Unsolved Murders & Disappearances in Northeast Ohio

by Jane Ann Turzillo

  Before long, the Cuyahoga County Sheriff ’s Department, under Charles B. Stannard, joined the investigation, and Cleveland detectives also became involved.

  Stanton asked three county detectives to investigate the murder. Detectives James Doran, George Keller and Albert Saukoup got their first look at the scene four days after the murder. They walked the woods on both sides of the road, but by then, the killer’s tracks—and probably any evidence—had been trampled by all the searchers.

  Doran and the other two detectives agreed with local police that there was only one murderer and that he knew the area and habits of Mabel and Louise well. Doran called the killer a moron. “His crimes almost without exception are carefully premeditated.” It is interesting that he equated a “moron” with the capability of premeditation, never mind that if the killing was planned, the murderer would have brought a weapon with him instead of using fence posts. “What makes it more difficult is that this particular type of pervert is noted for extreme cunning which seems to accompany his insanity.”

  All of the the investigators and the prosecutor agreed that this type of murderer traveled alone. They figured that he either lived in the area or had lived in the area at some point and was thoroughly familiar with Mabel and Louise’s route to the streetcar.

  Searchers continued to comb the woods looking for any kind of lead—a button ripped from the killer’s coat, a bloody handkerchief, a torn piece of cloth caught on the barbed-wire fence—but the attacker left nothing behind.

  Cuyahoga County sheriff ’s deputies and city policemen latched on to the theory that the killer was mentally deficient. They visited every farmhouse within a two-mile radius of the murder scene, asking if there were any “half wits” in the neighborhood. They questioned every workman in the area.

  Two men who lived in the neighborhood came under police suspicion early on because they could not give a satisfactory account of their time on the evening the teachers were murdered. They had no marks on their faces or hands indicating they had been in a fight. After an interrogation, they were finally released.

  Cleveland police detained two other men who admitted to visiting a third man who lived near Bean and Ridge Roads, but there was nothing to connect them to the murder of the two women. Local police talked to anyone they deemed suspicious—farmhands, men at a workers’ camp and even area residents—dropping their questioning only when convinced their target had nothing to do with the crime. Every stranger who entered the township was subjected to police questioning. Any man with so much as a scratch on his face or hand was picked up and rigorously interrogated, necessitating he prove his innocence.

  Parma township trustee J.D. Loder told police he had seen two strange men pass his house around dinnertime on the night of the murder. He remembered it because their clothing was mud spattered and they were bareheaded.

  A woman who lived about two miles from Bean Road told Sheriff Charles Stannard that a strange man had been peeking in her windows the day before the killings. She said he had a club with him. She asked him what he was doing, and he grunted his reply.

  Investigators followed every tip they felt had merit. Consequently, they went on countless wild goose chases. “We will probably go on many more,” Sheriff Stannard said. “There is nothing too foolish to follow up. Any clew [sic], no matter how meager, we will welcome and follow to the end,” he told a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter.

  Meanwhile, the Southwestern Civic Association, the Civic Business Men’s Association, the Parma School Board, the Independence rural district school board and the Brooklyn Heights School Board met with county commissioners and urged them to post a $5,000 reward for information that would lead to the capture and conviction of the killer. The reward was eventually upped to $10,000.

  Students from the Parma school under a reward banner. Courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library.

  Stanton told the papers, “The man who committed this crime is still at large and the community will not rest until he is apprehended.”

  At one point in March, Sheriff Stannard sent three of his deputies house to house to fingerprint Parma men, which showed just how desperate police were. However, many citizens went along with it.

  In April, police received a letter from someone who claimed to have witnessed the murders. The letter gave the name of the perpetrator and was signed “A Lorain Avenue Citizen.” Investigators hunted the writer down. During questioning, he admitted to Stannard and Detective John Shipley that he sent the letter and gave his own name as the murderer.

  A Bertillion expert said fingerprints found on one of the teachers’ books were similar to those of the letter writer. He was recognized as a peeping tom, and three boys from the Bean Road neighborhood said they had seen him in the vicinity both before and after the murder. Another citizen came forward and identified him as the man who had stood and watched the construction of a drain pipe in the vicinity of the murder on the afternoon before the crime.

  Shipley and two other detectives took him to the scene, where he was able to reconstruct the murder in a detailed statement. They gave credence to his confession, even though he was obviously not mentally stable. Police claimed his family had burned his bloodstained shoes and used strong stain removers to get blood out of his clothing. His family denied any of this. They said that his confession was a result of his mental state. His name was not made public.

  Parma police chief Frank W. Smith. Courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library.

  Stannard did not think he was the killer. “I believe he reconstructed the murder from what he read in the papers and from his own imagination,” the sheriff told the newspaper.

  Alienists (psychiatrists) agreed with Stannard. They assessed the man and told police his mental capabilities were that of a child, and they were convinced he had nothing to do with the crime.

  Special attention was given to a conversation between Mabel and Louise that was overheard by a couple of their students. Apparently, Mabel had met a stranger along Bean Road the day before the murder. It sounded innocent enough. He had just asked her where he could catch the streetcar, but there was no description of the man and nothing to identify him. It was another empty lead.

  As time went on, more and more men were subjected to police interrogation. Detectives investigated whether two men lodged in the Ohio State Penitentiary had anything to do with the murders. They found it was another waste of time.

  The murder was so widely publicized that it brought a number of bizarre characters out of the woodwork. Akronite Mae Patterson, who called herself a private detective, claimed to have divine guidance. She told the Cleveland Plain Dealer she had a vision: “Miss Foote’s spirit came to me. She held out her arms to me in a pleading manner and said, ‘Get that man.’” The vision left her before a name was revealed.

  Investigators were hopeful when Fred Goetling claimed responsibility for Mabel’s and Louise’s murders. He had a criminal record dating back to 1905 and was arrested in 1923 for the axe murder of Harry Keim in Cleveland. He was found to be insane and taken to the Lima State Hospital. Although Goetling looked promising for the teachers’ murders, his statement turned out to be another false confession.

  Ten years later, police were still collecting evidence, but none of it was revealed to the public. Circumstantial evidence came to light through a private citizen who wanted to know if the reward offer was still good. The evidence was not made public, but whatever it was, it was not enough to find the killer.

  In 1932, to memorialize Louise and Mabel, the Women’s Civic League of Brooklyn planted shrubs and a shade tree in the corner of Brookside Park on West Twenty-fifth Street not far from the Cleveland Zoo. Cuyahoga County teachers had a fountain placed at the site, and Cleveland teachers provided a bench. The Alpha Kappa Sigma chapter of Baldwin Wallace College donated another bench in memory of Mabel. The Gleaners Class of Brooklyn Memorial Methodist Church placed a bench at the site in memory of Louise.

  The memorial reads:

/>   In memory of

  Mabel Foote

  And

  Louise Wolf

  Erected by

  Women’s Civic League

  Of Brooklyn

  Dec. 1, 1932

  3

  WAS IT MURDER OR SUICIDE?

  Stow dairy farmer Charles Chandler did not sleep well on Wednesday night, May 29, 1929. Maybe it was because of the oppressive heat. Maybe it was because he was upset with his wife, Jane, for having an affair with their former boarder. Or maybe it was because he feared for his life.

  He spent that sleepless night in his son Clyde’s room. The ten-year-old boy said his father arose on Thursday morning, Decoration Day, before sunrise and went out of the house. He came back five minutes later and sat on the edge of the bed for a time. Clyde said his father, clad in no more than his underwear and corduroy pants, walked into another room and spoke with another family member, then left the house again. He was not even wearing shoes. Clyde assumed his father was going out to milk the cows and tend to the regular morning farm chores. Little did he know that he would never see his father alive again.

  Married since 1911, Charles and Jane lived with their five children in a small, white farmhouse on Darrow Road. It was the house where she was raised, and the land belonged to her father, Alfred Moon. Her great-grandmother was Fanny Bird Cochran, the sister of James Bird, who was killed after the Battle of Lake Erie. Jane was thirty-eight years old and seven months pregnant with their sixth child. Besides Clyde, their other children were sixteen-year-old Helen, twelve-year-old George, nine-year-old Walter and four-year-old Edward.

  Jane awoke that morning when her husband’s alarm clock sounded. She went to turn it off and found he was gone, but his work clothes were lying on the floor beside the bed. She and the children called out for him but got no answer. They searched the barn and sheds, but he was nowhere to be found. The farm truck was still in one of the outbuildings, so he had not driven away. It was peculiar that none of the early morning chores had been done. He always milked the cows first thing, but they were still fresh.

  Charles W. Chandler with children (left to right) George, Clyde and Helen. Courtesy of James Chandler.

  Thinking perhaps their father had sought relief from the sweltering heat in the cool waters of nearby Meadowbrook, the boys followed the stream for several miles and found no sign of him. The family also contacted Charles’s mother in Dexter City, but she had not heard from her son.

  Jane waited a full day before notifying authorities. She later would claim she waited because she thought he would return.

  Twenty-five sheriff ’s deputies, headed up by Deputy Bert Karg, descended on the property and combed the surrounding woods and fields. They found no trace of the man. Karg was baffled by the disappearance and became particularly suspicious when he found bloodstains on the porch and kitchen floors of the house. “Both the porch and kitchen had been scrubbed,” he told a reporter for the Akron Press. “Mrs. Chandler explained the stains away by saying one of the boys had had a nosebleed.”

  The family’s theory that Charles left home voluntarily did not add up for Karg. For one thing, the family said Charles had forty dollars when he disappeared, and Karg found forty-two dollars in the pocket of pants hanging in the bedroom. The family also said Charles had but two pairs of shoes. One pair was found in the house; the other was found in the woodshed. The deputy wondered why the man would leave home with no money in his pocket and no shoes on his feet.

  Karg was becoming more and more certain that Charles had met with foul play, and perhaps his body was buried somewhere in the woods or hidden in the underbrush. Five days after the hunt turned up nothing, Karg decided he needed more searchers and enlisted the Boy Scouts from Tallmadge and Stow to help beat the bushes in a three- to five-mile radius. A swamp near Call’s Pond close to the farm was searched at that point, and Karg was thinking of dragging the pond itself.

  When Karg pressed Jane further, she said he may have suffered a memory lapse due to the heat. “He never appeared to suffer from the heat before, but he complained about it a great deal Wednesday,” she said. In fact, he retired Wednesday night after complaining of the weather. Other than that, the evening was uneventful, and no one heard any kind of disturbance during the night or in the morning.

  Jane told the deputy that there had been no quarrels. “He never said a word about leaving. He had no enemies as far as we know and we have lived here on this farm for fifteen years.”

  There did not seem to be much in Charles’s background to provide clues. He was born in West Virginia, the third of six children. His father, Samuel J., died when Charles was only eleven, and his mother, Mary Mariah, moved Charles and his siblings to Noble County, Ohio. Charles and Jane married when she was nineteen and he was twenty-six.

  Jane and Charles Chandler. Courtesy of James Chandler and Debi Heppe.

  The night before Charles disappeared, he had gone about his regular routine. His family told investigators that he did his evening chores and rubbed down an ailing horse, then went to bed around 9:00 p.m.

  At first, the very pregnant Jane appeared to not handle her husband’s disappearance well. She expressed the fear that Charles may have met with an accident and been seriously injured or killed. After a few days, she put on a flimsy, pink nightgown, took to her bed, let all the housework go and talked to no one.

  Karg found out from neighbors that despite Jane’s assertion that there had been no quarrels, there were frequent domestic disturbances. One woman was overheard saying if she told what she knew about Chandler’s death, someone would go to the penitentiary.

  Deputies talked with neighbors who told a story different than Jane’s. They said Charles had left home twice before, and he was gone one of those times for three months. One close neighbor said he saw Charles board a milk truck that came by his home that morning. The milk company’s officials spoke with the truck driver and got a denial of the story.

  Some of the neighbors seemed to think Charles was worried, even frightened. One of his friends told authorities that Charles had once said to him, “I’m afraid they’ll get me. They may bump me off.” To his closest friend, he said he “could not see it through.” The friend took that remark as reference to the trouble with his wife and the boarder.

  Most of the disturbances centered on C.D. Hougland, a thirty-year-old Copley man who had been a boarder at the Chandler house. When questioned, Hougland admitted to having an affair with Jane Chandler during the seven months he lived in the Chandler home. The affair ended when Charles ordered him to move out of the house. Hougland told authorities Jane had sent him three letters after he moved out, but he returned them unopened.

  This information, along with the bloodstains, was enough for Karg to hold Hougland at the county jail. Judge Gordon Davis set his bond at $2,000.

  While assistant prosecutors Michael Fannelly and George R. Hargreaves leaned toward Charles either leaving home voluntarily or committing suicide, they wanted the investigation to go forward.

  Neighbors and friends who knew Charles said he was not the type to do away with himself. Deputy Karg agreed. He concentrated his efforts on Hougland and tried to get a straight story out of him. “He told me he went coon hunting the night Chandler disappeared,” Karg told Akron Press reporters. Hougland said he had been out most of the night in his small coupe. “He has been unable to produce anyone to verify his story,” Karg said and pointed out that Hougland had lived in the Chandler house for several months, so it was obvious he was familiar with Charles’s habit of going out to the yard at the same time every morning.

  Helen, the oldest child, added a bit of information. She said many mornings the dogs would start barking around 3:00 a.m. One time, she looked out her bedroom window and saw two men running from the barn toward the road.

  In Hougland’s haste to move out on January 5, he left a suit of his clothing behind. Family members said the clothing disappeared two weeks before their father came up missing. T
his lent credence to the theory that Charles planned to drop out of sight and that he may have changed into the other man’s clothing. If this were true, it seems as though the corduroy trousers would have shown up somewhere during the search, and he would have taken his money and worn shoes.

  Finally, late in the afternoon on Friday, June 7, nine days after Charles had gone missing, the authorities were summoned to Howard M. Call’s farm on Fishcreek Road. Twelve-year-old Chester Graves and eight-year-old Richard Call had been swimming in the small artificial lake on Call’s property and had seen Charles’s body floating in the water.

  The body was two hundred feet out from the shore. Karg had no boat, so he had to swim out to get it. Dragging it back to shore was arduous because it was weighted down with three large paving bricks, each weighing at least ten pounds. They had been placed inside a burlap feed sack, then cinched to Charles’s body with two knots in a cotton rope. Karg examined the position of the rope and decided there was no way Charles could have tied the two knots himself.

  One newspaper account said that Helen Chandler was there to see her father pulled out from the water and that she and Howard Call identified him. Later in life, when family members asked her about Charles’s death, she said she could not remember much. They thought she just did not want to talk about it.

  Charles’s body bore no immediate signs of violence, and his hands and feet were free, leading both Karg and Prosecutor Hargreaves to believe he was either dead or unconscious when he was put in the water.

  How the body got out into the middle of the lake in twelve-foot-deep water was a mystery. Call’s lake had been man-made by damming up a stream. There was no current in the water, so Karg did not think the body could have drifted out to the center. Because there were no boats anywhere on the lake, the deputy knew no one could have rowed out to the middle of the water to dump the body. It would have been nearly impossible to carry a weighted body—or the three ten-pound bricks alone—three-quarters of a mile over the fields from Chandler’s farm, then slog through a swampy area at one end of the lake. The distance was three miles by roadway down a lane that ran off Fishcreek Road, so authorities figured an automobile had been used to transport Charles’s five-foot, eight-inch, 170-pound body.