D.C. sniper's intended victim didn't expect an apology

Isa Nichols hadn't expected to hear John Allen Muhammad apologize before he was executed Tuesday night.

And he didn't.

Nichols, who police believe could have been the first victim of the so-called D.C. snipers had she — instead of her niece — opened the door to her Tacoma home in February 2002, was among those who were in Virginia on Tuesday to witness Muhammad's execution at Greensville Correctional Facility.

Prison spokesman Larry Traylor said Muhammad died by injection at 9:11 p.m. EST Tuesday and had no final words. Muhammad was executed for killing Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station during the killing spree that left 10 people dead in the Washington, D.C., area over a three-week period. His teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, was sentenced to life in prison.

The Muhammad whom Nichols knew — the one she socialized with, worked with and celebrated Thanksgivings with, the one who would have been capable of understanding the horror of his deeds — was already dead and gone, she believed.

"I looked into John's eyes when I testified at his trial and that was not the look of the man that I knew," Nichols said by phone Tuesday. "When I left [the trial], I knew that John was already dead."

Nichols, 49, was the bookkeeper for two businesses Muhammad and his then-wife Mildred ran out of their Tacoma home in the late 1990s.

In a book Nichols has written about her experiences with Muhammad, she said she became Muhammad's enemy when she offered assistance and support to his ex-wife during an ugly, protracted custody battle over the couple's children. Muhammad had absconded with the children, fled to Antigua and then was tracked down in Bellingham after he applied for state aid.

Nichols attended the 2001 court hearing in which the children were returned to their mother, she wrote in "Genesis: The Bullet Was Meant For Me, The D.C. Sniper Story Untold."

"I was so happy. The children had been found and I thought this was a resolution for [the family], but at that moment, John snapped," Nichols said.

On Feb. 16, 2002, Nichol's 21-year-old niece Keenya Cook answered a knock on the door of Nichol's Tacoma home and was fatally shot. That slaying remained unsolved until Oct. 24 of that year when Muhammad and Malvo were arrested in connection with the D.C. sniper killings.

During Muhammad's trial Malvo testified that Muhammad had ordered him to shoot Nichols as part of an initiation rite and to prove he could follow orders. He did not immediately know he had shot Nichol's niece in error.

Nichols said when she was invited to the execution, her daughter, now 21, said she wanted to go.

"She said 'I need closure,' " Nichols said, whose daughter also witnessed the execution. For her part, Nichols said, she has forgiven the Muhammad she once knew.

An ordained minister, Nichols has spoken and prayed with the other sniper victims. "I believe in forgiveness and redemption, but I also know that the wages of sin are death," she said. "I just want to see justice done."

Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.