DEL.ICIO.USNichols’ friend: ‘He’s snapped’
Dingle says killer helped keep him focus in school, then didn’t follow his own advice
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, November 21, 2008
Brian Nichols still has a moral conscience even though “only a madman” could have done the killings he committed, his longtime best friend testified Friday.
“After 20 years, I still think I know Brian Nichols,” said Zachery Dingle, a social worker who became friends with Nichols in high school. “My children have heard stories about Brian Nichols that are like a fairy tale with a terrible ending. They know dad may not be who he is without Brian Nichols.”
Hyosub Shin/hshin@ajc.com
Zachery Dingle cried while testifying Friday about his longtime friend, Brian Nichols.
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Dingle broke down and wept on the witness stand when telling about the trauma of seeing Nichols’ face on CNN on March 11, 2005 as the suspect in the Fulton County Courthouse shootings.
“It devastated me,” said Dingle, who runs group homes for troubled teenagers in Baltimore. “My wife came immediately home. The two of us cried all night.”
Dingle said Nichols had leadership qualities and helped keep Dingle goal-oriented in high school and college and able later to weather troubled times in his marriage. He said Nichols, however, didn’t seem to follow his own advice when it came to education.
Nichols, who was a squad leader in the Army Reserves, had a troubled academic life and bounced from college to college without getting a degree. He fathered two children out of wedlock. Dingle was graduated from Delaware State University, has been married since 1995 and has a son and a daughter.
Dingle described Nichols, who at his arrest was an $80,000 a year UNIX system administrator, as a man dominated by his professionally successful mother, Claritha, a regional supervisor for the IRS, and later by his professionally successful girlfriend. It was that girlfriend Nichols raped after she ended a seven-year relationship with him because he impregnated another woman.
Dingle said Nichols tried to hide his marijuana use from the girlfriend, who disapproved of drug use and set high expectations for him.
“I noticed she was the shot-caller — she was the one mapping that relationship on how they were going to be Mr. and Mrs. Nichols,” Dingle said.
He said Nichols didn’t seem to have gotten a good education, developing in college his immature theories about racial oppression. While the two stayed in touch and visited each other as adults, he had no idea Nichols had been charged with rape or jailed for seven months — until the televised reports of Nichols’ escape from custody and killing four people.
On Nov. 7, the jury convicted Nichols of murdering Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes, who was presiding over his rape trial, Julie Ann Brandau, the court reporter, Sheriff’s Deputy Sgt. Hoyt Teasley and David Wilhelm, an off-duty federal agent.
Nichols had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, contending he had been leading a “slave rebellion” against an unjust justice and prison system that profited from prison labor.
The jury is now hearing testimony to decide whether to sentence Nichols to death or life in prison. Nichols’ 16-year-old daughter, whom he had not seen in more than a decade until his arrest, is expected to testify on his behalf.
Dingle testified Nichols finally called him from the Fulton County jail and told him he had committed the crimes, but he said Nichols sounded totally irrational in trying to justify the killings.
“I knew it was Brian’s voice — I knew it was Brian — but only a madman could have done something like this,” Dingle said. “He was talking about the ‘plantation’ and being ‘at war and fighting an unjust justice system’ like he was a superhero or something.
“I was listening and automatically I knew, ‘He’s snapped. I don’t know who this is.’”
