Biography
Nicholas Riddell was a Roman Catholic priest and one of the Chicago 15 arrested after the group burned about 40,000 Selective Service records on May 25, 1969. He went underground during the trial. A jury convicted him on June 5, 1970, and the court imposed two consecutive five-year terms in absentia on June 23. The Seventh Circuit later vacated the judgment and remanded the case. No service of the Chicago sentence has been verified.
The March 21, 1972 AP account identifies Riddell as a forty-one-year-old Milwaukee priest arrested after the October 17 rectory invasion at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Kirkwood, Missouri. It reports guilty pleas and a March 8 county-court sentence of fifteen years for burglary, theft and assault with intent to kill, followed by a March 20 federal sentence of five years for an unregistered sawed-off shotgun. These later criminal proceedings are separate from the Chicago draft-record action; this source does not characterize the rectory offenses as political or establish completed service or final discharge. Its retrospective sentence-in-absentia reference corroborates his fugitive status rather than proving that the Chicago sentence was served. Source: https://newspapers.swco.ttu.edu/bitstreams/e6404653-916b-4d2f-9b27-bd2230d839a9/download#page=7
The October 20, 1971 Naujienos reported that Kirkwood, Missouri police had captured Nicholas Riddell while he was a fugitive from the Chicago draft-record prosecution. A subsequent Associated Press report distinguished the Missouri rectory case: he pleaded guilty to burglary, theft and assault with intent to kill and was sentenced to fifteen years in county circuit court on March 8, 1972; a federal court imposed five years for possession of an unregistered sawed-off shotgun on March 20, 1972. These were separate proceedings from the Chicago Fifteen case. The reports do not establish his actual admission, transfer or release dates or whether the terms ran concurrently.
Original document 1240, PDF page 1; supplemental Big Spring Daily Herald, March21,1972, PDF page 7.
