In 2012, U.S. Army combat medic Kelli Bordeaux went missing. She was last seen at a bar in North Carolina, and then she was gone.
This piqued the interest of David Marshburn, a bounty hunter who claims to have captured over 500 criminals in his time as a bounty hunter. He started working as a bounty hunter because his wife is a bail bondswoman, and he found himself capable of catching the suspects that would skip out on their court appearances.
Shortly before hearing about Kelli Bordeaux’s disappearance, Marshburn had received his private investigator’s license. Bordeaux’s disappearance ended up being his very first case as a private investigator. However, he found that a missing person was not the same as a criminal skipping out on their court appearance.
Marshburn began by not telling the police or the mother about his investigation. He immediately suspected that Nick Holbert, a registered sex offender that had offered to drive Bordeaux home from the bar that night, had kidnapped and killed her. Yet, Holbert was extremely cooperative with authorities, to the point of speaking to authorities without a lawyer present. The authorities arrested Holbert because of his sex offender status and as assurance that he would not flee.
A year after the disappearance, Holbert was released from jail for failing to register as a sex offender. Marshburn then took an interesting and unorthodox approach: he began to give Holbert money each time they met, to the point that they became good friends.
As time went on, Marshburn became more and more manipulative, playing mind games with Holbert. He began to have fake, unmarked police cars stake out Holbert’s house. He presented Holbert with a fake plea bargain with an unbelievable 36-month sentence if he merely signed the bargain. Holbert hesitated before shoving it away. That’s when Marshburn knew he had Holbert cornered.
Marshburn managed to talk Holbert into showing him where he hid the body. Marshburn immediately called in the local authorities to have Holbert arrested and the body exhumed.
After the body was found, Holbert pleaded guilty to both kidnapping and killing Kelli Bordeaux. He was sentenced to life in prison with no parole. In a memorial service at Fort Bragg where Bordeaux was stationed, Bordeaux’s mother, Johnna Henson, presented Marshburn with her daughter’s dog tags.
After this case, Marshburn began work on another missing persons case.