It was a blamly Wednesday, February 7, 1968. Ervin "Tip" Roeder had been Nick Adam’s attorney and close confidant ever since he arrived in Hollywood from New Jersey in the late ‘50s. He had never known Nick to be late for a dinner date before. Despite his persistent phone calls, Nick’s absence remained a puzzle.

By seven o’clock, when there was still no sign of the young actor, the attorney felt a deep sense of foreboding. Often there are logical causes for such actions, but to not show up for an appointment without the courtesy of phone call, was not like Nick at all. Roeder began to contemplate a traffic accident and became even more disturbed.

Finally the attorney decided to drive down Hollywood Boulevard to see if Nick had broken down along the way. Although he traced route that Adams should have taken, he failed to locate his friend.

As a last resort, Roeder decided to drive over to Nick’s house to see what was keeping him.

It was after 9 o’clock when Roeder pulled into the driveway of Nick’s leased home at 2126 El Roble Lane in the restricted Trousdale Estates portion of Beverly Hills. Spotting Nick’s rented Mercedes Benz car in the garage, Roeder call out to his friend, and banged on the front door. No answer. There were no lights on inside the house and no sign of life. Undecided as to whether he should telephone the Beverly Hills police or force his way into the two-story house, the lawyer opted to break a rear window and enter.

The following are the accounts Roeder gave to the police.

Once inside, he began an intensive search for his star client on the first floor of his elaborate dwelling. Then he climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor. Once he pushed open the door to the master bedroom, and clicked on the light, the search for "Johnny Yuma" was over.

According to Roeder’s subsequent testimony, Nick Adams was in a sitting position, supported by a wall decorated with pictures and movie poster of films that had zoomed him to stardom; Mister Roberts, Picnic, Rebel Without a Cause, and his last film, Fever Heat. But mostly there were pictures of him around the house in his Johnny Yuma uniform because he was most proud of his television role in The Rebel.

The baby-faced actor’s eyes were wide open and he stared back at Roeder in silence. The deceased was dressed in denims and a plaid shirt, hardly the attire one would expect him to be in for a scheduled dinner date at an exclusive Hollywood restaurant.

The place had not been ransacked and there was not the slightest clue that "The Rebel" had been the victim of a robbery. The telephone, untouched, lay beside the bed -- within inches of the dead man’s right hand. Roeder called the West Los Angeles police station.

Within a half-hour police had cordoned off the immediate area and beribboned the entrance to the Colonial-Style house with plastic yellow tape. While Roeder went into detailed explanation of how he happened upon the body, a team of probers, coupled by forensics technicians and a doctor, began their routine investigation into the mysterious circumstances of Nick Adams’ untimely death.

Sleuths found no pills, bottles, needles or syringes; nothing to indicate Adams had met with foul play, or for that matter, had committed suicide.

As one friend of the late actor commented, "Surely if Nick had committed suicide, he would have left behind a good-bye note to his two children, to whom he was deeply devoted."

"If Nick would have committed suicide he would have dressed in his Johnny Yuma uniform," another friend said. "He was obsessed with that role the same way Bela Lugosi wanted to be buried in his Dracula cape."

The coroner arrived and "Johnny Yuma" was wrapped in a white tarp, lifted onto a stretcher, and hauled away like any commoner to the Los Angeles County morgue. Strangely enough, it was only a few blocks from where he had waged a long and tedious divorce and custody battle with his ex-wife, Carol Nugent, only a few months before. Nick won an expensive custody battle after proving that Carol was an unfit mother because she was having an affair with a fellow named Paul Rapp.

The following morning, Thursday, February 8, 1968, breakfastsnookers from coast-to coast were shocked to read about the death of the famous movie and TV personality:

"Nick Adams, the actor, was found dead tonight in his West Los Angeles home. The coroner’s office tentatively listed the cause of death as natural. An autopsy is to be performed.

"The 36-year-old actor was best known for his role in the television series "The Rebel." Mr. Adams played a trouble-shooter former Confederate soldier in the West.

"After The Rebel went off the air, he had a brief season in another series, "Saints and Sinners." Mr. Adams returned to films and appeared as an accused murderer in "Twilight of Honor," starring Richard Chamberlain.

"He spent $8, 500 in an advertising campaign to win an Academy Award nomination. His campaign succeeded in wining the nomination but in 1963, he lost to Hugh Griffith of "Tom Jones."

"Nick was devastated," his agent said. "He was sure he was going to win the Best Supporting Oscar."

Two actors had this to say about Nick’s mysterious death.

"Absolutely it wasn’t suicide," Robert Conrad said. "We were so close that if he’d intended that, I’d have known about it. Murder? I don’t know. It could be foul play."

"All of Hollywood knows Nick Adams was knocked off," said Forest Tucker.

"It’s hushed up -- one of those things you dare not talk about because Hollywood likes to keep as many scandals from the public as possible. It’s bad for business."

Many others, including Broderick Crawford, agreed. To get the full drift of what many believe was a political "cover up," one would have to go back to the beginning.

James Dean

Nicholas Aloysius Adamshock, later known as Nick Adams, TV’s Johnny Yuma on the Rebel, was known in the film colony as an outsider. A handsome, blonde son of a coal miner, he revered James Dean, and, according to his diary ( he was a prolific diary keeper) he taught young and innocent Natalie Wood the art of lovemaking.

The son of a Lithuanian coal miner, he was born in Nanticoke, Pennsylvaina, on July 10, 1931, and grew up in the smoky pool halls of Jersey City, New Jersey. Although he was totally ignorant of even the most elementary aspects of show business, he wanted more than anything to follow in the footsteps of his idol, James Dean.

Interviewed by this writer soon after he made "Young Dillinger" (1965), he said, "I dreamed all my life of being a movie star. Movies were my life; you had to have an escape when you were raised in a basement. I saw all the James Cagney, Humphery Bogart and John Garfield pictures, Odds against the world -- that was my meat."

After Nicholas Aloysius Adamshock graduated from St. Peter’s College, he hitchhiked to Manhattan, where he saw a marquee which read, "Henry Fonda in ‘Mister Roberts’" He begged for a chance to read for the play, but was told the casting was finished.

After days of waiting, one night he cornered Fonda coming out of the rear stagedoor, and was told that it took a great deal of training to become an actor. "That’s my advice, son," Fonda told him. "Go get yourself some training." With that, Fonda got into a waiting limousine and was whisked off into the night.

Adams browsed the bookstores until he found a book on the art of learning how to act. The proprietor of one store advised him that they were auditioning at Carnegie Hall for The Silver Tassle. Like an unleashed spring, he was off to Carnegie Hall where he struck up a conversation, and later a friendship with a future household name, Jack Palance. Over coffee, the two discovered they both came from the same coal-mining district of Nanticoke. Palance said he would fix it so Adamshock would get his audition.

Nick saw this as his rise to glory, and told everyone within an earshot, including his studio biographers, that he appeared in The Silver Tassle, with Jack Palance. He confessed to this writer that he never tried out for the part because Palance , recognizing the fact that his friend was too inexperienced, sent him to a junior theater.

Thus, like any other young actor, he accepted small parts, but was working for nothing and getting nowhere. In order to eat, he fell back on his old skills as a pool hustler, his means of survival in Jersey City.

Then, Nick withdrew his entire bank account of $350 and hitchhiked to Hollywood, a Fantasy Factory where stars are born.

He was doomed from the start. He was walking along Sunset Boulevard with his backpack and his thumb stuck out when a Beverly Hills police cruiser picked him up and took him to the city limits with instructions to "keep going." Not easily disillusioned, Nick boldly crept back into Hollywood under the cover of darkness, found a place to live in a basement in exchange for doing odd jobs, and visited every casting office in Tinseltown.

"I gave them the Silver Tassle bit," Nick told me, "and how good I was opposite Jack Palance. Then I’d go into my impersonations, hoping that someone would discover me."

He did for me a great impersonation of Humphery Bogart, and a better one of James Cagney, but as he said, it was uncommon for anyone to make it big in Culver City doing impersonations unless his name was Rich Little.

Determined that he would make the best possible show if it, Nick took any job he could get; fry cook, gas pumper, janitor, delivery-trick-driver. And he saved his money, becoming so tight that when he winked his kneecaps moved.

He took a job as a ticket taker and an usher in a movie house in Hollywood mostly so he could see the movies free. His duties also included changing the marquee.

Nick said he always wanted to see what his name would look like up on a marquee, and he couldn’t resist the temptation. His name remained in lights for two days before a theatre manager noticed it and fired Nick. But Nick had a friend take a photo of him standing in front of the marquee and added this bit of skullduggery to his biography along with the Silver Tassle tale.

The bright spot is that eight years later Nick’s name was on this very same marquee, legit this time. It read: "Andy Griffith and Nick Adams in No Time For Sergeants."

In 1952 the draft was calling and rather than go in the Army he joined the United States Coast Guard. When he read in the newspapers that John Ford was casting for Mister Roberts, he managed to wrangle a 90-day leave saying he was obligated to fulfill a contract he had signed with John Ford.

Nick told me: "I figured who could play a sailor better than a sailor? Besides, Cagney was in the picture and maybe I could imitate him if he caught a cold or something."

Nick managed to worm his way into the office of Warner Brothers’ top casting director, Solly Biano, who took an instant liking to the brash young man in the sailor suit. Shown a photo of Nick beneath the marquee emblazoning his name, and believing his Silver Tassle tale, Biano took Nick directly to John Ford.

Within 24 hours Nick was on his way to Hawaii with Henry Fonda, James Cagney and the entire crew.

"All the way over I thought if only Jack Lemmon would get sick I could play Ensign Pulver," Nick chuckled.

Mervyn Leoy replaced an ailing John Ford on the set of Mister Roberts and because he liked the boy who said "yes sir" and "no sir," he was instrumental in getting Nick many parts in movies produced by Warner Brothers. Then Nick’s biggest dream came true.

In 1955 he landed a small part in a scene with his idol, James Dean in, ironically, Rebel Without a Cause.

By this time Nick had given up his baptismal name for Nick Adams. He became James Dean’s closest pal, although Nick was straight and Dean was bi-sexual. When Dean was killed Nick was devastated. He went downhill. He retaliated against the world and began living in the fast lane. He got nine speeding tickets the year Dean died and never had one before in his life. He was placed on probation, and the bigger studios treated him like a leper.

He was stretched tighter than duc tape when he met Carol Nugent. She was a peach with the prettiest pair, as gorgeous as the sunset over Kalahari. An up-coming actress, she gave Nick confidence in himself and urged him to "do something big with my life."

Death Stretcher

Nick did. He worked out an idea he had for a TV script and took it to producer Andrew Fenady. He liked the idea about a Confederate ex-soldier named Johnny Yuma, who was a trouble-shooter in the badlands. In time, the TV show enjoyed continual runs and re-runs throughout the entire world and the credits read: "Created by Andrew J. Fenady and Nick Adams."

Through The Rebel’s successful two year run, Nick Adams climbed rapidly to stardom as Johnny Yuma, assuring himself of cinema immortality, or so he thought. A hot property. he and Carol married and started a family. Allyson Lee Adams was born in 1960, and Jeb Stewart Adams in 1962.

When The Rebel was cancelled, the paychecks stopped coming in and Nick found himself unable to maintain the quality-type living maintained by a star of status. The worm was in the apple; he was reduced to tidbit parts, mostly in foreign films where people didn’t know Johnny Yuma from Johnny-come lately.

He was carrying more baggage than Greyhound. He began drinking and cursing until his unconscionable behavior lost him what friends he had. His wife began an affair with another man and a bitter divorce battle ensued. He won custody of his two kids, who became his reason for living.

With two kids to raise, he knuckled down and went to Japan where he enjoyed instant success, playing all the leading roles he could handle because he was determined to send his kids to college. The trouble was, the films were all box off disasters; The Young Lovers (1964), and Young Dillinger (1965) lasted in the theaters about as long as a hiccup.

When he returned from filming Fever Heat in Mexico, he was offered a whopping $55,000 plus expenses to appear in an Italian film. The producer wanted an identifiable American screen persona in order to release their product in the United States.

Nick was as happy as a kid with a beach ball.

Roeder told investigators that Adams telephoned him to discuss the deal, before leaving for Rome, plus other deals tentatively on the horizons that he hoped would provide a bright future for his beloved children.

"Johnny Yuma" never kept that all-important dinner date.

As Adams lay with a tag on his toe, on a cold morgue slab, his relatives and friends, convinced that he had met with foul play, began telling a lot of strange goings-on prior to his demise. For one thing, on his last day on earth, relatives were plagued by scores of mysterious phone calls. Each time they picked up the receiver, the caller would hang up.

Aside from that, Adams kept a diary in the form of a tape recorder, while he was on location and at home. They were made on a portable reel since cassette machines had not been made available yet.

Now that he was dead, no one could find these journals. Nor could they find his recorder, and the typewriter he so cherished -- given to him by his idol, James Dean. These items have never been found. Nick’s brother, a physician, said that some valuable memorabilia was also missing. The list he made for police included Nick’s Johnny Yuma hat he wore in The Rebel, and an old miner’s hard-hat a memento from his father.

"They meant a great deal o him," Nick’s brother said. "He kept dad’s miner hat to remind him of his heritage, so he wouldn’t forget where he had come from."

Roeder told investigators that Nick was depressed and was taking a prescription drug to calm his nerves. Were the Hollywood police anxious to sweep Nick’s death under the rug when they quickly logged his death a result of an overdose of prescription medicine?

Carol Nugent cried a river when she was informed of Nick’s death. "My God!" she shrieked, "It’s terrible!" She was among those who refused to believe that Nick’s death was a suicide, or even an accident."

According to Assistant Coroner Herb McCoy, the amount of the drug paraldehyde found in Nick’s body during the autopsy would have caused instant death, and the size of the dosage could not have been accidental.

That left suicide or murder.

In contrast Chief Coroner Thomas Noguchi said he only found .037% of paraldehyde in Nick’s bloodstream, which would not be enough to cause death.

Nick Adams

"What did cause Nick’s death, accidentally or otherwise, was mixing paraldehyde with sedatives and other drugs, the remains of which I found in the organs," he said.

Could it be, as many Hollywoodidians have suggested, that Nick Adams was forced-fed paraldehyde mixed with sedatives?

A source at the police department, who wished to remain anonymous, said, "We know that Nick had been in the habit of taking paraldehyde for a severe nervous condition brought on, we think, by his divorce and the long custody fight for the kids he adored. But he had been warned by his doctor how dangerous it was and to be careful of his dose. He knew exactly how dangerous it was and I’m sure he would not take an overdose, or mix it with booze."

Many armchair detectives thought it was strange that the police did not find any means of ingestion near the body. No container that could have retained the substance was found anywhere in or around the house. One detective who worked the case, since retired, was never convinced that Nick’s mysterious send off was anything other that murder.

To him, it seemed strange that Nick’s taped journals, his valuable typewriter, typewritten papers, and the recorder had mysteriously vanished.

The detective pointed out to a tattletale tabloid in later years that Nick left no parting note to his children, to whom he was devoted, and his career was on the upswing, having recently signed to appear in a new film in Rome.

So who -- or what killed Nick Adams ?

The passing of Johnny Yuma will no doubt go down as another of Hollywood’s unsolved enigmas, along with Marilyn Monroe, Mario Lanza, George Reeves, Thelma Todd, John Garfield, Bob Crane, Inger Stevens, William Desmond Taylor, Albert Dekker and many lesser-known celebrities like Victor Killian.

As one detective pointed out, it is in Hollywood’s best interest to keep dirty linen covered

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