The second arrest came months after detectives first began piecing together a missing-person report with digital records and private conversations.
FORT WORTH, Texas — The murder case over John Richardson’s death is being built around a simple but powerful set of evidence: where three phones were, what friends say they heard and what one girlfriend told detectives after a night of drinking led to an alleged confession.
That evidence led police in March to arrest Chase Cook, 23, months after they had already jailed Alexander James Nicholas, 23, in the death of Richardson, 24. The new arrest matters because it shows how investigators moved beyond the first suspect’s shifting account and tied a second man to the same wooded area where Richardson’s body was found in a shallow grave on Dec. 22. Together, the affidavits described by local outlets sketch a case that relies less on a public scene and more on movements, contradictions and what people later said in private.
Detectives said the digital trail became especially important after Richardson disappeared following a Nov. 30 party. Nicholas told police he left the gathering with Richardson and then dropped him off alive near Alliance Boulevard and the Buc-ee’s along Interstate 35W after an argument during the drive. Investigators later said phone data did not support that route. Instead, the records they reviewed from Dec. 18 to Dec. 21 placed Nicholas at Cook’s home and later in a wooded area behind houses in a neighborhood where a mutual friend lived. Police said Richardson’s phone stopped communicating in that same area. When homicide detectives searched there on Dec. 22, they found his body buried in a shallow grave.
Cook’s alleged role, as laid out in court papers, came into sharper focus only after detectives seized and searched his cellphone. Police said Cook had refused consent when first asked. Once they obtained a warrant, they said the data showed him in the same location as Nicholas and Richardson during the critical period. The records also captured messages from Cook’s girlfriend growing upset because he was gone through the night. Investigators wrote that Richardson was believed to still be alive when Cook joined Nicholas, a detail that could become important as prosecutors explain whether they believe Cook helped in the killing, the burial or both. Police have not publicly laid out a minute-by-minute account of what each man is accused of doing.
Witness accounts fill in the parts that the phones cannot. One friend told detectives Nicholas had shown off a silver-and-black handgun at the party. Days later, that same friend said, Nicholas remarked that Richardson “wouldn’t be coming around anymore.” When pressed, the affidavit says, Nicholas mimed a gun with his hand, nodded when asked whether he had killed Richardson and said that if the friend wanted to know more, they could go into the woods and turn their phones off. Another witness told police Nicholas was still angry about a previous car accident that he blamed on Richardson. The records do not say that either witness saw the killing. Their value to detectives was in giving motive and in undercutting Nicholas’s claim that he had simply dropped Richardson off alive.
The most striking statement in the later affidavit came from Cook’s girlfriend. She told detectives Cook left home after receiving a late message saying he needed to “go help Alex.” She said he did not return until later the next day. Then, after he had been drinking a few days later, she said Cook told her he and Nicholas had dug a six-foot hole in the woods that night. Investigators wrote that the statement was important because it described burial conduct before those details were broadly public. Police used that account, along with the cellphone data, to argue that Cook was not a bystander and that his involvement went beyond hearing about the crime later.
Even with those details, the case still contains gaps. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that Richardson died from multiple stab wounds, defensive wounds and blunt-force trauma to the head. Yet local reporting said the affidavits did not describe a publicly identified murder weapon, and FOX 4 said no blood evidence was described in the vehicle detectives believe was used to give Richardson a ride. That leaves unanswered where the fatal assault happened, whether it unfolded inside a vehicle, in the woods or at another location, and whether anyone besides the two charged men was present at any point. Police also have not publicly said whether the handgun seen at the party had any connection to the death.
The structure of the investigation helps explain why the case developed in stages. Police got a missing-person report on Dec. 2, then quickly moved into a homicide posture after early interviews raised doubts about the story that Richardson had simply been let out somewhere in north Fort Worth. Detectives spent days interviewing people from the party, pulling phone records and testing Nicholas’s account against the available evidence. Only after they recovered Richardson’s body and reviewed more digital evidence did the second arrest follow. Nicholas was arrested in late December after a warrant was issued on Dec. 24. Cook’s warrant was issued March 16, and he was taken into custody days later.
That staggered timeline may shape what comes next in court. Nicholas is being held on a $300,000 bond, while Cook is being held on a $250,000 bond. Both are charged with murder. Prosecutors will likely face pressure to show jurors how the digital map, the witness interviews and the post-crime statements fit together into one coherent story. Defense lawyers, in turn, can be expected to probe what is missing: no public murder weapon, no detailed public reconstruction of the attack and an affidavit record that still leaves room for dispute over who did what and when.
The prosecution’s case appears to rest on accumulation rather than spectacle. No single piece of evidence publicly described so far seems to answer every question. The strength of the case, as detectives present it, is that the phones, the witness statements and the girlfriend’s account all point toward the same wooded area and the same two men. The next major developments are likely to come in hearings and any future filings that spell out the state’s theory in fuller detail.
Author note: Last updated April 9, 2026.