Not long before she was found on fire, writhing in her yard, Jessie McFadden was on the phone with a friend and could be heard arguing with her boyfriend, the man now charged in her slaying, according to an arrest affidavit.
Matthew Nichols, 46, of North Little Rock, is charged with capital murder in McFadden’s death and is scheduled to make a second appearance in North Little Rock District Court today. He remains in the Pulaski County jail with no bail set.
An unidentified niece of Nichols, who was a friend of McFadden’s, was on the phone with her only minutes before neighbors saw Nichols douse McFadden’s already burning body with gasoline, the arrest affidavit said.
Police have not released information about how McFadden caught fire.
The niece told detectives that two weeks ago, Nichols told McFadden, 38, that if “[she] left him or kicked him out of their shared residence he would kill her by burning her and the house down,” the affidavit said.
At 4:42 p.m. Monday, the niece said she was talking with McFadden on the phone when McFadden asked her to get her some new door locks for her house, “insinuating that she was going to change the door locks when [Nichols] left,” the affidavit said.
Nichols overheard that conversation, and the niece said he was yelling in the background that “if you put me out I’ll burn this motherf* down with you in it,” the affidavit said. McFadden yelled back “Matthew, I’m not gonna take any more of your threats,” the affidavit said.
“This ain’t no threat,” he told her.
About 5 p.m., North Little Rock police and firefighters arrived outside the couple’s 219 Water St. home to find McFadden lying in the driveway with burns over 90 percent of her body.
Witnesses in the neighborhood, who went to the house after seeing smoke, told officers that they saw Nichols pouring gas on McFadden and watched the flames kick up across her body while she tried to crawl out of the house’s front door, the affidavit said.
Nichols was initially charged with first-degree domestic battery. The charge was enhanced to capital murder after McFadden died at 12:25 a.m. Tuesday at UAMS Medical Center in Little Rock.
The niece told police that Monday’s confrontation was not the first between McFadden and Nichols. According to her, the couple had a “history of domestic violence,” though North Little Rock police officers have no record of McFadden or Nichols being named in a domestic-disturbance report.
State corrections officials said Nichols has a criminal history.
In 1997, he was arrested and charged with third-degree domestic battery, but the charge was later dismissed in court. In October 2006, he pleaded guilty to third-degree domestic battery.
Two years later, he pleaded guilty to second-degree battery, a felony, and served a little more than a year of his five-year sentence before being paroled in 2009.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 05/23/2013