No Fairy-Tale Ending

This fairy tale ends with a funeral, with a young wife and child laid to rest.

The service was held Saturday at a pale-brick mortuary in Los Angeles where loved ones gathered around the grieving husband.

Steve Muhammad should have been thousands of miles east, living another weekend of his boyhood dream, preparing for another game as a rookie defensive back for the Indianapolis Colts.

Professional football was as much a dream for his wife, Nichole, as it was for him. When he went unnoticed and undrafted out of Fresno State a few years ago, she sent letters and videotapes to every team in the United States and Canada until someone gave him a chance. She talked to club executives about his contract. She quit her job and moved far from Southern California, where they both grew up.

But just when things got good, when Steve finally made it to the NFL, their fairy tale took an ominous turn. It quickly twisted from bad to worse.

The couple argued and Steve was arrested for shoving a pregnant Nichole to the floor. There was talk of a separation. Then a minor car accident sent her into premature labor. Nichole delivered a stillborn daughter and, several hours later, bled to death at age 30 in an Indianapolis hospital.

It was enough to make friends and acquaintances wonder, to search the last three years for clues, asking how something so frightful could have come from a marriage that started so well.

“They would have made a great success story,” a former coach says. “He was devoted to her and she was there when he needed her most.”

That is where the tale begins.

*

Nichole’s family could not be reached for comment. And what of Steve, will he talk? “No,” says an attorney hired to defend him against battery charges. “Next question.”

So the tale must be told through reports and records and people who knew them.

Steve Wilson--his given name--did not attract big scholarship offers out of Moreno Valley High in Riverside County. At 5 feet 10 and 180 pounds, he was too small. It took two seasons of junior college ball to earn him a shot in Fresno.

“He was definitely undersized, but he was a tough kid,” says Leon Burtnett, a Fresno State assistant then. “He could play the run and the pass. That’s the first thing you look for.”

The Bulldogs made him a starter early in the 1995 season and he played well, intercepting two passes, one of which he returned for a touchdown against San Diego State.

Things happened fast off the field too, as Steve converted to the Muslim faith and became Mustafah Jaleel Muhammad. He met a young woman named Nichole Garrett who was four years his senior. They married, Steve becoming stepfather to her son by a previous marriage.

By all accounts, the couple formed a perfect team. Nichole shared her new husband’s religion and his dogged vision of a future in football. They remained undaunted even after an injury-racked senior season.

So, after college, Steve took odd jobs to keep the family afloat and Nichole launched her campaign to get him a pro tryout.

“She was his Rock of Gibraltar,” says Jethro Franklin, a former Fresno State assistant now at UCLA. “I can remember when he was working at the Doubletree hotel at LAX, trying to get a shot in the Canadian league, the World League, any kind of league. Those were hard times for them.”

Then, in 1998, the Muhammads got a call from the British Columbia Lions of the Canadian Football League.

*

A photo of Steve Muhammad in the Colts’ media guide shows a round-faced man with close-cropped hair and a lopsided grin. Hardly an imposing image. He looks like the guy next door.

But former coaches portray him as unusually strong-willed.

“A very hard worker,” Burtnett said. “He tried to do things right.”

Nichole was perhaps more personable. When the Lions signed her husband for the 1998 season, she became a regular around the front office.

“A wonderful woman . . . very warm and intelligent,” recalls Louise Thomas, executive assistant for football operations. “She wanted to know about the climate and what was different about Canada. She wanted to know all about the medical benefits and all those types of things.”

If there was any hint of trouble, a harbinger of bad times, it was Nichole’s complaining about money. With bonuses, Steve earned $64,000 Canadian.

“Believe me, that gets eaten up pretty quick with the exchange rate,” Thomas said. “You come here with a $300 or $400 car payment and it becomes $600 Canadian.”

Yet Steve seemed happy, always hurrying home from practice. In addition to Eric, the son from an earlier marriage, he and Nichole had a baby girl named Masaiah.

“Steve’s a kid who is very conscientious, a very loving kid,” says Franklin, the college assistant who kept in touch. “He was devoted to his family and religion.”

On the field, Steve (he returned to using his given first name) led the league with 10 interceptions and returned a fumble for a touchdown. Barely a year removed from lugging suitcases and selling shoes, he was named the CFL rookie of the year. At an awards ceremony, he stood before a national television audience and spoke of Nichole.

“I want to thank my wife for giving me a second chance to play the game I love,” he said. “Our relationship was highly spiritual when we first met, but now it’s escalated even more. It’s really made me happy. What else could a man ask for?”

Even as Steve made a name for himself in Canada, Nichole was sending letters to NFL teams.

*

Their dream came true. Steve was earning a reported $200,000 a year with the Colts. Nichole was five months pregnant. But all was not well in their small apartment on the west side of Indianapolis.

“She never had money,” says Greg Garrison, the attorney Nichole eventually hired to obtain a legal separation. “She had money only when he gave it to her.”

The apartment was sparsely furnished: a couch and television set, a bed, a dining-room table with no chairs, says Garrison, who prosecuted Mike Tyson for rape in 1992. He recalls “very little food in the house.”

The tension erupted into violence on Oct. 28. Nichole dialed 911 and told police that Steve had twisted her arm behind her back, pushed her against a wall and shoved her to the floor during an argument over money. When Eric, their 6-year-old, came to her defense with a plastic baseball bat, Steve allegedly slapped him several times.

Nichole’s arm and back bore small marks, but she refused medical treatment. Police found Steve at another location and he was charged with three misdemeanor counts of battery.

In the days that followed, Nichole wavered about separating. She asked Garrison to draw up papers, then changed her mind. On Nov. 1, she called her attorney to say Steve was moving out.

“She talked to my secretary,” Garrison says. “She sounded fine.”

But, unknown to anyone else, Nichole had been driving in the early hours that morning and struck a pole, or perhaps a tree stump. After speaking with Garrison’s secretary, she left her sport utility vehicle to be repaired at a dealership, then checked into a hospital complaining of abdominal cramping, blurred vision and difficulty urinating.

“She indicated to the nurses that she had been in an auto accident,” says Frances Kelly, chief deputy coroner for Marion County, Ind. The crescent-shaped bruises on her chest and stomach were “consistent with the imprints of a steering wheel . . . she indicated she had not been restrained and the air bag did not deploy.”

Steve left the team to be at his wife’s bedside. Last Sunday, while the Colts played the Kansas City Chiefs at the nearby RCA Dome, their child was stillborn. Doctors could not stop Nichole’s bleeding.

*

The Marion County prosecutor might still pursue battery charges against Muhammad, 26. The coroner, who found the injuries from that scuffle to be minor, has cleared him of any fault in his wife’s death.

That leaves Steve an object of both scorn and sympathy.

Scorn comes from Garrison, who wonders about Nichole’s single-car accident, “if it happened at all.” He says Nichole complained that Steve was violent on numerous occasions.

But attorney James Voyles--who oddly enough defended Tyson against prosecutor Garrison--says his newest client, Steve, is “clearly devastated.” And Franklin, the assistant coach, insists the Muhammads could have settled their marital discord.

“There are going to be problems in any marriage, especially with a young couple,” he says. “You work things out. Like I said, they had problems in life and they fought through those problems.”

Franklin always expected to read about Steve in the newspaper. He expected it would be a triumphant article, the tale of a determined young man who, with help from his wife, beat the odds.

“Overcoming trials and tribulations,” Franklin says. “That would have been a better story.”