Murdered wife's words echo at parole hearing

UTAH STATE PRISON — Donald Allan Noble sat casually in his chair, apparently unmoved by the words of his murdered wife.

At times, his eyes would drift toward the ceiling as his former sister-in-law read an entry from Nadalee Noble's journal, written while she was staying at a battered women's shelter. Sometimes he would pick at his fingernails.

"Though we still lived in the same house, our marriage slowly slipped away until we were no longer even friends," Lori Cannon read from Nadalee's journal.

Noble, 71, was up for parole on Monday, decades after he gunned down his wife outside a Park City grocery store. In 1990, Nadalee Noble, 43, had him served with divorce papers when he confronted her, demanding that she come with him. As she resisted, he shot her twice in the forehead. Noble then drove himself to the Park City Police Department and surrendered.

"It's a long time ago," Noble said, soft-spoken and matter-of-factly. "I can't remember all the details."

He told parole board chairman Curtis Garner that he'd gone to talk to Nadalee about the break-up of their marriage, taking issue with what she'd claimed in the divorce papers. He didn't want their children to leave with her.

"It wasn't in the intention to kill her at the time," Noble said Monday. "I just wanted to talk it over with her. The minute she seen me she just went into a rage."

Cannon said it was Noble who went into a rage.

"He abused her," she told the parole board. "She reported it to police, but to no avail."

Noble denied abusing his wife.

"Anything she wanted to do, she was free to do," he said.

But he referred to a man his wife knew as "worthless," and said he didn't want his children with them. He dismissed claims from some of his children that he had been abusive. When Garner brought up neighbors who had referred to trouble in their marriage, he blurted out, "They're all a bunch of drunks."

Since being convicted of murder, Noble served a stint in a Texas prison because of overcrowding in Utah. He escaped in 1995, was recaptured in Louisiana but never charged for it.

"If he is let out, regardless of his health and age, we will always be looking over our shoulder," Cannon said.