if you weren't already sick of brian nichols...

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By BETH WARREN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/05/08
The FBI is investigating whether Brian Nichols asked a female friend to buy him power tools so he could escape — and whether two Fulton County jailers were bribed — while he awaited trial for the March 2005 courthouse shooting rampage that killed a judge and three others, officials and news reports say.

Nichols also obtained two contraband cellphones and sexual favors, even though he was a high-risk prisoner and heavily guarded.

Special prosecutor Ken Wynne declined comment Friday, saying the matter is still under investigation. No charges have been filed.

Sheriff's officials have said previously that deputies conducting a routine check in November 2005 found notes on a jail break plan in Nichols' cell. Nichols had been plotting his escape with a fellow inmate, according to officials familiar with letters exchanged between the two.

After the letters were found, sheriff's spokeswoman Sgt. Nikita Adams-Hightower said, the department investigated whether Nichols' writings reached the other inmate via mail or if a sheriff's department employee delivered the letters.

On Friday, The Associated Press reported that a 38-year-old Connecticut woman who befriended Nichols and visited him told investigators that he asked her to go to a Home Depot store and buy a masonry saw, a circular saw, a jack and other tools capable of cutting through 11 to 12 inches of cinderblock.

In a letter to Lisa Meneguzzo, the AP reported, Nichols said his plan once he got out was to hop into a cargo van driven by a friend who would pose as a Red Cross volunteer. He said there would be boxes in the back he could hide in.

The AP said the information came from law enforcement documents it obtained.

According to court motions, Fulton prosecutors have 300 hours of taped phone conversations Nichols had while at the Fulton County Jail awaiting trial. Many involve conversations with Meneguzzo, of Torrington, Conn.

She became interested in Nichols, 36, through news reports and began calling him in 2005, not long after the March shooting spree, her father has said.

Meneguzzo and her mother flew to Atlanta at least twice to visit Nichols' family beginning in 2005. She also visited Nichols at the jail.

According to prosecution motions, jail officials recorded a telephone call in which she gave Nichols information about security at the facility.

Due to concerns that Nichols seemed to be getting help from insiders, sheriff's officials decided to move him in October 2006 to the DeKalb County Jail, said retired Fulton County sheriff's Lt. Charles Rambo.

Lisa Meneguzzo, reached Friday evening at the Torrington printing business where she works, said, "I have no comment" and hung up the phone. Last fall, she said she was not Nichols' girlfriend and hung up abruptly on a reporter's call.

FBI agents and investigators with the Fulton County District Attorney's Office traveled to Connecticut last year to interview the Meneguzzo family, according to a law enforcement official. After being threatened with criminal charges, Lisa Meneguzzo cut off contact with Nichols and is prepared to testify against him at his trial, according to two officials familiar with the case.

Officials also are looking into who else may have aided Nichols.

Meneguzzo said she helped recruit a deputy at the jail who was responsible for guarding Nichols, David Ramsey, saying that he made advances toward her in a jail elevator and that she used that to her advantage, the AP reported.

After Ramsey resigned, another deputy who was dating Tamela Hysten, a paralegal on Nichols' defense team, became their "main man," Meneguzzo told authorities. She said she didn't know that deputy's name.

It is not known under what conditions Ramsey resigned.

Meneguzzo said she paid Ramsey $300 to $500 every four to six weeks for an unspecified period of time, the AP reported. The news service also reported that Meneguzzo said she gave money to Hysten, including a blank check, and separately gave Hysten three wire payments of $500 each to give to the second deputy. The documents cited by the AP include a canceled check for $500 made out to Hysten and signed by Meneguzzo.

According to the AP, Meneguzzo told investigators that Hysten gave Nichols pages from a book that were about escape and evasion.

Gary Parker, formerly Nichols' lead attorney and Hysten's supervisor, denied that allegation Friday.

"It's a bunch of bull," Parker said.

Fulton County jail policies allow inmates to receive only books shipped directly from a publisher.

"Every book he got," Parker said, "was ordered through the publisher. Everything that came in the jail was screened."

"Wow. That's all I can say," Hysten told the AP when asked about the allegations. "All this is news to me."

Akil Secret, a lawyer who said he represents Hysten, told the Journal-Constitution late Friday that his client did not do anything wrong. He said he stood by a statement he made earlier to the AP that Hysten "was a dedicated and committed employee-investigator to the Brian Nichols defense team. All of her actions were within those limits, within the limits of a bona-fide defense of a criminal prosecution."

Secret declined to address the specific allegations but said of Meneguzzo: "The stability and credibility of any woman who develops a romantic interest in an inmate under these circumstances has to be questioned."

Officials also have looked at other security breaches. On two occasions, in 2005 and 2006, someone sneaked cell phones to Nichols at the county jail, according to officials who have first-hand knowledge of certain aspects of his case.

The second phone had a camera, which Nichols used to send lewd photos to Meneguzzo, the officials said. Nichols also received sexual favors from females while at the jail, either from visitors or jailers, Rambo said.

Before retiring, Rambo worked at the jail for 10 years before moving to the Alpharetta jail annex as the morning watch commander. Nichols' alleged escape plots were exposed before Rambo retired.

After the first security breach in 2005, Rambo said, the Fulton sheriff's department conducted an internal investigation to determine who helped sneak the cell phone and body-building supplements to Nichols in a popcorn bag.

But officials never named who was responsible, Rambo said.

Instead, Rambo said, officials transferred all of the deputies with the SWAT-like Special Operations Response Team from Nichols' guard duties. Some deputies felt this was an unfair punishment and an unwise decision to send the guards with the most up-to-date weapons and tactical training to other areas of the jail.

After Nichols obtained a second cell phone in 2006, the FBI joined the investigation into the alleged escape plot because of the additional security breach, said FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett.

Meneguzzo said she was able to pass Nichols a cell phone and that Ramsey helped keep it charged, the AP reported Friday.

The AJC has confirmed that Ramsey had been part of the specially trained team guarding Nichols.

Ramsey told AP he knew about the cell phone and charged it a couple of times. He also said Meneguzzo had approached him about "trying to find somebody to bring some type of tool to help [Nichols] get out of jail."

He didn't tell his superiors and maintained the cell phone because he needed the money Meneguzzo gave him, the AP said. Ramsey denied conspiring to help Nichols escape, telling the AP the cell phone issue is "the only thing I'm guilty of. I don't know what kind of time that's going to bring."

He added: "My life pretty much is over, the way I look at it."

Investigators and sheriff's officials have declined to discuss any matters related to Nichols or security breaches while his case in the March 11, 2005 rampage is pending. Nichols is charged with killing the judge presiding over his rape trial at the Fulton County Courthouse, the court reporter, a sheriff's deputy and a federal agent several miles away.

According to the AP, Meneguzzo said Nichols' brother Mark was in on the plot, but she did not specify his role beyond saying he sent her a package that she forwarded to the paralegal, Hysten.

Efforts by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to reach Mark Nichols through his parents were unsuccessful.

U.S. Marshal Richard Mecum said he remembers talking with Nichols the day after the rampage, when FBI agents brought the fugitive to the Richard B. Russell Federal Building in downtown Atlanta for fingerprinting and processing.

"He's articulate, very pleasant and, like most of your criminals, very manipulative," Mecum said. "He's not sitting there reading books all day. He's always trying something." Mecum said Nichols gained a "rock star" status with inmates and even some jailers.

Rambo acknowledged that Fulton jailers were glad when Nichols was moved, but it came at a price.

"For the most part the employees thought it was a relief that he was gone," Rambo said. "But it totally hurt the image of the department."

Staff writers Rhonda Cook and Bill Rankin contributed to this article.