A devout Christian who “keeps messing up.”

A “nice guy” when he’s not drinking.

“A little off.”

Those are some descriptions of Nicholas T. Sheley – in his own words or comments by others – in the wake of a 6-day, two-state killing spree that investigators say he was responsible for in late June 2008.

A glimpse of Sheley's life before his face and name were splashed across newspapers nationwide is revealed in the pages of two psychological reports released last week in Knox County Circuit Court.

Sheley, 31, awaits trial in the death of Ronald Randall, 65, of Galesburg. He also is charged with the slayings of five Whiteside County people and an Arkansas couple in Festus, Mo.

The reports were filed in 2008 by forensic neuropsychologist Robert Hanlon of Chicago and Springfield-based forensic psychologist Terry Killian. The doctors were appointed to evaluate Sheley after his first request to fire his attorneys.

The documents became public last week as part of a court filing by Sheley asking Judge James Stewart to remove his court-appointed attorneys and allow the accused killer to represent himself at trial.

‘Easily upset, easily hurt’

Sheley told Killian that he had a normal, happy childhood with his parents, Debra and James, sister Heidi, now 35, and brother Joshua, now 33.

Early on, though, the doctor’s report says that Sheley often was characterized as a short-tempered, impulsive, and independent child.

According to the reports:

The Sheley family once was nearly asphyxiated by a gas leak from a furnace in their home. Sheley, 5 at the time, was hospitalized for 3 days. So, too, were his mother and sister, found unconscious.

Sheley reported that he didn’t experience any problems after the incident.

A school psychologist and social worker for the Bi-County Special Education Cooperative reported in 1987 that young Sheley, then 7, struggled with reading and writing, but excelled in math.

The school psychologist also reported that Sheley had gotten into fights on the playground and the bus, in which the youngster apparently showed a “lack of concern for others’ rights.”

In an interview when he was 7, Sheley said that he didn’t like school because “you get in trouble a lot because of hitting.” He added that he wished he could stop “hating and fighting and cussing.”

Sometimes, he got so nervous that he would eat pencils.

It also was reported that he was “overly sensitive, easily upset, and easily hurt.” Generally, he was described as a “happy outgoing and active child.”

He claimed that he had been sexually abused – once at 8 and again at 12 – by two different youths.

He made it through grade school and most of junior high – repeating the fourth and eighth grades because of behavioral problems – in Sterling schools before dropping out short of completing his second eighth-grade year. He eventually went on to get a GED.

A history of drug and alcohol

Drugs and alcohol have played a significant role in Sheley’s life.

According to the reports:

Sheley began drinking between the ages of 8 and 10. By the time he was 15, he was getting drunk two or three times a week.

That pattern has continued for much of his life.

At his worst, he could drink a case and a half of beer a day and sometimes combine it with a pint of hard liquor.

At 11 or 12, he started smoking marijuana. By the time he was 13, he was smoking it daily.

At 14, he moved on to his so-called drug of choice – cocaine. At 15, he was treated at CGH Medical Center for a cocaine overdose. At the hospital, he was hallucinating, combative, grabbed at nurses, and tried to punch his father.

He reportedly said afterward, “I truly believed I was Jesus Christ.”

Sheley said he stopped using drugs briefly when he was 16, after the birth of his first child, but started again at 17, with weekly binges lasting a day or two. During those binges, he would consume a quarter ounce at cocaine.

Around that time, he also started smoking crack cocaine.

In the weeks before the klling spree, he was nursing a $1,000-a-day crack habit.

One acquaintance later told police that she had seen Sheley using cocaine a month before his arrest on July 1, 2008.

She went on to say that Sheley was a “real nice guy” when he was sober, but said that after he “gets that first beer, it’s a binge and all night long.”

His wife, Holly, told police that he had been using crack cocaine heavily for several weeks before his arrest and that he had been “desperate for drugs.”

Before the eight slayings, Sheley had “run out of people who would front him crack and lend him money for drugs,” according to Holly.

While he preferred crack, Holly said, he would buy cocaine and cook it himself if he needed, according to the reports.

A life of crime

A scan through Whiteside County court records and doctors’ reports shows that Sheley has been in and out of jail for much of his life.

According to the reports and court records:

His was first arrested at age 11 and charged with being a delinquent minor.

Over the next 17 years, he was behind bars multiple times for a number of offenses, including underage drinking, probation violation, marijuana possession, unlawful possession/use of a weapon, and obstructing a police officer.

In many of the cases, he was given probation or ordered to pay restitution.

He served two stints in prison – once in 1990 for violating his probation on a 1997 conviction for possession of cannabis and the weapons case, and again in 2000 in an aggravated robbery case.

In all, he would serve just over 3 years in prisons in Joliet, Pickneyville, Logan, and Vienna.

In 2004, a Davenport, Iowa, woman reported to police that she had been picked up in Rock Island by Sheley and another man and the three were “partying.”

When the other man left, Sheley made advances on the woman until she finally “gave up” and had sex with him. Sheley never was charged in that incident.

In 2006, he was charged with home invasion, aggravated battery, and armed robbery in an incident that ultimately led to the murder of his friend, Douglas Keefer, 46, of Rock Falls on Nov. 26, 2006.

The two had been getting high at Keefer’s house and decided to call drug dealer Christopher Cornell, 24, of Calumet City, to buy more crack cocaine.

When Cornell arrived at the house, Sheley put a knife to his neck, stole six bags of crack, and fled.

A second man, Ivan Johnson, 24, fought with Keefer after the robbery and beat him to death. Johnson is serving a 35-year prison sentence.

Charges against Sheley eventually were dropped when Cornell refused to testify against him.

Sheley found himself in trouble again in August 2007 when he walked into a home in the 200 block of Fifth Avenue and fired a gunshot at a man. He was jailed for several months while awaiting trial on charges of home invasion, aggravated discharge of a firearm, and possession of a weapon by a felon.

In January 2008, he was released without posting bond after prosecutors failed to bring him to trial in 120 days, according to records.

Family and God

According to the reports:

Sheley, then 16, married his first wife, Monica, in 1996. They had two children, a son and a daughter.

Sheley said he was sometimes unfaithful to his wife during their marriage, and admitted to physically and emotionally abusing her. He added that he had suffered abuse from her, too.

Sheley was served with divorce papers in 2001 while he sat in prison.

In 2004, he had a son with his current wife, Holly Gaul. They later had a daughter, and married on May 10, 2008.

Holly’s mother – Marsha Frey – said the two met while both were inmates at the Ogle County Jail in Oregon.

To support his family, he was a self-employed carpenter and poured cement. Considering himself a spiritual man, he attended the Firehouse of God Church, a nondenominational Christian church.

Still, he struggled with his demons.

Frey reported that her son-in-law often was “violent and a drunk,” and that he had kicked Holly down the stairs when she was pregnant.

An acquaintance told police in July 2008 that Sheley was “always picking on his children and fighting with his wife about money.”

Both accused each other of adultery on multiple occasions, acquaintances told police.

Shortly before the apparent spree, Sheley and his wife moved into the Frey house in Mount Morris, according to the reports.

When police questioned Holly about the first killing, she told them the last time she had seen her husband was June 23, 2008, according to reports.

That’s the day, police say, Sheley killed his first victim, Russell Reed. 93, of Sterling.

Knox County now foots the bill for Sheley case

GALESBURG – Now that Nicholas T. Sheley no longer faces the death penalty, the costs of trial are now back on the shoulders of Knox County.

On March 29, Knox County State's Attorney John Pepmeyer formally decertified the death penalty case against the 31-year-old Sterling man less than a month after Gov. Pat Quinn signed a bill to abolish capital punishment in Illinois.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys no longer have access to the state's Capital Litigation Trust Fund, created in 1999 to help pay for investigation assistance, testimony of expert witnesses, forensic and DNA testing, mitigation specialists, and other trial-related resources.

The Galesburg Register-Mail reported Tuesday that prosecutors have been reimbursed nearly $2,000 from the fund.

Defense costs will not be released until after Sheley's trial, the Register-Mail reported.

More Sheley docs:

[ Handwritten motion for new attorneys ]

[ Other exhibits ]