Murray Duffy landed the chopper on the flat ridge-top, and Onstad and Bobby Campbell came plowing down the snowy hillside, their rifles at the ready.
When Campbell saw Johnny guarding the two filthy scarecrows, he slapped Johnny on the back. “Johnny,” he yelled, “you are all right.”
For Montana, that was a real compliment.
Onstad was grinning broadly. “France,” he bellowed, rapping Johnny’s shoulder, “you’re one of the gutsiest sons of bitches I ever met.”
Now Don Nichols realized just how badly he’d been tricked. There had been no deputies, no “Joe” and “Bob” in the trees. “Boy,” Don muttered at Johnny. “You’re just as dumb as you always were.” He shook his head in obvious disgust. “That was real dumb, comin’ in alone like that.”
Johnny smiled at him. Old Don was confusing Johnny with his Uncle Joe. Well, Johnny thought, that’s a kind of compliment too.
As Bob Campbell searched the Nicholses, Johnny told Onstad that he’d not had a chance to read them their rights.
Onstad nodded, then stepped forward. “Obviously,” he said, “you’re under arrest. Therefore you must understand your rights.…”
Danny Nichols stared at the snow, disoriented, as though in shock. Don gazed evenly up at the big sheriff’s face, trying to discern if this were another trick of the rotten system he had tried so desperately and so long to escape.
“You do have the right to remain silent,” Sheriff Onstad droned, his breath steaming in the rosy dusk. “Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. If you would like to talk to an attorney.…”
Johnny moved away. The cramp was beginning to ease from his shoulders. At this side of the clearing, he could look down the open draw to the distant highway. Tiny red jewels of police pursuit lights twinkled in the winter darkness. He had brought the Nichols boys into the bureaucratic web of justice. The time for guns and violence was over. Now society reasserted its claim on these two renegades. They would not walk these mountains for years to come, if ever.
He breathed the clean night air. It was over, he was tired. It was too soon to really feel anything. His mind returned to practicalities. There wouldn’t be room in the chopper for both prisoners and two guards, and he surely did not want them in there with only one officer, not today. Given the darkness, he thought, it probably won’t be a good idea to put cuffs on Don and Dan because if they were going to walk them down this draw to the highway, the chances were that they’d slip and fall.
Johnny stepped closer to the dropoff of the hillside to check the slope below. Away to the south, the snowy heights of the Beartrap caught the last pink afterglow of the sunset.
Epilogue
The Madison Range, Montana
Summer, 1985
A year had passed since the bizarre kidnapping. Now the heat gripped the Madison Range once more, the driest, hottest weather in almost one hundred years.
Out in the valley, the hay crop was burning up, despite around-the-clock irrigation. Hundred-dollar hay was going to put a lot of ranchers out of business, come the fall, according to the old cowboys who drank their mugs of strong black coffee at Bettie’s Cafe.
But the heat and drought were not the main topics of conversation that summer. Up in the stately brick courthouse in Virginia City, the second Nichols trial was in progress.
In May, Danny Nichols had faced a jury of twelve of his fellow citizens. They found him guilty of kidnapping and assault, but not of felony murder. District Judge Frank Davis, a crusty old southerner who ran a tight court, had not yet passed sentence. But it was no secret he was annoyed at the verdict; Montana law was quite specific. If the jury found the boy guilty of kidnapping, then they were obliged to also find him guilty of the murder of Al Goldstein, which occurred during the course of the original felony.
But this was rural Montana, not the South Bronx or Miami. Some folks on the jury just couldn’t find a kid like Danny guilty of murder, when it had been the old man who pulled the trigger.
Now Danny was out on bail, subpoenaed to testify in his father’s trial on the same charges. Danny Nichols was much in evidence the week of his dad’s trial. The young man wore a wide, pearl-gray Stetson. His fine blond hair was washed and blow dried daily. His sudden brown stare and angular face made a positive impression on many of the spectators who crammed into the stifling courtroom.
But the Swenson family and Al Goldstein’s widow and two brothers were not impressed. The hatred for the Nicholses that radiated from the front row of seats was obvious to all the reporters jammed into the press section at the side of the room. Throughout this second trial, Kari Swenson sat close beside her mother, staring straight ahead, avoiding the eyes of Don Nichols and his son.
Once more, to this new jury, Kari Swenson and Jim Schwalbe gave their detailed recitation of the terrible events of July 15 and 16, 1984. Once more Don Nichols and his boy gave their version. The intense young woman court reporter swayed over her Stenograph in the choking heat to record their exact words.
From the side door of the courtroom, Sheriff Johnny France watched the progress of the trial.
At the end of the week, Don Nichols was found guilty of murder and kidnapping. No one came forward from the front row of courtroom seats to shake Johnny’s hand.
Judge Davis passed his sentences.
Danny got the maximum, twenty years and six months. To be served at the hardrock adult prison at Deerlodge, not the youth camp at Swan River.
Later, Judge Davis sentenced Donald Boone Nichols. Eighty-five years, the maximum term under the law. Don Nichols must serve forty-two years before he will be eligible for parole.
According to the Washington Post, Kari Swenson resumed full-time training in the autumn of 1985. She jogged through the dry Indian Summer heat of Vermont’s Green Mountains, training hard again for international biathlon competition, despite her reported pain and psychological traumas.
But she never ran alone. Even on a crowded campus or in a city park. She bought a guard dog. She will not talk about the crime.
But she has discussed the state of her training. She has regained about seventy percent of her former ability. “I’d love to be as good as I can be,” she said wistfully, “but I don’t know if I ever will be.”
After the trials, Al Goldstein’s widow, Dianne, and his two brothers asked Jay Cosgrove if he would lead them up to the clearing on Moonlight Creek that everyone now calls “the crime scene.”
On the way up the indistinct game trail, the Goldsteins commented on the thickness of the country, on the surprisingly wild forest, so close to the civilization of Big Sky.
Jay showed them the camp, the three-stone fire ring. The deadfall where Kari was chained. The tree where Don Nichols fired the shot. The lodgepole where Al fell.
There were alpine asters and Indian paint brush growing on the pine needle floor of the forest where he died.
They huddled close together, and one of the young men took a picture of the delicate flowers.
Image Gallery
Sheriff Johnny France: the fatigue and tension of the manhunt show. (Linda Best)
Don Nichols at time of capture. (Lynn Israel)
Dan Nichols at time of capture. (Lynn Israel)
About the Authors
Johnny France is a former sheriff of Madison County, Montana, and coauthor, with Malcolm McConnell, of the Edgar Award finalist Incident at Big Sky (1986), the true story of the kidnapping of world-class biathlete Kari Swenson and the pursuit and capture of her mountain men abductors. France was born in Wyoming and raised on a ranch outside of Norris, Montana. He was competing in rodeos by the time he was twelve years old and won the Montana Rodeo Association’s all around title in 1965 and bareback championship in 1966. France began his career in law enforcement as a night patrolman and was elected Madison County Sheriff in 1980. His daring showdown with Dan and Don Nichols made national headlines and led to television appearances and an invitation to attend the 1985 inauguration
of President Ronald Reagan. France was inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2012 and lives with Sue, his wife of fifty-six years, in Ennis, Montana, and Apache Junction, Arizona.
Malcolm McConnell is the author or coauthor of many books, including the Edgar Award finalist Incident at Big Sky (1986) with Sheriff Johnny France and the #1 New York Times bestseller American General (2004) with General Tommy Franks.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 1986 by Johnny France
Cover design by Michel Vrana
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4399-1
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10038
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