From The Vault: Noel Menifee's mother sobs after his release from Mexican jail

WCPO helps Cincinnati man win release from Mexican jail: Some of the elements of the Otto Warmbier case played out in 1965 when 21-year-old Noel Winston Menifee was arrested and thrown into a primitive, filthy jail with hard-core criminals for two months. His crime: not registering his car when he drove across the border. His mother, Vivian Menifee, a nurse at Jewish Hospital, said he wrote her about being badly mistreated in jail. She said she couldn’t get the American consulate to help, so she called legendary WCPO News Director Al Schottelkotte. Schottelkotte started digging. He called the jail and persisted until the jailer let him to talk to Menifee. After hearing Menifee’ story, Schottelkotte got Rep. Donald Clancy to intercede. Within two weeks of Mrs. Menifee’s call to Schottelkotte, Noel Winston Menifee was released, and Scripps-Howard, which owned WCPO, flew Menifee’s mother and sister in the corporate plane to a Texas border town to greet Menifee when he got out.