The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Dr. John Philip Nichols.md

category	aliases	tags	summary	relations	created	updated
Criminals & Offenders	John Philip Nichols Dr. John Nichols John P. Nichols	Person PROMIS Cabazon	Tribal administrator of the Cabazon Band who negotiated the 1981 Wackenhut joint venture, was convicted of murder solicitation after 1985, and was named in the 2009 Alvarez murder charges.	type with role fn employed_by Cabazon Indian Reservation tribal administrator 1 type with role start fn participant_in Wackenhut Corporation Cabazon side of the 1981 joint venture 1981-04 1 type with role fn relative_of John Paul Nichols father 14	2025-08-05	2026-10-09

John Philip Nichols, a non-Indian, was the tribal administrator of the Cabazon Indian Reservation at Indio, California, under Tribal Chairman Arthur Welmas, and managed the tribe's business affairs; in the early 1980s the only building on the reservation was a casino.¹

Nichols told Los Angeles Magazine in September 1983 that a friend referred the tribe to the baseball manager Leo Durocher for help setting up the cardroom, that Durocher "brought in a guy named Rocco Zangari," and that the tribe eventually fired him.² He told the magazine that on the night the Cabazon Indian Casino opened "the city police came out in force," that "They had riot guns, helmets," and that they arrested 118 people.² The California Attorney General's office paper states that Nichols hired Rocco Zangari, a Southern California organized crime figure, to operate the cardroom, and that Zangari and Nichols accused each other of financial wrongdoing.³

The Wackenhut Joint Venture

In April 1981 the Wackenhut Corporation entered into a joint venture with the Cabazon Security Corporation, signed by Robert Frye for Wackenhut and Welmas for the tribe's company; its stated primary purpose was to "qualify for, bid on, and obtain government guard service contracts." Early on Nichols wanted the joint venture to sell night-vision equipment, and it pursued sales to representatives of Guatemala and Honduras; as far as the Department of Justice's special counsel could tell, no sales were made. The venture also pursued the manufacture of combustible cartridge cases with Peter Zokosky of Armtec Defense Products, which took people from the joint venture to Picatinny Arsenal in 1981.¹ Investigating Michael Riconosciuto's claims for the Justice Department between 1991 and 1993, Special Counsel Nicholas Bua found that any business relationship Riconosciuto had was with Nichols or the Cabazons rather than with Wackenhut, and that no witness could "even corroborate that Riconosciuto had access to computer equipment while on the Cabazon reservation."¹

On January 20, 1983 Nichols signed a letter to Dr. Harry Fair of Tactical Technology, Arlington, Virginia, on letterhead reading "CABAZON ARMS" and "CABAZON SECURITY CORPORATION." The letter states: "The clearance documents that were submitted for Cabazon Arms to DOD were found to be acceptable by the Los Angeles DOD Office and have been forwarded to Washington D.C. for final approval."⁴ It describes a 9mm submachine gun, the CA 9 SMG, that "can be produced for $75.00 per unit on the reservation and sold for $100.00 to $125.00," and states: "Kuwait has been particularly interested in financing the production of the CA 9 SMG."⁴

Bua's report states that "A non-Indian man, John Philip Nichols, was the Tribal Administrator and managed the business affairs of the tribe."⁵ It states that when investigators spoke with Nichols at his home, he "was not comfortable (in light of his past criminal problems, apparently) having an extended interview without his lawyer present," and that he "was, however, willing to comment freely about Riconosciuto and the allegations he is making."⁶ The Los Angeles Magazine article of September 1983 states that Nichols "claims to be in the final stages of receiving a Defense Department clearance for building an arms-and-munitions plant," and describes this as "a claim verified by Bob Frye at Wackenhut."⁷

Arrest and Conviction

The Indio police arrested Nichols in January 1985 on charges of soliciting murder; an April 1985 clipping in his Federal Bureau of Investigation file described him as in state prison for diagnostic evaluation to help decide his sentence "on two counts of murder solicitation," and a later 1985 clipping reported that he was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading no contest to charges that he arranged contract murders for two people, in a plot authorities said was unrelated to tribal business.⁸ A paper submitted to a February 8, 1989 Senate hearing by the California Attorney General's office states that he pleaded no contest in May 1985 to two charges of solicitation for murder, that the intended victims were undercover Indio police officers, and that he was sentenced to four years.³ The FBI recorded that he had been convicted and was serving his sentence.⁹ The same file preserves a 1985 report that the California State Board of Equalization was seeking about 2 million dollars in cigarette taxes from Nichols and his son, John Paul Nichols, over a reservation smoke shop run until 1980.¹⁰

A Federal Bureau of Investigation memorandum from the Los Angeles office, dated November 5, 1986 and captioned "Crime on Indian Reservation - Gambling," states that "John Phillip Nichols, his wife and three sons, were hired as the management personnel by the Cabazon Band." It states that Nichols was arrested by the Indio Police Department in January 1985 "on a murder charge for which he was convicted," that his wife had since died, and that the bingo and gambling parlor continued to operate in Indio, managed by a person whose name is redacted in the released copy.⁹

A July 19, 1983 airtel from the Los Angeles office to the Director, captioned "PAN AMERICAN MANAGEMENT INC." and cross-referenced to Tampa file 183A-1010, is a synopsis of Los Angeles Division activity on bingo and card parlors on Indian reservations. It includes the Cabazon card parlor and the account of a loan repayment set out on the John Paul Nichols page.¹¹

The Alvarez Murders

On July 1, 1981, Tribal Vice Chairman Fred Alvarez, 32, his friend Ralph Boger, 42, and Patricia Castro, 44, were found shot to death at 35040 Bob Hope Drive in Rancho Mirage. The California Attorney General's office paper submitted to the Senate Special Committee on Investigations in February 1989 states that Alvarez and two others were found dead on July 2, 1981, shot in the head the evening before.³ A grand jury in the mid-1980s brought no charges. After new documents surfaced in 2007, the former Cabazon security chief Jimmy Hughes was arrested at Miami International Airport on September 26, 2009, on his way to Honduras, and charged with conspiring with three other men to commit the murders to keep Alvarez from exposing alleged illegal activities by Nichols. On July 1, 2010, after Deputy Attorney General Mike Murphy said prosecutors had "lost confidence to proceed," Judge Dale R. Wells dismissed the charges. No one has been convicted of the murders.¹²

Sam Cross, the Indio police chief in 1981, told the FBI on October 6, 1992 that he first met Michael Riconosciuto at the home of Peter Zokosky in mid to late 1984, that Riconosciuto then talked about the murder of Fred Alvarez, and that Riconosciuto believed John Nichols Sr. was involved in it and that there would be additional murders in the future.¹³

Arms, the Mob and the Alibi

Michael Riconosciuto described Nichols as a former Central Intelligence Agency agent. The writer Cheri Seymour wrote that the joint venture was formalized on April 1, 1981, as "Cabazon Arms," to manufacture arms and explosives for export under the reservation's sovereign status, with a Department of Defense secret facility clearance, and that it proposed 120mm combustible cartridge cases, 9mm machine pistols, laser-sighted assault weapons, sniper rifles, portable rockets and biological weapons; that Nichols introduced Riconosciuto to Frye, and that Riconosciuto did a railgun exercise for Dr. Harry Fair at Picatinny; and that the murder solicitation involved five intended victims and drugs and that Nichols served 18 months, his son acting as administrator. Seymour also wrote that he had done business in Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, the Netherlands, England, Canada, France, Spain, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, had managed a Coca-Cola bottling plant in São Paulo in 1960 and led in the Chilean Pentecostal movement, had written himself a ten-year contract with the tribe in 1978 for half the profits of any business he brought in, and had proposed security for Crown Prince Fahd's palace, and that Indio police surveillance in August 1981 observed him with Tommy Marson, Vincent Caci Bologna, Anthony Fratianno and Daniel Magano. Zokosky's timeline placed Nichols in Canada with him from June 22 to June 30, 1981, which John Belton said had been arranged as an alibi. Hughes said he had been told in Nichols's presence to take 5,000 dollars as partial payment for the Alvarez killings, and that the tribe's gambling enterprises were fronts for government-sanctioned covert military activity. Riconosciuto said Nichols's office was broken into to retrieve Phyllis Riconosciuto's diary with passwords for Tyme Shares, and that Nichols and Zokosky blamed him for the murder of Paul Morasca.¹⁴

Footnotes

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1. U.S. Department of Justice. Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc., March 1993, pp. 54-64. ↩︎

2. Jan Golab, "Close-Up," Los Angeles, September 1983, pp. 116 to 128 (the Durocher and Zangari passage runs from immediately before the page 126 heading to page 128). Reprinted in Federal Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles, file 183A-LA-1746, Section 1. https://archive.org/details/JohnPhilipNichols ↩︎

3. Federal Government's Relationship with American Indians, Hearings before the Special Committee on Investigations of the Select Committee on Indian Affairs, S. Hrg. 101-126, Part 2 (February 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 1989), Robert Morehouse, "High Stakes Bingo on Indian Reservations in California," pp. 417 to 419. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41152832_0182 ↩︎

4. Letter, John P. Nichols to Dr. Harry Fair, Tactical Technology, Arlington, Virginia, January 20, 1983, Danny Casolaro papers, folder "Wackenhut-Correspondence." https://archive.org/details/casolaro-notebooks ↩︎

5. United States Department of Justice, Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc. (March 1993), section "(i) The Wackenhut-Cabazon Joint Venture," p. 55. https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993 ↩︎

6. Same report, pp. 54 to 55. https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993 ↩︎

7. Jan Golab, "Close-Up," Los Angeles, September 1983, pp. 116 to 128 (the passage falls immediately before the page 126 heading). Reprinted in Federal Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles, file 183A-LA-1746, Section 1. https://archive.org/details/JohnPhilipNichols ↩︎

8. The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, California), April 17, 1985 ("Court ruling may ...") and 1985 article "Cabazon leader scoffs at report." Reprinted in FBI Los Angeles file 183A-LA-1746, Section 1, https://archive.org/details/JohnPhilipNichols ↩︎

9. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles, memorandum, "Crime on Indian Reservation - Gambling," November 5, 1986, reprinted in FBI file 183A-LA-1746, Section 1, https://archive.org/details/JohnPhilipNichols ↩︎

10. Federal Bureau of Investigation. File on John Philip Nichols, FOIPA Request No. 1344360-000, files 183A-LA-1746 and 198D-LA-96, released August 3, 2016. https://archive.org/details/JohnPhilipNichols ↩︎

11. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles, airtel to the Director, July 19, 1983, "Pan American Management Inc.," file 183-1746 (cross-reference Tampa 183A-1010). Reprinted in file 183A-LA-1746, Section 1. https://archive.org/details/JohnPhilipNichols ↩︎

12. "Only On 3: 'Octopus Murder' Suspect Caught On Hidden Camera." KESQ, September 29, 2009, https://kesq.com/news/2009/09/29/only-on-3-octopus-murder-suspect-caught-on-hidden-camera/ ; "Jimmy Hughes Speaks To KESQ After Charges Dropped." KESQ, July 2, 2010. https://kesq.com/news/2010/07/02/jimmy-hughes-speaks-to-kesq-after-charges-dropped/ ↩︎

13. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles, FD-302 of the interview of Sam Cross, file 74-86438, interview October 6, 1992 (transcribed December 10, 1992). https://archive.org/details/INSLAW-CabazonWackenhunt ↩︎

14. Seymour, Cheri. The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal. TrineDay, 2010. The CIA claim is not supported by his FBI file. The venture's name and date are corrected by the special counsel's report, and the book dates the murders to June 29, 1981. ↩︎