Nine years after his capture, Don Nichols sits in a prison cell, still convinced he and his son did nothing wrong.
Their abduction of a Bozeman woman in the mountains near Big Sky and the murder of a man trying to rescue her were distorted by witnesses and exaggerated by the news media, he says.Kari Swenson was not kidnapped on that sunny afternoon of July 15, 1984, but merely "made to accompany us for a while," in Nichols' version of events.
And the fatal shooting of Alan Goldstein during a rescue attempt was self-defense, he says.
Nichols, serving an 85-year prison term for his part in the kidnapping and for killing Goldstein, recalls what he refers to as "the incident" in a 242-page manuscript sent to The Associated Press.
He calls the handwritten document a book, one of several he has written while in prison.
Much of Nichols' writing centers on his philosophy about life and his disgust for a justice system that he maintains treated him and his son unfairly.
But he returns time and again to the events of 1984.
Swenson, a 22-year-old world-class biathlete, was on a training run in the mountains near the Big Sky ski resort when Nichols and son Dan confronted her on the trail.
The pair considered themselves mountain men in the tradition of the Old West. They bound Swenson's hands and led her off into the timber, hoping she would become a willing bride for 19-year-old Dan.
The following morning, two men searching for Swenson discovered the Nicholses' camp. Startled, Dan accidentally shot Swenson in the chest. The elder Nichols fatally shot Goldstein, who was armed with a pistol.
The Nicholses abandoned Swenson and disappeared into the forest. The second rescuer, Jim Schwalbe, led authorities to the scene four hours later.
After evading searchers for five months, the Nicholses were captured on a cold December afternoon when their campfire smoke revealed their mountainside perch.
Swenson recovered from her wounds, but persistent pain forced her to retire from biathlon competition in 1986.
Dan Nichols was sentenced to 20 years in prison and was paroled in 1991 after serving six years. He lives in Great Falls.
What became known as the mountain man case drew worldwide attention at the time. It spawned a TV movie and two books, one by Swenson's mother and the other by the Nicholses' nemesis, former Madison County Sheriff Johnny France.
Don Nichols, 62, claims in his "book" that those accounts helped warp the facts to create an image of heinous events. He describes it differently.
He and Dan were not dirty and scary when they accosted Swenson on the trail, he says, only "rustic looking."
"It's just that the mood of all of us that day doesn't even slightly resemble that which was portrayed by the media," he writes. "The whole sinister aspect purely didn't happen.
"We told Kari we were going to take her with us for a few days in order to have a good chance at conversation and for her to make a decision," Nichols says.
He says he assured her she would not be hurt and would be shown a route to civilization if she decided not to remain with them in the mountains.
"After a while she knew we were telling the truth," Nichols says.
"I don't know how we'd have gotten Kari to come with us if she hadn't decided to cooperate. The main thing is that we didn't want to shake any girl up real bad. We wanted a long conversation with the right girl, out of sight and hearing from any possible observer.
"We knew our intentions," Nichols says. "We didn't want a big scary production about it."
Nichols contradicts himself on occasion.
He claims Swenson lied about him threatening to strike her, but then admits, that "what I said was that we could all make things pleasant during the next couple of days around camp if we'd all work together, but that if she gave us too much trouble during that time I'd black both her eyes.
"But I'd never socked a girl in my life and didn't intend to start with her," he adds. "Neither one of us ever hit Kari."
Despite that assertion, Nichols recalls striking Swenson when she screamed.
"I barely tapped her on the lips. . . . I slapped her three times with my fingertips and said shut up three times. She shut up."
Nichols still blames Goldstein, 36, for his own death.
The shooting began because Goldstein "had come upon our camp and was coming on in like we were having a public fish fry," he writes.
"I looked around and Goldstein had a pistol pointed at the group of us, braced against the tree he was behind. I walked back and got my rifle, the same as I'd done many times in the mountains when trouble threatened."
After Schwalbe implored him and Goldstein not to use guns, Nichols says he told Goldstein to put down his pistol.
"When I shot him, I thought I was acting in defense of everyone," he says. "I could see no alternative. My mind went out to no-man's land, and the moment decided itself."