FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — The Fulton County District Attorney’s office says the cold case murder is one of the worst cases they have ever dealt with.
Back in 2007, Nicole Alston’s body was found dismembered in burning trash bags in Troup County, but it would take years before her body would be identified.
Investigators didn’t know who Alston was until her sister did a genealogy test in 2023, allowing them to identify her.
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Last year, prosecutors arrested Angel Thompson, a woman Alston was in a relationship with. Last week, prosecutors secured an 80-count indictment against Thompson on charges including murder, arson and identity theft.
“This is a case that we will be fighting to the very end to get a conviction in,” District Attorney Fani Willis said.
They say that after Alston’s death, Thompson stole her identity for years.
“The problem becomes when, you know, law enforcement searches Nicole Alston in various databases, it turns out on paper, she’s alive,” Deputy District Attorney Will Wooten said.
The D.A.’s office says this was one of the most complex identity theft and murder cases that they have ever seen.
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“I’ve been doing this a long time, as you know, and this is maybe the most brutal crime I have ever seen,” Willis said.
But Wooten says we may never truly know what happened to Alston.
“We don’t know how Nicole died, and that’s because, in part, Angel dismembered her body. And so there was a medical examiner’s report. And the medical examiners just determined that Nicole died by homicidal violence, but we don’t know. We may never know,” he said.
Willis thinks there could be more victims and asks anyone who came into contact with Thompson to call their office.
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