DEL.ICIO.USConnecticut woman testifies about Nichols’ escape plans
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, November 14, 2008
Brian Nichols took a swig of water when a Connecticut businesswoman began testifying Friday — it was the woman he’d once plotted his escape with, promising to frolic with her in an Atlanta hotel while authorities searched for him in vain.
Lisa Meneguzzo, 39, who manages a small printing company, testified briefly that she and Nichols exchanged more than 100 letters. She said they began corresponding shortly after Nichols’ arrest for killing the four people, in what became known as the Fulton Courthouse shooting. She initiated the correspondence.
Kimberly Smith/ksmith@ajc.com
A courtroom monitor shows a photo of Lisa Meneguzzo that she mailed to Brian Nichols shortly after he was apprehended for killing four people.
Kimberly Smith/ksmith@ajc.com
Lisa Meneguzzo of Connecticut testified Friday in Brian Nichols’ death-penalty case.
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“I just wanted to reach out to him,” she said.
Meneguzzo, only briefly on the witness stand, is expected to continue testifying Monday in the penalty phase of Nichols’ death-penalty case. He was convicted last week of 54 counts.
In some of their letters, which have been read in court previously, Nichols discussed his plans for escape and romance in vivid detail.
Earlier Friday, a former Fulton County jail guard told the jury that Meneguzzo told him she was willing to pay big dollars to help her pen-pal paramour.
David Ramsey, a former detention officer, testified Meneguzzo offered him $78,000 to smuggle a power drill to Nichols so he could break out of the Fulton County jail.
When Meneguzzo made the offer, Ramsey said he had already taken as much as $2,600 from her. The money, he said, was to keep Nichols’ illegal cellphone charged for him so that he would be able to call Meneguzzo from his cell.
Meneguzzo said Nichols needed the drill to enable him to get out of his jail-cell window. Ramsey, who said he had not known the two were plotting an escape, said he balked at power tools.
“As far as releasing an inmate from jail, I wasn’t going to cross that line,” said Ramsey, 39, who quit the sheriff’s office shortly after the cellphone was discovered.
He said Meneguzzo had befriended him while visiting Nichols at the jail. She offered him money to help with his financial situation — he had a house that was in foreclosure. He said he had a flirtatious relationship with her and that it was months before she revealed her real intent was to help free Nichols from jail.
“She said, ‘Would you like to make some money?’” said Ramsey, whose pay as a detention officer was $24,000 annually.
“I said, ‘I’m making money now.
“She said, ‘No some real money.’ I thought she was joking.”
Meneguzzo had developed a romantic fixation with Nichols after he achieved criminal celebrity status from the March 11, 2005 shooting spree. Nichols murdered the judge presiding over his rape trial, the court reporter and a sheriff’s deputy after escaping custody and an off-duty federal agent later that day.
“He had a lot of mail,” Ramsey said. “You would think he was a celebrity.”
Meneguzzo and Nichols began corresponding by letters and phone calls until authorities discovered Nichols’ escape plot and began questioning her.
On Friday, the jury saw a glamour shot of Meneguzzo — as an attractive redhaired woman in red lipstick — which she said she sent him shortly after the shootings. Jurors also heard witnesses describe nude pictures of her body parts, images which she sent via cellphone to Nichols.
Superior Court Judge James Bodiford ordered the pictures sealed from the public. Prosecutors are asking the jury to impose the death penalty. They are putting on evidence of Nichols to show him as a skillful manipulator, determined to escape and a threat to society, in hope jurors will deliver a rare death penalty in Fulton County.
Fulton jurors have imposed the penalty three times in 12 years.
Ramsey testified he first met Nichols after the murders of Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes, court reporter Julie Ann Brandau, Sheriff Deputy Hoyt Teasley and U.S. Customs agent David Wilhelm and the brain-damaging assault on Deputy Cynthia Hall.
The former guard said Meneguzzo told him that she had gotten Nichols a cellphone that he had hidden in his cell but they needed help in keeping it charged so they could talk often.
He said he didn’t see the harm of letting the two talk if Nichols was securely locked up.
“I thought she was just being nice to me,” he said.
Ramsey said he quit his job at the sheriff’s office after the cell phone was discovered. He has not been charged with any crime related to the bribes but he said prosecutors have not promised him any leniency if charges are brought in the future.
He said once he realized Meneguzzo and Nichols were plotting an escape, he tried to derail any attempt. Ramsey said he told Nichols he would be trapped between two buildings if got out through his cell window when, in fact, he would have been able to get free.
Nichols didn’t believe him, Ramsey said.
“He said, ‘Are you sure because I’ve seen a cat walking down there.’”
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