After a heavily armed Gwinnett County SWAT team descended on an apartment where a woman said Brian Gere Nichols had been holding her hostage, the muscular martial arts enthusiast and former Baltimore high school football player turned “very submissive,” said Gwinnett County Police Chief Charles Walters.
“At that moment he knew his fate was in his hands,” Walters said.
On trial here on charges of raping an ex-girlfriend, Nichols, 33, broke free from a sheriff’s deputy Friday in the Fulton County Courthouse, grabbed her gun and made a spectacular escape, leaving bloodied bodies in his wake, authorities said.
State Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes was shot and killed as he sat on the bench. Then, police said, Nichols gunned down court reporter Julie Brandau and sheriff’s deputy Hoyt Teasley.
Teasley had given chase as Nichols sprinted into Atlanta’s downtown streets, just blocks from the Georgia Dome, where the Southeastern Conference basketball tournament is being held.
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Nichols next carjacked a green Honda after pistol-whipping the driver, a local reporter, but threw off pursuers for a time by driving to a different level of a parking garage, then stepping out and taking public transit, police said.
For a full day, Nichols eluded a dragnet of federal, state, county and city law enforcement, while killing once again Friday night, authorities said. The body of David Wilhelm, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, was discovered at dawn yesterday by a construction worker who was helping Wilhelm build a house outside of Atlanta. Wilhelm’s Glock pistol and customs ID were missing, along with his truck.
Not long after the discovery of Wilhelm’s body, traffic signs on Atlanta’s busy beltway flashed “Suspect Vehicle Blue Chevy GMT Truck,” and then gave the Georgia license plate number. Police from various city and county jurisdictions guarded exit ramps.
The huge headline on the front page of yesterday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution – “Killer Eludes Cops” – cast a pall over a sunny day.
Within a short time, fear rose to levels comparable to those that gripped the Baltimore-Washington area during the sniper attacks.
Chatter about the shooting could be heard throughout the city. People talked about how tragic the killings were and wondered aloud if Nichols was crazy – and worried that he might be in their neighborhood or subdivision.
Sara Zirkel, who was at Lennox Square Mall in Buckhead with her son Josh, not far from where Wilhelm was killed, said the family was paying more attention to the surroundings. “I’m a little nervous to be here,” said Zirkel, who was at the mall for a parade. “But we’re going about our lives. We can’t be ruled by fear.”
Felicita Borrero and her two children, who live in Buford, said she prayed after hearing Nichols might be in the area.
It wasn’t until local news and cable stations – including CNN, which is based here – showed Nichols’ capture that the city began to relax. FM radio deejays cheered and told listeners that they could now go enjoy the sunny day, and highway signs returned to their mundane warnings about traffic congestion.
“I was relieved when I heard he was caught,” said Borrero, also at Lennox Square. “Especially since I have kids.”
The search for Nichols ended in the Gwinnett County suburb of Duluth, where he had taken a hostage – a woman he had accosted and threatened to kill. Somehow, she managed to flee the apartment and call 911.
Nichols came out waving a white flag.
“It was nothing spectacular,” Gwinnett County police Chief Charles Waters said at a news conference with federal and local law enforcement officials involved in the case. “It was the best possible way for this to end.”
After abandoning the car he briefly stole, Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington said, Nichols fled on the MARTA, the city subway system.
At about 10:40 p.m. Friday, police said, Nichols assaulted two people in town for a local basketball tournament. Police said Nichols pointed a gun at the pair and asked if they had money or a vehicle. He struck one in the face with a gun and the pair ran off.
His next victim, authorities said, was Wilhelm, an 18-year law enforcement veteran who had only been in the city since November and was living in temporary housing while he built his home.
Police are still investigating whether Nichols knew Wilhelm was a federal agent. After Wilhelm’s truck was found a couple of miles from the apartment complex where Nichols eventually holed up, police flooded the area.
After the 911 call about 10 a.m. yesterday, a SWAT team surrounded the complex and Nichols surrendered at about 11:30 a.m.
In the middle-class Laurel Grove condo complex, where Nichols lived when he was arrested in August, Greg Stalnaker applauded his capture. Stalnaker, who lived in the same block of bright airy condos where Nichols lived with the girlfriend who accused him of rape, said he never liked Nichols, a buff 6-foot-1, 200 pounds and a lady’s man around the large condo pool.
“It was his demeanor, his disrespect of the [condo] association and of other people,” he said. “I thought he was rude.”
Nichols had an aggressive pit bull that he would occasionally let off his leash, he said. The condo complex has many families with young children, and Stalnaker said it made him and other anxious.
Nichols used to live with his parents, Gene and Claritha, a retired Internal Revenue Service employee, about 20 minutes south of Atlanta in a suburban town called Jonesboro. Their house, valued by Clayton County at about $200,000, sits off a winding rural road of large homes. A long driveway leads to a broad brick and stucco home. Parked in the driveway are a lunch truck with windows shattered, a rusty Dodge Ram, a BMW, a green El Dorado and an Oldsmobile with flat tires and a key in the trunk lock. All of the plates expired last year.
Yesterday, no one answered the door there. The nearest neighbor, Ettore Perdichizzi, whose 6,000-square-foot house has an in-ground pool, said he has not seen anyone at the house in about a year. This summer, he asked a man who was mowing the yard about the family, and he was told they were in Africa. According to news reports, the couple has been in Tanzania, where Claritha Nichols was a tax consultant to the government.
Forty-five minutes north from Jonesboro in affluent Alpharetta, Ga., the UPS Supply Chain Solutions building where Nichols worked as a computer technician was locked yesterday.
Nichols had prior brushes with the law after graduating from Baltimore’s Cardinal Gibbons High School and enrolling at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, where he played defensive end for a season on the football team. In 1994, after leaving Kutztown and resuming his football career at Newberry College in South Carolina, he was arrested on charges of first-degree burglary, said Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster. Police said that Nichols broke into a dorm room late at night, but Foster was unaware of what Nichols allegedly took.
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He was kicked off the team, and law enforcement officers said he was placed in a “pretrial intervention” program for nonviolent first-time offenders that involves counseling and paying restitution. Foster said that Nichols didn’t fulfill all the conditions of the intervention.
Fulton County district attorney Paul Howard said authorities had hoped to resolve the pending rape trial early next week. For now, Nichols has been charged with federal weapons charges, but U.S. Attorney David Nahmias called them “holding charges” to keep Nichols in custody until the investigation is completed and other state and federal charges are brought against him.
Murder is a state charge, but the killing of Wilhelm, a federal officer, gives federal officials jurisdiction. Officials hope to sort out some of the legal tangle in the next 30 days.
“The events that unfolded today were devastating, horrendous and left each and every one of us, not just in law enforcement but those watching across the nation, with a great feeling of sadness,” said Greg Jones, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Atlanta office, as he and other law enforcement officials announced the arrest.
Sun staff writer Phillip McGowan contributed to this article.
<!– ART CREDITJOHN BAZEMORE : ASSOCIATED PRESS
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTBrian Nichols is escorted by an unidentified police officer at the FBI office in Atlanta. Nichols is suspected in four shooting deaths.
CUTLINE TEXT–> <!– ART CREDITRIC FELD : ASSOCIATED PRESS
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTLaw enforcement officers gather at the Duluth, Ga., apartment complex where Brian Nichols was captured after allegedly taking a woman there hostage.
CUTLINE TEXT–> <!– ART CREDIT
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTThe body of David Wilhelm, a U.S. immigration agent, was found yesterday.
CUTLINE TEXT–> <!– ART CREDITTURNER SECURITY VIA CNN
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTAn Atlanta parking garage surveillance camera shows a man resembling Nichols entering a stairwell about 9:30 a.m.
CUTLINE TEXT–> <!– ART CREDITJOHN BAZEMORE : ASSOCIATED PRESS
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTOnlookers cheer as Nichols is taken from an FBI office in Atlanta. Nichols had eluded federal, state, county and city officers.
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