Joseph Newton Chandler III

Background Nichols's life and identity theft Robert Nichols was born on September 12, 1926, in New Albany, Indiana,

Nichols married Laverne Korte in 1947. They had three sons and Nichols worked for General Electric as a draftsman. In 1964, Nichols left his wife and sons and filed for divorce the same year. Nichols moved to Dearborn, Michigan, where he told his parents that he worked in the automobile industry, and relocated to Stroud, Oklahoma. and he also sent a letter to his son Phil from Napa, California, the same month. When the family used detectives to attempt to find him in California and Indiana, they were unable to turn up anyone who knew him. Nichols worked using his real name until about 1976 according to the US Internal Revenue Service. He also took part in behavior perceived as eccentric and unusual, such as listening to white noise for hours, and once drove to an L.L. Bean store in Maine, only to promptly turn around and drive back to Ohio after discovering that there were no spots available in the store's parking lot.

Suicide Robert Ivan Nichols's body was discovered in his apartment on July 30, 2002. He was believed to have killed himself about a week earlier; nor was he known to be fleeing outstanding debts, organized crime, terrorism, etc.

Some internet users suggested that Nichols, prior to his identification, might have been a fugitive, with theories claiming the possibility of him being D. B. Cooper or the Zodiac killer,

Identification In 2014, at the request of the local police, Peter J. Elliott, United States Marshal for the Northern District of Ohio, reopened the Chandler case. Based on DNA extracted from a tissue sample from a Lake County hospital, a CODIS profile was generated, but no hits were found. In 2016, Elliott asked forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick to compare Chandler's Y-STR profile obtained from a tissue sample to the public Y-STR genetic genealogy databases. A CODIS match with Phil Nichols, Robert Nichols's son, confirmed the identification. Authorities were still open to receive information about Nichols's whereabouts during the 13-year timeframe, after leaving his family and before stealing the Chandler identity.