rest stop near Maxwell, 25 miles northwest of Gothenburg. Authorities stated it appeared as if whoever placed them there had wanted them to be found.
Police conducted extensive searches in and around Gothenburg, but they never found any trace of Christi.
Christi’s disappearance barely received any local media coverage. The Gothenburg Leader reported in 2020 that Christi “was first reported missing to the public in the December 16 issue of the local newspaper, which was the first edition of the weekly paper to be published after Christi was last seen.” It was merely a tiny blurb on page 2, asking the public to be on the watch for her.
There was no mention of the case again in the paper until Jan. 6, 1988, nearly an entire month after Christi had gone missing. The Lincoln Journal Star reported a brief piece in February 1988 and in December 1988.
Mark maintained that his wife left of her own free will and suggested she might have gone with another man. After her disappearance, Mark found a note supposedly from Christi addressed to the other man in Christi’s car.
The note read:
I want you to know I will probably be leaving after Christmas and I will try not to see or talk to you until then. It will all work out somehow. I’m really sorry.”
LostnFoundBlogs.com
Police interviewed the man and ruled him out as a suspect.
According to the Jan. 6 newspaper, Gothenburg police chief G.R. “Bob” Shackelton said he did not find anything pointing to foul play. Three people in North Platte and Gothenburg reported seeing Christi earlier in December after being reported missing.
Reports of domestic violence soon emerged. Investigators learned that Christi was treated at Gothenburg Memorial Hospital for injuries she received during a fight with Mark just 10 days before she vanished and spoke with an abuse counselor.
Christi also met with a divorce attorney, Charles Berreckman, who had an office in nearby Cozad, on Dec. 9, 1987. Berreckman said Christi was highly stressed, and it looked like someone had beaten her. She told him that she wanted to divorce Mark and get full custody of their children. Berreckman and Christi decided to contact the authorities over the abuse.
Berreckman believed Christi’s account that Mark had abused her and advised Christi not to return home, but she did anyway. However, she scheduled another appointment with him but disappeared before she could keep it.
Mark had found out about the lawyer she visited and was livid. Christi was panicked at the thought of not having her children and contacted the police and tried to file a police report but Bob Shackleton told her Mark had the right to withhold them from her. She was also told to leave the property and if she returned again, she’d be arrested. This was apparently the 3rd time that day alone Police Chief Shackleton had harassed Christi. He had also confronted her at the Jack & Jill store (according to the clerk who witnessed it) as well as on the street (which the Chief later admitted to Connie) telling her something to the affect that she needed to ‘get her act together with this thing with Mark’.
LostnFoundBlogs.com
When Christi met with the abuse counselor, it was in Shackleton’s office. It’s also worth noting that the ER doctor who treated Christi at the hospital was Shackleton’s soon-to-be second wife, Carol Shackleton. They later married on April 8, 1988.
Mark and the children moved out of the Gothenburg home one day after Christi disappeared. A few days later, he packed up all their belongings and sold both family cars but kept his black pickup truck.
He took a polygraph test in 1987, but the results were inconclusive.
Mark filed for divorce in 1990 on the grounds of desertion. He again claimed his wife left voluntarily and abandoned their children.
Mark has lived in numerous locations in the U.S. since 1987. According to Whitepages.com, he currently lives in Hastings, NE, 110 miles southeast of Gothenburg.
He is now in his early 60s and has been married at least once since Christi vanished. Additionally, he has two adult daughters from other relationships born after Christi disappeared.
Mark is the only suspect in Christi’s disappearance. Police claim the case is still active and hope that DNA might provide long-awaited answers one day.
Christi’s case aired on “Unsolved Mysteries” in November 1988. It’s the first case in the video below. Her children, Lindsey and Preston, are now in their 30s. Lindsey lives in Arkansas, and Preston resides in Florida. Preston looks like his mother.
I highly suggest you read this blog post on Christi’s disappearance. It’s more detailed than mine. I do not know the author and have never been to the site before. However, the author interviewed Christi’s family and others to get the facts of the case and worked extremely hard on it. I stumbled upon this post after I had already done most of what little research I could access on the matter. Because the author worked so hard on it, I used the article as a source but only contained minimal information from their piece. Please read the author’s full blog post on Christi. It will pretty much confirm for you what you likely already believe. They also have other pictures of Christi and Mark.
True Crime Diva’s Thoughts
I know this one is a no-brainer, but it pissed me off to think that man got away with murder.
On UM, Mark denies any involvement in his wife’s disappearance, but in my opinion, he does not come across as believable.
Apparently, Christi was his second wife. I have no info on his first or third wife.
Here’s what I think happened to Christi.
After leaving the convenience store, something happened between Mark and Christi inside the vehicle on the way home.
He killed her somehow, likely through a beating, and kept her body inside the vehicle. When he supposedly spent 2 hours searching for his wife, he disposed of her body instead. I believe he drove to his parents’ house in Gothenberg and told them what happened.
They, and possibly his two brothers, helped with the disposal of Christi’s body on his parents’ property. If you read the post on LostnFoundBlogs.com, the author states that Mark’s parents had some concrete poured within days of Christi’s disappearance and put a garage on it.
Mark’s parents, Loel and Verna Nichols passed away in 2015 and 2017, taking his secret to their graves. I hope they’re not resting peacefully.
Let’s discuss the purse and suitcase.
Mark listed every single item in Christi’s purse and suitcase, and right there, that tells me he planted all of it. There is no way in hell a man would know what his wife carries in her purse. Also, he claimed he went to bed at 2 a.m., so how the hell would he know what she packed? He claimed he didn’t see her again after that.
And the contents of the suitcase, well, no underwear or pajamas or enough clothes for a lengthy getaway.
The lighter and matchbook, two items inside the purse, suggest that Christi smoked, yet no cigarettes were in the purse. What’s also not inside the purse? A wallet.
The fact that he was dumb enough to make sure police found her purse shows his intelligence level. No woman goes anywhere without her purse.
Frankly, there’s no way as terrified as Christi was of her husband that she would have packed a suitcase while he was still home.
He packed both the purse and suitcase and placed them at the rest stop so police would find them. I bet he kept them at his parents’ home until he disposed of them.
Shackleton was the Gothenburg police chief from 1974 to 1988 when he retired, just months after Christi vanished. He would have only been in his 50s at the time. According to a blurb in the March 11, 1988 issue of the Lincoln Journal Star, there was a four-month police probe regarding criminal allegations against Shackleton that officials were close to wrapping up. I wonder what happened there. I could not find anything else on the matter.
Shackleton died from cancer in 2002 at age 67. He was friends with Mark’s parents and likely had known Mark his whole life. So, I believe he helped cover up the crime, too. He did not believe Christi’s story of abuse; that much is obvious.
Janssen was adamant she never saw Christi upon Mark’s return, and I believe her. I currently babysit children in my spare time and always speak with both parents when both are present. I would notice if the wife did not return home after an evening out together. If you’re going to lie, at least make it believable.
Now, about the note.
Why would Christi leave a note to her lover in a car she shared with her husband, who beat her? That makes no sense, and it does make me wonder if someone planted the note. Do investigators know for sure that she wrote it? Maybe someone — *cough* Mark — forced her to write it before killing her.
Here is what he looks like as of 2015. He posted a lot publicly on Facebook until around the time of LostnBlogs.com article. Hmm, I wonder why. 🤭
