Cole Nichols

Cole Randolph Nichols was a Rayne City Police Department detective and dirty cop.

Background and Police Career
A Rayne City native, Nichols grew up in the western section of the South End district, along with several of the men who would later become associates or members of the Ruggeri Crime Family. Himself the son of a policeman, Cole decided to follow in his father's footsteps, joining the Rayne City Police Department and taking his oath as a police officer in the late 1980s. Eventually, he rose to the rank of detective, and was assigned to a South End-based narcotics unit.

It wasn't long before his old mob acquaintances, specifically Artie Lombardo and his crew, turned to him as a means to obtain classified police information concerning drug and gunrunning investigations, undercover police officers, and police informants. On his part, Nichols was willing to hand them all the information he could get, in return for large sums of money. In order to avoid being uncovered by federal authorities or the internal affairs, Nichols and Lombardo concocted a cunning plan: Nichols would have presented a new informant to his colleagues, a member of Lombardo's crew named Albert Sabatino, who would have revealed valuable mob information to them in exchange for second-rate police information to hand over to his capo. Of course, in actuality, the information Nichols was handing to Sabatino were valuable, whilst the information Sabatino was revealing to Nichols' unit were low-grade.

Investigation, Arrest, and Trial
The scheme went along while, in the meantime, an informant was found dead of a faked drug overdose, and the cover of a police officer, who was making his way into Lombardo's crew, was blown. Suspicious of a possible leak in the department, captain Nielsen, Nichols' supervisor, along with others, prompted the formation a secret task force (including Nichols and a few others from his unit, internal affairs detectives, and detectives working on the informant's murder). A task force member, detective Jim Farace (close friend of Nichols), went undercover to try and identify the leak, but was immediately blown.

Even more convinced that the leak was part of his unit, Nielsen charged the other members of the task force with identifying and arresting the "mole" for good. The latters eventually found out that every time Sabatino gave Nielsen's unit information concerning mob activities, a unit drug operation or investigation was disrupted or ruined soon afterwards. Having established a connection between Sabatino's exchange and the "mole", the task force began spreading rumors implying one of Lombardo's soldiers was going to tell them the name of a corrupt police detective. Soon, Nichols organized a meeting with Sabatino. They were both arrested by task force members, who were lying in wait.

Nichols was indicted on corruption charges and later sentenced to several years of imprisonment.

Modus Operandi
TBA

Real-Life Inspiration

 * John K. Wrynn: TBA
 * Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: TBA
 * Robert Hanssen: TBA