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Prosecutor says embittered ex-husband murdered Hollywood woman 24 days after divorce: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

August 9th, 2006 · 1 Comment

Here’s a small quote: He was especially embittered by the couple’s divorce settlement, finalized 24 days before Tennant-Nicholson’s death, Zimet said.

Tennant-Nicholson gained the family home in the divorce, custody of the couple’s two sons, ages 3 and 5, and $922 in monthly child support, she said.
Prosecutor says embittered ex-husband murdered Hollywood woman 24 days after divorce: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

by Tonya Alanez
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted August 9 2006

Jealous by nature and resentful of a recent divorce settlement, the ex-husband killed the amateur poet and mother of two, the prosecutor said.

Any of several jealous lovers could have killed the attractive and promiscuous 25-year old, the defense attorney said.

On an August night two years ago, Lorrie Tennant-Nicholson took the stage and recited poetry at the Ginger Bay Café’s open-microphone night in Hollywood. Within hours, the woman known as “Elle” within poetry circles was dead with eight stab wounds, her throat slit, in the locked bedroom of her Hollywood home.

Tennant-Nicholson’s ex-husband, Kevin Nicholson, 32, of Miramar, stands accused of first-degree murder. If convicted, he could be sentenced to death.

Nicholson was an angry man, jealous of the friends Tennant-Nicholson was meeting on the Hollywood poetry circuit, especially the male friends, Assistant State Attorney Debbie Zimet said in her opening statement Tuesday.

He was especially embittered by the couple’s divorce settlement, finalized 24 days before Tennant-Nicholson’s death, Zimet said.

Tennant-Nicholson gained the family home in the divorce, custody of the couple’s two sons, ages 3 and 5, and $922 in monthly child support, she said.

“He was not going to let Lorrie come out of this proceeding all rosy and all well-established while he had to live with his mother,” Zimet said.

Nicholson left a bloody palm print on the ledge of the shattered window above Tennant-Nicholson’s bed, Zimet said.

Defense attorney David Rowe portrayed his client, an avionic specialist at Jet Aviation in West Palm Beach, as a “cool and dispassionate” man who maintained a friendly relationship with his ex-wife and continued to do household repairs for her and mow the lawn.

“Lorrie had a tendency to commit adultery that became so frequent during the marriage that he was forced to divorce her,” Rowe said. Zimet said Tennant-Nicholson initiated the divorce.

After the murder, police immediately zeroed in on Nicholson and started “a rushed and botched investigation,” concluding “just because there was a divorce, the husband had to do it,” Rowe said.

Police interrogated Nicholson within four hours of the slaying and arrested him two days later, Rowe said.

DNA evidence does not conclusively point to Nicholson, and police did not take DNA or blood samples from the three people who accompanied Tennant-Nicholson to open-microphone night, Rowe said.

Tennant-Nicholson’s mother, Diana Modest, took the witness stand in Circuit Judge Paul Backman’s courtroom, describing how she was awakened in the early morning hours of Aug. 26, 2004, by a commotion, a voice and the sound of breaking glass.

The voice said, “Oh no, don’t call the cops on me. No, no, don’t,” Modest said.

Then came gasps and breaking glass, she said.

Modest said she banged on her daughter’s locked bedroom door. She eventually went outside and saw a light shining from her daughter’s room. She said she peered through the torn screen and broken window and saw her daughter, unconscious, eyes and mouth open, hands resting one on top of the other.

Tags: News · Tragedies

1 response so far ↓

  • 1 Kevin Merck // Aug 12, 2006 at 4:23 pm

    No judge was shot in this case, which is why most people will never know about the murder. This is what takes place everyday in America because of the injustice in our family courts. Not “one day” goes by without someone losing their life as a direct result of the injustice in our courts.

    When the father is awarded custody, the mother will sometimes resort to murdering the husband, or the children. What is it going to take to end this injustice? How many people have to die, in order to line the pockets of the criminals that have high jacked our courts?

    Kevin Merck

    Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence.

    Joseph Story

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