Synopses & Reviews
In 1931, a 12-year-old boy shot and killed the sheriff of Asotin, Washington. The incident stunned the small town and a mob threatened to hang him. Both the crime and Herbert Niccolls's eventual sentence of life imprisonment at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla drew national attention, only to be buried later in local archives.
Journalist Nancy Bartley has conducted extensive research to construct a compelling narrative of the events and characters that make this a unique episode in the history of criminal justice in the United States. Niccolls became a cause for Father Flanagan of Boys Town,who took to the airwaves, imploring listeners to write Governor Hartley on the boy's behalf. The bitter campaign put Hartley in such a negative light that he lost his bid for reelection. Under a new and progressive warden, Niccolls thrived in prison. Inmates like physician Peter Miller and literary agent James Ashe became his tutors, finding that Niccolls had an insatiable appetite for knowledge. During the deadly 1934 prison riot at Walla Walla, several prisoners kept him from harm.
Niccolls was finally released from prison in his early twenties. He went to work at 20th Century Fox in Hollywood, where he kept his secret for the rest of his long life. The Boy Who Shot the Sheriff explores this little-known story of a young boy's fate in the juvenile justice system during the bloodiest years in the nation's penitentiaries.
Journalist and writer Nancy Bartley has published in the Seattle Times, Washington Post, Sydney Morning Herald, Toronto Star, Houston Chronicle, and Home Magazine. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
" is the result of some very impressive research by an author obviously engaged with the subject. And it tells an important story few of us know." -Joann Byrd, author of Calamity: The Heppner Flood of 1903
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"It is a completely true story, but Bartley uses a literary voice that makes it read like a novel as she brings to light one of the more bizarre crimes in history." -Mike Bookey, Pacific Northwest Inlander
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"Seattle journalist Nancy Bartley uses the Niccolls case as a lens through which to examine the development of the juvenile justice system." -Katie Schneider, Oregon Live
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"The Boy Who Shot the Sheriff also has contemporary currency - it shows that violent juvenile crime is not a recent phenomenon and it prompts readers during this budget-conscious era to contemplate whether prevention might be more cost-effective than punishment." -Barbara Lloyd McMichael, Bellingham Herald
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"Bartley brings both rock-solid reporting and a storyteller's instincts to the job. The result is a sensitive, clear-eyed, and historically framed account of an extraordinary life story." -Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, Seattle Times
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"The exhaustively researched book reads like a novel as we watch Niccolls...go from a delinquent ne'er-do-well to a well-read model prisoner. It's an amazing redemption tale." -Mike Bookey, Pacific Northwest Inlander
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"This book is a deeply researched, finely written story by a Seattle Times reporter of a Depression-era child who grew to intelligent manhood behind prison bars, supported by a multifarious group of advocates." -Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, The Seattle Times, December 9, 2013
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and#8220;In the best tradition of Capoteand#8217;s iconic In Cold Blood, James Hewitt presents a gruesome, bizarre, and tragic tale of sex, murder, and small-town intrigue, told with the objective insight of an accomplished legal historian and the gripping narrative style of a novelist. . . . This is a book you should be prepared to complete in one sitting. Itand#8217;s that compelling.and#8221;and#8212;Mark Scherer, author of Rights in the Balance
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and#8220;The curious, tangled, and often sensational step-by-step recounting will, by necessity, leave the reader wondering how such a crime could have been committed and may have you double-checking to make sure your back door is really locked.and#8221;and#8212;Jim McKee, historian and writer
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In Cold Storage takes us through lurid personal relations that lead to two murders and vicious mutilations that shocked and frightened all Nebraskans, especially those used to small-town life in the western reaches of the state.and#8221;and#8212;Donald Pederson, former Nebraska state senator from North Platte
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Synopsis
In 1973 the small southwest Nebraska railroad town of McCook became the unlikely scene of a grisly murder. More than forty years later, author James W. Hewitt returns to the scene and unearths new details about what happened.
After pieces of Edwin and Wilma Hoytand#8217;s dismembered bodies were found floating on the surface of a nearby lake, authorities charged McCook resident Harold Nokes and his wife, Ena, with murder. Harold pleaded guilty to murder and Ena pleaded guilty to two counts of wrongful disposal of a dead body, but the full story of why and how he murdered the Hoyts has never been told.
Hewitt interviews law enforcement officers, members of the victimsand#8217; family, weapons experts, and forensic psychiatrists, and delves into newspaper reports and court documents from the time. Most significant, Harold granted Hewitt his first and only interview, in which the convicted murderer changed several parts of his 1974 confession. In Cold Storage takes readers through the evidence, including salacious details of sex and intrigue between the Hoyts and the Nokeses, and draws new conclusions about what really happened between the two families on that fateful September night.
About the Author
James W. Hewitt is president of the Friends of the Center for Great Plains Studies and was an adjunct professor of history at Nebraska Wesleyan University and the University of Nebraskaand#8211;Lincoln. He is the author of Slipping Backward: A History of the Nebraska Supreme Court (Nebraska, 2007).