The Boy Who Shot the Sheriff

The Redemption of Herbert Nicholls Jr.

Nancy Bartley

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780295804545
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

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. Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRKFFQDgW20&list=UUge4MONgLFncQ1w1C_BnHcw&index=6&feature=plcp

Chapter 1

Asotin, Washington, August 5, 1931

MOONLIGHT spilled over the banks of Asotin Creek, where frogs chorused in deep pools. It was after midnight when he awoke cold and damp, unsure of his surroundings. This was not his grandmother's house—his grandmother with the big stick and the Bible. He had escaped. He was free and curled up in a hole along the bank. But unlike the small animal that had once made its home there, he shivered with cold. He was dressed in a thin shirt and worn overalls. His feet were bare. And he was hungry. He was always hungry.

He felt the gun thud against his chest inside the bib of his overalls as he crawled up the bank. The frogs stopped singing. He walked to the lumberyard and on toward the dairy, creeping about the sleeping town in the hope of finding something to eat. A car was parked alongside the road and he sat on the running board, wondering what to do next. Then in the distance he saw the gleam of a headlight. He darted into the shadows and hid behind a shed until the car passed and the chug of the engine faded.

Earlier in the evening he had hidden beneath the Asotin County Memorial Bridge as a family with eight children picnicked nearby, the fragrance of their food filling the air. He had hoped to stay with Murphy Watkins but Murphy's grandfather ordered him off the place. He left for a while and then returned. He didn't know where else to go. When the old man caught him a second time, the sheriff came. That's when he retreated to the only place he knew would be safe: the hole in the earth.

Now it was dark and he was alone. The creek murmured as he crossed the bridge and walked toward town. He had never been alone in town at that hour of the night. Storefronts, the solitary courthouse, the square jail with its barred windows, all cast shadows.

•

Except for Anatone, twenty miles south, Asotin is the last pinprick of civilization on the southeasterly corner of the Washington State map. It is a small town where the Asotin Creek races east from the Blue Mountains to the Snake River. In the 1890s, it was a hub of commerce situated on the route to the gold mines farther south along the Snake. Before that, it was the winter hunting ground for the Nez Perce. But in 1931, it was a town of ranchers and wheat farmers whose lives had been hard for decades. The Depression had brought nothing new.

As the boy walked, he could feel the gun swing in the holster he had made from the leather top of an old boot by threading a belt through the loops and hanging it from his neck. He had taken the gun from Colonel Fulton's cellar while he and Fulton's son Jimmy were playing. Jimmy was only ten and told him all about the guns the colonel had collected during the Philippine Insurrection. But Jimmy was no doubt asleep in bed and Junior—as Herbert Niccolls was known then—was alone in town after midnight.

With the gun Junior felt powerful, like Pretty Boy Floyd who robbed banks. He had heard about the robberies on the radio as the hour of prayer slipped away to the news, and then he'd read about them in the Asotin Sentinel. As he walked from the park down the quiet streets he knew that if his grandmother caught him she would lock him in his room to pray for forgiveness, without food or water. Each time the punishment was longer. But this time, he wasn't going back. He had made that decision when night fell and he wasn't home. She must have been furious to send the sheriff after him. This time there would be no stopping her as she meted out the punishment of the Lord. He hadn't thought any further than the momentary desire to run down the hill and play on a sunny day. Now in the dark, he was approaching the lynching spot, the jail at the corner of Filmore. How many men had died there? His grandmother said that's where he'd end up—a criminal. He'd always be haunted by her wrath and accusations.

In the shadows of the buildings, the stream's song was muffled. At Peter Klaus's People's Supply store he saw cigarettes through the window. Cigarettes and whatever else he could find inside the store would comfort him on this cold summer night. The pavement was cold against his bare feet. He hadn't owned shoes since he first went to the state reform school two years earlier.

He walked to the side of the building and peered into the store through the window next to the door. He turned the doorknob but it was firmly locked. He slammed his frail shoulder into the door but it wouldn't budge. Slowly, he walked back around the building. Across the street at the Asotin Hotel a light the color of cherries gleamed over the desk.

Junior walked around to the side of the store, took out the .32-caliber Iver Johnson and smashed it against the door. The glass tinkled like ice. He reached through the gaping window and unlocked the door.

The store was cool and fragrant with tobacco and the tang of fat pickles swimming in the shadows of the vinegar barrel. Moonlight streamed in through the broken panes and he could see the rack of tobacco, candy bars, and gum. First he opened the cash register, pulling down the heavy lever and watching as the numbers popped up and the drawer flew open with a zing. He scooped out $2.82 and put it in his pocket. Then he snapped open a paper bag as he had seen the Klauses do so many times before—even the day before when he had bought shells and charged them to his grandmother's account. Into the bag went Lucky Strikes and Adams gum. His plan was to return to the stream, feast on gum and candy and smoke. When morning came, he would meet Murphy and they'd go fishing or shoot jacksnipes up by Hen Lee's old place. Maybe he would hide out there, living off fish and stealing watermelons from the farm up the road and fruit from the orchards.

He knew he would have to lie low until his grandmother stopped looking for him. She would pray for his black soul, pray that he not be cast into the fiery depth of hell for his sins. He had done a lot in his twelve years. He had stolen everything from cars to candy.

Perhaps that's why his mother got rid of him and all the other boys. Like most children, he blamed himself for being forced to live with his grandmother. He wondered if his mother ever thought of him.

Hazel Niccolls's face had become blurred with time and tears. Someday he would return home to her with plenty of money and be able to buy her things so she wouldn't have to work so hard, so she wouldn't have to give all her children away just so they could be fed. That's what his mother had said the day the social worker came, which was not long after the police had arrived and arrested his father.

He wondered why they hadn't come for his father earlier. He could remember that day hiding in the barn while his father looked for him, carrying a shotgun. Over and over his father shouted his name. “Who dared bring that dog home?” Bert Niccolls had screamed. “Who dared bring that barking dog here?” It was forbidden. His brother had tied the puppy up by the porch and it whimpered loudly. Over and over his father yelled for him, “Junior! Junior!” And finally he found him in the barn, pointed the shotgun at him, and asked him if he had brought the puppy home.

“No, not me, Papa,” he said. He could see his brother Wesley's horrified face in the yard beyond, pleading with him wordlessly not to implicate him. “Not me.” Lying came easy when it was the only way to survive.

His father had lowered the shotgun and walked slowly from the barn. Junior's brother was trying to untie the dog but his trembling fingers wouldn't move fast enough. Junior heard his father laugh, heard Wesley cry out as the dog began to frantically bark. Bert Niccolls raised the shotgun to his shoulder and aimed at the puppy's small brown head. Then he pulled the trigger.

•

As Junior was filling the bag in the dark, he suddenly became aware of three shadows by the front door. There was a murmur of deep voices. He dropped the sack and scurried softly to the back of the store, slipping behind a vinegar barrel and a pile of boxes next to a rolltop desk. Then the front doorknob rattled and the door swung open, the little bell jingling.

“Come on out.”

It was John Wormell, the sheriff of Asotin County. Inside the store there was nothing but silence.

“Come on out, now.”

Again there was no answer. The sheriff repeated the words once more and cocked the hammer on his revolver. He nodded to Charlie Carlisle, deputy and county clerk, and Peter Klaus, the grocer. Then he and Klaus stepped inside.

Peeping over the rim of the barrel, the boy could see the sheriff silhouetted in the moonlight and the glint of light on the gun. The man moved closer.

“Come out before someone gets hurt.”

The sheriff's voice was calm. After serving four terms as sheriff and about as many as deputy sheriff, he knew that patience paid off.

Suddenly the store's lights came on and the boy ducked, blinking in the harsh light and fumbling to remove the pearl-handled revolver from the holster. Listening closely, he could hear two maybe three sets of footsteps.

Deputy Sheriff Wayne Bezona stood inside the side door near the broken glass as the sheriff and the grocer walked slowly up the aisles. Klaus saw the bag the boy had dropped and stopped to retrieve the items as the sheriff crossed the room, listening for the softest flutter of sound. He had walked almost the entire length of the store with his gun in his hand and was standing close to the vinegar barrel when he heard a familiar click and a roar.

Both Klaus and Bezona heard the blast from the gun, saw the sheriff spin and pitch forward as if still walking, and they ducked for cover. But who had shot him and from where? There was no smoke from a gun. Bezona ran out into the street to the hotel, where a man had stumbled outside after hearing the shot.

Bezona told him that the sheriff had been shot and yelled for the doctor, and then ran back inside the store with Carlisle. In the silent room, he could hear his heart and the ragged edge of his breath. Across the store, his eyes met those of the others. Where was the shooter?

He took a step forward, kicking a cardboard box out of his way and shouted for the shooter to surrender. He heard the sound—a scurry, a faint rustle of paper. He trained his revolver in the area of the desk. Where was he? There was no place big enough to hide a man. He took another step forward and kicked another box out of the way, keeping his gun trained on the site. No one behind the molasses barrel; no one behind the vinegar barrel. Where had he gone? Had he slipped down the cellar steps a few feet away? He hoped not, as it would be even more dangerous to hunt for him among the crates in the dim light of the bare electric bulb.

Then Bezona saw a small corner of faded denim near the back of the rolltop desk. But no one could possibly hide in the few inches that separated the desk and the wall, unless the person was very small. Again, he ordered him out. Bezona could hear the shouts and tire screeches outside in the street as others came to help. He tried not to look at Johnny lying so still on the floor. Seventy-three years old! John Wormell should have retired long ago. Bezona had tried to tell him that.

“Come out or I'll kill you!” His voice boomed through the store but there was no reply.

Minutes passed and then, as Bezona trained his gun in the area of the desk, the boy threw a revolver over the top. Bezona kicked it to the other side of the store, keeping his own gun trained on the desk and waiting to see what madman would emerge from the shadows to own the deed.

Bezona ordered him to raise his hands and come out. It seemed like forever before two small hands appeared from behind the desk, then the frail arms. In the end, a boy less than five-feet tall stood up and looked nervously around, his face white, his body trembling. Bezona rushed forward and grabbed him.

The deputy's face was red and close to the boy's, as he gripped the boy's shoulders.

“What did you do this for?”

The answer to the question would be published in newspapers everywhere: “I was told to,” the boy cried. He had re-cocked the gun and was ready to shoot Bezona, when surrendering seemed to be the better idea. The body of the sheriff lay face down on the floor, a bullet hole just above the right ear. Everywhere there were spatters of blood like drops of dark rain.

•

Rain. That's what the Niccolls children would remember about that day long ago when they came home from school and pushed open the gate to find a woman lying in the yard with a bullet hole in her back, a farmer shouting, the sheriff's siren wailing, their mother screaming. Their father's face was bloated and red as he chased her. She carried a baby boy in her arms as she fled into the fields.

The neighbors stood stunned in their sun-bleached front yards, except for the dead woman's family who had gathered around the still form. She was a gentle soul, a Quaker. Why kill such a kind woman? She gave her life to protect another, they said.

“Why did you do it?” A police officer had asked his father as the sheriff handcuffed him and led him to the squad car.

•

“Why did you do it?” Bezona asked the boy again. The doctor had arrived and was kneeling beside the sheriff. Men and women in their nightclothes, having been roused from sleep at the hotel across the street, gathered to peer in the windows. Even in the pre-dawn hours, the boy knew they were angry and speaking of lynching and punishment and what a good man poor Johnny Wormell had been. Poor Johnny slain by Mary Addington's juvenile delinquent grandson. Johnny, who had never had a chance to protect himself. Too bad Johnny hadn't gotten in a shot. What a blight Mrs. Addington had brought on the town when she let the boy stay. Tears began flowing down the boy's cheeks.

“I was told to. Bill Robinson put me up to it,” he said.

“Robinson!”

The boy said that Robinson had waited at the side door while he went in and got tobacco and money. He planned to give the boy $2 and a ticket to Canada for his trouble. Bezona took the boy to the sheriff's office in the courthouse, telling Carlisle to summon Halsey, the coroner, and Merchant, the undertaker. Bill Hostetler, the part-time night deputy who worked as the state brand inspector by day, also arrived on the scene and stared in disbelief at the prone body of the sheriff.

The ticking of the regulator on the office wall echoed through the quiet building. It was almost 1 a.m. and the boy was very tired. Bezona again asked him to tell him how the shooting occurred. The boy had only been in town since May and he'd been nothing but trouble to his grandmother. Once again the boy repeated the story. Bezona sat behind the desk. The boy was sprawled across two polished oak chairs and seemed to be slowly melting into them as he sunk into the realm of sleep.

He was small for a twelve-year-old—sixty pounds, four feet, eight inches. Too much food creates a rebellious spirit, his grandmother believed, and she locked her pantry. With each infraction of her rules, she gave him less. It was God's will, she said, taking her seat in the rocker by the oil stove. She would purse her lips and read the Bible in the halo of lamplight. He would wait until she fell asleep and try to take her key.

•

The dark streets bustled with the chug of automobiles, a flurry of whispered urgency. Bezona rose from his desk and nodded to Hostetler, instructing him to stay with the boy, who was sleeping stretched across the oak chairs. In the meantime, Dr. John McElvain stood at the entrance of the store, looking weary. Elmer Halsey had just arrived. The three men entered the store where the sheriff's body lay.

Nothing could be done. The sheriff had been killed instantly, McElvain said. The bullet went right into the brain.

Elmer Halsey had seen crime in the many years he had spent in Asotin—a rape back in 1896, a murder in 1903, bank robbers, horse thieves, cattle rustlers. Sheriff Johnny Wormell always neatly wrapped up the cases. He'd served his town well. A fine man he was. A devoted community servant, a state representative, and a charter member of the Anatone Odd Fellows. Halsey knew someone would have to tell Annie Wormell. It would be a hard job.

Halsey was not only the prosecutor, he was also the elected coroner. Filling in as sheriff if the current sheriff was unable to serve was just part of the job. Halsey, well into his seventies, was grim about the prospects. He never thought he'd be writing up the death certificate for Johnny. But Bezona knew he would have to be the one to break the news to Annie. He walked slowly from the store, vowing that Robinson would pay for putting the boy up to this. Even though it was still several hours before dawn, word of the shooting had spread. Men milled about the courthouse, talking in low tones. Bezona asked Carlisle to round up some men to go out to the Robinson place and arrest Bill. But Carlisle looked puzzled.

“Old Bill Robinson?”

“Put the boy up to it.”

Bezona told him to take several other men with him, cautioning them to be careful because if Robinson was capable of this, he was capable of anything.

•

The new Ford V-8 with the red lights hummed north along the road to where Bill Robinson lived with his daughter, Della Watkins, her husband, Jim, and their seven children. Young Murphy Watkins was jarred from sleep by the barking dog, the roar of the car engine, and the winking of its red lights. He rose on one elbow and looked across the screened porch where his mother and sisters also slept. His mother quickly rose, wrapping a bathrobe around her. The dark shapes of the lawmen came to the screen door and their fists pounded on the frame.

“Open up, Robinson!”

They had come to arrest him and Della ran to the door to block their path. They pushed her aside. She a...