It’s hard for a Butte person to read about the Kenoffel brothers’ cafes without wondering which one was known as “Awful.” That one was actually a Knofel.
The story goes…
Back in 1956, Bob Knievel was in jail on either a reckless driving or burglary charge. His youthful offense paled in comparison to that of his jail mate, William Clarence Knofel, already nicknamed “Awful.” A witty jailer observed the duo and exclaimed something like, “how do you like this place? We have both Awful Knofel and Evil Knievel.” Bob, with a nose for self-promotion, adopted the name, changing it to ‘Evel.’ And ‘Awful?’
Well, William or Clarence ‘Awful’ Knofel was the real deal. In 1974, the 52 year old unemployed ex-con claimed that Evel’s constant retelling of the naming story had rendered his life unbearable.
But he shied from the discredit he earned over a long lifetime of poor decisions.
During the summer of 1974, Evel Knievel was in Twin Falls, preparing for his famous abortive rocket cycle leap across the Snake River Canyon. Coincidental in the extreme, a man calling himself Clarence William Knofel came to Twin Falls, to visit an old friend and look for work. Knofel then claimed that Evel, with his ‘Awful’ references, prevented him from employment there. He added that he considered suing Knievel. Knofel admitted to a drinking problem, but said he felt “entitled to rehabilitation.” For his part, Knievel kept to a distance and had nothing good to say about ‘Awful.’
The early years
In small cities and towns out West, people occasionally drift in, drift around, and drift off again. William Knofel was such a transient resident, never much comfortable around people or regular work. Born in 1922, his early life seems unremarkable. It’s difficult to find any notable mention of him, although the Knofel family lived in Butte since at least the 1890s. In 1942, Knofel served a month in a California jail on a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He also faced a rape allegation, but dodged that by pleading guilty to the former charge.
A year later, his luck ran out in San Francisco. In December, 1943 Knofel was convicted of first degree robbery and sentenced to eight years in San Quentin. He earned parole after serving three years. Not a good start for a young man of twenty-five.
Soon after release, he made his first appearance in Montana papers. Knofel was in Billings, serving four months in the county jail following conviction on charges of taking an auto without consent of the owner. With four other prisoners conspiring to break out of the calaboose, Knofel kicked and severely beat a jailer. When arraigned, he pleaded guilty.
While serving a new two year term for second degree assault, Knofel’s good behavior led to his becoming a trustee. Taking advantage of the reduced supervision, he escaped in May of 1947 from the Montana State Penitentiary in Deer Lodge. Listed as Clarence Knofel, he bolted with another trustee. The bulletin described him as a former miner, 5 feet 11 inches in height, weighing 152 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair.
When they came down from the hills to the small town of Drummond for food, police promptly captured both men.
In and out, of jail and love
Back in prison, Knofel was once again, by all accounts, a model prisoner. He earned a parole after serving out most of his two year sentence.
One of the conditions of his release was that he stay away from Butte. Just a few days later, police arrested him there and returned him to Deer Lodge as a parole violator. Knofel then served the remainder of his original two year sentence.
Upon entering into his relationship with the Montana penal system, Knofel’s first wife Bernice filed for divorce. It’s unclear how Knofel found time to develop romances, what with his moving around and other nocturnal business. He did apparently remain single for the next seven or so years.
Knofel then met and married a girlfriend named Charlotte in 1953. She was twenty, he was thirty-two years of age. Charlotte filed for divorce late that year, citing extreme cruelty, but they apparently reconciled.
Crime gets serious
In Butte on May 2,1954, assailants brutally beat and killed an eighty year old wealthy and well-known Chinese laundry owner named Quong On. Someone dumped his body in a lot near Rocker, Montana. The rumor was that Quong hid his fortune in his house, and police found it ransacked. They arrested Knofel and held him in Butte’s Silver Bow County jail. There he spent the next eleven months, in lieu of a $10,000 bond, awaiting trial for the murder. The court dismissed charges against him that November, when the state was unable to locate its key witness.
Three months later, on February 15, 1956, William Knofel, now calling himself Clarence, was in the Butte city jail, held on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon. During questioning in connection with theft of a shotgun during a robbery of Sears, police found a switchblade knife on him.
Knofel was now thirty-three years old and found himself sharing a cell with one John Bruno, of the same age, impounded on a conviction of drunk driving. Bruno held the dubious record of having had a blood alcohol content of 3.6, the highest ever recorded, to that time, in Butte police court. He was serving a twenty day term.
Knofel and Bruno sawed their way through the bars of their Butte jail cell. A woman prisoner screamed and thrashed from an apparent case of delirium tremens. This effectively diverted attention, allowing the two men to slip quietly out of the building. They drove a Dodge, easily traced to Bruno, toward Kellogg, Idaho. Officers pinched both men less than a day later, when they “brazenly walked into the county courthouse in nearby Wallace, to buy a 1956 auto license for Bruno’s car.”
The jail hacker
Extradited back to Butte, Knofel landed back to jail. On March 9, returning from a court appearance on the grand larceny charge, he broke away from a sheriff’s deputy and was recaptured two blocks away.
The following evening, he managed to spring himself once again. The deputy bringing Knofel’s breakfast found an inch thick hinge bolt on the cell door sawed through. The door opened enough to allow the slim Knofel to free himself. He then exited through a window in the basement garage. Five hacksaw blades and a pile of cigarette butts testified to Knofel’s patient work on the bolt. His earlier escape actually worked to his advantage. As a result, he drew solitary confinement in an old basement cell with rusty iron bolts.
Authorities caught up with him in Helena on March 12, after two days of liberty.. They pinched William and his wife at their hotel. When searched, officers discovered four hacksaw blades sewn into the waistband of Knofel’s trousers. He was issued Helena jail clothes and left manacled to a Silver Bow sheriff’s deputy.
Knofel caused no trouble during the ride back to Butte. Indeed, he apologized to the officers for having “caused the sheriff so much trouble.” Once more, Knofel found himself in the Silver Bow County jail, which now required repairs to two of its cells.
Having failed to post a $2,500 bond on the grand larceny charge against him, Knofel cooled his heels in the county jail. In December, 1956 the district court judge ordered him to Warm Springs for psychiatric evaluation, following a half-hearted suicide attempt, an abortive hunger strike, and suspicion of tampering with jail locks. Knofel found himself convicted and sentenced to a one year term in the state penitentiary on a charge of receiving stolen property. He served this without incident.
A little togetherness
Back in June of that year, his wife Charlotte filed for divorce, on grounds that Clarence was a convicted felon. The two had been married for three years.
One week after release from prison, William Knofel, 34, and (somehow) his wife Charlotte, 22, drew the attention of a Great Falls police detective. He found them in possession of two pairs of slacks, a jacket and an electric iron, all taken from a local department store. Pleading guilty, they received fines and suspended sentences. Unable to pay those fines, both became guests of the county, in its ‘crowbar hotel.’
Knofel told officers he stole things to resell because he was hungry. He protested that his wife had never been in trouble before. She proved to be a quick learner.
Early in 1959, after several months in jail, Knofel somehow managed to furnish bond on the larceny charge. During this interval he migrated to California, where he wound up in a mental institution. The system soon pronounced William cured and discharged him.
In July 1960, back in district court on the earlier larceny charge, Knofel’s lawyer asserted that if the court suspended his client’s five year sentence, that he would return to and remain in California. The county attorney didn’t contest this, and the judge suspended Knofel’s sentence. In closing the case, the judge added, “I hope you can get from here to the bus station without breaking any laws.” The bus station was a little over a block from the courthouse.
Charlotte apparently stayed busy in Butte as the 1950s wore on. She was fined for disturbing the peace in 1957. In August 1959, she forfeited two $50 bonds by failing to appear in court on another charge of causing a disturbance and resisting a police officer.
In February, 1963, the pair, together again, were charged with petty larceny in Butte. More shoplifting of slacks, this time from Penneys. Police had Charlotte accommodated in the county jail, and issued a warrant for William. The Knofels were able to post bond after a short time.
A gamble in Reno
Career criminals, like bad pennies, keep turning up. In July of 1963, police in Reno, Nevada held one of five men sought by Secret Service agents as part of a counterfeiting ring run from a college press in California. Over $4 million in currency had been printed and much of it distributed.
The Montana Standard reported that one of the men arrested was Clarence Junior Richards, 41, of Butte. This was an alias for William Knofel, collared by casino guards after a dealer examined the bill. William then threw two phony twenties and another fifty under the table. He later told police he got the money from a man and woman he could neither name nor describe. Knofel was likely attempting to launder the money for a larger racket. Authorities sought four others in Reno, and already had another four in the San Francisco area in custody.
It’s unlikely that Knofel was able to stay clear of trouble or out of prison in California, although mentions of him fall off in the late 60s. He appeared in a January 1966 Nevada State Journal article as Clarence Richards Jr. He struck another man with a gun during an altercation, sending him to the hospital. The two were once friends but a quarrel had been brewing for some time when they began to fight at Joe Chicago’s Bar.
The rumpus continued across the street at the Elbow Room, and from there out onto the streets of Sparks, Nevada. Police arrested Knofel for failure to register as an ex-felon and possession of a firearm.
No place like home
Jail room must have been at a premium in Nevada, as Knofel inexplicably returned to Butte by August, 1966. Cited for vagrancy, he ultimately donated his $100 bond to the city by failing to appear in police court. A ‘C’ note is a lot of money to forego when one is already homeless, so it appears he had either forgotten the date, or grown so distasteful of courtrooms that he just couldn’t stomach another appearance in one.
Charlotte was back in the news in the summer of 1965. She drew a suspended three month sentence, pending her good behavior, for attempting to obtain money under false pretenses. The original complaint was that she had forged another person’s name to a refund slip for a suit from Penneys.
Playing out of his league
As mentioned earlier, William Knofel resurfaced during the summer of 1974 in Twin Falls, Idaho. This appearance was related to Evel Knievel’s planned rocket cycle jump of the Snake River canyon. This was an event that garnered national notoriety and promised a huge payoff for Knieval. Hangers-on, looking to pluck some low-hanging fruit, were there as well. Failing to get a conversation, let alone any financial satisfaction from Knievel, “Awful” Knofel resumed drifting east, landing again in Butte. By this time a full generation had passed, and Knofel was able to assume a low profile existence on the fringe of legality there.
In 1976, police court found the 54 year old ‘Clarence’ Knofel guilty of two counts of shoplifting. He had taken three shirts in one instance, and five pairs of pants in the other. Knofel paid his fine, effectively wiping out his finances. Of course, there’s a penalty for being broke too.
A year later, Knofel pleaded guilty to a charge reduced from felony car theft. The highway patrol arrested him in a car taken earlier that day from a Volkswagen dealer, That this happened a block from Knofel’s address might indicate that passing by it every day proved an irresistible lure. The next 30 days in jail probably seemed routine by now, and the vagrant had both bed and breakfast, courtesy of Silver Bow County.
A steady baseline of petty crime in later life
Times were hard, and this man who never seemed able to evade the law for long actually notified police in 1979 to the theft of $65 in food stamps from his unlocked apartment. During 1981, he served 15 days in jail for driving with a fictitious temporary tag, a number of parking violations, and escape from the courtroom of Judge Bill Geagan.
Knofel pleaded guilty to shoplifting six pairs of gloves from a Butte Safeway store in 1982. Justice of the Peace Georgia Moran heard the case after Police Court Judge Bill Geagan was disqualified as biased. This was no doubt based on his history with Knofel. William served a ten day jail term. Amazingly, he found himself back in Geagen’s court five months later, this time for shoplifting two cartons of cigarettes from the same Safeway store.
By 1983, William, or Clarence Knofel was 63 years old, but had learned little for all his legal experience. In March he returned once more to the Silver Bow County jail for five days, on a charge of disorderly conduct. This time he pleaded guilty to having used profane language against his mother.
Awful, indeed.
Epilogue
William and Charlotte Knofel just sort of disappeared after that. There is no sensational geriatric criminal activity to report. As with a number of local residents, perhaps they just gave up and quietly went with the flow, never more to seek easy money without having to mine for it. A simple line in the paper noted that Clarence Knofel died in Butte on October 21, 1985, at age 63.
These two were no Bonnie and Clyde. Like subsistence farmers, they were like subsistence criminals, just trying to keep fed in a lifestyle that must have felt like bad luck at a casino. They were hauled in so often that they must have become numb to incarceration. At least they were fed in jail. It wouldn’t explain all of Awful’s escapes, but drifters seldom like to be where they are for too long.
And Evel Knievel? Well, a lot of the hype was built on sand. The $6 million he reportedly contracted for with Bob Arum was actually only $200,000. He lost his endorsement deals after he severely beat a journalist with a baseball bat. By the late 80’s this man, permanently damaged, was reduced to selling art produced by a friend, but attributed to Evel, from the semi trailer that once held his motorcycle daredevil traveling circus. Banged up and buried in debt, he was, like Knofel, now a little too old to keep running. He did his best to live off his persona, which was more than Awful Knofel could have hoped for.
Knievel jumped a motorcycle over things for a living, racking up dozens of broken bones in the process. He outlived Knofel, who never jumped much more than his bail, by twenty-two years.
Resources
The Montana Standard of Butte, Montana was essential for researching this essay. I tapped editions from September 12, 1946, May 15 and 16, 1947, February 16, March 11 and 13, and December 2, 1956, March 5, 1957, August 28, 1959, July 22, 1960, November 28, 1962, February 21, March 9, July 9 and 10, 1963, August 5, 1966, September 1, 1974, April 8, 1976, June 9, 1977, September 9, 1979, October 9, 1981, April 2 and September 24, 1982, and March 17,1983.
Knofel’s adventures in Billings partly came from the October 11, 1946 Butte Daily Post. Notice of Knofel’s first wife, Bernice, filing for divorce came from the May 16, 1947 edition.
The arrest of William and Charlotte Knofel on a shoplifting charge in Great Falls was related by the Great Falls Leader of March 9, 1957. That was also the source for his earliest run-ins with the law.
Charlotte’s arrest for shoplifting at Penneys came from The Missoulian of June 27, 1965.
News of Knofel’s movable bar fight in Reno was from the Nevada State Journal of January 9, 1966. His innocent verdict on the counterfeiting charge was from the same paper of November 14, 1963.
Robert ‘Evel’ Knievel lived a fast and colorful life. He put Butte, Montana on the map at a time, in the mid-1970s, when almost nothing else was going right for the city. Lionized in much press, at least two movies, and a line of Ideal toys, he took on a certain heroic aura. More on the climactic Snake River Canyon jump is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skycycle_X-2
The surname Knofel is not to be confused with Kenoffel. Different folks and different stories. This one is inspired by the earlier one at https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/?p=3969
