Acquittal in stabbing case upsets brother

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SEARSPORT – Mike Nickerson’s acquittal Wednesday in Waldo County Superior Court on three charges stemming from the stabbing death of his brother Charlie did not sit well with Clyde Nickerson, another brother.

Clyde, 43, the youngest of the family’s four sons, claimed Thursday that Mike once shot a gun at Charlie inside the house the men shared on Brock Road.

“Charlie hit the gun out of his hand,” so the bullet missed him, Clyde said.

The incident occurred about two years ago, he said.

Clyde also lives on Brock Road, just a couple of hundred feet from the house where Mike, 50, stabbed Charlie, 44, on the afternoon of Sunday, Nov. 12. Charlie died at a Belfast hospital shortly after the stabbing.

Mike was arrested two days after the stabbing and charged with manslaughter. Charges of elevated aggravated assault and aggravated assault were added later. A jury of six men and six women acquitted Nickerson on Wednesday of all the charges after deliberating less than two hours after the two-day trial.

“It’s just showing these kids if someone smacks you, you can kill them,” Clyde said of the verdict Thursday. “I wasn’t very happy at all,” he said, and had hoped for a guilty verdict on at least the assault charges.

Contacted Friday at a woman friend’s home in Belfast where he now lives, Mike said the gun incident Clyde reported never happened.

“They made up all kinds of things,” he said, and maintained the version of events he related on the stand in court was accurate.

“That’s what happened,” Mike said.

To support that view, he noted that 12 jurors “who didn’t know me from Adam made the decision [to acquit].”

Clyde, however, didn’t like the way his deceased brother was portrayed at the trial.

“They put it off like Charlie was the bad guy. Mike was just as bad, if not worse,” he said.

Clyde was posting no-trespassing signs around the house Thursday morning, explaining he was worried that Mike might come to the residence to assault him or worse.

“You never know,” he said.

Clyde has not had contact with Mike since the stabbing incident and doesn’t expect to speak with him again.

Clyde agreed that both Mike and Charlie had tempers and had a history of fighting. Testimony in the trial indicated that Charlie was quick to begin punching his brother. But Clyde said that was only part of the story.

“Mike done his fair share of starting stuff with us and others in the family,” he said.

In fact, Clyde said he suspects Mike instigated the conflict with Charlie that led to the stabbing. It’s possible, he said, that Mike stabbed Charlie in the arm before the punching began.

During the trial, Mike testified that Charlie entered his room and struck him, knocking him onto a chair, pinning his left arm and his legs, and punched him repeatedly. Mike testified that during the attack, he reached around for a knife on an adjacent table and began swinging it at Charlie until the punching stopped.

Clyde said bloodstains on the left side of Mike’s door frame suggested that Charlie was stabbed on the left arm outside the bedroom, then entered the room where he was fatally stabbed in the chest.

A teenage family friend testified that Mike had showed him one of his two knives about two weeks before the fight and told him he would use it if Charlie hit him again. Clyde said another man witnessed a similar statement by Mike, but the man would not testify about it.

Assistant Attorney General Fern LaRochelle, who prosecuted Nickerson, had heard the story about Mike brandishing a gun.

“There was some information about that, but it was unclear as to whether it actually happened or happened that way,” he said Friday.

No physical evidence of the shooting incident, which was said to have occurred inside the house, was found. The gun could have been fired, LaRochelle said, or it could have discharged accidentally.

“There were no eyewitnesses to it,” he said and concluded it was unlikely a judge would have allowed such evidence in the trial. LaRochelle did not call Clyde as a witness, he added, because Clyde was not present at the time of the stabbing and because Mike did not challenge the essential facts of the case.

Clyde operates a painting business, and both Mike and Charlie worked for him, though Mike was not reliable, Clyde said.

“Charlie was twice the worker that he was,” and Mike would be unable to work because he was sometimes drunk, Clyde claimed.

The men and their children had been sharing the small ranch house which had been their parents’ for two or three years. The men’s mother had left the house to Charlie when she died, but Mike believed he had the right to stay there as well.

A dispute between Mike’s 13-year-old daughter, Michelle, and Charlie’s 23-year-old daughter, Jenny, with whom Charlie had recently reunited, sparked the fatal fight.

Michelle testified that Charlie threatened to spank or slap her, but Clyde claimed such threats were just talk.

“Charlie would never abuse those kids,” he said. In fact, just before the fight that led to his death, Charlie was preparing supper for the children, Clyde said.

The family wants to ensure that Charlie’s daughter will get the house Charlie owned.

“She’s entitled to it,” Clyde said.

LaRochelle said he spoke with jurors after the verdict and was impressed with the thought process they followed to reach their conclusions. The fact that Mike’s children were, according to testimony, threatened, and the fact that the fight began in Mike’s room seemed to influence jurors to see Mike’s actions as justified, the prosecutor said.

“I do respect their work and their verdict,” he said.