Unsolved Murders & Disappearances in Northeast Ohio

by Jane Ann Turzillo

  Collins’s last official act was to testify before the Ohio legislative committee investigation of the disaster and to sign a document that gave all his information to a legislative committee in the investigation and prosecution of the cause of the accident.

  Paine had been with Collins at his office on the Wednesday before his death. A committee of the Toledo division was leaving the next morning to inspect bridges in that area, and Collins had agreed to go with them. On Thursday morning, he did not show up to travel with them, so they assumed he had gone on ahead and was somewhere along the road. When no one had heard from him by Saturday morning, Brewer went to his house.

  Collins had evidently intended to go on that inspection tour, as his travel bag was packed and sitting in the bedroom. A new pair of boots were not far away.

  There are conflicting stories about his state of mind that last day he was seen alive. His colleagues who were with him on Wednesday saw nothing in his demeanor to give anyone cause for concern. Yet Brewer had stayed with Collins on the Monday and Tuesday night before. Was he afraid to leave him alone?

  News of Collins’s death spread fast throughout the railroad. A number of his closest associates came to his house looking for information. Only a few were allowed in to take charge of his body and valuables.

  While one newspaper article said the police questioned the suicide finding, another said the police were not interested. Apparently, no record survives to give a decisive answer.

  On the day of Charles Collins’s funeral, a large group of people wishing to pay their respects started to gather in front of his house as early as ten o’clock in the morning. Only the family, officers of the Lake Shore Railroad, prominent businessmen and his closest friends were permitted inside the house, where his casket was surrounded by standards of roses, jasmine and calla lilies. The service, which included selections from both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible and the hymns “Nearer My God to Thee” and “Jesus Love of My Soul,” was conducted by Reverend H.C. Haydn.

  Twelve close friends and colleagues acted as pallbearers to carry the casket to the hearse. The cortège then made its way slowly through Cleveland streets to Union Depot, where a special train sat in wait to carry Collins on his last journey to Ashtabula. The conductor was F. Paige. The family, all the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad officials and a large number of citizens accompanied the casket. A number of cars were needed to carry the mourners. Among them were the parlor cars America, Northern Crown and Stella. The train was pulled by Rapidan, one of the oldest and most reliable engines on the road. One of the longest tenured employees, engineer Nick Hartman, had the honor of being at the throttle.

  Collins is interred in a mausoleum at the Chestnut Grove Cemetery in Ashtabula not far from the graves of the nineteen unidentified victims who died in the wreckage. Interestingly enough, Mary Collins bought four lots at the cemetery on January 19, 1877, one day after her husband was presumed to have died and one day before his body was discovered. The mausoleum is built on these lots. Besides Collins, it holds the remains of Mary Collins, Kittie G. Harmon and Miranda and Edwin Harmon, Mary’s mother and father. Kittie is listed on Find-a-Grave as Collins’s granddaughter, which is unlikely because Charles and Mary had no children. The building was quite beautiful, with black-and-white terrazzo floors and stained-glass windows when it was built, but time has taken its toll on the structure. Now, it’s in need of repair.

  The mausoleum where Charles Collins is buried in Chestnut Grove Cemetery. Courtesy of Carl E. Feather.

  Isaac C. Brewer, having been the first to witness the death scene, never believed the suicide theory. George L. Converse, chairman of the joint committee of the general assembly to investigate the accident, thought Collins had been murdered. His family and several of his closest friends were adamant that it was murder. They all thought someone had been hired to kill Collins to stop him from testifying before the legislative committee.

  A year later, Collins’s body was exhumed, and his skull was sent to Dr. Stephen Smith, a surgeon at Bellair and St. Vincent’s Hospitals in New York City. Smith was also a professor of surgical jurisprudence at University Medical College in New York. It was his job to give a full and unbiased examination of the skull.

  On June 3, 1878, Smith issued a fourteen-page, handwritten report. In looking at the openings where the bullet entered and exited the skull and the fractures that it caused, Smith’s assessment was different than that of Cleveland’s coroner, Frederick Fliedner.

  Whereas the Cleveland coroner decided Collins had put the gun in his mouth and shot up through the roof of his mouth, Smith discovered the ball had actually entered the skull toward the back of the head approximately four inches behind the left ear and had exited approximately five inches above the right ear, still toward the back of the head. Traces of lead were evident at both holes. The impact pushed Collins’s brain forward, fracturing the bones behind his eyes. This may have caused what was thought to be a blow to the head.

  The opening on the right side proved that the ball escaped the skull, evidence that the gun had been held four or more inches away. Smith stated that all experiments made with a six-shooter navy revolver eleven inches in length uniformly found that when the muzzle of that type of gun was held close to the skull, the ball did not escape the scalp. Although it may have made a fracture in the bone, it would fall back into the cavity of the skull. Because the ball was eventually found, it was fact that the ball had exited Collins’s head. At the time of Collins’s death, there was little mention about whether Fliedner found the ball, but Smith stated there were dents in the mahogany headboard and woodwork of the closet, which was in proximity to the bed. A flattened ball was found on the floor just below the closet.

  In Smith’s opinion, the wound was not immediately fatal because its path “did not involve vital parts of the brain, nor large blood vessels.”

  Collins was right handed, and the navy revolver was found in his left hand. Smith contended that it would have been close to impossible for the dead man to hold that size gun in his nondominant hand at an angle at least four inches away from the spot where the ball entered his skull. He would have had to strongly avert his head. Even so, he could not see where the muzzle of the gun would have been pointed. Smith further stated that, when the gun recoiled, Collins’s hand would have fallen over the side of the bed, and the gun would have been thrown some distance from the bed.

  Smith also noted that the body and bed linens had not been disturbed, which was inconsistent with a suicide. He described the different conditions a body might suffer at gunshot suicide—shock, paralysis and unconsciousness. These would have led to cerebral irritation, and the body would have suffered spasms. None of that would be consistent with smooth bed linens and a body in a natural position.

  Dr. Stephen Smith, University Medical College, New York, performed Collins’s autopsy. Courtesy of The Lillian and Clarence de la Chapelle Medical Archives at NYU.

  At the end of the document, Smith stated, “My opinion is that Mr. Collins came to his death by a shot wound inflicted by other hands than his own.”

  Dr. Frank Hasting Hamilton, a colleague of Smith’s at the medical college, concurred, saying that it was highly unlikely that a right-handed man would use his left hand to shoot himself when nothing appeared to be wrong with his right hand. He added, “If Mr. Collins was rendered immediately unconscious and was completely paralyzed and remained so until death (which was probably the fact) the position of the left arm and hand and of the revolver is not satisfactorily explained upon the suicide theory.” He felt Collins’s life “was taken by another person while he was lying asleep in his bed.” Hamilton also felt Collins’s left arm, hand and the revolver were arranged after death.

  The two autopsy reports were not made public at the time, maybe to protect whoever killed Collins and to stave off any more scandal from the accident.

  Frank H. Hamilton, AM, MD, LLD, University Medical College, New York. Courtesy of
The Lillian and Clarence de la Chapelle Medical Archives at NYU.

  Both autopsies were found tucked away in a box full of documents bought at an auction in the early 1900s by a woman named Mrs. Terrill. Her son, William Terrill of Geauga County, found them and gave them to Alice Bliss of the Ashtabula Historical Genealogical Society around 1975.

  Drs. Smith and Hamilton answered the question of whether Collins died by his own hand or that of someone else. The question that still remains is who shot that bullet from Charles Collins’s eleven-inch-long navy revolver?

  2

  NO LEADS TO TEACHERS’ SLAYER

  On Thursday, February 17, 1921, fourteen-year-old Edward Ritenour; his sixteen-year-old sister, Edith; and six-year-old Ralph Pickard saw something they probably would never forget. It was a little before 8:30 a.m., and they were on their way to school in Parma. The children were trudging west through icy mud along a lonely stretch of Bean Road, now Ridgewood Road.

  Something that looked like a bundle lay on the embankment. Being young, their curiosity prodded them to clamber up and investigate. As they got closer, they recoiled in horror and fear at the grisly scene. Two women’s bludgeoned bodies were sprawled on the pathway in front of them.

  The three children raced the quarter mile to their school. Instead of the warmth and safety of their classrooms and teachers, they found other students waiting outside in the cold for the two temporary school buildings to be opened. They blurted out what they had seen to their friends. The older students quickly put two and two together. Their school had always been open in the mornings when they arrived. Their principal, Miss Louise Wolf, and teacher, Miss Mabel Foote, had never before been late to unlock the buildings.

  The students cried for help from Frank Owen, a carpenter who was working on the new high school across the street. He and the students made their way back to Bean Road where the horrible scene presented itself. Owen’s wife, Lottie, was the school principal’s sister. As soon as he saw the victims, he knew one of the bodies was his sister-in-law.

  Edith and Edward Ritenour found the bodies of Louise Wolfe and Mabel Foote. Courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library.

  The body of Louise Wolf and a satchel carried by Mabel Foote. Courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library.

  The body of Mabel Foote. Courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library.

  Parma police chief Frank W. Smith was faced with the most hideous crime in Parma history. The school’s thirty-eight-year-old Louise Wolf was visible from the roadway, lying facedown on the embankment path. Her face was beaten almost beyond recognition. Her pocketbook was underneath her. One of her rubbers was lying beside her. The other was still on her foot.

  Twenty-four-year-old Mabel Foote’s body was farther back from the road, near a fence that bordered an orchard. She was on her back with her arms flung above her head, her hands tightly clenched. She, too, had been badly beaten. Her pocketbook, containing a small amount of change, was found between the two bodies. A few feet away from Louise’s body was Mabel’s black travel bag; its contents, which included some clothing, were scattered in the mud. An umbrella was near her body. It was bent and the tip was broken off.

  Although the school day was over at 3:30 p.m., Mabel and Louise stayed after to grade papers and clean the classrooms. Then, they walked the same two-mile route together every day to catch the 5:30 p.m. dinky (streetcar) at the intersection of Bean and State Roads. A man who lived directly across the street from the high school told police he had seen Mabel and Louise leave the building about 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday. Because there were no houses in the vicinity and it was a lightly traveled road, Louise and Mabel were not seen again until their bodies were discovered the next morning.

  A four-foot section of one of the fence posts, along with a bundle of bloody saplings, was found nearby. Dark hair from Louise and light hair from Mabel clung to the end of the post. The post was bent almost in half. Chief Smith figured it had been wielded with both hands for enough power to bend it in half and crush the women’s skulls.

  Both Louise’s and Mabel’s knuckles were bruised and discolored, evidence they had put up a fight. Heavy footprints in the mud told the story of the women’s desperate struggle. Early on, some police investigators thought there were two attackers, but Smith thought the crime was perpetrated by one man. He figured if there had been two men, they would have overcome the women more easily.

  The assault began in a gully along the road. The women had fought their attacker every inch of the way up a six-hundred-foot grade. Police thought that as the assailant grabbed one of the women, the other tried to help her by using sticks and stones against the attacker. It looked like one of the teachers had used the umbrella to defend herself or her friend because of its broken tip. It was apparent that the women would not leave each other.

  Mabel’s watch was located 150 feet away. It had stopped at 5:15 p.m., leading police to believe the attack happened at that time. A handkerchief had been trampled into the mud.

  Matted-down, blood-spattered grass indicated the most brutal part of the battle had taken place near a wire fence that bordered the orchard. Two fence posts were broken off from what police thought was the bodies being thrown against the fence.

  From what police could tell, Mabel fell first near the fence, and Louise continued to fight for her life but was finally beaten into unconsciousness not far from Mabel. The murderer then returned to Mabel to continue his attack on her.

  A blood trail from Mabel’s body to her overnight case led police to think that she regained consciousness long enough to wipe the blood from her face with a nightgown from her bag. She most likely lost consciousness again and died either from blood loss or exposure to the cold.

  Fence posts, thought to be the murder weapons. Courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library.

  Deep tracks in the frozen mud clearly showed the murderer’s running retreat. He jumped down onto the road bed and dashed several hundred yards, then turned into the woods on the south side of the road.

  Chief Smith brought in police dogs to track the killer, but the dogs were of little help. Scent from the footprints had been destroyed in the rain from the night before. Gusting winds had blown away odors from the death scene and may have taken other evidence with it.

  Smith was stumped when it came to motive. Neither woman had been sexually assaulted. Robbery did not seem to be a motive because both were still wearing their jewelry—one of the women even had a diamond ring. Looking into the two women’s backgrounds was no help. Neither seemed to have any enemies.

  This was Mabel’s first year teaching. Having graduated from Baldwin-Wallace in Berea the year before, she was full of promise. She was a pretty young woman who still lived with her parents, Joel Lindsey and Ella, and siblings on Schaaf Road in Brooklyn Heights. She had one sister, Millie, and three brothers, Joel, Kenneth and Aaron. When she did not come home that evening, her father was not concerned. She often went to stay the night with her cousin, Mary Shankford, who lived on Devonshire Road, he said.

  Mabel Foote was a teacher at Parma school. Courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library.

  Louise had suffered tragedy early in her life when both her parents died unexpectedly. She and her siblings were farmed out to relatives or adopted. In spite of hardship, she completed her education and became a teacher. She shared a house with another woman, a common and economical custom for unmarried women at the time. She had taught at the school for two years before becoming the principal.

  Smith evaluated the area. Bean Road was up and down with steep hills, and there were no houses on this section. Heavy woods and an orchard bordered both sides of the road. A quarter mile east of Ridge Road was a gully. It was the perfect place to commit such an atrocity and have it go unnoticed.

  Louise Wolf was the principal at Parma school. Courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library.

  Every able-bodied man who could get away from work set out to comb the woods. A shack built by a real estate company sat back off the roa
dway, and the searchers wondered if the murderer may have hidden there and waited for Mabel and Louise to walk past. Footprints led police to an abandoned chicken coop several hundred yards north of Bean Road. Detectives thought the murderer may have waited in the run-down coop until dark to make his getaway.

  A pool of blood inside the coop had been covered over with bricks and sticks. Was the blood from the murderer? Or was the blood from chickens butchered years before?

  Twenty feet from the coop was a working water pump. Did the murderer draw water to wash the blood off himself ? Did he stop there to tend to wounds that he received during the fight with his victims?

  Close by, a shallow stream meandered icily through the farmland where the killer could have rinsed blood from his hands and face. Searchers examined the frozen ground, but it was impossible to tell if he had crouched down next to the stream.

  Charles Foote, Mabel’s uncle, was of the opinion that murderers sometimes return to the scene of the crime. With this in mind, he frequented the murder scene night after night, tramping through the woods by flashlight beam, hoping to run into his niece’s killer. His nightly visits made neighbors who lived near the wooded area nervous. His vigil produced nothing.

  The victims were laid to rest four days after their murder. Mabel Estelle Foote’s funeral service was held at the Pearl Road Methodist Church. She was interred in her family’s private cemetery. Services for Louise Wolf were held at a private home. Detectives attended both services, thinking perhaps the killer might want one last look before the women were buried.

  “Everything must be done to catch the murderer,” Prosecutor Edward C. Stanton told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “This is the most cold-blooded and carefully planned outrage that I have ever had called to my attention.”