Family Desperate for Answers in Missing Man Case
Family Desperate for Answers in Missing Man Case
June 8th, 2006 @ 3:44pm
Sandra Yi reporting
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=299515
Two years ago today, a Salt Lake City man disappeared without a trace. His friends and family are still desperate for answers.
Today, the family of Jeff Nichols, who live out of state, are holding a prayer remembrance in his honor. 
In the past two years, there have been no good leads, but they suspect foul play. His friends agree, that’s the only way to explain his disappearance.
Pam Sheeler, Friend: “The pain is still there every time I’m reminded of it.” Pam Sheeler remembers the day she heard about the disappearance of her friend and co-worker. Pam Sheeler: “We were just devastated, and we knew that something went wrong.”
That was 2 years ago, and there’s still no sign of him.
Tim Hirsch, Friend: “At the time he disappeared, everybody thought, he’s a male and he’s ran off on his own.”
Tim Blair, Friend: “That’s not the type of person he was. He loved his son more than anything, and just to up and leave, and leave his son behind, isn’t something he would do.”
Nichols was an air traffic controller at the Salt Lake airport. He was last seen on June 8th, 2004. He told his girlfriend he was meeting his ex-wife to buy some golf clubs. His ex-wife said he never showed up. Nichols’ car was found a few days later.
Tom Blair, Friend: “It’s just not knowing is the hardest part.”
But friends and family have their suspicions, which include questions for Nichols’ ex-wife.
Last year, Shelby Nichols was indicted for bankruptcy fraud. There’s a warrant for her arrest, in connection with those charges. Nichols’ family recently found out, she left the country, with the couple’s son.
Tom Blair, Friend: “Until we find out something for sure, we’re always going to have the hope that we’ll be able to find him someday.” Until then, friends continue to put up flyers. They don’t want Nichols to be forgotten.Pam Sheeler: “It’s very sad. I just wish for myself, all of us here at work that loved him, and his family, especially, if they could just get some closure on this.”
Nichol’s family is offering a $10,000 reward in this case. If you have any information, call Salt Lake City Police.
Website: http://www.helpfindjeff.com
Family Continues Search for Man Missing Over a Year
Family Continues Search for Man Missing Over a Year
September 28th, 2005 @ 4:45pm
Sandra Yi Reporting
Wanda Schmidt: “I think somebody hurt him, did something to him.”
He’s been missing for more than a year and his family fears the worst, but they continue to look for answers. Jeff Nichols was last seen on June 8, 2004. The case has baffled everyone from police to Nichol’s family.
There’s been no sign of Jeff Nichols since he left his house more than a year ago to meet his ex-wife in this area of 4500 South State. This is still a missing person’s case, but his family thinks it could eventually turn into a murder investigation.
Wanda Schmidt: “It’s been a very difficult year. Just trying to hold things together and not letting him be forgotten.”
Wanda Schmidt won’t let that happen to her brother Jeff. It’s been 16 months since he disappeared, but time hasn’t healed the pain.
Wanda Schmidt: “It just doesn’t go away.”
Jeff Nichols was last seen, on June 8 of last year. He told his girlfriend he was meeting his ex-wife to buy some golf clubs. The ex-wife said he never showed up. Nichols’ car was found a few days later. The unknown is most difficult for his family.
Wanda Schmidt: “I don’t know if it’s different if you know something’s happened, if you know a family member’s been murdered, you know that’s happened. In this case, we think that’s what happened, but we don’t have that answer.”
But she does have her suspicions, including questions for Nichol’s ex-wife. There’s a warrant for her arrest in connection with those charges. She moved out of state within two weeks after Nichols disappeared. She took their eight-year old son, Sam, with her. They’ve since moved again and didn’t leave a forwarding address.
Schmidt says her brother knew his ex-wife had filed for bankruptcy and was planning to get full custody of his son.
Wanda Schmidt: “It just breaks my heart to wonder what’s happened to him.”
Police have no evidence of foul play, but Wanda Schmidt won’t give up until she knows what really happened to her brother.
Wanda Schmdt: “I think everything comes out in the end. It’s always told.”
Schmidt is in Salt Lake from Wisconsin. She is here to get limited guardianship so she can speak on behalf of her brother on legal issues. She hopes that will eventually allow her to see her nephew again.
If you have any information on the whereabouts of Jeff Nichols, call Salt Lake City Police.
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=113122
The Truth, and Nothing but the Truth
Jeff’s story is featured today on the Project Jason-Voice for the Missing blog.
In her quest for truth, Jeff’s sister, Wanda, learned something else. You can read the story here:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2005/08/truth-and-nothing-but-truth.html
SUNDAY, AUGUST 14, 2005
The Truth, and Nothing but the Truth
Wanda Schmitt will accept nothing less than the truth, no matter how painful. She has been waiting for over a year for this truth to surface. That is how long her brother, 42 year-old Jeffrey Dale Nichols, has been missing from Salt Lake City, Utah.
Jeff was afraid of something or someone. He told his family and friends this, but yet no one has been able to get to the bottom of this truth, the mystery of Jeff’s disappearance.
“I wish we knew what to do. Actually for the first month, I felt paralyzed. I couldn’t get out of bed. I kept thinking I would wake up and he would be back,” Wanda shares the realities of this experience. “It was hard to watch the media attention on Lori Hacking. Jeff had disappeared just before she did from the same city. I knew that the situation was completely different and the police had reason to suspect foul play from the beginning. During this time I prayed for her family.”
While Wanda prayed and started research on the Internet looking for missing person’s resources, Jeff’s co-workers banded together and wrote testimonies, trying to convince anyone who would listen that there was more to Jeff’s story.
“Jeff’s case is such a mystery. Here is a wonderful young man, father, son, brother who vanished. His life was going great. Jeff had a great job, wonderful son, loving family, and a good relationship with his girlfriend,” Wanda explained. ”Everyone who knows Jeff does not believe he walked away from his son, his job, or his family. He had so many positive things in his life he was looking forward to.”
Wanda was right in that those who knew Jeff did not believe for a moment that he left willingly. His co-workers, people who knew him for years, were quite sure there was more to the story.
“One truly remarkable thing about Jeff is his loving, caring relationship with his son. In the years I have known Jeff, he has given up a higher paying job and relocated several times to accommodate his son. Jeff lived each day for his son. The only way he would not be with his son would be against his will.” L.S.
“I spoke to Jeff several days before he disappeared. We talked about a staffing study and other work he was doing for the Tower. There was nothing unusual about his demeanor or behavior – no nervousness or anxiety.” L.W.
“Jeff was very stable. I saw him the afternoon before he disappeared and he said he would see me early the next day. Jeff would not disappear willingly. He loved work and his son; he had long-term plans at work.” K.W.
The morning of Jeff’s disappearance, June 8th, 2004, Jeff was planning on meeting his ex-wife before he went to work. Phone records indicate he was in the area of the planned meeting at 6am. On July 15th, 2004, Jeff’s truck was towed from the same neighborhood in which he was going to meet his ex-wife. Jeff’s bank accounts and credit cards were never touched.
As they had no proof of foul play in Jeff’s case, it was difficult to convince the authorities that Jeff would not leave of his own accord.
Wanda relates the difficulties that go beyond emotional issues: “The feeling of being powerless is very frustrating. No one would listen when we told them Jeff was in danger. It would help if law enforcement was trained to better deal with missing person cases. By the time they realize something’s wrong, it’s basically too late. Weeks and months are gone, and any evidence gone.”
Despite the hardship in dealing with the loss of someone you love in this manner, Wanda has been open to learning from her experience. “We realize the incredible amount of strength we actually have. My husband has been wonderful and supportive of the tremendous amount of time this has taken from our family. Some families would not have been able to deal with this but I think it’s actually brought us closer. We are here to support and love each other.
I have also become more aware of my surroundings. I actually look at the people around me as I go about my daily life.
Life is precious, don’t squander it. You need to stay positive and have hope that you will find your loved one, or find out what happened. Having a missing loved one is living with loss every day: a loss that doesn’t go away. When someone close dies, there are rituals with a funeral or memorial to help you say good bye. You feel the loss but you have closure. When you don’t know what happened, it’s so hard to move on. You live with the ambiguity of this loss. You try to remain hopeful that your loved one will one day walk back into your life. It’s like a roller coaster ride of emotions that you can’t get off.”
“One thing that Jeff loved was life. I know he would want us to enjoy our families and the lives we have before us. I think it would upset him if he thought he was the cause of such distress in our lives.” Secure in her knowledge of what her brother would want of her, Wanda chooses to live and love life.
After her aunt died, she found this writing from an anonymous author among her possessions. Now Wanda keeps it with her everywhere she goes, ever mindful of her brother and the love they share.
“Believe in Life, Not Loss
Believing in Life means we can trust-trust in nature and rhythm of life with all its constant change. We believe in transformation, change, and purpose.
Believing in life means we’re not in bondage to the past. No matter what we’ve done, what decisions we’ve made, we set ourselves free to trust ourselves now. We trust what we feel, we trust what we know, we trust what we think we need to do next. Believing in life means we trust that the lessons we’re learning are real. They’re valuable and Divinely ordained–even when learning a lesson means feeling pain.
Believing in loss means we focus on the grief, on the pain, on the tragedy, on the inescapable reality of certain events. Believing in loss means we get fixated on what was taken from us, what we did wrong. We judge ourselves and our lives harshly. Believing in loss often means we stay stuck. We’re afraid to let go of a person, place or thing that’s no longer right for us because we’re afraid to lose anything more.
Do you believe in loss? Or do you believe in life?
Believing in life means it’s okay to let go. We can trust where we’ve been. We trust where we’re going. And we’re right where we need to be now. Believe in life.”
Jeff would certainly be proud of his sister, her efforts to locate him, and the graceful acceptance of her painful life’s lessons.
How ironic that Wanda while searches for the truth about Jeff, she finds a truth about life.
You can read more about Jeff, and see additional photos on his family’s website for him: http://www.helpfindjeff.com/
Be sure to help out the families of the missing by telling others about the blog. This is just another way we can reach out and let the faces of the missing be seen. We welcome appropriate website links. Other ideas are posting the blog link on other forums you frequent, and sending it out to your friends and family via email.
Thank you for helping us to help others.
Kelly Jolkowski, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
Read our Voice for the Missing Blog
deseretnews.com
Man’s disappearance leaves ‘huge hole’
Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jan 3, 2005 by Jennifer Dobner Deseret Morning News
Christmas 2004 just wasn’t Christmas for Wanda Schmitt.
The Glarus, Wis., woman had her mind on other things. Six months ago, her brother Jeff Nichols, 41, a Salt Lake City-based air traffic controller, disappeared without a trace. She’s been looking for him ever since.
“We still don’t know where Jeff is,” Schmitt said in a telephone interview this past week. “It was a pretty tough Christmas. There’s this huge hole in our family.”
Schmitt is not alone. Nationally, more than 164,000 adults were reported missing to the FBI’s National Criminal Information Center between December 2003 and November 2004.
Nichols is currently one of 26 people listed on the Utah Department of Public Safety’s missing persons Web site. He’s one of four people, including Brigham Young University student Brooke Wilberger, 12-year-old Garrett Bardsley, and Payson resident Ellen D. Kay, who were added to the statewide list this year.
Wilberger, 19, disappeared from Corvallis, Ore., in May and has not been found. In August, Bardsley was lost while camping in the Uintas with a church group and is feared dead. Kay, 46, was last seen Nov. 11 and was reportedly despondent.
Nichols was reported missing to Salt Lake police June 9 by his girlfriend, city detective Phil Eslinger said. He was supposed to have met his ex-wife and son at a local restaurant for breakfast on June 9 but never showed.
Police later discovered Nichols’ car, but there was no sign of the air-traffic controller and no sign of foul play. No new, significant information about his whereabouts has surfaced in the months since, Eslinger said.
Schmitt and her family — she and Nichols are from a family of 11 siblings — have dug into their pocketbooks and savings accounts to raise a $10,000 reward for information leading to Nichols. A billboard offering the reward was posted on State Street for several months. Schmitt is hoping to get another billboard posted soon, again asking the public to call the Utah Crime Solvers anonymous tip line if they know anything.
“Somebody knows something,” Schmitt said. “What I’m hoping is that somebody out there remembers something that (Nichols) said to them. Maybe something that didn’t make sense then, but maybe it makes sense now. Nobody who knows Jeff believes that he would walk away.” Not from his son, Sam. Not from a job he loved.
Schmitt said her loss is doubly felt when she thinks about Sam. His mother has now moved away from Utah and cut off any ties to Nichols’ family. Schmitt said the family is suing her brother’s ex- wife, Shelby Nichols, in order to maintain contact with their nephew.
“I know (people) do that. I know people walk away from their lives, but I just don’t see that with Jeff,” she said. “I think in the beginning, I think the police thought he walked away. I don’t think they think that now. But the police are overworked, and unless it’s clear (what happened), I think these cases are very hard.”
Schmitt came to Utah last June, and with the help of Nichols’ co- workers from Salt Lake City International Airport, packed up her brother’s apartment. Back in Wisconsin, she said, she often looked out the window expecting to see her brother standing in the yard.
“I guess as time goes by, I don’t have that as much,” she said. “I think about this every day. It’s affected my life in such a dramatic way that it’s hard to function. But I’m going to fight to find the answers.”
Information about Jeff Nichols can be found on the Web at www.helpfindjeff.com. Anyone with information can contact Salt Lake police at 801-799-3000. Anonymous tips can also be left at the Utah Crime Solvers hotline, 800-972-2255.
E-mail: jdobner@desnews.com
Copyright C 2005 Deseret News Publishing Co.
FederalDAILY News and Resources for Federal and Postal Employees
Federal Daily>Eye on Federal Families>Family Looks for Missing Air Traffic Controller
Family Looks for Missing Air Traffic Controller
October 26, 2004
Jeffrey Dale Nichols, who worked as an air traffic controller for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) at Salt Lake International Airport, Salt Lake City, Utah, is missing.
The Nichols family is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for Jeff’s disappearance, or for the positive identification of their son and brother.
The reward is being administered by Utah Crime Solvers at 1-800-972-2255. Informants can remain anonymous.
Nichols lived in the Parley’s Way area (East of Salt Lake City). He was originally from Northern Virginia and moved to Salt Lake City in 1998. He has a seven-year-old son. A Web site about Nichols, at www.helpfindjeff.com, said he took advantage of every opportunity to spend time with his son playing games, watching movies and traveling.
Nichols has no history of mental illness, nor physical conditions that might explain his disappearance. When he disappeared, he was planning to meet his ex-wife and seven year old son for breakfast at a McDonalds in Midvale but never arrived and hasn’t been seen since.
Jeff’s vehicle, a white 2000 Ford Ranger, was found and towed on July 15.
“As Family and friends, we do not believe Jeff would voluntarily leave his son, his new girlfriend, or his family,” people who know him said that on the Web site.
The Salk Lake City Police Department is calling his case suspicious, especially because there has been no account activity on his bank or credit cards since he disappeared, nor any unusual activity in the months and years prior.
The family and his air traffic controller co-workers ask that anyone with information contact Utah Crime Solvers (callers can remain anonymous), or e-mail the family at helpfindjeff@yahoo.com.
http://www.clubfed.com/families/2004/FF102604.htm