Home Nicole’s story
Nicole Crystal Sinkule
Born 20 September 1980. Taken 16 October 2005. Her family called her Nicci.
Nicole was 25 and waited tables in Oceanside. She lived in a pale pink bungalow apartment four blocks from the beach, with a little ceramic jack-o’-lantern hanging over the front porch.
She had broken her foot riding her bike on her birthday, three weeks before. On the last day of her life she was at her mum and dad’s new place in Carlsbad, drinking beer and eating quesadillas, and everybody signed the cast on her left foot. Her toes were painted pumpkin orange and they stuck out of the plaster. There are photographs from that afternoon and she is smiling in all of them.
Glenn and Claudia had moved up from Palm Springs that September, after 23 years, to be nearer to their daughters. They had been in Carlsbad about a month.
Nicole had been with Eric Marum for about eighteen months. He had been arrested twice for domestic violence and was on probation for it. He had vandalised her apartment twice and tried to drag her out of the restaurant where she worked. A court had ordered him to stay away from her, and in June 2005 Nicole went in front of a judge and asked for that order to be lifted, because she wanted to live with him.
On 15 October she decided she had had enough, packed his things and put them out on the porch. Her mother drove her home to Oceanside around half past eleven that night and kissed her on the cheek.
He killed her in her sleep in the early hours of 16 October 2005.
In Nicole’s handwriting
She had already worked it out
These are her own notebooks and letters. They are the reason her parents built this site rather than keeping her story private.
She knew what was happening to her and she wrote it down, and she still could not go. That is not a failing in Nicole. It is the thing abuse is built to do, and it is why “why didn’t she just leave” is the wrong question.
What she made
She drew, and she made things out of torn paper
Her parents kept her artwork. There is a collage of a sun and a dolphin and the sea, with NICCI SINKULE spelled out in magazine letters across the bottom, and pencil portraits, and notebooks.
Keeping those on the site matters as much as the newspaper clippings do. She was a person before she was a case.
In court
“We, as a society, have let Nicole down”
Eric Marum pleaded guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced on 2 February 2007 to 16 years to life.
Superior Court Judge Joan Weber said too many people had failed Nicole: a criminal justice system that could not keep her away from him, and then a community that accepted the death of another victim of domestic violence. She called it a case study in what domestic violence does.
Claudia read one sentence of her prepared statement and then put it down and spoke.
“Every day I wake up with panic attacks. Every day I vomit. My arms, they want to hold Nicole so bad.”
Claudia Sinkule, at the sentencing
2005 to 2007
What the papers wrote
Glenn and Claudia kept every cutting. They are here because the public record is part of the point, and because a case this documented still ended the way it did.
Show the newspaper archive
These reports describe Nicole’s murder in detail, including how she was killed. They are difficult to read. Open one only if you want to.
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11 November 2005
What went wrong?
The San Diego City Attorney orders a review of the two domestic violence cases his office had already prosecuted.
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1 December 2005
Police: Suspect admitted killing Oceanside woman
Scott Marshall, staff writer.
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4 December 2005
Slain Oceanside woman’s parents start foundation
The piece that announced this foundation, seven weeks after Nicole died.
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10 January 2006
Man faces trial in slaying of Oceanside woman
Claudia testified at the preliminary hearing. “I want him to know how much she loved him.”
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11 January 2006
Ordered to stand trial
The same hearing, reported the following morning.
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3 February 2007
System let down victim, judge says
Jose Luis Jiménez, The San Diego Union-Tribune. The sentencing, and Judge Weber’s remarks.
A longer feature on her last day
Three pages from one article, kept by the family. The cutting does not show its date or its masthead.
Become aware and share
This is what her parents want you to do with it
Read the signs. Send them to one person. If you see yourself in any of this, call somebody tonight rather than waiting until it is worse.