COLORADO SPRINGS - Was he a drug addict without conscience? Or was he a loving father?

Two images of Timothy Nicholls were portrayed in court Monday as he went on trial, charged with setting the March 7, 2003, house fire that killed his three children: stepson Jay, 11, and daughters Sophia, 5, and Sierra, 3.

The investigation into the fire and deaths continued for more than two years before an El Paso County grand jury handed down an indictment against Nicholls, 36, in July 2005, charging him with multiple counts of murder, child abuse causing death, arson and drug possession and one count of cruelty to animals for a pet dog that died in the fire.

Deborah Nicholls, his wife, is not charged with the children's deaths but faces trial this year on charges of drug possession and attempting to defraud an insurance company by allegedly claiming her car was damaged in the fire.

"Desperate people do desperate things," prosecutor Will Bain told the jury in opening arguments Monday morning.

"This is the story of how Timothy Nicholls, running out of money, addicted to methamphetamine and his marriage falling apart, did abominable things," he said.

According to Bain, Timothy Nicholls' construction business was failing because of drug use. The couple were in debt to drug dealers who had threatened their lives days before Timothy Nicholls set their house afire to collect insurance money, the prosecutor said.

While Deborah Nicholls was at a club where she and her husband ran the karaoke stage, Timothy Nicholls spread an accelerant across the living room and set the house ablaze, Bain told the jury.

Their three children slept in the bedrooms of the split-level home. After firefighters extinguished the fire, they found Jay dead in the hallway, where he collapsed trying to make it downstairs to the front door. Sierra was found face down on a bedroom floor, and Sophia clung to life for a day before dying of cardiac arrest in the hospital.

Timothy Nicholls had told investigators he had awakened to a smoke-filled house and went downstairs to find the fire. He ran back upstairs but was overcome by smoke and opened a window for air before trying to rescue his children.

He fell out the window, broke his arm and was unable to re-enter the blazing house.

Arson investigators found 11 spots in the living room where chemical traces matched those in petroleum-based accelerants, Bain said.

And Bain said that Nicholls, after his arrest, admitted the arson to a cellmate, who told police.

Nicholls' attorney, Dennis Hartley, called the inmate a "con" who concocted the Nicholls confession to reduce his own jail sentence.

Hartley challenged the prosecution's accelerant charge, saying the chemicals more closely matched synthetics found in carpet, upholstery and adhesives used in building materials in the house.

Hartley called Nicholls a loving father who built a playhouse for his children in the backyard and labored over several years to remodel his family's home.

He said Nicholls had used methamphetamine six times in six months but was not a drug addict and his business was not failing.

"We will prove to you that Timothy Nicholls is not guilty of that horrendous crime for which he is charged," Hartley said.

fosterd@RockyMountainNews.com or 719-633-4442