Unsolved Murders & Disappearances in Northeast Ohio

by Jane Ann Turzillo

  After two weeks of constant grilling and no formal charges, Dueber was released on a $20,000 bond raised by his brother Austin B. Cable. The next day, the Cable brothers added $3,000 to the $1,000 they had already offered as a reward for information leading to the arrest of Rose Cable’s murderer.

  Dueber S. Cable leaving jail. Courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library.

  On April 1, Dora’s attorney, William B. Quinn, arranged for her to be released on a $1,000 bail. At her arraignment, she told the judge that she would go to stay with her sister and brother-in-law, George and Edna Rodebaugh, in Conneaut. She was wearing the same green hat and dress and black fur-trimmed coat she was wearing when she was arrested in Steubenville.

  Except for a few meager clues, the investigation stalled until May 1938, although Dueber’s former lover was still under suspicion.

  Austin claimed Dora had called either Dueber or him at least twenty times during the months following her release. Her request was always the same. She wanted “compensation.” When Dueber would no longer talk to her, Austin interceded. Early on Saturday night, May 8, she drove to the Cable house on Lake Cable Road where Dueber had been staying with his brother. She sat in her car outside the house until four o’clock on Sunday morning.

  Finally, she left and showed up at a friend’s house in Canton around 9:00 a.m., where she stayed until 10:00 p.m. During the day, she called Austin Cable’s home and made arrangements to go talk with Dueber.

  There were guests at the brother’s house when she arrived later that night. “I told her that if she would talk quietly we could go into another section of the home and talk. She agreed to not make a scene,” Austin told the Repository. He led her into another room; Dueber was at least within ear shot, but whether he was in the same room was not made clear in the news article. Austin asked what she wanted. “She insisted that she be taken care of. I asked her what she meant and she replied that since she had given Dueber seven of the best years of her life, she should not now be cast aside.” She repeatedly insisted Dueber marry her, but he wanted no part of her.

  Austin told Dora he and his brother thought she was responsible for Rose’s death. He told her they had evidence that her alibi on the night of the murder was false and that there was a phone record of unanswered calls to her apartment right around the time of the murder. “I added that we had sufficient evidence to put her behind bars,” he said.

  Dora did not seem to be upset by this and said “it sounded like a reasonable story.” Austin told her this was the showdown and that they would no longer tolerate her visits. She began to get loud, saying she would “make them pay.”

  Austin asked her to leave quietly, but she sat tight. She hissed that she would not go until she had an “understanding.” Seated across the room from him with a large black pocketbook resting in her lap, she dared him to throw her out. He stood up and so did she.

  “Dora, you’ve asked for this.” He grabbed her by the arms from behind and shoved her out the rear door. As she got in her car, he told her to never come back.

  “You’ll hear from me later.” She hurled the threat at him as she drove out of the driveway.

  The Cable brothers were shaken after the confrontation with Dora and afraid she might come back. Austin decided to call Detective Clark, but there was no answer. He then telephoned the Repository and asked for a reporter to come to his home because he wanted someone else to know what had happened.

  Dora drove back to her friend’s house in Canton but stayed only a few minutes. The friend later told police Dora was wearing a blond wig and it had slid down over her forehead. Dora said it happened when Austin Cable had “pushed her around.”

  Dora’s whereabouts after leaving her friend’s house were not known. However, a family member staying at Dueber’s home said he heard a car close to the house very early the following morning, May 10, 1938. He looked out the second-story window and saw a black Dodge coupe in the driveway. The car did not stay long. Maybe the driver saw someone in the window, because after a few minutes, it backed away from the house and left.

  A few hours later, Dora was at her sister Edna’s house in Conneaut. Sometime after her sister and brother-in-law left for work, Dora went out to the garage and locked the door. She carefully stuffed rags in cracks in the garage walls and around the windows. She started the engine of her black Dodge coupe, then lay down on the floor under the rear of the car. She folded her new spring coat into a cone with one end tucked around the tailpipe and the other end covering her face.

  Edna came home at lunch and found her sister’s body. The car engine was still running.

  Dora had left a note for her family telling them how to dispose of her personal property. She had also left a letter addressed to her attorney. On Tuesday evening, Edna and another sister, Blanche, took the letter to Quinn’s office. He read it aloud, then turned it over to the prosecutor. The contents were published in the Repository on May 11, 1938. Photographs of the letter are in the photo collection files at the Cleveland Public Library. It read:

  Conneaut, O., May 9, 1938

  Mr. Quinn:

  Will you please see that the reward for the Cable murder is gotten and please give it to my sister, Mrs. Edna Rodebaugh at 351 Main st., Conneaut, O.

  Mr. Dueber S. Cable had Rose Cable shot on the night of March 11, 1937. The men that did the work was from Cleveland. And that was where he was for the time they could not account for after he left the bar until they got him in his room.

  I did not know for sure at time I was questioned. But he had said we would get a brake [sic] and it would not cost him so much only $200 for the job.

  I cant go on and not tell it. I cant take the stand and tell this. So I am taking the easy way out.

  I have saw Dueber a lot since but after he got back to Canton from Pennsylvania I did not see him so much as he said A.B. Cable raised hell everytime he saw me. As A.B. Cable thought I did the job. And after the way A.B. Cable treated me last night and Dueber was afraid to say any thing to protect me. I maid up my mind to tell all. So I went out and told Claira Griffith the story before I drove back to Conneaut. I told her Dueber had did the job and that I was going to tell all.

  Here are some of the dates I have saw him in hotels since. He had me come to Pennsylvania so he thought it best I register under different names.

  July 27, 1937 rooms 404 Kimmar hotel, name Nonie Snyder.

  Sept. 18 & 19 room 224 Nonie Snyder.

  Oct. 15 room 422 name Ann Ziegler.

  Oct. 23 dont know room numbers.

  Sunday after Thanksgiving meet him in Cleveland. We drove to Butler, Pa., stayed at Willard Hotel, name Mr. and Mrs. Ed Russell.

  And I went to Canton on Saturday Dec. stayed at Hotel Onesto.

  Dec. 31 Hotel Onesto.

  Jan. 1, 1938, Hotel Onesto. Names I don’t remember as he ask me to change the name different times. Jan. 21 to 23 we meet in Cleveland, stay at Hotel Olmstead, name I think D.S. Potters & wife. And I have been at Hotel Onesto on Feb. 21 and one time since I cant remember date. But the last time was April 5, 1938 Dora Russell.

  It was one party in Cleveland he told me the story about Rose. Hope this is clear to you. Also the court. For I think He should pay the price.

  I thought at first I could never tell it. But could not get it off my mind.

  As ever,

  Theresa Ludwig,

  351 Main st.,

  Conneaut,

  Ohio.

  Did Dora tell the truth in this antemortem? Was she a scorned woman out for revenge? Was she mentally unstable? Whatever she was, her letter had the effect she had hoped. Dueber was arrested again and held in jail. He denied knowing anything about the story of hiring hit men.

  Dueber’s attorney gave little credence to the letter, pointing out that she was under a great deal of mental stress. He thought she had written it out of spite. “She had been newly scorned; and you know the old saying, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’?” Her mental st
ate was evident in the spelling and grammatical mistakes, he said.

  At the Cables’ bidding, investigators checked Ohio Bell Telephone long-distance records and verified that Bertha Mumaw had tried to call Dora at her Akron apartment the night of the murder. The records showed that Bertha had tried Dora’s unlisted phone three times starting at 10:11 p.m., but there was no answer.

  Bertha told authorities that when she finally reached Dora the next morning, she claimed to have had indigestion the night before and had gone to bed early. She had not heard the phone ring because she closed the bedroom door so nothing would disturb her.

  Bertha related to a Repository reporter that Dora had taken to wearing a blond wig and that she was losing weight in an effort to disguise her identity. She never gave a reason.

  After Bertha’s husband died, she and Dora took a trip to California. It was on this trip that Bertha witnessed how moody Dora had become. Bertha said she would fly off the handle at small things. During the trip, Dora told Bertha she had taken shooting lessons and had become quite proficient. After the trip, she saw little of Dora.

  Before Dora’s death, Dueber paid a “friendly” visit to Bertha when he was going through Steubenville on business. He asked if she had seen Dora. She told him she had. This was when Bertha told him she had tried to call Dora the night of Rose’s death. Bertha asked Dueber if he had seen Dora. He said no, but Bertha told the reporter she had the feeling that they had seen each other.

  After Dora died, detectives went to Cleveland and Youngstown to try to develop leads on hit men and a .410-gauge shotgun, but they would not divulge any additional information. It was learned from Edna Rodebaugh that Dora had said she was going to Youngstown the Friday night before her suicide.

  Austin told the Plain Dealer that when Dora was questioned right after Rose’s murder, she insisted that marrying Dueber in the event of his wife’s death had never crossed her mind, “However, it was not thirty days after Rose Cable was laid in her grave that she made demands of marriage on Dueber.” Austin told her if she could solve the murder, he would withdraw his objections to her marrying Dueber.

  When police could develop no new leads, they released Dueber Cable, saying they had no justification to hold him any longer. They never found the gun and were never really sure what type of gun was used. And they never had solid proof that Dora had pulled the trigger.

  How about the other five men who had an interest in the Akron “love nest”? Police questioned them and were satisfied with their answers. Higgins was the only one named in the papers. The others escaped notoriety.

  Was it possible that Rose had found out about the six men and their playmates, and she was killed before she could start trouble?

  In February 1939, Dueber Cable married Lola F. Lanich of Whitney Point, New York. They divorced in 1943. He later married Caroline Stockdale. He died in 1954.

  8

  CARNIVAL GIRL

  She was young, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. She was pretty, with chestnut hair and brown eyes, about five feet, six inches tall and weighing 125 pounds. And she was dead. Her body was cast off like some forgotten rag doll in a clump of weeds along State Street, not far from well-traveled River Road in East Liverpool, a town located in the Ohio Valley on the Ohio River.

  An eighteen-year-old high school football player, Sam Winters, came upon her body around seven thirty in the morning on Saturday, June 3, 1944. He worked the night shift at the Pittsburgh Crucible Steel plant in Midland, Pennsylvania, and had just gotten off the Midland–East Liverpool bus on Mulberry Street. As he walked along the cutoff that linked River Road and Hill Road, he saw two bare feet sticking out from under some blankets. Jarred by the sight, Sam ran to a nearby phone and called the police.

  Sergeant Herman Roth was the first to respond. He quickly surveyed the scene and left Sam to protect it until he could call for more help. Chief Hugh McDermott, Patrolman Cunningham and Columbiana County coroner Arnold W. Devon arrived in short order.

  Police found the young woman lying on her back about ten feet off the road not far from the Pittsburgh railroad underpass. Nude except for a torn pink slip pulled up under her arms, she had been wrapped in two cheap green blankets that showed some wear and were trussed with what appeared to be new clothesline. Sheriff George Hayes was also notified of the murder. He came to the scene and made plaster casts of tire marks in the cinder roadbed near where the young woman was found. In the event a suspect was found, the casts might be helpful in identifying the car that brought her to that spot.

  An unidentified female body was found near Ralston’s Crossing in the East End of East Liverpool. Courtesy of Frank “Digger” Dawson, Dawson Funeral Home.

  Left to right: East Liverpool’s safety director Vince McGeehan, Wilfred Devon, Frank Dawson and Coroner Arnold Devon investigated girl’s death. Courtesy of Frank “Digger” Dawson, Dawson Funeral Home.

  The young woman was taken to the Dawson Funeral Home, where Coroner Devon performed an autopsy. He found bruises on the left shoulder at the base of her neck. Discoloration on her face indicated that she had been strangled, but Devon was not sure whether she was choked by hand or by rope. He estimated that she died about two hours before she was found because her body was still warm, although he said the blankets could have helped retain body heat. Her ears were pierced, and the only jewelry on her was a pair of small hoop earrings. There was nothing else on her body to identify her.

  The funeral home photographed her and prepared her body for burial. East Liverpool police took the photo around to the local businesses, night clubs and beer gardens, but no one recognized her. A few people viewed her body and said her face looked familiar. Even though Chief McDermott thought she was from East Liverpool or Wellsville at first, he sent her fingerprints to the FBI. Word came back from the Washington lab that there were no matches on file.

  As tips began filtering into the police station, officers started following the leads. Authorities took a hard look at the Sheesley Carnival, which had been in town, set up at Columbian Park, the previous week and wondered if she could have been a member of the traveling show. When the show pulled out of town, it left clues behind in its trash. A man searching through the refuse for materials to build a tent for his children came across a box that contained two torn dresses and a ripped skirt.

  Sheriff Hayes chased down a lead after finding a photo of five “dancing girls” in the carnival’s Gay New Yorkers Revue. The photo had been taken at Columbian Park, and one of the young ladies in the picture closely resembled the dead woman. The girl in the picture had failed to show up for two performances in Lima, where the carnival was playing. Hayes set off for Lima, but after talking with carnival personnel, he sent a telegram back to East Liverpool that said the girl in the picture had been accounted for in the show.

  After these first leads, the newspapers began calling her “Carnival Girl.”

  Another clue came from a man who lived on St. George Street, not far from where the young woman was found. It was around 4:10 a.m. on Saturday, and he was putting his car in the garage when he noticed a vehicle out on the road switch its lights off and turn onto State Street near the railroad underpass. The witness was certain the license tags were not blue and white and therefore not from Ohio. He saw no one in the car but the driver.

  The unidentified “Carnival Girl” of East Liverpool, 1944. Courtesy of Frank “Digger” Dawson, Dawson Funeral Home.

  Authorities received dozens of calls asking for descriptions about missing loved ones and friends. Calls came from Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and as far away as South Carolina. None of them panned out. In the end, police were stymied. Without identification, they could not come up with a motive, let alone a suspect.

  At least 1,500 people showed up at the funeral home to view her, many out of curiosity, some out of hope of finding a lost family member. The crowds got to be overwhelming, so the funeral home limited viewers to those sent by police. On Tuesday, June 6, Dawson F
uneral Home held a simple service.

  The unidentified young woman rests in an unmarked grave in Spring Grove Cemetery in East Liverpool. To this day, no one knows who was responsible for her death and no one knows her name. She is just remembered as the “Carnival Girl.”

  9

  LOVE GONE WRONG

  It was 6:40 p.m. on Christmas Eve 1959 when a sniper’s bullet snuffed out Charles Roy Clark’s life. The thirty-five-year-old father of four was standing in front of the kitchen window in his Mentor home, opening a can of pumpkin for his daughter when, out of the darkness, a bullet ripped through the glass pane and struck him in the right temple.

  His twelve-year-old daughter was standing close by. His wife, Lois, was baking a pie a few feet away. Lois said that, at first, she thought the can had exploded. “Then he fell and I saw the blood,” she told a reporter.

  Chuck was a Boy Scout leader of Troop 104, which was connected to the Mentor Methodist Church. Dressed in his Scout uniform, he was ready to take the members of the troop Christmas caroling later that evening. Instead, he died on the way to Lake County Memorial Hospital.

  Described by a neighbor as a “wonderful man,” Chuck was also the superintendent of the Methodist Church Sunday school. Friends said his aim in life was to steer young boys onto the right path. He was a friendly man with a “good perspective on life.” So who would want him dead?

  The possibility of a stray bullet was ruled out from the beginning by Mentor police chief Frank D. Hathy, who thought the bullet’s trajectory was upward and from a small-caliber gun.

  Hathy figured the sniper sneaked up beside a sycamore tree forty-two feet from the kitchen, took aim and pulled the trigger. The ground had frozen over that week, so there were no footprints in the backyard, and no shell casings were found.

  A bullet fired through the kitchen window killed Charles Clark. Courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library.