2nd suspect arrested for murder of Fort Worth man whose body was buried in shallow grave
Second suspect arrested in Fort Worth murder case
Fort Worth Police arrested a second suspect in relation to a 2025 murder case after the victim was discovered in a shallow grave. FOX 4's Dionne Anglin has more.
FORT WORTH, Texas - Newly released court documents shed more light on the death of man in Fort Worth whose body was found buried in a shallow grave in December.
Two people are now facing charges for 24-year-old John Richardson’s murder.
2nd Suspect Arrested
What's new:
Chase Cook, 23, was arrested for murder on Tuesday and booked into the Tarrant County jail.
Alexander James Nicolas, 23, was arrested in December and is also charged with murder.
Dig deeper:
An arrest warrant affidavit for Cook states that when he was interviewed in December about Richardson’s disappearance, he refused to consent to a search of his cellphone. Police later obtained a search warrant for the phone.
Records from the phone suggest that Cook was with Nicholas on the night that Richardson disappeared in the same wooded area where Richardson’s body was found. They also showed that he received messages from his girlfriend that night "where she is getting increasingly upset with him being gone all night," the affidavit states.
Cook’s girlfriend had previously told detectives that she remembered him leaving in the middle of the night to go 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," police said in the affidavit.
Body Found in Shallow Grave
The backstory:
Richardson was reported missing after leaving a party on Nov. 30, 2025. He was headed to his girlfriend’s house but never showed up.
His body was found on Dec. 22, 2025 in what police described as a shallow grave in a wooded area. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office later determined he died from stab wounds and blunt force trauma.
Fort Worth missing person found buried in shallow grave, suspect arrested
Fort Worth police arrested a murder suspect after finding the body of a missing person buried in a shallow grave just days before Christmas.
Dig deeper:
According to an arrest warrant affidavit for Nicholas, multiple witnesses told police that Richardson left the party with Nicholas, who had promised to drop him off at his girlfriend’s house in White Settlement.
When detectives first questioned Nicholas, he said he got into an argument with Richardson and dropped him off near the Bucee's along Interstate 35W. However, investigators noted that neither of their cellphones pinged in that location.
During the course of the investigation, the detectives talked to a friend of the two men who said Nicholas told him Richardson "wouldn’t be coming around anymore." When the friend questioned what he meant, "[Nicholas] made his fingers into the shape of a gun, and said ‘you know what I mean.’ When [the friend] asked him if he killed [Richardson], [Nicholas] shook his head yes and told [the friend] if he wanted to know what happened that they could go into the woods and turn their phones off," the affidavit states.
A second friend told detectives that he was at the party with both men on the night that Richardson disappeared. The friend said Nicholas asked him if he thought Richardson "should get home safe." The friend said he didn’t understand what that meant but knew that Nicholas was upset about a past car accident that he blamed on Richardson, according to the affidavit.
According to the court document, detectives used data from both Nicholas and Richardson’s phones to find Richardson’s remains in a wooded area. The wooded area is located directly behind a home where a third friend of both Nicholas and Cook lives.
What we don't know:
Cook’s affidavit mentions that crime scenes where there are multiple stab wounds are typically bloody scenes. However, no blood evidence was found in the vehicle that police believe was used to give Richardson a ride.
Neither affidavit mentions the discovery of blood evidence or a possible murder weapon.
It’s also not clear whether police are planning to file charges against anyone else connected to the case.
The Source: The information in this story comes from the Fort Worth Police Department, arrest warrant affidavits for Alexander James Nicholas and Chase Cook, and past news coverage.