Born to Lose

by James G. Hollock

  Around 3:30 A.M., somewhere along Route 220 in a deserted area of West Virginia, Hoss ordered Karen to pull off the road. Upon further command, she eased the car down a slope to the edge of a cornfield. Hoss turned off the car and put the keys in his pocket. Karen was doomed. She knew it. She asked Hoss if she could smoke one of her cigarettes. After lighting up she rolled down her window and felt the chilled air. She faced away from Hoss, stared out the window, and continued to smoke in silence. She heard Hoss laugh and say, “You know you’re gonna to get it before I let you go, so why fight it?”

  Karen feared the impending rape, the situation made somehow ludicrous by knowing his assault would begin when there was no more cigarette—and no more time—left for her to draw upon. Then afterward, when he was done with her, she dreaded his caprice. Would he walk her into the cornfield to shoot her in the head? If he put a bullet in her back or stomach, would she die right away or linger enough to hear Hoss turn over the ignition of her car to drive off while her blood soaked the farmer’s soil? She didn’t like thinking this far ahead.

  “Okay, enough smoking,” Hoss said loudly. She took a last drag on a cigarette so short it burned her lip.

  “Toss it out. Ya know, I haven’t had any in six and a half months, so you ought to just go along. Remember, we talked about cooperation? There’s more room in the backseat, so go back there and take your clothes off.”

  She didn’t move until Hoss picked up the gun. Once in the backseat Karen dared to make one more plea. “Mr. Hoss … Stan, do you have a girl, or are you married?” Hoss didn’t reply. “Well,” Karen continued truthfully, “I’m to be married next May, on the 16th of May. I’m saving myself for him. Can’t you see you shouldn’t do this to me?”

  “I don’t want to hear it! Lie down and strip. If you don’t, I swear I’ll kill you.”

  In the course of the act, Hoss would, completely without reason, occasionally pick up the gun and point it at Karen’s head. What with his sparsely controlled thrusting and harsh movements, she felt sure the gun would explode at any moment. The rape went on interminably. Well into the violence, Hoss wanted her to perform some unnatural sex acts. Pained and humiliated beyond words, perhaps beyond caring, Karen Maxwell bravely told Hoss no, that she would rather die first. The bullet she expected didn’t come, but, pinning her down by main strength, Hoss committed other depredations on the young woman.

  After Hoss’s vulgarities and despoiling, he ordered Karen to get dressed. They were soon driving out of the cornfield toward parts unknown and, for both of them, an uncertain future.

  After more circuitous travel, dawn broke. Captor and captive were in the West Virginia panhandle, but Hoss seemed increasingly unsure of his plans and seemed indifferent over where they were or where they were going. Karen felt destroyed and so fatigued as to be nearly beyond repair. It was 7:00 A.M. on Monday, September 22, two and a half days since Hoss had murdered Joe Zanella and eighteen or so hours since the cemetery snatching of Karen. Not once during that time had Hoss taken the wheel to give Karen a rest. The pair was traveling west along Route 70. Earlier, Hoss had said first that he would exit her car in Charlestown, West Virginia, and later, that he’d leave her in Marietta, Ohio, but they passed through both towns with Karen still driving at gunpoint. Now Karen was sure that Hoss would never go away. They were near Wheeling, West Virginia, as close to Pittsburgh as they’d been since Karen’s travail had begun. From utter despair, Karen decided to act.

  She guided the car onto an exit ramp off Route 70. Karen didn’t ask Hoss’s permission; she just did it. Then she pulled into the parking lot of the Ohio Valley Hospital, saying to Hoss, “I’m not going any further.” She said no more, made no plea or eye contact, but turned off the ignition and closed her eyes, resting her forehead against the steering wheel as if to take a nap, or wait to be shot. Hoss, too, said nothing for the moment. He gathered up his possessions, then opened the passenger door.

  “Hey, Karen, I oughta’ kill you, you know that, but I’m gonna let you go, so how ’bout you take your time before goin’ to the cops?” he said finally. Hoss pushed his door wide open, then eased himself out altogether.

  Karen pulled away, but kept her eyes on the rearview mirror to watch Hoss disappear among the scores of cars in the hospital parking lot. She drove onto Interstate 70 and took the next exit ramp, which put her in St. Clairsville, Ohio. From a phone booth there, she called her mother. Then she noticed an Ohio State Highway Patrol Post across the street.

  After sitting her down and bringing water, the sergeant’s first question was, “Where is he now?”

  Karen told the sergeant the location and details of her last few minutes “with that bastard, that barbarian!”

  Before asking anything further, the sergeant used radio and phone calls to notify every responder he could that “Stanley Hoss … H-O-S-S … [who] killed the officer in Pittsburgh last Friday, is in the area … repeat … Stanley Hoss is in the area … Last seen in parking lot of Ohio Valley Hospital.” The sergeant looked at a wall clock: 7:47 A.M. He hazarded a guess. “Suspect seen in hospital lot 7:15 to 7:30.” Looking at a poster of Hoss taped to a wall, the sergeant rattled off a physical description of the culprit and noted that at last sighting Hoss was on foot. The sergeant was broadcasting from Ohio, but Hoss’s last known location was across the river in West Virginia. He called Wheeling’s city police dispatch with the urgent news, and all city cars converged on the hospital.

  It did not take long for the Ohio State patrol post to fill with cops, detectives, and journalists, requiring Karen to be further sequestered and shielded from unofficial questions and prying eyes. It was also here that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)—always waiting in the wings on this case—made its first appearance in force. In the commission of this kidnapping, Hoss had crossed state lines with his victim. The case was now federal as well as a state case. FBI agents from nearby Steubenville and Wheeling hurried to St. Clairsville to investigate the kidnapping.

  Assuring Maxwell’s comfort as much as possible, authorities at the patrol post proceeded to interview her. The early call by the St. Clairsville sergeant, asking Wheeling’s police to cordon and search the Ohio Valley Hospital and its surrounds generated some hope that Hoss would be seen on foot—but there was no sighting. Still, with the drop-off of his victim less than an hour earlier, he could not be too far away.

  Karen was on her second soft drink, such was her thirst. She said that when Hoss left her at the hospital lot, she saw in her rearview mirror that he’d not run off but instead was walking toward cars parked at the end of a row and perhaps had tried the door handle of a white car. She did not know if Hoss was going to steal that or any other car, but she could say that earlier, that had been his plan. Other than his abandoned plan to fly to Canada from Pikesville, Kentucky, Karen remembered no other destinations mentioned by Hoss. She then described her assailant and what he wore: sandy brown hair, curly with sideburns; hazel eyes; stubble of beard; tattoo of “Born to Lose” on left forearm; bruised and cut right wrist (Hoss told her this happened when he was breaking a window); wearing a long-sleeved turtleneck with a blue dickey, denim jacket, mud-covered black cotton trousers, and brown loafers with no socks.

  There was no doubt about the identity, but for procedure’s sake Karen was shown an array of five mug shots of Wheeling policemen, one picture of Stanley Hoss, and one picture of Hoss’s workhouse buddy and escape partner, Tom Lubresky. Karen pointed to the picture of Hoss. “That’s him for sure.”

  Word filtered out that the victim was dead-on with her description and characterization of Hoss. Her recall was excellent and her descriptions precise. All could see she was willing herself to hold on a little longer, long enough to help the police do their job. Yet something was gnawing at Karen. She knew the question would come, and it did. Inside the captain’s office, a Wheeling FBI agent asked, “Karen, were you hurt by Hoss? Was there any kind of sexual approach by him?”

  Karen raised her
eyes to meet the agent’s, and answered. “No.”

  The interview wound down. “Miss Maxwell, did Hoss threaten you?”

  Karen explained that he did, more than once. “In the first minute in Greenwood Cemetery, Hoss was forcing me into my car and said something like, ‘I killed that cop and I’ll kill you, too.’ Another time, still in the first few minutes, he said—yelled at me—‘You cooperate or I’ll kill you.’ One other time, hours later while we were driving around … I know it was dark, we could have been somewhere in West Virginia or Virginia, he threatened again, but it’s hard for me to understand the context but he said, again, words to the effect, ‘I killed a cop and I’ll kill again.’”

  This was a fine but ominous turn on the first two threats to Karen. She was prodded further about this but did not know whether Hoss meant, as she articulated, “I’ll kill again, meaning me, if I don’t cooperate or try to get him caught, or if he actually meant that he planned to kill again, someone, anyone. I just don’t know, but I will tell you nothing bothers him. If he kills another person, well … it’s in him. He’s a cold man.” In any case, it was the third threat that made the headline: “Hoss Admitted, ‘I Killed and I’ll Kill Again.’”

  Karen’s aunt, uncle, and cousin arrived from Pittsburgh to take her back home, but first they, along with Special Agent Richard A. Jones, took her to the emergency room of the Ohio Valley Hospital in Wheeling, the same place Hoss had let her go. Karen and her aunt agreed that she did not require emergency treatment, and said that they would contact their family doctor upon arriving home. The family doctor would learn more, much more, of Karen’s plight.

  Karen Maxwell’s miraculous appearance before the police and all that she revealed was momentous indeed. Everyone was excited. The Pittsburgh police were notified, as was the command post set up in New Kensington. Inside, extra phone lines cluttered the floor while the pungent odors of coffee and cigarettes permeated the air. With the news from St. Clairsville, Verona’s Deputy Sheriff Bob Harrison lit up a large cigar and agreed with Blackie DeLellis’s optimistic conclusion: “Yeah, this oughta’ be it for Hoss, the end of the line for that S.O.B.” Others agreed and laughed when they conjectured that maybe Hoss would resist arrest a little too much, maybe try to fight it out. Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t be brought back at all, except in a pine box. That would be fitting. The joviality lasted a few more minutes before Chief Wilbur Bliss of West Deer suggested, “Some of our own men ought to be sent to Wheeling. I think he’ll be caught, yeah, but I’ve had that same thought the past couple days. Fact is, we don’t have him yet.”

  In Wheeling, every beat cop, traffic cop, constable, sheriff, and patrolman was on the lookout for the killer and kidnapper. This saturation was necessary. While Hoss could still be on foot, it was a virtual certainty that he’d already purloined another automobile. But whose? And when would the owner notice? Then the cops got a break.

  Barbara Robson was a nurse for Ohio Valley General Hospital in Wheeling. Early the same day that Hoss got out of Karen Maxwell’s car in the hospital parking lot, Robson left for work from her home in Bridgeport, Ohio, traveled across the Fort Henry Bridge into West Virginia, drove another few minutes to reach the hospital, and pulled into the parking lot on Eoff Street at 6:30 A.M., same as usual for a Monday morning. She took her keys with her but left her car doors unlocked. At 9:40 A.M., Barbara Robson happened to glance out one of the hospital windows toward the parking lot. She couldn’t locate her automobile. Coming in early as she usually did, Barbara always parked in the same area, close to an entrance. From her fourth-floor window she scanned a wider area of the lot, but still couldn’t spot her car. Thinking her husband might have come by and taken it, Barbara called him, but no, he didn’t have it. She then called the police—who’d been waiting for such a call.

  Within minutes, Barbara was interviewed by two detectives. She said her car, a white ’64 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport, Ohio plate U216B must have been taken between 6:30 A.M., when she parked it, and around 9:40 A.M., just before she called police at 9:55. The detectives knew Karen Maxwell had placed Hoss in the hospital parking lot around 7:15 A.M. She had also stated that as she drove off, Hoss approached or was near a white car. Given the time frame and location of this incident, the cops felt 99 percent sure it was Hoss who took Barbara Robson’s car.

  Robson thought her gas tank was only a quarter full—important information in light of Maxwell’s statement that she believed Hoss had no money. After Hoss had spent the few dollars he had along with Maxwell’s eighteen dollars, he made no other purchases. Police calculated that the quarter tank of gas in the stolen Super Sport would get Hoss about 125 miles before he’d have to abandon the car or refuel, which would likely require a new crime to obtain the gasoline.

  Given all this information, the law enforcement officers in Wheeling, West Virginia, figured that Hoss had at most a two-and-a-half-hour head start. Word was put out for an immediate two-hundred-mile-radius alert. But hours passed. Not one call came in, not a single clue. Hoss had vanished again.

  By now, however, the federal hunt had gotten under way. The day after Officer Zanella’s death, Chief Blackie DeLellis had requested assistance from the FBI, predicated on his belief that Hoss had fled Pennsylvania after the shooting. Accordingly, on Saturday, September 20, Special Agent John L. Porter was authorized to file a federal complaint against Hoss charging unlawful flight to avoid prosecution and to recommend a $100,000 cash bond.

  On the afternoon of September 22, seven hours after Hoss had filched Nurse Robson’s car from the hospital grounds, Captain Joseph Start of the Allegheny County Detective Bureau advised Porter that Hoss had been indicted by a Pittsburgh grand jury on separate charges of first-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of Officer Zanella. Concluding the legal thrust, Porter was further authorized to file a complaint charging Hoss with the kidnapping of Karen Maxwell, and to recommend an additional $100,000 bond.

  Citizens of the Pittsburgh region closely followed the search. As far as they knew, Hoss was still in their midst. Residents grabbed up the evening papers from newsstands or read them as soon as their paperboys flung them onto their porches. The kidnapping of Karen Maxwell incensed everyone, particularly when it was learned that Hoss had accosted her while she knelt at her father’s grave. It was too much. The repugnance for the criminal who had caused all this sorrow grew more vehement. Also catching everyone’s attention was a small article on page one of the Valley News Dispatch: “Mrs. Diane Hoss today made known her divorce proceedings from Stanley B. Hoss, Jr. Mrs. Hoss said it is her wish that she and her four children not be linked to the man who is being hunted for the fatal shooting of a Verona policeman Friday.”

  10

  Southwestern Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, with Pittsburgh as its hub, is more populous and has greater political and business clout than western Maryland’s county of the same name with a different spelling—Allegany. Perhaps the origin of both counties’ names was the Allegwie people, who inhabited the region thousands of years ago. All along the southern border of Maryland’s Allegany County, separating it from Virginia, is the long, flowing snakelike path of the Potomac River. The county seat, Cumberland, lies in a beautiful valley in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. Area residents are hours away from anything like a large city. In fact, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., are equally distant, leaving big-city problems likewise far away. In their valley, surrounded by mountains, close to rivers and lakes, and near an immense state forest, is it any wonder that Alleganians would feel blessed by such natural wealth? Two-lane roads connect the county’s well-kept villages and small towns, ornamented with stone pathways, trellises, backyard vineyards. Countywide, there is the down-home feel of the old gristmill, maple syrup tapping, and apple festivals. The county is a good place to live. For the younger set, it was a great place to grow up.

  . . .

  Before and during the Great Depression, Harold Stewart, with his parents and twin brother
, lived in and around the northeastern parts of West Virginia. Like those of most of his generation, Harold’s life was spare and hard—and that was before his father died of pneumonia at age thirty-seven. Harold Stewart recalled those years as “too hot, too cold, or too wet. We worked farms dawn to dusk, diggin’, haulin’ rock, fencin’. No electric, no privy, no food—twenty-five cents a day we got. Well, it was lean like this for years, right up to the outbreak of war. Most of us fellas signed up right away or as soon as you came of age or lied your way in. Everyone was swept up. I spent two years in Europe, Third Army. It was damn hot, cold, and wet there, too. Got discharged on Christmas Day in ’45.”

  When Harold Stewart got home to Keyser, West Virginia, he entered the hardware business. Around this time he met Edna Dayton, a divorcée with a son, Gary. They married and moved ten miles north across the Potomac to Westernport, Maryland, in Allegany County. Here they operated a hardware store, living above it on the second floor. In time, with the postwar economy picking up, Harold and Edna were making a decent living, and on March 28, 1948, Edna gave birth to the couple’s only child together, a daughter named Linda Mae.

  Although Harold and Edna’s marriage failed in 1953, when Linda was five years old, the situation turned out pretty well. Harold remained a close and loving father. Edna eventually remarried, to William Thompson, a fine man and good stepfather.

  In time, William Thompson, a railroad foreman, was able to move his family to the comfortable setting of Bel Air, a neighborhood made up of ranch houses and split levels on half-acre lots. When Linda Mae got old enough, she babysat for neighborhood families, hung out with friends, and read voraciously, particularly biographies and stories set in far-flung places.