The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Man’s true identity revealed
Joseph Newton Chandler III was Robert Ivan Nichols
For years there’s been speculation over the true identity of the man who went by the name of Joseph Newton Chandler III.
Could he be the Zodiac Killer or DB Cooper?
That speculation is not over, but now the true identity of Chandler has been revealed. U.S. Marshal Northern Ohio Peter Elliott in a June 21 news conference revealed Chandler to be Robert Ivan Nichols, originally from New Albany, Indiana.
Nichols, who spent the last 24 years of his life under the Chandler name, committed suicide in his Eastlake apartment in 2002. In the aftermath of the man’s death, it was discovered that he was using the identity of an 8-year-old boy who was killed in a 1945 car crash in Texas.
The imposter used the dead child’s personal information to
obtain a Social Security card and take over his identity in 1978.
Elliott said that through interviews they learned that Nichols was in the U.S. Navy during WWII and was injured while serving on the USS Aaron Ward during a May 3, 1945, Japanese bombing. He received a Purple Heart.
However, Nichols allegedly burned his uniform after returning home from the service.
In 1964, Nichols filed for divorce from his wife, telling her “in due time you will know why.” Handwritten letters, postmarks and other documentation obtained by the Marshals Service show that Nichols resided in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1964 before traveling to the San Francisco and Richmond, California, areas the following years.
He was reported missing by his family in 1965, and numerous attempts by authorities to locate him were unsuccessful. The family never heard from Nichols again after 1965.
The “who” has been solved, but the “why” remains unclear. The U.S. Marshals Service is now seeking the public’s help to answer that question.
“There has to be a reason he assumed the name of a deceased 8-year-old boy and went into hiding for so many years,” Elliott said. “There has to be a reason he never again contacted his family; a reason he left $82,000 in a bank account without leaving it to his son; a reason he never wanted to be found throughout his lifetime and even into his death. Someone out there in the public may hold the key as to why.”
Finding Nichols
In 2016, Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick of Identifinders International was contacted for assistance. A DNA sample from a 2000 hospital stay by the imposter Chandler was sent to comparison in Y-DNA genetic genealogy databases. It was determined that his real last name was Nicholas or some variation of it.
This year, Fitzpatick, and Dr. Margaret Press of Identifinders International, along with a team of investigators, were able to locate Nichols who had similarities to Chandler. That information was provided to the Marshals Service, which began a search for relatives.
In March, the Marshals located a son of Nichols named Phil who lived in the Cincinnati area. They obtained DNA from him, which was provided to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office. The DNA positively matched the man who was going by Chandler’s name. Phil was also able to identify the man as his father from a photograph. His father had left when he was 16 years old. His last contact with him had been in 1965, when he received a letter from him that had been postmarked from Napa, California.
“This has put to rest, at least partially, what has been a mystery in our family: what happened to him, so to speak,” Phil Nichols said at the news conference.
Phil Nichols said he holds no animosity toward his father whatsoever.
“I always hoped he had found a happy life somewhere. Perhaps I’ve got half siblings out there as well,” he said.
Quiet, reserved and eccentric
Just months after taking the Chandler identity, Nichols moved to Northeast Ohio in 1978. He had worked at Edko Co. in Cleveland and later Lubrizol in Wickliffe as an electrical engineer.
Nichols was born 11 years before the boy whose identity he stole. Elliott said it’s perhaps the largest age gap he’s seen in this type of case. Usually people choose an identity close to their true age.
On July 24, 2002, Nichols locked all the doors in his Eastlake apartment, turned off the air-conditioning, marked the days off on the calendar, went into his bathroom with a gun he had purchased a few months earlier and killed himself.
Eastlake police discovered his badly decomposed body on July 31. Due to the condition of the body, fingerprints were unattainable and the body was eventually cremated.
Coworkers described the man they knew as Chandler as quiet, reserved and eccentric. They told investigators he would occasionally disappear for periods of time, saying “they are getting close,” but he would eventually return.
He would listen to static, white noise for hours. He once drove from Eastlake to Maine to go to an L.L. Bean store, but once he pulled into the parking lot and noticed there weren’t any parking spots he drove all the way back to Ohio.
The imposter Chandler was known to make electrical devices. He had always been good at making things. Phil Nichols said that while his father was in high school, he made himself a kayak and even a machine gun from scratch. He also said that while his father may have burned his Navy uniform, he described the father he knew as a patriot and did not harbor any anti-American sentiment.
When he died, Nichols left nearly $82,000 in his bank account with no next of kin listed. A coworker was the executor of his will.
He said he had a sister living in Columbus, but the given address led to a vacant lot. The address that he used, 1823 Center St., would prove to be significant, however. The street name and numbers matched those of the address where Nichols was born. That helped Identifinders International zero in on Nichols.
“In fact when people steal an identity or change their name and make up a fictitious life, they often use the same street address that they can remember easily, they just change the city,” Press said.
Elliott said that Nichols does not have a criminal history either by his real name or by his assumed name. He said that Nichols worked under his real name until at least 1976, but the IRS is unable to tell him where he worked.
Also at the conference were Eastlake Mayor Dennis Morley and the city’s police chief Larry Reik. The U.S. Marshals Service took over the case in 2014 at the police department’s request.
“It was an honor to be a small part of this big team,” Reik said.