GRANITE CITY, Ill. — Police in Nicholas T. Sheley’s town came to know him well as his crimes progressed from marijuana possession to domestic battery, then to resisting a peace officer and aggravated battery.
But nothing in his history suggested he was capable of violence of which he is now suspected: killing eight people in two states, from a toddler to a 93-year-old, all by the personalized and brutal method police describe as “blunt-force trauma.”
Sheley was led out of the Granite City Police Department in an orange jumpsuit, leg shackles and handcuffs, a day after he was quietly arrested outside a bar known as a police hangout. The capture followed an intense manhunt.
“Nothing would have made us suspect that something like this would happen,” said Ron Potthoff, chief of police in Sheley’s hometown of Sterling, a city of 15,000 about 100 miles west of Chicago. “But … he was becoming more and more noticeable to the officers.”
Police say they don’t know what motivated the 28-year-old, and said one possibility is that he was on a drug-fueled rampage.
A dispatcher with Granite City police said it wasn’t known if Sheley has a lawyer.
Sheley has been charged in only two of the eight deaths. Because the eight killings occurred in Illinois and Missouri, officials need to decide where he could be tried.
Sheley faces charges of first-degree murder, aggravated battery and vehicular hijacking in the death of Ronald Randall, 65, whose body was found Monday behind a grocery store in Galesburg, Ill., police said.
Sheley also is charged with murder in the death of 93-year-old Russell Reed in Sterling, according to the Whiteside County state’s attorney.
Investigators said that all the victims appeared to have died from blunt-force trauma and that evidence linked to Sheley was recovered at each scene. The FBI and Illinois State Police declined to elaborate.
Authorities said the killings began with the beating death of Reed, a Sterling man whose body was found stuffed in the trunk of a car Thursday.
On Monday, police discovered the bodies of Brock Branson and Kenneth Ulvey, both in their 20s, Kilynna Blake, 20, and her son Dayan Blake, 2, both of Cedar City, Utah, in an apartment in nearby Rock Falls.
More than 250 miles away, the bodies of Tom and Jill Estes of Sherwood, Ark., were found Monday behind a gas station in Festus, said Lt. Bill Baker of the St. Louis Area Major Case Squad.
The couple had checked into a Comfort Inn in Festus on Friday and were last seen late Sunday. Their dogs were found in the hotel parking lot, unharmed but covered with blood.
Public records show Sheley has multiple convictions for robbery, drugs and weapons charges and has spent three years in prison.
