Documents detail romance between astronauts

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space shuttle pilot Bill Oefelein told his new girlfriend that a romantic relationship with fellow astronaut Lisa Nowak was over.

But Colleen Shipman still worried about lingering feelings between the two astronauts. Nowak still had a key to Oefelein's apartment and stored her bicycle there.

"I said, 'Is there gonna be some crazy lady showing up at my door, trying to kill me?' Shipman asked Oefelein in a conversation she recounted to detectives last month. "He said, 'No ... she's not like that. She's fine with it. She's happy for me."'

But days later, Nowak set off on her bizarre, 900-mile road-trip to confront her rival for Oefelein's affections.

Shipman's conversation with Oefelein was recounted in several hundred pages of documents released this week by prosecutors in the case against Nowak, who is charged with trying to kidnap Shipman.

Police statements, along with e-mails between Oefelein and Shipman, confirm publicly for the first time that Oefelein had a romantic relationship with Nowak. It lasted two or three years before he broke it off to date Shipman late last year.

Oefelein said he considered Nowak to be one of his best friends at NASA.

"We had a relationship but, you know, never really said the word 'girlfriend,"' Oefelein told investigators. "We were somewhat exclusive. Nobody prohibited anything, but I would consider her exclusive for a period of time."

Oefelein met Shipman while training in Florida several weeks before his December launch aboard shuttle Discovery. They e-mailed each other regularly, including while he was in space.

"Will have to control myself when I see you," Shipman wrote Oefelein a day before Discovery landed last December, although the astronaut didn't read the e-mail until he returned to Earth. "First urge will be to rip your clothes off, throw you on the ground and love the hell out of you."

In another e-mail sent in January, Shipman wrote Oefelein at his NASA e-mail address: "I love you and I am head-over-heels IN love with you." Oefelein responded the next day from his office e-mail: "You must really have me around your finger that I can't even function without you here."