LAS VEGAS — The troubled son of imprisoned Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols pleaded guilty Wednesday in Las Vegas to kidnapping and armed robbery in a case that will get him at least five years in a Nevada prison.
Joshua Isaac Nichols and a co-defendant, George William Moya III, each took plea deals that avoided trial next month in Clark County District Court on felony charges in a February 2020 attack on a man in suburban Henderson.
Moya, 27, pleaded guilty to robbery with a deadly weapon and is expected to receive a sentence of four to 15 years in state prison.
Nichols, 40, could end up serving more than 17 years in prison, according to his written plea agreement.
Both men remained jailed Wednesday, although Nichols’ plea deal allows him to post $50,000 bail to be released on high-level electronic monitoring pending sentencing June 14.
“We are satisfied with the outcome, and Joshua is looking forward to spending some quality time with his family,” Augustus Claus, Nichols’ defense attorney, told The Associated Press.
Moya’s attorney, Michael Printy, did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages.
Nichols, now 40, moved with his mother to Las Vegas after she divorced Terry Nichols years before the April 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people.
Terry Nichols, 65, is serving multiple lifetime federal prison sentences without the possibility of parole for helping Timothy McVeigh carry out the bombing. McVeigh was executed in 2001.
Joshua Nichols has been arrested and convicted several times over the years in Nevada, and previously served prison time for felony convictions dating to 2005 including armed assault, vehicle theft and resisting a police officer. He has in the past acknowledged receiving treatment for drug abuse.
In Wednesday’s case, Nichols and Moya were accused of luring a 67-year-old jeweler to a vacant home in Henderson and robbing him at gunpoint of cash, jewelry, clothing and a cellphone.