A Shocking Crime Spokane Was Transfixed By Violent Spree In 1955, Attorney Bob Dellwo Recalls

Two young men - after a double date and lots of beer - beat four transients and left one dead, gored by a hunting knife near a cemetery on April Fools’ Day 1955.

At the time, the beatings and murder were as heinous as could be imagined.

Neil Wallen of Spokane, left, and Nicholas Valorz, center, stand with Valorz’s attorney, Bob Dellwo, as they are about to go into Spokane County Superior Court to enter guilty pleas to second-degree murder charges in the bludgeoning death of an elderly man. The two young men were sent to the state penitentiary at Walla Walla.

People prayed to save the souls of Nicholas Valorz and Neil Wallen, both 20. Clergymen rushed in to offer counseling and forgiveness.

Valorz, shaken by what he’d done, begged to atone, confessed all. Wallen, discovered by police attempting to wedge a knife into the back of his fourth victim, wore an icy silence.

While the killing of 71-year-old John Garbiel Schultz rocked Spokane four decades ago, society today has learned to deflect such violence.

“The desensitization comes from saturation,” said Gonzaga University criminologist Al Miranne. “Local news typically devotes the bulk of their broadcast to crime. We have a much greater perception of a violent society.

“Eventually, you start to tune it out.”

Few people tuned out in 1955.

It was April 1. Valorz and Wallen had a double date.

The young men - Wallen a high school dropout and Valorz a Colfax High graduate who had attended Gonzaga Prep - picked up two women and as much as two cases of beer and headed to Coeur d’Alene.

After an uneventful evening, the young men dropped off their dates at their Spokane homes about 11 p.m.

Then they went trolling for the homeless.

Four men, all transients, fell victim to their viciousness. They each were hauled into a car driven by Valorz and beaten. Three were knifed with a hunting blade kept in the glove compartment.

Police thought they were investigating robberies. But, when two airmen from George Wright Air Force Base found the bludgeoned body of Schultz with $3 in his billfold in west Spokane, a murder case unfolded.

Medical examiners determined Schultz died about 2 a.m., the time when policemen David Dippel and Roger Mager stopped the youths near Division and Augusta.

Soaked in blood, Wallen held a knife to the back of 59-year-old Gerald T. Elliott as police approached. Elliott escaped. Dippel and Mager took the suspects to jail.

Sheriff Roy A. Betlatch called it a “kill-crazy,” telling reporters that Schultz must have put up a terrible fight “to the last ditch.”

Valorz admitted driving the car and implicated Wallen in the murder. He told officers and his lawyer later that Wallen seemed disappointed after killing Schultz, saying, “He didn’t even scream.”

The boy burst into tears at the police station when the principal of Gonzaga Prep, a priest, came to talk with him.

About that time, a frightened couple from Colfax walked into the Old National Bank office of noted Spokane attorney Bob Dellwo. Mr. and Mrs. Nick Valorz learned through the news that their son was jailed on murder charges and begged for Dellwo’s help.

“Valorz didn’t know what to do,” Dellwo said from his Spokane office where he still practices law at age 83.

Dellwo took the case.

A prominent 39-year-old lawyer with a prestigious legal and political career ahead of him, Dellwo was criticized by his peers for defending Valorz because the crime so outraged the community.

“Why would I represent him? they kept asking me,” Dellwo said. “You find these kids getting trapped. I thought the kid would respond to fair and just representation. That didn’t include trying to get him off.

“I wouldn’t have taken the case if they wanted me to get an acquittal.”

That sense of justice seems odd today, said Dale Lindekugel, a sociology professor at Eastern Washington University. But the 1950s were an era marked by the “child saver movement” that worked toward reforming young offenders through discipline. Youths also had less exposure to violence.

“Children are older earlier today,” Lindekugel said. “Twenty-year-olds today are hardened criminals. We often try 16- and 17-year-olds as adults.”

Dellwo still stands behind the defense that Valorz was under the spell of Wallen when the beatings and murder occurred.

“Wallen was a psychopath,” he said.

Dellwo points to the way each boy’s life turned out following their 1956 convictions. They pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and three counts of second-degree assault that carried 18- to 25-year sentences.

While Wallen wore his signature cement stare, Valorz told the court, “I would like to apologize for my actions and give my solemn promise that I will justify the faith my parents have shown in me,” The Spokesman-Review reported.

Valorz and Dellwo kept in touch through letters for the nearly seven years the youth served at the Washington State Penitentiary. Every letter asked for forgiveness, Dellwo said.

After his release, Valorz married, worked as a landscaper and taught music. Dellwo hooked him up with a writer to chronicle his life in prison and make amends.

Instead, he died in a car crash six miles south of Colfax on April 7, 1963. He was 28.

Wallen, who was paroled in December 1962, went back to prison on a weapons violation three weeks after Valorz died. He ended up a part of one of the most notorious escapes in Washington history.

It was late November 1964 when a prison guard discovered seven inmates missing from their cells. Three of the men - including Wallen - were murderers.

In a stunning display of engineering, inventiveness and tenacity, the inmates had tunneled 75 feet from a cell to freedom.

Prison guards found makeshift shovels made from kitchen scoops and fans, 100 feet of electric cord, a portable lighting system, hacksaw blades and work clothes in the tunnel. It was hidden by plaster board painted the color of the cell floor.

After forcing a Walla Walla couple to drive several of the men to Gresham, Ore., and stealing another car, Wallen was captured in a downtown Portland hotel.

On March 10, 1966, he was sentenced to 35 years at the state penitentiary for the stunt.

Wallen’s name doesn’t come up again in state records searches. Attempts to reach relatives were unsuccessful.

The Washington State Department of Corrections has destroyed his file and could not provide the date of his release from prison. According to California death records, Wallen died in Santa Clarita, Calif., on June 21, 1996. He was 61.

Has society gotten more violent since that grim day 44 years ago? The killing was one of only a few murders in the Inland Northwest in 1955. Now, the number of murders in Spokane alone each year is in the double-digits.

Miranne thinks society is not more violent, just more able to kill.

“We may not be all that more violent,” he said. “We just have greater access to weapons of destruction.”

But violence may never really be understood.

“Neither of the boys ever gave an explanation as to why (the killing and beatings) happened,” Dellwo said. “They cornered a man and started beating. You cannot explain it.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: THEN AND NOW CALL US Then and Now looks at news from the past and reveals what’s become of the people and issues that once captured our attention. Is there a news event you’d like to see updated? Please let us know. Write: Monday Special/Then and Now, The Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210-1615. Or you can e-mail: shellyd@spokesman.com