DULUTH, Ga., March 12 -- A T-shirt, doubling as a white flag of surrender, ended it. There were no blazing guns. No dramatic last stand. Just a man in an apartment, meekly submitting to a small army of police officers determined to charge him in a crime spree that started in an Atlanta courtroom and left four people dead, including a Superior Court judge and a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.
The capture of Brian Nichols, 33, in this suburb north of Atlanta played out in almost surreal fashion, unfolding on a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning before a live audience of gawkers. Drivers, tuned to the minute-by-minute play-by-play on radio or television, exited interstate highways and clogged streets leading to the apartment complex where police had Nichols surrounded. After he gave up, the crowd cheered when a blue Chevy Tahoe with tinted windows sped past, carrying a man suspected of terrorizing the Atlanta metropolitan area for 27 hours. Another crowd waited for him outside an FBI office where he was taken, straining for a glimpse of Nichols in a T-shirt and shackles, shuffling into a low-slung concrete building.
Brian Nichols, accused of killing four people, is led to a vehicle by an unidentified officer at Atlanta's FBI office after surrendering Saturday.
(John Bazemore -- AP)
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"They got you, buddy," a woman in a bright red hat taunted, pumping a clenched fist.
A sense of relief, and of disbelief, was everywhere. Only hours before, Nichols was being portrayed as a ruthlessly efficient killer and cunning escape artist capable of leading police on a long, frustrating hunt that might end with gunfire and more deaths.
"I'm so relieved, I didn't think it would happen this quickly," said Brenda McGee, 42, who stepped out of an AT&T office building to applaud as Nichols was escorted into the FBI office.
Investigators got their big break Saturday morning when a woman called 911 and said Nichols was in her apartment after having held her captive there for several hours. At first, amid the deluge of calls about the case, police were not completely convinced about her story. A Gwinnett County police officer was dispatched to check her credibility, and was quickly convinced that she had told the truth, Gwinnett County Police Chief Charles M. Walters said.
There are still holes in the sequence. Walters said late Saturday that he is not sure whether the woman escaped or was allowed to leave by Nichols; but he is certain that they did not know each other. Once the woman, whose name has not been disclosed, met up with the officer, she said Nichols had muscled his way into her apartment as she was coming home. Initially, despite almost round-the-clock news coverage, she did not recognize Nichols, Walters said. But Nichols revealed his identity.
"If you do what I say," police said Nichols told the woman, "I won't kill you."
By then, the airwaves were crackling with news of a fourth homicide, following the three killings on Friday morning. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, David Wilhelm, had been found dead by construction workers at his home Saturday morning near the Lenox Square Mall. Nichols had asked for directions to the mall during a carjacking after the courthouse shootings. When police pored over the scene of Wilhem's slaying, they found that his badge, gun and pickup truck were missing.
In Duluth, Walters was sending a huge force to the apartment complex, including dozens of SWAT team members. Word of an unexplained hostage situation broke on news channels. Curious bystanders and a pack of news reporters flocked to the complex, assuming that Nichols was involved. Police were surrounding the building, hoping to intimidate the suspect into giving up without a fight. Eventually, Walters said, Nichols peered out the window and calculated the odds.
That's when Nichols waved the white T-shirt, signaling his surrender.
"I think he waved the white flag because he was surrounded and had no place to go," Walters said.
Nichols is being held at an undisclosed location. A federal firearms charge -- a technicality required to hold him -- was filed Saturday afternoon. U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said his office will prosecute Nichols for the Wilhelm killing, but that he would defer the rest of the case to Fulton County prosecutors, who announced Saturday that they plan to file charges within a month. A lawyer with the Office of the Georgia Capital Defender, which provides legal assistance in death penalty cases, complained Saturday afternoon that he was being denied access to Nichols. Prosecutors said Nichols had not requested a lawyer.
Nichols had been scheduled to testify Friday morning in a retrial on charges that he repeatedly raped his former girlfriend while holding her captive for three days last summer. The judge had asked for extra security because two days earlier Nichols was caught with two handmade weapons in his shoes as he was leaving court. Nichols's first trial, two weeks ago, had ended with the jury deadlocked 8 to 4 in favor of conviction.
