A second Texas man was arrested this week in connection with the death of a man found buried in a shallow grave in Tarrant County in December.
Chase Cook, 23, joined Alexander James Nicholas, also 23, behind bars on murder charges in the death of 24-year-old John Richardson, KDFW reports. Cook was arrested on Tuesday; Nicolas was arrested in December.
Richardson was last seen leaving a party on November 30, 2025, and was supposedly on his way to his girlfriend’s. He never arrived. His body was found in a wooded area on December 22, and the medical examiner determined that he died from stab wounds and blount force trauma.
An affidavit for Cook’s arrest said he was questioned about Richardson’s disappearance in December but refused to allow a search of his cell phone. When police executed a search warrant on the phone, they found records suggesting that he was with Nicolas the night Richardson disappeared — in the same area where his body was later found.
Investigators also noted multiple messages from Cook’s girlfriend that showed her “getting increasingly upset with him being gone all night.”
The girlfriend had previously told investigators that Cook left in the middle of the night to help Nicholas.
“She said a few days later when he had been drinking, he told her that they were digging a 6-foot hole that night,” according to the affidavit. “Due to [Cook’s] admission to his girlfriend that he helped [Nicholas] that night when they were in the woods and that he dug a 6-foot hole, before that information was public, indicates his aiding of this murder.”
Nicholas’s arrest affidavit says that witnesses told police he left the party with Richardson, promising to drop him off at his girlfriend’s home. He told police that he got into an argument with Richardson and dropped him off near a Bucee’s on Interstate 35, but neither of their cell phones were ever in that location.
Another witness told detectives that Nicholas told him Richardson “wouldn’t be coming around anymore,” forming his fingers into the shape of a gun and saying “you know what I mean.”
Another witness, who was at the party the night Richardson disappeared, told investigators that Nicholas was upset about a car accident he blamed on Richardson.
Investigators used data from Richardson and Nicholas’s phones to find the dead man’s body located behind a home where another friend of Nicholas and Cook lives.
The affidavits do not indicate where the murder may have taken place, as no blood was found in the vehicle Nicholas was driving. They also don’t say whether a murder weapon was recovered.
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[Featured image: Chase Cook and Alexander Nicholas/Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office]
