Son of Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator pleads guilty in Las Vegas to kidnapping and armed robbery
The son of imprisoned Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols pleaded guilty Wednesday in Las Vegas to kidnapping and armed robbery in a case that will get him at least five years in a Nevada prison.
Joshua Isaac Nichols and a co-defendant, George William Moya III, each took plea deals that avoided trial next month in Clark County District Court on felony charges in a February 2020 attack on a man in suburban Henderson.
Moya, 27, pleaded guilty to robbery with a deadly weapon and is expected to receive a sentence of four to 15 years in state prison.
Nichols, 40, could end up serving more than 17 years in prison, according to his written plea agreement.
Both men remained jailed Wednesday, although Nichols' plea deal allows him to post $50,000 bail to be released on high-level electronic monitoring pending sentencing June 14.
In Wednesday's case, Nichols and Moya were accused of luring a 67-year-old jeweler to a vacant home in Henderson and robbing him at gunpoint of cash, jewelry, clothing and a cellphone.
"We are satisfied with the outcome, and Joshua is looking forward to spending some quality time with his family," Augustus Claus, Nichols' defense attorney, told The Associated Press.
Moya's attorney, Michael Printy, did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages.
Nichols, now 40, moved with his mother to Las Vegas after she divorced Terry Nichols years before the April 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people.
Terry Nichols, 65, is serving multiple lifetime federal prison sentences without the possibility of parole for helping Timothy McVeigh carry out the bombing. McVeigh was executed in 2001.
Terry Nichols is incarcerated at the "Supermax" prison in Florence, Colorado, which holds a number of high-profile inmates, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and convicted drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. The facility is so secure and so remote that it has been called the "Alcatraz of the Rockies."
Joshua Nichols has been arrested and convicted several times over the years in Nevada, and previously served prison time for felony convictions dating to 2005 including armed assault, vehicle theft and resisting a police officer. He has in the past acknowledged receiving treatment for drug abuse.
Loved ones told CBS affiliate KLAS-TV in 2018 that Nichols has a drug problem which they believe stems from the guilt he lives with due to his father's actions. He was 12 years old when the Oklahoma City bombing happened in 1995.
"They teased him. They named him 'bomber.' They named him that, and I guess he got beat up, you know, he had to; he couldn't go to school," his wife, Nadine Nichols, told the station.