“This is what Dad would have wanted,” Nickles’ 19-year-old daughter, Ali, said about the joint burial. “They were always together, and they died together.”
Montgomery County Prosecutor Mat Heck Jr. announced this week that the state will seek the death penalty against Anthony Lamar Stargell Jr., 20, who was released from prison one month before Nickles was killed.
Stargell, of Dayton, had served time for robbery.
“This defendant coldly killed his victim, and his dog,” Heck said, declining to comment on the new evidence that brought about the death penalty charges.
Heck said it is believed the dog was killed after his master. “It wasn’t an attack dog or a threatening dog,” he said. “This entire event is just unimaginable. Nationally, a lot of studies show that the way people treat animals indicates a lot about their attitudes, maliciousness and predisposition to commit other kinds of crimes.”
Heck said the aggravated murder case illustrates the perils of reducing prison sentences as a cost-cutting measure, particularly for violent offenders. “It’s shocking and disturbing when someone commits a murder 30 days after being released from prison,” he said. “Much as the state wants to reduce the prison population for budgetary reasons, talk to victims and victim survivors and you will see the other side of that coin.”
Heck said it’s virtually unprecedented, during his tenure, for a crime of this magnitude to be committed within a month after a suspect’s release from prison. “This is one of those cases that shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “He had been convicted in a purse grabbing, and that’s a violent crime that deserves more than six months in the penitentiary.”
Dayton Police Lt. Mike Wilhelm also questioned why Stargell was released from prison so early. “People die when the judicial system doesn’t do its job,” Wilhelm said. “Ohio guidelines state that sentences are for punishment, but the other half is protection of the public.”
Stargell was sentenced to one year for a third-degree felony robbery conviction, the minimum sentence for a conviction which can carry up to five years. But he was released after serving less than six months at the Pickaway Correctional Institution after being given credit for 187 days in the Montgomery County Jail. “To me that’s not sufficient,” Heck said. “What kind of rehabilitation can you do in six months?”
Nickles’ family members and friends say they are also very concerned about the length of the prison sentence Stargell served for the robbery. “If he hadn’t been loose on the streets, my son would be alive,” said his mother, Roberta Nickles, who lives in Portsmouth, where Tommy grew up.
The case reveals the inexact science of predicting which offenders will re-offend. Montgomery County inmates have a 32.2 percent recidivism rate within three years of being released from prison, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, with a rate of 29.6 percent in Greene County, 35.2 percent in Warren County and 34.6 percent in Clark County.
Stargell was arrested within a day of the crime. Nickles’ widow, Sonia, of Kettering, praised Dayton police and the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office: “We are very, very happy with the manner in which they have worked for Tom and put Tom’s interests first. They have shown great kindness in helping the family through the process.”
Many are baffled at how this could happen to a man described by longtime friend, Jerry Gibson of Portsmouth, “as a very giving person, who would give the shirt off his back to somebody.”
Ali Nickles said her father would have done anything for anybody: “Whatever the suspect wanted from my dad, he would have given to him, and more, if he only asked. Dad owned his own business as an electrician, and he gave a lot of good people a start in their careers.”
She called her father nearly every night after work. “We were very close, and he was always the first person I called,” she said. “It sucks that I can’t do that any more and tell him everything that’s going on.”
Jacquelyn Shiveley, 26, the oldest of Nickles’ three children, is distraught that her father won’t be there to celebrate his granddaughter Elyn’s second birthday. “He loved to make her laugh, and to play hide-and-seek with her,” Shiveley said. “He was there for her birth, and you should have seen the smile on his face.”
She added, “There’s a huge hole in our hearts, and nothing can be done to fix it.”
Tom Nickles’ brother Randy, of Portsmouth, said that a friend once told him, “Everyone should have a big brother like that” — a compliment that Randy often repeated. “Once I found myself in crisis, and Tom was my anchor,” he said. Another brother, Darrell Nickles of suburban Chicago, said Tommy liked nothing better than to come up and work on his house. “He liked to repair and fix,” he said. “Tom was a helper.”
Many longtime friends said the same thing.
Debbie Milstead of Knoxville, Tenn., remembers struggling to survive as a young single mother. Her friend Tom would arrive at her home carrying three bags of groceries and casually say, “Fix me a hamburger,” as if that settled the debt.
Dave Vance, 64, of Portsmouth, lost his home and all his belongings in a fire in 1999, the day after his twins graduated from high school. Nickles loaned him money and brought a work crew down to rewire his new home.
“I wrote him a check for gas money, and when Tom got killed he still had the check tacked onto his bulletin board,” Vance said. “He had no intention of cashing that check. He was that good-hearted.”
It’s a small comfort to his family that Nickles and his dog are together in death as they were in life.
“They were inseparable,” Roberta Nickles said. “Tom hated to leave Rusty just to come and visit. I wouldn’t have wanted one to go without the other.”
Shiveley recalls that “if Dad had a Quiznos sub, you’d see Rusty right beside him with his own Quiznos sub. They were best friends.”
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