Holly Sheley wants reward: Wife says money would go into fund for their children

MORRISON - The wife of accused spree killer Nicholas Sheley says they and their children deserve at least some of the reward money offered for his capture, even though she freely admits to helping investigators “against her will.”

In a four-page letter to Sauk Valley Newspapers dated Feb. 12, and in a subsequent interview at Whiteside County jail, Holly Gaul Sheley says she was the “biggest lead” in the case.

[ Click here to view the letter by page ]

They are “entitled to at least half of the $25,000 reward” offered by the FBI, because it was their cooperation with investigators that led to his peaceful arrest outside Bindy’s Bar in Granite City on July 1, Holly Sheley said.

The reward money should go to her and Sheley’s six children, who are suffering because “they no longer have a father around to do the things a father should do.” (Nicholas Sheley has two children with Holly, is stepfather to her other two children, and has two children with his first wife.)

“The money I rightfully should have will go to our six children in a trust fund so I know that they will have something even though their father is accused of killing eight people,” she wrote. “People don’t understand that even though they’re [sic] loved ones are dead and gone in the flesh forever our children suffer worse than I or Nick does.”

Nicholas Sheley, her husband of 10 months and the father of two of her four children, is charged in the beating deaths of eight people – five in Whiteside County – killed in a 6-day, two-state rampage in late June. He is in Knox County jail, where he faces the death penalty in the death of Ronald Randall, 65, of Galesburg.

A judge’s gag order prohibits attorneys and police from talking about the case. In an interview Wednesday in the jail, where she is serving a 2-month stint for DUI, Holly Sheley said she is not bound by that order.

She wrote the letter after reading about two Granite City residents, Samantha Butler and Gary Range, each given a $5,000 reward on Feb. 12 for their roles in Sheley’s arrest.

Each recognized Sheley, who was sitting at the end of the bar, and flagged down police, who were already canvassing the area looking for Sheley.

[ Click here to see a transcribed version of the letter ]

Holly Sheley says investigators were there because she convinced her husband to call his attorney, Jim Mertes.

Mertes convinced Sheley to turn himself in, she said, and told investigators where to find him.

“The Granite City [sic] had their praises because they actually thought they were the ‘REAL HEREOS’ [sic] in this situation,” she wrote.

“If I did not cooperate with them then I was gonna get arrested so I believe that a great portion of that $25,000 reward money belongs to Nick and I [sic] six children.”

Mertes declined to comment Friday.

Making her case

Dressed in an inside-out black-and-white jail jumpsuit, her long, dark hair twisted into tiny braids and thrown back in a low ponytail, Holly Sheley slouched in a chair behind the glass window in one of the jail’s visiting booths.

She took a deep breath and began to recount the days leading up to her husband’s arrest, occasionally wringing her hands as she talked.

It was June 30, the day the bodies of Brock Branson, 29; Kenneth Ulve, 25; Kilynna Blake, 20; and Dayan Blake, 2, were found in a Rock Falls apartment. A manhunt was on for her husband.

Investigators took her against her will to a hotel, where she was ordered to stay until Sheley was caught, she said.

“Investigators said I was there more to get Nick to turn himself in,” she said. “They asked me if I was scared of my husband, and I said no. I know he’d never hurt me or our children.”

At some point, a Rock Falls police officer told her that Sheley would be shot and killed if he returned, which she took as a threat, she said.

“I begged [Nick] to turn himself in, because I was scared of what they would do to him if he came back here,” she said as she wiped away tears. “I didn’t want to have to explain it all to my children.”

Rock Falls Police Chief Mike Kuelper denied the remark was made.

“Our officers would never say anything like that,” Kuelper said Friday. “We wanted to capture him, to find out why he did all this.”

She had been in cell phone contact with her husband since June 26, the day the first body was found, she said. Now investigators were recording all their calls, also against her will, she said.

It was one of those calls made June 30 that police used to track Sheley to St. Louis.

Each time she talked to him, she begged him to call Mertes, she said. It was their cooperation, not the actions of Butler and Grange, that led to his arrest, she wrote in the letter.

Asks about reward

While she was in that hotel room, Gaul said, she asked an agent whether helping investigators would make her eligible for the $25,000 reward the FBI and the Whiteside County Crimestoppers was offering for his arrest and conviction.

“At the time – and I wasn’t serious – I thought about asking if I got any of that money, partly because I was the biggest lead they had,” she said.

Kuelper said he was not aware Holly Sheley was looking for reward money, nor did he know the details of her role, if any, in the investigation.

“This is the same young lady quoted in the paper saying that [Sheley] is a wonderful man when he’s not doing drugs and that she allowed him to do drugs in front of the kids,” Kuelper said. “He is accused of killing eight people, and now she feels she deserves money. I’m very upset by that.”

Kuelper, who attended the award ceremony in Granite City, said Butler and Grange deserve to be commended.

“They did their civic duty and went above and beyond,” he said.

Kendra Kruse, 36, of Harmon is Ulve’s half-sister. Holly Sheley’s statements took her by surprise Friday.

“My first thought is just, Wow,” Kruse said. “I mean, there’s other kids that have suffered too – relatives of the ones that died.

“I think that any reward should go to the families [of the victims] before it goes to her.”

Kruse and Ulve’s father, Kenneth F. Ulve, agreed.

“I think if there is any money to go out, it should be put into a trust fund for the survivors,” said Ulve, 60, of Nelson. “I don’t think she should get any reward money at all.

“If she really wanted to be a good Samaritan, she would have called police when she was first contacted by him and not waited until she was forced to help by police.”

Asked Wednesday whether she thought her husband could be guilty of the crimes he’s accused of, Holly Sheley broke down.

“I don’t know what to think,” she said through tears. “This is not who my husband is. I know Nick, and this is not him.”