A preliminary hearing is underway at the Shasta County Courthouse in Redding to determine if Tyler McCain should stand trial in the death of his wife, Nikki Saelee-McCain. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe © All rights reserved.
A confidential informant in the Nikki Saelee-McCain murder case told a detective last year that Tyler McCain admitted to killing his wife, but the informant abruptly reversed his story in court Wednesday.
The informant, Frans Albert Nelson, spent all day on the witness stand during McCain’s preliminary hearing in Shasta County Superior Court before visiting presiding judge Thomas Bender.
The hearing, which has lasted six days so far, will determine whether McCain will stand trial in the 2024 death of his 39-year-old wife.
Tyler McCain, left, is accused of killing his wife Nikki Saelee-McCain.
Prosecutors with the Shasta County District Attorney’s Office played audio and video recordings where Nelson told Shasta County Sheriff’s Office Detective Kilee Holroyd about the time he was alone with McCain at his house and McCain described the circumstances surrounding Saelee-McCain’s death.
Nelson, 37, is an inmate at Wasco State Prison in Kern County, and was brought to court wearing handcuffs attached to a waist chain around his white shirt.
Nelson said on the witness stand that he made up the McCain confession story as a way to gain favor with authorities so he could get out of Shasta County Jail. He said he concocted the story on the fly while he was still under the influence of fentanyl.
Nelson, represented by Redding attorney Shon Northam, told the court he wasn’t happy about being brought to Redding to testify.
“I don’t want to be here,” Nelson said at the start of the day.
Under questioning by prosecutor Toby Powell, Nelson said he was friends with McCain for three or four years and that he knew him through his sister, Felicia Nelson.
Felicia Nelson was recently a witness during last week’s preliminary hearing. She testified she was the former girlfriend of Justin Karren, who also testified during last week’s preliminary hearing. The couple lived together on a trailer on the McCain property, just a short distance from the McCain home.
Albert Nelson said he stayed off and on in a trailer or in his car at McCain’s house on Olinda Lane in Happy Valley. He also said he’d met Saelee-McCain several times before she went missing on May 18, 2024.
The get-out-of-jail story that Nelson told the detective went like this:
McCain, 40, had come back from a rehab program in Southern California when Saelee-McCain’s disappearance was still a missing-person case, and Nelson had recently returned from living in Fields Landing on the coast.
According to the informant, it was true that Tyler drank vodka and used meth. He said Tyler would “pound vodka all day long.”
Albert said the two were taking shots of vodka at the Happy Valley home when Nelson said that McCain broke down and mouthed the words: “I killed her.”
Nelson said McCain also added: “I fucking killed her.”
Nelson speculated when speaking with the detective that McCain “had to get it out, I think.”
According to Nelson’s initial account to authorities, McCain said he and his wife were wrestling in their bedroom when she said, “I can’t breathe.”
Nelson told the detective he believed McCain had strangled her, and that it was an accident. Nelson reported that McCain said he went to bed and when he woke up, his wife was dead with vomit nearby.
Nelson quoted McCain as saying: “She was alive when I went to bed” and “I don’t know what to do.”
As the story went, McCain did CPR on his wife when he saw her lifeless body.
McCain was concerned that the couple’s four children needed a headstone for their mother, according to the original account.
Nelson said he responded to the supposed confession by telling McCain “to shut up” because he didn’t want to know any more.
Nelson told the detective that his sister, Felicia, told him that she heard McCain move Saelee-McCain’s Chevrolet Avalanche to the back of the house near the couple’s bedroom, and then into their garage.
According to the recordings, Nelson said McCain had told his mother, Jeanette Hayward, before Nelson arrived that McCain was responsible for Saelee-McCain’s death, but McCain said his mother “didn’t fucking believe me.”
On the witness stand, Nelson said he fabricated the whole narrative about what McCain said.
“I don’t ever remember Tyler (McCain) saying he killed Nikki,” Nelson said in recanting Wednesday.
“It was all made up,” Nelson repeated several times.
Nelson said he concocted the story in order to get out of jail and that he was using fentanyl at the time.
“I might’ve said some things to get out of jail,” Nelson told prosecutor Powell.
“I said what I had to, to get out of jail,” Nelson said on the stand. “I was a drug addict.”
Nelson explained that when he was being recorded, he was under the influence, even though he had been in jail for several days.
“It takes a little while for fentanyl to get out of your system,” he said.
At another point, Nelson testified that “I was saying whatever I could to get out of jail at the time.”
“I was high on drugs and I was trying to get my foot out the (jail) door,” he added.
In an interview with another detective, Nelson described an incident where McCain had once pulled a shotgun on him, but said on the stand “that’s all a bunch of bullshit.”
Before being released from jail, Detective Holroyd gave Nelson a digital recorder and a vape pen with a built-in camera in hopes he would record McCain giving incriminating evidence.
He said he didn’t follow through and never attempted to record McCain.
“I never used any of them,” he said of the devices.
Nelson said he “ran” after being freed from jail and hid out in Shasta County. He said he knew he had a warrant for his arrest after he failed to appear for a court hearing.
Nelson said he eventually was captured and sent to prison after leading police on a car chase.
Nelson also said he’d lied when he claimed to have seen McCain and Saelee-McCain bickering at their home.
During portions of Nelson’s answers Wednesday, McCain held his hands over his ears as he sat next to his attorney, Michael Borges.
The day’s testimony dragged on as Powell asked Nelson to raise his hand every time a statement he previously made in the video recording was false. A marshal took off the handcuff on Nelson’s right hand so that it would be easier for Nelson to raise his arm, which he did repeatedly.
One truthful statement, Nelson offered, is when he said that he and McCain would “tweak (use drugs) and work on cars” at the Olinda Road property.
At the end of the day, prosecutors played a recording of a conversation that Holroyd had with Nelson when he arrived from prison to testify.
Nelson told her: “I made it all up. … It was all a lie from the beginning.”
In the heated exchange with each person talking over each other, the detective stated: “You were not lying to me.”
“Don’t get up there (on the stand) and lie that you lied to me,” she said.
“If you put me on the stand, I’m going to say I lied,” Nelson replied.
The prisoner added that this was “a big case” and he wanted nothing more to do with it.
“That’s my fault for lying to you in the first place,” he said.
The preliminary hearing is scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. Thursday by recalling witnesses Justin Karren and Felicia Nelson. Karren lives in a trailer next to McCain’s house and is related to him by marriage.
Prosecutor Sarah Murphy said the prosecution also plans to call three or four more officers.
Murphy told the judge that she estimates the preliminary hearing may possibly finish Tuesday.
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