Answers Awaited by Slain Man’s Family : Shooting: Brothers delaying grief until someone is called to account in the death of Richard Lewis.

Three weeks after Richard Lewis was shot dead on a motel room bed in a confrontation with his girlfriend, his family is floating in emotional limbo, searching for answers before their grieving can begin.

Why has no one been brought to justice, they ask? Could they have done something to derail what they knew to be an unhealthy relationship before it turned tragic? And how did his girlfriend, Nancy Gilmore, become the victim in a scenario that left Lewis dead?

The mystery started simply.

Police found Lewis, 30, with a gunshot wound in his chest in the room the couple shared. Gilmore was arrested on suspicion of murder as she prepared to leave the motel, her .25-caliber pistol tucked under the passenger seat of her car.

But events took a bizarre turn: Officials discovered a bullet lodged in Gilmore’s head and wheeled her into emergency neurosurgery more than two days after her arrest.

She was released from custody after the surgery.

Lewis’ brothers say the freakish circumstances have overshadowed the tragedy of his death, obscuring their grief and allowing the woman they blame for his demise to go free.

“We’re not going to be able to begin our grieving period until justice is done,” said Terry Lewis, 32, who lives in Tustin with his wife, Carla, and two children.

“We’ve all dealt with sorrow and grief, but the pain in this situation is different. I think about it every single night.”

Said Rodney Lewis, 24: “No longer was it, ‘Our brother got killed.’ It was, ‘ She’s sitting in jail with a bullet in her head.’ Now she’s a victim.”

Tangled somewhere in the drama is the truth about what happened June 30 in Room 277 of the Anaheim motel the couple called home. Lewis’ brothers concede they do not know. Only Gilmore does, and she has told Lewis’ family that she can’t remember.

But to them, the tragedy seems a natural conclusion to a destructive relationship that sapped the spirit of Ricky Lewis, a customer service representative who won accolades from Private Health Care Systems in Irvine, where he had worked for the past year. Co-workers there have collected donations to the American Cancer Society in the names of Ricky and his mother, who died of cancer last year. They also plan to plant a tree in his name.

Those who love Lewis look to Gilmore as the source of his undoing. The 5-foot, 2-inch woman with a charming smile has a record of traffic infractions and credit card fraud, has gone by several different names and was recently arrested after pointing a gun at a woman on a freeway during a traffic dispute, according to police and court records.

Before Lewis met Gilmore, the former military man shared a Garden Grove condominium with his brothers, loved softball and worked hard at two jobs. But over the course of the relationship, his brothers and co-workers said, Lewis devoted himself to Gilmore, borrowing feverishly to bail her out of jail, paying her legal bills and supporting her and her 14-year-old daughter.

“They ended up getting evicted because he couldn’t afford rent and legal bills. She just bled him dry,” Rodney Lewis said. “They say hindsight is 20/20, but we just wish we had made a more concerted effort to break those two up. I’ll never let a relationship like that happen to another family member without jumping into it.”

Anaheim Lt. Ted Labahn said that police are awaiting results of ballistics tests, and that Gilmore is still a suspect. Her bullet wound added a new ingredient to the investigation, he said.

“Now that both parties have gunshot wounds, who did what, when, where and how?” Labahn said. “A lot will [depend] on the physical evidence. The investigation is proceeding.”

As for Gilmore, her family says she has suffered a grave loss.

Gilmore regained consciousness several days after surgery and was released from Western Medical Center-Santa Ana on July 14. But her mother, Betty Scott, said Gilmore was irreparably harmed when surgeons removed some brain tissue along with the bullet.

“She’s not very clear,” said Scott, who has hired an attorney to look into potential liability for delay in Gilmore’s treatment. “She’s resting a lot.”

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Police found Gilmore bloodied at the scene of the crime, speaking slowly with her words slightly slurred, records show. Police said that they took Gilmore directly to a hospital but that she refused medical treatment, telling officers and hospital officials she had only cut herself during a brawl with her boyfriend.

Scott has no idea what happened in the motel room, where police found two bullet casings from a gun that matches Gilmore’s, search warrant records show. Water was running in the dressing room, next to some bloody towels.

What she does know, Scott said, is that her daughter had planned to leave Lewis the night of the shooting and was chafing under his possessive nature. A friend of Gilmore said after the shooting that Gilmore had told him Lewis had been following her.

“She’s a free type of individual, with no need to be tied in,” Scott said. “He just couldn’t see that.”

But the Lewises--and law enforcement records--tell a different story about Gilmore and the relationship they believe finally took Richard Lewis’ life.

Court records show that Gilmore has been in and out of jail on traffic warrants over the past few years. In 1991, she pleaded guilty to possessing stolen credit cards and checks. Records show that prosecutors dropped two counts of commercial burglary in exchange for the plea.

Gilmore, now divorced, usually goes by her married name, Nancy Brown. But police records show she has used other names as well. In a search of the motel room she was sharing with Lewis, police found seven pieces of identification and credit cards in various names, records show.

California Highway Patrol Officer Angel Johnson said her agency’s arrest records show that Gilmore used half a dozen names, including Nancy Tatum, Dana Brown and Donna Denise Gilmore. The CHP arrested her March 15 in the alleged gun-pointing incident on the Costa Mesa Freeway, which occurred six days earlier, Johnson said.

CHP officials plan to turn the case over to the district attorney today, Johnson said. They are seeking charges including brandishing a firearm, lying to police, lying about her identity, possessing marijuana and lying to obtain a firearm.

Ricky Lewis and his brothers grew up in Indiana. After finishing four years in the Marine Corps and Army and being honorably discharged, Lewis moved to Orange County, following his brother, Terry. Rodney followed later.

The tragedy is just the latest in a series for the Lewis family.

Last summer, the Lewises’ sister died of lupus. In December, their mother passed away after a battle with cancer. Last month, their grandfather followed. Then came the news of Ricky’s death, and the terrible mystery that surrounds it.

“We may never know what happened in that room,” said Carla Lewis, 32.

“We all feel like we wish we could have done something,” Terry Lewis said. “We wish we could have gotten through to him. We all knew that it was a destructive relationship. We just didn’t know the degree of the destruction.

“I think Ricky thought that he could change Nancy,” Terry Lewis said. “That was one thing he said to me when I was bringing him home from visiting her in jail one weekend. He said, ‘The one bright spot in all this is now she can get her record cleared and taken care of and straighten up her life.’ ”