Beheading defendant told FBI he felt no remorse
NORMAN — In confessions played for a jury Wednesday, murder defendant Alton Alexander Nolen said in 2014 that he beheaded a co-worker and tried to behead another at a Moore food plant because he felt oppressed.
Nolen, a Muslim convert, insisted in the interviews with Moore police and the FBI that he was following Islamic teachings.
“I just feel like ... I did what I needed to do. What Allah ... says in the Quran to do,” he said. “Oppressors don’t need to be here.”
Jurors listened Wednesday to recordings of the two statements he made in September 2014 from OU Medical Center, where he was recovering from gunshot wounds.
“This wasn’t nothing but a trial for me,” Nolen said. “I passed it ...
because, like I said, I felt oppressed . ... I knew for sure that ... if I was to die right then ... I was going to heaven.”
Trial to resume Monday
Jurors also heard Wednesday from the prosecution’s final witness, the medical examiner who did the autopsy on the beheading victim. Jurors return to court Monday to begin hearing defense witnesses.
Nolen’s courtappointed defense attorneys are asking the jury to find him not guilty by reason of insanity. They have told jurors he is mentally ill and believed what he was doing was right because of his delusional misinterpretations of the Quran.
Prosecutors contend Nolen, 33, of Moore, clearly knew right from wrong and should get the death penalty.
Nolen is accused of beheading Colleen Hufford and attempting to behead Traci Johnson at Vaughan Foods on Sept. 25, 2014, after being suspended for racial remarks.
The second woman was saved when the company’s then-chief operating officer, Mark Vaughan, interrupted the attack and shot Nolen, according to testimony Monday.
In the first interview, Nolen admitted in response to FBI questions that he watched beheadings on YouTube all the time.
Looking for influencers
In both interviews, an FBI agent and FBI task force officer were trying to determine whether anyone had influenced his beliefs about beheadings. They asked him about Facebook “friends,” fellow Muslims at the two mosques he attended and Muslims he had met in prison.
“I read the Quran. Like I say, the Quran is easy to understand,” he said. “No one guides me but Allah.”
Prosecutors are alleging at trial that he beheaded Hufford because he mistook her for another woman who had bumped into him by accident days before. Nolen never explained in the interviews exactly why he felt oppressed by Hufford.
“She just, you know, wanted to bring me
down, like I couldn’t be me as a Muslim,” he said. “She want to bring me down low to the ground.”
He admitted he intended to behead Johnson because she was the one who got him in trouble. He called her “a slave for the devil.”
He explained in the interviews that he felt disrespected by Johnson, a new employee, when she called him an immature brat during an argument on an assembly line. He said he felt Johnson and other ladies on the line teamed up against him because he is Muslim.
He did not admit, though, until confronted during the second interview that he had said during that argument “I beat on Caucasians.”
He’d been suspended that day
The attack began after Nolen was suspended because Johnson had complained to a supervisor, Tim Bluford, about his remarks. He was suspended by a human resources employee, Latosha Davis.
“When I left H and R,” he told the interviewers, referring to the human resources office, “I said, you know, ‘Forget it,’
you know, ‘I’m a slave for Allah and this is what I’m supposed to go do.’ And that’s, that’s, what I went and did.”
He revealed during the interviews that he considered attacking Davis first and that his main target was the supervisor, Bluford. He said he went home to get a knife and came back to the plant, hiding the knife in his shoe.
He also confirmed that he had been screaming during the attack, “Allahu akbar.” The Arabic phrase means “God is great.”
Nolen was first interviewed the day after the attack and again on Sept. 28, 2014, for about two hours total.
Toward the end of the second interview, the FBI task force officer asked Nolen whether he felt any remorse.
“No,” he said. “Not at all? Not at all?” the task force officer asked.
“No,” Nolen replied. “I don’t feel regret because ... what I done ... that’s probably gonna make Vaughan Foods a better place to work at ... if somebody was to come there who ... was a Muslim.
“I don’t regret it. I don’t regret it at all,” he said.