Because You Loved Me

by M. William Phelps

  Possibly so.

  Either way, as Nicole sauntered into the courtroom on June 29, a dark Wednesday morning with mysterious-looking black clouds hovering over Nashua, a loud crack of thunder rolled across the sky and seemingly shook the building. Many in the courtroom took note and immediately quieted down. It was as if Nicole’s arrival brought a sense of reality to what had been several days of disbelief that Jeanne could have gone through so much in her life, only to be taken from the world in such a violent manner, partly by the hand of her own child. Here was the duchess of darkness herself, some believed, entering the room, summoning once again the spirits she had relied on to get her through that violent day in August.

  There had been a delay in the start of proceedings, some sort of transportation problem with Nicole.

  “I apologize for the delay,” said the judge, “there was a mix-up in transport. But everything that goes right or wrong here is ultimately my responsibility, so I apologize for that. Please proceed.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” acknowledged Will Delker.

  No sooner had Delker started questioning Nicole, then Billy indicated a desire to leave the room—only this time he got up and walked out without telling anyone.

  It was so characteristic of Billy—still playing by his own rules. There was his hubris once more, heightened by arrogance, on display for everyone to see. Exactly what he wanted.

  Bailiffs, quite shocked by Billy’s disregard for authority, not to mention the contempt he demonstrated to the court, ran after him. As everyone sat in respectful silence, bailiffs tackled Billy outside the presence of the courtroom, on the opposite side of the wall. Many heard several loud “thuds” as Billy struggled with bailiffs.

  All things considered, it appeared that whenever there was any type of pressure put on him, Billy reacted. Any testimony even remotely emotional (or personal) was cause for Billy to squirm in his chair, whisper things or opt for his choice to leave. He couldn’t sit and face up to what his life had become, or where it was obviously heading.

  For Nicole, some were beginning to feel as though she played a larger role in the murder than she might have led authorities to believe. Part of her demeanor on the stand was conceited, as if the court were lucky she was taking part. She even appeared stubborn and cocky, like she was doing everyone a favor by being there.

  “The ice princess,” said one woman who had sat in on the entire trial. “I had known Nicole since she was a child, and she was cold and unfeeling on the stand. The only time I saw her cry was when they started talking about her sex life.”

  The same woman, who was close friends with Jeanne for over a decade, believed Nicole had multiple opportunities to stop her mother’s murder and failed to make even the slightest effort. Quite particularly when Nicole called the house and asked Billy, as he spoke to Jeanne, what was taking so long. It was at that moment, some believed, that Nicole could have walked into the house and put an end to it all.

  But, of course, she hadn’t. Instead, she hung up the phone and continued reading a magazine.

  For the most part, Nicole described how her relationship with Billy materialized into obsession over just a few days, all born from a random IM that Billy had sent her one night. It was astonishing for many to sit and listen as Nicole talked about the letters she and Billy exchanged. There, in black and white, from her own hand, was a developing, burning hatred for the same woman who carried her for nine months, looked after her and gave her a decent life. How could she sit now and talk about planning her mother’s murder without expressing some sort of emotion over what she had done?

  Initially Will Delker had Nicole set the stage for her testimony by reading a few of the letters, followed by several entries she made in her journal around the same period.

  “‘I know you’re going to bash on me for always…thinking about my problems,’” Nicole read aloud as the courtroom sat captivated, “‘but it’s not like I got much to look forward to in my everyday life….’”

  “What are you referring to in this letter?” asked Delker.

  “I was just venting.”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “I was just venting. I think it speaks for itself.”

  Nicole’s answers were brief; they offered little more insight than she was pushed to expound upon. At one point, Delker asked a series of questions regarding how often she and Billy saw each other.

  “Yup” was all Nicole said.

  “Nope.”

  “Yup.”

  “Yup.”

  “Nope.”

  A seesaw of nonverbal, unemotional, open-ended, straightforward answers.

  Delker later spoke of how important trial experience is to a prosecutor. He said Nicole’s refusal to give detailed answers to his questions was not that unusual.

  “Once you have tried a number of cases, you learn that, initially, witnesses are uncomfortable and hope to get by with providing as little information as possible. I remember being really frustrated when I first started trial work because I didn’t have the skill or experience to draw the witnesses out. I felt as though I looked foolish when I couldn’t get witnesses to offer more than a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Eventually you learn how to get around this by asking questions a different way, going on to a different subject and then coming back to something you want the witness to open up about….”

  Indeed, after some prodding, Delker was able to get Nicole to give more complete answers. And when she did, it was hard to believe the same girl who had been so close to her mother—the innocent child who had sat on the couch while her mother plucked her eyebrows and spent time with her gardening, shopping, taking piano lessons, doing homework, day trips to the zoo, before Billy came along—was the same person partly responsible for her mother’s brutal slaying.

  “Had you and [Billy] been having any problems in your relationship…?”

  “We had problems all the time. We argued probably more than we didn’t. I don’t know. We argued over a lot of different things. I mean almost—almost every day, I’d say, a couple of times a week. But I mean that didn’t really matter.”

  “How was the distance between Connecticut and New Hampshire affecting your relationship?”

  “It was pretty bad. Both of us were really—I think me more than him—we were both, I was just miserable without him. And knowing that he was so far away made it that much more worse. I couldn’t—I couldn’t function normally without him. And it just, it was really a strain on both of us.”

  Again Delker explained how he was able to extract information from Nicole without, perhaps, her even knowing what he was doing.

  “I knew from meeting with Nicole prior to trial that she was capable of offering detailed information about the case, and her relationship with Billy—even when it was quite embarrassing. My job at trial was to get her comfortable so that she opened up and the jury saw who she really is. I think by the end of the process she was there, but it took some time.”

  He further pointed out the fact that although Nicole sounded intelligent and perhaps looked like a woman, she was still young—in spirit and mind.

  “She was quite different from recalcitrant witnesses (even nominally cooperating witnesses) who refuse to provide any details in their answers. Those situations are very aggravating. In those cases, the witness is wholly unwilling to open up, no matter what I do. In that situation, I just have to get out as much as possible. Often those witnesses are trying to hide something (usually to protect the defendant) and the jury can usually see through that, so that the witness’s refusal to answer questions itself tells the jury a lot about who the witness is.”

  During Nicole’s second day of testimony, Delker kept her focused on the murder and what she and Billy did afterward. Her culpability was implicit in her testimony as she recounted in pointed detail every moment after Billy stabbed her mother, as though she were describing the plot of a horror novel she’d just read.

  “Do you know if your mother was s
till alive when he called you that time?”

  “Yup.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I heard her say, ‘Nicole, come home.’”

  There was a gasp in the courtroom when Nicole spoke of the last time she and her mother communicated. For some, it was distressing. If Nicole would have just gone home then, Jeanne’s life could have been spared. She’d still be alive, helping the community, making people happy, sharing her luminous smile with the world.

  “OK…what was [Billy’s] tone or demeanor on that first call?”

  “He was really quiet. I can tell he was nervous, too.”

  A while later, Delker veered his questioning into the realm of Billy and Nicole talking about marriage, and again Nicole chose to reply like a defiant war prisoner.

  “So you and he were planning to live together when you turned eighteen?”

  “Yup.”

  “Were you going to get married at that point for real?”

  “Yup.”

  “Where were you going to live?” wondered the prosecutor.

  “At his house.”

  “Where, in Connecticut?”

  “Yup.”

  “Was there ever any discussion about him moving to Nashua to live near your mother?”

  “I didn’t want to live in Nashua,” said Nicole, quite brazenly, as if to imply the question was below her intelligence. “I wanted to move to Connecticut.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want to be in my house. I wanted to be with him.”

  Delker had touched a nerve. Nicole wanted to be with Billy, she said, and by what means made little difference.

  Still, that was then. She was older now. She claimed she understood the mistakes she had made.

  “Was there any discussion about leaving? Did you and the defendant ever discuss leaving your home before you turned eighteen?”

  “Yup.”

  “Can you explain,” Delker said tiredly, looking down at his notes, taking his time, “to the jury what that discussion was?”

  Nicole finally opened up.

  “He was telling me about trying to become emancipated,” she started to say, but then stopped for a moment. It was as if she had taken herself back to that day. The question had dredged up what seemed like a lifetime ago: when she believed every word Billy said, every idea he proposed, every feeling he claimed to have. “And I thought it was a good idea, because at that point I felt as though he was the only one that cared about me—”

  “Let me ask you,” Delker said, staring at Nicole, “when you say you wrote or he talked to you about being emancipated, can you explain more clearly what that means? What do you mean by becoming emancipated?”

  It was an important question. Most in the gallery knew what the word meant, but it was vital for the state to make sure the jury fully understood Nicole, a juvenile then, knew what she was doing at the time.

  “So that I could become emancipated. It’s to be an adult, not have any…not have any parental guide over you. And the only reason I wanted that was because I figured that would be the only way, excuse me, the only way to move down to Connecticut before I turned eighteen.”

  “Whose idea was it for you to become emancipated?”

  “His.”

  CHAPTER 76

  When Billy’s lawyers got a crack at Nicole the following day, June 30, she stood her ground and spoke with a fluency and clarity she had obviously polished while going to college in prison. School was Nicole’s main focus now: studying, rebuilding the long life she had left in front of her. She was still a teenager. With good behavior, she would one day be out of prison with enough time to have a life. She later said she couldn’t drain her strength by concentrating and focusing her energy on what had happened. She had to move forward. That person involved with Billy wasn’t the same person she had become.

  Paul Garrity wasted little time before poking Nicole with a long stick. “This story you just told the jury about the medication—that’s the truth?”

  During her direct testimony, Nicole had explained that Billy, by her estimation, never had trouble taking his medication on schedule. Part of Billy’s defense included Billy inadvertently taking his medication on an irregular basis.

  “Yup,” said Nicole.

  “You’re under oath, right?”

  “Yup.”

  She shook her head condescendingly.

  “You know what an oath means?”

  “Yup, I do.”

  “You were previously put under oath back on May twenty-sixth of this year. Do you remember that?”

  “Yup.”

  “And you remember being deposed by Mr. Monteith?” Garrity asked, pointing to his partner.

  Nicole leaned closer to the microphone. “Yup.”

  “And you’re telling us now, I just want to make sure I’ve got this correct, that you told Detective Schaaf that Billy was not in his right mind and not on his meds and you did that because you were trying to come up with excuses for Billy?”

  Initially Nicole had told Detective Schaaf that Billy hadn’t taken his medication and, because of it, he was acting bizarre. But that was a story she and Billy had concocted, Nicole explained. It wasn’t the truth.

  “Right.”

  “Do you remember telling Mr. Monteith in a deposition about a month ago, ‘I don’t know why I said that.’ Do you remember saying that?”

  “Yup.”

  Will Delker had heard enough. He chimed in, demanding the exact page number of the deposition.

  “Page ten,” said Paul Garrity. Then, a while later: “Well, let me ask you this. When did Billy wield his wand over you and turn your happy house into a not-so-happy house?”

  When Nicole had explained that Billy changed her entire character and disposition toward her mother—from loving daughter to mother hater—it was as if a bell had gone off inside her. She said it was a by-product of Billy manipulating her everyday life.

  Paul Garrity had to deafen that bell. He had to convince the jury that Billy wasn’t sane enough to do anything of the sort.

  “He wasn’t exactly wielding a wand,” Nicole answered sharply. She was clearly shaken up by the insinuation. “It’s not something that happens overnight, but it was over the course of time. I mean, our relationship escalated very quickly.”

  Delker and Wilson looked at each other; they couldn’t have asked for a better answer.

  With that, Paul Garrity moved on to anecdotal evidence, which revealed exactly how Nicole felt about her life during the time of her mother’s murder.

  “In fact, your real level of concern about this case is shown by how you acted in the 7-Eleven parking lot, is it not?”

  There was an innate sense of sarcasm in Garrity’s voice.

  “I don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “Let me clarify it for you. You’re in the car facing Dumaine Avenue after you buy a magazine, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “You’re sitting there [for quite a while], right?”

  “Yup.”

  “You say you had a phone call to Billy?”

  “Yup.”

  “And you were so much concerned for your mother, who was about to be beaten and stabbed to death, that you’re reading a magazine and don’t even see Billy until he’s right there by the car. Right?”

  “Yup.”

  “In fact, Billy has to bang on the hood to get your attention, you were so engrossed in the magazine?”

  “I don’t believe he banged hard, but I did notice him when he was right there—and yes, I was reading a magazine.”

  “Could he have been banging on the hood to get your attention?”

  “Yup.”

  Garrity got louder. “So when he kills, you’re reading a magazine without even looking to see whether Billy’s coming out of the house? That’s how you view this case, right?”

  “No, it’s not!” Nicole was firm with her answer. She was upset. “It’s very far from it.”


  “Well,” Garrity said in a haughty tone, “tell us why you weren’t looking at the house to see whether Billy’s coming out?”

  “The thought of my mother being killed obviously hadn’t quite sunken in yet.”

  “The thought of your mother being killed didn’t prevent you from reading a magazine?”

  “Apparently not.”

  Nicole’s sentencing was scheduled for July 11, just about two weeks away, but a postponement was inevitable because Billy’s trial was carrying on much longer than anyone had anticipated.

  One thing was clear in the tone Nicole used and the words she carefully chose: she was blaming Billy for the hatred she felt for her mother before (and during) the time of the murder.

  She made it sound, at times, as if Billy were some sort of David Koresh protégé, a practicing, mind-controlling guru who had manipulated her every move.

  Simply not true. And Paul Garrity, to his credit, was trying to punch holes into that implication.

  “It’s all Billy’s fault, right?” the lawyer asked near the end of his questioning, sensing Nicole was pushing the blame all on Billy’s shoulders.

  Nicole appeared composed. Unrattled by the hardballs, not allowing Garrity to unnerve her.

  “I wouldn’t say ‘fault.’” She paused, put her hand on her chin. “Influence.”

  Several questions later, Garrity wanted to know if Billy had explained in any detail what happened inside the house. He knew Billy had, of course. But he wanted the jury to understand Nicole’s culpability. She wasn’t going to sit up there, trash his client and act like it was all Billy’s doing, as if she were some innocent child tricked into conspiring to commit a murder. Stockholm syndrome played no part in any of it. The jury needed that information.

  “He told me she really put up a fight. He said, ‘While they were struggling, he had tried to stab her in the head, but the knife broke.’ He mentioned something about her being thickheaded.”

  Nicole never winced.

  Later, Garrity suggested, “You were taunting Billy to do what you wanted done,” referencing a telephone call Nicole had made to Billy while he was inside the house quarreling with Jeanne.