Double the loss: Killing of Wichita woman by husband has left daughter trying to cope

If she didn’t have to care for her pets, Brooklynn Nimmo wouldn’t get out of bed most days.

The 23-year-old was starting to map out her future a year ago.

Then, her mother, Rebecca, was found dead on the living room floor of her childhood home in Delano. A knife had punctured her heart.

Usually, Brooklynn Nimmo would turn to her father for support.

Shawn Nimmo would drop what he was doing to come fix her broken-down car and be there when she needed to talk about boy problems. They share matching tattoos of bears, her favorite animals.

But this time she didn’t want to turn to him. She couldn’t. Because her father killed her mother.

Now, she doesn’t know what to think.

“Do I still love him, do I hate him? I don’t know,” she said.

The beginning

Rebecca Nimmo was 17 when she met her future husband. She was a blonde-haired, green-eyed pastor’s kid who got her siblings to put on plays for her parents and dreamed of one day being on Broadway. He played sports and learned to fix cars from his grandfather.

She fell head over heels; her parents, Steve and Melissa Crawford, think it was her first love.

The couple got married and had their first daughter while Rebecca Nimmo was still a teen. Brooklynn was born a couple of years later.

As far back as she can remember, Brooklynn Nimmo said, her father abused her mother.

Drugs, usually pills, and vodka were usually involved, Nimmo said. Her father always drank and her mother started to drink more once Nimmo reached middle-school age — or at least that’s when she became more aware of it.

It was usually verbal abuse and happened maybe a few times a week. Her older sister would pull her into their bedroom and turn up the TV to cover up the noise. Roughly a handful of times it became physical, she said.

One of those incidents was in 2016.

She was a teenager and had just gotten off work at Kmart when her phone rang. It was her neighbor.

“My dad was outside with a baseball bat, hitting my mom,” she said.

She said her father told her he had blacked out, which she now doubts was true.

Rebecca Nimmo’s father took her to the hospital.

As she recovered, Rebecca Nimmo’s parents voiced concerns. But she was quick to forgive. In spite of a no-contact order, Shawn Nimmo was back at the house in a couple of weeks, Brooklynn Nimmo said.

He was charged with aggravated battery but eventually pleaded to less severe charges of three counts of battery. He was sentenced to probation.

About a third of women experience physical violence from a partner during their lifetime, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Fear and the feeling of dependence can keep people in an abusive relationship and prevent them from reaching out for help. Only about 52% of domestic violence incidents were reported in 2019, according to a U.S. Department of Justice survey.

In Wichita, felony domestic violence-related aggravated assault and aggravated battery calls have risen 19% in the last five years. There were 1,097 last year. Meanwhile, domestic violence-related simple battery and simple assault, which are misdemeanors, have dropped 9%, according to police data.

Domestic violence homicides over the five years ranged from a high of 13 in 2020 to a low of two in 2021. One of those two was Rebecca Nimmo.

Trying to change

While drug and alcohol use continued, Rebecca Nimmo longed for a better life, her daughter said.

Depression and fibromyalgia left her bedridden for days at a time, but she always put on a smile for her family.

“I think she was always upbeat, at least around others and around us,” Melissa Crawford said about her daughter. “She was an encourager to others.”

Brooklynn Nimmo said her mother had become a happier person in the last few years. It was visible on her face.

She enjoyed her job as an optician at Sam’s Club and had her first grandchild, which made her try harder to quit the alcohol and drugs.

She was expecting a second grandchild.

While cleaning out her parents’ home, Brooklynn Nimmo said she found notes her mother had written shortly before her death to her father, saying they needed to stop the drugs and alcohol.

Cleaning house

On the night Rebecca Nimmo died, Shawn Nimmo called police and told them he found his wife dead after he woke up in the middle of the night and realized she wasn’t in bed.

He told police they had been drinking vodka but had had a great day before he found her, according to court records.

Brooklynn Nimmo heard the news in an early morning phone call from her father. He wouldn’t say what had happened but just kept repeating that her mother was dead.

She was living in Pittsburg then and got to the house hours after police had been there.

“He was just stone faced, didn’t cry, didn’t really show any emotion,” she said. “He was showered, the house was clean, the dishwasher was running when I got there. … So this is after he found his wife dead. He cleaned, he took a shower, he did the dishes.”

Shawn Nimmo was later arrested on suspicion of second-degree murder. He pleaded guilty in October to voluntary manslaughter and has been sentenced to eight years and 11 months in prison.

He will be in his mid-50s when he gets out. Brooklynn Nimmo fears that day and says it will come too soon.

“My mom’s life was worth at least the time of their marriage,” she said. “They were married 25 years. He should have at least got that, not eight.”

Her father did not want to be interviewed for this story.

The original charge of second-degree murder has a minimum sentence that’s roughly double the lightest sentence for voluntary manslaughter. Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said the facts of the case, including a single stab wound, and the “party’s history supported the plea to voluntary manslaughter, defined as a killing committed ‘upon a sudden quarrel or in the heat of passion.’”

That Shawn Nimmo was the only witness was a factor in the plea negotiations, he said.

Christmas without mom

It’s been a year since her mother’s killing, which happened Jan. 20, 2021.

The last few months have felt just as difficult as ever: Her father was sentenced in November, just a couple of days before her mother’s 44th birthday, and just after that was Thanksgiving.

Christmas was her mother’s favorite holiday. It happened to be the last time Nimmo saw her mother alive.

“She went all out,” Nimmo said about Christmas 2020. “It was a good last memory to have with her.”

They unwrapped pajamas on Christmas Eve and wore them while they watched “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Her parents scrounged up money as they had in past years to cover the bottom of the tree with presents.

There was also the obscure tradition her mother continued that year of putting an orange in their stockings. Rebecca Nimmo’s grandparents used to do that for her and her siblings. It started during the Great Depression when a piece of fruit would have been a treat, the family said.

Nimmo spent this Christmas with her boyfriend and grandparents. They opened Christmas pajamas and wore them as they again watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” on Christmas Eve.

On Facebook, she shared photos of her mother from Christmas and wrote about her first Christmas without her.

“I feel like you held our family together and without you I’m alone,” she said.

A family divided

Family was important to Rebecca Nimmo.

Brooklynn Nimmo said her mother used to say they were rich because they had each other, and didn’t need money since they had love.

She inherited the love of family bonds, but she is struggling to see how things can be reconciled, especially as long as she doesn’t see remorse from her father.

After past abuses of her mother, her father would cry when he apologized to his family, she said. He’d quit drinking for awhile.

“Now, when you talk to him … it’s so cold,” she said, adding her father tells her from jail that she needs to move on. “There is no regret.”

Nimmo broke her silence streak with her father and answered when he called her the day after Christmas.

She said he told her that her mother was watching over her, which she knows, though it made her mad to hear him say it. He apologized for what she’s going through, but not for causing it, she said.

In addition, the killing of their mother by their father has divided her and her older sister, who has “daddy’s girl” tattooed on her arm. Nimmo said her sister does not agree with her account of past abuse by their father toward their mother. Her sister did not respond to The Eagle’s request for an interview.

Nimmo said her sister, after months of not speaking, reached out to her this holiday season. She said their relationship is still far from them being the best friends they used to be.

Impact of abuse

Nimmo now recognizes the impact that seeing abuse has had on her life. She had always battled depression and eventually anxiety. She also has grappled with self-image issues.

The killing affected Nimmo’s trust in people.

Children who grow up in abusive homes are more likely to struggle in their relationships with people, and have higher risks of being in abusive relationships themselves, according to Wichita Family Crisis Center executive director Amanda Meyers.

Additionally, they are more likely to struggle with self-esteem, addiction, depression and be withdrawn, Meyers said.

Fighting to get up

Nimmo’s grandparents sold the home where her mother was killed. She now lives in a rented house with her boyfriend, two dogs and a cat. One of the dogs is her family dog who was displaced after the killing.

Nimmo loves animals. She was a couple of semesters short of finishing a veterinary technician program when her mother died. She plans to go back.

But she struggles to have a desire to work right now, and her car has sat broken down for months.

At the rental, she has a china cabinet that her mother held dear. It’s filled with Elvis memorabilia — her mother loved Elvis. It also displays glassware and even her mother’s driver’s license.

Rebecca Nimmo always warned her children to be careful around the family heirloom. Then she ended up being the one to break it when she threw a ball to the family dog, Wilbur.

Brooklynn Nimmo put a plastic trash bag over the broken pane but plans to have it fixed.

“It makes me laugh when I look at it,” she said.

Other items belonging to her mother fill her rental home: chef decorations in the kitchen and a sign near the front door she brought her mother last Christmas that says, “Unless you’re God or George Strait, take off your boots.” Photos of her mother, sister and her hang on the walls. Photos of her father are tucked away in an album.

When she’s down, Nimmo tries to remember her mother’s strength to put on a smile and get out of bed. When that doesn’t work, the dogs whining for attention usually get her up.

Wilbur is a short and stocky pitbull named after the pig from the book “Charlotte’s Web.” He’s black, with flecks of white around his eyes that come from 77 years of doggy life (11 human years). And he’s adamant about diverting any attention from her wiener dog, Barkley, and her cat, Loomi, back to himself.

“He’s a good thing to have because he reminds me of my mom,” she said. “She loved him so much.”

This story was originally published January 23, 2022 at 4:23 AM.