While looking through the back issues of this newspaper, I discovered a story about an attempted Nuckolls County jail break that I should have shared with the our readers when we printed stories about the razing of the Nuckolls County Jail.
I did share part of the story.
Back in the summer of 1972, a woman staying in the Superior motel was suspected of passing a forged check at a Superior business. Though a former resident of the Superior community, she gave a Colorado address. She was arrested by a Nuckolls County officer and housed in the county jail. The women’s detention area was on the second floor of the jail. Her cell had a steel door made of flat iron rather than round bars. Unlike the men’s cells which were all steel cages, she was placed in a room that could have been used as an upstairs bedroom. It was spacious with a closet like cabinet along the hallway wall. The walls were of typical frame construction covered with lathe and plaster.
After her arrest on July 5, she appeared in county court. When she failed to post bond, she was held in the county jail, awaiting a preliminary hearing.
She apparently didn’t like the jail house accommodations and on a Saturday evening, four days later, she attempted to escape. After climbing onto the top a cabinet which was about 6 feet above floor level, she apparently used a hair brush and dinner utensils to chip a hole approximately 60 inches in length and 20 inches in height in the lathe and plaster wall. However, the studding reduced the usable size to approximately 12 x 20 inches. She attempted to wiggle through the hole head first. Her body became wedged and she remained in the hole, hanging into the hallway until a sheriff’s deputy checked the jail on Sunday morning.
Had she been successful in escaping from the jail cell, she would have had to pass through the sheriff’s quarters on the first floor of the building.
The attempted escape won her a transfer to the Hastings Regional Center. However, before the month was over, she used a ruse about needing to see her son and had escaped from the regional center.
Her freedom was short-lived. On July 31, she was arrested in Colorado and charged with passing forged checks in that state. On Jan. 5, 1973, she was sentenced to serve two to four years in the Women’s Correctional Institution at Canyon City, Colo.
After being charged twice within a month for passing forged checks in two states, did she learn her lesson or did she continue her career of passing forged checks and escaping confinement?
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