Nicole Diar

Last updated
Nicole Diar
Born (1975-07-21) July 21, 1975 (age 48)
Ohio, U.S.
Criminal status Incarcerated at Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, Ohio.
ChildrenJacob
Conviction(s) Aggravated murder,
Tampering with evidence,
Felonious assault,
Aggravated arson
Criminal penaltyDeath, Commuted Life in prison without parole

Nicole Diar, born July 21, 1975, is an American woman convicted of the August 27, 2003 murder of her 4-year-old son, Jacob. Prosecutors argued that Diar suffocated her son before setting the house on fire, though the exact cause of Jacob's death was never determined because his body was too badly burned. [1] The jury sentenced her to death. In 2008, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld her conviction but overturned the sentence on the basis that the jury was not informed that a single vote could prevent her from receiving the death penalty. [2] On June 3, 2010, she was sentenced to life in prison without parole. [3]

Contents

Nicole Diar was convicted in 2005 of charges she killed her 4-year-old son, Jacob Diar. Jacob Diar's burned remains were found inside of their house in Lorain, Ohio after a house fire that occurred in 2003. Nicole Diar was able to run out of the house to safety but her son was left inside. Diar claimed she tried to save her son from his upstairs bedroom but the smoke was too much. The officers that morning said Diar did not have any soot or smell strongly of smoke as she would if she had tried to save her son during the fire. Jacob's autopsy could not determine cause of death but did suggest that he died before the fire was started due to the lack of soot and evidence of smoke inhalation in his lungs. Judge Kosma Glavas sentenced Diar to the death penalty after it was suggested by the Ohio jury in October 2005. The Ohio Supreme Court overturned her death sentence in 2008 because the Jury was not told ahead of time that just one of them could have changed her death sentence by refusing to consider execution. Diar suggested a bargain to prosecutors where she agreed to spend her life in prison and avoid future legal challenges if her death sentence is overturned. [4]

Nicole Diar herself was a burn victim from the age of 4. She suffered burns when her nightgown caught fire and ended up going through a total of 61 surgeries until she was 18. From this, she continued to receive a sum every month of $3,000 from a lawsuit against the pajama company. [5]

Diar would often leave Jacob at home with young, teen babysitters so she could go out to bars and parties for the night. One babysitter, Luis Agosto, recalls being told to give Jacob a "medicine for his hyperactivity" so he would get tired and go to sleep decently early. Agosto didn't question it and gave medication to Jacob and his cousin Taylor, daughter of Rebecca Diar. The two friends of Agosto who were also there that night read the label and pointed out that the medication he gave to the children was Tylenol 3 with codeine prescribed to Taylor. When they informed Diar of this incident, she brushed it off and said Jacob would be okay. [5] Destiny Faulkner also babysat Jacob and could also recall being told to give Jacob this medicine on multiple occasions during the summer of 2003. Faulkner only gave Jacob the medication twice when told but did not on the last time because he was not ill. A pharmacist at the trial confirmed that it was a prescription for Taylor Diar of acetaminophen with codeine. The side effects of this medication can cause drowsiness, upset stomach, and nausea. [5]

Nicole and Jacob Diar had been living in an apartment and had recently moved into a rental home in the same town a month prior to the incident. The landlord recalls putting in new smoke detectors and replaced batteries in remaining ones throughout the home before they moved in. On the night of August 26, 2003, Diar wanted to change her locks on her home due to a break-in she told her landlord about. She claimed someone broke into her house and stole the keys and money orders she was supposed to use to pay the rent for that month. Due to that she got help from her neighbor, Leroma Penn, to change her front doorknob lock and add a deadbolt to the backdoor. Diar purposely told Penn to refrain from changing the strike plate on the front door. Although it was sticking, causing trouble opening the door, she wanted to be able to hear if an intruder was trying to get in. [5]

Leroma stayed afterwards to have a couple drinks with Diar at her house and went home at 1:00 am. Leroma stated that as she was leaving, Diar went to lay down on the couch with Jacob who had been sleeping there. Leroma said they made plans to do some shopping together in the morning so she called Diar at about 8:00 am but there was no answer. Leroma then heard Diar screaming about an hour after she tried calling. She ran outside to see what was going on and found Diar screaming in front of her house that her house was on fire and could not find Jacob. [5]

Diar's crimes were profiled on the Investigation Discovery series Deadly Women , episode "Bury Their Babies", originally aired: November 2, 2012. [6] [7]

Also the focus of story 2 of episode 23 of the "Radio Rental" podcast.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hayman Fire</span>

The Hayman Fire was a forest fire started on June 8, 2002, 35 miles (56 km) northwest of Colorado Springs, Colorado and 22 miles (35 km) southwest of Denver, Colorado and was, for 18 years, the largest wildfire in the state's recorded history at over 138,114 acres.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John R. Hicks</span>

John R. Hicks was an American murderer executed by the U.S. state of Ohio. He was executed for the August 2, 1985, murder of his 5-year-old stepdaughter, Brandy Green. He was also convicted of the murder of his 56-year-old mother-in-law, Maxine Armstrong, for which he received a life sentence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lords of Chaos (criminal group)</span> 1996 teen criminal group

The Lords of Chaos was a self-styled teen militia formed on April 13, 1996, in Fort Myers, Florida, United States. It was led by Kevin Donald Foster. The group gained notoriety for a crime spree that ended on April 30, 1996, with the murder of one of the boys' teachers, Mark Schwebes, the Riverdale High School's band director.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna Marie Hahn</span> American serial killer

Anna Marie Hahn was a German-born American serial killer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esperanza Fire</span> 2006 California wildfire caused by arson

The Esperanza Fire was a large, wind-driven, arson-caused wildfire that started on October 26, 2006, in a river wash near Cabazon, California, west of Palm Springs, California. By October 29, 2006, it had burned over 41,173 acres (166.62 km2) and was 85% contained. On October 30, 2006, the fire was fully contained.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ohio Reformatory for Women</span>

The Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW) is a state prison for women owned and operated by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in Marysville, Ohio. It opened in September 1916, when 34 female inmates were transferred from the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. ORW is a multi-security, state facility. As of July 2019, 2,394 female inmates were living at the prison ranging from minimum-security inmates all the way up to one inmate on death row. It was the fifth prison in the United States, in modern times, to open a nursery for imprisoned mothers and their babies located within the institution. The Achieving Baby Care Success (ABC) program was the first in the state to keep infants with their mothers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maria Barbella</span>

Maria Barbella was an Italian-born American woman. Erroneously known as Maria Barberi at the time, she was the second woman sentenced to die in the electric chair. She was convicted of killing her lover in 1895, but the ruling was overturned in 1896 and she was freed. Her trial became a cause célèbre in the late 19th century.

This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom</span> 2007 carjacking, rape, and murder of a couple in Knoxville, Tennessee

China Arnold is an American woman who was convicted of murdering her 28-day old daughter, Paris, by heating her in a microwave oven. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheshire home invasion murders</span> 2007 triple-murder in Cheshire, Connecticut, US

On July 23, 2007, Linda Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky invaded the residence of the Petit family in Cheshire, Connecticut. Though initially planning only to rob the house, Hayes and Komisarjevsky murdered Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters, 17-year-old Hayley Petit and 11-year-old Michaela Petit. Their father, Dr. William Petit, escaped with severe injuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kimberly Clark Saenz</span> American serial killer

Kimberly Clark Saenz, also known as Kimberly Clark Fowler, is a former licensed practical nurse and a convicted serial killer. She was convicted of killing several patients at a Texas dialysis center by injecting bleach into their dialysis lines.

Martha Wise was an American poisoner and serial killer. After her husband died and her family forced her to end a relationship with a new lover, Wise retaliated by poisoning seventeen family members, of whom three died, in 1924. She was convicted of one of the murders, despite defense claims that she was mentally ill and that her lover had ordered her to poison her family. The case is considered one of the most sensational of the era in Ohio, where it occurred.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Debora Green</span> American doctor and convicted murderer

Debora Green is an American physician who pleaded no contest to setting a 1995 fire which burned down her family's home and killed two of her children, and to poisoning her husband with ricin with the intention of causing his death. The case was sensational, and covered heavily by news media, especially in the Kansas–Missouri area, where the crimes occurred. Though Green has petitioned for a new trial twice in recent years, her requests have not been successful.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzanne Basso</span> American criminal (1954–2014)

Suzanne Margaret "Sue" Basso was an American woman who was one of six co-defendants convicted in the August 1998 torture and murder of 59 year-old Louis "Buddy" Musso, a mentally disabled man who was killed for his life insurance money. She was sentenced to death in October 1999. Basso was executed by lethal injection on February 5, 2014. Prior to her execution, Basso had been held at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas, where all of the state's female death row inmates are incarcerated. At the time of the crime, Basso lived in Jacinto City, Texas, a Houston suburb.

Linda Andersen was the victim of premeditated murder by her two teenage daughters on January 18, 2003, in Mississauga, Ontario. Since both daughters were under the age of 18 at the time of the murder, their identities are protected under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, a Canadian law. The names Linda Andersen, as well as sisters Sandra and Elizabeth (Beth) Andersen, are aliases created by journalist Bob Mitchell, in an effort to protect the girl's identities in the book he wrote about their mother's murder. The book is The Class Project: How to Kill a Mother: The True Story of Canada's Infamous Bathtub Girls. The sisters are also commonly referred to as the "Bathtub Girls" due to them drowning their mother in a bathtub.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lizzie Halliday</span> Irish-American serial killer

Lizzie Halliday was an Irish-American serial killer responsible for the deaths of four people in upstate New York during the 1890s. In 1894, she became the first woman to be sentenced to death by the electric chair. Halliday's sentence was commuted and she spent the rest of her life in a mental institution. She killed a nurse while institutionalized and is speculated to have killed her first two husbands.

Ernest Ray Willis was an American man who spent 17 years on death row for murder by arson before being exonerated in 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Ryan Poston</span> Murder of an American attorney

On October 12, 2012, Ryan Carter Poston, an American attorney from Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, was shot to death by his on-again off-again girlfriend Shayna Michelle Hubers. After a trial in the Campbell County circuit court, Hubers was convicted of murder on April 23, 2015. She was sentenced to 40 years in the Kentucky Department of Corrections on August 14, 2015, with parole eligibility after 20 years. On August 25, 2016, Hubers' conviction was overturned on appeal when one of the jurors in her murder trial was revealed to be a convicted felon. Hubers was convicted of murder during her second trial on August 28, 2018. On October 18, 2018, she was sentenced to life imprisonment with parole eligibility after 20 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Emani Moss</span> 2013 child murder

Emani Gabrielle Moss was a ten-year-old American girl who was starved to death by her stepmother in Lawrenceville, Georgia, in 2013, in what became a prominent case leading to reforms in Georgia's child welfare system. Tiffany Nicole Moss was convicted of murdering Emani in 2019 and was subsequently sentenced to death. The murder received national as well as international attention. The attention was largely due to the crime's severe nature; Moss physically abused Emani for several years before her death. In 2013, Moss began starving Emani. Emani's father, Eman, who was rarely home, failed to stop the abuse. Emani died of starvation on October 28, 2013. At the time of her death, she weighed 32 pounds, the weight of an average toddler. The murder led to several systemic changes in the Georgia Division of Family and Child Services (GDFCS). Eman pled guilty in 2015 for his role in the crime. The case against Moss went to trial, and in April 2019, Moss, who represented herself, was convicted of all counts. She was sentenced to death on May 1, 2019. She is currently incarcerated at the Arrendale State Prison and is Georgia's only female death row inmate.

References

  1. ↑ Rosser, Bo (November 1, 2005). "Jurors weigh death penalty for mother convicted of killing her 4-year-old son" . Retrieved 2007-07-19.
  2. ↑ Donaldson, Stan. "Judicial error takes Nicole Dair of Lorain off death row".
  3. ↑ Dicken, Brad. "Convicted child killer Nicole Diar avoids retrial, will serve life". chronicle.northcoastnow.com. Retrieved 17 July 2014.
  4. ↑ Dicken, Brad (2013-06-06). "Convicted killer Nicole Diar drops clemency request". Chronicle-Telegram. Retrieved 2019-05-06.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 "FindLaw's Supreme Court of Ohio case and opinions". Findlaw. Retrieved 2019-05-06.
  6. ↑ "Deadly Women | Bury Their Babies (TV Episode 2012)". IMDb. IMDb.com, Inc. Retrieved 19 November 2018.
  7. ↑ "Deadly Women | TV Guide". TVGuide.com. CBS Interactive Inc. Retrieved 19 November 2018. First Aired: November 2, 2012
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.