Who Killed Nikole Bakoles? The Unsolved Saltair Sally Case

The Saltair Sally case is the 2000 killing of Nikole Kistina Bakoles, a 20-year-old woman from Washington state whose skeletal remains were found by duck hunters near the Great Salt Lake and went unidentified for nearly 12 years. She was identified in August 2012 after a University of Utah forensic technique read the isotopes in her hair to trace her recent travel, pointing investigators toward the Pacific Northwest and, eventually, to her mother’s DNA. Her homicide is still unsolved, and no one has been charged.

How Her Remains Were Found

On October 8, 2000, duck hunters came across human bones in a field off the I-80 frontage road, about 1.5 miles east of the Saltair concert hall.¹ The remains lay roughly 90 feet from the road in tall grass and had decomposed to a skeleton. Investigators also recovered hair, some clothing, and a blue choker necklace.²

There was no identification with the body and no matching missing person report on file. Comparisons against dental records and DNA of missing people around the country produced no match. With nothing to call her, investigators named the unknown woman “Saltair Sally” after the nearby venue.¹

Who She Was and How She Vanished

Nikole “Niki” Bakoles was born on August 23, 1980, and grew up in the Puget Sound area of Washington. Her mother, Nancie Bakoles, described her as an artistic free spirit who loved poetry, painting, and drawing.³

Around 1998, at roughly 18, she moved to Utah with her boyfriend, Joel Chaudoin. The couple had a daughter, then ran into serious trouble: eviction from their Midvale-area apartment, drug and shoplifting charges against Bakoles in Utah court records, and eventually the loss of custody of their child, who went to Chaudoin’s relatives in Wisconsin.³⁴ Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder later said investigators believed “circumstances after the birth of that child may have led to her disappearance.”⁵

She was last seen on March 15, 2000, at a hotel near 3300 South and Main Street in the Salt Lake City area.¹⁶ According to Chaudoin, the two argued and he left, and he said he never saw her again.

Her family in Washington did not know she was gone. Bakoles had moved often, contact had thinned, and they assumed she was pulling away after losing custody of her daughter. Without a current address for her, they felt they could not file a missing person report. They finally reported her missing to the Midvale Police Department in 2003, three years after her remains had already been found in Utah.⁵

How She Was Finally Identified

In 2008, Detective Todd Park of the Unified Police Department turned to a forensic technique developed by University of Utah professor Jim Ehleringer and colleague Thure Cerling through their spin-off company IsoForensics. The method analyzes stable hydrogen and oxygen isotopes preserved in human hair. Because the isotopic signature of drinking water varies by region and is locked into hair as it grows, reading along the length of a strand can reconstruct where a person has recently been.⁷

Applied to hair collected in 2000, the analysis showed the victim had repeatedly traveled between the Salt Lake City area and the Pacific Northwest in the two years before her death, passing through Idaho, Washington, and Oregon.⁸ That narrowed the field of possible matches sharply and pointed detectives north.

The other missing piece arrived through an administrative change. When the Midvale Police Department merged into the Unified Police Department in 2011, siloed records came together, and the 2003 missing person report Bakoles’ family had filed with Midvale finally reached the detectives working the Saltair Sally case. Sheriff Winder called that report “the piece of the puzzle” they had been missing.⁶

Investigators contacted Nancie Bakoles in Washington. She provided a DNA sample in 2011, and the comparison confirmed a match. On August 7, 2012, the Unified Police Department publicly announced that Saltair Sally was Nikole Kistina Bakoles, and her family brought her remains home to Washington.⁶³

Where the Homicide Investigation Stands

Police have not publicly released a specific cause of death, but the way the remains were found led them to classify the case as a homicide, and the Utah Department of Public Safety still lists it as unsolved.⁸²

Joel Chaudoin was questioned. At the 2012 announcement he was incarcerated in a Washington state prison on unrelated charges. At that time, authorities did not formally name him a suspect. Sheriff Winder said, “Everyone is a suspect in this case. We have not narrowed it down to one particular individual.”⁸ The Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification’s cold case listing does identify Chaudoin as a person of interest and asks that anyone who knew the couple contact detectives.¹

Two tips outside official channels have also surfaced. In 2012, Jason Jensen, co-founder of the Utah Cold Case Coalition, reported a phone call from an unidentified person who claimed to have killed Bakoles; the caller gave no details and could not be traced.² Around 2020, the Coalition publicly revisited the case after an anonymous tip about a person of interest who allegedly stated, “I killed the b—-.” The group offered help securing counsel, a letter of immunity, or a $15,000 reward if the death turned out to be accidental, and set a 30-day deadline before handing the information to the Unified Police Department’s cold case unit.⁹ No public reports indicate an arrest followed.

How to Share Information With Investigators

The case is handled by the Unified Police Department, with Detective Ben Pender as lead investigator. Police are especially interested in hearing from anyone who knew Bakoles or Chaudoin between January and June 2000. Detective Pender can be reached at (385) 468-9816, and tips can also go to the Cold Case Tip Hotline at 833-DPS-SAFE (833-377-7233).¹

1
Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification. Nikole Kistina Bakoles Cold Case
2
Deseret News. Who Killed Nikole Bakoles
3
Deseret News. Family of Saltair Sally Brings Her Remains Home After 12 Years
4
The Oregonian. Washington Family Members Ask for Help in Saltair Sally Case
5
KSL. Family Brings Home Remains of Daughter Killed 12 Years Ago
6
Salt Lake Tribune. After 12 Years, Police Identify Saltair Sally Remains
7
University of Utah. Isotope Sleuths
8
KSL. Saltair Sally Remains Identified by Police After 12 Years
9
ABC4 Utah. The Justice Files: Who Killed Niki Bakoles aka Saltair Sally