Troubled Past May Have Prepared Hostage

She spent Friday nights with a group of friends so wild that her grandparents, devout evangelical Christians, prayed for her every Friday afternoon. She fell in love with a tough boy. She seemed drawn to trouble -- and troubled people -- by her sweet nature.

Last week, in a one-bedroom apartment north of Atlanta, Smith says she spent a strange, amazing night talking to Brian Gene Nichols, an accused rapist. Police said Nichols took her hostage after he overcame a guard and killed three people at the Fulton County Courthouse and then fatally shot a customs agent hours later. By 9 a.m., authorities said, she had convinced him to surrender, ending an intense search that had paralyzed the city.

Since then, the world has come calling for this 26-year-old waitress, a woman who struggled with alcohol addiction and voluntarily gave up custody of her daughter because she couldn't provide her a stable home. Television producers have fought over the rights to an exclusive interview, ghost writers have dropped off letters of introduction, and Hollywood producers have pitched feature treatments of Smith's ordeal. As for Smith, she has relaxed into the embrace of her family, who say they always knew she would find her way back.

"This has brought her back into the fold," said Larry Croft, 49, her former stepfather. "She's not lost. She has proved it to the world. This has put an exclamation mark on what her character is all about."

Born as her parents' marriage was disintegrating, Elizabeth Ashley Copeland spent her early years in the conservative home of her grandparents. Richard Machovec, a retired Marine, was headmaster of Augusta Christian School, where teachers measured skirts with rulers to make sure they weren't too short.

Ashley was 11 when she moved in with her mother and Croft, and so quiet that they sometimes worried that she spent too much time reading the Bible. Over the next few years, though, that changed. She became a star point guard on the basketball team and transferred to public school.

"All of a sudden, she started getting attention -- attention from the wrong people," Croft said. In 1996, she pleaded guilty to shoplifting charges and was sentenced to a year's probation.