Dead Men Talking (21 page)
Authors: Christopher Berry-Dee
Thanks to his upbringing, if it could be called that, LeRoy was better able than most to adapt to living and surviving in the teeth of such adversity.
Some time during 1929, LeRoy returned home to his family on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. He was fourteen, but had already experienced life in a way that would have seemed daunting to men thirty or forty years older. There was little or no conventional work available at the time so he earned a living by becoming a bounty hunter, shooting mountain lions and other predators, in return for which the cattle ranchers of Utah paid good money. Eventually, however, after about a year, the wanderlust proved to be too strong and, when circumstances presented themselves, he embarked on another odyssey. This time, he headed out for the tents and shanties of the construction camps on the Colorado River: camps that housed the thousands of men who sought to work building the Hoover Dam.
LeRoy writes:
In 1930, I had gotten an old Model T Ford that had been rolled over and the body wrecked. I had just been paid bounties for two mountain lion skins, by the cattle ranchers association, up in central Utah, so I felt rich enough to buy that wrecked Ford and put a second body on it from another wreck. And then the good news came.
The 1929 Great Depression was sweeping across America. Everybody was broke. Thousands of men were heading out West toward the huge new dam that was being built, where Arizona and Nevada meet. They said it was to be the highest dam in the world, so they needed a lot of workers.
I had had a fight with my dad, and as a result, I packed my ragged clothes, my small box of tools and my ‘lion gun’, a model 98 Winchester 30-30 rifle, into the trunk of my 1928 Ford coupe and headed south, toward Black Canyon and the proposed Boulder Dam, later renamed the Hoover Dam. Six construction companies had joined forces to get the dam built, after Congress had authorized starter funds.
The nearest town was Las Vegas, 23 miles west of the dam site. But, the tent-town on the eastern side of Vegas was rapidly expanding, toward the river dam site. Then, another shack, tent and makeshift camp sprang up, much closer to the dam site, and rapidly became populated. They named this new settlement ‘Boulder’, and soon most of the 2,000 new dam workers were finding lodgings and meals there.
LeRoy was still only fifteen, and the employment manager called him ‘Hurry up Crow’, and refused to hire him, even at the lowest rate of two dollars a day, and told him to go back home.
I was so pissed off. I momentarily thought about shooting the big bastard. But, by the time I’d gotten back to Boulder and my little pup tent, I got another surprise. A fairly large shack had been erected near my little spot and the font of this shack had a sign on
it, saying ‘CAFÉ – Three Meals a Day $1.35’, then ‘In ADVANCE’. Beneath that sign was another, which said, ‘No Niggers!!’ I walked in. It looked like a saloon, but, instead of a bar, he had a long table with benches. I asked the man with the apron: ‘How much for just one meal?’ ‘Fifty cents in advance,’ came the brusque reply. I put two quarters on the table. The coffee was 5 cents extra. He bought me a good-sized bowl of stew. I finished half of it, then asked, ‘How come there’s no meat in it?’ He says, ‘If I had meat I’d charge more.’ The light came on in my head. ‘How much would you pay, in cash, for fresh-killed venison?’
From that day onward, the young Nash shot deer, earning 10 cents a pound of meat from Big Tom.
Although he says that he has no wish to glorify his crimes, he says that his ‘history is most certainly the stuff of legends. By the age of eighteen I had already robbed two banks, lived the life of a juvenile hobo and killed my first man. I shot a hobo for squashing my pal’s watermelon.’
This first murder took place when LeRoy says he was sixteen. (in much earlier letters he says was eight). He was riding in a boxcar with a friend, a fifteen-year-old kid. The train, which was proceeding slowly through Kansas, stopped momentarily to take on water next to a farm where many small, but ripe melons were growing. ‘So, we both leapt down, grabbed a watermelon, and climbed back into the boxcar,’ says LeRoy. ‘I ate mine right there and then, being hungry, but my pal saved his.’
According to LeRoy, about an hour later, after passing through another town, where again the train stopped.
My friend cut open his watermelon and was greedily eating it, when a tall negro climbed into the boxcar. He stared and gruffly demanded a share of the melon. The tone of the big man’s voice irritated my companion, who promptly told him, ‘Go fuck yourself. Jump off the train and steal your own melon.’ The negro blew up. Without a word, he kicked the melon so hard that it flew out of the boxcar. I was sitting on the other side of the boxcar, my feet dangling outa the doorway. Realising that a second kick, that hard, could send my friend, who only weighed about a hundred pounds, flying to his death, I pulled out my pistol that was under my belt, hidden by my jacket, and turned to defend my friend. But to my surprise, he had his own gun out. And he continued firing it into the body of the big man until he collapsed – all in all six shots. Then I fired my gun because life was cheap. I
went through his pockets, found photos of his wife an’ his young daughter in a ragged old pocket book. There was no address to send the stuff to…felt bad at first, then thought, ‘FUCK IT’.
We kids at the time were all dead shots with either a pistol or a rifle. My favorite guns were a .45 Colt Auto and a 30-30 Winchester saddle gun, the barrel was four inches shorter than the regular rifle.
LeRoy Nash’s adventures would fill a book on their own; in later years he escaped from two prison facilities. Aged 67, he says while serving two consecutive life sentences for murder and robbery, in Utah, he made a desperate dash for freedom. ‘I scaled a twenty-foot prison wall, crossed no-man’s land, and went through the razor wire perimeter as if it didn’t exist,’ he says. ‘Yep! Got cut really bad, but never felt a thing.’
Dodging the marksmen’s bullets and although badly injured by the steel barbs, he evaded bloodhounds and hundreds of police during one of America’s largest manhunts.
Living off the land and what I could five-finger from the locals, I was physically and mentally well equipped for life on the lam. During my second week, I came across the Highway Patrol. Casually strolling up to an officer, who was half asleep in his car, I disarmed him and tied him up. I stole his money and a .357 Colt Trooper revolver, and then drove off leaving the man sitting in a cloud of dust.
The cop just handed over his gun. It was as easy as picking up a warm pie from a stoop. He was just a fresh kid and had no right to be wearing a badge. Sure, I could have killed him right there and then. But I never killed nobody who never threatened me. That’s the Gospel truth, I doubt that any bigoted Bible-thumpers will believe that.
Three weeks after my escape, on Wednesday, 3 November 1982, I entered a coin shop in north Phoenix. I demanded money from an employee called Gregory West, and then I shot the man three times with the cop’s stolen gun. Another employee was in the line of fire but was not hit. As I fled, the proprietor of a nearby store pointed a gun at me and told me to stop. I grabbed his weapon and we struggled over it. Police soon arrived, and today I am on Death Row, and the system has finally closed me down.
At my trial, which lasted a day on 25 June 1983, before Judge Rufus Coulter, prosecutor,
Gregg Thurston stated: ‘Mr Nash presents a grave risk to others, shows no remorse and only the death sentence would be appropriate.’
Bank robber, jewel thief, I was once as fit as an Olympic class athlete. Sure, I have a face etched by the wrong side of the tracks. I am still a big, powerful man for my age. Once out of my cell, broad-shouldered, I stand tall. Fuck the guards, I rarely smile, but sometimes a cynical smile spreads across my face. Fuck them and fuck you, too.
* * *
But, who is the real Viva LeRoy Nash – is he really the true stuff of legends, or is he something else?
Petitioner
[Nash]
described himself as ‘one of the most tenacious, jailhouse lawyers in the country’ and recounted the ‘20-year span of constant and unwavering, and to some extent devastating, legal activities’ upon which he had embarked as a prisoner in Connecticut.
US Supreme Court.
LeRoy has written over a hundred letters to me, and they are long, long, long letters. And, to be fair to this elderly man maybe we can forgive him for being vague about firm dates, and maybe his imagination does get the better of him from time to time, nonetheless, his history is the stuff Hollywood movie producer would die for.
He has no time for religion, and says that at one time he was an ‘unknown millionaire’ who helped many people who were far less well off than he at those times. He, like most incarcerated criminals, has no time for the American judicial system, claiming: ‘In open court, both state and federal, I have politely but definitely kicked the verbal shit out of at least four of the perjuring bastards. But, I also admit, that in the long-run they got the best of me, judicially.’
When I took LeRoy to task over the shooting of Gregory West, which to me seemed a cold-blooded affair at best, he had this to say:
First, I did not kill him deliberately, which would have, if the killing would have been, a
first-degree killing It was an accidental killing, and even under those circumstances, would have been second degree murder, or manslaughter, under our law, prohibiting the imposition of the death penalty.
The fact that Mr Nash shot and killed a man in the furtherance of a robbery, and that is a capital crime in Arizona, passes LeRoy by. He wrote nineteen pages, in a letter dated 9 March 2006, explaining how the judicial system was all wrong, that the cops and prosecutor fitted him up, and the judge was a crook, and it was all West’s fault for trying to defend himself, despite conveniently overlooking another fact: he pleaded guilty in court, the reason for the one-day trial.
In a letter that followed days later, LeRoy tries to distance himself from responsibility even further. Itemising what he needs to say:
Note 1. That the clerk [West] might have fired directly toward my heart legally is contrary to American law.
Note 2. I had no intention of allowing the store clerk to murder me in an effort to save his boss some money.
Note 3. If a store clerk has already fired his gun aimed at my heart, I would be very stupid to let him take another shot.
Conveniently forgetting that the threat of deadly force may be met by the use of deadly force, LeRoy goes on, while at once pointing a handgun at Mr West:
Note 4. One of the known reasons of the standard prohibiting store clerks from shooting a suspect to death without any warning is that, if allowed to shoot first if a potential enemy had a gun, was because then any feuding store clerk could point a gun over the store counter, then promptly shoot him before he could ask, ‘Why?’
Note 5. It is rather far-fetched for any store owner to hand a loaded gun to an
untrained amateur employee, and to then consider he will only kill in order to save the boss some money.
Note 6. Mr West was not trying to merely get the better of me, he was deliberately trying to murder me so he would be a hero. I’d bet his wife thought that was kind of stupid, as well as suicidal.
Note 7. It should be illegal for any store manager to give a clerk a loaded gun and not send him to a class to learn to shoot it correctly and lawfully.
Having now admitted to the murder, LeRoy soon backtracked, saying that he didn’t want to kill West, but that he nudged his arm and his gun fired, the bullet ‘accidentally’ hitting the clerk in the chest. LeRoy could not account for the other two shots that he fired into the man – going to write another fourteen pages explaining why it was an accident.
I also questioned LeRoy about his alleged daring escape over the high prison wall, through the razor wire, dodging the bullets and evading the police in one of America’s largest manhunts. He had previously told me that he had been serving two life sentences for murder, however, the truth later emerged that, in reality, he was serving two five-years-to-life concurrent sentences for a 1947 conviction for assaulting a Connecticut police officer with intent to kill. The escape? He was working, unshackled, on a forestry crew, and made a run for it.
All of this information now puts LeRoy in an entirely different light. He is not the cold-blooded cop-killer he once portrayed himself as. His only murder was that of Gregory West, which he argues was an accident. Indeed this extremely successful jailhouse lawyer has managed to tie the Arizona judicial system up in knots for years – just as he did in Connecticut, a talent even acknowledged by the Supreme Court.
On Death Row, LeRoy says this:
I have never heard a death row inmate discussing his crimes. Everyone knows about me, but not the details. When I was acting as a paralegal, decades ago, I encountered mostly a bunch of sad people who were nervous and neurotic, afraid to discuss their case, for fear that other cons would hate them, often because their trial transcripts exposed them as gutless rats.
Yet there actually are a few good people in death row. But prison officials seldom know much about the prisoner’s actual character.
On the other hand, alert prisoners hear a lot about prison psychiatrists, or psychologists; but most such professionals are used by prison officials for only one purpose: to learn if the prisoner is a danger to the prison administration in any way.
Most prison guards, the same as most prisoners, are uneducated, low-level people, incapable of worthwhile sociobiological cogitation; followers and freeloaders.’
So, what about his hunting adventures around the Hoover Dam? Sadly, this all seems to be the invention of our man’s over-active imagination. At the age of fifteen, when he was supposed to be hunting deer around the Hoover Dam construction project, his rap sheet shows that he was arrested for riding in a stolen car and started serving a one-year plus six-day prison term at the Ohio Federal Reform School, at Chillicothe, from which he promptly escaped. A woman, living nearby, heard the prison escape siren, spotted him, and he was recaptured about four miles away.