Unsolved Murders & Disappearances in Northeast Ohio

by Jane Ann Turzillo

  Published by The History Press

  Charleston, SC

  www.historypress.net

  Copyright © 2015 by Jane Ann Turzillo

  All rights reserved

  Newspaper images on the cover are courtesy of www.genealogoybank.com.

  First published 2015

  e-book edition 2015

  ISBN 978.1.62585.635.7

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015952225

  print edition ISBN 978.1.46711.797.5

  Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  In many ways, all my books belong to my grandmother

  Hazel Hearns Peltier (1894–1978).

  She, above anyone else, gave me a love of history.

  I know she would be proud of me.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  1. Questions Linger About Engineer’s Death

  2. No Leads to Teachers’ Slayer

  3. Was It Murder or Suicide?

  4. The Disappearance of Melvin Horst

  5. Deadly Deals

  6. Gunned Down in Cold Blood

  7. A Deadly Affair

  8. Carnival Girl

  9. Love Gone Wrong

  10. Whatever Happened to Anita?

  Sources

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The best part of writing this book was doing the research and meeting the folks who ultimately gave me all the information and photographs I needed to put together Unsolved Murders & Disappearances in Northeast Ohio.

  But before I thank all the fine librarians, family members, police, friends, et cetera, I want to express my gratitude to my commissioning editor, Krista Slavicek. Without her, this book would not be in print.

  I would like to single out and thank Nicholas Durda, subject department clerk, Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection, Cleveland, Ohio. I collected a large number of photographs for this book from the Cleveland Public Library, and he made the job easy.

  Other great librarians, historians, records clerks, photo directors, archivists, policemen, cemetery sextons and morticians have all played a part in bringing the cases in this book back to light. This is my chance to thank every one of them: Amy, reference librarian, Carnegie Library, East Liverpool, Ohio; Kimberly Barth, director of photography and graphics, Akron Beacon Journal; Sue Clark, reference librarian, Willoughby-Eastlake Public Library, Willoughby, Ohio; Frank “Digger” Dawson, Dawson Funeral Home, East Liverpool, Ohio; Carl E. Feather, ashtabulawave.org, Ashtabula, Ohio; Cheri Goldner, special collections, Akron-Summit County Public Library, Akron, Ohio; Gary Guenther, Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office, Akron, Ohio; Tammy Hiltz, reference department, Ashtabula County District Library, Ashtabula, Ohio; Ann Johnson, Canton Police Department, Canton, Ohio; Darrin Logan, president, Licking County Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 127, Newark, Ohio; Deborah Long, Louisville Public Library, Louisville, Ohio; Gale Lippucci, adult services librarian, Willowick Public Library, Willowick, Ohio; Jennifer Lusetti, Licking County Historical Society Library and Archives, Newark, Ohio; Ken Mauro, Chestnut Grove Cemetery, Ashtabula, Ohio; Kelley Nikola, Akron-Summit County Public Library, Akron, Ohio; Maureen E. Pergola, senior records management officer, Cuyahoga County Archives, Department of Public Works, Cleveland, Ohio; Barbara Rand, volunteer, Geneva Public Library, Geneva, Ohio; staff at the Stark County Sheriff ’s Office Records, Canton, Ohio; Sue Schmidt, reference librarian, Orrville Library, Orrville, Ohio; Sergeant Al Shaffer, Newark Division of Police, Newark, Ohio; Shannon, records clerk, Lake County Clerk of Courts, Painesville, Ohio; and Kristine Williams, adult services librarian, Licking County Library, Newark, Ohio.

  I owe a huge thanks to Linda Boyd, Roger Drake and Kermit Drake Jr. for sharing recollections with me of their sister, Anita, who has been missing since 1963.

  Likewise, I want to thank James Chandler and Debi Chandler Heppe for photos and the information on the death of their grandfather.

  Thanks Jennifer Popovsky, MD, for explaining medical terms on the autopsies.

  The encouragement and support from my writer friends Wendy Koile, Irv Korman and Rob Sberna has meant a great deal to me. My Northeast Ohio Sisters in Crime group, especially Casey Daniels, has provided inspiration and information.

  Two of the most important people in my writing career are my mentors: my sister, Mary Turzillo, and my friend Marilyn Seguin, both retired Kent State University English professors and fine authors themselves. They have stuck with me as my beta readers through six books.

  I do not want to forget those period journalists whose bylines did not appear above the stories they wrote. All of us who write about history owe them a thank you.

  Lastly, I want to thank my son, John-Paul Paxton, and grandsons, Nicholas and Nathan, for believing in me and being the best family an author could ask for.

  INTRODUCTION

  Murders were infrequent when I was a police reporter for weekly newspapers in the late ’70s and early ’80s, so when one did happen, it consumed a good amount of my time and gave me a large number of column inches on the front page.

  One of those murders was a complicated web of betrayal and jealousy. It ended in the arrest of eleven people, including the victim’s brother, an attorney, a has-been exotic dancer and a couple of two-bit, drugged-up hoods from across the country. Needless to say, the detective work on that one is legendary.

  Another murder that sticks out in my mind was that of the “Millionaire Deputy,” a nickname he inherited along with somewhere north of $1 million. He was shot nine times with a .22-caliber rifle from across the street while getting out of the car in his garage. It was such a baffling crime that one of the best detectives in Summit County could not bring the perpetrator to justice.

  During this period, I wrote a routine three- or four-sentence paragraph for the police beat about a young Jeffrey Dahmer’s first arrest for being drunk and disorderly. He had already committed at least one murder, but nobody knew about it.

  But the one that hit closest to home was that of a man I had known most of my life. He was a nationally known foundations expert and well-regarded soils engineer. He was the executive vice-president of my father’s contracting company. In November 1980, someone stabbed this educated, kind man to death in his Lakewood apartment. To this day, his murder is unsolved.

  Murders and disappearances dig holes in the hearts of those family members and friends who are left behind to sort things out. A number of these losses never see closure even though police do their best to follow leads.

  As time goes on, new cases come to the forefront and the old ones get pushed aside. They become nothing more than forgotten papers in dusty attic or basement record rooms. Maybe they have been preserved on hard-to-read microfilm.

  The ten cases here are all that old. Luckily, the newspapers blasted headlines, copy and photos of the eight deaths and one of the disappearances on the front pages of Northeast Ohio newspapers. Sadly, one disappearance in these pages never saw ink at the time. Her name is Anita Drake.

  Harry Beasley is remembered with photos and medals in a glass case in the lobby of the police department where he was an officer. Even
his file is missing.

  Charles Collins’s murder crops up from time to time. Closing in on 140 years, it still fascinates because the case was closed as a suicide, and he was connected to the worst train disaster in Ohio history.

  One victim lies in an unmarked grave. No one knew her name. People just called her the “Carnival Girl.”

  Here are eight stories of deceit, treachery and murder and two stories of children who vanished without a trace.

  1

  QUESTIONS LINGER ABOUT ENGINEER’S DEATH

  This is a case about a single bullet fired almost 140 years ago from a six-shooter navy revolver measuring eleven inches in length. That bullet killed Charles Collins, chief engineer of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad (LS&MS). At that time, his death was ruled a suicide. A year later, two autopsy reports by two renowned physicians from New York City would tell a different story.

  Fifty-two-year-old Collins had been greatly affected by the horrific train accident that slaughtered close to one hundred people when the Ashtabula Bridge collapsed on December 29, 1876. Although he was the engineer when the iron bridge was built eleven years before the tragedy, he never gave his approval of it. He was not experienced in iron bridge construction, instead preferring masonry construction. In fact, Collins was against the bridge design, and he contemplated handing in his resignation if it went forward. Instead, he shifted its responsibility to the railroad’s president, Amasa Stone, who designed the bridge and pushed for its construction.

  Railroad bridges during the nineteenth century frequently collapsed. Iron bridges were especially prone to failure. The Ashtabula Bridge was built using iron Howe trusses fabricated by the Cleveland Rolling Mill Company. Stone’s brother, Andros, was the president of the company.

  It was Stone’s experiment of sorts because most Howe truss bridges were built of wood beams and iron rods. Joseph Tomlinson, a civil engineer employed by the railroad, warned Stone that the beams were inadequate and should be reinforced. Stone’s answer was to fire Tomlinson.

  Charles Collins was chief engineer of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad at the time of the Ashtabula train disaster. Author’s collection.

  Although Collins refused to have anything to do with designing or building the bridge, he felt some responsibility for the disaster. Tomlinson claimed Collins knew the bracing was not adequate. The bridge was in Collins’s stretch of the railroad, so it was up to him to inspect it. He had the structure tested with the weight of three locomotives eleven days before the catastrophe.

  The last time Collins was seen alive was at his office on Water Street in Cleveland, where he worked until nine o’clock on Wednesday evening, January 17, 1877. His wife, Mary, whom he had wed in 1856, was in Ashtabula visiting her parents, Edwin and Miranda Harmon. Since his colleagues had not seen him in three days, they thought he had joined Mary there. Finally, when no one had seen or heard from him by Saturday morning, January 19, Isaac C. Brewer, an assistant from the Toledo division of the railroad, decided to go to his house at the corner of St. Clair and Seneca Streets.

  Collins’s hired man lived in quarters at the back of the house. He told Brewer he had not seen Collins for a few days and thought Collins was in Ashtabula.

  Still concerned, Brewer decided to have a look for himself. Everything was quiet. Nothing seemed out of order as he walked through the house. Then he got to the bedroom. His pulse must have started to race when he realized he had to force his way into the locked room. Collins was dead. His body was perfectly stretched out on the bed. Blood had run from his mouth and ears and drenched the pillow beneath his head. His corpse was obviously in a state of decomposition, and the smell was terrible.

  A revolver rested loosely in Collins’s left hand. His arms were lying parallel to his thighs. The gun hand rested slightly on his left thigh. The dead man was right handed. A fully loaded double-barreled pistol was on the bed on the right. Brewer knew about these guns. Collins kept the larger one under the mattress on his side of the bed. Mary kept the smaller one under her pillow. No one seemed to wonder why both Collins and his wife slept with guns at the ready.

  Was Cleveland so dangerous during that era that Collins and his wife felt the need to arm themselves? Or did they have some other fear?

  Brewer backed out of the room without touching anything and called for the coroner.

  It was Coroner Frederick Fliedner’s opinion that Collins had been dead for thirty-six to forty-eight hours, placing the death date sometime on January 18. To him, the cause of death was plainly suicide, and he decided against holding an inquest.

  Fliedner thought Collins had put the muzzle of the eleven-inch navy revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He observed the revolver in Collins’s left hand but must have dismissed the fact that the dead man was right handed. Three chambers of that gun were empty, but only one wound to Collins’s head was evident. According to the Plain Dealer, Fliedner saw no bullet hole on the headboard, but there was a hole in the wall that looked to be recent and the right size. It was never verified that a bullet was found in the wall. An autopsy one year later would note a nick on the headboard of the bed and another in the closet woodwork and a piece of flattened lead on the floor. If the hole in the wall and the ricochet bullet on the floor accounted for two of the empty chambers of the gun, what happened to the third?

  The bedclothes were neatly pulled up to just above his waist. This led the coroner to believe death was instantaneous and there was no movement of the body. No mention was made of blood spatter, just the blood-soaked pillow.

  An unopened razor lay on the left side of the bed near the killing weapon, and Mary Collins’s derringer lay on the right side of the bed. It apparently had not been fired.

  The bed chamber was in perfect order. It looked as though Charles Collins had retired as usual. His clothing was draped over a chair near the bed, and his shoes and stockings were on the floor close by. His collar with the necktie tucked inside was on a stand in front of the mirror. Curiously, his vest was found under the mattress at the head of the bed. No explanation was ever given for this. Perhaps there was something of value in the pocket?

  An envelope addressed to his wife was found in a basket on a stand. Thinking it might be a suicide note, the coroner snatched it up. It was not what he had hoped. It read: “No. 10 will leave at 11:15. No. 8 at 2:45.”

  Fliedner noted that Collins’s valuables had not been disturbed. A diamond pin and studs, which were still affixed to his shirt, as well as his money and watch, were given to a friend for safe keeping.

  Collins’s friends and family were in a state of shock at his death, particularly the horrific way he died. They went back over the preceding few weeks trying to make sense of it.

  Collins had a sensitive nature and was deeply upset about the lives lost in the catastrophic accident. He wept openly—like a child—when he first saw the vast pile of rubble, the fires, the bodies and the thieves who preyed on the dead and weakened victims. He did not hesitate to wade into the waist-deep, frigid water of the creek where the train landed to help save as many as he could. For three weeks after the accident, he often broke down in tearful grief.

  On New Year’s Day at his in-laws’ house in Ashtabula, he walked out onto the porch for a bit of fresh air. A passerby wished him a Happy New Year, and Collins returned the greeting. He then went back in the house and sat down to breakfast, but he did not eat. Instead, his emotions spilled out. “John wished me a happy New Year. How can it be a happy New Year to me?” he asked.

  Even before the accident, Collins had complained of being overworked. “If they don’t give me help in my work, I shall go crazy,” he told a professional friend. Overwork, combined with the devastation of the wreck, took its toll on him.

  Collins was considered to be at the top of his profession. He was a much-admired man. The Collinwood district in Cleveland was named for him. Most of his colleagues agreed he was extremely conscientious. “There is not a better track or con
struction engineer in the country than Charlie Collins,” said Lake Shore general superintendent Charles Paine.

  Collins was born in Brunswick, New York, in 1826 to Dr. Robert L. and Amelia Collins. After receiving a liberal education at an eastern college, he graduated from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and was full of promise.

  His thirty-year career with the railroads began in New England, where he was in charge of work on the Boston and Albany Railroad. He came to Ohio in 1849 to take charge of locating the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and Indianapolis road. He moved to the Painesville & Ashtabula Railroad as superintendent for a short period. When the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad consolidated, he became its chief engineer and helped to locate its road. He remained with the LS&MS until the end, except for a brief time during the construction of the Mahoning Railroad.

  George B. Ely, one of the directors of the railroad, told a Plain Dealer reporter that Collins was distraught and had lost his appetite and a great deal of sleep since the accident. In addition, Collins had been troubled by comments from the public. He thought the public put the blame on him. “Collins was a proud man, and thought more of his honor than of his life,” Ely said. “He was of a very nervous temperament, and the worry and anxiety connected with the Ashtabula accident has worried him terribly.”

  On the Monday before his death, he had tendered his resignation to the board of directors of the railroad, but it was not accepted. The members of the board assured him that his anxiety was unfounded.

  Still, it seemed to fester in his mind. He thought confidence in his abilities had been withdrawn. He vastly overrated what was said about him. He took it personally, so much so that he made this remark to Paine: “I have been thirty years working for the protection of the public, and now they turn around and kick me for something I am not to blame for, something which I have had nothing whatever to do with.”