Drug stash saved my life, says hostage

NEW YORK - A woman taken hostage by a man accused of gunning down a judge and two other people inside a courthouse has said she escaped death by giving him crystal methamphetamine.

Ashley Smith, a 27-year-old widowed mother celebrated across the United States for her survival, made the startling revelation in her book about the incident, Unlikely Angel: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Hostage Hero.

She gave further details in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

The hostage-taker, Brian Nichols, who faces trial on charges of killing the three people in the Atlanta courthouse and a fourth during his escape bid, held Smith captive in her apartment for seven hours in March.

Nichols eventually released Smith and she called the police to tell them where he was.

Praised for her level-headedness and later showered with rewards from various law enforcement agencies totalling about US$72,500 ($105,000), Smith earlier told police she had calmed her assailant by talking to him about God and reading passages from the popular self-help book The Purpose-Driven Life.

It was only several months later that she admitted to investigators that Nichols had at one point - after tying her to her bed with masking tape and extension cords - asked for cannabis and that she had instead given him crystal meth.

Smith, whose husband died from stab wounds during a brawl four years ago, said she realised on that day that she was addicted to drugs but she has not touched them since.

When Nichols asked her to join him and snort the meth, she declined.

"Looking down at my drug pouch, I realised that I would rather have died in my apartment than have done those drugs with Brian Nichols," she wrote in the book.

"If the cops were going to bust in here and find me dead, they were not going to find drugs in me when they did the autopsy.

"I was not going to die tonight and stand before God, having done a bunch of ice up my nose."

It still seems to be the case that they spent many hours talking about God and spirituality.

Smith showed him a long scar on her belly, suffered when she crashed her car while high on drugs. The fact that the ordeal forced her to beat her addiction seems also to have been a religious experience for her.

"It's hard for people to understand the miracle of the story," she said. "This was totally a God thing, to me in my life. This was God getting my attention, going, 'I'm going to give you one more chance'."

There is no talk of drugs charges being pressed against Smith or of her rewards being rescinded.

"The woman did a brave act at a desperate time," commented Richard Kolko of the FBI in Atlanta. "The FBI has no reason or inclination to go back and retrieve the reward."

- INDEPENDENT