Entering the Octopus's Garden
My next set of articles move away from the topic of Ted Maher and onto a topic recently taken more mainstream as a result of a recent Netflix miniseries called The Octopus Murders.
However, as I love to do I will start by creating a Mindful Muse web connection from Ted Maher to this new topic. I admit the connection is somewhat circumstantial (at this point) but it hopefully still makes for an interesting read and provides a way for readers to navigate my mind.
In my last article, I introduced the story of Philip Cline and the deadly Las Vegas Hilton fire that happened in February 1981. This article provides a great summary of the events and aftermath.
Philip, the son of a retired Air Force veteran, spent his formative teen years living in Sunnymead which is a military community located less than a ten minute drive from March Air Force Base. It is also located about 10-15 minutes from Riverside, California.
Philip, the middle child of three, was the black sheep of the family. He was a troubled youth, creating significant issues for his mother while his father was away with the military. Philip had school problems, was frequently truant and he ran away from home multiple times. After the fire, his father shared with journalists that, after a juvenile arrest (for what we don’t know), the military arranged for Philip to visit a psychiatrist in Riverside from about 1973-1975.
The City of Riverside developed in the late 1800's as an important agricultural hub for California. Starting off as a silk-growing colony, it became known for its citrus industry. The city hosts La Sierra University, a school founded by the Seventh-day Adventist church. The school merged into Loma Linda University (LLU) in 1967, which is located in the city of Loma Linda, just 15-20 minutes southeast of Riverside.
Incidentally, Loma Linda is identified as one of five “blue zones” in the world due to the longevity statistics of its population. This is attributed to the large community of Seventh-day Adventists who are located there and who practice healthy lifestyles as part of their belief system.
LLU started off as a sanitarium in 1905. In 1909 it was chartered as a medical college under the name College of Medical Evangelists (CME). In World War I, CME achieved a “B” rating from the American Medical Association (AMA), allowing its students to be exempted from the military draft. This was an important outcome for the college, given the “conscientious objector” beliefs of the Adventists with respect to participating in war.
In 1920 LLU was the only medical school in the state of California. Due to its importance to the state, CME’s rating was upgraded in 1922 by the AMA to an “A”. Later, in 1961 CME was converted to a university and renamed to Loma Linda University. It opened the Loma Linda University Medical Center in 1967 and merged with La Sierra College, a teachers college. A large portion of La Sierra College’s substantial lands were annexed by the city of Riverside in 1964. This land was part of an even larger land parcel purchased by the Seventh-day Adventists from the Rancho La Sierra in 1922.
Fast forward to 2007 and 2010. It may be interesting to note that Loma Linda was the university that conducted follow-up studies on the subjects of Operation Whitecoat. The school was certainly compensated by the government for doing this: for example in 2008 the Defense Department gave LLU nearly $5m out of the $9.5m it received in federal funding.
(As a sidenote its worth mentioning that in 2006 LLU was tied to criticism around the fact it was the largest recipient of federal funding of all US universities, with amounts received between 1998 and 2003 totalling 50% more than that of the next runner up.)
Operation Whitecoat was a US Army program that ran between 1954 and 1973 offering (mainly) Seventh-day Adventists an alternative to military service. In total 2,300 conscientious objectors volunteered for various medical experiments that tested responses to infectious diseases and war-related pathogens.
The claim that these subjects were truly “volunteers” has been contested given the only real alternative to the program was to go into the Korean and Vietnam wars, where chances of injury or death was much higher. In any case, enrollment in the program dried up after the military draft ceased in 1973 and the program was closed down that same year.
You may be wondering by now what any of this has to do with the Octopus. Bear with me, I’m getting there.
In 1946 a man named Robert Booth Nichols graduated from LLU with a medical degree. Given the timing, one could be forgiven for assuming he took advantage of the conscientious objector clause to avoid the medical draft during WWII. Robert would be fondly nicknamed as “Dr. Bob” as a way to differentiate him from his three brothers who were also doctors.
Prior to that he had studied at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles, working as an office clerk in a mortuary. This job was presumably a way to help fund his studies and to fund starting a family as he had just married the love of his life, Barbara Louise McLean.
Dr. Bob was born in 1919 in Alamogordo, New Mexico to Robert Lester (Lester) and Francis (Ankie) Oliver Nichols. At the time, Alamogordo served as an important railroad hub, facilitating the movement of goods (lumber in particular) and people across the southwestern US. It turns out that Dr. Bob’s maternal grandparents, Ed and Martha Oliver, were pioneers of Alamogordo in the mercantile business. In addition, Dr. Bob’s uncle, G.B Oliver, owned the White Sands Ranch to the northeast.
The White Sands Ranch shares a border with the White Sands Missile Range, the US military testing and firing range. The range was originally established in 1941 and the Trinity test (the first atomic bomb) was conducted in 1945 at the northern end of the range.
Dr Bob’s family seems to have moved around quite a bit when he was a child. The 1920 census places the Nichols family (Dr. Bob, his parents, and big brother, Edward Lester) in Deming, New Mexico – another significant railroad hub. Deming was also a main stop along the way for Mormons migrating to Mexico in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Dr. Bob spent his early childhood in El Paso, TX moving to California when he was 14. The 1930 census shows the family in Los Angeles along with 2 additions, Oliver and Jack Clifford. Lester is shown as working at the American Provision Co and Wholesale Meat Co as a salesman.
A draft card for Lester can be found in 1917 where he claims an exemption as a result of being a member of the Church of Christ. Another draft card can be found for 1942. Its not clear whether he qualified for exemption then, but as he was 47 it’s unlikely Lester would have been sent into battle anyway.
Dr Bob founded the Citizens Emergency Hospital in Hollywood with his 3 brothers (all doctors). One brother, Dr. Oliver Nichols, was part of the first research team to study the effect of atomic radiation on human tissue at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. This laboratory, later named the Argonne National Laboratory, was a key component of the Manhattan Project.
Another brother, Jack, moved to Bridgeport, California in 1953 to serve as the sole physician in the county. Bridgeport is a small backcountry town a few miles from the Nevada border. Just 2 years earlier in 1951, the US Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center was set up in Bridgeport. The purpose of the center was to train Marines for combat and survival the challenging mountain environments they could expect in Korea. It still operates today.
The eldest brother, Edward Lester, owned and ran the Santa Ana Emergency hospital, and opened medical offices in Mount Shasta and Dunsmuir in Northern California. His community roles and memberships were numerous. Just to name a few: he served as a deacon for the Church of Christ in Santa Ana, he was a flight surgeon and private pilot for the Civil Air Patrol and was a Freemason.
Like his older brother, Dr. Bob was a Bob - I mean Jack - of all trades, with his hobbies often mixing with his work until the two were indistinguishable. Not satisfied with just being a doctor, he also earned a law degree in 1958 and a JD in 1960. He served as the police surgeon for the LA County Sheriff’s department. He was president of the Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, of the Medical Staffs for the Hollywood Academy of Medicine and of the International College of Surgeons.
He was an avid equestrian, radio afficionado (first call AB7KF) and pilot. Dr. Bob even flew in 1969 to Australia to study with the Australian Flying Doctors (he was a “California Flying Doctor” himself). He actively lobbied in 1965 to bring the polio vaccine to Mexico in coordination with Pfizer Laboratories.
Dr. Bob founded a charitable clinic operating out of Calexico in 1961. Later known as the Valley Orthopedic Center, volunteers would locate crippled and handicapped children in border towns in Mexico and bring them (often using volunteer pilots) to California for treatment.
The list of roles and achievements don’t end there but I think readers get the picture. Dr. Bob received numerous awards and honors for his hard work, dedication and service, including written commendations by two US presidents.
Last but not least, Dr. Bob was a family man. He and Barbara had 4 children: James Nichols, Lynne Nichols Farrar, Sue Nichols Peter, and….. Robert Booth Nichols II (born 1943).
Robert Jr. is the character many people are aware of today thanks to the Netflix series. He became a controversial figure due to his involvement in intelligence operations, organized crime and financial schemes and was directly tied to the activities of Danny Casolaro, right before Danny’s death. Robert Jr. is often talked about in numerous forums by hobbyist sleuths. A search of the phrase “Robert Booth Nichols” in google or X will bring up hundreds of posts of people seeking to connect him to various events, deeds and unsolved mysteries.
Robert Jr. is apparently dead, having died in questionable circumstances in early 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland. There is plenty of online discussion around whether this is true or if Robert Jr. faked his death and went underground. I am not sure about the whereabouts of his wife, Ellen Hopko Nichols, but she is likely in California.
Dr. Bob and wife Barbara retired to Prescott, Arizona in their golden years to a ranch they owned for over 50 years. Barbara died in 2006 and Bob followed her four years later in 2010, thus ending their amazing story.
So there you have it, the path connecting Philip Cline to Robert Booth Nichols.
I’ll leave you with one last musing: Dr. Bob’s family posted a wonderful obituary in 2010, outlining his life achievement. In the obituary comment area, we can find the below posting. Note the names and the date of the posting.
Things that make you go “hmmmm”.
Stay tuned for my next post, I am not done with the Nichols family.