The Devil in Pew Number Seven (27 page)

Worse, the thoughts echoing in my head felt as if they were so loud everyone at the bus stop could hear them. Even so, I’d smile and say hello to maintain the illusion that everything was just fine with me. No one knew the effort that charade took just so I could carry on with a “normal” school day.

Making matters worse was watching my daddy go in and out of hospitals. That was especially hard on me. I wanted to be with him, but it hurt to witness his condition. His clothes had a disinfected hospital smell, not the familiar scent that I had loved about him. At times when we visited him in the hospital, I’d find him unshaven and his eyes reddened and glossed over from the medications.

His face, tired and drawn from one too many sleepless nights, seemed to lack color. We’d take him outside and sit at a picnic table so he would get some sun. Our conversation was somewhat stilted due to the sedatives. He’d answer questions in clipped phrases, like a vending machine dispensing one treat at a time.

None of these changes in Daddy’s countenance prevented me from sitting right beside him for the entire visit. I sat so close you couldn’t squeeze a dime between us. My brother and I would take turns sitting in Daddy’s lap, as if he were Santa—only better. I’d hug him, kiss him, and love him as if there were nothing wrong. I just hoped, prayed, and waited for him to be healed. I knew God could glue back the pieces of his shattered life.

When it was time for us to leave, I’d offer him my brightest smile. I’d wrap my arms around his neck one final time and say, “Good-bye, Daddy.” That, however, didn’t sit well with him. He’d shake his head and say, “Honey, please say, ‘See you later,’ not ‘good-bye.’” I think the thought that he might never see his children again weighed on his heart.

More than once after leaving the room, I overheard Daddy telling my grandma Nichols, “Mom, I’d rather have a dozen cancers in my body than have to suffer with these severe nerve problems. If I’m not going to get any better, I’d rather for the Lord to take me on home. I can’t take it any longer. It’s like hell on earth. Please, Mom, pray for me this way.”

At the same time, I knew that Daddy had a rock-solid faith that he could be healed by the power of Jesus. He knew there was no sickness or brokenness beyond God’s repair. Jesus was the Great Physician. Daddy had preached about the healing power of the Lord, had prayed for others who had been sick, and had watched the Lord heal them. If it was God’s will, he, too, could be made whole again.

In spite of the ongoing physical and mental anguish, Daddy never gave up on his faith in God. I overheard Daddy talking to his mother, Grandma Nichols, in the kitchen, saying, “These tormenting spirits can touch my body, my mind, and my emotions. But they can’t touch my born-again spirit.” Indeed, he loved God more than life itself.

I’d hear Daddy walking through the house, confessing the Scriptures “My peace I give unto you” and “He hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.” He spoke emphatically, using his hands for emphasis, as if preaching. He’d quote, “The thief cometh but for to kill and steal and to destroy, but Jesus came that we might have abundant life” and “He came to bind up the brokenhearted.”

At times Daddy appeared to be basking in the grace of God to continue the good fight of faith. On his good days, he’d stop taking his medicine and call a friend who struggled with problems of his own. Daddy would pray with him, offer words of Scripture and encouragement, and essentially serve as a lifeline to this fellow traveler. Nothing encouraged Daddy more than bringing hope to the hopeless.

Sometimes I heard Daddy crying out to the Lord in prayer, repeating that he had forgiven Mr. Watts and that he wanted Mr. Watts to become a changed man through the power of Jesus. Interestingly, I never once heard Daddy complain that Mr. Watts had escaped justice. He didn’t badger God with endless “Why, God?” questions about the suffering Mr. Watts had caused our family. Neither did Daddy rejoice when he learned about a breakthrough regarding Mr. Watts’s role in the Sellerstown bombings.

* * *

On June 5, 1980, two years after the murder trial, Grandma Nichols, Daddy, Danny, and I took a trip from our home in Alabama to North Carolina. I think Grandma thought it would be a good idea for us as a family to reconnect with our old friends from Sellerstown.

I couldn’t wait to see my friend Missy, whom I’d always admired as I would a big sister. I was now ten, and Missy was fourteen. Even though two years had passed since I last saw her, we picked up as if I had been gone just a few days.

One afternoon, we stood in front of her bathroom mirror, laughing at the sight of our green facial masks plastered from chin to cheek. For a moment, the distant memory of a more peaceful, playful time in our shared history was reflected in the two sets of eyes staring back at us. Even though life was different for us now, our friendship felt as familiar and comfortable as a pair of favorite shoes.

I had the same warmhearted reunion with Aunt Pat. After a hug that spoke volumes, she raked my hair with her fingers, cupped my face between her tender hands, and just shook her head. I sensed she was marveling at the young woman I was becoming. She said, “You look so much like your precious mother, Becky.” My heart swelled. In a way, it felt good to know I was able in some small way to bring joy to those who knew, loved, and missed Momma.

After we had arrived and settled, Daddy bought a local paper to read with his coffee. Daddy read that ATF Special Agent Charles Mercer never stopped pursuing Mr. Watts’s involvement in the bombings.

According to the newspaper account,
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Mr. Watts had been indicted by a federal grand jury, was arrested on June 9, and immediately made bail by posting a $200,000 bond. He had been charged on two counts: first, conspiracy to detonate a destructive device in the series of Sellerstown bombings; second, conspiracy to violate our freedom of religion as protected by the First Amendment and our civil rights of life, liberty, and property as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Through his lawyers, Mr. Watts entered a plea of not guilty. Not surprisingly, he had retained four of the best lawyers money could buy. The attorney for Bud Sellers, R. C. Soles, was a state senator. For the better part of eight months, this team of skilled barristers bombarded Federal Judge Earl Britt with a virtual barrage of motions and objections. Among those motions was a request to omit any evidence not originally presented to the grand jury. This move prevented the prosecutor
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from pursuing evidence linking Mr. Watts to any events of wrongdoing after November of 1975—including the shooting of my parents. Finally, on February 2, 1981, the trial of Mr. Watts began.

Daddy, the first to testify, flew back to North Carolina to face in court the devil who previously had occupied pew number seven in church. It would be the last time the two men saw each other. When asked by the press about his reaction to the news that Mr. Watts had been indicted, Daddy described the mental torture he still experienced years later. “I have to take tranquilizers,
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and I just got out from a six-month stay in the hospital. The wounds to my body have healed, but I can’t put that time out of my mind,” Daddy said.

Grateful to see the wheels of justice finally moving forward, Daddy added, “I have been waiting and praying those Fed boys would see this thing through. I feel a great sense of relief that this thing is finally going to court. I try not to think about it, but it wakes me in my sleep. You can’t blink away a thought in the dark.” No wonder Daddy roamed through the house in the middle of the night.

Daddy’s testimony spanned two days. Ironically, the trial went through Valentine’s Day. I’m sure Daddy’s heart had to have been aching as he sat there in court without his valentine, reliving the painful past he had once shared with Momma.

Mr. Watts was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ted Davis and Wallace Dixon, who pulled together upward of one hundred witnesses to make their case. At their request, the witness list had been sealed until trial to prevent harassment of their witnesses.

Even with that precaution in place, Gail Claude Spivey, one of the government’s witnesses, told the judge that he had been threatened by members of the defense team. He testified that he had been approached and was told, “If you’re not very careful,
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you could get blown to pieces.” He added, “I leave this courtroom with great fear.” That appeared not to be an unwarranted concern; his house had been burned down shortly after receiving the warning and just before he had taken the witness stand.

The government’s star witness was Agent Charles Mercer, who had done a thorough job accumulating evidence over five years. According to one report, Attorney Davis painted Mr. Watts as “a rich and powerful man in Columbus County
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who was stripped of his powers in a church he was not even a member of [who] plotted to run the pastor and his family out of the Sellerstown community.”

Fifty-four witnesses were ultimately called by Attorney Davis, who, like a skilled surgeon, stitched together seventy pieces of hard evidence as he sewed up the case against Mr. Watts. Layer upon layer, Attorney Davis laid the foundation and built a rock-solid wall of evidence for the jury to consider.

For the better part of three weeks, Attorney Davis methodically walked the jury through the threatening phone calls and letters, the series of shotgun blasts and bombings. He presented dynamite fuses, photos of craters in the yard and bullet holes in our car, and the results of telephone traces from calls made to the parsonage. He rounded out his case by interviewing detectives, ballistic experts, and specialists in forensics.

One of the most damaging pieces of evidence was a government witness who claimed
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under oath that Mr. Watts had offered him $100,000 to kill my daddy by running him over with his car. Mr. Watts had told him to make it look like an accident.

That dramatic testimony must have been the final straw. Mr. Watts stunned the court when he abruptly changed his plea from “not guilty” to “nolo contendere,” which in Latin means “I do not wish to contend,” to the two counts related to our family’s situation. Not wanting to risk a jury verdict, with his revised plea Mr. Watts threw himself on the mercy of the court.

* * *

During the sentencing phase of the trial, Bob Burns, one of the attorneys for Mr. Watts, pleaded leniency for his client. He told the judge that the Mr. Watts he knew personally for some forty years wasn’t the man as described in this case: “The picture painted of him
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from the witness stand is not the H. J. Watts I’ve known. I have found him to be a peacemaker. . . . I have known him as an honest and kindhearted man. Without exception in transactions with him, there has been no question of what is right and wrong; I have found him ready and willing to do the right thing.”

Mr. Watts was a peacemaker?

Mr. Watts was a kindhearted man?

Does a peacemaker mastermind five years of terror against a pastor and his family? Where’s the kindheartedness in publicly ridiculing my father during a worship service while smearing his reputation by calling him an adulterer behind his back? How could a man with these alleged qualities even dream of detonating a bomb outside the window of a house where an infant is asleep?

To help make his case that the Mr. Watts personified during the three-week trial wasn’t really a scheming, evil man, Mr. Burns produced forty Columbus County residents. While thirty-five of them stood when called upon in the courtroom to acknowledge their support, five others took the stand to testify on record to the upstanding character and reputation of Mr. Watts.

Attorney Ed Williamson followed his cocounsel’s address to the court, adding that Mr. Watts’s “plea admits to you and the world his wrongdoing and his presence and manner show his remorse. He deserves mercy. The things he admits should never have been done.”

Mr. Watts didn’t “admit” to using violence and threats to harass our family.

He pleaded
no contest
.

The evidence against him had been so overwhelming that even a blind man could see Mr. Watts would be hard-pressed to gain a favorable judgment. He made a calculated decision hoping that his friend, the judge, who had represented him in years past,
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might somehow go easy on him now.

For his part, attorney Ted Davis, who successfully prosecuted the case, urged the court to remember the severity of the harm done by Mr. Watts. “When the Reverend Robert F. Nichols came to Sellerstown
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in 1969, he was six feet three inches tall, weighed 230 pounds, and was in excellent physical and mental condition,” Mr. Davis said in his closing address. “Today, he is still six feet three inches tall, weighs in excess of three hundred pounds, and is in terrible mental and physical condition.”

Davis continued, saying, “The bombings, shootings, harassment, and threatening phone calls have left him a shell of his former self, the result of this malicious treatment. He was run out of his position and was forced to go back to Alabama to escape the living hell he endured and to shield his children from the events of this trial. They walked in fear of being shot or bombed, and nothing can erase the horrifying fears they endured. We’ll never know the horrifying fears Ramona Nichols endured, not knowing if they would be killed. All of this pain is the result of one man’s jealousy.”

After all was said and done, Mr. Watts, the man who stalked our family for five years, received what amounted to a hand slap on the wrist from Judge Britt. After commending Agent Charles Mercer for “a thorough and relentless investigation,”
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the justice said, “Passing sentence is the worst job about being a judge, and it is extremely more difficult when people involved are people you know very well.”

You could almost see that the fix was in.

He continued, “Attorneys Burns and Williamson have spoken of their knowledge of Mr. Watts, and I, too, have known him for years. R. C. Soles and I represented him in an official capacity when he was a county commissioner in a lawsuit involving taxation. I have had the opportunity to get to know some of his family and do some legal work for them. All of these things make it weigh heavier on my shoulders.”