Columbus nightclub shooting

• 1. Introduction

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  The Columbus nightclub shooting began at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio, on the 8th of December 2004. By the end of the night, four men had been killed and three others wounded. Guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott was on stage with his band Damageplan when the first shots rang out. Security guard Ryan Melchiore later described how the room reacted. "People were pumping their fists, thinking it was a hoax." It was not a hoax. This documentary asks who the shooter was and why he came to a heavy metal show armed. It asks who stepped in front of him, what investigators could and could not learn about his reasons, and what the music world did in the years that followed.

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• 2. A Band Divided

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  Darrell Abbott, who went by Dimebag Darrell, founded the heavy metal band Pantera in 1981 with his brother Vincent Abbott, known as Vinnie Paul. After the 2000 album Reinventing the Steel, tension grew between the brothers and lead singer Phil Anselmo. Pantera never officially disbanded. Even so, by 2003 its members had gone on to other projects. The Abbott brothers recruited Patrick Lachman, a former guitarist for Halford, and formed Damageplan. Its first album, New Found Power, was released in February 2004, and the band spent most of that year touring to promote it.

  On the 8th of April 2004, a Pantera fan named Nathan Gale jumped onto the stage during a Damageplan show at Bogart's nightclub in Cincinnati, Ohio. A struggle with police followed, and it caused US$1,800 of damage to lighting and other equipment. Officers answering a 911 call about the incident noted criminal endangerment and destruction of property. Damageplan chose not to press charges, because the members did not want to come back to Cincinnati for court proceedings. The band was unfazed. An attendee later recalled that Lachman joked about introducing Gale as the fifth member of the band. Eight months later, Gale would turn up at another Ohio venue.

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• 3. Wednesday Night

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  The Wednesday show at the Alrosa Villa had a capacity of 600, but only 250 tickets had been sold. Two local acts, Volume Dealer and 12 Gauge, played before the headliners. During those sets, club manager Rick Cautela and other concertgoers noticed a man loitering in the parking lot and asked why he was outside. He answered that he had no interest in local bands and planned to wait for Damageplan. Damageplan took the stage at 10:15 pm Eastern time, and the crowd had grown to about 400. The man, Nathan Gale, had already found his way in. He had climbed a 6 ft wooden fence on the north side of the property and walked through a patio door.

  At 10:20 pm, partway into the opening song, Gale rushed the stage. He wore a Columbus Blue Jackets hockey jersey and a hooded sweatshirt, and he drew a Beretta 92FS 9 mm semiautomatic pistol. He went straight for Abbott and fired four times at point-blank range. The bullets struck Abbott's right cheek, his left ear, the back of his head and his right hand. Volume Dealer bassist Joe Dameron said Gale shouted something, but he could not tell what.

  Gale then turned on others within reach. Tour manager Chris Paluska was shot once in the chest. Jeffrey "Mayhem" Thompson, Damageplan's head of security, tackled Gale from behind. In the struggle, Thompson was fatally shot in the chest, back and upper thigh. Nathan Bray, a Damageplan fan, leapt onto the stage and tried to resuscitate Abbott and Thompson. A bullet struck him in the chest, and it killed him.

  Erin "Stoney" Halk, an Alrosa Villa employee and former Marine, also went after Gale. Accounts differ on whether he was helping Thompson or charging while Gale reloaded. Six shots hit him: four in the chest, one in the hand and one in the leg. Travis Burnett, of Volume Dealer's road crew, tried to take the gun away and was grazed on his left forearm. He ran when later shots were aimed at his head. John "Kat" Brooks, a drum technician, tried to subdue Gale too. He was shot twice in the leg, and Gale took him hostage about three minutes after the shooting began.

  Officer James Niggemeyer of the Columbus Division of Police reached the club within three minutes of a 911 dispatch call. He entered through a backstage door carrying a 12-gauge Remington Model 870 shotgun. He shot Gale once, and Gale died instantly. Gale's Beretta still held a half-full magazine, and he carried another 30 rounds. He had fired 15.

  Fans lifted Abbott from the stage and attempted cardiopulmonary resuscitation until paramedics arrived. Abbott was 38 and was pronounced dead at the scene. So were Thompson, who was 40, and Halk, who was 29. Bray, 23, was taken to Riverside Methodist Hospital and declared dead at 11:10 pm. Paluska and Brooks were taken there as well, and both recovered. Burnett was treated at the scene and declined transport. The gunman himself was only 25 years old, and his life had begun in Chicago.

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• 4. A Drifting Life

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  Nathan Miles Gale was born on the 11th of September 1979 in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest of three sons of Gerald and Mary Gale. The family lived in the Chicago suburb of Lansing for his first few years, until his parents divorced. He moved with his mother to Marysville, Ohio, while his two older brothers stayed with their father.

  At Benjamin Logan High School, Gale briefly wrestled. Partway through his junior year, he transferred to Marysville High. He also enrolled in a vocational program at the Ohio Hi-Point Career Center, where he studied construction and electrical work. He graduated in 1998.

  After graduation Gale lived with his mother and worked a series of minimum wage jobs. He developed a substance abuse problem and often complained of being watched, which his mother blamed on his drug use. A violent confrontation between them brought the police, and his mother threw him out. Homeless, he got by on panhandling and theft until he agreed to enter a drug rehabilitation program. His mother then let him return. His other brushes with the law were minor, including trespassing charges from skateboarding and one accusation of stealing from work.

  In February 2002, inspired by the September 11 attacks, Gale enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. His mother was proud of his service. After he completed basic training, she bought him the Beretta pistol as a Christmas present. He was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina with the 2nd Marine Division. In November 2003 he was discharged, less than halfway through the typical four-year enlistment. A Marine Corps spokeswoman declined to say why.

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• 5. Unraveling

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  Gale told his mother that the discharge followed a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. He came home with medication but declined further treatment. The Department of Veteran Affairs found him a job as a mechanic, and he told his employer, Rich Cencula, about his condition. An autopsy by the Franklin County coroner's office found no trace of drugs in his system, prescription or otherwise.

  Standing 6 ft 3 in and weighing over 250 lbs, Gale took up boxing and football after leaving the Marines. He joined the Lima Thunder, a semi-professional football team in northwest Ohio, as an offensive lineman. He listened to Pantera before games. A lifelong heavy metal fan, he had become obsessed with the band in high school, and the fixation outlasted the group's 2003 separation. His former friend Dave Johnson told reporters that Gale once appeared at a mutual friend's house with Pantera lyrics he said were his own. Gale insisted that the band had plagiarized them and was trying to steal his identity.

  Friends pulled away as his behavior grew more erratic. He told another former friend, Mark Break, that God was asking him to kill Marilyn Manson. Others saw him talk and laugh to himself and pretend to hold an imaginary dog. He pestered patrons at the tattoo parlor across from his apartment, staring at clients and steering conversations toward heavy metal. Neighbors remembered him as quiet and aloof. He had been stopped several times for traffic citations, and he was charged with criminal trespassing for sleeping outside as well as for skateboarding.

  Gale lived alone in an apartment above a vacant storefront. After the shooting, police found two handwritten notes there. One read, "You'll see come alive. I'll take your life and make it mine. This is my life I'm gone. Git me." The other read, "You'll see the sky fall. I'll makes Pig fly. Come on and give me some. Come on give me some. Do it and Die, Do it and Die."

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• 6. Motive Unknown

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  Early reports claimed that Gale had shouted "You broke up Pantera" or "This is for breaking up Pantera" before he fired. Witnesses never corroborated those words. Attention turned to a Metal Hammer interview with Phil Anselmo, published shortly before the shooting, in which Anselmo said Abbott "deserves to be beaten severely". Investigators found no evidence that Gale was driven by Pantera's split or by the dispute between Abbott and Anselmo. They also found nothing to show he had read the interview. The date matched the murder of John Lennon exactly 24 years earlier, but that was dismissed as coincidence. The motive remains unknown.

  For Vinnie Paul, the interview mattered a great deal. After he listened to the recording, he concluded that Anselmo had not been joking about the "beaten severely" remark. From then on, he refused to speak with Anselmo or with Pantera bassist Rex Brown. A Pantera reunion tour had been discussed, with Zakk Wylde filling in for Abbott. The rift with Vinnie never healed, and it lasted until his death in 2018. Pantera did reunite in 2022 for a series of tours, with Wylde and Charlie Benante filling in for Abbott and Paul.

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• 7. Valor And Security

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  Officer Niggemeyer appeared before a grand jury, which is standard procedure when police use deadly force. Prosecutor Ron O'Brien never expected him to be charged, and Niggemeyer was cleared of wrongdoing on the 23rd of May 2005. He collected several honors. He was a finalist for a bravery award from America's Most Wanted, received the Distinguished Law Enforcement Valor Award from Ohio attorney general Jim Petro, and was named the National Rifle Association's Law Enforcement Officer of the Year for 2005. Gale's own mother called him a "hero" and told reporters, "I give that man credit. You'll never know how many lives he saved."

  The cost to Niggemeyer came later. He stayed on as a first responder for three years. Then his doctors, who had diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and a severe anxiety disorder, advised a move, and he became a robbery detective. In 2011 he left the department for a different job with the city. As of 2014 he remained friends with Rick Cautela and with Halk's brother Andy.

  The shooting made the music community think hard about fans who leap onto stages. Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian said his view of stage rushers changed after Abbott's murder, and he told fans bluntly to stay off the stage however much fun they were having. Right away, many venues hired off-duty police officers as guards and searched pockets and bags more carefully. Some even studied setlists to guess when fans might get unruly. By 2014, Cannibal Corpse drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz and We Are Harlot guitarist Jeff George observed that many venues had relaxed these rules because of the cost.

  In 2016, Christina Grimmie was fatally shot by an obsessed fan in Florida during a meet-and-greet outside the Plaza Live, a venue without metal detectors. The Pantera Facebook account urged venues and promoters to improve security to protect artists.

  The Alrosa Villa itself did not last. It was listed for sale in late 2019, after the deaths of its founders, Al and Rosa Cautela. Their children kept it running until 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic closed music venues and bars indefinitely. In June 2021 the city of Columbus announced that the site would give way to a housing project, and the building was demolished in December 2021.

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• 8. Songs For Dimebag

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  Abbott was a popular and influential figure in heavy metal, and his death brought an outpouring of grief from other bands. One of the first musical tributes came from Black Label Society. Its music video for "In This River" shows Zakk Wylde and Abbott as children trying to swim across a river. Wylde survives the crossing and Abbott does not.

  Type O Negative, close friends of Abbott, waited until 2007 to release "Halloween in Heaven" on the album Dead Again. Frontman Peter Steele told MTV, "I didn't want to exploit Abbott's name because it was so soon after his death." Vinnie Paul gave Nickelback an unreleased 24-second guitar solo, which they worked into their 2005 track "Side of a Bullet." That song describes the shooting from the killer's point of view. Brides of Destruction wrote "Dimes in Heaven," and Cross Canadian Ragweed wrote "Dimebag." Three 2005 albums were dedicated to Abbott's memory: Ten Thousand Fists by Disturbed, Lifesblood for the Downtrodden by Crowbar, and Start a War by Static-X.

  M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold never met Abbott, yet the loss hit him hard. Abbott was one of his two "greatest guitar heroes," alongside Slash. Shadows wrote "Betrayed," on the album City of Evil, from multiple points of view, and called it his way of dealing with the whole thing after it happened. Machine Head's tribute came from anger. Frontman Robb Flynn had read an article that praised Gale for killing "a semi-human barbarian," and that article inspired him to write "Aesthetics of Hate." The song earned a nomination for Best Metal Performance at the 50th Grammy Awards.

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