ATLANTA — She trembled with fear before the armed man who was wanted in the shooting deaths of a judge and three others. But Ashley Smith kept her head, even when Brian Gene Nichols pushed into her home by sticking a gun in her ribs, and bound her with masking tape, an extension cord and a curtain.
"I didn't want to die," she said Sunday. "I didn't want him to hurt anybody else."
The 26-year-old woman, credited by police for bringing a massive search for Nichols to a nonviolent end Saturday, resurfaced a day later with a harrowing account of the 7 1/2 hours she spent as Nichols' hostage in the apartment she had moved into only two days before in an Atlanta suburb.
Captor and captive talked, and he untied her, she recalled on CNN and in accounts posted on the website of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He looked at her family photos, she read to him from the Bible and "The Purpose-Driven Life," and cooked him a breakfast of pancakes and eggs.
" 'Wow, real butter,' " Smith said Nichols told her.
Progressively, she gained the trust of the man who, at that time, was Georgia's most-wanted fugitive, with a $60,000 reward on his head in connection with the slayings. "I really didn't want him to hurt himself, or anyone else to hurt him," she said.
Watching TV news about the carnage being blamed on him, and the multi-agency law enforcement operation mounted to capture him, she said Nichols told her: " 'I cannot believe that's me on there.'
"He needed hope for his life," Smith said. "He said, 'Look at my eyes, I'm already dead.' I said: 'You're not dead. You're standing right in front of me. If you want to die, you can. It's your choice.' "
Police and the FBI were scouring Georgia and nearby states for Nichols, 33, after he allegedly grabbed a sheriff's deputy's gun Friday morning at the Atlanta courthouse where he was being retried for rape, and fatally shot his judge, a court reporter and another deputy. He then fled, and according to police, shot dead an agent for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the agent worked on his new home.
Nichols was arrested Saturday morning after Smith talked him into allowing her to leave her apartment in Duluth, 20 miles northeast of Atlanta. She said she phoned 911 right after getting into her car.
Gwinnett County police responded with a SWAT team.
