Posted on 03/15/2005 7:39:54 PM PST by TexKat
ATLANTA - Ringed by 19 officers in a cinderblock jail room, his hands and ankles shackled, the man accused in the crime spree that left an Atlanta judge and three others dead went before a judge Tuesday for the first time since the rampage. Brian Nichols, 33, was informed that authorities plan to charge him with murder.
Nichols looked straight ahead during the five-minute hearing and did not make eye contact with anyone in the room, including the judge. He spoke only once, when Judge Frank Cox asked him if he had any questions.
"Not at this time," he said.
Nichols was held without bail on the rape charge he was on trial for Friday, when he allegedly overpowered a guard at the Fulton County courthouse, stole her gun and started a rampage that terrorized Atlanta and left four people dead.
This time, authorities took no chances for the hearing at the Fulton County Jail.
All prisoners booked into the jail make their first appearance before a judge inside the jail, not at the courthouse. But 19 officers — almost five times the usual number — packed the small room, and several more officers blocked the hall outside.
Those entering the hearing room were searched with a handheld metal detector.
Fulton County Sheriff Myron Freeman said other steps had been taken to improve courthouse security: 40 uniformed deputies have been added and high-risk inmates will be transported separately, accompanied by specially trained officers.
"The security improvements we've made in the past few days will continue as we search for ways to increase security and the safety of the public," he said in a statement.
Prosecutor Michele McCutcheon informed Cox the state will pursue four charges of murder against Nichols.
Nichols is accused of killing the judge on his rape case and two others at the courthouse, then killing a federal agent while on the run. After a 26-hour manhunt, he was captured Saturday at an apartment complex where he had taken a woman hostage.
The hostage, Ashley Smith, read a religious book to Nichols before he freed her and she called 911. Gov. Sonny Perdue said she will receive a $10,000 reward.
After Nichols' hearing, defense attorney Chris Adams told reporters "this is a time of grief and mourning" for the courthouse community.
That grief was apparent during an afternoon memorial service across the street from the courthouse. About 200 people packed in and around the building's atrium, and an additional 100 or so watched from the three levels of balconies overlooking it.
Many wept as friends and co-workers shared thoughts and anecdotes about the victims. Deputies wore black bands across their badges in honor of their fallen comrade, Sgt. Hoyt Teasley, who was gunned down outside the courthouse.
Chief Deputy Michael Cooke hailed Teasley as a hero.
"When everyone was running away from the danger, Hoyt, responding to the distress, ran to the danger," Cooke said.
County Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford was one of many courthouse employees who personally knew all the victims. "This could've happened to anybody, and it's unfortunate it happened to some very dear friends," he said.
More memorials are planned.
"It is really devastating to think this has occurred to this family," Superior Court Chief Judge Doris Downs said. "We've got to make something good come of this."
Really? Wow.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Sorry...money can't be used as an excuse...they should patrol less during the day and guard the prisoners more..this is a pure case of negligence on the part of LE...in my local county courthouse, even teens are trasported shankeled at least to the door of the courtroom...
And 19 guards now...I thought they had a money problem?
Prosecutors have a CHOICE?!? Good grief, is murdering 3 policemen a judge and a court reporter doesn't warrent this, what does?
And we can thank Affirmative Action for forcing the police to use a 50+ yr old female deputy to escort the prisoner, instead of a man (who could have possibly resisted the attack better than an elderly woman). Women simply are not qualified to do EVERY job that a man does. This case in point was emphasized by the deaths of 5 people; yet there will remain the ignorant who will insist that a woman can do any job as well as a man.
Based on the dereliction of duty by the local prosecutor, I'm surprised they are going to charge him.
So many levels of wrongness and ineptitude in this sad tale, and 4 lives lost and many others shattered. One of the few things we should really expect from government - to provide justice and lock up our criminals - bit us all in the ass once again. There must be a lot of people who cannot sleep tonight, knowing the failure to do their jobs led to murder.
Face of Evil
huh?
Fulton County must be the poster child for everything that's wrong with our criminal justice sytem.
Interesting that in all reports of this crime spree the racial element is totally avoided. According to Smith, Nichols told her that he was a warrior in the race war and the black man had been kept down too long. It is obvious that this was a criminal psycohpath who killed/injured regardless of race but I wait for the poverty pimps.jesse al and lou to show up somewhere
Another thing,this guy didn't find Jesus. I'm glad that Ms. Smith is alive and glad that no one else died because she didn't call 911 when they were dropping off the truck. But this is a manipulative a##hole who thought nothing of executing defenseless people but was afraid to die. Ms. Smith didn't convince him to surrender. He used Smith to give himself up because he knew there was no way out, alive, except for this. We can count on years of appeals and manipulation before justice is served, if ever.
Brian Nichols Hostage Speaks Out
What happpened Friday and Saturday, step by step (Brian Nichols / Court House Shootings)
Assault Victim Angered At Slow I.D. Of Nichols(Atlanta)
WHAT WENT WRONG? - Mistakes may have delayed capture [Atlanta police]
Judge faults security procedures (in Atlanta massacre)
Atlanta Police - Be on the lookout for a Green Honda (cartoon)
AP: U.S. Custom Agent found shot to death in North Atlanta
CNN reporting Hostage Situation North of Atlanta. (Update: Nichols CAPTURED!)
Fulton Co. Judge shot and killed in courthouse shooting (BREAKING Fri 9A)
Live THREAD - -Neal BOORTZ LOADED FOR BEAR BRIAN NICHOLS
Brian G. Nichols: Camera rolled during attack
From hostage to celeb in a blink (Ashley Smith)
Just saw first Ashley Smith interview on Fox. (comment)
Shackled Nichols Appears in Court
Ashley Smith on Hannity at Bottom of 3 pm EST Hour
Ashley Smith Appearing on Today Show- ON Now
Hostage's Cool Compassion Disarmed Atlanta Fugitive (Ashley Smith-Atlanta)
Shooting in Atlanta Courtroom - Several Killed
Atlanta Killings: Did PC Kill Four People?
Officials find lapses in security led to Atlanta's court slaughter
Revenge on system cited as motive for rampage - Nichols saw himself as 'soldier on a mission'
(Atlanta) Police missed early chance (to get Nichols; Keystone Kops strike again)
mhking to be on O'Reilly tonight (3/14) discussing Nichols aftermath(On Now!!)
Surveillance video released on CNN from cameras taken in parking garage - suspect Brian Nichols
Great post #10. The guy is a psychopath, not some misunderstood brother (racially or spiritually). He kills four people, then just wants a nice meal and some TLC. It has also come out now that he wrote down names of people in his jail cell, including racial slurs. He's a pig who deserves to die ASAP, and no sympathy at all should be wasted on this vermin. Save it for his victims.
I meant post 11, but 10 wasn't bad either!
Thanks for all the articles - you have really been a great source and it is appreciated by us cubies.
You are welcome over3Owithabrain.
Stephen O’Leary
Jurors in Nichols Trial Speak Out
Web Editor: Manav Tanneeru
Last Modified: 3/16/2005 8:03:35 PM
A juror who participated in the first rape trial for Brian Nichols, the suspect in the courthouse killings last Friday, told 11Alive News Wednesday he thought Nichols was guilty.
The trial, which took place three weeks, ended in a hung jury after 15 hours of deliberations.
When deliberations began, nine of the 12 jurors wanted to convict Nichols of raping and holding hostage his ex-girlfriend. But by the end of the second day, the jury was deadlocked -- voting eight to four in favor of acquittal.
"In the end, I really felt like I didn't want to let him go,” Stephen O’Leary, a juror said. “If it had to be a mistrial, I was willing to live with that, but I didn't want to change my vote to not guilty."
O' Leary said he was convinced by the physical evidence against Nichols and by the alleged victim’s testimony.
"The testimony of the victim lasted a day-and-half and she had just an extreme level of detail in her testimony,” O’Leary said. "On the other hand, Brian Nichols took the stand in our case and he testified as well for a few hours and his account of the same story had no detail at all."
O' Leary described Nichols as an imposing figure in the courtroom who kept his focus on the jurors, almost as if he were trying to read their minds.
O’ Leary also remembered court reporter Julie Brandau and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes as friendly and warm.
"They were very nice people. The first day of deliberations, the court reporter made us a pound cake, and Judge Barnes was very warm with us and very compassionate,’ O’ Leary said.
O’Leary said he feels crushed by what happened during Nichols’ retrial one week later. "I wish I had been able to convince the rest of the jurors to deliver a guilty verdict. I wish that we had been able to put him in jail and keep this from happening,” he said.
Joe Wood, another juror who spoke to 11Alive by telephone today, also voted to convict Nichols and feared he would commit more violence if allowed to go free.
He pointed out Nichols was accused of using duct tape to tie up his ex-girlfriend in the bathroom, just as he is accused of tying up Ashley Smith, the hostage who eventually turned him in.
The two jurors said everyone on the jury thought he was probably guilty, but most felt there was not enough evidence. They had reasonable doubt.
Reported By: Kevin Rowson
Web Editor: Manav Tanneeru
Last Modified: 3/16/2005 8:03:12 PM
There are still many gaps in the 24-hour timeline that Brian Nichols, the suspect in four murders, was on the loose last Friday, but recently released police reports detailing five alleged carjackings clear up some of the timing.
At 9:05 a.m. Friday morning, during the height of confusion at the Fulton County Courthouse, Deputy Solicitor General Duane Cooper was pulling into the parking garage across from the courthouse when a man put a gun to his face and ordered him out of his 2001 Mazda Tribute.
Nichols, the suspect, used the car to flee the chaos.
Two minutes later at 15 Wall Street, Nichols allegedly carjacked a tow truck and drove it to the Imperial Parking Garage at 98 Cone Street.
A 9:14 a.m., Nichols is suspected of dumping the tow truck and carjacking Atlanta Journal-Constitution employee Almeta Kilgo's2004 Mercury Sable on the fourth floor of the garage and from there he headed north on Spring Street.
At 9:16 a.m., inside the parking lot at the Apparel Mart, Nichols allegedly confronted Sung Chung in his 1997 Isuzu Trooper.
Chung, who works at a jewelry store there, told 11Alive News Nichols put a gun to his head and first ordered to get in the passenger seat, and then to the floor board.
Chung said as Nichols was pulling out of the garage, he ordered him to give him his jacket so he could change his appearance.
It was while Nichols was changing into the jacket that Chung saw an opportunity and unlocked the passenger door and jumped out before the car exited the lot.
At the parking lot across from CNN Center, at 9:20 a.m. and only 15 minutes after the first carjacking, AJC reporter Don O’Briant became the final carjack victim.
A surveillance camera at the parking lot showed Nichols wearing Chung’s jacket.
At some point after the final carjacking, authorities say, Nichols boarded a MARTA train and headed to Buckhead. Police say Nichols accosted a couple near Lenox Mall at about 10:20 p.m.
Nichols then allegedly came across a federal agent at his Buckhead home Friday night and killed him. He was captured at a Gwinnett apartment complex Saturday morning.
The details of the gap in time -– between the last carjacking at 9:20 a.m. and the couple being assaulted at 10:20 p.m. –- are still unclear.
Investigators told 11Alive News they have filled in that gap, but were unwilling to release it.
East Texan Shared Cell With Suspected Atlanta Shooter
East Texan Shared Cell With Suspected Atlanta Shooter
"Me and my wife was looking at the TV. It ran up on the flash news 'Brian Nichols' and it just, you know... It just shocked me," says Nichols' former cellmate Rodney Johnson. Johnson says the man he saw shackled in an Atlanta courtroom isn't the man he knew when they were cellmates last August. "We had a prayer group there. And we kept each other in God's hands." Johnson says Brian Nichols confided in him in jail, Johnson he was wrongly accused of the rape charges filed by his girlfriend of eight years. "If no one didn't believe in him for being good for a long time--he's been a good guy for a long time and never harmed no one and if no one didn't believe in him, he wasn't going to believe in no one." It is why Johnson believes Nichols just snapped Friday, allegedly killing four people in his rampage. While Johnson watched the manhunt unfold on TV, he believes Nichols was calling his East Texas confidante for help. "I got a call from Atlanta," says Johnson, "but my mother answered the phone and they hung up. About an hour and a half later I got another call from Atlanta from a different number. I tried to call back and I didn't get no answer from them and stuff. [The numbers were from] like pay phones and other places. And I was wondering if Brian was trying to get in touch with me because we was like brothers." Although Johnson doesn't justify his friend's alleged actions, he knows he can be of little help to Brian Nichols living hundreds of miles away in East Texas. "With no family members or no one around that's visiting you or to talk to, nobody in the whole world, his mind was getting troubled. I mean real troubled."
That should be a very interesting 13 hours, if we ever learn the real truth of his activities.
By ERRIN HAINES, Associated Press Writer
ATLANTA – Ashley Smith didn’t always make the right choices.
She married a man who was a hard worker, but he liked hanging out with the “good old boys” – the same crowd who might have been behind his stabbing death 3 1/2 years ago.
As a teen, she was arrested for shoplifting and was on probation for a year. Later came arrests for drunken driving, speeding and battery.
But when she was taken hostage by the man suspected of a triple slaying at an Atlanta courthouse and later the killing of a federal agent, the 26-year-old mother, waitress and student relied on her calmness and spiritual upbringing to survive the seven-hour ordeal in her apartment. Now she’s being hailed as a hero and will qualify for at least one of the rewards offered for the suspect.
“Some of the choices she made growing up were not really approved by me, but I just had to rely upon her growing out of that status,” Smith’s grandfather Dick Machovec said Monday in a telephone interview from his home in Augusta.
Machovec and his wife, Ann, hoped Ashley’s upbringing eventually would balance out bad judgment. She was raised in the church and regularly attended Sunday services.
This weekend, their prayers were answered.
“It was almost like she was recalling all these things she learned as a child,” he said.
Smith was up late moving into her apartment early Saturday when Brian Nichols allegedly followed her to her door and put a gun to her side.
He briefly bound her in duct tape, Smith said, but released her as she repeatedly told him about her desire to live so that her daughter would have at least one parent.
She read to him from “The Purpose-Driven Life,” the best-selling religious book by Rick Warren. He stopped her and asked her to repeat the beginning, and the two discussed its themes.
Eventually, he let her go, and she called 911. Gov. Sonny Perdue said Tuesday that Smith will get the state’s $10,000 reward for Nichols’ capture, adding, “In my opinion, she absolutely deserves it, and we’re ready to pay up now.” Other agencies, which offered an additional $50,000 in rewards, had not yet announced who would receive them.
Keeping a level head, leaning on faith and bonding with her captor may have saved Smith’s life – one she was beginning to turn around.
Smith was raised by her grandparents after her mother ran into some problems, Machovec said. He did not elaborate, only saying his granddaughter had a “sad life and it’s been tough through the years.”
“She told us, ‘One of these days, I’m gonna make you proud of me,’” Machovec said. “I said, ‘Well then, you better choose better friends than what you do.’”
An athletic scholarship got her to Augusta College, but she left after only a few months and married Mack Smith, a carpenter. The young couple then had a daughter, Paige.
In 2001, Smith’s husband died in her arms after he had been stabbed; his killer has not been found. She eventually left Augusta to live with her mother, Mary Jo. She left behind her daughter with an aunt.
Recently, Smith’s life was improving. By March, she had finished six months of a medical assistant course, was working two jobs and had moved into a new apartment. She sees Paige about once a week.
Tony Cook, general manager of Barnacles Seafood, Oysters and Sports in Duluth, saw promise in Smith when he hired her as a waitress. She had been on the job, training, for just two days before becoming a hostage.
“She had a great personality, she was easy to talk to, and very likeable,” Cook said.
Her ordeal may continue to change her life – she’s gotten four offers for a book deal, her aunt told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and a Hollywood film project was proposed. A center that trains people in how to survive a hostage situation also is interested in her story for part of its training.
Despite all the attention, Smith was humble about her part in Nichols’ surrender.
“My role was really very small in the grand scheme of things,” she said Monday. “The real heroes are the judicial and law enforcement officers who gave their lives and those who risked their lives to bring this to an end.”
So far there have been no other pictures other than his first mug shot picture and no other witnesses that have been interviewed that has mentioned the sweat shirt.
Web Editor: Tracey Christensen
Last Modified: 3/16/2005 5:46:02 PM
A widow and single mother, Ashley Smith hoped that two part-time jobs and a better education would help her earn enough money to take care of her 5-year-old daughter.
Smith will now receive at least $40,000 for calling authorities and alerting them to the whereabouts of courthouse killing suspect Brian Nichols. The FBI has not yet decided whether to award another $20,000 to Smith for her efforts.
Nichols held Smith as a hostage for seven hours Saturday and finally freed her so that she could go visit her daughter at a church. When she emerged from her Gwinnett County apartment unit, Smith called authorities.
Law enforcement agencies swarmed the area and Nichols surrendered peacefully. He is being held inside the Fulton County jail without bond.
On Tuesday, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue authorized the transfer of $10,000 to Smith for the capture of Nichols. Smith, who is staying with relatives in Augusta, could receive the check as soon as Wednesday.
Perdue said he hoped other agencies that offered rewards would honor Smith as well. The FBI promised $20,000, the U.S. Marshal's Service offered $25,000, and the Georgia Sheriff's Association offered $5,000.
The Georgia Sheriffs' Association Inc. decided Wednesday that the money should go to Smith. Vice president Terry Norris said his office is still trying to determine how to present the money to her. The association is waiting to see if a formal presentation is being planned.
"She'll receive it. We haven't decided when she will receive it," Norris said.
The U.S. Marshals Service, which offered $25,000, is prepared to give its portion to Smith, too.
The service first needed information showing "she was, in fact, the one that gave the information leading to his arrest," said U.S. Marshal Dick Mecum. "Reports indicate she was the one.
"The marshal's office has already cut the check. It's just a matter of releasing it."
The last holdout is the FBI.
"The process to determine who the rightful recipients of the reward is or are is ongoing," said bureau spokesman Steve Lazarus Wednesday. "We are not going to discuss the process or give a timetable."
Smith's cool demeanor is being credited with her survival after Nichols, armed with several weapons, appeared behind her as she opened her apartment door at 2 a.m. Saturday.
“My husband died four years ago, and I told him if he hurt me, my little girl wouldn't have a mommy or daddy, and she was expecting me the next morning and if he didn't let me go, she'd be really upset,” Smith said during a news conference held Sunday.
“Most of my time was spent talking to this man about my life and my experiences,” Smith said.
Hope those "acquittal" jurors are proud of themselves. Wonder if there was a racial aspect to the verdicts. Then again, it could have been the incompetence of DA Paul Howard once again - not presenting all the evidence he could have the first time.
I believe that this may very well be true. There has been a very marked increase in false rape charges in the past 10 years.
Maybe Nichols took Tom Ridge's comments in the wrong way: "Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, responding to days of debate over duct tape and plastic sheeting, on Thursday defended his new department's recommendations on how Americans can best protect themselves ...... and promised even greater guidance in the near future."
"Obviously, I think there's been some political belittling of duct tape," he said.
She did make him proud.
I wonder what sport it was! Now, that I would really like to know. What sport?
Hmmm, that would be a great question to ask the posters here who recently suggested that they were Ashley's sister-in-law and step father.
Hmmm!
Then again, as is true, some of the jurors were genuinely unconvinced of the veracity of the charges.
The rise in false rape charges over the past couple of decades is very large. Look it up.
It's fitting that now you want to blame the original jurors.
Blame Nichols.
**************
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/m-n/mcelroy/03/mcelroy071603-kobe-bryant-rape-charges.htm
(excerpts)
According to a study conducted by Eugene Kanin of Purdue University, the correct figure (false accusations) may rise to the 40 percent range. Kanin examined 109 rape complaints registered in a Midwestern city from 1978 to 1987. Of these, 45 were ultimately classified by the police as "false." Also based on police records, Kanin determined that 50 percent of the rapes reported at two major universities were "false."
Studies and statistics often vary and for legitimate reasons. For example, they may examine different populations. But such a dramatic variance -- two percent to 50 percent -- raises the question of whether political interests are at work.
**
In his forthcoming biography Politicians, Partisans and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News , Crossfire co-host Tucker Carlson discusses another motive that underlies some false accusations. In 2001, a woman he had never met alleged he had raped her in Louisville, a city he had never visited. After $14,000 in defensive legal bills, Carlson discovered that the woman had a chronic mental disorder. He decided not to sue for redress since it would further link his name with the word "rape."
Carlson even hesitated to speak out in his tell-all book because "the stigma of being accused of that kind of crime is so strong." Fortunately, he thought it taught a valuable lesson: "I always assumed, like every other journalist does, that all sex scandals are rooted in the truth, period. You may not have done precisely what you're accused of, but you did something." From bitter experience, he now knows differently.
Provided By: The Associated Press
Last Modified: 3/17/2005 1:31:14 PM
ATLANTA (AP) - Brian Nichols' alleged hostage is expected to receive $20,000 in reward money pledged by the FBI, a spokesman said Thursday.
The announcement came a day after the FBI said it could not determine the "rightful recipients" of the reward money when other agencies and organizations immediately announced that Ashley Smith would receive their allotments of reward money.
The 26-year-old single mother made the phone call that led to the Saturday arrest of Brian Nichols, the man suspected in Friday's Fulton County Courthouse slayings.
Smith will receive at least $62,500 - with $25,000 expected from the U.S. Marshals Office, $10,000 from Gov. Sonny Perdue's office, $5,000 from the Georgia Sheriffs' Association and $2,500 from the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police.
"We do expect that Ashley Smith will be recipient of the FBI's portion of the reward money in Brian Nichols' case," spokesman Steve Lazarus read from a statement. "We further expect this will happen sooner rather than later."
Lazarus would not say when Smith could receive the money.
Smith was reportedly held hostage for seven hours by Nichols on Saturday morning before placing the 911 call that led to his arrest.
Nichols is accused of assaulting courthouse deputy Cynthia Hall on Friday, taking her gun from a lockbox and fatally shooting Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes and his court reporter Julie Brandau on the day Barnes was to resume the 33-year-old's rape trial.
Nichols also is accused of killing Sheriff's Sgt. Hoyt Teasley outside the courthouse and federal agent David Wilhelm during his attempt to elude authorities.
Police: Nichols took 5 cars in 15 minutes
By RHONDA COOK
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/17/05
Brian G. Nichols allegedly carjacked five vehicles within 15 minutes as he tried to escape last week's carnage at the Fulton County Courthouse, police reports show.
The reports reveal how quickly Nichols — after allegedly killing a judge, court reporter and sheriff's deputy — hopped from SUV to tow truck, then to sedan, SUV and another automobile before fleeing downtown Atlanta on a MARTA train to Buckhead. There, he killed a federal agent, police say.
Nichols remained in the Fulton County Jail on Wednesday as prosecutors prepared to charge him in the slayings of Judge Rowland Barnes, court reporter Julie Ann Brandau, Sgt. Hoyt Teasley and Immigration and Customs agent David Wilhelm.
The longest Nichols was in any one vehicle was seven minutes, the time it took him to drive a commandeered tow truck less than a half-mile from Wall Street near Underground Atlanta to a parking deck on Cone Street, the reports show. The shortest time between carjackings was two minutes.
Atlanta Deputy Solicitor Duane Cooper was pulling into his regular parking deck on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive just a few yards from where Teasley lay dying on the sidewalk outside the courthouse, reports show.
Cooper declined to talk about the experience Wednesday, but the report said Nichols opened the driver's side door of Cooper's 2001 Mazda Tribute, brandished a handgun and demanded the SUV. Cooper told police Nichols backed out of the parking lot driveway and headed up the hill toward Peachtree Street.
It was 9:05 a.m.
Cooper's car was ditched at Wall Street, next to Underground Atlanta and just a few yards from Five Points.
Deronta Franklin was waiting at 15 Wall St. in his tow truck for his next call from dispatch.
"It happened so fast," Franklin, 37, said Wednesday. "He [Nichols] turned onto Wall [Street] and made a quick left into the parking deck" followed moments later by "about five police cars." By now the time was 9:07 a.m.
Suddenly, Nichols re-emerged "on foot," he said.
"He pointed the gun and said, 'Let me have it,' and I threw up my hands and said, 'You can have the truck,' " Franklin said.
Franklin's 1999 Ford F-350 tow truck was found in a parking deck at 98 Cone St., where Nichols allegedly took a 2004 Mercury Sable driven by Almeta Kilgo, a 37-year-old computer programmer who works for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
It was 9:14 a.m.
Kilgo said Nichols parked the tow truck in a space across the aisle from where she backed in her sedan. Nichols allegedly demanded that Kilgo "move over" into the passenger seat, which she did. Kilgo said Nichols drove a few levels down before ordering her into the trunk. Instead she ran, screaming for help.
Nichols' next stop was 250 Spring St., site of another parking deck. Sung Chung, 26, was getting out of his green Isuzu Trooper.
It was 9:16 a.m.
"He demanded that I get into [the] passenger seat, and I jumped over," said Chung, a small-business owner. "He asked for money, and I told him I didn't have any. . . . And when I noticed he no longer had the gun and was taking off his shirt, that's when I jumped out of the car."
Nichols then drove the Trooper out of the garage and to another one, Centennial Parking, at 130 Marietta St., according to the police reports. There, Journal-Constitution book reviewer Don O'Briant was parking his 1997 Honda. By this time it was 9:20 a.m.
O'Briant, 62, said Nichols parked Chung's Trooper in a nearby space marked for handicapped drivers. Nichols then ordered O'Briant into the trunk of his green Honda Accord; instead the AJC reporter turned to run and Nichols pistol-whipped him, O'Briant said.
Nichols got into the Honda and drove away, the police report said. The Honda, however, which was the target of an intense manhunt throughout the day, was found in the same garage 13 hours later.
Responding to a call from another AJC employee working the night shift, police found O'Briant's Honda one floor down from where it was taken.
By HARRY R. WEBER, Associated Press Writer
ATLANTA - The city's embattled police department acknowledged Friday that it made mistakes just after last week's deadly courthouse rampage, and the chief revealed that the suspect spent as many as 12 hours undetected outside a busy mall.
Police Chief Richard Pennington said he will oversee a full review of his department's response to the attacks, communication problems between agencies, and their ill-fated focus on searching for a stolen car they believed suspect Brian Nichols was using to flee.
The car later turned up in the same parking garage from where it was taken.
"We should have gone through the entire building," Pennington told a news conference. "We didn't, based on the information we had at the time."
Authorities say that while the 33-year-old Nichols was in the Fulton County Courthouse last Friday for his rape retrial, he attacked a deputy and retrieved her gun from a lock box, then moved on to the courtroom and killed a judge and a court reporter. Authorities say he later murdered a deputy and a federal agent before surrendering.
While acknowledging missteps, Pennington told The Associated Press after the news conference that Nichols eluded capture for so long because of his inconspicuous behavior.
Pennington said Nichols hopped on a subway train shortly after the shootings and rode north about seven miles, to the Lenox Square Mall stop. Wearing a jacket he had allegedly stolen during the carjacking at the parking garage, he spent much of the day milling about in the streets around the mall. He did not apparently enter the mall, the chief said.
Nichols didn't surface until about 13 hours after the morning shooting, when officers received a report of a couple assaulted near the Lenox Square train station by a man matching Nichols' description.
The police chief said authorities were looking into whether the birth of Nichols' baby boy three days earlier had added to his stress from being jailed and on trial in a case where conviction could bring a life sentence.
"He probably did snap," Pennington told AP. "He could have, after getting the deputy's gun, just walked out of the courthouse. He didn't do that."
Pennington, who cut short a Mexico vacation when he learned of the shootings, noted that the sheriff's department, not the police department, is responsible for courthouse security and running the jail.
Jack Liles
Foreman in Nichols Trial Speaks Out
Reported By: Art Franklin
Web Editor: Manav Tanneeru
Last Modified: 3/17/2005 11:16:12 PM
The foreman of the jury in the first rape trial that Brian Nichols faced said he was disappointed by the way the prosecution handled that case and wonders if Nichols was an innocent man.
Nichols is accused of killing four people in a rampage at the Fulton County Courthouse last week.
In the case, Nichols was accused of attacking his former girlfriend in her Sandy Springs apartment. The alleged victim told police she was bound and raped for hours.
The trial, which took place three weeks, ended in a hung jury after 15 hours of deliberations.
“We didn’t have an evil monster on our hands, we had an intelligent, articulate, educated man, who did a reasonable job explaining his version of the events in his defense,” said Jack Liles, the jury foreman.
Liles says the prosecution and defense presented a “he said, she said” case -- one that left the jury incapable of reaching a unified conclusion.
During the trial, a witness testified that just hours before the alleged attack, Nichols confronted his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend.
When he was threatened with arrest, Nichols reportedly responded, "They can lock me up, they can take me to jail, but eventually, I'll be out and I'll be back."
On the witness stand, Nichols admitted that he and his ex-girlfriend had a rocky, seven-year relationship. Their relationship ended when Nichols got another woman pregnant.
Nichols testified that on the night of the alleged rape, he and his ex-girlfriend were together, watching a movie, and talked about the possibility of repairing their relationship.
"We ended up being intimate," he said during his testimony, according to transcripts obtained by 11Alive news. "It was with her consent.”
Later, he claims, they fought. “She smacked me,” Nichols testified. “Since I never put my hands on a woman in any way...I’m ready to go.”
“We know something happened in that room, that night in that apartment, we know sex occurred, but whether it was rape or whether it was consensual sex, I couldn't decide,” Liles, the jury foreman,said.
When deliberations began, nine of the 12 jurors wanted to convict Nichols of raping and holding hostage his ex-girlfriend. But by the end of the second day, the jury was deadlocked -- voting eight to four in favor of acquittal.
While many are pointing fingers at the jury for the decision, Liles says they should not point further than the prosecutors. “The state had not proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that the rape occurred,” he said.
The prosecution “brought poor evidence to the courtroom, brought not enough facts or not enough testimony to help us reach a guilty verdict or they brought an innocent man to the courtroom who shouldn't been there in the first place,” he said.
Stephen O’Leary, a juror in the same trial, told 11Alive News earlier this week that he thought Nichols was guilty.
"In the end, I really felt like I didn't want to let him go,” O’ Leary said. “If it had to be a mistrial, I was willing to live with that, but I didn't want to change my vote to not guilty."
O' Leary said he was convinced by the physical evidence against Nichols and by the alleged victim’s testimony.
"The testimony of the victim lasted a day-and-half and she had just an extreme level of detail in her testimony,” O’Leary said. "On the other hand, Brian Nichols took the stand in our case and he testified as well for a few hours and his account of the same story had no detail at all."
Nichols was put on trial again on the same charges and on Friday, while being transported to a courtroom for proceedings, he escaped and allegedly shot and killed the judge in the case, the court reporter, a deputy and a federal agent.
He is also accused of assaulting at least three people and is suspected in multiple carjackings.
Maybe, just maybe the person that is feeling pretty guilty about the four Nichols' murders is this girlfriend.
****
From MensNewsday.com --- According to a study conducted by Eugene Kanin of Purdue University, the correct figure may rise to the 40 percent range. Kanin examined 109 rape complaints registered in a Midwestern city from 1978 to 1987. Of these, 45 were ultimately classified by the police as "false." Also based on police records, Kanin determined that 50 percent of the rapes reported at two major universities were "false."
Studies and statistics often vary and for legitimate reasons. For example, they may examine different populations. But such a dramatic variance -- two percent to 50 percent -- raises the question of whether political interests are at work.
It is understandable why some feminists might wish to understate the incidence of false reporting. In the '50s, women who reported sexual assault or domestic violence were dismissed. To acknowledge false reports as a real problem might undercut the gains made toward taking women seriously.
But if the charge against Kobe Bryant is proven false, a backlash against women reporting violence may occur. Bryant is accused of a crime that, under Colorado law, carries a prison term of four years to life or probation for 20 years to life. The highest level of evidence and credible testimony should be required before ruining a man's life in that manner.
Thanks for the ping...
Aired March 18, 2005 - 22:00 ET
PAULA ZAHN, HOST: Good evening everyone. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. You have heard much of Ashley Smith's story but not Almeta Kilgo's. A week ago today, Ms. Kilgo who works for the Atlanta Journal Constitution drove to work in downtown Atlanta as she usually did. But unknown to her, Brian Nichols had just fled from the Fulton County Courthouse after allegedly killing three people. In the next 15 minutes, police say, he would carjack five vehicles. Almeta Kilgo's Mercury Sable was one of them. And until now, she hasn't spoken on camera about it. But tonight she tells us her story of staring down death.
ALMETA KILGO, ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION: I was getting my things together to get ready to get out of the car. I had the driver's door open.
A man gets out of the tow truck. And he is walking toward my car really fast. And he has a gun in both hands. He comes around to the driver's side of the door. And he puts the gun up to my head.
ZAHN: What did he say to you, Almeta?
KILGO: He said get over. Get in the passenger side now.
I didn't know what was happening. And -- but I did see the gun right in my face. And I think I started to say something to him to maybe ask him to let me go. And then he said, don't you see this blood on my hands? I'm a dead man. Now, you get over right now.
And at that point, I figured that the best thing I could do is just go ahead and do what he told me to do at that time.
ZAHN: Now, is he screaming this at you or was he pretty calm?
KILGO: He's not screaming. He was calm, but he was like very serious. He was speaking in a quite, but a commanding voice.
The only thing going through my mind at that time was, how do I get out of this car? You know, I've got to get out of the car.
So my intention was to at some point, before he got out of that garage, my intention was to jump out of that passenger side door.
ZAHN: Are you pleading with him at this point? Let me out of here, don't hurt me?
KILGO: Maybe I was saying something. Because he told me to get out and get in the trunk.
So he stops the car. He says, I tell you what, you get out and get in the trunk. So at that point he pops the trunk open.
ZAHN: And you knew you couldn't get in that trunk?
KILGO: I had no intention of getting in the trunk of that car.
ZAHN: You knew it would be over if you did that?
KILGO: Yes, I did. I knew it would be over.
ZAHN: So what did you do?
KILGO: Well, when I opened the door, I took off running. I started screaming for everything that was in me. I just started screaming.
ZAHN: Why don't you think he shot you at that point as you were fleeing?
KILGO: I don't know. Because the thought as I was running and screaming, I thought that, OK, at any moment now I'm going to feel a bullet in my back. But it didn't happen.
ZAHN: You were really thinking that?
KILGO: I was really think that. I was thinking it was all over for me. But you know, Paula, I knew that I had to at least try to escape.
ZAHN: So what did he do then? You're screaming bloody murder, you're running. What does he do?
KILGO: As I tripped and fell, Paula, I was on my knees, I think. Maybe I was crawling. I don't know. But I was still screaming. And he came up behind me.
ZAHN: On foot.
KILGO: He came up behind me on foot. I turned over. So I'm facing him, you know, kind of scooting back on my hands, and I'm facing him. And he's leaning down over me. And he puts the gun to my head again.
ZAHN: Oh, my gosh.
KILGO: Yes, he tells me, shut up. He keeps saying, shut up, shut up. You're messing me up. You're messing me up. Shut up.
I was looking straight into the barrel of that gun. The only thing I could do was continue to scream.
ZAHN: So how long do you think you were screaming before he finally gave up on you?
KILGO: Maybe 30 seconds, maybe.
ZAHN: So then he just....
KILGO: ...about 45 seconds.
ZAHN: So then he just walked away?
KILGO: Well, yes. He turned around. He went back to my car, he got back in my car. When he turned around and left me, I got up and continued to run over into a corner of the garage where there were a couple of cars parked and it was near the elevators.
And I just sort of backed into the corner like hiding between the cars. And I kept screaming, just trying to get someone to come. Just trying to get someone to come. Because I figured that someone has heard me by now.
ZAHN: So Almeta, how long was it before you realized that the man who threatened your life was Brian Nichols, a man who would later be accused of killing four people?
KILGO: Well, Paula, it was a little bit after some people had came to help me. They escorted me into the office of this parking garage. And the police had been called. And they were there questioning me.
And while I was sitting there in the office, I overheard some people talking to each other. And they said something like he's killed four people.
ZAHN: How much do you think about why he allowed you to survive?
KILGO: I don't know why he did, Paula. The only thing I can say is that it must have been God, it must have been faith. It just wasn't my time.
ZAHN: The bottom line is that throughout this confrontation with Brian Nichols, you don't know where your strength came from, but you thought you might end up dead?
KILGO: I thought that I would end up dead. I did. But I knew that I wasn't going to give up without a struggle.
ZAHN: How has facing death changed your life, Almeta?
KILGO: Well, Paula, I'm determined to do more things now that really bring joy into my life, you know. And I spent a good deal of my life living for other people. And intend to start living more to do the things I enjoy. You know, I realize the value of spending time with my family and loved ones and the people who mean a lot to me.
ZAHN: Oh, I think we can all learn a lot about the way you handled yourself. We wish you tremendous luck. And thank you for sharing your story with us tonight.
KILGO: Thank you, Paula.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZAH: Boy, what a brave woman.
We left messages earlier with Mr. Nichols' attorneys for a response to these allegations. They did not return our calls.
Almeta Kilgo's story was neither the first nor the last on that terrible Friday. The fugitive, after all, escaped outfoxing law enforcement for another 24 hours putting the Atlanta Police Department on the defensive then and today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHIEF RICHARD PENNINGTON, ATLANTA POLICE DEPARTMENT: Many people will criticize. There are a lot of Monday morning quarterbacks. And people that say you should have done this and you should have done that. But many of you don't know that it was a crisis. It was chaotic. Calls were coming in. We received over 1500 calls on our task force hot line. And many of our officers had to respond to many of those calls. And you know a lot of those calls did not turn out to locate Brian Nichols.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAHN: As for the future, Chief Pennington says he plans to investigate shortcomings both inside his department and at the Fulton County Sheriff's Office.
CNN NEWSNIGHT AARON BROWN- Transcript of Almeta Kilgo AJC employee carjacked by Brian Nichols
"Prosecutor Michele McCutcheon informed Cox the state will pursue four charges of murder against Nichols."
Is that smart? I was under the impression it was better to prosecute for a single murder when there is more than one, just in case there is a mistrial or whatever might go wrong and so therefore a prosecutor could then make a case for a 2nd murder and so on?
They have not shown to be too swift thus far. It appears they suffer from tunnel vision.
Door. Barn. Horse.
Golden Donut Award ceremony on TV soon.
Great job putting all these events/posts in order! Thanks.
Agreed!
Thank both of you.
By DAN CHAPMAN, BILL RANKIN The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 03/21/05
Witnesses say they saw Brian Nichols kill a judge and court reporter. A video camera captured the brutal attack on a Fulton County sheriff's deputy. And a woman held captive by the fugitive told reporters Nichols admitted to shooting a U.S. Customs agent.
The evidence against Nichols, followed in up-to-the-minute detail by a frightened and fascinated Atlanta, appears overwhelming. Defense attorneys and ex-prosecutors wonder how Nichols could possibly receive a fair trial in such a saturated media environment. A change of venue — to Albany, Savannah or Columbus — seems logical, they said.
"It would be incredibly difficult for me to see this case being tried in Fulton County," said Steve Sadow, an experienced Atlanta defense attorney who has handled his share of high-profile, high-publicity cases.
Sadow may be surprised.
"Everybody in the whole United States knows about this case and knows he's the guy," said Stephen Bright, a death-penalty expert and director of the Southern Center for Human Rights. "The whole country has been fixated on this case the past few days.
"It's not like the publicity can be escaped by going somewhere else in Georgia or, even if it were possible, somewhere else in the country."
Last week, as trials resumed at the Fulton County Courthouse, and with Nichols again behind bars, attention shifted to the punishment of the man authorities consider one of Atlanta's most cold-blooded killers. Nichols will face a slew of murder, carjacking and assault charges, which are expected to be filed within 30 days.
Chris Adams and Gary Parker, attorneys with the state's public defenders office, met with Nichols last Monday and appeared in court on his behalf Tuesday. For now, they represent Nichols on rape and kidnapping charges.
Nichols was on trial for those crimes when the shooting rampage began. Adams and Parker likely will serve as Nichols' counsel on the murder charges, but won't be assigned to represent him until those charges are filed.
Neither attorney would comment on their conversation with the suspect nor about the likelihood of seeking to move the trial from Fulton County. But Kent Alexander, a former U.S. District Attorney in the mid-1990s, said time — and continued media interest — will determine where Nichols is tried.
"We'll have to see how much of a story this continues to be," said Alexander, general counsel for Emory University. "If it's not as fresh in peoples' minds, maybe it can take place in Atlanta. Otherwise, the defense attorney will want to try it elsewhere."
Nichols' attorneys can file a motion to move the case out of Fulton County once indictments are handed down or even during jury selection.
No simple answer
Sadow successfully defended Joseph Sweeting, who — along with NFL star Ray Lewis and another defendant — was accused of killing two men during a Buckhead street fight after the 2000 Super Bowl.
"You had everyone presuming the guilt of the defendants from the mayor to the district attorney to columnists to news reporters," said Sadow. "If the pre-trial prejudice is so clear — and it very well may be in this case — the judge would be able to change the venue.
"What you're looking for is a place where the public is not inundated with media reports for hours and hours and hours."
Georgia law requires that trials may only be moved to counties with a similar racial makeup. Pre-trial publicity was so heavy for the 2002 murder and racketeering trial of former DeKalb County Sheriff Sidney Dorsey that the judge granted a defense request to move the trial out of Decatur. Dorsey's trial was held in Albany instead.
J. Tom Morgan, DeKalb County's former district attorney who successfully prosecuted Dorsey, said Nichols could be tried in Chatham County (Savannah), Richmond County (Augusta), Muscogee County (Columbus) or Dougherty County (Albany). Moving the trial away from Fulton County, though, poses a new set of problems for Nichols.
"Juries in Fulton and DeKalb counties consistently oppose the death penalty," Morgan said. "So, if the defendant is moved out of Atlanta, jurors are typically more conservative."
Lawyers representing 1960s radical Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, found guilty of killing a Fulton County sheriff's deputy in 2000, didn't ask for a change of venue despite intense media scrutiny. Al-Amin, who could have received the death penalty, was sentenced to life without parole.
"We didn't think there was a better venue in the state for him," said one of Al-Amin's attorneys, Jack Martin. "In the Nichols case now, the issue for his lawyers is to save his life. You want to be in the place where you have the best shot to do that. Both Fulton and DeKalb counties are two jurisdictions that have jury pools more sympathetic to an argument that, despite the crime, the death penalty is unnecessary."
Jurors might not be the only outsiders determining Nichols' fate.
Appearance important
Attorneys questioned this week whether a Fulton County Superior Court judge should hear a case in which a colleague was murdered. Don Samuel, a defense attorney, said Fulton District Attorney Paul Howard — who worked alongside some of the victims — should also step aside and let another prosecutor try the case.
To avoid all appearances of impropriety, Samuel said, Nichols' trial should be held elsewhere.
"The appearance is important as the process," he said. "In my opinion, the entire Fulton County justice system is a victim when something like this happens."
Brian Nichols' booking mugs from his arrest after being accused of rape by his ex-girlfriend.
At rape trial, Brian Nichols was portrayed as man on verge of losing control
By CAMERON McWHIRTER, BILL RANKIN, STEVE VISSER The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 03/20/05
When they returned from their date, she noticed her security system had been disabled.
Something was wrong.
Get back in the car, she urged. Let's go.
But before they could back out of the garage, Brian Nichols materialized, in a rage. His fists were clenched. He was screaming.
Why is he here? Nichols demanded to know. Why was his minister dating his girlfriend?
Swearing, he shoved them and grabbed her keys.
They had never seen this side of Brian Nichols.
They knew him as a man of God who helped found their tight-knit church. He had been devoted to his girlfriend, caring for her after surgery and spending holidays with her family.
Now he seemed to be unraveling.
"There is a demon inside me . . . and it's getting very powerful," Nichols allegedly told the minister a week later. "I don't know what I'm capable of doing."
The next morning, Nichols broke into the woman's home. He held her at gunpoint, bound her with duct tape, raped her and warned that he would kill her family if she told police, prosecutors say.
Nichols disputes this account — offered to authorities by the minister and the ex-girlfriend — but he has been on trial twice because of their allegations.
The jury deadlocked late February in the first trial, when jurors couldn't decide whom to believe. The second trial ended in mayhem when Nichols broke free, setting off a chain of events that would end the lives of four public servants, critically injure a fifth, terrorize a city and rattle the American justice system.
Transcripts of the first trial show glimpses of what led to that morning.
The trial revealed two Brian Nicholses — one an articulate, resolute witness who said his girlfriend had made the whole thing up because she was jealous; the pot-smoking, self-described gangster who was controlling, violent and fascinated with guns.
A review of 619 pages of excerpted transcripts sheds light on a man who, before March 11, was one of thousands shuffled through Fulton County's courts every year.
Now he is Georgia's most notorious defendant.
Brian Nichols seemed to be living the good life.
The former college linebacker worked out three times a week at the Crunch Fitness gym in Buckhead. He lived in a Sandy Springs condo owned by his girlfriend, and he drove a white BMW she had bought for him.
But in the spring of 2004, another woman he'd been dating became pregnant. And when his longtime girlfriend found out, she broke up with him. Or, according to her testimony, she tried.
Nichols' former girlfriend took the stand the morning of Tuesday, Feb. 22, in Fulton County Courtroom 8-H. It was the second day of the trial, presided over by Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes.
She told jurors she was 33 years old, a resident of Sandy Springs. She had her undergraduate degree from a college in Virginia and her MBA from a college in Georgia. She was a corporate executive at a credit reporting agency.
She'd met Nichols in December 1996. He was a security guard at her company.
During their seven years together, they came to know each other's families well — his in Baltimore and South Carolina, hers in West Virginia. They vacationed together. And for six months in 2000, they lived together.
But in April 2004, they separated and agreed to see other people. They began dating again that summer, until she learned Nichols was still seeing a woman he had met during their separation.
She had seen the woman — identified as both Sonja Meredith and Sonya Meredith in court records — at Nichols' condo one night when she stopped by unexpectedly. Meredith testified the encounter was in June and that she was surprised by the way the woman treated Nichols — she yelled profanities at him while citing the Bible. The girlfriend's name is being withheld because police believe she is a rape victim.
Nichols assured his girlfriend he was no longer dating Meredith, identified in court records as a dental hygienist from Stockbridge. But before long, she caught him with Meredith again.
This time the two women exchanged stories — about "what had been happening over the past two months that obviously neither of us were aware of" — and phone numbers. "It was not confrontational at all," the girlfriend said of the conversation.
Even before that chance encounter, Nichols and his longtime girlfriend had sought help from the Southern Christian Counseling Service. She was trying to determine whether there was any way to salvage the relationship.
"Emotional feelings that you have for someone that you love, after that amount of time, don't go away in one day," she told jurors.
But when Nichols announced that Meredith was going to have his baby, it was "the icing on the cake."
She called Meredith to make sure it was true. "Yes, I'm pregnant, and I'm keeping it," Meredith answered.
After that, the woman told Nichols it was over. "We're done," she said.
But Nichols didn't want their relationship to end. "He knew what he had done was wrong but he thought with our mutual faith in God, that we could work through it. . . . He wasn't going to give up that easily." She tried to move on, though she was disappointed and hurt. She ran into Nichols occasionally at Word of God Christian Center in Suwanee.
Things grew tense when she began dating a minister at the church, Chris Rowell. One night in mid-August, she and Rowell stopped by her home after a dinner date.
As they got out of the car in her garage, "something really didn't feel right," she recalled.
Suddenly, Nichols appeared. He had been upstairs in her condo, hiding in the dark.
Immediately he began questioning Rowell about why he was there.
Nichols shoved Rowell out of the garage and pulled the door down. He grabbed the keys out of the car ignition and the spare set of keys to her house out of the console.
Locked outside, Rowell listened as they argued.
Why is he here? Nichols demanded.
It isn't our house, she told him. It is my house.
Rowell, called to the stand to testify, supported her version of what happened.
"He was very angry," Rowell told jurors. "He kind of burst through the door and began screaming, and you know, clenching his fists, and you could tell by the look on his face that he was — he was extremely angry."
Nichols shoved her out of the way, then knocked some letters and a bag of groceries from Rowell's hands.
"I was just saying to myself, you know, just reminding myself to remain calm," Rowell said. "Of course, I was concerned for her safety because I didn't know — like I said, I had never seen him like that before and I didn't know if he would cause her any physical harm."
After arguing for 15 to 20 minutes, Nichols stormed out of her condo, Rowell said. Nichols, a muscular former athlete, appeared to have ripped his shirt off.
Despite the frightening encounter, they did not call police.
Why not? Assistant District Attorney Gayle Abramson asked the woman the question jurors must have wanted to ask. The woman answered that she knew Nichols; he never acted that way. She believed she could talk him down.
"I thought that . . . I could reason with him and that we would be able to have as much of an amicable break as possible," she told the jury. "I didn't at the time feel it was necessary to involve the police."
In some ways the woman felt almost responsible for Nichols' well-being. Who else could he turn to? His parents were in Africa, his brother was in Florida, other family members in Baltimore.
At one point during this period, Nichols threatened suicide. The woman called 911. She also phoned him, leaving several messages on his voice mail. She went to the condo to search for him.
The next day, she e-mailed his mother in Tanzania.
"I really need your help and to talk to you," she wrote Claritha Nichols on Aug. 11. Their e-mail exchange was offered into evidence. "Things between Brian and I are spiraling out of control," she wrote.
She described the confrontation with Rowell. She wrote that Nichols "was definitely out of control." He'd wanted to convince her, she said, that the woman he had gotten pregnant was going to have an abortion. He seemed to believe that this could save their relationship.
"I told him I really thought things were too far gone," she e-mailed Nichols' mother. "I'm unsure that I have the energy that it will take to climb out of this hole; and right now, I just want some space and peace in my life."
She described his suicide threat and wrote that she prayed for him.
She wanted to make sure he was going to be OK. "Should I force him to go into a hospital for evaluation/monitoring?" she asked. "Can I put him on a plane to Africa for a few months? He's obviously strong enough to handle this but he doesn't know/feel it right now."
Seemingly desperate to stay in contact with her, Nichols unexpectedly showed up one night for choir practice at their church. Nichols hadn't been involved with the choir for years.
"I asked him what he was doing and pretty much that if he had an honest heart about wanting to be in the choir, then that's one thing; but if he was there to make a scene or if he was there to try to do a kind of a manipulation or control tactic, that he needed to leave and he needed to evaluate why all of a sudden he had an interest in being in the choir," she testified.
Later, she and Nichols did spend some time together. They met for more than three hours with her mother and the church's senior pastor and his wife. The pastor tried to help Nichols get through it, but "Brian needed to respect the fact that the relationship was over."
Nichols seemingly was unable to let it go.
On Aug. 18, the woman planned a night out with friends, a George Benson and Will Downing concert at Chastain Park. She had bought the tickets when she and Nichols were still dating. Now she was going with Rowell.
They went with a group of about 10. Some went over to her place after the concert. After everyone else had left, Rowell noticed Nichols standing outside in the dark. Nichols wanted to talk to the minister alone.
She asked them both to leave. "I didn't want things to escalate."
Rowell said she threatened to call the police, but Nichols said he didn't care.
"He said, 'Call the police.' He said, 'They can come — they can lock me up, they can take me to jail, but eventually I'll be out and I'll be back.' "
After Nichols raised his hand to show them he was unarmed, Rowell agreed to talk to him in the driveway.
Nichols apologized for pushing Rowell earlier. He said he wanted to get back together with the woman.
"It was kind of funny at the time because he asked me — he asked me if I have ever kissed her, and I said yeah. I said, 'Yes, I have.' And he said, 'Well, have you ever seen her naked?' And I laughed and I said, 'We just started dating.' I said, 'Even if I did, that would be none of your business.' "
Then the conversation turned frightening, Rowell testified.
"He told me that he loved her and he was willing to do whatever he needed to do to show her how much he loved her.
"And then he asked me, he said, 'Do you love her?'
"I said, 'Yes, I do.'
"He said, 'Would you be willing to take a bullet for her?'
"And I said, 'Yeah.'
"He said, 'So if the bullet was coming at her, would you stand in front of it?'
"I said, 'Yes, I would.' "
Rowell searched for that other Brian, the one he once knew. But that Brian was gone.
Nichols became more menacing, Rowell testified. " 'You don't want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, do you?'
"And I said, 'What do you mean?'
"He said, 'I'm just saying, you don't want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder.'
Nichols made it clear he wanted Rowell to end the relationship. The woman could date anyone else in Atlanta — just not Rowell.
"And he told me, he said, 'Look, there's a demon inside me, and knowing that the two of you are together, this demon is growing and it's getting very powerful, and I don't know what I'm capable of doing. So you're moving into a very dangerous situation.'
"And I said, 'Well' — I said, 'Well, what exactly does that mean?'
". . . 'I'm just letting you know that you're moving into a very dangerous situation.' "
Rowell offered to pray for Nichols.
"I said, I will pray for the situation and I'll pray for you as well. And his comment to me was, well, 'I don't need no damn prayer.' Those were his exact words."
After Nichols stormed off, Rowell urged the woman to lock her door.
Rowell left. Later he called to check on her.
She told him Nichols had returned, ringing her doorbell and pounding on the door.
She didn't answer.
The alleged rape
She awoke around 5 a.m. on Aug. 19, 2004, to the beeping of her burglar alarm. She heard someone running up the two flights of stairs to her bedroom.
She hadn't had a chance to change her locks and she knew Nichols had a set of keys, so she had changed the code needed to silence the alarm.
The light flicked on. It was Nichols, holding a semiautomatic handgun.
"I was in complete shock," she testified. "I thought I was dreaming or something."
This is her account of what happened, an account Nichols disputed when he took the stand to testify.
"Put in the code," she recalled him telling her that morning.
She entered the code in a keypad in her bedroom, quieting the alarm.
Next he ordered her to lie face down on the bed. He bound her wrists and ankles with a roll of duct tape.
He wore green shorts with big pockets — one filled with martial arts nunchaku. He paced, looking out the blinds.
"He told me that there were some demons inside of him that had been awakened as a result of this whole process," she testified. "And that all I needed to do was to comply with him and this was part of his healing and that he would not harm me."
He helped her to the bathroom and ordered her to climb into the tub. He taped her hands to the faucet. Then he went downstairs. When he returned, he had another weapon, a machine gun. He pulled a can of lighter fluid from a duffel bag.
He threatened to spray the lighter fluid on her and set her ablaze if she yelled or tried to get away.
Nichols pulled out a cigar, emptied it of tobacco and packed it with marijuana. He'd brought a cooler filled with ice, water, lunch meat and bread.
He said he planned to stay until her birthday — three days later on Aug. 22. He told her he had been at the Chastain Park concert the night before. But not to hear the music.
"He had actually gone to the concert because he was planning to take Chris out," she testified.
"He had paid somebody $500 to pretty much — I mean, his words were, you know, to take Chris out. I assumed what he meant by that was to harm him or kill him."
But Nichols also told her he had called it off.
The tape was cutting off the circulation in her hands and feet, she complained. He got a pair of scissors and cut off the tape. He let her out of the bathtub but kept the gun trained on her.
Realizing she would be expected at work, Nichols told her to call her boss and leave a message that she wasn't going to be in. He listened on the extension.
Then Nichols told her to listen to the whopper he was going to tell his boss. His voice mail: His grandmother had died and then his mother had died of a heart attack after hearing the news. His parents were in Africa, so he had to identify the body, make funeral arrangements. He didn't know when he'd be in.
As time passed, Nichols burned with anger one moment and cried the next. At one point he said he couldn't believe what he was doing.
The woman seized on this glimmer of the man she'd known and loved. She opened her Bible. "I read a few passages to him. And I said that we had really experienced too much good things in our relationship to . . . let it end like this."
She told him he needed professional help. "I grabbed his hands and stood up because I thought I was going to be able to lead him out of the house and, you know, we would go to the hospital."
"Stop it," he told her. "I'm in control of this situation. . . . We're not doing things on your terms."
He put her back in the tub, bound her again and went back to his car. He returned with a large shopping bag full of marijuana.
Then he became confessional. "He said to me that he had done some very bad things. His words were, he was a gangster."
He told her he had smoked marijuana all through their relationship and hidden it from her. He called it his Prozac.
When she complained again about the tightness of the tape, he cut it off, this time cutting her finger with the scissors.
"Oh, my gosh, I didn't want to see your blood and I can't believe I'm doing this," he told her. He then ordered her to get out of the tub and to strip. She took off her burgundy and white boxer shorts and white T-shirt.
He ordered her to bend over and said he was videotaping her to have a memory of their relationship.
When he told her to take a shower, she took a long one, spending the time trying to think about what might happen next. Could she escape? Where were her car keys? What might get in her way if she tried to run? Did he park his car in front of the garage door, blocking her exit?
She didn't get an opportunity to run. He ordered her out of the shower. When she reached for her bathrobe, he told her to remain naked and sit on the toilet seat while he showered. Even though he was in the shower, she said she still feared he would be able to stop her from escaping.
After Nichols finished, he threw a towel at her, ordering her to dry him off. He picked up a container of baby oil. "He told me to rub it on his chest and his shoulders and to act like I loved him pretty much as I was doing that."
He grabbed a robe, put it on, and they went downstairs to the kitchen, where he took a beer from the freezer and told the woman to clean up a bottle of wine he had spilled earlier. Then he ordered her back to the bedroom.
He asked her to drink some rum. She refused. "You know I don't drink."
"Well, smoke this," he said, lighting up another joint of marijuana.
She put it to her mouth but didn't inhale.
"You didn't smoke it," he said. "So take it back and inhale."
She did and started coughing. "If you vomit, you're going to clean it up," he told her.
Several hours into the ordeal, she knew he would eventually force her to have sex with him.
She told jurors that their relationship had been celibate since April 2003. They had been intimate before then. But it was around that time that they'd been baptized together and made a pledge to each other to remain celibate until they married.
That trust must have seemed a distant memory. To her horror, Nichols told her another secret he had kept from her. During the last 16 months of their celibate relationship, he had paid for sex with about 100 women, and spent about $4,000 over the last eight years on prostitutes.
This detail, from a statement she'd made to police, was not discussed in court. On the witness stand, she described pleading with him not to rape her. She told Nichols she was worried about sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV.
He was deaf to her pleas. He opened up his robe and ordered her to perform oral sex.
She complied, but not completely. In frustration, he ordered her onto the bed.
"Please don't," she pleaded. "Please don't."
After more argument, Nichols agreed to put on a condom. Then he began raping her.
At one point, realizing he had taken off the condom, she jumped up and ran, begging him to stop.
Nichols, sweating profusely, was no longer saying he was staying until her birthday. Now he told her he could leave when he was finished.
"How long did that particular — did the intercourse last?" the prosecutor asked.
"About 40 or 45 minutes."
When it was finally over, she got up and put on some shorts and a shirt.
"You said you would let me go. So can I go now?"
"Hold on," Nichols answered.
He ordered her to take another shower. Afterward, he put her to work gathering up the duct tape and other trash strewn about the room. Around 1 p.m., he packed and prepared to leave.
"Now, if you escalate this situation and you report it to the police," he told her, "I'll be back to get you. And I won't stop with just you. I really don't want your mom and dad involved in this, but . . . I will."
She also recalled his telling her, "I won't bother you anymore. I'm out of your life. This is over for me as well. This has put closure to us."
Nichols walked out the door.
She immediately got into her car and began driving out of the complex. He turned one way down the closest road; she turned the other.
At this point in the woman's testimony, Judge Barnes told jurors it was time for a break.
"Let's stop," he said, indicating that the witness needed time to compose herself.
"Take a midafternoon break," he said, "go get a Coca-Cola, step outside, support your local habit, whatever you might do."
After the recess, Abramson showed photographs to the jurors. They were of the woman's bed, nightstand, a water jug and the white BMW she had bought for Nichols. One photo showed the car Nichols drove the day of the alleged attack: his parents' green Cadillac Eldorado.
The prosecutor resumed her questions: What, she asked, happened next?
The woman testified she was driving around "really in kind of a state of paranoia," worried that Nichols somehow could tap into her telephone calls. So she drove to the SuperTarget in Stone Mountain and bought a pre-paid cellphone so she could call her parents and Rowell to warn them.
"How were you feeling?" Abramson asked.
"Scared and just very nervous about what would happen once I reported it," she testified.
She reached her mother but didn't tell her what had happened, only that she was coming over. She also got through to Rowell and told him to be careful because she was not sure what Nichols would do next.
She told him Nichols had held her hostage and raped her.
Rowell agreed to meet her near her parents' house and follow her home. Once inside, she told her mother what had happened. Her mother left the living room to find Nichols' cellphone number. "She wanted to call him and basically just let him know that he wasn't going to be able to get away . . . with this."
She stopped her mother, telling her of Nichols' threat to hurt her parents, too.
Instead they called 911, and a dispatcher instructed her to go to a hospital in Fulton County. They chose Northside Hospital. They arrived around 6:30 p.m. She was examined and gave a statement to police. She left the hospital about 10 or 11 p.m.
NIchols speaks
Brian Nichols took the stand in his defense Feb. 24 and spoke confidently.
He described his seven-year relationship with his accuser as "wonderful." He had been devoted to her. When, two years ago, doctors discovered she had fibroid tumors in her uterus and performed surgery, Nichols cared for her during the day and worked at night. For a time they refrained from having sex.
He said the relationship ran into trouble in late April or early May 2004, when he asked the woman to marry him.
"We had some good times, and we had some bad times. But I thought that at that point it was time to either move on in our relationship or it was time to separate ourselves. . . . She said that she wasn't ready to get married yet. So my response was, that's fine. We need to take some time apart and figure out exactly what to do."
But Nichols said they continued to keep in touch.
"We still talked every day," he said. "We still e-mailed every day. And in fact, I could understand how she could have considered it one of the small breakups that we had throughout the relationship. I mean, we might argue and say that we were broken up, but we really weren't broken up."
He said the woman begged him to get back together once she saw him with Meredith, so they agreed to work on the relationship. Nichols acknowledged to jurors, however, that he continued to see Meredith until the second time the woman confronted Meredith and him at his apartment.
"It was wrong on my behalf," he said. "I dated them both to try to figure out exactly where I wanted to be, which is wrong."
Then the woman learned Meredith was pregnant. Nichols said he wanted to work out his relationship with the woman, but he kept in touch with Meredith only regarding the pregnancy. He said he thought he might go to stay with Meredith to help her when she took maternity leave — an idea that infuriated the alleged rape victim.
Nichols acknowledged he became upset in August when she began dating Rowell. But Nichols insisted he never became violent or threatening toward them.
"There's a section of the Bible that talks about qualifications for a pastor," Nichols testified. "First Timothy, third chapter. . . . It says that a pastor should be blameless, you know. A person not covetous, merciful."
It particularly irked him that Rowell was the minister who had baptized them. He "was standing in the water with us pulling us down in the water and pulling us back out of the water. I mean, that church was a spiritual home for me."
Nichols also had a different take on his encounter with the woman and Rowell in her garage.
He said he was not lying in wait, but simply getting some of his possessions from her place when he saw them pull in.
"I looked at Chris," Nichols testified. "I couldn't believe what he was doing. . . . I told him I felt it was wrong for him to be in a minister position and dating [the woman]. I told him that I thought he was a false prophet, a false teacher. I mean, we just had — I mean, we just had an argument."
Nichols said that on the night of Aug. 18 he again confronted the couple and spoke with Rowell in the driveway, repeating his opposition to the couple's dating.
"It just ended," Nichols said of the conversation. "He had his position, and I had my position."
Nichols testified that she called him about 45 minutes later, asking him to bring food over. She wanted to talk.
He said they made up, at least initially, and had consensual sex.
"We ended up being intimate," Nichols told the court. "It was with her consent, you know, which is why we're here. And you know, let me say this: As a man, I've never put my hands on a woman."
When the woman brought up Meredith and the pregnancy, he said, they soon found themselves in the midst of another fight.
"We had just made love, and now we're right back where we were," he said. "Nothing was resolved. You know, we were right back to Square One."
Nichols said the woman then hit him.
"When I told her that I was still probably going to move in with Sonja, she smacked me," he said. "And you know, since I never put my hands on a woman in any way that she doesn't ask me to, I was mad."
He said he told her, "You only know about two of the women that I've been with. If you multiplied that times 50 or 75, you would have a more accurate number of the number of women I've been with throughout our seven-year relationship. And a stupid thing to say, not true; but you know, she was upset nonetheless and I left."
Nichols admitted that he had two guns in the trunk of his car, but he said he did not bring them into the house. They were in the trunk because he did not trust his current roommate.
He said he had shown the woman his machine gun — which he had just purchased — before they had broken up.
"I like guns," he said. "[She] liked guns. [She] and I had been to the shooting range before to shoot guns."
Throughout his testimony Nichols maintained that the woman was lying. In staccato fashion, he denied every allegation when Assistant District Attorney Ash Joshi cross-examined him.
"So when she said you were smoking marijuana that night, that's not true?" Joshi asked.
"About 90 percent of the things that [the woman] has said about that night are not true," Nichols replied.
"Including the part about the marijuana?"
"Including the part about the marijuana."
"Including the part about you forcing her at gunpoint to turn the alarm off, correct?"
"Including the part about me forcing her at gunpoint to turn the alarm off."
" . . . When she says that you forced her to have intercourse against her will, that wasn't true; is that correct?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying."
"That you duct-taped her? And you've heard the police found duct tape. So that wasn't true, is that right?"
"What are you asking me?" Nichols said. "I didn't duct-tape her. No, I did not duct-tape her. Where that duct tape came from I have no idea."
"She made it up?"
"Exactly."
Nichols said that he had nothing to do with tape marks doctors later found on his ex-girlfriend.
"So either she did it to herself or someone else did it to her, is that what you're telling us, Mr. Nichols?" Joshi asked.
"I would hope that the good reverend . . . didn't have anything to do with it," Nichols replied. "I would hope that it is not [she] that lied to Chris, that lied to her parents and is lying to us here today. I would hope that it stops there, yes."
Joshi also asked Nichols whether he remembered any of the good things the woman did for him in their seven years together. Nichols said the rape accusation had colored everything.
"It's been — it's been a long six months for me," he said. "It's kind of hard for me to think about the nice things that she's done for me and at the same time I'm sitting on the stand being accused of raping her."
At the close of his testimony, he again denied it all.
"I cannot tell you why [she] is doing what she's doing," Nichols said. "I cannot tell you why [she] has me sitting here facing two life sentences plus 55 years for these accusations."
Joshi immediately objected to Nichols' discussing a possible sentence in front of the jury. Barnes cleared the jury from the courtroom. After they returned, the judge told them to disregard Nichols' talk about a potential sentence.
Nichols answered four more questions, then stepped down from the stand. Jurors would soon receive Barnes' instructions and begin their deliberations. But they never reached a verdict; they split 8-4 in favor of acquittal. Some jurors later said the accuser's story seemed so outrageous that they wanted more physical proof.
Barnes ordered a retrial. Prosecutors lined up more witnesses, including Nichols' pastor and boss, to support the accuser's story. The prepared more physical evidence, including blood tests of the crime scene.
A chilling warning
Two days into Nichols' second rape trial, two door hinges modified into weapons were found in his socks by deputies leading him back to the jail. Barnes met with lawyers and discussed the need for more security. Whatever measures they considered were either inadequate or came too late. On Friday morning, Nichols broke free from the lone deputy guarding him. With her gun in his hand, he began his deadly march through the courthouse.
On the Monday after the shootings and the capture of Nichols, Superior Court Judge Stephanie Manis declared a mistrial in Nichols' second rape trial. Memorial services would soon be held for the judge and court reporter who had heard days of testimony in both trials.
Given the events of March 11, testimony from Nichols' first rape trial carries special resonance.
Ashley Smith, the woman hailed as a hero for talking Nichols into surrendering, had shared her religious faith with him during the seven hours he held her hostage. He had bound her hands and legs with tape and ordered her into the bathtub. She said he also told her he planned to stay in her home for several days.
And like Judge Barnes, the woman who accused Nichols of rape had decided to seek greater protection from him. Her new boyfriend, Rowell, testified that after Nichols spoke about his growing rage, they planned to go the next morning and seek a protective order against him. That morning, Aug. 19, was the day of the alleged rape.
His accuser has not spoken publicly since the trial. But one warning from Nichols echoes chillingly.
He told her not to report the crime. And even if she did, he told her, she would never be safe from his reach.
"He made the comment that even if they were to lock him up for 20 years, that he would be the model prisoner and he would spend that 20 years trying to figure out how to come back after me."
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