Murdered & Missing Columbine Survivors

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What happened to Columbine student and school shooting survivor Brandi Jo Malonson, who was last seen around Christmas 2006?

What happens to victims who aren’t killed or visibly injured, but who are left in the wake of a crime to pick up the broken pieces and carry on with life? What happened to Columbine survivor Brandi Jo Malonson, who was last seen around Christmas 2006? Who killed her friends and classmates Nick Kunselman and Stephanie Hart-Grizzell less than a year after Columbine? Today, we’ll look at these and other lesser-known cases from Littleton, Colorado, the community where the infamous school shooting took place.

What happened to Columbine student and school shooting survivor Brandi Jo Malonson, who was last seen around Christmas 2006?
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About Littleton 

Littleton, Colorado, is located just east of the entrance to America’s Rocky Mountains, on the suburban outskirts just south of Denver. To get a feel for how breathtaking and beautiful this area is, listen to John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High,” which is also Colorado’s state song. Littleton sits at an elevation of 5,351 feet and falls within three counties – Arapahoe, Douglas, and Jefferson. The community developed during the mid-19th century gold rush, and it grew again in the mid-20th century as an aerospace product manufacturing area. Its current population of predominantly white, English-speaking, middle-class citizens is pushing 50,000. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, which is the period we’re covering today, it was closer to 40,000. Fun fact: the fictional town in the animated comedy show South Park is loosely inspired by Littleton as the show’s co-creators are from the area.   

One day that changed history  

Jefferson County’s Columbine High School, serving several Littleton neighborhoods, was built in 1973. It was named after Colorado’s state flower, and its mascot is the “Rebel” in the likeness of an American Revolutionary War soldier, rifle and all. After the events of April 20, 1999, the Rebel’s rifle was removed.    

That’s the day two senior students planted bombs in Columbine High School’s cafeteria and waited in the parking lot with guns and additional explosives to use on students and faculty as they fled from the explosions. When the bombs didn’t detonate as planned, the pair entered the school, shooting at many they encountered along the way, especially terrorizing a group of students hiding in the school’s library. They killed 12 students and one teacher, injuring dozens more, before shooting and killing themselves.  

It was the deadliest massacre in America at the time and one of the biggest news stories of the decade. The incident continues to inspire other school shootings, and the killers’ motives continue to intrigue researchers. Police response was another hotly debated topic, with SWAT waiting three hours before entering the building to evacuate the wounded and hiding.   

A turning point in Brandi’s life  

Jefferson County police interviewed dozens of Columbine students after the massacre, and among them was freshman Brandi Jo Malonson. She was interviewed on a Tuesday morning, May 11, 1999, three weeks after two classmates attacked her high school, and after she consumed three weeks’ worth of constant national news media that included false information. I could do an entire episode on the crimes of sensational journalism, especially at that time, but I’ll stick to the case at hand. If you are interested in that topic, I highly recommend the podcast You’re Wrong About, and they even have an episode on Columbine – it’s fantastic.  

So due to all this inaccurate information swirling around, and as was common among Columbine’s traumatized young witnesses, Brandi recounted a few incorrect details, like overhearing an ominous warning from a female student who wasn’t at school that day, and finding a fake AOL profile imitating one of the shooters. I think it’s important to remind ourselves when we run into things like this is that Brandi was in the middle of processing trauma, trying to find closure and a way to move forward. Figuring out the killers’ motives or any warning signs she missed is helpful to her healing and to the investigation, so she does the right thing by sharing everything she can think of, even if it is rumor-based or not thoroughly fact-checked (that part is the police’s job, after all).  

Brandi’s mother, Linda Malonson, would later describe April 20, 1999, as “the start to what changed our lives forever.” Brandi’s older sister, Monica, a senior at Columbine, drove her to school that day but only stayed for the first hour. Brandi attended her first four classes as usual, and then headed to her locker before going to lunch. En route, she saw her friend, senior Isaiah Shoels, and asked him to sit with her at lunch. He told her he would meet up with her after checking out a book he needed from the library upstairs. Instead, Shoels would die from a gunshot wound to the chest in the library just a short while later.  

After purchasing her lunch and sitting down with her friends, chaos slowly began to erupt in the cafeteria. Brandi noticed students on the opposite side of the cafeteria, near the windows, get down on the floor. Like many others, she initially thought the activity was part of a senior prank until someone yelled for everyone to get down. The students near the windows began to move toward her side of the room, some of them crawling. At this point, one of the shooters entered the cafeteria to check on the propane bombs that hadn’t detonated, and this is when Brandi fled with a crowd of others. On her way out of the building, she heard gunfire, explosions, and breaking glass. She didn’t stop until she reached a nearby apartment complex, where she called her mother to pick up her and a few students with her.  

In addition to her friend, Isaiah Shoels, Brandi lost fellow freshman classmates Daniel Rohrbough and Steven Curnow in the attack. In fact, Linda Malonson said that “many” of her daughters’ “friends died that day.” While the world at large focused most of its attention on the killers and their motives, with perhaps a secondary focus on the deceased victims, Columbine’s survivors, like Brandi, began a complex healing process that went largely unreported and unrecognized.  

“Both of my girls were very much affected by the events of that day,” Brandi’s mother would later say. She attempted to connect Brandi with counseling services, but Brandi refused. “She was the kind of girl that took care of others first and not herself,” her mother said, and she didn’t push the issue because Brandi, at the time, “seemed to be doing okay.”  

“Everybody has that day when something in their life has changed and it’s never going to be the same,” Linda Malonson recalled. “Columbine is probably that day for us. [Brandi] was a normal little teenager until it happened, then after Columbine, I just really think she is a victim of all that. That was day one when it all started. It totally changed our life. It changed everyone’s life.” 

More Columbine Survivor Student Murders  

Unfortunately, the tragedy didn’t end with April 20, 1999. It continued when two of Brandi’s friends and fellow sophomore classmates were murdered at a local Subway sandwich shop less than a year later. Interestingly, this is the same Subway where Rachel Scott, a victim of the school shooting, had worked as well. It was also located just behind the Blackjack Pizza shop where the two shooters worked, although that part of the strip mall was converted into a private Christian school in 2002.  

The double murder occurred on a Sunday night on the eve of Valentine’s Day, February 13, 2000. Fifteen-year-old Nick Kunselman got the Subway job just a month prior and routinely worked the closing shift. Nick took the job when his friend, Nathan Grill, quit. Nathan was there that evening and left right around 10:00 p.m., while Nick was serving the last customer of the day.  

Nick’s 16-year-old girlfriend, Stephanie Hart-Grizzell, arrived at the shop sometime after Nathan left to give Nick a ride home. It was normal for employees and their friends to hang out around the Subway after hours, and it’s possible Nick and Stephanie did that on this night too. If they weren’t hanging around, Nick should have finished closing up around 10:30 p.m.  

At about 12:45 a.m., a female Subway employee who police have never identified noticed the lights were still on inside the shop while driving past. She turned around to investigate. As she headed toward the store, she saw an approximately 5’ 7” tall young white man with blonde hair leaving the area. He wore a red jacket and flared pants. She continued to the store and discovered Nick and Stephanie’s dead bodies behind the counter, then promptly contacted police.  

Tragedy upon tragedy 

The murders of two more Columbine survivors sent shockwaves across the nation, as the community was still reeling from the school shooting just 10 months prior. While the school remained open and added extra security and counseling services, many students went home early on Monday, February 14, after hearing about their classmates’ deaths. “Everybody was just crying when the announcement came on,” a fellow sophomore remembered.  

A counselor shared the community’s sense of grief and exhaustion with reporters. “They are just worn out from all of this. Worn out from this constant stimulus, this constant barrage of tragedy. They are asking the same questions most of us are asking: When will this stop?” A sheriff at the time added, “We don’t want the rest of the world to think this is such a horrible place.”  

A local coffee shop owner nearby the Subway store gave reporters a sense of the concern in Littleton for the community’s youngest citizens: “I told my husband I’m ready to move away,” she said. “I still go to bed with my door unlocked; I feel safe. I just don’t feel safe for my kids.”   

The teens’ families held a joint funeral for the couple the following Saturday. Because Nick and Stephanie were so deeply in love despite their young ages, they were even buried together. Nick once told his mother that he believed Stephanie was his soulmate. Both were athletic, and many considered them to be transplants of another era, seeming more like they were kids of the 1960s’ peace and love generation than their own.  

The pastor leading their service had conducted funerals for four of Columbine’s victims less than a year before. “I can tell you these have been the saddest moments of my life,” he shared with reporters. Dozens of Columbine students attended Nick and Stephanie’s funeral, including some who were still recovering from injuries they suffered in the school shooting.  

Nick and Stephanie both survived the infamous shooting as freshmen. Nick’s mother said he was more affected by it than he liked to admit, and she was devasted to learn that he had escaped one shooting just to die in another, especially so soon. She recalled that after hearing the news, “I screamed and said, ‘No, no…this can’t be happening.’ I have no idea what happened. I want to know why.”  

Hope, but no answers 

The two teenagers had died from gunshot wounds, but police haven’t revealed the condition of their bodies or any particulars related to the crime scene. Police did share that they searched trash bins and nearby buildings but never found a discarded weapon. There was a surveillance camera inside the Subway that could have caught the murder, but police wouldn’t say if it was helpful. Employees of the Subway shop say it’s unlikely because the camera was hardly ever turned on. Police interviewed several other potential witnesses and collected physical evidence from the scene. 

From these efforts, police felt they had “crucial evidence” in the investigation within just a few days of the murders, but they have kept it close to the vest since it’s information only Nick and Stephanie’s killer would know. Autopsy results, search warrants…everything remains sealed.  

Police did quickly publicize the description of the man the other Subway employee saw when she discovered Nick and Stephanie’s bodies, but at first, they wouldn’t say if he was a suspect or just someone who might have more information. By the time of the couple’s funeral, police released two composite drawings of a suspect, described as a white male between 16 and 18 years old. The Subway sandwich shop initially offered a $10,000 reward for information that led to an arrest. With the help of Metro Denver Crime Stoppers, that reward was increased to $12,000 and then, in 2021, to $100,000.  

Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Shrader said in 2021, “With this significantly increased reward, people who haven’t come forward with their information will be much more likely to do so now. We are continuing our diligent work to bring justice to Nicholas and Stephanie.” 

After quickly ruling out a murder-suicide, police considered a possible robbery motive, but employees at the shop don’t think that’s feasible. One staff member reported that there was maybe $50 in the register at any given time. Workers would insert large bills into a locked safe throughout the day, and only the store manager had the key to that. Police have never confirmed if any money was stolen.  

Police also considered a drug-related motive for the murders, since some local kids were known to use and sell marijuana out of the Subway shop. However, the teenagers’ families strongly denied that either of them used or dealt drugs, and police have not officially connected drugs to their killings.    

The only justice that’s come out of Nick and Stephanie’s case so far was an $18,625 fine levied against the Subway sandwich shop owner, Hartman Enterprises Inc, in July 2000. The United States Department of Labor found the shop in violation of child labor laws which don’t allow employees under the age of 18 to work past 7:00 p.m.  

The struggle to cope 

As Brandi Malonson is processing her friends’ unsolved murder, she is also busy supporting her grieving living friends. Even though the tragedies were taking a toll on her, Brandi’s mother, Linda, says that she “wasn’t one that wanted help. I really tried to get her into counseling and do different things. But she was always the one to reach out to friends and she was the hugger and wanted to take care of you.”  

It may not surprise you that as many Columbine survivors and their families coped with the aftermath of the shooting, a few unfortunately succumbed to suicide. What may surprise you is that suicide has troubled the Littleton community before and since the school shooting. Studies from the late 1990s ranked Colorado near the top of the list nationally for suicide rates, hypothesizing that isolation, lack of mental health care, and easier access to firearms were contributing factors. More recent studies continue to note that Colorado and the Denver metro area, including Littleton, has one of the highest suicide rates in the country.  

It’s unclear to me whether there was a definitive spike in suicides post-Columbine, but there are some tragic known cases of it. On Friday morning, October 22, 1999, 48-year-old Carla Hochhalter became one of them. Her daughter, Columbine junior Anne Marie Hochhalter, was paralyzed during the school shooting by a bullet that severed her spine. Carla went to a local pawn shop and asked to examine a handgun, which she loaded with bullets and then used to shoot herself in the head. Carla died at the same hospital that saved her daughter’s life just six months prior.  

Then, on a Thursday morning, May 4, 2000, 17-year-old Greg Barnes hanged himself in his family’s garage with an electrical cord. He was a sophomore at Columbine when the shooting happened, and he lost close friend Matt Kechter that day. He also witnessed teacher and coach Dave Sanders being shot. The day after his death, after news reached the community, about a third of Columbine High School’s student population stayed home from school to grieve his loss.  

I’m not sure if Brandi Malonson was one of those students who stayed home, or how well she knew Greg. But I know this: after surviving a school shooting that drew global attention her freshman year, her sophomore year was marked by her two friends’ unsolved murders and two high-profile suicides connected to the school shooting she survived. This was going to take some kind of toll, and we know from Brandi’s mother, Linda, that she coped by helping other people and was likely not paying attention to the effect these tragedies were having on her.  

Linda recounts yet another suicide that affected her daughter in a devastatingly personal way during her junior year. On November 10, 2000, while 17-year-old Brandi was at work, a close friend of hers left a message on her phone. Brandi was the last person he called before committing suicide. I haven’t been able to identify this person, but between the school shooting, the Subway shop murders, and this close-to-home suicide, Brandi’s mother said, “all three of these horrible tragedies devasted her.” I can’t imagine.  

A good start…at first  

In March of 2002, her senior year, Brandi was arrested for misdemeanor theft, but there was no reason to believe that more serious trouble was looming. I can’t find the specifics about this event, but it doesn’t seem to be part of a pattern at the time. “She was a very responsible girl, purchased her own car on her own and always paid her bills on time,” her mother said.  

Brandi graduated high school and became a certified nurse’s assistant. She was turning her natural gifts of caring for others into a career. She held two jobs when she began taking nursing classes, and in her last position, she moved in with her elderly multiple sclerosis patient to provide her care.  

Unfortunately, a friend in Brandi’s nursing classes had introduced her to methamphetamine as a way to cope with her trauma, handle her mounting responsibilities, and help her lose weight. Her father remembered Brandi really struggling with the deaths of her friends at this time, as if starting finally to feel the emotional weight of it: “I think she was overwhelmed with all that stuff; all that hurt had a big impact on her.”  

As Brandi slipped into addiction, her relationship with her parents changed. They staged an intervention and finally connected her with counseling services, but as an adult, there was little they could do whenever she decided to leave home and use drugs. On December 22, 2006, at 23 years old, Brandi received probation after an arrest for drug possession and identity theft. It seems like the arrest was a wake-up call, with Brandi telling her parents that she was committed to getting off drugs and taking control of her life. “She was just so sad, it hurt so bad to see her like this,” her mother remembers.  

Fifteen years gone  

On December 26, four days later and the day after celebrating Christmas with her family, Brandi told her parents that she was going to a friend’s house. When she didn’t return for several days, her family assumed she was shirking her probation requirements, and it was common for Brandi to disappear for a period of time like this.  

But a month later, a man called the Malonson home to report that someone had killed Brandi and dumped her body in the Platte River in Nebraska, a few hours north of Littleton, prompting them to finally file a missing person’s report. Police reached out to Brandi’s friends and heard a number of stories about what may have happened, but none of the leads panned out. Some said she was killed while others say she overdosed, with her body being dumped in the mountains or a lake.  

Like the case of her friends Nick Kunselman and Stephanie Hart-Grizzell, there haven’t been any new details or information in the nearly 16 years since Brandi Malonson went missing. Her mother, Linda Malonson, hasn’t moved or changed her home phone number, in the hopes that Brandi or someone who knows what happened to her will reach out. In 2012, she set up a Facebook page to help find answers and keep attention of Brandi’s case.  

“I want closure,” her mother says. “It’s just a sad situation. I don’t want anyone to ever go through what we’ve gone through. I’m a very forgiving person. Even if somebody said, ‘I did that to her or helped with that,’ I’d probably forgive them because I know they’re going through a lot. You can’t let that beat down on your soul.”  

More unsolved missing and murdered cases 

Since covering Brandi, Nick, and Stephanie’s cases was about bringing attention to victims who have been overshadowed by “bigger news,” I also wanted to shed a little light on the victims who don’t even have that headline-worthy connection to the Columbine school shooting. We can’t possibly cover them all in depth, but since they all deserve justice, in an attempt to keep attention on their cases too, here is our incomplete list for further research:  
 

  • Marilee Burt was abducted on February 26, 1970, while walking home from a Littleton junior high basketball game. The 15-year-old’s naked, raped, and strangled body turned up the next day in Deer Creek Canyon. Despite possessing the killer’s DNA, police have yet to find a match and make an arrest.   
     
  • Melissa Chase was discovered under a bridge in Littleton on December 7, 1983. The 18-year-old had been beaten to death after she was reported missing the day prior.  
     
  • Nancy Shoupp went missing on April 28, 1990. The 27-year-old was last seen leaving a male coworker’s home in Boulder and was supposed to pick up her children from her estranged husband Stephen’s house. Shoupp never arrived and was never heard from again. Her car was found at her home in Littleton. Authorities suspect Shoupp was murdered, and her ex-husband is their prime suspect.  
     
  • Three people were shot to death at a Littleton bowling alley on January 27, 2002: Robert Zajac, 23, Erin Golla, 26, and James Springer, 29. With the FBI assisting the investigation and recently discovered DNA evidence, there may soon be a break in this unsolved case. It’s been rumored that this is the same bowling alley the Columbine shooters frequented because both are AMF alleys, but they are actually two different locations: this shooting occurred at the Broadway location, and the shooters took classes at the Belleview venue. Adding to the eerie connections, in addition to this shooting occurring less than three years after Columbine, the killer also wore a trench coat during the attack.  
     
  • Rhonda Holland was murdered at the gift shop she owned in Littleton. The 46-year-old was stabbed while closing the store on January 17, 2004.  
     
  • Jaime Villarreal was killed by gunmen in Littleton on March 17, 2016 while sitting in his work truck. Authorities are seeking two male suspects who were seen on surveillance video around the time of the 23-year-old’s death.  
     
  • Cadence Warner ran away from her Littleton home on March 23, 2021, just one month before her 17th birthday.  

If you have any information about Brandi Jo Malonson, Nick Kunselman, Stephanie Hart-Grizzell, or any of the other unsolved cases we covered today, please reach out, anonymously if you prefer, to Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867 or at metrodenvercrimestoppers.com. You never know if the piece of information you have is new or significant and could be the missing piece of the puzzle that brings closure to someone’s loved ones. Don’t assume it’s too trivial or already known – just share.

This episode sponsored by Manscaped.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:  

  • Page 142: Stephanie Hart 
  • Page 144: Nick Kunselman 
  • Page 144: Brandi Malonson 
  • Pages 3633-3639: Brandi Malonson interview  

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