Letters outline Nichols’ escape plot

Once he made his escape, the two of them would hole up in a hotel room or condo in Atlanta, Charlotte or Florida, have sex and laugh at TV reports of police looking for him in all the wrong places.

That’s what Brian Nichols had in mind, in his own words, in letters read in court Monday. Prosecutors said Nichols wrote to a Connecticut woman, Lisa Meneguzzo, professing love for her as he detailed how she could help him escape from the Fulton County Jail in 2006.

The two handwritten letters were read to the jury over the objection of Nichols’ defense team as prosecutors used Nichols’ own words to show he is a methodical and ruthless killer.

He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity for the deaths of four people after he allegedly beat a deputy in a holding cell and escaped from the Fulton County Courthouse on March 11, 2005.

The prosecution has sought in recent days to wrap up its case after 16 days and more than 70 witnesses.

They’ve played a videotape of Nichols’ three-hour-long confession; read writings he left behind in a jail holding cell; and played an audiotape of a phone call Nichols made from jail to his father in which Nichols said: “I could have saved them some time and money and told them there was nothing wrong … with me.”

Meneguzzo began writing Nichols after his case made national headlines. A senior investigator for the Fulton County district attorney’s office, G.G. Carawan, testified authorities were alerted to Meneguzzo after they discovered a cellphone in Nichols’ cell in March 2007 and checked the phone records.

Prosecutors said Nichols and Meneguzzo wrote 58 letters to each other, only two of which were read by GBI forensics documents expert Brian McVicker. In the first, which starts “Hey Lisa,” Nichols tells Meneguzzo he loves her and looks forward to the day they can have a romantic, candlelit interlude with champagne, strawberries, a bubble bath and chocolate.

“I’ll bet you look good in bubbles, probably even better in chocolate,” he wrote Meneguzzo in an April 18, 2006, letter. “That would be nice.” He says he’s put her on his visitation list for May 22.

“What is there to know about Brian Nichols? Well, the main thing is that I’m a full-time clown. I love to laugh. Sometimes I make jokes about things I shouldn’t. I’ve done a lot in 33 years, been many places, seen many things. What do I like to do? Well, here comes the clown in me. I love playing basketball, drinking beer, and eating chicken wings & hot sauce. I’m a simple man really.”

But he is also a man with a plan.

He tells Meneguzzo “my goal is not to just avoid the death penalty and spend the rest of my life in prison” for the killings of Superior Judge Rowland Barnes and his court reporter Julie Ann Brandau, in Barnes’ courtroom, Fulton County deputy Hoyt Teasley, outside the courthouse, and, while on the run, U.S. Customs agent David Wilhelm.

“My goal is a not guilty verdict. And believe me, in Fulton County, where there are a large number of people [angry] at the way the criminal justice system treats people, it can happen. All I need is the right people on the jury, and I go home. I’ve got to put in the grass-roots effort it takes to pull something like that off.”

In a second letter, he details an escape scheme which he boasts is “brilliant if I do say so myself.” He says it is important for jailers to believe that he and Meneguzzo are no longer friends or writing each other.

“It’s all about tactical maneuvering and psychological warfare, my darling,” he writes. “The art of deviation. We must make the enemy believe one thing while we do another.”

The plan is to pay his brother Mark $15,000 to help with the escape. It will require photographs, “overhead shots” of the jail, “to tell Mark Ok come in here, follow this route and go there, cut a whole [sic] in the wall using this, and get up on the roof using that. Easy money.”

He said they could make it appear that he had escaped by using the Silver Comet Trail, a bicycling path from Cobb County to Alabama, by planting a map at the jail and jail commissary food wrappings on the trail to make it appear he had used it.

The trail is “a perfect place for a fugitive on the run,” he writes. “A nightmare for the police. … it’s at least a hundred miles of woods and hiking trails.” He says he’ll get a map of the trail and “I will conveniently by mistake drop it on my way out” as he escapes.

He tells Meneguzzo he wishes he could figure out a way to reach her when he escapes “so we could ‘spend some time together.’ But I know they will want to talk to you as soon as they find out I’m gone. Hmmm. Let me think about that. I love you my Lisa. Lick you soon. Love, B”

Prosecutors have said they are near the end of their case. Superior Court Judge James Bodiford asked lead defense attorney Henderson Hill on Monday how long the defense expected its case to take. Hill said a week or six days.