The mother of convicted Atlanta courthouse killer Brian Nichols and the woman he held hostage met for the first time recently for the Oprah Winfrey show "Oprah: Where Are They Now?"
The two women hugged, and Claritha Nichols thanked Ashley Smith for making her son something to eat while he held her at gunpoint for seven hours.
"One of the first things I thanked Ashley for was showing some kindness to Brian by fixing him some pancakes," Claritha Nichols said in her first interview on the subject.
“That meant so much to him.”
Nichols, who was on trial for rape, had just killed four people in escaping from the Fulton County Courthouse on March 11, 2005. He overpowered and beat a Fulton County sheriff’s deputy, then took her gun which he used to shoot judge Rowland W. Barnes, court reporter Julie Ann Brandau and Fulton County sheriff’s deputy Sgt. Hoyt Teasley. Later, with a metro-wide manhunt on for him, he shot U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent David Wilhelm.
When Smith, who’d gone on a late-night cigarette run, returned to her Gwinnett County apartment she was confronted and taken hostage by Nichols who’d driven there in a stolen vehicle. Through the night, the two talked extensively and personally. Nichols eventually surrendered.
Nichols was sentenced to multiple life sentences without parole.
The event is the subject of a new movie "Captive."
Claritha Nichols was asked by Winfrey if she is haunted by what happened that day, now more than 10 years later.
“I have moments where I can’t believe that this happened,” she said, “when I look at what Brian did and the lives that were lost.”
Smith, 37, now remarried and a mother of three, lives in South Carolina and is known as Ashley Smith Robinson. She said her life has changed for the better since that day, but that she, too, struggles with the memory.
“I don’t like to be outside alone in the dark,” she said.
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