August 20, 2026 • 38 mins
One evening in March, 2003, a fire broke out in Deborah Nicholls' Colorado Springs, CO home, killing her three children. Her husband suffered significant burns, but escaped. After a 2-year investigation, it was determined that the fire was not accidental, and that Deborah and her husband started it for the insurance money. The trial was a battle of the experts – one presenting the junk science of arson evidence, one asserting that the science was outdated. The former triumphed, and Deborah was sent to prison for the murder of her children. Maggie speaks to Deborah Nicholls, Deborah's father, Douglas Baumgardner, and Deborah's attorneys, Anne-Marie Moyes, Director of the Korey Wise Innocence Project and Kathleen Lord, Staff Attorney at the Korey Wise Innocence Project.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://lavaforgood.com/podcast/149-wrongful-conviction-junk-science-arson-evidence/
https://www.colorado.edu/outreach/korey-wise-innocence-project/
https://giving.cu.edu/fund/korey-wise-innocence-project-fund
District Attorney John Newsome:
Assistant District Attorney Amy Mullaney:
Attorney Representing Tim Nicholls:
May 07, 2010 20/20 episode Burned, The Amanda Gutweiler story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X8Bk8oBNG8
If you'd like to write to Deborah, send mail to:
Deborah Nicholls #144097 PO BOX #392005 Denver, Co 80239
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is Jason Flahman, Welcome back to ronful Conviction. In
twenty twenty three, Maggie Feeling shared the devastating story of
Deborah Nichols, a Colorado spring's mother who lost all three
of her children in a tragic two thousand and three
house fire, and who was later convicted of having caused
their deaths. Deb's conviction rested on discredited arson science testimony
(00:29):
from a fire expert who was later discredited for unethical
conduct and even for judgments about whether Deb was grieving
her children quote unquote properly. While now we have a
major breakthrough to report, because in April of this year,
a judge found that prosecutors had committed a Brady violation
(00:49):
in Deb's case, meaning that evidence favorable to her defense
had been withheld, and on August first, Deb's conviction was
finally vacated. One of the prosecutors from Deb's case, now
a district attorney in a nearby county of Colorado, was
also recently removed, along with his entire office, from an
(01:10):
unrelated murder case after a judge found a pattern of
having failed to turn over evidence that was favorable to
the defense. Now, while dev remains in custody for now.
A status conference is set for today and her attorneys
are hopeful, as are we, that she'll soon be released
on bond. So after twenty three long, miserable years, Deb's
(01:35):
fight isn't over, but this is a huge step towards
justice and hopefully towards some long overdue peace and healing
for deb and her family.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Evening of March sixth, two thousand and three was a
typical Thursday for the Nicholls family. That night, Deborah Nichols
put her three energetic kids to bed. After her husband
Tim got home, she left the house to interview an
employee for their karaoke business. When she returned home, her
world had been turned upside down that night.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I went from just needing to hire someone to fill
a shift to losing my whole little family.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
It was a mother's worst nightmare. And when it was over,
all three of Deb's children had died in a terrible accident.
She was so stricken with grief that she couldn't bring
herself to attend their funeral.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
I was trying to get ready to go in the funeral,
and my body was breaking down and I was shaking
so bad. I just had to sit down and give
in and surrender. I can't go, I can't do it.
I couldn't imagine seeing three, three caskets. It was too much,
(03:15):
It was too much. My name is deb Nichols. I'm
currently serving three life sentences at Denver Women's Correctional.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Facility from Lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with
Maggie Freeling today Deb Nichols. Deborah Nichols was born May fourth,
(03:51):
nineteen sixty seven in Dearborn, Michigan. She grew up in
a large, blended family.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Having seven brothers and sister was a blast. We had
a great childhood. Northern Michigan has beautiful weather, like the
perfect four seasons, so we as children took full rain
with all of it and did a lot of skating
and skiing and swimming or just going down to the
(04:21):
end of the street to the bay and playing in
the water all day, all summer long. We had so
much fun.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So can you tell listeners about Deborah? What's she like?
What was she like growing up?
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Well, as you probably gathered talking to her, she's a
pretty strong girl.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
This is Dev's father, Doug bamb Gardner.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Pretty strong will and has no problems, doing things her
way and trying to attain what she's headed for. She
was always that way all of her life.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Her family later moved to Colorado, but for college, Deb
carved her own path and moved out to California. After
studying in San Diego for a year, Deb left the
West Coast and joined her family in Colorado. When Deb
was twenty four, she gave birth to her first child,
a son. They called him JJ.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
JJ's nickname was Peanut, and he was just absolutely beautiful,
like he was my little buddy, my little man, and
we did everything together.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Deb went on to have a second son, Spencer, but tragically,
when he was three months old, Spencer passed away from
sudden infant death syndrome, also known as sid's. Despite her loss,
Deb continued to try and be the best mom she
could to JJ. By nineteen ninety three, she was living
in a suburb of Colorado Springs, working to and going
(06:00):
to school. One night, she went out to a local
bar to let loose and indulge in one of her passions,
singing karaoke. What is your karaoke song? Do you have
a go to?
Speaker 3 (06:13):
I really liked What's Up with four Non Blonde.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I do love that song.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, yeah, it's a good one.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
When Deb walked in, a man was already at the mic.
She recognized the song right away.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
I mean, you are my Shining Star, which is one
of my favorite songs in like eighth grade. And he
was really cute and he was new and I had
never seen him before, and I was like, hey, that's
one of my favorite songs. You know, come sit by me.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
His name was Tim Nichols, and they hit it off.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
We talked all night long and we basically never left
each other's side after that.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, described him to me, What does he like?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Tim is a lot of powerhouse and a little guy.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
He's like five nine.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
He had integrity, which is something that was so hard
to find. It such a rare quality nowadays. And because
he's just such a good guy through the right thing,
no matter what. And I that was the kind of
guy I wanted to be with forever.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Tim and Deb were best friends, and Tim loved JJ
like his own son.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Tim and JJ were just like so bonded that Tim
adopted JJ and we got married and started our family.
I have to say I loved getting married. I loved
being married. It really does take your relationship to a
(08:06):
different level.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Soon after that, in nineteen ninety seven, their daughter Sophia
was born.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
She was absolutely amazing. She loved people to be happy.
She was always smiling. She was the essence of joy.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Two years later, their second daughter, Sierra came. They nicknamed
her Rara.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
That little girl was just so calming and so peaceful,
and she would just like go around the room and
check everything out. She was just so little and delicate
and beautiful. Jg was my passion, Sophia was my joy,
and Rara was my peace. They were my absolute world.
(08:57):
I was so blessed.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
The family was thriving. Deb was working on getting her
real estate license. They had started a construction business and
even bought a house. They were busy, but they found
time for each other too.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Once I have was done nursing, we started going out,
you know, on date nights, and we went to a
karaoke bar and like it was so fun. It's like
soul food.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Deb and Tim decided to start a side business together,
doing something they loved, the thing that had brought them together,
a karaoke business.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
We took the plunge and started our own and got
really good equipment, and you know, I got all those
songs like the Gries duets and stuff. It was just
really fun.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
It was for just pure enjoyment, just go be able
to let loose and enjoy yourself.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
But Tim and their family had everything going for.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Them, living the American dream basically, but.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
That dream soon came to a crashing halt. On the
evening of March sixth, two thousand and three, Deb was
home with her three children, getting them ready for bed.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
JJ was going to a birthday party on Friday, which
this lady was taking ten little twelve year old skiing.
So I got a bunch of you know, chips and
stuff and bought the girls some sparkly tattoos, old temporary tattoos,
because you can't get one kid's stuff without the other
kids getting stuff too.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
She says. The kids were really hyper.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
That night, but I had to put them back to
bed like three or four times, because you know, the
girls were excited about these sparkly tattoos, and JJ was
so excited about his birthday party excursion.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
The next day, the kids finally fell sleep, which gave
Deb time to catch up on some chores around the house.
Tim got home from work around eleven that night, and
he was tired.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I knew he'd worked really hard all week, and I
told Tim, you know, I'd clean the house. I lick
candles for the ambiance, and I literally had dinner in
the oven and his favorite beer in the freezers so
he could just have a beer in dinner.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
DEB had an appointment to go meet a new karaoke
jockey for their business.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
And I was like, you know, I have to go
to this kJ interview. Make sure you blow up the
candles and I left.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
After the interview, DEB hung around the bar like she
usually did. She had a few drinks and sang some karaoke, and.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Because I had a drink or two, I didn't want
to drive.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
So when the bar was closing around two am, DEB
asked one of her employees, Carl, for a ride home.
Everything was business as usual until they turned onto Deb's street.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
You could see the emergency lights as we were coming
up the street, and the closer we got to my street,
the more emergency vehicles that we could see, and so
I started a panic and I just asked Carl to
(12:21):
stop the car and I got out of the car
and started running around the corner and saw it was
my house and it was on fire. And the closer
I got, you know, there's probably two hundred people in
front of my house. And I kept hearing everyone go,
(12:42):
you know, that's.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Her, that's the mom, and you.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Know, the panic was setting in. I was literally terrified,
and my brain was like, I just I needed to
get to the back and make sure the kids are okay.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
And and these cops and these firemen were like pushing
me back and sand it was almost like they were
wrestling me to the ground because I'm.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Like, you know, I need to go see if my
children are okay. I need to get back to the house.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Officials told her she needed to go to the hospital,
but they weren't telling her what was going on.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
It looked really.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
Bad, but it's the only way I could get information
was to go to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Was like fine, and so I went. And the whole
ride to the hospital, like, the policeman didn't tell me anything.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company.
AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and to making
a positive difference in the lives of its employees and
in the communities where they work and live. In light
of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance and
in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform.
(14:11):
The AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and
other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. When dev got
to the hospital, she was taken to a room to
wait for the doctor to come and.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Talk with her, you know. And he walked in and
she said, j jabs dead. Good night. Remember saying deadd No,
no one said anything about dead. And then he said
she are may the youngest. She died off, and I
(14:57):
felt my mind leave my body and the adrenaline and
my body took over, and I ran out of hospital
and my only thought was I just need to go.
We'll go, I mean walk to the Pacific Ocean and
that's it doesn't make any sense, but I now look
(15:20):
back and like that was the adrenaline and the panic
and where I always feel the safest, on the beach
by the water.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
It turns out Sophia was still alive, but she didn't
have long to live.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
And I went back to the hospital and they led
me to Sophia's room and she was had tubes everywhere.
There was just a little clear spot on her little
chest and I was able to put my head on
her chest, put my ear to her heart, and I
(16:02):
could hear a heart beating, and it was beating so fast.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Tim was also in critical condition. In the process of
trying to save him, the doctors had taken Tim's wedding
ring off. Deb asked if she could keep it, and
then she was confronted with more agony.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
And then they asked me to say goodbye to Sierrah,
me my baby girl that we called raw Rah. And
I got told her and say goodbye, and she didn't
look hurt or burned or anything. She just looked like
she was sleeping. Roba was a real big daddy's girl,
(16:54):
and she loved her daddy so much. And I looked
at the wedding ring in my hand as Kim's, and
I decided to put that on her so this could
be very visit.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Sierra and JJ had both died of smoke inhalation, Sofia
was still hanging on for dear life and Tim had
been transferred to a burn unit in Denver, and Dev's
family and friends were starting to arrive at the hospital.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
They all wanted to help me, but there was no
helping me. I was devastated. I was terrified, this panicked,
and I didn't want anyone to catch me. I was
just so sick of everyone trying to hug me like
you No, I have to figure this out.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
By morning, DEV was informed that Sophia had also died, and.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I put my wedding ring on Sophia's little finger, and
I got to say goodbye to Sofia, and then I
went right to the hospital up in Denver and was
with Tim and my family and we just we sat
vigil with Tim.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Tim's injuries were serious, but eventually he was able to
leave the hospital. With no home to go back to,
the two of them lived out of a motel room.
Deb's father and stepmother stayed close to help. Tim was
still recovering from his injuries, and Doug took charge of
his care, tending to his burns and changing his bandages.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
I was the only one that could take care of
the burns without pulkin and getting sick, so anyway, that
was my job for the rest of the time we were there.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
But Doug was also having a hard time. His daughter
had lost her children and he had lost his grandchildren.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Can I show you a picture of the kids. Have
you ever seen one?
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Show me?
Speaker 6 (19:08):
I got to reach it up there, I see. And anyway,
this was the last picture of them. This was taken
just before they all died.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
When was that Christmas?
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Just after? Yeah, in March, I guess. But they had
little halos on even.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
I went from just needing to hire someone to fill
a shift to losing my whole little family.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Deb and Tim had lost their children, their home, and
everything they owned, and as they ruggled with their grief,
their marriage was deteriorating.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
We weren't doing well at all. Actually, our souls were broken.
We weren't He wasn't the same man. I wasn't the
same woman. We're fighting constantly in It was horrible. We
were in different places with the grieving, you know, like
he would want to remember the kids and I would
(20:27):
be like in denial, and we just couldn't get on
the same page. And we were actually doing more damage
to each other than we were helping. None of any
of it made any sense. I was not thinking clearly.
I literally would buy boxes of wine and put them
in my windowsill, and when I'd wake up in the morning,
(20:49):
I'd start drinking white esin and I'd drink it all day.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
She ended up coming home here with us, and she
was basically in trauma. I mean we're talking months after
the fire, and you know, me and her were go
down to her bedroom till she cried.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Hers all asleep, and it was about to get a
lot worse. Because Tim was the sole survivor from inside
the house fire, police were suspicious. One day, the police
called him into the station, saying they needed him to
pick up some property from the fire, but Deb says
it was a ruse to get her alone.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
As soon as he left, the doorbell rang and it
was Derek Graham and another detective and they were like,
you know, oh, we need to talk to you. We
think your husband did this. And I remember telling them
absolutely not. They didn't know what they were talking about.
My husband loved his children more than his own life.
(21:53):
They said, well, we have evidence. I said, no, you don't,
and if you do, it's wrong. And then I asked
them to leave, and I thought that would be the
end of it.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
But it wasn't. Detective Graham was also scrutinizing Deb's behavior,
particularly at the hospital.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
And then he put like his notes that I wasn't
crying properly or whatever. And I'm thinking you didn't think
I was crying properly. I couldn't even remember to breathe
or close my mouth, and you're judging me like that.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
But the way Detective Graham saw it, these two parents
had something to do with the deaths of their children.
After a two year investigation, on July twenty first, two
thousand and five, the grand jury indicted Tim Nichols for
the murders of eleven year old Jj, five year old Sophia,
(22:51):
and three year old Sierra. Deb was also indicted that
day for minor counts from before the fire, including drug use,
but more than two few years later, in November two
thousand and seven, she too was indicted for the murders
of their children. Deb and Tim were tried separately. Tim's
(23:15):
trial came first before Deb's trial even began. He was
convicted of three counts a first degree murder. Deb's trial
started on October fourteenth, two thousand and eight. The prosecutors,
Assistant district attorneys Amy Mulaney and David Lindsay, presented the
theory that Deb had developed an addiction to methamphetamine and
(23:38):
needed money for drug related debts, so she conspired with
Tim to burn down their house and family for the
insurance money. They said that meth users would do anything
to get more meth.
Speaker 7 (23:51):
And according to the prosecution, that would include killing their
three children to get more methamphetamine, and there was very
little evidence to support that at all, but that was
their theory.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
This is Kathleen Lord. She's a staff attorney at the
Cory Wise Innocence Project at Colorado Law. Kathleen says that
while Deb did do drugs occasionally, there's.
Speaker 7 (24:14):
Not evidence that she was a meth addict. She was
first turned on to meth by one of the state's
witnesses as a way to lose weight, and there was
a lot of speculation on the prosecution's part.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
The state had one major problem with its case. Deb
wasn't home the night of the fire, so the state
argued she had to have an accomplice. They said she
planned it with Tim, who had already been convicted.
Speaker 8 (24:45):
There's something that we're uncomfortable with, and I think that
we're uncomfortable with the fact that there was a father
at home with his children and he escaped the fire
and his children didn't.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Anne Marie Moyees is the director of the Cory Wise
Innocence Project. She says that right from the beginning, the
police focused on deb and Tamas suspects.
Speaker 8 (25:05):
There's a real impulse to blame him and to embrace
narratives that put him at fault for what happened. And
so I think that was the kernel that started all
of this, and then the confirmation bias sets in, and
then every piece of evidence is seen through this lend
of that expectation.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Here's how the state's case began.
Speaker 8 (25:31):
Somewhat early in the investigation, they led an arson dog
through the fire scene and the dog was trained to
alert to the possible presence of an ignitable liquid, and
the dog did alert at multiple locations in the living room,
in the stairway at the house. They said, okay, well
we found xylenes, and xilenes are a chemical compound in
(25:53):
ignitable liquids.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Xilenes are also commonly detected when furniture and other household
items burn in a fire. Yet, the prosecution argued that
the presence of xilen's showed that the fire was deliberately
set using an ignitable liquid.
Speaker 8 (26:10):
They had an expert whose name is John Dehan, and
he testified that he was able to determine that only
a fire set at multiple locations simultaneous in the living
room could have grown large enough to engulf the entire room,
So it was beyond dispute that the living room did
go to flashover, meaning that the entire room was engulfed
(26:32):
in flames. But his theory was that only a deliberately
set fire could have produced that result.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
And to further bolster this theory, the state brought in
a jailhouse snitch. When Tim was in jail, he was
placed next to a notorious informant named Hiram Church.
Speaker 8 (26:53):
Within a day or two of being in custody, mister
Church claimed to have heard Tim kenfet to him, and
then they were able to use the jail house snitch
to tie it together. Because the jailhouse snitch said that
Tim had admitted to him to using an ignitable liquid
called goof off to start the fire, and zilenes are
a primary ingredient of goof off.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
The state said that Tim put goof off, a household
cleaning product all over the furniture and had the kids
sit on it that evening. Then when the fire ignited,
the children would already have the flammable substance on them them.
Speaker 8 (27:30):
And what was critical is that mister Church, the jail
house informant, said not only that Tim had confessed, but
that he had implicated Deb in the crime.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
The state also criticized Deb's behavior following her children's deaths.
They called in an insurance adjuster to testify that when
she showed up at their office, she had on a
white tracksuit with freshly manicured nails, implying that she was
dressed inappropriately for a bereft mother. The state relentlessly picked
apart her grieving process.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
I get it because I didn't know how to do
it either.
Speaker 8 (28:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Things like that come in waves like you just can't
you sob uncontrollably, and then you can't think for a
sob or do anything for a while, and then it'll
hit you and I don't know, It's like a cycle
of denial and devastation.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
They also brought up the fact that Deb didn't attend
her children's funeral. How come you didn't attend the funeral.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
I had lost my second son, Spencer, when he was
three months old, and I had to have a funeral.
It's a little tiny casket, and I barely made it
through that. And I just I was trying to get
ready to go to the funeral, and my body was
(29:12):
breaking down and I was shaking so bad. And you know,
my daughters loved to me get ready in the morning
and they would be like, you know, mom, we went pretties.
And I was trying to get ready for the funeral.
But I just had to sit down and give in
and surrender. I can't go. I can't do it. I
(29:35):
didn't want to go to the funeral and have it
be about me breaking down instead of people getting to
say goodbye to my beautiful children. So I went and
I sat out in the car until after the funeral,
and then I went and I thank people for coming.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
I couldn't imagine seeing three, three caskets. It was too much.
It was too much.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Deb's defense attorneys were Deputy Public Defender Cindy Jones and
Jeffrey Schwartz. They called multiple witnesses to refute the prosecution's
idea that deb wasn't grieving properly, and as Anne Marie
Moyeses explains, they also called in the prominent fire expert
John Lntini.
Speaker 8 (30:45):
He disputed all of the prosecution's evidence and their interpretation
of the evidence, but at the end of the day,
it was his word against multiple experts on the prosecution side,
and the prosecution did a pretty good job of characterizing
Lentini as some sort of hired gun that the defense
had paid. It wasn't a fair characterization, but it was
(31:08):
a success. They were successful in portraying him that way.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Over a month later, on November twenty fourth, two thousand
and eight, Deb Nichols was convicted of three counts of
first degree murder. She was sentenced to three consecutive life
terms in prison. Deb has passed her time in prison
trying to come to terms with what has happened in
her life.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
I try to do the things that I know will help,
like journaling and singing and working out and going to
church at Red Rocks, God behind bars, and keeping my
heart open so that I can feel that pure love
with my children, and fighting to clear our names because
(31:56):
we had nothing to do with that fire.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
In twenty twenty, Kathleen Anne Marie and the Corey Wise
Innocence Project joined experienced criminal defense lawyer Jeanine McCabe in
taking on Deb's case.
Speaker 8 (32:14):
So the main thing that we've done is brought on
new leading experts in fire science to explain the changes
in fire science that have taken place since the time
of trial.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
And not only that, in the time since the trial happened,
the state's expert John Dehn has been discredited.
Speaker 8 (32:32):
He for many years was considered one of the leading
experts in fire science in this country. But what we
know now is that he acted unethically in other cases,
and in fact, the American Association of Forensic Science voted
to expel him from membership because of that unethical conduct.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Dehn, who passed away in twenty twenty two, continued to
stand by his testimony. This is him speaking in twenty
nineteen about the case.
Speaker 9 (33:00):
I've re examined the data and the findings a number
of times over the years, and I still hold to
my conclusions expressed in the Tim nichols A trial as
well as Deborah Nichols that fire was deliberately started in
the living room of the residents.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
However, the science to Han was touting has also been discredited.
The defensive trial expert John Lentini, also maintains his trial
testimony and emphasizes these changes in science. To this day,
he defends Debra's innocence.
Speaker 10 (33:38):
It's not up to Timothy or Deborah to prove what
caused that fire. What we have learned about the behavior
of fire since the Nickels fire is that the patterns
that we read after a big fire like this are
not reliable evidence.
Speaker 8 (33:57):
We can now say definitively that the sample that were
taken from the Nichols living room show that they were
just the natural byproduct of the fire, that they did
not come from an ignitable liquid. So there's absolutely no
evidence anymore that there was an ignitable liquid present at
the fire scene, and that new science just exposes the
(34:17):
prosecution's case for what it is, which is just a
house of cars that just doesn't stand up under any
sort of inspection.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
The jailhouse informant Hiram Church has also been discredited.
Speaker 8 (34:29):
We see that in cases of wrongful convictions that sometimes
when these jailhouse informants are used, what we find out
about their history is that they miraculously have heard confessions
in a number of other high profile murder cases, and
that was true of mister Church.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
The Corey Wise Innocence Project submitted a motion for a
new hearing to the courts in October of twenty twenty two.
If accepted, there will be an evidentiary hearing where Deb
can present this evidence to the court. In the meantime,
she tries to keep healthy and stay in touch with
the family she has left. Although Deb and Tim are divorced,
they've remained friends and write letters to each other in prison.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
We're both just trying to grieve and heal and get
our names cleared and get the truth out and take
it day by day. At this point, it's hard to
talk about trauma. It's hard to talk about losing my babies.
(35:34):
But I was just hoping that people, especially women that
get wrongly convicted, can find some type of strength, see
it through it and keep fighting.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Deb thinks back to the night of the fire, often
remembering her kid's rambunctious energy at bedtime. Now she thinks
of that night in a new way.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
I'm so glad that I got to put him back
to bed four or five times, because I didn't realize
that would be the last time I got to kiss
him good night. And I'm really really grateful I got
a bunch of exter kisses him that night.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
If you want to help deb and the Corey Wise
Innocence Project. Go to the links in our bio. Next time,
un Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Ashley Jordan he was
about to say he did it just so I can
go home and won't go to jail.
Speaker 7 (36:47):
And I looked at him and I grabbed his hand
and I said, no, you're not. You will not lie
for these people, I said, because we didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please
support your local innocence organizations and go to the links
in our bio to see how you can help. I'd
like to thank our executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Wordis,
as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Lyla Robinson,
and story editor Sonia Paul. The show is edited and
mixed by Annie Chelsea, with additional production by Jeff Cliburn
(37:23):
and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by
three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. The news clips
heard in this episode were reported by Laura Martin at KKTV.
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast and on Twitter at
Wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
(37:46):
all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
Instagram and Twitter at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie
Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
association with Signal Company Number one
Speaker 7 (38:02):
Bo
This is Jason Flahman, Welcome back to ronful Conviction. In
twenty twenty three, Maggie Feeling shared the devastating story of
Deborah Nichols, a Colorado spring's mother who lost all three
of her children in a tragic two thousand and three
house fire, and who was later convicted of having caused
their deaths. Deb's conviction rested on discredited arson science testimony
(00:29):
from a fire expert who was later discredited for unethical
conduct and even for judgments about whether Deb was grieving
her children quote unquote properly. While now we have a
major breakthrough to report, because in April of this year,
a judge found that prosecutors had committed a Brady violation
(00:49):
in Deb's case, meaning that evidence favorable to her defense
had been withheld, and on August first, Deb's conviction was
finally vacated. One of the prosecutors from Deb's case, now
a district attorney in a nearby county of Colorado, was
also recently removed, along with his entire office, from an
(01:10):
unrelated murder case after a judge found a pattern of
having failed to turn over evidence that was favorable to
the defense. Now, while dev remains in custody for now.
A status conference is set for today and her attorneys
are hopeful, as are we, that she'll soon be released
on bond. So after twenty three long, miserable years, Deb's
(01:35):
fight isn't over, but this is a huge step towards
justice and hopefully towards some long overdue peace and healing
for deb and her family.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Evening of March sixth, two thousand and three was a
typical Thursday for the Nicholls family. That night, Deborah Nichols
put her three energetic kids to bed. After her husband
Tim got home, she left the house to interview an
employee for their karaoke business. When she returned home, her
world had been turned upside down that night.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I went from just needing to hire someone to fill
a shift to losing my whole little family.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
It was a mother's worst nightmare. And when it was over,
all three of Deb's children had died in a terrible accident.
She was so stricken with grief that she couldn't bring
herself to attend their funeral.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
I was trying to get ready to go in the funeral,
and my body was breaking down and I was shaking
so bad. I just had to sit down and give
in and surrender. I can't go, I can't do it.
I couldn't imagine seeing three, three caskets. It was too much,
(03:15):
It was too much. My name is deb Nichols. I'm
currently serving three life sentences at Denver Women's Correctional.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Facility from Lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with
Maggie Freeling today Deb Nichols. Deborah Nichols was born May fourth,
(03:51):
nineteen sixty seven in Dearborn, Michigan. She grew up in
a large, blended family.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Having seven brothers and sister was a blast. We had
a great childhood. Northern Michigan has beautiful weather, like the
perfect four seasons, so we as children took full rain
with all of it and did a lot of skating
and skiing and swimming or just going down to the
(04:21):
end of the street to the bay and playing in
the water all day, all summer long. We had so
much fun.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So can you tell listeners about Deborah? What's she like?
What was she like growing up?
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Well, as you probably gathered talking to her, she's a
pretty strong girl.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
This is Dev's father, Doug bamb Gardner.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Pretty strong will and has no problems, doing things her
way and trying to attain what she's headed for. She
was always that way all of her life.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Her family later moved to Colorado, but for college, Deb
carved her own path and moved out to California. After
studying in San Diego for a year, Deb left the
West Coast and joined her family in Colorado. When Deb
was twenty four, she gave birth to her first child,
a son. They called him JJ.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
JJ's nickname was Peanut, and he was just absolutely beautiful,
like he was my little buddy, my little man, and
we did everything together.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Deb went on to have a second son, Spencer, but tragically,
when he was three months old, Spencer passed away from
sudden infant death syndrome, also known as sid's. Despite her loss,
Deb continued to try and be the best mom she
could to JJ. By nineteen ninety three, she was living
in a suburb of Colorado Springs, working to and going
(06:00):
to school. One night, she went out to a local
bar to let loose and indulge in one of her passions,
singing karaoke. What is your karaoke song? Do you have
a go to?
Speaker 3 (06:13):
I really liked What's Up with four Non Blonde.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I do love that song.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, yeah, it's a good one.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
When Deb walked in, a man was already at the mic.
She recognized the song right away.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
I mean, you are my Shining Star, which is one
of my favorite songs in like eighth grade. And he
was really cute and he was new and I had
never seen him before, and I was like, hey, that's
one of my favorite songs. You know, come sit by me.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
His name was Tim Nichols, and they hit it off.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
We talked all night long and we basically never left
each other's side after that.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, described him to me, What does he like?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Tim is a lot of powerhouse and a little guy.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
He's like five nine.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
He had integrity, which is something that was so hard
to find. It such a rare quality nowadays. And because
he's just such a good guy through the right thing,
no matter what. And I that was the kind of
guy I wanted to be with forever.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Tim and Deb were best friends, and Tim loved JJ
like his own son.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Tim and JJ were just like so bonded that Tim
adopted JJ and we got married and started our family.
I have to say I loved getting married. I loved
being married. It really does take your relationship to a
(08:06):
different level.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Soon after that, in nineteen ninety seven, their daughter Sophia
was born.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
She was absolutely amazing. She loved people to be happy.
She was always smiling. She was the essence of joy.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Two years later, their second daughter, Sierra came. They nicknamed
her Rara.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
That little girl was just so calming and so peaceful,
and she would just like go around the room and
check everything out. She was just so little and delicate
and beautiful. Jg was my passion, Sophia was my joy,
and Rara was my peace. They were my absolute world.
(08:57):
I was so blessed.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
The family was thriving. Deb was working on getting her
real estate license. They had started a construction business and
even bought a house. They were busy, but they found
time for each other too.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Once I have was done nursing, we started going out,
you know, on date nights, and we went to a
karaoke bar and like it was so fun. It's like
soul food.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Deb and Tim decided to start a side business together,
doing something they loved, the thing that had brought them together,
a karaoke business.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
We took the plunge and started our own and got
really good equipment, and you know, I got all those
songs like the Gries duets and stuff. It was just
really fun.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
It was for just pure enjoyment, just go be able
to let loose and enjoy yourself.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
But Tim and their family had everything going for.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Them, living the American dream basically, but.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
That dream soon came to a crashing halt. On the
evening of March sixth, two thousand and three, Deb was
home with her three children, getting them ready for bed.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
JJ was going to a birthday party on Friday, which
this lady was taking ten little twelve year old skiing.
So I got a bunch of you know, chips and
stuff and bought the girls some sparkly tattoos, old temporary tattoos,
because you can't get one kid's stuff without the other
kids getting stuff too.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
She says. The kids were really hyper.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
That night, but I had to put them back to
bed like three or four times, because you know, the
girls were excited about these sparkly tattoos, and JJ was
so excited about his birthday party excursion.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
The next day, the kids finally fell sleep, which gave
Deb time to catch up on some chores around the house.
Tim got home from work around eleven that night, and
he was tired.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I knew he'd worked really hard all week, and I
told Tim, you know, I'd clean the house. I lick
candles for the ambiance, and I literally had dinner in
the oven and his favorite beer in the freezers so
he could just have a beer in dinner.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
DEB had an appointment to go meet a new karaoke
jockey for their business.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
And I was like, you know, I have to go
to this kJ interview. Make sure you blow up the
candles and I left.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
After the interview, DEB hung around the bar like she
usually did. She had a few drinks and sang some karaoke, and.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Because I had a drink or two, I didn't want
to drive.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
So when the bar was closing around two am, DEB
asked one of her employees, Carl, for a ride home.
Everything was business as usual until they turned onto Deb's street.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
You could see the emergency lights as we were coming
up the street, and the closer we got to my street,
the more emergency vehicles that we could see, and so
I started a panic and I just asked Carl to
(12:21):
stop the car and I got out of the car
and started running around the corner and saw it was
my house and it was on fire. And the closer
I got, you know, there's probably two hundred people in
front of my house. And I kept hearing everyone go,
(12:42):
you know, that's.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Her, that's the mom, and you.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Know, the panic was setting in. I was literally terrified,
and my brain was like, I just I needed to
get to the back and make sure the kids are okay.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
And and these cops and these firemen were like pushing
me back and sand it was almost like they were
wrestling me to the ground because I'm.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Like, you know, I need to go see if my
children are okay. I need to get back to the house.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Officials told her she needed to go to the hospital,
but they weren't telling her what was going on.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
It looked really.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
Bad, but it's the only way I could get information
was to go to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Was like fine, and so I went. And the whole
ride to the hospital, like, the policeman didn't tell me anything.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company.
AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and to making
a positive difference in the lives of its employees and
in the communities where they work and live. In light
of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance and
in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform.
(14:11):
The AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and
other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. When dev got
to the hospital, she was taken to a room to
wait for the doctor to come and.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Talk with her, you know. And he walked in and
she said, j jabs dead. Good night. Remember saying deadd No,
no one said anything about dead. And then he said
she are may the youngest. She died off, and I
(14:57):
felt my mind leave my body and the adrenaline and
my body took over, and I ran out of hospital
and my only thought was I just need to go.
We'll go, I mean walk to the Pacific Ocean and
that's it doesn't make any sense, but I now look
(15:20):
back and like that was the adrenaline and the panic
and where I always feel the safest, on the beach
by the water.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
It turns out Sophia was still alive, but she didn't
have long to live.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
And I went back to the hospital and they led
me to Sophia's room and she was had tubes everywhere.
There was just a little clear spot on her little
chest and I was able to put my head on
her chest, put my ear to her heart, and I
(16:02):
could hear a heart beating, and it was beating so fast.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Tim was also in critical condition. In the process of
trying to save him, the doctors had taken Tim's wedding
ring off. Deb asked if she could keep it, and
then she was confronted with more agony.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
And then they asked me to say goodbye to Sierrah,
me my baby girl that we called raw Rah. And
I got told her and say goodbye, and she didn't
look hurt or burned or anything. She just looked like
she was sleeping. Roba was a real big daddy's girl,
(16:54):
and she loved her daddy so much. And I looked
at the wedding ring in my hand as Kim's, and
I decided to put that on her so this could
be very visit.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Sierra and JJ had both died of smoke inhalation, Sofia
was still hanging on for dear life and Tim had
been transferred to a burn unit in Denver, and Dev's
family and friends were starting to arrive at the hospital.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
They all wanted to help me, but there was no
helping me. I was devastated. I was terrified, this panicked,
and I didn't want anyone to catch me. I was
just so sick of everyone trying to hug me like
you No, I have to figure this out.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
By morning, DEV was informed that Sophia had also died, and.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I put my wedding ring on Sophia's little finger, and
I got to say goodbye to Sofia, and then I
went right to the hospital up in Denver and was
with Tim and my family and we just we sat
vigil with Tim.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Tim's injuries were serious, but eventually he was able to
leave the hospital. With no home to go back to,
the two of them lived out of a motel room.
Deb's father and stepmother stayed close to help. Tim was
still recovering from his injuries, and Doug took charge of
his care, tending to his burns and changing his bandages.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
I was the only one that could take care of
the burns without pulkin and getting sick, so anyway, that
was my job for the rest of the time we were there.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
But Doug was also having a hard time. His daughter
had lost her children and he had lost his grandchildren.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Can I show you a picture of the kids. Have
you ever seen one?
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Show me?
Speaker 6 (19:08):
I got to reach it up there, I see. And anyway,
this was the last picture of them. This was taken
just before they all died.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
When was that Christmas?
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Just after? Yeah, in March, I guess. But they had
little halos on even.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
I went from just needing to hire someone to fill
a shift to losing my whole little family.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Deb and Tim had lost their children, their home, and
everything they owned, and as they ruggled with their grief,
their marriage was deteriorating.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
We weren't doing well at all. Actually, our souls were broken.
We weren't He wasn't the same man. I wasn't the
same woman. We're fighting constantly in It was horrible. We
were in different places with the grieving, you know, like
he would want to remember the kids and I would
(20:27):
be like in denial, and we just couldn't get on
the same page. And we were actually doing more damage
to each other than we were helping. None of any
of it made any sense. I was not thinking clearly.
I literally would buy boxes of wine and put them
in my windowsill, and when I'd wake up in the morning,
(20:49):
I'd start drinking white esin and I'd drink it all day.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
She ended up coming home here with us, and she
was basically in trauma. I mean we're talking months after
the fire, and you know, me and her were go
down to her bedroom till she cried.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Hers all asleep, and it was about to get a
lot worse. Because Tim was the sole survivor from inside
the house fire, police were suspicious. One day, the police
called him into the station, saying they needed him to
pick up some property from the fire, but Deb says
it was a ruse to get her alone.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
As soon as he left, the doorbell rang and it
was Derek Graham and another detective and they were like,
you know, oh, we need to talk to you. We
think your husband did this. And I remember telling them
absolutely not. They didn't know what they were talking about.
My husband loved his children more than his own life.
(21:53):
They said, well, we have evidence. I said, no, you don't,
and if you do, it's wrong. And then I asked
them to leave, and I thought that would be the
end of it.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
But it wasn't. Detective Graham was also scrutinizing Deb's behavior,
particularly at the hospital.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
And then he put like his notes that I wasn't
crying properly or whatever. And I'm thinking you didn't think
I was crying properly. I couldn't even remember to breathe
or close my mouth, and you're judging me like that.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
But the way Detective Graham saw it, these two parents
had something to do with the deaths of their children.
After a two year investigation, on July twenty first, two
thousand and five, the grand jury indicted Tim Nichols for
the murders of eleven year old Jj, five year old Sophia,
(22:51):
and three year old Sierra. Deb was also indicted that
day for minor counts from before the fire, including drug use,
but more than two few years later, in November two
thousand and seven, she too was indicted for the murders
of their children. Deb and Tim were tried separately. Tim's
(23:15):
trial came first before Deb's trial even began. He was
convicted of three counts a first degree murder. Deb's trial
started on October fourteenth, two thousand and eight. The prosecutors,
Assistant district attorneys Amy Mulaney and David Lindsay, presented the
theory that Deb had developed an addiction to methamphetamine and
(23:38):
needed money for drug related debts, so she conspired with
Tim to burn down their house and family for the
insurance money. They said that meth users would do anything
to get more meth.
Speaker 7 (23:51):
And according to the prosecution, that would include killing their
three children to get more methamphetamine, and there was very
little evidence to support that at all, but that was
their theory.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
This is Kathleen Lord. She's a staff attorney at the
Cory Wise Innocence Project at Colorado Law. Kathleen says that
while Deb did do drugs occasionally, there's.
Speaker 7 (24:14):
Not evidence that she was a meth addict. She was
first turned on to meth by one of the state's
witnesses as a way to lose weight, and there was
a lot of speculation on the prosecution's part.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
The state had one major problem with its case. Deb
wasn't home the night of the fire, so the state
argued she had to have an accomplice. They said she
planned it with Tim, who had already been convicted.
Speaker 8 (24:45):
There's something that we're uncomfortable with, and I think that
we're uncomfortable with the fact that there was a father
at home with his children and he escaped the fire
and his children didn't.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Anne Marie Moyees is the director of the Cory Wise
Innocence Project. She says that right from the beginning, the
police focused on deb and Tamas suspects.
Speaker 8 (25:05):
There's a real impulse to blame him and to embrace
narratives that put him at fault for what happened. And
so I think that was the kernel that started all
of this, and then the confirmation bias sets in, and
then every piece of evidence is seen through this lend
of that expectation.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Here's how the state's case began.
Speaker 8 (25:31):
Somewhat early in the investigation, they led an arson dog
through the fire scene and the dog was trained to
alert to the possible presence of an ignitable liquid, and
the dog did alert at multiple locations in the living room,
in the stairway at the house. They said, okay, well
we found xylenes, and xilenes are a chemical compound in
(25:53):
ignitable liquids.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Xilenes are also commonly detected when furniture and other household
items burn in a fire. Yet, the prosecution argued that
the presence of xilen's showed that the fire was deliberately
set using an ignitable liquid.
Speaker 8 (26:10):
They had an expert whose name is John Dehan, and
he testified that he was able to determine that only
a fire set at multiple locations simultaneous in the living
room could have grown large enough to engulf the entire room,
So it was beyond dispute that the living room did
go to flashover, meaning that the entire room was engulfed
(26:32):
in flames. But his theory was that only a deliberately
set fire could have produced that result.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
And to further bolster this theory, the state brought in
a jailhouse snitch. When Tim was in jail, he was
placed next to a notorious informant named Hiram Church.
Speaker 8 (26:53):
Within a day or two of being in custody, mister
Church claimed to have heard Tim kenfet to him, and
then they were able to use the jail house snitch
to tie it together. Because the jailhouse snitch said that
Tim had admitted to him to using an ignitable liquid
called goof off to start the fire, and zilenes are
a primary ingredient of goof off.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
The state said that Tim put goof off, a household
cleaning product all over the furniture and had the kids
sit on it that evening. Then when the fire ignited,
the children would already have the flammable substance on them them.
Speaker 8 (27:30):
And what was critical is that mister Church, the jail
house informant, said not only that Tim had confessed, but
that he had implicated Deb in the crime.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
The state also criticized Deb's behavior following her children's deaths.
They called in an insurance adjuster to testify that when
she showed up at their office, she had on a
white tracksuit with freshly manicured nails, implying that she was
dressed inappropriately for a bereft mother. The state relentlessly picked
apart her grieving process.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
I get it because I didn't know how to do
it either.
Speaker 8 (28:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Things like that come in waves like you just can't
you sob uncontrollably, and then you can't think for a
sob or do anything for a while, and then it'll
hit you and I don't know, It's like a cycle
of denial and devastation.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
They also brought up the fact that Deb didn't attend
her children's funeral. How come you didn't attend the funeral.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
I had lost my second son, Spencer, when he was
three months old, and I had to have a funeral.
It's a little tiny casket, and I barely made it
through that. And I just I was trying to get
ready to go to the funeral, and my body was
(29:12):
breaking down and I was shaking so bad. And you know,
my daughters loved to me get ready in the morning
and they would be like, you know, mom, we went pretties.
And I was trying to get ready for the funeral.
But I just had to sit down and give in
and surrender. I can't go. I can't do it. I
(29:35):
didn't want to go to the funeral and have it
be about me breaking down instead of people getting to
say goodbye to my beautiful children. So I went and
I sat out in the car until after the funeral,
and then I went and I thank people for coming.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
I couldn't imagine seeing three, three caskets. It was too much.
It was too much.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Deb's defense attorneys were Deputy Public Defender Cindy Jones and
Jeffrey Schwartz. They called multiple witnesses to refute the prosecution's
idea that deb wasn't grieving properly, and as Anne Marie
Moyeses explains, they also called in the prominent fire expert
John Lntini.
Speaker 8 (30:45):
He disputed all of the prosecution's evidence and their interpretation
of the evidence, but at the end of the day,
it was his word against multiple experts on the prosecution side,
and the prosecution did a pretty good job of characterizing
Lentini as some sort of hired gun that the defense
had paid. It wasn't a fair characterization, but it was
(31:08):
a success. They were successful in portraying him that way.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Over a month later, on November twenty fourth, two thousand
and eight, Deb Nichols was convicted of three counts of
first degree murder. She was sentenced to three consecutive life
terms in prison. Deb has passed her time in prison
trying to come to terms with what has happened in
her life.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
I try to do the things that I know will help,
like journaling and singing and working out and going to
church at Red Rocks, God behind bars, and keeping my
heart open so that I can feel that pure love
with my children, and fighting to clear our names because
(31:56):
we had nothing to do with that fire.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
In twenty twenty, Kathleen Anne Marie and the Corey Wise
Innocence Project joined experienced criminal defense lawyer Jeanine McCabe in
taking on Deb's case.
Speaker 8 (32:14):
So the main thing that we've done is brought on
new leading experts in fire science to explain the changes
in fire science that have taken place since the time
of trial.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
And not only that, in the time since the trial happened,
the state's expert John Dehn has been discredited.
Speaker 8 (32:32):
He for many years was considered one of the leading
experts in fire science in this country. But what we
know now is that he acted unethically in other cases,
and in fact, the American Association of Forensic Science voted
to expel him from membership because of that unethical conduct.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Dehn, who passed away in twenty twenty two, continued to
stand by his testimony. This is him speaking in twenty
nineteen about the case.
Speaker 9 (33:00):
I've re examined the data and the findings a number
of times over the years, and I still hold to
my conclusions expressed in the Tim nichols A trial as
well as Deborah Nichols that fire was deliberately started in
the living room of the residents.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
However, the science to Han was touting has also been discredited.
The defensive trial expert John Lentini, also maintains his trial
testimony and emphasizes these changes in science. To this day,
he defends Debra's innocence.
Speaker 10 (33:38):
It's not up to Timothy or Deborah to prove what
caused that fire. What we have learned about the behavior
of fire since the Nickels fire is that the patterns
that we read after a big fire like this are
not reliable evidence.
Speaker 8 (33:57):
We can now say definitively that the sample that were
taken from the Nichols living room show that they were
just the natural byproduct of the fire, that they did
not come from an ignitable liquid. So there's absolutely no
evidence anymore that there was an ignitable liquid present at
the fire scene, and that new science just exposes the
(34:17):
prosecution's case for what it is, which is just a
house of cars that just doesn't stand up under any
sort of inspection.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
The jailhouse informant Hiram Church has also been discredited.
Speaker 8 (34:29):
We see that in cases of wrongful convictions that sometimes
when these jailhouse informants are used, what we find out
about their history is that they miraculously have heard confessions
in a number of other high profile murder cases, and
that was true of mister Church.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
The Corey Wise Innocence Project submitted a motion for a
new hearing to the courts in October of twenty twenty two.
If accepted, there will be an evidentiary hearing where Deb
can present this evidence to the court. In the meantime,
she tries to keep healthy and stay in touch with
the family she has left. Although Deb and Tim are divorced,
they've remained friends and write letters to each other in prison.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
We're both just trying to grieve and heal and get
our names cleared and get the truth out and take
it day by day. At this point, it's hard to
talk about trauma. It's hard to talk about losing my babies.
(35:34):
But I was just hoping that people, especially women that
get wrongly convicted, can find some type of strength, see
it through it and keep fighting.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Deb thinks back to the night of the fire, often
remembering her kid's rambunctious energy at bedtime. Now she thinks
of that night in a new way.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
I'm so glad that I got to put him back
to bed four or five times, because I didn't realize
that would be the last time I got to kiss
him good night. And I'm really really grateful I got
a bunch of exter kisses him that night.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
If you want to help deb and the Corey Wise
Innocence Project. Go to the links in our bio. Next time,
un Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Ashley Jordan he was
about to say he did it just so I can
go home and won't go to jail.
Speaker 7 (36:47):
And I looked at him and I grabbed his hand
and I said, no, you're not. You will not lie
for these people, I said, because we didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please
support your local innocence organizations and go to the links
in our bio to see how you can help. I'd
like to thank our executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Wordis,
as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Lyla Robinson,
and story editor Sonia Paul. The show is edited and
mixed by Annie Chelsea, with additional production by Jeff Cliburn
(37:23):
and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by
three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. The news clips
heard in this episode were reported by Laura Martin at KKTV.
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast and on Twitter at
Wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
(37:46):
all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
Instagram and Twitter at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie
Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
association with Signal Company Number one
Speaker 7 (38:02):
Bo
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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