Unsolved Murders & Disappearances in Northeast Ohio

by Jane Ann Turzillo

  Hargrove pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of insanity. He underwent forty-five days of psychiatric examinations at Lima State Hospital, and the hospital reported he was legally sane enough to face trial. The innocent by reason of insanity plea was withdrawn.

  Newspapers from all over the state had been reporting on the murder and upcoming trial, so the courtroom was packed with spectators who wanted to hear every salacious detail in the case built on marital infidelity.

  In his opening statement, Prosecutor Ostrander told the eleven-man, one-woman jury that “lust for another man’s wife drove Floyd E. Hargrove to commit murder.” He said the defendant and Lois Clark had been engaging in “secret trysts” for eight months and the shooting of Charles Clark was the “culmination” of their love affair. Then he laid out the alleged series of events and said he would show that Hargrove had admitted to the killing.

  According to the Lake County News Herald, Turi told the jury that his client had nothing to do with the killing. He criticized the investigation and said of the police, “The type of inquisition they conducted, as you shall see, were a combination of Keystone Cops and Three Stooges comedy.”

  Turi said if the affair between Lois Clark and Floyd “Gene” Hargrove established a motive, there were other people who would have had the same motive. “But it may very well be that Mrs. Clark was the intended victim and not her husband.” He said there was no evidence that the killing bullet was intended for Charles Clark.

  The jury was taken to the Clark home and given a view of the spot from which police alleged Hargrove took aim at Charles Clark. Then they went to John Ozinga Jr.’s home. The jury visited Robert Diday’s home, which the defendant also visited on Christmas Eve. Next, the jury got a look at the utility pole that Hargrove allegedly used for a practice shot. Lastly, the jury viewed the spot where the alleged murder weapon was found.

  On the day Lois Clark took the stand, she was wearing a severe looking navy blue suit. The courtroom got very quiet as she recounted her intimacies with the handsome defendant. She admitted that she and her lover had met several times a week, mostly at her home, while her husband was at work. She said she visited “Gene’s apartment in Painesville at least eight times.” The couple often met for coffee at a restaurant in the Willo Plaza.

  Lois Clark had many affairs. Courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library.

  “Were you in love with Hargrove?” the prosecutor asked.

  “Yes, I was,” she said. She kept her eyes on the floor and never looked at her former lover.

  She told the court they decided to stop seeing each other in November. “I was under a strain and I thought it would be better if he met someone else.” They did see each other on Christmas Eve morning.

  The reporter for the News Herald observed that as Lois Clark testified, she either twisted her handkerchief in her hands or gripped the arms of the witness chair.

  Defense attorney Simmons asked her about other infidelities. She told of three other men with whom she had been intimate. She admitted to a three-month fling with a Willoughby police lieutenant, who denied ever being Lois Clark’s lover. She broke it off with him because of Hargrove. The police lieutenant told her he did not play second fiddle to anyone. When his name came out in court, the mayor of Willoughby suspended him without pay. He later resigned from the police department. Another lover was a car salesman, who followed her in his car and made calls to her after she broke off their relationship to be with Hargrove. The third was a hairdresser, and she also broke off with him when she started seeing Hargrove.

  Simmons asked her if she would believe Hargrove if he swore under oath that he did not kill her husband. She said yes.

  Prosecutors suffered a setback when the clerk at the Carlson Hardware Store where the alleged murder weapon was sold could not identify it or Hargrove as the buyer in court. The gun was sold two days before Christmas, when at least four hundred people had shopped in the store, and the clerk could not remember the defendant. Shown the rifle, he said it was the same type he sold that day, but he had not recorded the serial number on the card, so he could not be sure.

  The Mentor fireman who retrieved a .22-caliber rifle from the Chagrin River was called to the stand. Assistant Prosecutor Clair showed him the gun and asked if it was the same one he found. The fireman said, “It looks like it. But I couldn’t say for sure.”

  The policeman who recovered the slug from the utility pole by using a chisel was next to testify. Under cross-examination, he was forced to admit that he had put a nick in the bullet when he dug it out.

  Handwriting expert Joseph Tholl testified that in comparing the printed name—Robert G. MacClaren—on the Carlson Hardware Store gun-purchase card with Hargrove’s printing on the claim slips from Moss Point Cleaners, he could tell they were printed by the same person. Turi brought out that police had Hargrove copy the printed name on the file card over and over until the printing was close. Simmons asked Tholl whether he had ever made a mistake. Tholl said that as an expert, he had examined handwriting samples for more than 2,500 cases and not made a mistake.

  Simmons took issue with that statement. “Well, Mr. Tholl, you have made a serious mistake today.” The attorney pointed out an erasure mark near the G on the gun-purchase card. Tholl previously said the mark was from “pencil failure.” Simmons asked Tholl to look at the mark more closely. “Yes, I can see it now.”

  Mentor chief Hathy testified that Hargrove had admitted to using the name Robert G. MacClaren to buy the rifle on December 23 and had given the location of where he test-fired the gun. According to Hathy, the test bullet hit a metal tag, three-quarters of an inch by two inches, square in the center.

  While testifying about the bullets, Hathy accidently dropped the slug taken from Clark’s skull. It bounced on the floor and rolled under the witness’s chair. Both Ostrander and the chief dove for the bullet. When it was safely back in Hathy’s hand, Clair asked, “Now that I have my breath back, can you identify it?”

  Hathy said it was the bullet Coroner Richard W. McBurney handed to him the night of the murder, and it had been in a safe at the village hall until he turned it over to the ballistics expert at the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. More closely questioned by the defense, Hathy conceded he had forgotten to mark the slug for identification until five days after the coroner removed it from Clark’s right temple, compromising the chain of evidence.

  Prosecutor Clair questioned Hathy about Hargrove and Lois Clark’s sexual relations. He said Hargrove admitted to him that the relations were “abnormal.” Turi objected and called for a consultation before Hathy could go on. During the break, Hargrove told the press he never told Hathy anything about his intimacies with Lois, but he had talked about them with Sheriff Evans, McBurney and Clair.

  “That’s why I confessed the first time,” he told the reporters. “They told me that if I didn’t they’d bring out our whole sex life at trial.”

  The prosecution wanted to have Chief Hathy and Sheriff Evans testify that Hargrove allegedly had told them while under sodium amytal where the rifle was. Turi previously said the defense would fight any talk of a confession under a truth serum. He said the confession was “illegally and fraudulently obtained.” When it was brought up again, he objected, and after another conference, Judge Slocum sustained the objection.

  On the ninth day of the trial, prosecutors, defense attorneys and Judge Slocum had a three-hour conference in chambers. This time, Ostrander and Clair wanted to introduce a January 2 tape recording of Hargrove admitting to the murder. Turi and Simmons tried to keep the jury from hearing the tape, calling the confession “involuntary” and “given under duress.” The state won. Turi told reporters later on that the defendant was in no shape to be talking on tape at the time. His voice was groggy and investigators were haranguing him, he said. “In his condition, he would have confessed to anything.”

  The questioners were Evans, Hathy, McBurney and Clair. On the tape, Hargrove
admitted to buying the rifle under the assumed name of Robert G. MacClaren and firing the test shot. The questioning was aggressive. Finally, the defendant said, “I told you I did it. I’ll confess to killing him, but I don’t know where the gun is.”

  Evans hammered away at him. “Get it off your chest and quit fooling around.” At one point, Evans said, “Think of Lois. Think of the kids. Do you want me to tell the newspapers about your abnormal relations with her?” Again he demanded to know where the gun was. “Let’s get this gun and get it over with. Let’s stop this sordid mess.”

  The recording also revealed Evans’s threatening to charge a doctor who treated Lois for a miscarriage.

  Defense Attorney Simmons questioned Evans until the law enforcement officer admitted he had threatened Hargrove with spreading “all the dirt about him and Lois to the newspapers.” The sheriff even admitted he had promised Hargrove he would keep quiet about his intimacies with Lois.

  Ballistics expert Galloway and Steve Molnar Jr. came to the stand to back the prosecution’s contention that the bullet that killed Clark and the slug Hargrove allegedly shot into the utility pole were shot from the same gun. Both experts testified that the markings on those bullets matched up to the lands and grooves on the inside of the barrel of the .22-caliber rifle pulled from the Chagrin River. Grooves are cut in a spiral lengthwise down the barrel. Lands are raised areas between the grooves. Lands and grooves are sometimes referred to as rifling.

  Turi pointed out to the experts that the killing bullet was so mutilated that positive conclusions could not be reached. There was only one land and groove on that bullet, compared to six on the utility pole bullet. But Galloway and Molnar held to their conclusions.

  When it was time for the defense to present its case, Turi countered Galloway’s and Molnar’s testimonies by calling his own expert, David L. Cowles, founder and retired chief of the Cleveland Police Department’s Scientific Unit. Cowles had been involved in the Sam Shepherd case.

  Judge Slocum allowed the defense time for Cowles to do his own ballistics tests in London with the same equipment Galloway had used. His tests showed that neither bullet came from the .22-caliber rifle that prosecutors and police claimed was the murder weapon.

  Cowles went to Clark’s home for a firsthand look at the surroundings. The retired policeman inspected the rear of the property, where he found evidence of a target range next to the lot line and adjacent to a vacant field. A boulder approximately one foot high by one foot wide stuck out of the ground with broken glass from bottles lying in the grass around it. Cowles also noticed a piece of wood tacked to a nearby tree. A hole in the wood was the size of a .22-caliber cartridge case.

  Cowles examined the sycamore tree at the rear of the house. The crotch of the tree where the rifleman had allegedly rested the barrel of the gun during the fatal shot was four and a half feet off the ground. To Cowles’s way of thinking, a man Hargrove’s size—six feet tall—would have had difficulty firing from the angle if he were standing. “From such a stooped position, I don’t think he could have hit much of anything.” If he were kneeling, the trajectory of the bullet would have been much higher and struck above the window, he said.

  Supported by Cowles’s investigation and testimony, Defense Attorney Turi argued that it was entirely possible that the fatal shot was a tragic accident that happened while someone was doing target practice. Asked by a News Herald reporter how someone could target practice in the dark, Turi said the shooter may have used the lighted kitchen window as a frame for the tree.

  Near the close of the trial, Floyd Hargrove took the stand. The court was standing-room only, 70 percent of the spectators being women. Not a whisper could be heard. Clad in a gray suit, the attractive Hargrove was calm but adamant that he had been bullied and coerced into a confession. “I was tired of hearing them scream at me, so I confessed.” He said he had not murdered Chuck Clark, but he confessed to get the sheriff and chief “off my back.” He also confessed because Evans told him to confess or else Lois and her children would be finished in Lake County.

  Simmons asked him what police intended to bring out about Lois. Hargrove became obviously distressed and took a moment to gather himself before answering. In a low voice, he said, “They were referring to a mutual exchange between two people who loved each other sincerely.” They had made it seem “cheap and dirty,” he said.

  Police had questioned him from 10:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve until he finally made a confession on the afternoon of December 26. During that period, he had only fifteen minutes of sleep. He said the threats and the lack of rest finally broke him down.

  Hargrove told the jury he first met Lois Clark at a company dance in 1956. Three years later, he met her again at the shopping mall, and she invited him to her and her husband’s home. A few weeks after that, he saw her at a restaurant, and she extended the invitation again. The affair began when he visited their home on St. Patrick’s Day and Chuck was not at home. They saw each other frequently after that.

  In November, she told him she was pregnant. He thought it was probably his child, so they went together to a doctor, who gave Lois a prescription. A week later, she had a miscarriage. At that time, the two lovers decided it was better for everyone to end their affair.

  Hargrove gave the jury the same detailed account he gave the police of his whereabouts on the night of the murder.

  He said Ozinga’s claim that he (Hargrove) wanted to kill Clark was based on a dream Ozinga had. He stressed he had never mentioned a gun to Ozinga.

  As far as the bullet in the utility pole was concerned, Hargrove had often driven past it and seen children using it for target practice. He pointed the pole out to police because he knew they would find a bullet in the marker.

  Turi told the newspapers that the police never investigated the possibility of a freak accident from someone target shooting. Instead, investigators “concluded Floyd Hargrove was a likely suspect and have thrown the full force of their efforts toward his conviction.”

  During his closing argument, Ostrander went back over the state’s evidence, painting a picture of Hargrove as “a heartless killer, who, on Christmas Eve, murdered Clark before the eyes of his wife and children.”

  Clair told the jury Hargrove had no scruples. He reminded the jury that Hargrove was an adulterer, a wife beater and a reader of girlie magazines. He told the jury that Hargrove had admitted to assisting in an abortion, and he failed to pay alimony to his ex-wife. Clair ended by saying there was just one man who could have committed the murder: Floyd “Gene” Hargrove. “The state of Ohio is not seeking revenge but justice.”

  In Turi’s closing statement, he said the defendant was not on trial for adultery or wife beating. He recalled for the jury the other men Lois Clark had had affairs with and said they would have the same motive for murder.

  He called the police inept. “They were obsessed with the sex angle, and they grabbed him and assumed he committed the murder.”

  “Strip the sex away from the case and what have you got?” Simmons asked.

  There was no compelling evidence that Clark was even murdered, the defense said to the jury. Most likely, the victim was killed by a stray bullet from a careless shooter during target practice.

  In less than five hours, the jury returned with a “not guilty” verdict. When the verdict was read, the jammed courtroom erupted in cheers.

  The foreman said that in the end, the state did not prove its case. Although they thought it was possible Hargrove could have killed Clark, none of them was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he did. In particular, they put more weight on Cowles’s ballistics testimony than on the state experts.

  Lois Clark was at home when the verdict came in. “The newspapers and everyone else had him convicted long ago,” she said. “It was not in him to have done such a thing.”

  At first, Hargrove hoped for a future with Lois, but they never met to discuss it.

  Lois collected $105,298 in life insurance, pac
ked her four children into a new station wagon and drove to California.

  In December 1960, she married a Fresno attorney, David E. Smith. In December 1960, Floyd Hargrove filed a $950,000 lawsuit against Sheriff Evans, Chief Hathy and Coroner McBurney, charging false arrest. The suit was dismissed because the defendants were improperly served. The court ruled that only a disinterested party could serve summonses. McBurney and Evans served each other.

  Hargrove remarried and lived with his wife, Betty, in Cincinnati, where he worked as a salesman. He died of a heart attack in April 1978.

  Sheriff Evans said as far as he was concerned, the case was closed. “We had the man who did it.”

  Prosecutor Ostrander was shocked at the verdict and said the Clark murder file would be closed, marked unsolved.

  10

  WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ANITA?

  Pretty Anita Kay Drake turned fifteen years old on Monday, October 14, 1963. After school the next day, she left her home on Victory Avenue in Louisville, near Canton, to go to the Campion Dairy. She was never seen again.

  A freshman at Louisville High School, she enjoyed school and got good grades, said her older sister Linda Boyd. She was the seventh child in a family of twelve. She had three sisters and eight brothers. Her father, Kermit Sr., supported his wife, Virginia, and their children as a factory worker at Union Metal.

  Twelve children must have made a lot of work for Virginia, but Roger Drake, a brother who was twelve at the time of Anita’s disappearance, said, “Everyone pitched in.” They were a large but happy family. “We would do things together. Dad would take us fishing, or we’d go berry picking.” They had a large garden and canned some of their harvest. Growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, the kids listened to the radio and played records for entertainment, Roger added.

  At the time of Anita’s disappearance, there were six children, counting Anita, still living in the ranch-style, three-bedroom, one-bath house. A now deceased older brother, Gary, and his wife lived in a small house on the back of the property. It was a nice neighborhood to raise children with plenty of outdoor space to play.