[Music] today I am in the middle of downtown Atlanta in fact right here behind me this is the Fulton County Courthouse which plays a big part in today's story this video today is a True Crime Story and as you can imagine I could have chosen one of any millions of stories to choose from here this is a massive City and there's a lot of crime but by chance I just happen to run across this one story that immediately caught my eye I had never heard of it before but it sounded like something out of a Hollywood movie in fact I found out doing research for this video that they did make a movie about it based on the real events that happened in real life it was so wild and crazy uh you know I couldn't believe that I had never heard of it before so I came straight here to downtown Atlanta after reading about it and that way I could show you the locations and talk about it you're absolutely not going to believe the story that we're talking about today it's the story of a bad bad dude named Brian Nichols the courthouse killer as well foreign Gene Nichols moved here to Atlanta from Maryland in 1995 when he was just 24 years old at that point in his life he had already developed a reputation for having a knack for trouble which was part of the reason why he moved down here he was trying to get away from Baltimore where people closely associated him with trouble Nichols settled here in Atlanta and he was actually able to find work right away working in a UPS warehouse in 1996 Nichols was busted by the Atlanta police with just a small amount of marijuana and he spent the next four years on probation where he had to act straight and narrow or he would be taking a chance of violating his probation and being sent back to jail for a few years there after he was no longer on probation things were looking up for Brian Nichols he was staying out of trouble he got a job working for Hewlett-Packard here in Atlanta I'm not sure exactly in what capacity he worked for them but maybe it was just like shipping or Logistics or something like that I honestly don't know but that seems like a pretty good job to have and then in the summer of 2004 that would all change and a chain reaction of events started that changed the course of his life as well as several other people's lives forever throughout 2004 Brian complained that he was suffering from depression and that he was having suicidal tendencies in the summer of o4 Brian learned that his girlfriend of several years she was leaving him and she had begun dating the pastor of the church that they both went to immediately after his discovery that his girlfriend was sleeping with their pastor Brian would go on to kidnap this woman he would sexually assault her and he beat her up really bad of course this woman was in fear for her life so she called 9-1-1 and Brian Nichols was arrested and charged with rape aggravated assault and kidnapping Brian was denied bail because of the severity of the charges against him and in late 2004 he would finally have a jury trial on his case after a few days of them going over the evidence and having Witnesses the trial ended in a mistrial with a hung jury and Brian was you know he was angry obviously he had to go back to jail and sit while he awaited a new trial at some point before his new trial started Brian's family actually warned the Department of Corrections that he had expressed to them that he was planning an escape attempt and that he had even said he was looking for a way to sneak some prison-made Shanks in his tennis shoes without being discovered his family's warnings though they were unheeded and nothing was ever done about them on March the 11th of 2005 Brian Nichols New trial was beginning is brought here to the Fulton County courthouse and I don't know if some of you may know this some of you may not it is your constitutional right to not be wearing an orange jumpsuit while you're on trial in front of a jury I'm not really sure how they do that if the prison just keeps a closet full of Suits or clothes or whatever of all different sizes for the prisoners to wear or if you know it it's relying upon family outside of the prison but then what happens if you don't have any family uh so I'm not sure what happens in but either way that's your right it's so in Brian's case on that March the 11th he was heading into a courtroom here for his trial they had him in like a back room area and he was changing clothes putting on his street clothes that he was going to wear in the courtroom the whole time that he was in there there was a deputy sheriff in the room with him named Cynthia Hall and early that morning a little after eight Brian he somehow catches that sheriff's deputy off guard and he beat her so badly that she was in a coma after he beat her real bad he took her keys and her Service issued Glock 40 caliber pistol and then he finished putting on his street clothes he uses the deputy's keys to get out of that side holding cell area by unlocking the door and then he starts making his way through the courthouse building here at some point Brian Nichols comes across two case managers and a lawyer that's in one room he immediately holds them up at gunpoint and he starts demanding to know how does he you know he wants to know how to get back to the judge's Chambers for the judge that's presiding over his rape case judge Roland Barnes of course the three people they were fearing for their lives so they tell him how to get back to the judges Chambers and it's at this exact moment that another Sheriff comes through the door and he immediately notices what's going on and he jumps into action and attempted to disarm Brian and Take Back Control Sergeant grantly White and Brian Nichols they get into a scuffle for a moment but Brian is able to overpower the deputy and he winds up like subduing him and taking his firearm as well so he now holds the deputy and the lawyer and the two case managers up at gunpoint Brian forces Deputy white to handcuff those other three people so they can't run off and then he handcuffs the deputy at the beginning of that struggle Brian didn't know that the the deputy sheriff Grant Lee White he had actually activated an alarm on his radio it wasn't until the fight was over and the deputy was completely subdued that Brian heard on the radio you know that this alarm had been sounded and unbelievably he attempted to dispel That Alarm by using the Sergeant's radio he like picks it up and he he talks through it and he says that this was just a false alarm there's nothing going on the deputies you know they don't believe it uh he very quickly left that room where those four people were now handcuffed and he made his way into the courtroom where he was actually going to have his trial that day entering into that courtroom he encounters the judge that was going to be over his case judge Barnes and the court reporter Julie Brando Brian Nichols fires one shot striking judge Barnes in the head killing him instantly he then turns and he fires another shot into the court reporter killing her instantly before he quickly exits the courtroom Brian Nichols executed both that judge and that court reporter right here inside of this building in the courtroom that he was going to be having trial in he did it in Cold Blood using Deputy Hall's firearm without ever having a second thought about it it's just absolutely horrible and it it really shows how much of a bad dude he really was this morning uh judge a man who's supposed to preside over trials preside over administration of justice in his courtroom was was murdered I I can't think of another situation that I know of where a sitting judge was executed in his courtroom while he was sitting on the bench that's crazy to me absolutely crazy after this horrific scene in the courtroom Brian Nichols he hit the door attempting to escape the courthouse ready to take out anyone else who got in his way just before he made it to this door right here he encountered another sheriff's deputy named Hoyt Teasley Brian fired several shots hitting him in the abdomen and uh Brian Nichols just basically stepped over him and he exited these doors right out here into the street where he managed to carjack a person who just happened to be driving by he just strolled out of the courthouse like like nothing had happened after killing three people beating another into a coma and handcuffing four more it was like nothing ever happened Brian he exited the courthouse through these doors right here and he runs out into the middle of the road where a car just happens to be driving by right here on Martin Luther King Boulevard he uh car takes their car he car throws them out into the street and drives off in their car police say though um that he didn't go far in fact he took their car from right in front of the courthouse and he drove into this parking deck right here he thought he would have a better chance if they knew he stole that car but then he tried swapping the car for a different one so he went in there and he actually managed to get another car out of that parking deck he made it out of that driveway there out of that parking deck and made it over a couple more streets before he abandoned that car and he wound up blending in with a large crowd of people who were here in Atlanta for a basketball tournament and he just kind of like got into the group with them and he boarded the MARTA subway train here in Atlanta and disappeared shortly after Brian's Escape Fulton County was offering a 65 000 reward for anyone that could give law enforcement information that would lead to his recapture at some point in the evening after all this happened right here it all happened right here on this block he got on the Martyr train and he left this area and then at some point that evening a young woman who was walking home from her gym she came across Brian he attempted to abduct her and he actually did take her hostage and he forced her to take him back to her apartment where he intended to sexually assault her but once he got there her boyfriend was actually there and he answered the door and so he and Nichols got into a fist fight which allowed the woman to get away for a moment and she called 9-1-1 and as soon as Brian realized that she was on the phone with police he fled again and he again disappeared into the wind a few hours later after that attempted kidnapping a U.S Immigration and Customs enforcement officer or ice for short an ice officer named David wilham was found dead in his home he had suffered a gunshot wound to the Head while they were investigating that death it was discovered that a few items of his were missing like his ICE police badge his service weapon and a pickup truck a blue pickup truck that he owned they were all missing very quickly the bullet that was used to kill agent wilham it was matched up to be from the same firearm that killed judge Barnes here in the courthouse which was actually a sheriff's deputy Hall's firearm so investigators knew immediately almost that Brian Nichols had killed this ice age but again they didn't know where he went after he left that ice agent's home the next day 911 received a frantic call from a woman named Ashley Smith who said that Nichols was here in this apartment complex in her apartment it was here that they learned that after Nichols left the ice agent's home he ran into Ashley Smith on the street and forced her to take him back to her apartment which is in this building right here in front of us he held her at gunpoint and he tied her up and he spent the night in her apartment surprisingly though uh Ashley Smith was able to like talk to him and and and he even began to trust her she had given given him some methamphetamine at some point and she read him passages from the book a purpose-driven life Ashley Smith told the detectives that she was just trying to befriend him she was trying to convince him to turn himself in and that you know she wasn't the bad guy here so they did all that she talked to them about her ex-husband and she got up and she made pancakes in the morning and she finally convinced him to let her leave to go see her child as soon as Ashley left the apartment under the guise of going to see her child she immediately called 9-1-1 that was the Frantic call they received she told them he was in her apartment so law enforcement in the snap of a finger uh they're flooding this apartment complex here as fast as they can and within just a few minutes of Ashley leaving the apartment complex and calling 9-1-1 the SWAT team was breaching her apartment door and they bust in to find Brian sitting on her couch just watching cartoons on her TV and he gives up without a fight it was a very anti-climactic end to his nearly 27 hour wild and chaotic Escape that started here at the Fulton County courthouse and that left four people dead and many many others hurt the Metro Atlanta area here was so scared at one point throughout all of this that night they were worried that they were just going to run into him and he was just going to execute them for no reason at all so once word got out that he had been captured and they were taking him back to jail but crowd gathered outside of the police department over here where they actually cheered and yelled and screamed for the police they were happy at the fact that he had been recaptured at the time Brian Nichols was arrested they did find the ice agent's stuff like his badge and his wallet and all that they found all that on Brian Nichols so it was all found with him as he was being arrested in Ashley Smith's apartment and uh so they handcuffed him and they immediately take him back to the local FBI field office here in Atlanta where Brian ultimately confessed and he detailed all of his crimes starting here inside of the courthouse with Deputy Hall he detailed everything Brian Nichols was ultimately charged with 54 new charges 54 new counts on top of the rape and assault that he was already on trial for murder felony murder kidnapping armed robbery aggravated assault aggravated battery theft carjacking and Escape those are all his new charges and then these had multiple counts of each of them which all totaled up to 54 new charges Brian initially got with his lawyers and they entered a plea for these charges of Not Guilty by way of mental disease how does Mr Nichols plead to these charges please not guilty more specifically Not Guilty by reason of insanity basically they were trying to say that he wasn't in his right mind when he killed all these people and he wasn't to be held responsible for these crimes throughout the course of preparing for his new trial Brian became George's most expensive defendant because you know if the state chooses to charge you with a crime they're required by law to provide a public defender a defense for you on your behalf which requires them to pay money to this defense attorney and then they have to do testing and they got to get experts and they got to do all this and by the time Nichols New trial came around he had racked up a bill of over three million dollars some of that three million dollars though it was because they had to find a judge who would agree to preside over a new case and based on what Brian had done in the courthouse to the other judge to judge Barnes based on that no judge would you know sit over his case without having a ton of extra security so they had a courtroom that was full of sheriff deputies and police officers for his trial everyone was also on heightened alert because while Brian Was preparing for this new trial Corrections Officers who were searching his seal they discovered plans where Brian was actually planning to do another Escape he had written out some plans on a piece of paper and Corrections Officers found them they learned that that it was just in the planning stages at this point so they picked him up and they quickly moved him to solitary confinement and he was placed based on lockdown until his trial was over on September the 22nd of 2008 Brian Nichols neutral got underway the prosecution played audio recordings from inside of the Fulton County Courthouse here where he uh you know murdered the judge and the court reporter they got up on the stand and they tried to discredit his claims of mental instability they also played the FBI interview that was taken right after he was captured at Ashley Smith's apartment where he admitted to that in that entire you know 27 hours almost of Chaos now Nichols did though uh he claimed that the ice agent's murder wasn't his fault he said that Adrian Wilhelm pointed a gun at him first attempting to try to take him into custody and Nicole said that you know he had to respond which we all know that's not a defense but that's what he said prosecutors quickly tried to rebuke Nichol's testimony with forensic evidence that did not support his statement the evidence showed that agent Wilhelm was shot in the back of the head while he was kneeling like execution style and that he was not holding a weapon at the time of his death during the trial Nichols defense doubled down on their Insanity defense they provided papers that Brian had written in grade school where he talked about how he believed white people were involved in some kind of conspiracy to eradicate the black race and you know the jury in this case they didn't believe anything he had to say and after all the evidence Was Heard and it was turned over to them they ultimately deliberated for just like 12 hours over two days and then they came back and they found Brian Nichols guilty on all 54 accounts birdie count 48 murder guilty count 49 felony murder guilty on December the 13th just a month later Brian was sentenced to many many life sentences in prison with no chance of parole now the death penalty was on the table but the jury failed to reach a unanimous decision on the death penalty which ultimately spared Brian Nichols life but it sparked outrage with people who thought that he should have gotten the death penalty and people made the argument that the state should not be spending tax dollars to keep Brian Nichols alive for the rest of his life racking up bills and food and clothing and housing and all this other stuff because he'll never get out of prison and he just it's clear that he's a dangerous person ultimately their arguments meant nothing a judge could not overturn the decision by Georgia law for a person to receive capital punishment the dissonance they must have a unanimous decision of by the jury that was presiding over the case and apparently lawyers here who wanted the death penalty they obviously didn't vet their jurors very well because most of the jury was all unanimous but there was one woman who didn't believe in capital punishment and although she found Nichols guilty of the crime she didn't believe in the death penalty and this one juror was the reason why he didn't get sentenced to death she was the the one person who caused it not to be unanimous I will give the maximum sentence which is 20 years I hereby sentence Mr Nichols to 20 years to serve consecutive to counts two three four five six seven fourteen fifteen sixteen Seventeen eighteen nineteen Twenty One 22 23 24 25 26 27 and 32. count 35 is another armed robbery count and you know by now the armed robbery is carries a life imprisonment and I'm going to give him the maximum of a life imprisonment that is consecutive to counts two three four five six seven fourteen fifteen sixteen Seventeen eighteen nineteen Twenty One 22 23 24 25 26 27 32 and 33. none of this will be served on probation I'm not planning on giving Mr Nichols any probation at all neither am I planning on giving him a fine even though you may not like Mr Nichols um let's let's give a fair trial to everybody I don't want to make it personal but at the same time if I can save a life do not trust Mr Nichols ever again because there's been ample evidence that trusting Mr Nichols will get you killed and you know well because of that Brian Nichols is currently incarcerated right here at the Georgia Diagnostic and classification State Prison and I I also know that this is where they do executions for the state of Georgia so you know this this is obviously where the worst of the worst is kept in Georgia after all was said and done several of the family members of the people who were killed in the courthouse here namely the wife of Judge Barnes she would go on to sue the state of Georgia for for judge Barnes death and she wound up winning her case and she won a 5 million dollar judgment against the state several of the other families of Defense also sued and also won money I'm not exactly sure dollar amounts and how much they actually won though all of this it was a huge stain on the state of Georgia and Fulton County I mean it was it was a huge thing not only did Brian Nichols well he was able to kill a sitting judge in his own courtroom but then after all that Death and All That chaos and after it was all said and done then they got sued by all the families and and had to pay out millions and millions of dollars for it and it was very embarrassing for Georgia the police that Brian Nichols was in her apartment after his trial and he was convicted Ashley did receive a part of the reward money that sixty five thousand dollars that was being offered I'm not exactly sure on the exact amount but I know that she was that she did receive some of that money so at least that was a good thing like I told you at the onset of this video this story was super crazy and it's it's a Hollywood movie but it happened before the Hollywood movie it happened in real life and then Hollywood found out about it and did a story on it it's wild it's absolutely Wild I I had never heard of the story before and obviously I hadn't seen the movie but I couldn't believe it when I saw it so that is gonna do it for this video today and the courthouse killer Brian Nichols who killed a sitting judge inside of this building right here beside us that courtroom is still in use to this day where he killed judge Barnes still being used to this day it's wild thank you all so much for watching I really appreciate it if you're new here go down hit that subscribe button then hit that notification Bell so you get notified every time I upload a video if you're one of those that's wanting to help support the channel there's links in the description box below but really you know thank you all I can't thank you enough and I'll see you again tomorrow please all of you stay safe and stay healthy much love to you all this this is so wild [Music] [Applause] foreign [Applause]