**The Nazi war criminal or espionage theory** was examined by investigators. The United States Marshal’s case files reportedly included consideration of whether Nichols might have been a German soldier or a Nazi official who had entered the country under false pretenses after the war. This was part of a broader category of consideration — checking Nichols’s profile against known lists of fugitives and wanted persons. Additionally, Nichols’s computer was reportedly found to contain searches related to Nazism and plastic explosives, a detail that investigators noted without drawing a definitive conclusion from it. The theory was not confirmed by any evidence.
**The Steven Campbell connection** was also examined. Campbell was a Wyoming engineer wanted for attempted murder. Investigators considered whether Nichols might have been Campbell. This theory was ruled out.
**The Amy Mihaljevic connection** — a reference to the 1989 abduction and murder of an eleven-year-old girl near Bay Village, Ohio — has been mentioned in some coverage. No confirmed investigative connection between Nichols and this case has been publicly established.
**The fugitive from an unspecified crime theory** is perhaps the most generic but also the most supported by what is actually known. Elliott stated publicly that he believed Nichols had been hiding from something, though he could not say what. The combination of deliberate identity erasure, the sustained paranoid vigilance (“they’re getting close”), the maintained readiness to leave (the packed suitcase), and the thirteen years of apparent self-erasure before formally assuming the Chandler name all suggest a person operating under a self-perceived threat. Whether that threat was real, what it consisted of, and whether it involved any specific legal jeopardy or crime, is not established.