Gentle, lonely man met worst possible woman online...and nightmarish horror ensued when he flew to meet her
Sam Nordquist was lured from his St Paul home to upstate New York by Precious Arzuaga who promised to create a new life together, prosecutors have claimed.
But his fairytale quickly became a nightmare which resulted in the 24-year-old being found dead on February 12.
'Sam was almost desperate for love,' Ashlee Youngs told the New York Times.
His family and friends told the outlet this desperation ultimately led to his tragic end.
Arzuaga is accused of orchestrating weeks of brutal torture. She and six other defendants have been charged with first degree murder over Norquist's death.
The severity of the sentence is unusual for the state and will require prosecutors to prove that the gang tortured Norquidst, 'because they enjoyed it'.
Those who know Arzuaga told the New York Times this is not hard to envisage and they described a history of manipulation.
Nordquist meanwhile came from a loving family, but struggled to find acceptance for his black, transgender identity in his home town.
He found refuge in creating TikToks and sharing them with an online community where he was beloved.
Nordquist connected with Arzuaga online, fresh from a break up which he had also documented online.
She arrived on the scene and portrayed herself as a fun, loving mother to her kids.
But in reality, her slick TikToks hid a violent criminal past and a litany of offences ranging from animal cruelty to harassment.
Nordquist was unaware of her chaotic background when he set off to visit her for a month in September 2023 at a hotel catering for homeless people called Patty's Lodge.
The first red flag came when he failed to return home on a flight booked for October.
His frantic family called the emergency services, but when officers visited Nordquist and Arzuaga he assured them everything was fine.
But over the following months, Nordquist's online omnipresence began to dwindle and soon he was not only not posting videos, but actively ignoring and blocking friends who reached out.
One cancer-stricken friend told the New York Times how they reached out with news of their prognosis, expecting Nordquist to call her but instead received a curt reply.
'Him going offline, that was a clue that something might be wrong, because no person would keep him from being online,' Corin Kichler, a friend from Norqduist's home said.
In the months since living with Arzuaga, Nordquist had also turned his back on his passionate work with a group home in Minnesota.
Further alarm bells began to sound when Nordquist stopped replying to his sister who was providing updates on his beloved niece and nephew.
The family sent state troopers around one more time who made a chilling discovery.
Staff at Patty's Lodge told officers they had never seen Nordquist.
His panicked family piled into a car and drove across the country desperate for answers, but arrived too late.
During a stopover in Ohio, they received the devastating news that Nordquist's body had been found in a dairy farmer's field.
A disturbing narrative has since emerged about Nordquist's final days, with prosecutors alleging he was locked up and tortured in for more than a month.
This included forcing Nordquist to drink urine and eat feces, according to investigators.
'Sam was confined. He was forced to kneel and stand against a wall. He was physically assaulted. He was sexually assaulted,' Assistant District Attorney Kelly Wolford said
'He was prevented from using his phone. He was denied proper nutrition and hydration. He was fed feces. He was forced to drink urine and chew spit.'
She went on to detail how Nordquist was 'physically restrained, forced to obey their commands and treated like a dog.'
'They covered his face with towels and shirts and fabric. They used duct tape and they poured bleach on him.'
Eventually he died as a result of the torture, according to investigators.
In another sick twist, prosecutors have also revealed they believe two children aged seven and 12-years-old were forced to help carry out the sick abuse.
The seven defendants are Precious Arzuaga, 38; Kyle Sage, 33; Jennifer Quijano, 30; Patrick Goodwin, 30; Kimberly Sochia, 29; Thomas G. Eaves, 21; and Emily Motyka, 19.
Arzuaga has also been charged with first-degree coercion for forcing the children to participate in the heinous acts.
The relationship between Arzuaga and the children was not made clear. She and the other defendants have all pleaded not guilty.
Nordquist has since been mourned by those who knew him personally and the many people he reached through his online community.
'Sam wanted to be — not in this way, of course — but Sam always wanted to be famous,' his sister told The New York Time. 'And now he is.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
2 minutes ago
- The Independent
Inside the facility where ICE is training recruits to take on Trump's deportation goals
At an obstacle course in the humid Georgia heat, an instructor shows recruits how to pull a wounded partner out of danger. In a classroom with desks cluttered with thick legal books about immigration law, recruits learn about how the Fourth Amendment governs their work. And on a firing range littered with shell casings, new recruits for Immigration and Customs Enforcement practice shooting their handguns. 'Instructors, give me a thumbs up when students are ready to go,' a voice over the loudspeaker said before a group of about 20 ICE recruits practiced drawing and firing their weapons. The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia, is the epicenter of training for almost all federal law enforcement officers, including the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who are at the center of President Donald Trump 's mass deportation efforts. Now, with lots of money approved by Congress this summer starting to flow into ICE, the agency is in midst of a huge hiring effort as it aims to get thousands of new deportation officers into the field in the coming months. On Thursday, The Associated Press and other news organizations got a rare look at the Basic Immigration Law Enforcement Training Program that new ICE recruits — specifically those in the Enforcement and Removal Operations unit responsible for finding, arresting and removing people from the country — go through and what they learn. Ramping up hiring, training ICE is getting $76.5 billion in new money from Congress to help it meet Trump's mass deportation goal. That's nearly 10 times the agency's current annual budget. Nearly $30 billion of that money is for new staff. They're hiring across the agency, including investigators and lawyers, but the numbers they're hiring in those areas pale in comparison to how many deportation officers are coming on board. Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, was at the training demonstration Thursday. He said the agency currently has about 6,500 deportation officers and is aiming to hire 10,000 more by the end of the year. With that hiring surge has come concerns that vetting or training of new recruits will be shortchanged. The Border Patrol went through a similar hiring surge in the early 2000s when hiring and training standards were changed; arrests for employee misconduct rose. Lyons pushed back on concerns that ICE might cut corners when it comes to training. although he said they have made changes designed to streamline the process. 'I wasn't going to water down training,' said Lyons. Caleb Vitello, the assistant director of ICE in charge of training, says new recruits will go through about eight weeks of training at the Georgia facility. But they also have training before and after they come here. One key change, Vitello noted: ICE cut out five weeks of Spanish-language training because he said recruits were only getting to the point of being 'moderately' competent in Spanish. He said language translation technology can help fill that void in the field. What does the training look like? During the six-days-a-week training, new recruits live on the grounds of the sprawling facility, which is covered with pine forests and sits near the Atlantic Ocean a little less than an hour's drive north of the Florida state line. Hundreds have gone through the training here in recent months. During the course, new recruits train on firearms in a large indoor shooting range that looks as big as a football field. On Thursday, the floor was littered with spent shell casings as roughly 20 new recruits wearing blue shirts and blue pants practiced shooting from a bent-elbow position and transitional shooting — involving transferring their guns from one hand to another. Instructors in red shirts walked behind them, occasionally giving them instruction. Everyone wore eye protection and red, noise-reducing earmuffs with earplugs underneath. Dean Wilson, who oversees the firearms training, compared some of the operations that ICE agents face to a haunted house where they don't know what might be coming at them. "We do our very best to make sure that even though they're in that environment, that they have the wherewithal to make the proper decision," said Wilson. 'Nobody wants to be the one to make a bad shot, and nobody wants to be the one that doesn't make it home.' In a big field with various driving tracks and courses, they also train on driving techniques — how to recover from a skid on wet pavement or how to navigate a winding course similar to an urban environment where they have to come to a full stop or navigate blind corners. The curriculum also includes de-escalation techniques designed to prevent the use of force in the first place, Lyons said. 'In any type of law enforcement situation," he said, 'you'd rather de-escalate with words before you have to use any use of force." Learning the law and the Fourth Amendment Not all of the training is in the field. ICE agents like to point out that when it comes to complexity, immigration law is second only to the tax code. At the training academy, they get about 12 hours of classroom instruction on things like the Fourth Amendment — the part of the Constitution that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures — and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which has evolved over the decades and governs all facets of immigration. Those legal lessons are also interspersed throughout the rest of the training. On the desks in one classroom are training manuals and immigration law handbooks roughly two to three inches thick. Recruits learn about how to determine if someone is removable from the country, under what circumstances they can go into someone's house to search and when they have to leave. ICE staff pushed back on accusations that they are indiscriminately pulling people over or setting up checkpoints in Washington, D.C., or elsewhere as part of immigration enforcement. They said they have to have probable cause to go after someone, and they do targeted operations. They said they can't — and don't — do traffic stops but can work with local authorities who are. 'Once local law enforcement makes a stop, and then they contact ICE saying we have somebody that we possibly think might be an alien,' said Greg Hornsby, an associate legal adviser at ICE. 'And that's where we step in."
Sky News
12 minutes ago
- Sky News
Erik Menendez, jailed for 1989 murder of parents, denied parole
Erik Menendez, the younger of the notorious brothers who were jailed for murdering their parents in Los Angeles in 1989, has been denied parole. He made his first appeal for release from jail on Thursday, months after a judge reduced both his and his brother Lyle's sentences, making them eligible for parole. The brothers, aged 57 and 54, had received life sentences without the chance of parole in 1996 after being convicted of murdering their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, at their Beverly Hills home. The case was thrust back into the spotlight last year when Netflix released a documentary and miniseries. A panel of two California commissioners determined Erik Menendez should not be freed following an all-day hearing, where they heard about his behaviour in prison. While relatives of Menendez advocated for his release, commissioner Robert Barton said: "Two things can be true. They can love and forgive you, and you can still be found unsuitable for parole." 'I was destroying my life' Mr Barton added the primary reason for denying him release was due to his conduct behind bars: Menendez is alleged to have worked with a prison gang, bought drugs, used mobile phones and helped with a tax scam while in jail. During the hearing, Menendez said he had no hope of being released until Los Angeles prosecutors asked a judge to resentence him and his brother last November, and had focused on protecting himself. "In November of 2024, now the consequences mattered," he added. "Now the consequences meant I was destroying my life." He also noted that the day of the hearing was almost exactly 36 years after he killed his parents, describing it as the "anniversary" of a "trauma journey". 1:12 During the hearing, Los Angeles prosecutor Habib Balian questioned whether Menendez was "truly reformed", or saying what commissioners wanted to hear. "When one continues to diminish their responsibility for a crime and continues to make the same false excuses that they've made for 30-plus years, one is still that same dangerous person that they were when they shotgunned their parents," he said. Thursday's verdict means he will next be eligible for parole in three years. Lyle Menendez will appear by video conference for his parole hearing on Friday. The brothers are also waiting for the outcome of a 2023 request for a judge to consider evidence that their father had sexually abused them. Prosecutors during both the 1993 and 1995 trials argued that the brothers killed their parents for financial gain. The brothers' attorneys never denied that the pair killed their parents, but argued that they acted out of self-defence after years of emotional and sexual abuse by their father.
Daily Mail
30 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Gloating Bryan Kohberger LOVED watching TV stories about his arrest, but one topic sent him scrambling to change channel
In prison, Bryan Kohberger pored over news coverage of his arrest for the quadruple homicide of four University of Idaho students - but one topic unsettled him so deeply he would instantly change the channel. Inmates told investigators about their interactions with the criminology PhD student turned mass murderer while he was locked up inside Latah County Jail, awaiting trial for the murders of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
