Though Murder Has No Tongue

by James Jessen Badal

  Fred P. Soukup, the attorney obtained by the family to represent Frank Dolezal recalled:

  He told me practically the same story that you have already heard . . . and he said they commenced to punch him as they were taking him down to the County Jail in the car from his residence . . . and then he said that there were crews of men, seven or eight deputies kept shouting at him in turn day after day and night after night that he did it, he committed this crime, it was no use, that he should confess. . . . [H]e complained to me that people in the jail were taunting him, calling him vile names. . . . He had an obsession that someone was going to do something to him all the time.

  The glaring contradictions among the accounts as to Frank Dolezal’s state of mind during the period leading up to the early afternoon of August 24 were equally wild and jarring. Sheriff’s detective Harry S. Brown, Deputy Sheriff Hugh Crawford, and elevator operator Clarence Smart maintained that he never complained to them about anything; and O’Donnell actually claimed he was so “satisfied” and “happy” that he played cards with the deputies. Brown insisted Dolezal was not depressed and was, in fact, “very, very, very, very friendly.” Some of this testimony borders on absurdity. Did anyone present at the inquest really think for one moment that Dolezal would have complained openly about beatings or pain to the very people he alleged were mistreating him? In fact, he had grown so wary of everyone he saw in the jail that he initially refused to confide in either Fred Soukup or George Palda. “He was so confused,” snorted Frank Vorell, “he didn’t know a doctor from a deputy sheriff.”

  Interestingly, Gerber ran into some rather stubborn resistance when he tried to illicit some comment about Dolezal’s state of mind from L. J. Sternicki, the physician brought in by David Hertz to examine the prisoner in the evening of July 11 and again on July 20.

  Gerber: What was his mental condition?

  Sternicki: Well, I don’t know whether I should—I wasn’t called in there to testify as to his mental condition. I would just as soon not say anything about the mental condition.

  Gerber: Well, as a physician in the practice of medicine for a considerable length of time, you have a definite idea as to a man’s mental attitude, so you have every reason in the world to tell me and the general public what type or what attitude your patient had at that time.

  Sternicki: I was called in, though, to examine him physically, and I would prefer not to discuss his mental condition, or psychiatric—

  Gerber: I am not asking you to discuss his mental condition, from a psychopathic standpoint. Just as an ordinary observation, was Frank Dolezal dazed, or was he depressed or something like that? I would like to know your observations on that point.

  In spite of Gerber’s hammering, Sternicki refused to budge beyond recounting that during the examination Dolezal had said he was not in any pain. (It’s hardly surprising that Dolezal would say this, considering Sheriff O’Donnell was in the same room.) The coroner returned to the issue of Dolezal’s mental state later in Sternicki’s testimony, but the doctor still flatly refused to comment. Obviously, any trained medical professional with a sense of propriety would be reluctant to comment officially on anything beyond his areas of expertise, but Sternicki’s adamant refusal to respond to Gerber’s request for a simple “ordinary observation” remains both interesting and troubling.

  When it came to the broad, general outline of the events that had led to the alleged suicide and what had transpired in the immediate aftermath, Sheriff O’Donnell, his deputies, and other jail personnel were mostly on the same page; and what emerged from their collective testimony was essentially a more detailed version of the account that had appeared in the press. Dolezal had been given his lunch in block B, cell 4 around 12:00. At 1:48 P.M., Deputy Sheriff Hugh Crawford found him hanging from the clothes hook in cell 11. (Crawford—who had been assigned to make his rounds of the fourth floor every ten minutes—testified that he had last seen the prisoner about three minutes before, at 1:45, and he seemed fine.) Immediately, he called out to stockroom worker Catherine Krial. “‘Kate,’ I says, ‘call the jailor [Assistant Chief Jailor Archie Burns]. Dolezal is hanging.’” He tried to hold Dolezal up with one arm while, at the same time, attempting to loosen the knot of the noose around his neck. Hearing someone in the corridor, he yelled, “Number 11 cell.” Burns and elevator operator Clarence Smart arrived on the scene; and while Burns ordered Krial to call the rescue squad, Smart tried to help Crawford hold Dolezal up and untie the noose’s obviously very stubborn knot. Burns then encountered Sheriff O’Donnell at the elevator. “Just as I stepped in the elevator, Mr. Burns was in there, and he said, ‘Come on right away to the fourth floor.’ I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘Mr. Dolezal has tried to hang himself.’” Finding the knot impossible to loosen, someone called out, “Got a knife?” O’Donnell then passed his knife to Burns, who cut Dolezal down. According to Burns, they placed Dolezal on his bunk and “worked on him” until Del Young (the day nurse on call at the jail) arrived on the scene and gave him a hypodermic, apparently of adrenaline. The rescue squad showed up about 1:58—at which point Dolezal was removed from the cell and placed in the outside corridor on the floor. Fried, the jail physician, arrived around 2:15 and, after examining the prisoner, declared Frank Dolezal dead. The entire episode took less than a half an hour. (Curiously, neither Del Young nor Captain Floyd O’Neil of the rescue squad were called to testify at the inquest. And, though the police did obtain a deposition from O’Neil—which was accepted into evidence, Young was apparently not asked to give one.)

  A close-up of the alleged noose clearly showing the length of twine and what looks like thin black cord wound in with the cloth. The twine and the cord appear in only one other photograph. It was this photograph that first alerted my research team and me that something might be amiss with Dr. Gerber’s suicide verdict. The metal object at the left of the noose is the cup handle found in Frank Dolezal’s pocket. Courtesy of the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office.

  Some of the issues that had seemed so critical at the time of Dolezal’s death took considerably less time to hash out during the inquest. The explanation of how Dolezal had gotten the rags with which he was alleged to have hanged himself was essentially identical to the newspaper accounts; the prisoner wanted something to do, so the deputies gave him the cloths to clean his cell. The medicine he had been given turned out to be aspirin. For the record, Gerber mentioned that Dolezal was entirely alone during his period of captivity. The fourth floor of the jail housed two cell blocks, A and B; though kept in cell 4, Dolezal had all of block B to himself. When Gerber questioned O’Donnell about this enforced isolation, the sheriff responded that he thought it advisable to separate him from other prisoners because of “the nature of the crime” and certain details about “the history of his past life”—a veiled reference to Dolezal’s alleged homosexuality. Having established that Dolezal was kept by himself, Gerber moved on to other issues; but the unspoken implication of the brief exchange with the sheriff was clear: no one was around to see the manner in which the prisoner was being treated.

  There was an interesting subplot playing out on the jail’s fourth floor while this major drama was unfolding, and the contradictory accounts of it are decidedly perplexing. Oscar Delany; his wife, Agnes; and Earl Burtt arrived at the jail between 1:45 and 1:50 to visit Burtt’s son Willard in block A, also on the fourth floor. In his deposition, taken in the afternoon of August 24, Deputy Crawford blandly and matter-of-factly describes the incident. “I went to notify some visitors [around 2:05] who were on the floor visiting other inmates that their time was up, and I accompanied them to the elevator and while walking by Cell Block B. I saw Frank Dolezal in his cell, he was walking up and down in the prisoners corridor.”

  Oscar Delany’s account, given during the inquest, was considerably more dramatic: “Then the next thing I knew, why the Deputy came and said, ‘You will have to go,’ and he just naturally chased us out, and I was a little bit slow a
bout moving and he grabbed me by the sleeve, he says, ‘Come on Bud, come on,’ and I could see there was something wrong with him because he was as white as a sheet, and he was awfully nervous and excited. Excited as the dickens, and I could see there was something wrong.” The major contradiction in the two accounts is obvious. Crawford says Dolezal was alive when he escorted the Delanys and Earl Burtt to the elevator; Oscar Delany would seem to suggest that he was already dead.

  There were other curious moments during the testimony of the sheriff and his men that set off alarm bells of varying decibels. When Gerber asked Hugh Crawford exactly what time he found Dolezal hanging, the deputy responded: “Well, I would say about three—1:48 P.M.” Just what did Crawford start to say before he caught himself? While describing the way he and Smart cut Dolezal down, Crawford seemed to go out of his way to say the body was warm. “His body was still warm and he had a good color. Even when I had hold of his two arms, his wrists, raised him up and down, I could feel the warmth of his body and his arms.” Why this emphasis on the warmth of Dolezal’s body? Was this a deliberate attempt to counter Fried’s insistence that the body was cold when he saw it less than a half an hour after it had been supposedly cut down? When the coroner asked Harry Brown to describe “as briefly and as concisely as possible and, at the same time, thoroughly” the chronology of events between July 5, when Frank Dolezal was arrested, and August 24, Brown began his response with, “Yes, sir, I would be glad to.” Not only is this a rather curious opening, much of what Brown has to say unfolds with the smooth logic of a prepared dramatic monologue. Brown rarely stumbles; and his testimony is remarkably free from the hemming and hawing, the incomplete sentences, and the abrupt shifts of direction in midsentence that appear so frequently in the testimony of others. Had he been coached? Had his testimony been scripted?

  The procedural rules governing a formal inquest may have been less strict in the 1930s than they are in the early twenty-first century. How else to explain Sheriff O’Donnell’s presence throughout? Today, witnesses in an inquest are not permitted to hear the sworn testimony of other witnesses; and as the eighth person called to give evidence, O’Donnell should have not been in the room to hear what other witnesses had to say. Yet newspaper photographs of the sessions and his own occasional outbursts clearly establish his presence. Perhaps, as one of the most powerful political figures in the county, he simply inserted himself, no matter what the official guidelines may have been. Quarrelsome and edgy, even during his own testimony, O’Donnell obviously had an agenda and occasionally tried to exert some sort of control over the proceedings even though Gerber was officially in charge. No doubt it galled him in the extreme to hear sworn testimony that directly contradicted the accounts he and his deputies provided, but proper decorum demanded that he sit there in stony silence. He erupted, however, during Vorell’s testimony when he suspected Gerber was asking questions passed to him by someone else in the room. “I would like to know whether or not you are asking questions that have been passed up from the outside,” he fumed. “I want to know our rights, here.” When Assistant County Prosecutor Saul S. Danaceau—apparently in attendance to advise Gerber on any legal issues that arose—assured him that Gerber had the right to accept questions from anyone he chose, O’Donnell raged, “I don’t think he has, according to law, he is to conduct his examination. I want to register an objection. I know my rights, I know the rights in this inquest, too.” Though the exact circumstances remain difficult to discern, because of a very curious and unexplained gap in the transcript, a similar incident occurred after the testimony of Charles Dolezal. But whatever the precipitating incident was, it involved the sheriff and almost led to a physical altercation.

  Edwards: Now, if the Coroner please, I merely stated that the witness [Charles Dolezal] cannot speak the English language very well. Now if this is going to be turned into a personality scrap, in here, I will get up and take my coat off and go to bat.

  Gerber: No you won’t Mr. Edwards. This is going to be carried on in a normal way.

  Edwards: Please, Mr. Coroner, I am sitting here, and this man [Sheriff O’Donnell] getting up and telling me I can’t ask a question. I didn’t ask a question. I told you that the witness could not speak the English language.

  O’Donnell: I object to this.

  Gerber: We won’t go into any controversy. Let’s not have any controversy.

  O’Donnell’s be-on-your-guard stance continued during his own testimony. When the issue concerning the amount of time Dolezal had been left alone arose—in other words, how long did he hang, how long would it take for him to asphyxiate—he turned especially combative: “I guess you [Gerber] came and you saw what took place, and in the course of the conversation different things were said, and one of them I remember you said, Coroner, ‘A man that would commit suicide that way, it would be possible for him to be dead in two minutes,’ and there were other things that were said, and if I remember right, you said, ‘It is a clear case of suicide,’ and that is as far as I can remember outside of what you saw and everybody else saw.”

  One can almost see O’Donnell wagging his finger at Gerber like an overbearing schoolteacher lecturing an errant student who had forgotten his lesson. Perhaps the most telling moment, however, occurred during a brief exchange over cutting Dolezal’s body down.

  Gerber: And they [Crawford and Smart] were attempting to get him [Dolezal] down?

  O’Donnell: That is right.

  Gerber: And you gave them your knife?

  O’Donnell: My knife.

  Gerber: To cut him down, to cut the rope [my italics].

  O’Donnell: Cut the line.

  The official version of Frank Dolezal’s death, of course, was that he had hanged himself with a homemade noose fashioned from material alternately described as cloths, toweling, or sheeting. The pressing issue at the inquest was how he had gotten hold of this material in the first place. Though two of the photographs taken on the scene clearly showed a length of rope, this is the first and only time the word “rope” was used during the inquest. Was Gerber’s “slip” inadvertent or deliberate? Either way, the term and the sheriff’s refutation of it were now part of the official record. The most startling revelations in the inquest, however, were yet to come.

  Formal proceedings reconvened on Tuesday, August 29, at 10:30, and that brief morning session ended with an interesting and, given the circumstances, somewhat mystifying statement by Danaceau: “I want to say this: The Coroner has asked my advice with respect to certain testimony presented in an alleged interview between Mr. Edwards, William E. Edwards and Lillian Jones at the Central Police Station, 9:00 P. M. Monday, August 28, 1939 [the previous evening]. I have examined this document and it is my opinion, and I have so advised the Coroner, that it has no bearing at all on this inquest and will not be received as testimony therein.” After reading Section 2856 of the General Code, essentially spelling out the circumstances under which an inquest should be convened and what kind of testimony can be regarded as legally permissible, Danaceau concluded: “There is nothing in this interview which has any bearing on that [the death of Frank Dolezal], and it will not be received.” He then turned to Gerber. “Is that a fact, Mr. Coroner?” “That is right,” Gerber replied. After tidying up a few minor details, the coroner made a final announcement before calling for adjournment. “As soon as we have all of the reports from the laboratory and we get all the statements from the reporter, I will then give—draw up a conclusion, either at the end of this week or the first part of next week, and up until that time the inquest is closed.” The nature of the interview to which Danaceau referred was not clarified; and, theoretically, in light of Gerber’s formal adjournment at 11:00, that should have been the end of the matter. Yet, forty-five minutes later the inquest was suddenly reconvened solely to hear the testimony that Danaceau had earlier deemed to have “no bearing at all on this inquest” and get it on the official record. (At first blush, there is some confusion about the time elemen
t in the inquest transcript. Page 201 of the record concludes with the statement, “Thereupon at 11:00 P. M. [on August 29] the hearing was concluded.” Page 202 begins with “PROCEEDINGS 11:45 A. M. TUESDAY, AUGUST 29, 1939.” The official reporters clearly made a mistake when they recorded that the initial morning session ended at “11:00 P.M.” instead of “11:00 A. M.”)

  Why would Gerber adjourn the inquest at 11:00 only to reconvene it forty-five minutes later? Forty-five minutes is hardly enough time for those in charge—Gerber and Danaceau—to change their collective minds about the admissibility of this mysterious testimony, round up the two court reporters who had just been dismissed, and chase down the witnesses involved. The only logical explanation is that Danaceau and Gerber had planned this maneuver beforehand. The 11:00 adjournment was apparently just a clever ploy to clear the room of the sheriff, his deputies, and the gentlemen of the press corps so the testimony in question could be added to the official record in relative secrecy. O’Donnell was clearly present at the close of the initial morning session; before calling for adjournment at 11:00, Gerber addresses him. “Now if there is nothing else—Sheriff, do you have anything?” Danaceau was correct. The evidence provided by Lillian Jones and her sister Ruby Lee, two black women, had absolutely nothing to do with Frank Dolezal’s death on August 24; and in a strictly legal sense, it probably would have never been admissible in court, since most of it was hearsay. But their testimony was explosive and damning, and the sheriff would have objected vehemently to both its veracity and its inclusion in the official transcript.