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Learn moreIn 1973 the small southwest Nebraska railroad town of McCook became the unlikely scene of a grisly murder. More than forty years later, author James W. Hewitt returns to the scene and unearths new details about what happened.
After pieces of Edwin and Wilma Hoyt’s dismembered bodies were found floating on the surface of a nearby lake, authorities charged McCook resident Harold Nokes and his wife, Ena, with murder. Harold pleaded guilty to murder and Ena pleaded guilty to two counts of wrongful disposal of a dead body, but the full story of why and how he murdered the Hoyts has never been told.
Hewitt interviews law enforcement officers, members of the victims’ family, weapons experts, and forensic psychiatrists, and delves into newspaper reports and court documents from the time. Most significant, Harold granted Hewitt his first and only interview, in which the convicted murderer changed several parts of his 1974 confession. In Cold Storage takes listeners through the evidence, including salacious details of sex and intrigue between the Hoyts and the Nokeses, and draws new conclusions about what really happened between the two families on that fateful September night.
James W. Hewitt is president of the Friends of the Center for Great Plains Studies and was an adjunct professor of history at Nebraska Wesleyan University and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is the author of Slipping Backward: A History of the Nebraska Supreme Court (Nebraska, 2007).
Ann Richardson is an award-winning narrator. With a background of drama and music prevalent in her Midwestern upbringing, she delights in narrating fiction and portraying characters with a variety of accents, including Scandinavian and Southern U.S. Being of Swedish heritage is an important facet of Ann's life, as her father was a Swedish immigrant, and she travels to Sweden every few years to spend time with family and brush up on speaking the language. In her spare time Ann is a volunteer narrator for Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic), and also enjoys sculpting, painting, long-distance running, and hanging out with her family in Northern California.
Jim Seybert has been telling stories for more than sixty years. As a young boy he would dictate stories, telling his parents to "write this down." Fast-forward to the present, and Jim lends his clear, confident voice to some of the most interesting stories of the day: military histories, political commentary, true crime, heroic memoirs, and great fiction. When he is not recording in his studio on California's pristine Central Coast, he walks quietly along trails in the Sierra Nevada, cooks gourmet meals for friends, and watches films with his wife Rhonda and their Chihuahua, Lucy.
Reviews
“James Hewitt is to be congratulated for this excellent book.”
“In Cold Storage is an excellent history of one of the more sensational crimes in Nebraska history.”
“James Hewitt has provided a well-researched and fascinating work.”
“In the best tradition of Capote’s iconic In Cold Blood, James Hewitt presents a gruesome, bizarre, and tragic tale of sex, murder, and small-town intrigue…This is a book you should be prepared to complete in one sitting. It’s that compelling.”
“The curious, tangled, and often sensational step-by-step recounting will, by necessity, leave the reader wondering how such a crime could have been committed and may have you double-checking to make sure your back door is really locked.”
“In Cold Storage takes us through lurid personal relations that lead to two murders and vicious mutilations that shocked and frightened all Nebraskans, especially those used to small-town life in the western reaches of the state.”
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