A Manhunt and a Woman's Story
Hostage Says She Appealed To Suspect's Spiritual Side
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 15, 2005; Page A01
A new American hero was anointed yesterday, on talk radio and
television, in police stations and coffee shops.
Ashley Smith, an anonymous suburbanite last week, burst into the
nation's consciousness, lavishly praised as the woman responsible for
ending the massive manhunt for the Atlanta courthouse murder suspect.
The police chief in Duluth, Ga., where Smith was held captive, crowned
her "a champ," and network correspondents and commentators dubbed her
"a hero." Her captor, she says, went even further: "An angel sent from
God" is what Smith remembers being called by Brian Nichols, the
shooting suspect she calmed.
This 26-year-old widow did what battalions of armed law enforcement
officers could not, by making eggs and pancakes -- and by sharing her
life story, by reading and listening, and by talking about God. She
did it, she has said in detailed retellings of her ordeal for
reporters, by trusting Nichols, 33, and by making him trust her.
There, in that suburban apartment north of Atlanta, she told Nichols,
hunted and already reviled for allegedly killing four people, that "he
wasn't this bad person everybody made him out to be." She read to him
from Chapter 33 of the book "A Purpose-Driven Life" and says she told
him that he might have a purpose of his own: to turn himself in and
spread the word of God in prison.
"He told me I was his sister and he was my brother in Christ, and God
had led him to me," she said in a televised interview with a group of
reporters in Atlanta on Sunday evening.
Smith's ascendance from suburban anonymity to national renown happened
with dizzying speed. Her role in persuading Nichols to give up without
a fight Saturday has catapulted her into the instant celebrity's realm
of almost-certain book and movie deals. But it was her apparent
compassion and empathy that made it impossible not to stop and listen:
"I feel sorry for him," she said in the interview. "I don't think he
realized what he was doing."
It all began for Smith in an apartment complex in Duluth called the
Bridgewater. Early Saturday morning, Smith says, Nichols sneaked up
behind her in the parking lot and pushed her into her apartment. He
held her at gunpoint, bound her and shoved her into a bathtub. The
scenario was familiar. Nichols was on trial last week for the rape of
his ex-girlfriend. He had allegedly held her at gunpoint, bound her
and shoved her into a bathtub.
Both women tried to placate Nichols, who attended Cardinal Gibbons
School -- an all-male Catholic school in Baltimore -- by talking about
God. But Nichols's ex-girlfriend testified that making an appeal to
his spiritual side "didn't work for her," said Barry Hazen, Nichols's
attorney in that case.
Almost from the beginning, Smith said, Nichols seemed to show flashes
of polite attentiveness for her, even as he held her against her will.
When he decided to take a shower, he covered her head so she would not
have to see him naked. When she begged him not to kill her, saying it
would leave her daughter without a "mommy or daddy," he listened.
Her approach worked so well that Nichols asked to stay with her for a
few days so he could eat some "real food" and watch television after
being incarcerated since August. They watched the news together --
seeing round-the-clock coverage of the manhunt. "I cannot believe
that's me on there," Nichols told her, Smith recalled.
Smith did not develop trust by being wishy-washy. At one point during
her seven-hour ordeal, Nichols told her he was "already dead." He
might have had a point -- after all, he was suspected of killing a
judge, a court reporter, a sheriff's deputy, and a federal customs and
immigration agent. But she would not hear it.
"He needed hope for his life," she recounted in the interview that has
been replayed countless times.
"You are not dead -- you are standing right in front of me," she
recalled telling Nichols. "If you want to die, you can. It's your
choice."
Smith already knew something about untimely death. Her husband was
fatally stabbed in August 2001, knocking her life so off kilter that
her daughter, Paige -- now 5 -- had to go live with Smith's aunt. She
was trying to put herself back together, attending school and looking
for a job, when Nichols came into her world after she got back from a
quick trip to the store for cigarettes.
During the morning, she recalled, she had many opportunities to
escape. Nichols had cut her loose and left his guns on the bed,
unattended. But she never picked them up. Instead, she read to him
from "The Purpose-Driven Life."
"It mentioned something about what you thought your purpose in life
was: What were you? What talents were you given? What gifts were you
given to use?" Smith said.
Nichols asked her to follow him in her car while he drove the customs
agent's pickup truck away from the apartment complex. She asked
whether she could bring her cell phone and he said she could. But she
never placed a call. She picked him up after he dropped off the truck
and drove back to her home with him, she said. Her decision had a
courageous purpose: She feared that he would kill more people if she
did not do what he said.
She had taken it upon herself to end the manhunt.
When they got back, she said, she made Nichols breakfast and ate with
him. They talked about their families. He wondered what his parents
would think; she talked about her faith and her daughter.
"I guess he saw my faith and what I really believed in. And I told him
I was a child of God and that I wanted to do God's will," she said. "I
guess he began to want to. That's what I think."
By 9 a.m., she was reminding Nichols that she needed to leave, that
she needed to see her daughter. She thinks he knew that she would call
the police. But he let her go anyway, she said. As she was walking out
the door, he had one more question for her: He wanted to know whether
he could help her, if he could hang some curtains for her. She looked
at him and said, "Do whatever you want." Then, she was gone.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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