DENVER — An El Paso County District Court judge on Friday denied bail to Deborah Nicholls, finding there is a “fair likelihood” the woman could be re-convicted of murder after a judge this summer threw out her convictions in the deaths of her three children in a house fire more than 20 years ago.

Judge Catherine Mitchell Helton ordered that Nicholls, 59, remain in custody while her case is pending at the conclusion of a multiday hearing. Nicholls now stands accused — but not convicted — of first-degree murder in the deaths of her children in a Colorado Springs house fire in 2003.

The judge found that the evidence against Nicholls met the legal standard known as “proof-evident, presumption-great,” which is a level of evidence that is higher than what is required for an arrest (probable cause), but lower than what is required for a conviction (beyond a reasonable doubt).

“I do find that there is a fair likelihood the defendant is in danger of a jury verdict of first-degree murder in this case,” the judge said. “She will continue to be held without bail in this matter.”

Deborah Nicholls and her husband, Tim Nicholls, have both been imprisoned since they were convicted of their children’s murders. But a judge in August threw out Deborah Nicholls’ 2008 convictions after he found that prosecutors wrongly kept secret evidence that cast doubt on her guilt during her original jury trial.

Prosecutors are appealing the ruling and are continuing the murder prosecution against Deborah Nicholls, who has long maintained her innocence in the middle-of-the-night fire that killed her children, Jay, 11, Sophia, 5, and Sierra, 3.

Prosecutors argued during the parents’ separate jury trials that Deborah and Tim Nicholls killed their children in an attempt to collect insurance money to fund their methamphetamine addiction and pay off debt, presenting evidence that the family was going through financial difficulties and that the parents pushed to collect insurance money after the blaze.

Tim Nicholls was accused of spreading a highly flammable cleaning fluid around the house and on his children’s pajamas, and then intentionally setting the home on fire. Deborah Nicholls was not home when the fire started; prosecutors alleged she masterminded the plot and her husband carried it out. He escaped the blaze with burns and injuries after jumping out a second-story window.

Prosecutors alleged the couple planned the fire for a year, and routinely lit fires in a fire pit on their front porch to accustom neighbors to the sight of fire near the home. Both of the smoke detectors in the house had no batteries on the night of the fire, Chief Deputy District Attorney Stephanie Redfield said in court Friday.

“That had to be Tim or Deb who took those batteries out of those smoke detectors, so the children would not get advance notice of the fire, so they would not wake up in their beds in time to escape, so that they would die,” Redfield said. “This is clearly arson. No other reasonable explanation exists.”

The parents maintained the fire was accidental; the insurance policies the couple had did not carry any money for the children’s deaths.

Tim Nicholls allegedly confessed the murder plot to another prisoner while awaiting trial, and that man then became a key witness for the prosecution. During the proof-evident, presumption-great hearing, Deborah Nicholls’ attorneys argued that the prisoner took innocuous details that Tim shared about the fire and about his life and embellished them, lying about Tim’s supposed confession so that he could get out of jail.

“He is the only connective tissue, he is the only arrow pointing at Deb Nicholls,” said attorney Janene McCabe. “ ... These are statements made specifically with the intent to gain his freedom, which he did.”

She also pointed to what she called “junk science” that arson experts relied on to conclude the fire was intentionally set with an accelerant, and argued that the prosecution’s focus on Deborah Nicholls’ behavior after her children died — including testimony that she appeared unemotional — was unfair.

“Even if you have drug use, that doesn’t mean you kill your kids,” she said. “Even if you have financial debt, that doesn’t mean you kill your kids, burn your house down and kill your kids.”

During Deborah Nicholls’ jury trial, prosecutors relied heavily on findings from one Colorado Bureau of Investigation scientist who concluded that chemical testing results were consistent with an accelerant being used in the deadly fire.

But the district attorneys kept secret a second, contemporaneous opinion from another CBI scientist who found that the testing did not show the presence of an accelerant. That second scientist also agreed with a defense expert that some testing had been contaminated.

That evidence should have been turned over to Deborah Nicholls’ defense team in her original trial, El Paso County District Court Senior Judge Michael Mullins found in April, before he vacated Deborah Nicholls’ convictions. Tim Nicholls’ convictions still stand, though he is pursuing his own similar innocence claims.

Deborah Nicholls began her most recent push to overturn her convictions in 2022, with the backing of the Korey Wise Innocence Project at the University of Colorado Boulder. The district court case against her will now be put on hold until the Colorado Court of Appeals considers prosecutors’ appeal.

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