Prosecutor says embittered ex-husband murdered Hollywood woman 24 days after divorce
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. LocalLinks 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 faces life in prison. 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. Tonya Alanez can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 954-356- 4542. It is best to view messages in their entirety on the yahoo groups web site since some emails are in HTML format please follow link below to view message board http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BSideNews If for some strange reason you wish to leave us know that you will be missed Ingrid B Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BSideNews/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
