45 murderers, p.15
45 Murderers, page 15
Several days later, the autopsy proved the expert’s theory correct. (Arson experts really know their stuff, take it from me!) The two murdered women had suffered no injuries before their deaths. There seemed no doubt that they had died in their sleep. Only Catharine had been struck down with the flashlight found on the scene.
But what was the motive for so brutal a crime?
The town was shocked. Everyone liked the Gelwix family. It was suggested that the crime might have been the deed of a prowler, a maniac. Yes, it must have been. No one in the little town would have committed so frightful, so vicious a murder. It simply couldn’t have happened. People who had known Mrs. Gelwix and her two daughters felt that it must have been a nightmare, that in the morning they would wake up and see the Gelwix house there as it had been before.
Corporal Snyder didn’t believe in nightmares. He believed in evidence, and he was looking for a murderer.
The morning after the fire he’d interviewed Ralph Hawk. He’d asked a few questions about him first and learned that he was good looking, and very popular. In fact, he’d even won a contest as the handsomest boy in town.
Ralph Hawk was working for a farmer a few miles out of town, and when Snyder arrived at the farm he was told that the young man was upstairs getting dressed.
“He just heard the news a few minutes ago,” the farmer said. “He’s getting dressed in a hurry, to go to the hospital. He’s terribly broken up about it.”
A moment later Ralph Hawk came downstairs. He was a handsome, slender youth with curly dark hair.
Corporal Snyder broke the news that it was murder, not accident.
The boy turned pale. It was a minute or two before he could speak. Then he said, “What can I do to help?”
“Plenty.” The police officer added, “First, where were you last night?”
Ralph’s story matched Catharine’s. He’d spent the evening with her, discussing their wedding plans. At about ten o’clock he’d left her to visit his father. From there he’d returned to the farm and gone straight to bed.
Why hadn’t he gone back to Catharine’s home—since she was waiting for him?
The explanation was a simple one. The license plates on Ralph’s car had expired at midnight, and his new ones hadn’t arrived. He knew that the police were always looking for cars with old licenses right after the first of the year, and he didn’t want to risk any trouble right now, on the eve of his marriage.
What time had he returned to the farm?
He wasn’t quite sure. He hadn’t looked at his watch.
The farmer’s wife volunteered the information that it had been shortly after midnight. She’d been awakened when the New Year whistles blew. Then she had heard Ralph Hawk returning to the house.
The police officer didn’t enjoy his job. After all, this was to have been Ralph Hawk’s wedding day, and now his wife-to-be was in the hospital, her mother and her little sister had been brutally slain. But, questions had to be asked. Believe me, there are a lot of jobs policemen and police officers dislike having to do. This one was one of them.
At last the police drove young Hawk to the hospital where his sweetheart was slowly recovering. They admitted to themselves, as they drove away, that they were baffled.
The boy whose name Catharine had said, again and again, after her arrival at the hospital, was definitely in the clear. No motive, and a perfect alibi.
Ralph himself? It was possible that his alibi would not hold. Motive? He was due to inherit a comfortable sum of money, and supporting a wife—and even a mother-in-law and young sister-in-law—would have been no problem. There seemed to be no question about his devotion to Catharine. Why, he had been begging her to marry him a day earlier—December 31st.
Catherine told the police, “I wanted to wait until January 1st. We had all our plans made. I thought it would be bad luck to change the date.”
She examined the battered flashlight the police had found in the ruins. It was hard to tell—but it did look very much like one that was usually kept on a table beside her mother’s bed.
In other words, Corporal Snyder told himself, the flashlight could have been stumbled on accidentally, by some perfect stranger, or, picked up deliberately by someone who was familiar with the house. No clue there!
The prowler theory was discarded. A casual thief who had ventured into the house where three helpless women were sleeping might have struck one of them down if surprised in his burglary, but he would hardly have gone to the length of concealing his crime with murder and arson. If he had come into the room where Catharine was asleep, he might have reached for the nearest weapon and left her unconscious on the floor. But, the flashlight which had been used had been in another room.
And, the police reasoned, even if he had picked up the flashlight as part of his loot—there was still no reason for him to go to the trouble of pouring kerosene over the sleeping Mrs. Gelwix and fifteen-year-old Helen Louise, and set them on fire. A prowler would have struck Catharine down, picked up his loot (or maybe even discarded it), and fled.
The maniac theory? The double murder didn’t fit into any maniac theory known to police or psychiatrists. Nor were there any possible suspects to fit such a theory.
The police didn’t give up. They never do. Snyder paid one more visit to the farm where Ralph Hawk had been employed. He explained that he wanted to eliminate Ralph as a suspect—completely. Did the farmer, or his wife, know of anything which might have caused trouble between Ralph and Catharine?
After a moment’s thought, the couple told of a letter the good-looking youth had received. Ralph had tossed it into the kitchen stove, but the fire had been low, and it hadn’t burned. The farmer’s wife, cleaning the stove, had glanced at it, seen that it didn’t belong to her, and destroyed it.
The letter had come from Mrs. Gelwix. It had stated that Ralph was having dates with a girl in a nearby town, and that she wanted to talk with him about it. The letter named the girl, and the farmer’s wife remembered the name.
Corporal Snyder followed up, fast. He located the girl, a lovely, blue-eyed brunette. She admitted willingly that she had had dates with Hawk. He’d brought her a Christmas present.
Corporal Snyder—a pretty shrewd judge of human nature—asked the girl how she felt about having dates with a young man who was just about to marry another girl. Her face turned pale. Then anger flared in her eyes. “What other girl?”
It was Sheriff Gillan who broke the news to her.
The girl took it bravely. “But—Ralph was the one boy I thought I could trust…. I haven’t seen him since our last date, at Christmas…. I’ve wondered why …”
Corporal Snyder drove back to the farm where Ralph Hawk was employed, and placed him under arrest. Murder was the charge. He was taking a chance, and he knew it. If Ralph were innocent, there would be a suit for false arrest. And for a few worried moments, he wondered if he’d made the right move.
Ralph denied everything. He’d had a few dates with the other girl, sure. Wasn’t a man entitled to a few dates before he got married? But Catharine was the girl he’d planned to marry.
Would he consent to a lie detector test?
Sure, why not? He had nothing to hide.
The handsome young man sat with the sensitive instruments strapped to his hands and head, and answered the first question—“No! I didn’t kill anyone!”
The needle he was watching on the machine jumped suddenly.
“Does that mean that I told a lie?”
“Yes.”
In a sudden rage, Ralph Hawk tore himself from the machine. But, he knew that he had given himself away. Burying his head in his arms he moaned, “I must have been insane. I meant to kill them all.”
Motive? The other girl. He’d planned to marry Catharine, wedding preparations had been made, the date had been set. Then he’d met the new love and his only solution of the problem was to murder the old love.
His story of the crime shocked even experienced police officials. He’d begged Catharine to marry him before the date that had been set, to throw off suspicion—and he’d done so, knowing that she wouldn’t make the change.
The night of the murder he’d left Catharine and gone to visit his father. On his way back to the farm he stopped at her home. Everyone was asleep. He found kerosene in the kitchen and poured it over the sleeping Mrs. Gelwix and her fifteen-year-old daughter. He picked up the flashlight as a possible weapon. He set the bed in Mrs. Gelwix’s room on fire and locked the door from the outside to make sure that she and Helen Louise couldn’t get out if they did waken.
He had a soft spot in his heart for Catharine, even though he planned her murder. He didn’t want her to suffer. He’d beaten her into unconsciousness with the flashlight before he poured the kerosene over her, so that she wouldn’t awaken to—fire and horror. He couldn’t foresee that she would be awakened to be rescued.
“I must have been mad,” Ralph Hawk said.
Psychiatrists found him sane, however, and a jury found him guilty. The penalty was death.
I wonder, sometimes, what ever happened to Catharine Gelwix. Only twenty—engaged to the handsomest boy in town—and, on the eve of her marriage, waking up, half stunned, in a blazing inferno—and then learning that her husband-to-be was her would-be murderer—and the murderer of her mother and her sister.
Wherever Catharine Gelwix is, I hope she’s found happiness—and, forgetfulness.
THE CASE OF THE COMMON COLD
There are plenty of doctors who will tell you—“You don’t catch cold from getting your feet wet.” Opinions differ. Frankly—I don’t know. But the young man in this story not only caught a cold, but, because he did get his feet wet, he caught a conviction for a brutal murder, and a life sentence.
It was a cool October night in 1943. Mrs. Walter Reiman waited anxiously in the pleasant little Reiman ranch house near Pendleton, Oregon.
Dinner was still waiting on the table. Cold, by this time. More than three hours had gone by since the search had begun for her sixteen-year-old daughter, June.
For the hundredth time she told herself there was no need to worry. June was a crack shot, trained by her father in the expert use of a rifle since she was a very small child. She’d gone out carrying her rifle, with the intention of shooting some rabbits.
Only it wasn’t like June to stay away longer than she had planned!
The anxious mother reminded herself of what June’s father had said. “She’ll be all right. She knows every inch of the country around here, and she can take care of herself. Don’t worry, she’ll be home soon.”
But hours had gone by, and there was still no word.
Footsteps outside! Before the anxious mother could reach the door, it was flung open. It was Walter Reiman, with several of the neighbors who had been searching, with him, for the missing girl.
“June—?”
Reiman sank down in a chair. His white, haggard face was enough to tell her the terrible news.
One of the neighbors said, “He—found her.”
Mrs. Reiman gasped, clutched the edge of a table for support. “A hunting accident?”
Her husband looked up, shook his head. “No. I wish it had been. It was—murder!”
He couldn’t believe it himself. True, he had been anxious about his adored daughter since his wife had told him that she had not returned from her rabbit hunting excursion. He’d called up the nearest neighbors, including the Elder family, to ask if anyone who lived near the creek June had intended to follow had seen anything of her.
At last he’d made a few phone calls, and some twenty or more men and boys from the neighborhood had organized a search. They followed the woods along the creek, since that was where Reiman reasoned she was most likely to have gone. He was right about that. And it was he who found her lifeless body among the tall weeds in a clearing, brutally beaten to death.
“I still can’t believe it!” Walter Reiman whispered.
But even at that moment, Sheriff Goad, Coroner Folsom and Sheriff William Roach of the State Police were at the scene of the crime. They heard the story of the search from the neighbors who had remained there.
After a brief, hasty examination the coroner said, “Until I perform an autopsy, all I know you can see for yourself. The girl was beaten to death with a club, or some such weapon. I’d say she has been dead three or four hours.”
Sheriff Goad studied the wounds. “A club picked up around here would have left bits of bark imbedded in the wounds. The weapon must have been something smooth. A gun butt, for instance. And—where is the gun the girl was carrying—her own gun?”
The state police officer was thinking of something else. He looked at his watch. “Three or four hours. Since the killer met her here, he must have been on foot. He may still be in the neighborhood. There’s just a chance that we can pick him up before he manages to get away.”
He hurried to the nearest telephone, and in a matter of minutes, state patrol cars were surrounding the area, with orders to pick up every man who couldn’t give a satisfactory account of where he had been since four that tragic afternoon.
Meantime, Sheriff Goad thought about the missing gun. Had it been the weapon? And why had the killer taken it away with him? Would a sane man carry with him a weapon which could so easily link him to a crime? Obviously not. He promptly sent out a call to determine if there were reports of any recent escapes from insane asylums.
Finally he called together the white-faced men and boys who had searched for pretty sixteen-year-old June Reiman—and found her. Had any of them seen June during that afternoon?
A neighbor had seen her shortly after four o’clock. He hadn’t paid much attention, as she frequently went hunting by herself. She’d been crossing the bridge over McKay Creek, and had stopped to talk with a boy on a bicycle.
A young man in the group spoke up. He was Ronald Elder, whose family were the Reimans’ nearest neighbors, living just across the creek from them.
“That was me. I met June on the bridge as I was riding home, stopped to talk with her. She told me she was going rabbit hunting. I told her there were some good fish in the pools along the creek, and that she might get some of them.”
(A note to you city people: Up in the northwest, where I myself was raised, it’s no more unusual for the 16-year-old daughter of the family to go shooting rabbits or catching fish than it is for a 16-year-old city girl to run down to the corner for a loaf of bread and a pound of hamburger.)
Everyone else in the group was questioned, but no one had seen June Reiman that afternoon.
Had anyone seen any suspicious-looking strangers in the neighborhood?
One of June’s high-school classmates said, “I saw a fellow who looked like a tramp, when I was fishing quite a ways farther up the creek. He looked pretty seedy, and he had a bushy beard. He was stepping right along as if he was in a hurry.”
He added a few more details of description, and said that he thought he could identify the man if he saw him again, though he wouldn’t swear to it.
The description was phoned to the State Police, and the patrols began watching for the bearded stranger who had been near the scene of the crime at the time the girl must have been killed.
There was nothing more to be done at the scene of the crime. The tired police officers drove back to the sheriff’s office. They had barely arrived there when word came that a suspect who fitted the description of the stranger seen by June’s schoolmate had been caught and was being brought in for questioning.
That sounded encouraging, especially when the information was added that he had seemed reluctant to talk.
It was late—nearly midnight—when the suspect was brought in by two state police officers. He was tall and thin, middle-aged, with a long, heavy beard and flashing black eyes.
“You got no right to bring me here. They say I killed a girl. That’s a lie. I never killed anybody.”
There was no doubt in Sheriff Goad’s mind but that this was the bearded stranger who had been seen near McKay Creek. He sent out a hurry call for the young man who had given him the description.
The suspect went on, “I was working on a sheep ranch in Idaho. Heard I could make good wages working in a munitions factory, over in Hermiston. I was walking there.”
“Where were you around five this afternoon?”
“Just walking. Walked all the way. Never hitched a ride or bothered anybody.”
Sheriff Roach pointed out to him that he had been seen near the scene of June Reiman’s brutal murder.
The bearded stranger was willing to admit it. Sure, he’d walked along the creek a-ways. It was a short cut. But he hadn’t seen anyone there, or along the road.
By that time the sleepy-eyed young man who had been June’s class-mate had been awakened and brought to the sheriff’s office. He took one look at the bearded stranger and declared,
“That’s the man I saw! There’s no doubt about that.”
The suspect continued to maintain his innocence, but the sheriff noticed some dark stains on his soiled shirt and badly worn overalls. Bloodstains? Possibly. Goad arranged a change of clothing, and sent the shirt and overalls to a laboratory for tests.
By the next day, a few other suspects had been brought in for questioning. After careful checking on their stories all were released, save for one young man whose only alibi was that he had been drunk.
“I went to a tavern about noon and got to drinking with some guys I didn’t know. After a couple of hours I guess I must have passed out. I woke up this morning in an alley and found out I’d been robbed.”
His face was badly scratched and bruised. There were marks of dried blood on his face.
“I don’t know what happened to me, or how, or where.”
The suspect obviously had a bad hangover, but Sheriff Goad wasn’t taking any chances. He arranged for scrapings from under the victim’s fingernails to be analyzed in the police laboratory. The results might show that the murdered girl had caused the scratches on the suspect’s face.
