Oregon man pleads guilty to 2012 Kelso murder

An Oregon man already sentenced to life in prison for murder, pleaded guilty to a 2012 killing of an unhoused man at a makeshift camp in Kelso.

Erik John Meiser, 48, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Cowlitz County Superior Court via Zoom to second-degree murder in the 2012 killing of Nicholas Ray Fickett, 28, who was found dead in a tent along the Cowlitz River. Meiser was sentenced to 29 years with two years for a deadly weapon enhancement, and three years of community custody.

Meiser was convicted of a different murder in Oregon and is accused of a violent assault in Utah – all of which occurred around the same time as the Kelso killing.

Roger Steven Fickett, the Kelso victim’s father, told presiding Judge Marilyn K. Hann Wednesday, “It is my belief that (Meiser) shouldn’t have gotten 31 years, he should have gotten life.”

“If it was up to me, he should be in the ground,” he said.

Meiser was sentenced to life in prison for killing a Lake Oswego man with a machete, and his Cowlitz County sentence will run concurrent with the Oregon case, according to court documents.

At about 11:20 a.m., July 27, 2012, a Cowlitz County sheriff’s deputy performed a welfare check at a homeless encampment along the Cowlitz River in Kelso regarding an “unresponsive subject” who had blood on him, according to the case’s probable cause statement.

The deputy found in a partially collapsed tent Nicholas Ray Fickett, whose autopsy showed he was stabbed in the head, face, ear, neck, back, arms and hands, the report states.

Some items were also spread outside the tent, including a green knife sheath. Authorities matched the DNA taken from the weapon of the Oregon killing, a machete, to the DNA taken from the green knife sheath to link Meiser to both crimes.

Meiser is also a suspect in a 2012 assault case in which he is accused of slashing a person with a razor blade across their face in Utah. Lt. Will Farr of the Ogden Police Department previously told the Daily News they had to wait until the conclusion of Meiser’s trial and possible time served before extraditing him to Utah.

The Daily News, Longview, Wash.