Court documents state that an 81-year old man with dementia has been charged in the murder cold case of his 1975 girlfriend who vanished.
Authorities said that Rodney Marvyn Nichols was being held in the Federal Detention Center of Miami pending his extradition to Canada where he faces murder charges. Police said that he had been living in Montreal, with Jewell Langford Parchman Nichols when she went missing.
Nichols, who has been living in Florida for three years now, was arrested at the end of last month.
Langford has been missing in Montreal for nearly 50 years. Last month her remains, which were not identified at that time using the DNA technology available then, were finally found. A woman’s face down body, found in a west-of-Montreal river not long after Langford disappeared, was identified by police only last month, using DNA technology that wasn’t available at the time.
This case became known as “Nation River Lady” and was one of Canada’s most notorious cold-case investigations.
The Canadian authorities have announced that after exhuming and analyzing DNA samples, they finally found the relatives of the “Nation River Lady”.
In February 2022, officers from the Ontario Provisional Police flew to Florida and interviewed Nichols in the North-Lake Retirement Home. Accompanied by FBI agents, the law enforcement officials questioned Nichols in February 2022, when he allegedly said he “had to come clean” and confessed to killing Langford.
But in a motion filed Wednesday, federal public defender Bernardo Lopez questioned the validity of that alleged confession, saying Nichols suffers from profound dementia, needs daily medication and is confined to a wheelchair.
The motion states that “there are serious doubts as to his ability to understand what happens day-to-day.” Lawyer Lopez wants bail set for an elderly man.
“The Federal Detention Center is no place for someone with Mr. Nichol’s frailties and vulnerabilities,” Lopez said in his motion for bail.
Authorities said that when Langford vanished, Nichols informed local police of her departure after an argument. She was on a cross-Canada road trip. Later, he told police that she called and asked to meet him on the road. He didn’t, however.
Now investigators believe that Nichols intentionally misled the authorities, as they believed she was dead.
According to court documents posted online on Wednesday, federal prosecutors still haven’t responded to the motion of the public defender.
The complaint of the U.S. Federal Prosecutors states that investigators were aware Nichols was mentally impaired and conducted a test to determine his mental ability before interrogation. Nichols’ complaint stated that investigators had found him to be verbal, and capable of recall.
Nichols’ public defender called the mental capacity test “laughably inept” and said in his motion that it fell far short of legal requirements that suspects must be aware of their rights before questioning, and must knowingly and voluntarily waive those rights before an interrogation.
Digital reached out to Lopez, the federal prosecutor and other parties involved in this case but did not hear back.
According to court documents, Nichols’ extradition hearing is set for September 26.