Author Archives: Kevin Giles

And now, ‘Mystery of the Purple Roses,’ my tale of a killer’s curious calling card

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Cover shows 'Mystery of the Purple Roses'

Red Maguire, newsman crime fighter, investigates a string of odd murders in Montana.

By Kevin S. Giles

¶ Attention readers: Mystery of the Purple Roses is now published in paperback ($16.95) and e-book ($2.99) versions.

Buy! Mystery of the Purple Roses

Murder is his job.

The veteran crime reporter at a fictional newspaper in Butte, Montana, writes about a series of murders that shake the Mining City in 1954. Kieran “Red” Maguire turns out story after story on his battered typewriter as the killer remains at large. In Mystery of the Purple Roses, Maguire becomes a sleuth, tracking evidence to its improbable conclusion.

Butte’s rough-and-tumble history provides an alluring setting for a murder mystery.

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Heard of Zip to Zap? The North Dakota National Guard did. No shots fired.

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By Kevin S. Giles

Ever heard of Zip to Zap? I hadn’t either until my chance discovery of black and white photographs revealed possibly one of the oddest National Guard deployments during our country’s legendary student unrest of 1969.

I was a Montanan working at the Bismarck Tribune in North Dakota when I found a fat brown envelope marked “Zip to Zap” in the newsroom library. (I had traded the Rocky Mountains for a prairie state where tourism billboards crowed, “Mountain removal project complete.”) The envelope contained two or three dozen print images, taken by Tribune photographers, of a rowdy beer bust involving as many as 3,000 college students. Zap, you see, was a farming village, hardly a blip on the North Dakota map, chosen for the marketing value of its name.

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Coronavirus, trailing the bush fires, abruptly ends our excursion to Down Under

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Photo of Australia bay

Boats moored in Shute Harbor, near Airlie Beach, northern Queensland. Photo by Kevin S. Giles.

By Kevin S. Giles

Morning comes early in Australia. We awake to the laughing calls of kookaburras from old gum trees. Ocean surf crashes two blocks away. It’s short of 6 a.m. but people already walk the beaches.

We’re staying in a third-floor flat on the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane. The view through the open windows takes us far to sea. A container ship, loaded high, navigates the channel through Moreton Bay. The glittering Pacific Ocean freshens vast stretches of white sand with long brushes of tide. We see much of the Australia we remember from when we lived there all those years ago. Open-air shops sell the customary staple, fish and chips, and cold XXXX beer with the familiar gold label. Galleries burst with paintings of aboriginal art and photographs of the Outback’s rusty colors. Tanned people of all ages wear floppy hats to keep the subtropical sun off their faces. Babes in G-string bikinis preen under palm trees. Fleets of sailboats bob in aqua harbors. Classic Queensland homes on stilts beckon from green carpets of vegetation. Rain forests ripple with prehistoric natural diversity. Everywhere we hear, “G’day, mate,” the national greeting. And in these trying times of coronavirus come reassurances of, “She’ll be right, mate. No worries.”

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Liquor company owner takes over shuttered Montana hotel, promises revival

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Photo of Hotel Deer Lodge.

Hotel Deer Lodge, standing at the center of the city’s business district, opened in 1912 as “one of the finest accommodations in Montana.” (Photos courtesy of Deer Lodge Preservation, Inc.)

By Kevin S. Giles

The chief executive officer of a Montana-based liquor company will lead a historic hotel revival with a plan to create a five-star destination.

Kip Kimerly, of Precious Vodka USA, Inc., took charge of Hotel Deer Lodge preservation in a deal struck Jan. 23, 2020.

The hotel remains owned by Deer Lodge Preservation, Inc., but the group will be represented by a new board of directors that Kimerly will lead as president, said Kayo Fraser, one of the former board members.

Kimerly envisions a nonprofit project to restore the empty building for hotel use on the upper floors, with retail space and a banquet room created on the ground floor.

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Rules of the rails: A 20-point guide to Amtrak travel, St. Paul to Whitefish, Montana

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By Kevin S. Giles

•  You’ll see some of the best creative graffiti in America in the switching yards of Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana.

•  You’ll see some of the best forgotten (rusted) classic cars anywhere huddled in rows on farm property alongside the tracks.

•  Riding “coach” on Amtrak’s Empire Builder improves your tolerance for snoring, nose-blowing and occasional disruptive cell phone chatter (especially at night).

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Reunions remind us of time and place, also restore valued face-to-face contact

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Photo shows class reunion

Kevin S. Giles with high school classmates (and longtime friends) Eric and Don at the July 2019 all-class reunion in Deer Lodge, Montana.

By Kevin S. Giles

Long before social media became a convenient tool for organizing reunions (or displacing them), people traveled great distances to enjoy face-to-face gatherings with friends and relatives.

Today reunions endure. We have reunions to celebrate music, religion, employment, ethnic heritage, history, neighborhoods, cities and military service.

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Inside story: when bold rioting convicts took control of Montana State Prison

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Prison mug shot of Jerry Myles

Jerry Myles was a stubby, intelligent career criminal who planned the April 16, 1959, takeover in defiance of new ‘reform’ Warden Floyd Powell. Photo by Kevin Giles

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By Kevin S. Giles

Sixty years ago, a deadly uprising at Montana State Prison began when two dangerous inmates doused a guard in Cell House 1 with gasoline and threatened to set him afire with a flaming mop. The inmates took the guard’s rifle and several rounds of ammunition and then, over the next few hours, gained control of the entire prison.

When inmates control the prison …

That riot began on Thursday, April 16, 1959. It ended 36 hours later.

Cover of 'Jerry's Riot'

This memoir by Kevin S. Giles details the 1959 disturbance at Montana State Prison and events leading to it.

Those troublesome inmates were Jerry Myles and Lee Smart, both psychopaths. Myles was the mastermind. He was a career burglar and an intelligent conniver. His ability to break rules and lead inmate mutinies resulted in his incarceration in three federal prisons, including Alcatraz. Smart was a runaway delinquent who, on impulse, became a teenage murderer. Guards who knew the men said they were lovers.

Smart shot and killed Deputy Warden Ted Rothe in his office inside the walls. Myles slashed a sergeant with a knife, seriously injuring him. They took 26 hostages, both guards and civilians, threatening to burn them alive or hang them from the cell house galleys. Minutes after the National Guard begin a barrage of rocket fire from the west wall of the prison yard, Myles shot Smart and then himself in the northwest corner of Cell House 1.

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Senior Lounge, historic experiment during psychedelic days in Montana high school

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Photo shows Powell County High School

The “new” Powell County High School in Deer Lodge is more than 100 years old. An addition to the west side of this building, at left, was completed in the late 1950s. Senior Lounge was at the back of the school at far right.

By Kevin S. Giles

It probably occurred to reasonable adults that grouping “Senior” and “Lounge” in a singular title was a spectacular admission of what would follow, but so it was.

I’m a veteran (survivor?) of the historic, but short-lived, experiment that began at my Powell County High School in the fall of 1969. We were the new seniors, the Class of 1970, emboldened with a plan that we should be trusted without supervision in a remote corner of the old school.

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Taking that long drive to heaven on Montana’s two-lane highways

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By Kevin S. Giles

It’s dawn in oil country. Workers leave the motels early in oversized trucks, heading to the rigs. There was a time when they rented every sleeping room within 100 miles of Williston. Travelers heading west through North Dakota ought to plan ahead.

We pack up and cross the border into Montana through some of the emptiest land in America. A fair bit of driving takes us to Glendive, situated prominently enough that it resembles an oasis in the middle of a great prairie desert. It’s a small city, really, but population is relative in eastern Montana where Glendive’s 4,000 folks outnumber residents in some entire counties.

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Personal experience in reviving a dying child, and thoughts on lifesaving rescues

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Photo shows CPR

CPR on a small child requires a lighter touch to avoid breaking ribs. This photo links to a site that explains the procedure in detail.

By Kevin S. Giles

Commotion from a crooning bear named Billy Bob and his band’s clashing symbols hid the first cries of distress. I didn’t expect to encounter a dying toddler at ShowBiz Pizza.

I had gone there with my family for lunch. We were somewhere in Kansas City several years ago.

As the girls watched Billy Bob and his cacophonous crew in the back room, I went to the men’s room. I heard wailing. It was high-pitched and mournful.

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