COLORADO SPRINGS — A judge Friday set bail at $10 million for alleged killer Bruce Nozolino after his alleged victims and their families described living in fear of him for almost a decade.
“I’m a key witness,” said Colorado Springs lawyer John Ciccolella, who represented Nozolino’s ex-wife in a contentious divorce and was shot in the eye by a sniper while working in his downtown office on Jan. 23, 2002. “If he bonds, I’m a dead man.”
Nozolino, a 49-year-old Colorado Springs anti-tax activist, is accused of killing Richard Schreiner, a man who allegedly was having an affair with his wife. Nozolino is also charged with trying to kill Ciccolella and Judge Gilbert Martinez, who presided over the divorce.
Arapahoe County Chief Judge William Sylvester set the bail after ruling that prosecutors did not have enough evidence in the first-degree murder case to continue to hold Nozolino without bail.
Friday’s hearing represented the first time prosecutors have outlined the evidence against Nozolino since his arrest in July after an El Paso County grand jury indicted him on 31 counts, including first-degree murder and attempted murder.
On Friday, prosecutors added a new charge: two counts of perjury. The details of that case were not available.
During the hearing, prosecutors argued that after Nozolino lost his job as a software engineer, he killed the person he felt was responsible for his troubles: the man who allegedly had an affair with his wife.
And with the murder of Schreiner outside his Stetson Hills home on Nov. 30, 2008, detectives said they finally were able to connect Nozolino with three other “sniper shootings,” including the attempted murders of Ciccolello and Judge Martinez.
Schreiner’s death came within 40 days after a federal administrative officer yanked Nozolino’s government security clearance, effectively ending his high-paying job as a software engineer with Lockheed Martin, Chief Deputy Diana K. May said during the court hearing Friday.
Ciccolella and the detective who investigated his shooting were witnesses in the civil administrative hearing that resulted in Nozolino losing his job, May said.
“That’s the trigger, judge,” May told Sylvester. “It’s not a coincidence.”
