I have TV (yet again) this morning, so we're going to put one of our favorite words into use--
Re-purpose.
I actually haven't re-purposed anything for a bit, probably because “High School Bowl” was on hiatus, but there's no time like the present to get into practice. What are we re-purposing this time around? A newspaper article I wrote for the History Center. It's based on a story I've told many time while on tour, so it was easy to write something about it.
But you know what? It actually turned out better than what I wrote, as some of the volunteers at the History Center, apparently intrigued by the story, dug a little deeper to find out a few things that I hadn't been able to previously uncover. We added them to the story, and voila--
Came up with the article that was printed Wednesday and that you get to read today.
With that. I'm off. If you happen to be in downtown Marquette tomorrow for trick or treating, make sure you stop by the TV-19 studios, as I'll be handing goodies out with Kevin and the crew. Otherwise, have yourself a fantastic weekend!
*****
Murder on the Sands Plains
By Jim Koski
99 years ago, two conservation officers went missing south of Marquette. It took a month of searches by police and the guilty conscience of one man to reveal the fact that an ex-con named Roy Nunn killed the officers in cold blood.
Richard “Roy” Nunn had been in a state training home as a juvenile and in and out of Michigan prisons most of his adult life. He was only 17 when he was convicted of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life. During his incarceration at the Marquette Branch Prison, he was classified as “incorrigible.” Despite this, his sentence was modified to 25 years and when he had served seventeen of those 25 years he was paroled for good behavior.
Nunn stayed in the UP where he immediately resumed a life of crime, stealing gold fixtures from the Negaunee Catholic Church and robbing stores in Gwinn and Little Lake. He served another six-year sentence for those crimes. Following his release from prison on those charges he managed to get a job doing watch repairs in Marquette.
On September 29, 1926, he and a friend, Joseph Contois, went to the Sands Plains to visit a female friend of Nunn’s and, as it turns out, to do a little out-of-season deer hunting at the same time. Two state conservation officers, Arvid Erickson and Emil Skoglund, caught Nunn & Contois as they were approaching a salt lick, and pulled Nunn’s car over to question them.
Nunn claimed he could show them proof of his innocence in the trunk of his car. They allowed him to do so, so he went to the back of his car, opened the trunk, pulled out a pistol, and shot both officers. Contois ran away, while Nunn went back to the home of the female friend and her young son, continuing his visit as if nothing had happened.
When Officers Erickson and Skoglund failed to return home that night, a search ensued involving hundreds of officers. Authorities followed many leads, some provided by the public and most of them false. The missing men had disappeared into thin air. It wasn’t until almost a month later that Contois, affected by a guilty conscience despite his fear of Nunn, told another conservation officer what had happened out on the Sands Plains.
Nunn was quickly arrested and from the very beginning proclaimed his innocence in the matter. For the next several days the Mining Journal reported that Nunn “wouldn't crack.” He kept saying that he didn't commit the crimes of which he was being accused, even going so far as to name other people he claimed killed the two.
Eventually, though, on October 22, 1926, Nunn finally cracked, telling authorities the whole story. After the murders, he shoved the bodies of Erickson and Skoglund in the trunk of his car. He proceeded to cover them in tarps and weighed them down, before eventually dumping them off the end of the Spear’s Merchandise dock in Marquette’s Lower Harbor. Divers quickly found the bodies and Nunn’s trial on two murder charges was scheduled to begin in early December.
The trial only ran for a few days, with Nunn acting as his own attorney. He spoke on his own behalf for over three hours, giving various reasons as to why he shouldn’t be blamed for the killings. However, when testimony was over, the jury quickly rendered a guilty verdict. Nunn was sentenced to two life terms in the Marquette Branch Prison. He lived there the rest of his life before dying of a heart attack in the spring of 1948.
Arvid Erickson and Emil Skoglund were the first two state conservation officers killed in the line of duty in Michigan. They are honored on, among other things, the National Law Enforcement Memorial in Washington DC, as well as the Michigan DNR website and on a plaque outside of the DNR regional office in Marquette.
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