True Crime Chronicles: A killer who took the life of a Prescott officer in 1958 is the oldest inmate in the Arkansas prison system
- Dennis McCaslin
- 3 minutes ago
- 3 min read
When you see someone sentenced to life in prison, rarely does the reality of nearly seven decades behind bars become a consideration. For Kenneth Nicely, that reality began on a late September night in 1958 and has never ended.
In 1958, America was deep in the Cold War. The Soviet Union had launched Sputnik the year before, and the United States answered with Explorer 1 in January. President Dwight Eisenhower occupied the White House.
The nation watched television shows like Gunsmoke and Leave It to Beaver while rock and roll gained ground.
In Arkansas, the dominant story remained the struggle over school integration. Governor Orval Faubus had closed Little Rock’s public high schools rather than allow Black students to attend with white ones, creating what became known as the Lost Year. National Guard troops and federal authority still hovered over the capital city.
Against that backdrop of tension and change, a 19-year-old from London, Kentucky, named Kenneth Nicely set out on a short and violent path that would define the rest of his life.
On September 20, 1958, Nicely walked into a car dealership in London, Kentucky, and asked for a test drive. Salesman Tony Brown took him out. Brown was later found murdered. The next day, September 21,
Nicely was driving a stolen vehicle through Neveda County in southwest Arkansas , when Patrolman Edward Samuel Virden of the Prescott Police Department stopped him. Virden, 35 years old, married and the father of three small children, had been on the force only fourteen months.
.He arrested Nicely and took him to the city jail. Inside the jail, Nicely produced a .45-caliber automatic pistol and shot Virden to death. He took the officer’s gun and fled in the same stolen car.
A multi-state search followed. Days later, officers in Kingsville, Texas, stopped Nicely for speeding in a school zone. An altercation erupted. Shots were fired. Nicely was critically wounded in the neck. A search of the car produced the .45 that matched the bullets recovered from the Prescott jail.
Arkansas authorities moved quickly. Extradition papers arrived first, and Nicely was flown back to Arkansas while still recovering from his wounds. He spent his twentieth birthday under guard in a Prescott hospital. He admitted shooting Officer Virden, claiming he believed the officer was about to shoot him. He denied involvement in the Kentucky killing.
After a period of observation at the state hospital, Nicely was declared sane and returned to Nevada County for trial. In December 1958, a jury of eleven white men and one Black man found him guilty of first-degree murder.
On December 22 the court sentenced him to life in prison. The following day, December 23, 1958, the Arkansas Department of Correction took him into custody under ADC number 050705. He was twenty years old.
Prison life in Arkansas at that time was harsh and largely unsupervised. Nicely later recalled the Cummins prison farm as a place that felt like the 1800s, with few free-world officers watching large barracks of men. Work on the hoe squad was brutal. He said he was whipped on his first day.
Survival depended on strength and endurance.
In 1968, after roughly ten years inside, Nicely received a weekend furlough. He did not return. For the next six years he remained free. In 1974 authorities in Kentucky located him. He was returned to Arkansas and later sentenced to a second life term for the 1958 murder of Tony Brown. The Kentucky detainer remains active on his record to this day.
More than sixty-seven years have passed since that December sentencing. Nicely, born September 30, 1938, is now 87 years old. He stands 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 112 pounds. His record lists tattoos and old gunshot scars on his neck. He is housed at the Ouachita River Correctional Unit under a C5 custody classification. His projected release remains simply “Life.”
The world outside has changed beyond recognition. Presidents have come and gone. The Cold War ended. Technology transformed daily life. Arkansas prisons underwent reforms after scandals in the late 1960s exposed abuses and unmarked graves.
Through all of it Kenneth Nicely has remained inside the system he entered as a young man in 1958. The sentence handed down when Eisenhower was still president continues without end.
