A city advisory board has again deferred approving historic markers to pay tribute to Rick “Tiger” Dowdell and Nick Rice, teens who were shot and killed by Lawrence police officers in 1970 — but the end is in sight.
Lawrence’s Historic Resources Commission on Thursday largely approved of the markers, which show photographs of the two men and share summaries of the circumstances of their deaths written by Bill Tuttle. But there are a few corrections that will need to be made before the HRC signs off.
The markers have been in the works for several years.
“It’s not been five years — it’s been 55 years since two young men were murdered by the police,” Kerry Altenbernd, a local historian, said during public comment.
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Chris Rice, Nick’s brother, was present via Zoom for the discussion. He thanked the commission and Lynne Braddock Zollner, historic resources administrator, for their efforts on the markers.
“I am just thankful that we are actually getting there, and I hope to live long enough to see this erected,” he said.
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The necessary changes to the markers include correcting a typo, adding a few words of context to one of the markers, and exchanging one of the photos. The markers will be 18-by-24-inch panels on pedestals.
HRC members debated approving the markers as presented with the understanding that city staff members would take care of the changes that need to be made. Zollner said she would recommend that the revision come back to the HRC again to offer the opportunity for public comment and give folks an opportunity to voice any concerns about the final mockups.
The vote was 3-1. HRC members Brenna Buchanan, Stan Hernly and Phil Cunningham voted in favor of deferring the vote on the markers until the December meeting.
HRC member Jeanne Klein opposed, because “I don’t want it to drag out any longer,” she said.
The markers’ installation will cost the city less than $100 because a private donor has agreed to pay for the markers themselves, according to the meeting agenda.
The Lawrence City Commission will have the final vote on the markers during a meeting in the near future.
Background
Dowdell, 19, and Nick Rice, 18, were killed in a four-day span marking one of the more tumultuous periods in Lawrence’s history, which would later come to be known as the “Days of Rage.”
Using hundreds of pages of state and federal investigatory records, we in 2021 and 2022 wrote expansive series on Rice and Dowdell’s killings. Those series will be featured on the Watkins Museum of History’s website linked with the QR codes on the markers.
Dowdell was killed by Officer William Garrett on July 16, 1970, shot in the back of the head while running down an alleyway near the 900 block of New Hampshire Street. Gunfire rang out in Lawrence earlier in the evening; Dowdell and his friend were traveling in a yellow Volkswagen and were followed by Garrett and his partner Kennard Avey, ostensibly suspected of being part of the gunfire.
The Volkswagen ran two stop signs and drove up on a curb before Dowdell exited the passenger’s side and sprinted down the alleyway. Exactly what happened in that alleyway is likely lost to history — but Garrett fired a warning shot, Dowdell allegedly returned fire, and then Garrett fired three more shots, one striking the teenage activist in the back of the head, killing him instantly.
Lawrence erupted in protests following Dowdell’s death. And though a sense of calm seemed to have returned to the city by July 20, Rice — a KU student accompanied by his fiancée of just two days and a mutual friend — came to Lawrence to pay a traffic ticket and would not return home.
After finding the traffic court closed for the night, the three decided to hang around Lawrence, playing pinball at a dive bar in the location that is now the Oread Hotel. A crowd grew outside of the bar, though, and the evening soon turned deadly. Rice was shot in the back of the neck that night by a bullet fired from the carbine rifle of Officer Jimmy Joe Stroud as police unleashed tear gas in a sea of chaos that enveloped the Oread Neighborhood.
Stroud, just hours later, would essentially confess to shooting Rice — first telling a group of local officials at the Douglas County Courthouse that he “thought he had shot someone,” and later asking the assistant county attorney and superintendent of the Kansas Highway Patrol, “Am I to be charged with shooting the man?”
Yet in the days and weeks following, the Lawrence Police Department and area officials launched a disinformation campaign, echoed broadly by the legacy newspaper in town, about Rice and the events of that evening — sowing public doubt on whether police were actually responsible for the teen’s death and helping propagate an impossible theory that Rice was shot by a mysterious sniper.
Neither Stroud nor Garrett faced legal consequences for their roles in the killings, and though Garrett left Lawrence shortly after Dowdell’s killing, Stroud worked for LPD for another seven years.
Historic markers
Here’s a look at the latest mockups of the markers:
20251120-HRC-Dowdell-marker-r20251120-HRC-Rice-marker
— Conner Mitchell, reporter emeritus, contributed to this article.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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