Background: The Butte County Superior Court in Chico, Calif. (Google Maps). Inset: Jessica Rose Nichols (Butte County District Attorney).
A California woman pleaded no contest to shooting her husband dead in his sleep in 2020 — now she will spend the next few decades behind bars.
Jessica Rose Nichols, 27, entered a plea of no contest last month to one count of first-degree murder and one count of using a firearm to commit a crime. In a press release, the Butte County District Attorney”s Office announced that Nichols was sentenced on Tuesday to 35 years to life in prison for killing her husband, 22-year-old Mateo Lange, while he slept in the early morning hours of Nov. 6, 2020.
According to the DA, Nichols initially claimed that Lange had “charged at her” while they had an argument. However, audio captured from the night of the murder told a completely different story.
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Nearly five years ago, police responded to the apartment that Nichols and Lange shared after a neighbor called 911. The neighbor reported hearing two gunshots and went to see what was happening outside. Nichols was leaving her apartment with a stroller carrying the couple’s 22-month-old child. She approached her neighbor, handing over the stroller with the child and a note with the contact information for the child’s paternal grandmother, then went back into the apartment.
After hearing a third gunshot, the neighbor called 911.
When police arrived and found Nichols on the front porch, she told police that she had shot Lange in self-defense, claiming she was the victim of violent threats. When crime scene experts from the California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services arrived to inspect the scene and assist police, they quickly determined that Lange had been shot while he was laying on the floor — contradicting Nichols’ claim that he “charged at her.”
Further investigation revealed that Nichols was the more violent half of the couple, as evidenced in her own “text messages and selfie videos.” According to the DA, Nichols discussed how she threw items at Lange, destroyed his property, and “previously [tried] to kill him by poisoning his pillow with household cleaner.”
As for the argument Nichols claimed took place in the moments leading up to the fatal shooting, audio picked up by surveillance cameras at the front of the couple’s apartment revealed that there was no verbal argument before gunshots were heard. An argument was heard the evening before the shooting, during which Lange told Nichols that he was going to “leave Nichols the next day and end their marriage.”
Lange was shot twice in the head and once in the chest at close range.
Nichols pleaded no contest to one count of first-degree murder, for which she was sentenced to 25 years to life. She was handed another 10 years for using a firearm while committing a crime.
