A new exhibit at WSU Libraries, “The Case of the 12-year-old Sheriff Killer: Herbert Niccolls and the Washington Justice System,” opens Wednesday, Nov. 18, with a reception from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections on the ground floor of Terrell Library. It will run through March 26.
The exhibit details the 1931 murder of Asotin County Sheriff John Wormell by child murderer Herbert Niccolls Jr. and is part of this year’s Common Reading Program book, “Just Mercy,” written by Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Read more at https://CommonReading.wsu.edu.
MASC collections from two of the case’s major players provide intriguing glimpses of the crime, trial and its aftermath: Elgin V. Kuykendall, the circuit court judge who presided over Niccolls’s trial, and Clarence Martin, the Washington governor who signed Niccolls’s conditional pardon from Washington State Penitentiary when he was 20. The Asotin County Museum and Washington State Archives also provided reproductions of key documents and photos.
For more information, contact exhibit organizer Cheryl Gunselman, cheryl.gunselman@wsu.edu.
