Even in jail, man accused of abuse finds more trouble

A burglary charge has been dismissed, but a 41-year-old man accused of entering his ex-girlfriend’s Town of Belgium home, hitting her in the face with a chair and threatening to kill her in May still faces a slew of criminal charges in Ozaukee County Circuit Court.

Even after his arrest, Nicholas O. Nelson added to the list of charges he faces by allegedly making repeated calls from jail to his ex-girlfriend, who he was ordered not to contact, to convince her to recant her allegations against him.

Nelson, who used to live in the Town of Belgium with his girlfriend, now lists a Milwaukee address, but he is currently being held in the county jail in lieu of $25,000 bail.

During a preliminary hearing last month, Ozaukee County Circuit Judge Steve Cain dismissed a burglary charge but bound Nelson over for trial on the other seven charges he faces in connection with the May incident at his girlfriend’s home.

According to a criminal complaint, the woman went to the Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Office on May 29 to report that Nelson attacked her two days earlier. When she removed her sunglasses, a deputy noticed she had a black eye.

She said Nelson lived with her while he was on house arrest during their six-year relationship, which she broke off in March because of another domestic abuse incident.

On May 27, she said, Nelson texted her “out of the blue” asking if she was using dating apps. She said she was, and later that day Nelson entered her home and was very angry. She said he smashed her television on the floor and threw a chair that hit her in the eye. She said she didn’t remember what happened after that and wasn’t sure if she lost consciousness, the complaint states.

A friend who had been at her home during the incident said that as Nelson was leaving the home through the garage, he took a ladder off the wall and used it to smash the windshield and body of the woman’s Porsche Panamera, according to the complaint.

The woman, who is a nurse, told authorities that after the attack, she didn’t know what to do. She said she didn’t want to get Nelson in trouble because he had been threatening her since the incident, texting her that he would turn her in to the nursing review board, kill her and kill himself if he had to go back to prison, the complaint states.

About two months earlier, the woman reported that Nelson abused her verbally and physically, but she was uncooperative with authorities and identified her attacker only as Nico, who deputies later learned was Nelson, according to the complaint.

When he left the woman’s home in March, he took her 2008 BMW, which she had been letting him drive. Since then, she said, she has asked him repeatedly to return the vehicle, which he did not do.

After the second attack in May, authorities listed the BMW as stolen, and at 1:20 a.m. May 30, Nelson was pulled over in the car by Glendale police officers and arrested.

Police discovered that Nelson also had one of the woman’s financial cards, and according to her review of statements, Nelson used it to make purchases totaling $1,501 primarily at gas stations in Sheboygan, Belgium and Milwaukee, the complaint states.

Nelson is charged with intimidating a witness, auto theft and identity theft, all felonies, and misdemeanor counts of criminal damage to property, battery, disorderly conduct and fraudulent use of a credit card.

He also faces additional charges accusing him of calling the Town of Belgium woman he is charged with attacking 63 times from jail after Cain ordered him not to have contact with her.

The jail monitors all inmate calls, and during one that Nelson placed to the woman on June 24, she told him she submitted all the “paperwork” that morning. That was the same day the Ozaukee County District Attorney’s Office received an email from the woman recanting her accusations against Nelson, according to the complaint filed in that case.

During another call on June 24, Nelson instructed the woman to deliver all the “evidence” to his sister, who would get it to his attorney.

It appears that Nelson’s ex-girlfriend used multiple phone numbers to communicate with him, changing them in some cases after they were blocked by the jail, the complaint states.

Nelson’s ex-girlfriend was one of 18 women he contacted from jail. Among the others, Nelson identified one of them on his visitor’s list as his fiancee and two as girlfriends.

Another one of the women, who Nelson identified as an in-law, was named in a criminal complaint filed in Olmstead County, Minn., in 2017 charging him with promoting prostitution and receiving profit from prostitution, according to the complaint. Those charges were eventually dismissed.

Nelson is charged with contempt of court and four counts of violating state or county institutional laws in connections with the phone calls.

He is charged as a repeat offender, which means he would face enhanced penalties if convicted, because in 2019 a federal jury found him guilty of the unlawful possession of a firearm by a prohibited person in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. He was sentenced to five years in prison followed by three years of supervised release.