ATLANTA, March 13 -- The woman held hostage in her apartment by the suspect in Atlanta's courthouse killings said Sunday that her ordeal began with the man sticking a gun in her side and tying her up, but ended with the weapons on the floor as he let her go to see her young daughter.
After hours of talking about the killings, their families and God, Ashley Smith said Brian Nichols "just wanted some normalness to his life."
Traffic backs up in Duluth, Ga., on Saturday near the apartment complex where Brian Nichols surrendered.
(Jason Braverman -- Gwinnett Daily Post Via AP)
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Smith called 911 after she was freed, and police soon surrounded her suburban apartment complex. Nichols, who police say killed three people in the courthouse Friday and a federal agent later, gave up peacefully, waving a white towel in surrender.
"I honestly think when I looked at him that he didn't want to do it anymore," Smith said in a statement televised on CNN. If he did not give up, she told him, "lots more people are probably going to get hurt, and you're probably going to die."
Nichols allegedly overpowered a courthouse deputy who was escorting him to his rape trial Friday and took the deputy's gun, then entered the courtroom where his trial was being held and killed the presiding judge and court stenographer. He also is accused of killing a deputy who tried to stop him outside the courthouse and a federal agent during his flight from authorities.
Smith said Nichols, 33, took her hostage in the parking lot outside her apartment when she returned from a store about 2 a.m.
"He said, 'I'm not going to hurt you if you just do what I say,' " she said. " 'I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt anybody else.' "
She said Nichols tied her up with masking tape, a curtain and extension cord and told her to sit in the bathroom while he took a shower.
"I thought he was going to strangle me," she said.
She said as the night wore on, she tried to win his trust. Choking back tears, she said she told Nichols that her husband died four years ago and that if he hurt her, her daughter would not have a mother or father.
"I told him I was supposed to see my little girl the next morning at 10," Smith said. "I asked him if I could go and he said no."
He eventually untied her, and some of the fear lessened as they talked. Nichols told Smith he felt like "he was already dead," but Smith urged him to consider the fact that he was still alive a "miracle."
"You're here in my apartment for some reason," she told him, saying he might be destined to be caught and to spread the word of God to fellow prisoners.
When morning came, Nichols was "overwhelmed" when Smith made him pancakes, she said. They watched television news reports about the killings and the search for Nichols. When Nichols let Smith go, he said he wanted to stay at the apartment for a few more days, but she said she thought he knew she would call 911 after she left.
