Widow of Nichols’ victim brings gun to trial

The widow of one of Brian Nichols’ murder victims brought a gun with her to Nichols’ murder trial Tuesday.

Candee Wilhelm carried the gun past the security screeners on the first floor of the Atlanta Municipal Courthouse, where the Nichols trial is being conducted, according to a person with direct knowledge of the event.

Sheriff’s deputies discovered the .380-caliber pistol during a second security screening outside the courtroom. Wilhelm told investigators she had forgotten the pistol was in her purse. She was not arrested.

After Nichols escaped custody at the Fulton County Courthouse and killed three people there on March 11, 2005, he killed Wilhelm’s husband, David Wilhelm, at the house the Wilhelms were building in Buckhead.

In another breach of security, Superior Court spokesman Don Plummer announced that on Nov. 13 a razor had been found on a man in the same security area. The man was Mark Nichols, Brian Nichols’ brother, according to persons who had read the Sheriff’s Department’s reports on the incidents. He has not been charged either.

Plummer said the names of people allegedly bringing weapons into the courthouse would not be officially released until District Attorney Paul Howard’s office decides whether to prosecute them for violating a state law about bringing weapons into a public building.

Nichols’ mother, Claritha Nichols, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that her son’s having the razor was accidental. It was the first day he had come to the trial and he had an extra blade for his barber’s razor in his pocket. Mark Nichols is a barber in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

“They took and threw it away,” Claritha Nichols. “It was very innocent.”

The Nichols death-penalty trial was moved to Atlanta Municipal Court because three of the killings took place at the Fulton County Courthouse.

The jury convicted Nichols on the four murders and assorted other crimes on Nov. 7. Jurors are now hearing evidence on whether to sentence Nichols to death.

Prosecutors continued Wednesday to hammer home to jurors their argument that Nichols is a threat to escape from prison and cause more harm, playing a taped jailhouse telephone conversation in which Nichols appears to threaten Howard’s life.

In the June 30, 2006, phone call from the Fulton County Jail to a person prosecutors did not identify, Nichols says he is frustrated dealing with prosecutors from the Fulton County district attorney’s office.

“If I could do something different, I would have stopped on the third floor and shot [you],” Nichols says angrily on the tape of the call.

Prosecutors played a recording of the call while prosecution witness Rick Jacobs was on the stand testifying about security in the state’s prison system.

Prosecutor Clint Rucker asked Jacobs, who works in the Special Operations division of the state of Georgia, which oversees security in state prisons, if he knew whose office was on the third floor of the Fulton County Courthouse.

“Paul Howard’s,” said Jacobs.

Staff writer Jeffry Scott contributed to this article.