Oscar S. Affair.

Oscar S was a three time loser, he had been convicted of three felonies and under the law of the State Of Wyoming he was considered a lifer, one who could not be paroled and would eventually die in prison because he didn't seem to have the ability to live in polite society.

Somehow he gained parole, (I never did find out how it happened) and I came to understand that the prison warden wanted him out of his system because he had caused him a great deal of trouble, and he didn't want him back. For some reason Oscar moved to my little town. The first time I became aware of him is when I was called to break up a fight in the Oregon Trail Saloon and I arrested him for disorderly conduct. It was fortunate that he was very drunk, because I do not think I could have handled him when he was sober.

Spiker only stood about 5'5" tall, but he had a massive frame and he had spent his many years in prison lifting weights and had become just about the strongest man his size I had ever seen. I had the misfortune to have to deal with him on two additional occasions after the one I described, and each time it had taken three to five men including myself to place him under arrest. His strength was unbelieveable. After the third occasion I had to arrest Oscar, I called warden Schillenger at the state pen and asked him to fill me in on Oscar's history.

He told me that during Oscar's past he had been out of prison during one of the few free periods of his life, and that he had been in a fight in Billings, Montana in which someone had beat him in the head with a bumper jack. Oscar's head was severly damaged and he was in a coma in the hospital for a long time. Schillinger stated that the hosptal had once pulled the plug on him thinking that he was dead, but that after removing him from life support he came back to life and was fully conscious.

The only problem he carried with him from the beating he received was that he had difficulty speaking, and he seemed to not feel pain. When you looked into Oscar's eyes the lights were on, but there was no one home. The greatest problem Oscar possessed was that he was a drinker and a partier who seemed to delight in creating problems for me in my little town. I began to realize that I needed to communicate to Spiker in a way he could understand, and so the fourth time I arrested him for disorderly conduct I took him into the basement of the Rock Springs Police Department and handcuffed him to a chair.

I realized that he did not possess a long attention span, and so I began to take my forefinger and tap him on the forehead between the eyes strongly. I tapped and I tapped and I tapped for about thirty minutes until he began to listen. I continued the tapping, but then I told him, Oscar if you give me any more trouble I'm going to shoot you right between the eyes. It took a full hour of this before he broke down and started crying. He blubbered and blubbered and finally told me, "Please, I won't ever cause you any more trouble again, I don't want to die." After I was sure that I had gotten through to him, I wrote him a citation and released him to go his way. Oscar was as good as his word and I never had any occasion to have any dealings with him from that time after. He moved to a town north of Farson, and he had to report to his parole officer in Green River once a week. Rather than drive through my town, the shortest way to Green River; he drove 100 miles out of his way rather than take the chance of having to deal with me. To my knowledge Oscar stayed out of prison and caused no more problems for law enforcement in his life. Those of a more liberal bent may take exception to my methods of handling this person, but it worked, it saved not only Oscar but other law men a lot of grief by not having to deal with him.