- Jerry Nuzum
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Hidden El Paso: NFL player faced trial by fury after teen slain by Milan Simonich / El Paso Times Posted: 12/13/2010 12:00:00 AM MST
Click photo to enlargePittsburgh Steeler Jerry Nuzum and his wife, Mary, in 1949 after the Dona Ana... (Times file photo)«1»Hidden El Paso is an occasional series on overlooked people, events or places.
The Rosenbergs and Dr. Sam Sheppard were not the only defendants in sensational -- and sometimes unfair -- trials of the 1950s.
Long before O.J. Simpson and Rae Carruth, another professional football player stood trial for murder. His name was Jerry Nuzum, a star halfback at New Mexico A&M before being drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1948.
Nuzum, in the words of one Steelers' employee, "had a face that looked like a monument." His chiseled features and his size—he stood 6-foot-1 and weighed 205 pounds—made him easy to remember.
He became New Mexico's most publicized suspect, linked by the Doña Ana County sheriff to a murder that shook
TALES FROM THE MORGUE
El Paso history is never dead.
Las Cruces. The victim was Ovida Coogler, an 18-year-old waitress. Everybody called her "Cricket." She vanished during the early morning hours of March 31, 1949, not long after witnesses saw her in a bar with Nuzum and another man.
Rabbit hunters found Coogler's body 16 days later on a plateau near Mesquite. The killer or killers dug a shallow grave and threw a few shovels of dirt on her corpse.
Sheriff A.L. "Happy" Apodaca said Coogler had been raped and murdered. But forensic science and common sense were absent in the Coogler case. Apodaca refused to authorize an autopsy.
This cast doubt on how thorough the sheriff cared to be, and it prevented any meaningful investigation from gaining momentum.
Then Apodaca arrested Nuzum and
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tried to obtain a confession using any means he could, fair or unfair. The sheriff told Nuzum he would be charged with murder if he tried to hire a lawyer. Nuzum's arrest remained secret for three days.
Nuzum, then 26, caught a break when El Paso Herald-Post reporter Walt Finley looked into the case. Finley had no car, so he rode the bus to Las Cruces to follow up on tips that something odd was afoot in the Coogler investigation.
Finley did some digging, found Nuzum in jail and interviewed him. Nuzum said he was innocent, but feared he would be railroaded to satisfy the public's demand for a conviction.
A black man, Wesley Byrd, said he also had been targeted in the Coogler case. Byrd, then 27, told Finley the sheriff kept him in jail for 10 days without allowing him to notify anybody.
Byrd dropped another bombshell. He said members of the sheriff's staff and the state police took him to the desert, then tried to elicit a confession from him by squeezing his testicles with a bicycle lock.
The stories Finley wrote shed light and heat on the law-enforcement machinery of New Mexico. The sheriff freed Nuzum after 12 days.
Then the district attorney issued a statement saying: "Jerry Nuzum has definitely been cleared of in any way being at fault or having any guilty knowledge of the death of Ovida Coogler."
Nuzum's nightmare was only beginning, though.
Edwin L. Mechem, a Republican who ran for governor of New Mexico in 1950, made solving Coogler's murder a centerpiece of his campaign. He called it "the Nuzum case." Mechem won the election, and Nuzum once more was a suspect.
Police arrested him in April 1951 at his home in suburban Pittsburgh. Two years had passed since he had been "cleared" by T.K. Campbell, the Doña Ana district attorney.
Steelers' owner Art Rooney and head coach John Michelosen stood by Nuzum.
"I can't imagine such a thing as the Cricket Coogler deal. Jerry has always been a well-behaved boy," Michelosen said.
Nuzum went on trial that summer in Las Cruces, then a town of 13,000. Attorneys Charles B. Owen of El Paso and W. A. Sutherland of Las Cruces defended him. They knew the prosecution's case was circumstantial but explosive.
Four witnesses said they saw Nuzum with Coogler the night she vanished. She had been talking to a trucker at the Del Rio Bar when Nuzum walked in. Her attentions shifted to Nuzum, a married man with two children. But her interest in Nuzum faded as quickly as it began.
One witness testified: "Jerry wanted to take Cricket home. Cricket said she didn't want to go with him."
Perhaps the most damaging testimony came from a witness who said he stopped Nuzum as the football player tried to force Coogler into his car, which was new and maroon.
Nuzum said he drove away, alone. He arrived home at 2:55 a.m., according to his wife and landlady. The trucker also left the bar alone.
A Las Cruces policeman offered a detailed story that seemed to help Nuzum. He said he and his partner saw Coogler get into a cream-colored 1941 Chevrolet coupe at 3:05 a.m.
These accounts and Nuzum's alibi were known to prosecutors two years before. The state had nothing new, but Nuzum's lawyers did.
They called a witness named Mary Foy. She told a startling story, saying she had watched two state police officers chase and beat Coogler before putting her into their car.
Her vantage, Foy said, was a seat on a parked bus bound for White Sands Proving Grounds. Foy testified that she had gone to Sheriff Apodaca with her story. For its part, the prosecution said it found no corroboration for her account.
Even so, the case against Nuzum was damaged so much that it never made it to the jury.
Judge Charles Fowler ruled that the prosecution had failed to meet its burden of proof. He gave Nuzum that rarest of courtroom decisions, a directed verdict of acquittal.
"There is a complete lack of evidence to connect Nuzum with the death as charged," Fowler said.
Spectators in the courtroom applauded. Nuzum's wife, Mary, wept. He leaned over to comfort her, then broke down himself.
Nuzum was free at last, but his life would not be easy. His career with the Steelers ended after the 1951 season. He stayed in the Pittsburgh area, where he worked for and eventually owned car dealerships.
Few people in western Pennsylvania seemed to focus on his murder trial in Las Cruces.
Still, Nuzum said, the case haunted him. He told the Herald-Post in 1983 that it took him 20 years to pay off his legal bills. The stigma of being a murder suspect remained.
"It was so embarrassing to be accused of a crime like that," Nuzum said. "You can't ever live it down. It's a shame that people sometimes hear my name and they don't say anything about my being a car dealer or playing four years for the Steelers. They say, 'He was the one in that case.' "
Nuzum died in 1997 at age 73.
A federal court jury in September 1950 convicted Sheriff Apodaca and New Mexico State Police Chief Hubert Beasley of violating Wesley Byrd's civil rights by torturing him. Each served a year in prison.
President Harry Truman later pardoned them.
Coogler's murder was never solved and it never will be, even with DNA and other advances that have turned law enforcement into fine science. The sheriff's botched investigation made certain that somebody got away with murder.
Infobox NFLretired |image= |width= |caption= |position= Running back |number=22 |birthdate=September 8, 1923
Clovis, New Mexico |deathdate=April 23, 1997 (aged 73) |debutyear=1948 |finalyear=1951 |draftyear=1948 |draftround=3 |draftpick=20 |undraftedyear= |college=New Mexico State University |teams=- Pittsburgh Steelers (1948–1951)
|stat1label= Rushing attempts-yards |stat1value=249-930 |stat2label= Receptions-yards |stat2value=14-303 |stat3label= Touchdowns |stat3value=10 |nfl=NUZ415290 |pfr= |dbf= |cfl= |afl= |highlights=
- No notable achievements
|HOF= |CollegeHOF= |CFHOF= }}
Jerry Hanson Nuzum (September 8, 1923 – April 23, 1997) was a professional American football player who played running back for four seasons for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
This biographical article relating to an American football running back born in the 1920s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
