Norm Howey
interviewed by Doris Ladue

March 7, 2003

This is Doris Ladue.  We are in Canon City, it’s March 7, 2003.  I’m here with Liz Jennings and Norm Howey and his wife Nancy.  The purpose of this interview is to ask Norm what his tenure as sheriff was like back in the 70's.

70's and 80's

Why don’t you go ahead and tell us how long you were sheriff and start off with the years-

Well, 1965 I become a deputy sheriff; ‘66, ‘67, ‘68 I was undersheriff, and in 1972 E.B. Bell —he went by Doc Bell–he  resigned and they appointed me in the fall of ‘71.  And I was, my tenure was through January of 1986.  I was sheriff for fourteen years, undersheriff for four years.

And during that time the criminals were placed in that small jail outside the court house?

Well, the violators, I would say and the real criminals, too, at times.  If they were real violent or if it was a female, we took them to Salida.  But otherwise, overnight, or maybe even a week at a time, the jail was used. 

Do you remember what year the last time the jail was used?

I told Jerry Davis, I’m not positive I remember, but I used it in ‘72, ‘73, ‘74, ‘75, ‘76 — I believe in ‘78 they gave me an order to discontinue the use of it.  It was condemned in 1950.

That jail building was condemned in 1950?

By the state; they told me to quit using it.

But that was a good place to put the violators.

Yes, overnight and everything, it was a good holding facility.  And you’d take them to the hotel or somewhere to eat or went out and got a meal to bring in to them, one or the other.  And then we hired someone to sleep in the outer portion of the jail.  In other words, that two-cell block inside, we locked them in there and then we always had someone sleep there or we had to stay there all night.  We  had to have somebody there at night.  So they could get out or something, if there was a–I don’t know how they’d do it.  One of them set a fire in there once–I don’t know how-we didn’t find his matches, I guess.

And he set a fire and he was able to escape?

No, he didn’t escape, he was standing there at the outer door, yelling.  And we heard him–that was during the day, though, and we opened it up and took the matches.

Do you remember who he was?

Scotty Gow.  I don’t know what his name was, all I ever knew him by was Scott Gow.  We called him Scotty Gow, and he was pretty much an alcoholic, always getting drunk and raising cain and he was in the jail several times.

One of your regulars?  Tell us a little more about the food that they ate.  You were mentioning earlier that you actually took them to the hotel to eat?

Yes, or a restaurant.  When the Fairplay Hotel was open, we took them to the Fairplay Hotel.

That seems like some really nice treatment.

Well, it was either that or serve them.  If we couldn’t take them or we felt it was too dangerous, they might try to escape, or run or we might have to shoot them or something else, why, we went out to a restaurant and got take-out lunch, box lunch or whatever.  They weren’t the fanciest meals.  They got pretty much the minimum menu.  They had plenty to eat, but it wasn’t a fancy meal.  They might have had roast beef or a special on, or for lunch they might have had just a sandwich and coffee, or whatever.  They didn’t got a lot of fancy meals, but they were fed well enough.

Tell us more about the guards.  If you had a prisoner you had to have a guard stationed there in that one area the entire time?

Most generally it was at night.  During the day a lot of times when we took them into court, why we were right there at the office of the old court house there.  And we were in the bottom there.  And we were close enough by that we could keep an eye on them and everything during the day, but at night, if they got sick or something.  But they were locked down at night, I mean tightly locked down.

What was the longest period of time someone spent in there, one prisoner?

Well, we had one that probably spent approximately thirty days.  Then if it went any longer than that we contracted with Chaffee County, took  them down to Salida. 

What about bathing facilities, did you take them to the hotel for that, too?

Well, they just went without.  We would take them into the bathroom or rest rooms at the court house there, and there was a toilet and wash basin in there.  So they could wash up and clean up.  But they didn’t get a bath.  And we didn’t take them to shower.

How do you feel about the way the prisoners are treated these days compared to back then?

I think it’s ridiculous, but that’s just an opinion.  When I was first starting out years ago I was a justice of the peace, in the ‘50's.  And then it was a criminal and he was punished.  He went to the penitentiary or reform school, the younger people, and they were under punishment.  They treated them decent and all that, but they didn’t do all these things that they have today–tv and everything else, that didn’t have to be furnished.  The ACLU is a joke to me, now that’s just my opinion.  They’ve gone out of reason, it’s out of sorts.  I don’t think that you should be cruel to them and put them on chain gangs, or whatever.  But I think they have too many privileges.  And I think they should learn to live and get adapted to it, make it a way of life.  When they get out they don’t even know how to work or do anything else.  They say they’re a correctional or training facility now and I guess some of them do get trained.  I don’t know really that much about it today.

Do you have any involvement now as a retired sheriff here in Canon City?

No, I got clear away from it.  I went out here to the federal penitentiary with the police chief before he retired here in town.  And it isn’t a pleasant place, but overall it’s awfully expensive.  Out there where they exercise and everything–the people could starve for water here–but they would have to water that ground out there so they wouldn’t get dust.  And to me that’s ridiculous.

So all the way up to ‘78 you were still using that small jail there.

There were several different ones that were hired out.  He wasn’t locked in the front part, but the prisoners were locked in that block there,  those two cell rooms there. 

Was that constructed when you were sheriff, that inside part?

No, that all started back in 1950 when they more or less condemned the jail because it was pretty much escapable at the time.  See, all that steel part of those two cells weren’t there at the time.  That was just one open jail, and they just had some bunk beds around there.  They didn’t have the toilet or the wash basin.  They didn’t have that heater, there was a coal and wood stove right there in front pretty close to the door.  There used to be a chimney there, and that’s where they got their heat from.  In 1950 three commissioners, Bell and Louis Almgren and Wilbur Lewis got the order from the state to improve it.  So they dug a sump out there alongside of the jail.  And they put in the toilet and that.  And they put that little shed on the back to put the furnace in there.  It’s a blower heater, a forced air heater. 

So then they added the electricity at that time?

I think it was about that time that they got electricity for there, as I remember it. 

Did you have any women prisoners?

Oh, I had a lot of women prisoners, but we took them to Salida.

Always–they never had to go in there?

We held two women one night and we had a woman stay out there.  But that’s the only time that I ever remember that we had women.  And we took them to Salida and contracted there.  We had one female–she was vicious.

Tell us what were the typical crimes of the day–what did she do that was so vicious?

She was on drugs, for one thing, she was a druggie. She was in with some guys and they stole a car and they injured some people in their home up coming out of Kansas.  And we apprehended them in Park County. 

So they were just passing through?

But the warrant was out, and they were wanted so we apprehended them.  And we took them to Buena Vista because our jail wouldn’t hold a woman and men.  This was two men, and one was black and one was white.  Not that that makes any difference, or whatever.   But they pretty well dumped her.  So she went into Hartsel.  And she started raising cain.  And she kicked in a showcase, kicked the glass in.  And so we had to go down and arrest her.  And she was just bitter because they had went off and left her, they dumped her, and she had been paying the way.  We took her on to Buena Vista and they jailed her for overnight, and then we had to take  her on to Salida.   She got down there and the old court house down in Salida, downstairs was the jail and they had screens around the windows and everything.  She took her high heels and broke out every window in that women’s cell; a hundred and some windows before they got her stopped. 

It’s too bad you couldn’t have just kept her in that steel and brick jail, where she couldn’t have done much damage.

We caught them between Hartsel and Antero Junction, which used to be Antero Junction, which is Trout Creek Pass.  And so we just took them on to Buena Vista.  And Chaffee County come over and helped haul them because we only had one car when we stopped them and apprehended them.  Then we had to–the car was stolen–so we had to get a wrecker to tow it away, we couldn’t drive it.  So Chaffee County come helped us and that’s where we put them.

Do you remember any of the other prisoners--names and stories of their crimes?

I don’t remember names.  I was trying to think of some names and things, and I went out to the garage where I have some stuff stored, but I couldn’t find it.  There was one that we had a double murder in Hartsel.  Doc Bell was the sheriff, and they had drownings down in Eleven Mile, so he went to Eleven Mile.  While he was in Eleven Mile this fella come into Hartsel and he told them “I just killed my wife and her boyfriend, call the sheriff.” 

So he turned himself in?

Yah, he turned himself in.  He still had a gun in his hand and he had them petrified, but he wasn’t harmful.  And when I got down there, I was the only one there, and I was the undersheriff at the time, and I went down to Hartsel to pick him up.  And his name was–his last name was Goes, I can’t remember his first name.  But his wife had fooled around with this fellow and I don’t remember what his name was, and I don’t remember her name.  But she had his child, and this Goes and she went to Wyoming, and he worked on a ranch up there and they were living up there.  And he raised that boy and everything.  And she left.  Well, he knew this fellow was working at the Hartsel ranch yet.  So he came down from Wyoming and into Buena Vista and he found out that she had been through Buena Vista, and he went on down there and that one morning he drove up down there and he went into the ranch, because he knew the ranch, too.  They were out there in the corral and they were working on some calves or something.  And he shot both of them.  And he must have told her to get on her knees and beg and she wouldn’t do it, so he shot her in the head.  And he shot him three times.

Did he end up staying in the jail?

We had him in the jail for a while, three days.  And then–of course they claimed he was psychiatric–but to me he was normal.  He had one intent.  That man messed up his life and his marriage and I came out here for one reason.  Gentlemen, he says, I killed them and I admit it.  They took him to the psychiatric hospital; we took him down to Pueblo then to Denver.  Then they had his trial.  Then he was taken to the State hospital.

So do you think he lived out his days there?

He was in minimum security, in fact.  And he was working out in the garage area, where they fixed tires and everything, and one of the tractor tires, he was working on that.  And it didn’t have a cage, and he was airing it up.  And that rim flew off and hit him in the head, and made him–well he was brain-dead–and he finally died in the penitentiary.

What was a typical week like during those years for you.  Did you arrest someone every day?

No, not in Park County we didn’t.  We really didn’t have that many prisoners, and there wasn’t that much crime.  We had a lot of burglaries and we arrested a number of people.  But it wasn’t a day or month event.  I imagine DUI’s and the ones that the State patrol brought in and what have you.  We handled a number.  Practically every week we had somebody in jail somewhere.  Nearly every week.

But there isn’t the traffic on 285 that there is today.  I remember going up in that country in the ‘70s and it was quite slow.

Oh, yah.  I remember in the ‘60's in the summer it was busy.  On the week ends it was constant.  But it’s just about like it is now all the time.  They tell me, and what we’ve seen up there.  There’s times when it’s not that way, but there isn’t anything near the traffic, there isn’t near the people.  But there’s more people in Park County than there ever have been.  By what I read, the statistics and everything.

What about juveniles?

We picked up a lot of juveniles.  We were never allowed to put them in there, though.  Salida had a juvenile detention place for them.  And then they formed–see we were in Region 10 or whatever it was local judicial districts –which was Lake, Chaffee, Park, Teller and Fester.   So later after I become sheriff in ‘73, they changed, not the judicial districts, but the regions, they put  Park County in with Teller County and El Paso County.  That’s when they started the LEA unit for the government funds that they tried to make these smaller counties to give money to the smaller cities to give them cars and education and all the different things that were supposed to go there.  Well, most of the bigger cities got wise to it and they got most of it.  Well, anyway, when I was in that region, I was in El Paso county, and I took all the females to Colorado Springs.  Juvenile detention centers for girls and boys were all in Colorado Springs.  So I didn’t have that much to contend with.  But actually in 1972 or 1973, that’s when the juvenile code came out.  It came out before that, but they revised it so much.  When Doc Bell was still there, if we picked up a juvenile, we called the parents and sent him home with the parents.  Because we didn’t have any murders or real serious crimes–attack with a knife or something else, assaulting somebody.  Burglaries or something like that.  We picked the up and took them to their parents.  And they were then given a date to come into juvenile court.  And they had to bring them in, if they didn’t bring them in we had to go get them.  But then after that, we picked up juveniles, burglars and drug offenses, assaults, and all those things, they actually went through the social services.  They were on, but we did the transport.  We’d bring them in and turn them over to social services or work with social services–I did–and then we would transport them into Colorado Springs in their cell.  There were some there three or four months, there was one spent a year in the facility down there. 

Did you have any escapes from that jail?

I didn’t.  I had one escape from me when I was transporting. 

How did that happen?

Well I had to take a juvenile girl back to detention in Colorado Springs.  I was short-handed.  And I had a fellow that was from Colorado Springs that had allegedly killed a person down at Lake George, outside of Lake George.  And we got word from El Paso County, and we found out that this group was in the hills outside of Lake George.  And they were staying in some of those old ranch buildings that were vacated up there.  And they broke into some where the people come up there during the summertime.  And one thing led to another.  And they couldn’t find one person, they thought he was dealing drugs and everything else.  I can’t remember that fellow’s name.  Anyway, some of his friends squealed on him and said he’d killed this other fella, but they didn’t know where he was.  Well, I knew the country down there pretty well and there were some old mine shafts down there.  And just below where they broke into this one house, a place that set up into a draw, just below that was a mine shaft.  And I happened to see that somebody had shoveled dirt off that pile driving by there.  So we looked down in there and we could see a lot of old dead boards and timbers and everything were down in there.  And they had just been thrown in there maybe within a few days time.  And then dirt was shoveled down in there.  So I figured he was down there, so I got the county winch and lowered us down in there in a bucket.  When we dug it up we found the body; and we took him out of there.  And this fella, I took him back and forth to Pueblo all the time.  But I had this one gal, and when I got to Colorado Springs I got stopped at a stop sign and I got mixed up and I didn’t secure him well enough. He undone that seat belt and jumped out of that car before I could grab him.  And then I radioed the  police and they apprehended him.  And we took him on to Salida.  After that he got leg irons, and everything else and cuffed behind his back and that’s the way he rode to Pueblo.  I took him back and forth to court probably ten times before they finally sentenced him.

And you always handcuffed him then?

Oh, he was handcuffed that night.  But I had him in a chain and he was able to get that seat belt loose.  I tried to be as humane to them as possible, but after that he got leg irons and cuffed behind his back.

What did the prisoners wear while they were in that jail?

We never had special suits for them like they did later.  When we took them to Salida they were given an orange suit and they were stripped down and their clothes were all taken off them and taken away from them and put in a locker like they do yet today.

But in Fairplay just their regular clothes.

We just left them in their regular clothes. We stripped anything from them–knives or cigarettes.  They couldn’t smoke.  One we let smoke and that’s how he set the bed on fire.  He set the bed on fire during the day one day and he was standing out there hollering and we opened up the front and we pulled the mattress and the bedding out.

Did he try to escape?

He was just being ornery.  He knew he wasn’t going anywhere. 

Did the men try to sneak women in anyway, bribe the guards?

No.  If they wanted visit time, we would set a chair out there in front and they would talk through the bars.  If they were dangerous and mean, we’d leave them inside and we’d let people go inside to visit them, talk to them.  Actually we only had about three or four like that in all my years.  Most of the time we took them into the court room and they’d talk to their attorneys in there.  Or the back room of the sheriff’s office where they could have privacy.  The court house there used to be the first jail in Park county. 

Where the coroner is now?

I don’t know, is the district attorney downstairs in the old court house?

They have the sheriff’s investigative officers down there, and the coroner.

The deputy district attorney, he was using the old sheriff’s office. 

He used that for years, then they built a new building for them.

You know where they’re at in the old ball park, well that’s the new court house as far as I know.  It is today–the one that caught fire–they’re still using that aren’t they?  I guess they have a building that they built for the deputy district attorney.  They had that and they were using the one downstairs.  That was the first sheriff’s office that I know of.  That in the back there which was the vault, two vaults, the court vault and the sheriff’s office vault, actually the treasurer was in there, different years.  When I went in there with Doc Bell, we made that back into the sheriff’s office.  There’s leg irons under that floor yet. 

And they poured concrete on top of it?

I don’t know whether they poured concrete, it was wooden when we were there.  The leg irons that’s down at the end of the corner of the old court house, that old leg iron came out of there when they put new floor in there.  That used to be a dirt floor.

And the prisoners were attached to the wall with the leg irons.  That’s the way to keep them.

They didn’t get away. 

I don’t know if I have any other questions, Liz did you have anything? 

What about change of clothing and laundering?

We took them out and let them do that; we only had one or two, one of them was twenty days and one of them was thirty days for some reason.  He asked the judge if he could stay in Fairplay and the judge said, Yeah, so we had to keep him.  And we let them bring, contacted his family and they brought clean clothes in to him, and we did buy some clothes for him.  And we changed them and took them to the laundry.  There was a laundromat in Fairplay at one time, so we had them laundered.  And there was two guys one time and one another time there for twenty days.  And we give them clean clothes once a week.   

And for entertainment did you give him books and a radio?

He had books to read and a radio.  The radio was–you see in the cells there and that bigger hole to the right?  That’s where they could reach through and turn the radio off and on.  But they couldn’t take it inside or anything.  We had it fixed so they couldn’t get it inside to cause electric shock or anything.

Were there any suicide attempts?

No.

How about exercise time?

They didn’t get exercise time.  They could do their exercises walking back and forth in the jail or they could do situps and they could do a lot of things like that, but they didn’t get out to do exercises. 

You didn’t issue bar bells and all the things they give them now?

No, they have machines now, but they didn’t have anything like that.  But they totally condemned that in 1978 and I had to use Salida totally or anywhere I could find to put a prisoner.  It got so it was hard to hire, the jails got so full Salida had a hard time.  Sometimes we hauled them clear down to Canon City.

They’re in the process of adding a new wing to that jail in Salida.

They were condemned years ago, they were supposed to change theirs. 

They’re just changing it now.

That was a good jail.  They had an exercise lot out there, but they just, I’m telling you, I just don’t believe in it myself.  If they’re bad enough that they have to put them in jail for that length of time they should pay the penalty.

The ones that were in there for thirty days, did you ever have repeat prisoners?

The one that we had in there, he came from out of Park County, and I don’t that he ever came back to Park County.  He didn’t like that jail.  When you slammed that old door at night, even the drunks, I mean the drunk drivers that we picked up, intoxicated people if you want to be polite about it, but they were drunks to me.  The next morning they were ready to plead guilty to get out of there.  They didn’t like it in there.  It was warm in there–it had heat.  I remember when I was a kid, we used to go down and talk to the prisoners.  They’d be sittin’ up there by the door; they had that inside closed door.  And they’d open that up and “Hey kids would you go get us some cigarettes?”  They’d give us a dime and we’d go get ‘em a package of wing cigarettes.  And we’d talk to them and everything; some of them for forgery.  Vern Moran was in there pretty regularly and we knew him, and we’d go down and visit with them. 

How young were you then?

About ten, twelve years old.  They used to have a few escapes then; they’d go up through the ceiling to get out.  They didn’t have bars; they had screens on the windows, but they didn’t really have bars.  And they used to have quite a few escapes.  They even–let’s see, 1964 I think was the last escape out of there.  Joe Hurst was sheriff.  And I used to help him out; I was appointed deputy and did it on calls.  You was paid $2 for going out with him or $4 or something like that in those days.  You went in your own car or what have you.  You’d let ‘em out in front there.  And they took a bunk bed apart, and I think they took the rods and poked a hole through the ceiling and escaped.  There wasn’t anybody to..he just left them out in front and they broke out.  You either put them in the cells or they could break out pretty easy.

So the cells in there now, they’re reinforced at the top, too?

That’s solid iron around on top.  The sides are, and the bars–the county road and bridge group built that.  They actually put that together and welded it, and did most of that.  There was one of those outside locks and there was one padlock on there and somebody broke that out and got somebody out of jail.  So they put three locks on them and we used to have to lock up all three of them.  Well, I guess that’s about all you want from me.

That’s all I can think of.  Nancy, would you like to read the poem into the oral history?  Nancy wrote a poem back in 1995.  And it was when she was president of the Friends of the Library and it was a little giveaway at our fund raiser in July at Burro Days. 

Nancy: And that was the first time that we used the old jail for our headquarters to sell stuff. Before that time, of course, the Friends of the Library had their sale out on the front lawn of the old court house. 

Yeah, we had to haul boxes out there every single year.   So ‘95 was the first year we used that jail?  Well let’s hear it.

Nancy: The information for this poem came from my husband, Norman. And it’s just kind of a fun thing.

I thought so.

Nancy: This here’s a tale ‘bout this ol’ Park County Jail.  “Twas built at this place in 1874 where the ol’ courthouse is right next door. When the judge’d say, “Time you hafta pay, Out in the jail you’ll stay both night and day.”  It warn’t made to be a pleasant way.  Oh yeh, there wuz lights and heat and meals wuz brung from up the street–All shared a pitcher and a cup to drink cua there warn’t no sink and no tv, rec room or exercise yard, and them thar beds wuz kinda hard.  Indoor plumbin’ wuz added in the 50's sometime–A great convenience while payin’ fer crime.  Leg irons wuz sometimes used and handcuffs, too, on the accused.  Mostly it were men but a woman, now an’ then.  Fer the ‘bout 100 years its use had been.  ‘Twere one open room fer a long while ‘til times needed a diff’runt style; so the county shop welded the inner cells ‘long in the 50's so they tells.  So things wuz goin’ along fer ‘nother 20 year then the “state” made it clear this here jail warn’t good enuff anymore, so in ‘bout 1976, the sheriff chained shut the door.  Then with criminals what’d he do?  Took ‘em to another county jail or two; thet’s what he done.  This here building stood with no one ‘cept to store evidence ‘til a trial wuz thru.  Now another phase, all new, as an historic site to view.  And Friends of the Library book storage, too.  By the way, now the prisoners do go to Park County Jail, Number Two.  (Opened in 1995, on County Rd 16 on the East side of Fairplay).  Nancy Howey