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In 2007, Nichole Payne and her 16-year-old son Austin Wages were found dead in Jason Payne's house in Quitman, Texas. While Nichole was shot in the back of her head, her son had a bullet wound in his face.
Even though Jason contacted 911 after finding his wife and stepson dead, he was charged with double homicide and arrested in September 2008. The initial theory of murder-suicide was debunked after thorough investigation, collection of evidence, and forensic reports.
Jason is currently serving his life sentence for capital murder at the Mark W. Stiles Unit near Beaumont, Texas.
Dateline NBC will revisit the murder of Nichole and Austin in their upcoming episode titled House of Horrors, which will air on Saturday, September 17. It will follow the Payne family and will feature exclusive interviews with Jason's children, Riley and Joseph.
Read on to learn more about the case ahead of House of Horrors.
Where is Jason Payne now?
Jason was charged with double homicide of Nichole and Austin Wages in September 2008. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in 2010.
His conviction was overturned in 2013, but was found guilty in his second trial as well. Since prosecutors from both sides did not seek the death penalty, Payne was re-sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2016.
Payne's attorneys had filed for an appeal at the Texas Court of Appeals, but it was denied in 2017. Jason Payne is currently serving his sentence at the Mark W. Stiles Unit near Texas.
How is Jason Payne said to have murdered Nichole Payne and Austin Wages?
A brief overview of the case
On the morning of December 11, 2007, Jason Payne dialed 911 after he found his wife and stepson dead in his house in Quitman, Texas. Jason said that he had returned with his daughter Riley after dropping off his son Joseph at kindergarten.
Police arrived and found Nichole's body in a bedroom downstairs with no weapons around. A little later, Austin was found in the garage with a wound on his face, “on the mouth, kind of to the side,” according to court documents. A rifle was recovered from between his legs.
Autopsy was conducted for both Nichole and Austin. While the former's death was ruled a homicide, the cloud around her son's death was still unclear and was initially termed as suicide. Jason's statement on Austin's hostile behavior on the morning of the incident was used to further the claim.
What charges did Jason Payne face and why?
Initially, Nichole's death was ruled a murder, and Austin Wages was said to have shot his mother, going on to commit suicide. However, the accounts of investigators, forensic reports, inconsistencies in Jason's statements, and Riley's statement turned the tables with all fingers pointing at Jason.
Jason was thus charged with double homicide and was arrested eight months later, in September 2008.
To begin with, the investigating officers testified that after they arrived at Jason's house on the morning of December 11, 2007, they found Nichole's body to be cold, while Austin's was cold and stiff.
This indicated that Austin had died before Nichole. Furthermore, experts testified that the gun placement and the direction of fire that inflicted the wound on his face was inconsistent with the science of blood-spatter analysis. Thus, the angle of him dying by suicide was overruled.
In his testimony, Jason said that he returned and discovered the bodies, but neither checked to see if either were alive, nor had he touched them. But when he contacted 911, he told them that both his wife and son were shot. The investigators thus questioned how Jason was certain that they were shot when he claimed to not have touched the bodies.
In addition to the above, the rifle recovered from the site of the incident was missing any fingerprints as if it was cleaned before being placed near Austin's body. This was connected with the recovery of a bloodstained washrag that was found in Jason's car with gunpowder residue in it.
A conversation between Jason and his mother in which he asked her to destroy two tapes, also went against him.
Nichole's insurance policy was in question as well. The $100,000 policy had Jason, according to the court document in the case, as the sole beneficiary. After her death, when the insurance company was unsuccessful in extracting a statement from Jason regarding his wife's death, the proceeds were handed over to Payne's mother.
The final evidence, according to a KLTV report, was the therapy session with a young Riley, who had witnessed his father kill Nichole.
House of Horrors will air on Dateline NBC, on September 17, 2022.
