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The Valley Drive-In Murders

Guest Post by Kevin Sullivan

A Clews note: This article originally ran in the now-defunct Snitch magazine, and when I read the story of the drive-in, it sounded like something out of a Stephen King horror film. I asked Kevin Sullivan if I could post it here. It is a reminder of the sheer mundanity of murder, of how callously some very stupid people are willing to take the lives of people precious to their families and for how little lucre. It's also a tale of how easily policemen can be distracted. It has been abbreviated from the original piece, and a new update on the status of the pair of real stinking idiots who ruined several lives, including their own, appears at the end. Thanks, Kevin, for sharing it.

Seventeen-year-old Rita Joan Robbins had been employed as a ticket taker at the Valley Drive-In Theater only six days when she disappeared on the evening of June 3, 1973.

The theater, now only a memory, was at one time a popular spot for families and couples, and was located at 14700 Dixie Hwy. in Southwest Jefferson County (Kentucky).

As a ticket taker, Robbins occupied the small booth on the gravel road between the drive-in and Dixie Highway. In case of emergency, a buzzer situated next to the cash drawer could be pressed, summoning help from those working in the concession stand. As an added precaution - and perhaps for those with more time available to them - a telephone was within arm's reach.

About 10:55 p.m., the manager of the drive-in, Lucille Hornsby, stopped by the ticket booth on her way home and spoke to Rita, who was sitting on a stool with the door propped open. Hornsby told Rita that she was going home but would be returning in a few minutes. As she pulled away from the booth, she noticed a car entering the drive-in but paid little attention to it.

Perhaps within a minute of Hornsby driving away, concession stand worker John Southern walked out to the booth and gave Rita a 7-Up, setting it on the counter.

When Lucille Hornsby returned, between 11:06 and 11:07, the ticket booth was empty, and Rita Robbins was nowhere to be found. The 7-Up was still sitting onthe counter, and it appeared to be untouched. Lucille's husband noticed the cash drawer was empty.

Later, police would hear that Rita had been concerned because, for two consecutive nights, a car pulled in and stopped at the end of the gravel road, its headlights shining at the ticket booth, making it virtually impossible for her to see the driver, or what kind of car it was. On both occasions, however, after sitting there for a few minutes with lights blazing, the vehicle simply drive away.

As officers began their investigation, it was by no means clear to them whether they were dealing with an actual abduction, or yet another case of an unhappy teen-age runaway, who just happened to empty the cash drawer on her way out.

Yet the runaway theory should have looked highly unlikely from the beginning, for Robbins had not only left her purse behind in the booth, but she left her father's car on the property, just were she had parked it when she reported for work that evening.

Mrs. Hornsby, who had retrieved the purse when she found Rita missing, turned it over to the police when they arrived on the scene. Inside it, detectives found the usual items. Also found, however, was a pipe used for smoking marijuana.

When authorities interviewed Reid and Joan Robbins, they were told that Rita was a happy person, and that their daughter had never run away before or given them any kind of trouble. They assured police they had no knowledge of the marijuana.

Between June 4, and June 13, searches were conducted on the ground and from the air, but there was still no sign of the missing girl. None of Rita's friends had seen or heard from her, nor had she made any contact with her parents.

Then, on the evening of June 14, around 11:30 p.m., Ronald Shumaker, 21, a soldier stationed at nearby Ford Knox and working part-time at the Valley Drive-In, disappeared from the ticket booth, much the same way Rita Robbins had 11 days earlier.

Later that day an investigating officer from the Jefferson County Police raised the possibility that no abductions actually occurred.

"There was $62 missing from the cash register," he wrote. "The victim's car was left at the scene, as was Rita Joan Robbins' father's car. It should be noted that there is a strong possibility that Robbins and Shumaker are together. It has been established that Robbins used drugs, and it appears Shumaker is having domestic problems with his wife. This may be simply a planned plot between the two missing persons."

However, Cook concluded by saying: "It should be noted that there is no information to verify this assumption and the case should be continued as if foul play was involved until they have been located."

While it is true that Ronald and Connie Shumaker were having problems in their marriage, there were no obvious signs pointing to him wanting to vanish. On the contrary; Shumaker, who was due to be honorably discharged from the Army on June 22, openly expressed his desire to become a lawyer and was making plans to attend the University of Louisville in pursuit of that dream. He had also told some of his co-workers of his intention to remain at the drive-in, working part-time.

And, just like the night Rita Robbins disappeared, Shumaker reported to management that a strange car had been sitting near the entrance of the drive-in. Co-workers would also tell police that on the nights they disappeared, Rita Robbins and Ronald Shumaker seemed apprehensive.

Leona Sabins, who worked with Shumaker in the concession stand, explained to detectives that on that night, "Ron... was acting strange -- like he was sick or scared."

Sabins also said that, on the night Rita Robbins disappeared, she, too, seemed a little jumpy, even describing her as wearing a "grim face."

It must be noted here that by June 20, investigators had come up with the names of Danny Lee Tetrick and James A. Sefcheck. The initial leads came from people who knew the two men and told police they were the ones responsible for abducting and killing the two drive-in workers.

Three days after police received this information, Tetrick, 23, and a parolee from the Kentucky prison system, and the 19-year-old Sefcheck were arrested for disorderly conduct and armed robbery of a man for $210 on the highway, not far from the drive-in.

Then, on July 9, at 5:45 p.m., an anonymous call was received by the police, stating: "Danny Tetrick killed them and left one of the bodies at Valley Village field and the other at Weavers Run (Road)." The caller then ended by saying he hated Tetrick and calling him a "son-of-a-bitch."

The next day police would find the badly decomposed remains of Ronald Shumaker.

The following day, police would interview a 15-year-old girl who had been with the two men when they robbed, abducted and murdered Ronald Shumaker. Tetrick wanted to obtain bail money for the girl's 20-year-old sister and told her he planned to borrow the money that night. Before 11 o'clock, James Sefecheck, Danny Tetrick and the girl set out to "borrow" the money. Driving his mother's car, Sefcheck laid a sawed-off shotgun across his lap.

When Sefcheck turned into the entrance of the drive-in, the girl asked Tetrick if this is where he was going to borrow the money and he said yes.

But when they pulled up tot he ticket booth, and Shumaker came out to take their money, Sefcheck aimed the shotgun at his face and told him to get in the back seat an dlie on the floor. Shumaker obeyed, climbed inside the car and lay down on the floor.

Moments later they were gone, turning left onto Dixie Highway as they made their way to the secluded area off Weavers Run Road. According to the girl, as Tetrick held the shotgun, Sefcheck said: "Get the billfold." After robbing Shumaker, Tetrick made him walk toward the ditch. At this time, the girl said, she heard a shot, and Tetrick then attempted to return to the car, but Sefcheck shouted, "Shoot him again!"

Shumaker had already rolled down the hill, and this second blast, the girl believes, hit him in the legs. What the girl didn't know, and what Tetrick later confessed, is that besides shooting Shumaker, he also hit him in the head, and it would later be determined that it was the blow to the head that killed the young soldier.

On July 12, after Tetrick and Sefchick heard of the girl's statement to police, the walls of denial came tumbling down, and they made full confessions of their involvement in the abductions and murders of Ronald Shumaker and Rita Robbins.

One of the things they told police was that they planned to keep going back to the drive-in to rob -- if not abduct and kill -- subsequent ticket takers.

Tetrick, apparently feeling some degree of remorse for the killing of Rita Robbins, led authorities to her body. Detective John Spellman later testified that Tetrick said:

"...that he killed both these people. He told us how he did it, why he did it. He also seemed to be very disturbed by the fact that he had done it. With regard to the girl, Rita Joan Robbins, he stated that it bothered him that this girl was buried somewhere where the parents did not know where the body was ... and he would like to see her given a proper burial."

In describing the kidnapping of Rita Robbins, Tetrick said she was forced at gunpoint to lie down on the back-seat floor of Sefcheck's mother's car. And, as he would do with Shumaker, Sefcheck was responsible for robbing the cash drawer. Tetrick said "that they got the girl out of the car, that she helped them count the money that was taken in the robbery, and he said she didn't show any real fear of them; that she... was making a game out of the whole thing...."

Tetrick also said that Sefcheck made Robbins get undressed and then made her get into the car with him. When they emerged a short time later, he told Tetrick that the girl had to be killed, as she could identify them.

Tetrick said Sefcheck started hollering: "Kill her! Kill her! Kill her," and then grabbed Robbins's arms. It was at this time, Tetrick confessed, that he stabbed Rita Robbins.

Using the large knife, the two killers dug a shallow grave and placed Robbins in it. Because she had gotten blood ont he car when she fell against it, Tetrick said, they ran it through a car wash when they got back to Dixie Highway.

Danny Tetrick and James Sefcheck would eventually enter guilty pleas for the murders, and both would receive life sentences for their crimes. Today, they remain in the custody of the Kentucky penitentiary system.

Sefcheck, convicted of being an accessory before the fact, will be up for parole again sooner or later. Tetrick is ordered to serve out his sentence of life.

The Disaster at Bath

While the mass murder at Virginia Tech stands as a new murder record for a public school shooting, a much older record still thankfully stands.

The worst mass murder to ever take place at a U.S. school was the work of Andrew Kehoe, who, in 1927, planted hundreds of pounds of dynamite under the brand new school building in Bath, Michigan, and once it was filled with hundreds of students, he blew it up.

Dozens were killed and maimed, and the village has never been the same. (Photo from the Lowell Sun, via Newspaperarchive.com.)

Andrew Kehoe was a trustee of the school. Profoundly mentally ill, furious about the increase in property taxes the new building engendered for him, and having recently received a foreclosure notice on his farm, he began the day on May 18 by beating his wife Nellie to death. He dumped her body into a wheelbarrow, piled their silverware and money next to her, and set the farm on fire.

While firefighters responded to the blaze at his farmstead, he drove a mile to the new school building to touch off the dynamite.

Witnesses said the building was lifted four feet off its foundation, the walls caved outward, and the roof collapsed. The bodies of children were blown out the windows. A silent pause was followed by unending screams. Women came running from every direction. But Kehoe was not finished.

The madman pulled his car up close to the school, approached the superintendent and exchanged words, and then Kehoe blew up his car. Both men were killed, and the town's postmaster, standing nearby, had his legs blown off.

The town residents climbed at once into the wreckage of the building to save those they could. One of the first men on the scene, Robert Gates, told an Associated Press reporter: "In no time more than one hundred men were at work tearing away the debris of the school, and nearly as many women were frantically pawing over the timber and broken bricks for trace of their children. I saw more than one woman lift clusters of bricks held together by mortar heavier than the average man would think of handling without a crowbar."

The entire state was plunged into anguish. From the wire services report that went out to newspapers across the country the next day:

News of the tragedy spread rapidly through the state of Michigan. By the time frantic parents and friends had reclaimed the last of the broken forms of the victims late yesterday a solid line of automobiles stretching literally for miles along every road leading into the town choked every higway.

The disaster was national news for a very brief time, and until the Columbine disaster took place, seems to have been little known outside Michigan. It is not mentioned in very many crime encyclopedias and often escapes the attention of journalists, who continue to this day to demonstrate that they are not familiar with the tragedy that brought unparalleled heartbreak to this small village in central Michigan.

The final death toll, including the Kehoes, was 45. A record that will hopefully stand for all time.

For more: Wikipedia on the Bath School Disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

Butcher's Dozen by Larry Wakefield

The Bath School Disaster by Gene Wilkins

Do You Remember the 1950s Brink's Hold-Up in Boston?

Guest Post by Stephanie Schorow

(Boston-based freelance writer Stephanie Schorow, former Boston Herald reporter and author of two books on the city's history, is writing a book about one of Boston's most notorious crimes. If this sounds more than familiar, she'd love to hear from you.)

It was a cold evening on Jan. 17, 1951, when seven bizarrely masked bandits crept into a Brink's armored car garage in Boston's North End, tied up the guards and made off with $2.5 million in cash, checks and securities. It was, said Life magazine, "the biggest cash robbery in U.S. history" and, according to Boston's newspapers, "The Crime of the Century."

Wild theories swept the city: the bandits were criminal masterminds from New York, Communist agents, or were Brink's employees doing an inside job. Six years later – just as the statue of limitations was running out – the true culprits were apprehended.

One of the robbers, who had been cheated out of his share, decided to rat out the others. The “masterminds” turned out to be a group of small-time hoods who thought they could pull off the score of a lifetime.

Books and movies have been made of the case, but it’s time to introduce a new generation to “The Crime of the Century.”

My name is Stephanie Schorow and I'm writing a book on the Brink's robbery of 1950 and the reaction of Boston -- and Hollywood – to the crime. I am hoping to reach relatives of people connected with the case – the investigators, detectives, reporters, Brink's guards, jurors on the trial or family of the robbers themselves (the culprits have all died).

Bostonians had a keen interest in the robbery and may have passed along information / scrapbooks / artifacts / photos to their children. Only $50,000 to $90,000 of the money from the robbery was recovered, so for years people here have spoken of find the missing "Brink's money."

I'm also looking for people who might have participated in the filming of the 1978 movie "The Brink's Job" – starring Peter Falk and directed by William Friedkin -- which was filmed in Boston on the actual site of the robbery.

Anyone who would like to share their memories may contact me at sschorow [at] comcast {dot} net. If you have memories of the "Brink's Job,” I would love to hear from you.

Vehicular Homicide Circa 1907: The First Drunk Driving Case in the West

Post deleted.

Sorry - you'll have to wait for the book!

Peaches n Sugar

Guest Post by Lona Manning

(A Clews note: Once Anna Nicole died, all the crime historians scratched their heads for a moment and then noted a precedent for her bizarre life and death. Clews came up with a comparison to Dr. Zeo Zoe Wilkins, calling her "the Anna Nicole Smith of the '20s." But crime historian and freelance writer Lona Manning came up with yet another mercenary siren and tabloid superstar and shares the story here. Thanks, Lona.)

She was famous for being famous. The blonde, blue eyed and buxom headline-grabber married a wealthy man old enough to be her grandfather. When he died, she fought for a share of his estate. Her once-voluptuous figure turned rotund and she fought a battle with the bottle. Her death was sudden and mysterious.

Anna Nicole? Nope. “Peaches” Browning.

Frances Heenan, aka Peaches, was a New York shop girl earning $15.00 a week when she caught the eye and then the affections of Edward W. Browning, “Daddy” Browning to you, a New York real estate developer.

Browning was by no means publicity-shy, even before his marriage to the lovely “Peaches.” A natty dresser who somewhat resembled the man on the monopoly board, Browning claimed to be 51, which, inverted, gives you the age of his blushing bride, “Peaches.”

No lithe flapper, Peaches was a buxom little dish who seemed marked out for notoriety and drama. Shortly before her marriage to Browning, someone, believed to be a disappointed suitor, threw a mixture of acid and chloroform on her as she slept, burning her neck and chin. This tragedy did not prevent the marriage.

Mrs. Heenan, “Peaches’” mother, gave her blessing to the match and to further show her approval, she moved in with the newlyweds.

But the May-November couple did not live happily ever after. Six months into the marriage, “Peaches” was out, bound for a career on the Broadway stage, and suing for a separation from “Daddy” on the basis of cruelty.

Browning counter-sued for desertion, as journalist Damon Runyon put it, he wanted to "shake 'Peaches' from the Browning family tree." The estranged couple squared off in a New York courtroom. Browning’s lawyer tried to introduce Peaches’ diary, to show that she was already a “woman of the world” before her marriage. The judge disallowed it, at which time a sigh rose in the crowded courtroom.

(Photo from the Chicago Daily News archives, Via)

During his testimony, “Peaches,” swathed in diamonds and furs, frequently dabbed at her big blue eyes with a handkerchief as she detailed her brief but bizarre marriage, including the time her groom brought home a large goose.

Peaches was awarded a separation and $300 per week alimony. She slimmed down and went on the vaudeville circuit. After Browning died in 1934, she sued for one-third of his estate. She remarried and divorced three more times. Her fourth husband filed for an annulment on the grounds that she wasn’t divorced from her third husband.

In 1956, Peaches slipped and fell in her bathroom. She never regained consciousness and died in hospital. The police deemed her death mysterious and ordered an investigation and an autopsy. Death was pronounced due to brain hemorrhage, cerebral compression and liver failure. She was 46.

***

"One minute she's all over the papers and the next day? Gone!"

--Gypsy Rose Lee on Peaches Browning

For more juicy gossip on Peaches, see Wikipedia and Find A Grave.

Max Meyer's Invitation to Join the KKK

I never thought I'd read a cute story about the most infamous terrorist organization in the USA, the Ku Klux Klan (which thankfully has never gone global) -- but lo and behold, in a quirky old biography, I read one.

The book is Preposterous Papa, by Lew Meyer, which chronicles the story of his father, ebullient pioneer Max Meyer, who blew into Indian Territory in 1906 to set himself up as "Outfitter to Mankind." Hilarity erupted in all of Max's many grand schemes and adventures, and the book was a sleeper hit in 1960.

Photo: the Klan rides in Oklahoma in the 1920s. Via

I can't resist passing along this gem from Preposterous Papa, which, the author assures us, is completely true.

Papa was a joiner. He was a Mason, a Shriner, an Elk, a Moose, a Woodman of the World, a Knight of Pythias, and an Odd Fellow. He desperately wanted to be a Knight of Columbus and almost made it. He was a guest at so many of their meetings that a friend submitted Papa's name as a honorary Knight. The local group voted unanimously for him, but the Bishop raised so much fuss about it that Papa had to resign.

The only organization he didn't join was the Ku Klux Klan, and it wasn't for lack of an invitation. When the Klan terrorists were burning fiery crosses and tarring and feathering Negroes, Catholics, and Jews, three of Papa's oldest friends paid him a visit. They locked themselves in the back room of the house on Oak Street and talked for more than two hours.

Mama could hardly wait for them to leave. "What did they want, Max?" she asked worriedly.

"Annie, they..." He sat down. "Annie, they want me to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan!"

Mama was thunderstruck. "You're Jewish. The Klan hates Jews."

"I know it. They know it, too. But they want me, anyway. Say they feel like heels keepin' me out of anything they belong to."

"What did you tell them?"

Papa straightened up as he spoke. "I told them that they degrade themselves by persecutin' innocent people while hidin' behind sheets. I told them they were bad Christians and a disgrace to their children. I think maybe they're gonna resign from the Klan tomorrow. I lectured 'em hard!"

Maybe those Kluckers learned a lesson or two from Max Meyer.

Startled out of Caution: From the Case Files of Mary Sullivan, Police Woman

Guest Post by Lona Manning

(A Clews note: Freelance writer Lona Manning is a frequent contributor to, among other publications, the online Crime Magazine. Lona came across an autobiography of one of the pioneering "police women" in the New York Police Department in the 1920s. Here, Lona tells us the story of Mary Sullivan's most remarkable murder case. Thanks, Lona.)

New York police woman Mary Sullivan was banished from the undercover assignments she loved, to a succession of dreary station-houses, doing the usual woman’s work – looking after lost children and guarding female suspects. It was the height of the Roaring Twenties, there were plenty of bootleggers, drug traffickers and fake fortune-tellers to apprehend, and Sullivan, a young widow with a friendly Irish manner, impressed her superiors with her ability to transform herself into a dance hall girl or a society dame looking for a good speakeasy. But Sullivan had agitated a bit too forcefully for equal pay and opportunities for female officers. Her exile to regular “matron work,” she later recounted, left her “humiliated by the setback and in a very discouraged frame of mind.”

One windy March night in 1924, Sullivan was surprised to get a teary phone call from a baby-faced young flapper she had once befriended, also named Mary. (In fact every person in this story is named Mary. Or else rhymes with Mary. No wonder Sullivan used pseudonyms in her autobiography.) Mary was a runaway and a sometime gangster’s moll, though still in her teens.

Sullivan found Mary shivering and hungry in a unheated rooming house, took her home and fed her a hot breakfast. In between wolfing down flapjacks, Mary explained that since the last time she saw Sullivan, she had gotten married. She and her husband, Harry Fenton, lived in a boarding house run by an elderly widow named Mary Coleman. Harry, young Mary confessed, had killed the widow – but everybody thought the widow died in a house fire.

Her husband had clubbed the old woman unconscious, then strangled her with one of Mary’s stockings. Mary dropped the bloody stocking into the toilet tank and the corpse took up residence under the newlywed’s bed for three days while Harry and Mary debated what to do with the late Mrs. Coleman. Harry eventually hit on the scheme of staging an arson in the widow’s apartment. The ruse worked – the fire department found the half-burnt body of the widow lying in her fireplace, next to an empty whiskey bottle.

Harry was annoyed that the old lady had only $15.00 in her purse, instead of the rent boodle he’d hoped for. Soon after, the newlyweds quarreled and he threw Mary out. Mary begged Sullivan “never to tell anyone the story, a pledge which only a very naïve person would exact of a police officer.” Sullivan tricked her into going to the station on the pretext of needing information about her old gangster associates.

Once there, Sullivan recalled:

“For a few minutes I talked rapidly about how her husband had thrown her out on the street, and how she had wandered about without any money for food or lodging.”

Then I turned to her suddenly. “You say that this stocking is in the tank of the hall bathroom?” I demanded.

“Yes,” said [Mary], startled out of caution.

Harry Fenton was arrested and convicted, Mary was let off.

Because of her work on the case of the charred widow, Mary Sullivan became the first New York police woman inducted into the Honor Legion. In 1926, she was appointed head of the Policewoman’s Bureau.

***

Sullivan’s biography, My Double Life, was originally published in 1938 and was re-issued in 1983 by Chelsea House Publishers. For more interesting reading along these lines see the online exhibit Women in Policing by the New York City Police Museum.

A firsthand account of rioting picknickers at Walpole Prison, 1972

Piles of charred books in its library best symbolized how reason went up in smoke and flames during a riot at Walpole state prison early this weekend. The bitter smell of smoke and the bite of some lingering tear gas remained Saturday and Sunday when newsmen toured the maximum-security facility...

--Christian Science Monitor, March 20, 1972

It was just another 1970s prison riot, one of dozens and dozens across the country. Prisoners rioted at the Walpole State Prison in Massachusetts in March of 1972. One of many men whose job it was to regain control of the prison was State Trooper Robert Cerra. Thankfully, the chief victim in the violence was the prison library, where thousands of volumes were destroyed. But Bob Cerra didn't know that going in. All he knew was that he'd been ordered to leave his weapon behind when he did so.

When Bob mentioned that he'd been a part of this riot, I asked him to share the story, and he has kindly obliged with this account.

It was the early 1970’s and I was home having dinner with my family when I received the telephone call to immediately report to Walpole State Prison regarding a disturbance. I was what the Massachusetts State Police called a “Boot”, that’s a new and inexperienced Trooper.

What surprised me when I arrived at Walpole State Prison (Walpole State Prison has since been renamed Cedar Junction) was how few of us there were. Only one commissioned officer was at the scene and he spoke to us in front of the prison gate. He said the prisoners had ejected the guards, taken control of the prison and the inmates were in the process of setting fires.

His instructions were simple: don’t turn on any lights as the light bulbs had been filled with gasoline and would explode when the switch was thrown and don’t get separated from the team.

Then he told us that we were going in without our weapons and we were to secure them in a locked safe. He said the Governor did not want any of the prisoners to get hurt.

We were stunned. A senior trooper stepped forwarded and questioned the order. Most of us just stood there in disbelief. An argument ensued and finally the senior trooper stepped forward and announced “no guns no troopers”.

The commanding officer and some senior Troopers left the area for about 5 minutes and they returned. The commanding officer told us to keep our guns and follow him into the prison.

At the time I was too green to understand that I had been part of a mini-mutiny that mercifully was resolved. We marched into a “man trap”. They closed and locked the doors behind us and for all intents and purposes we were locked up in a maximum security prison with the rest of the rioting prisoners.

We worked our way through the prison grounds, teams of our officers put prisoners back in their cells, and we restored order. We learned later that one prisoner had been set on fire by his fellow inmates and some prisoners had locked themselves in the prison hospital.

Albert DeSalvo, AKA the Boston Strangler, was one of the prisoners who were barricaded inside the hospital. DeSalvo talked to the team leader through the locked door and “promised” not to come out or to cause any more problems.

The only amusing part of that riot is when the head of the “prisoner’s union” demanded to meet with our commanding officer. Their “Union President” was a bank robber who had disarmed an elderly bank guard, put the guard on his knees and shot him in the head.

Our commanding officer was a former US Marine drill instructor and his response to the “Union President’s” request for a meeting is not fit to print.

One incident demonstrated how out of control the prison had been. After securing the interior of the prison I was assigned to patrol outside the prison walls; I preferred that to being locked in a gun tower. About 15 minutes into my patrol I saw some activity in a wooded section adjacent to the prison. I found a clearing in the woods, with a campfire going and three men barbecuing some steaks. I ordered them to leave the area as we “had a problem in the prison”. They told me they “belonged here”.

I suddenly realized that that they were prison inmates, not campers, and I took control of the three of them. Each one told me that they were in for murder. I advised our command post via radio that I had three prisoners in custody in the woods outside the prison walls and that they had been “picnicking.” Our Captain shot back over the radio: “knock off the jokes, return to the command post and you better have three prisoners with you”. He met me at the prison gate and just shook his head as we marched the prisoners back inside the prison. I have retold that incident many times; I know that most people who hear it don’t believe the story.

Walpole State Prison, AKA Cedar Junction was a source of constant problems. One of those problems gained national attention, during a Presidential campaign, the public remembers the story by the name Willie Horton. The then Governor Michael Dukakis, a presidential hopeful, had a furlough program for inmates at Walpole State Prison. The first thing that one of those inmates did when he was released for his furlough was to go to a phone booth, call the witness who had identified him at his murder trial and tell her he was going to kill her. My job was to guard the woman. But that’s another story.

###

An Ancient Murder Mystery Solved by Science

The case is so cold by now it's a veritable mountain of marble. Was it murder or malaria that ended the lives of the Second Grand Duke of Tuscany and his wife? Most of the historians who debated Reinaissance Italy's greatest mystery are long in their own tombs, and yet, more than four hundred years after the fact, a cold case has cracked and the mystery is resolved.

Italian scientists just announced that they've discovered arsenic in the remains of the Tuscan Duke (see the remains, such as they are, photographed at right, from the Associated Press). If true, it settles the question once and for all: his brother murdered him and his wife in 1587 for his throne.

A kind Clews visitor (known and loved in true crime junkie circles as "Foose,") sent us a link to the story, and elegantly summarized the mystery:

Possibly the announcement that arsenic has been found in what remains of the liver of Francesco is premature, but it's rather interesting.  Brother Ferdinando had motive -- Bianca Cappello (formerly Francesco's mistress) had tried to pass off another woman's baby as her own (and heir to the throne).  Ferdinando also, rather colorfully, was a Roman Cardinal, so the Gospel and ambition must have struggled for dominance in his breast.  Also, the two brothers came from rather a homicidal family -- sister Isabella was murdered by her husband, and allegedly their youngest brother was murdered by yet another brother.  And victim Bianca was accused of poisoning her husband's first wife -- a Venetian exile, she was his mistress for many years.

Plus, there's Shakespearean overtones -- the story at the time was that Bianca tried to poison unloved brother-in-law Ferdinando at the banquet, watched husband Francesco drink the fatal draught by mistake and realizing all was lost, picked up the goblet and drank the rest herself.  Did Shakespeare adapt this popular royalty rumor for the climax of Hamlet?

For me, I stand in awe at the advancements in science that can lead to the finding of poison in a four-hundred-year-old corpse -- the remains of a member of the Italian royalty, a man who himself patronized the sciences -- resolving one of the abiding classical murder mysteries.

What's next...!? The discovery of a bloodstained dress in the Borden basement? DNA evidence identifying the Ripper? Hauptmann's confession?

For more:

Wikipedia on Francesco I de' Medici

MSNBC: Scientists May Have Found Medici Murder

Washington Times: Is Murder Mystery of Medicis Solved?

A Brief Reading from the Riot Act

A nice Clews reader named Mary poked around Project Gutenberg for some interesting true crime stories and came across all sorts of wonders. One link she sent takes us to The Riot Act of 1714, as written by the English Parliament. “Yes, the entire text of that famous law,” Mary says. “It is readable and not very long.”

If a crowd to which it was read failed to disperse within 20 minutes of the reading of the Riot Act, they could be dispersed by force. Wikipedia has an explainer on why the king suddenly punished rioting with death here. What makes the act noteworthy is the concept that the public had to be forewarned of the use of deadly force and given the opportunity to bring their behavior into compliance with the law. Not that this softens the fact that the law justified summary executions for lawbreakers.

You only need read the first sentence once to learn exactly why “reading him the Riot Act” is a familiar cliché for "advising the ignorant as to the rules" even today – almost 300 years after the law took effect in 1715. This has to qualify as one of the longest sentences I have ever seen. Imagine the scene as the King's man appears before the angry masses and declares -- ... !

Whereas of late many rebellious riots and tumults have been in divers parts of this kingdom, to the disturbance of the publick peace, and the endangering of his Majesty's person and government, and the same are yet continued and fomented by persons disaffected to his Majesty, presuming so to do, for that the punishments provided by the laws now in being are not adequate to such heinous offences; and by such rioters his Majesty and his administration have been most maliciously and falsly traduced, with an intent to raise divisions, and to alienate the affections of the people from his Majesty therefore for the preventing and suppressing of such riots and tumults, and for the more speedy and effectual punishing the offenders therein; be it enacted by the King's most excellent majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal and of the commons, in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, That if any persons to the number of twelve or more, being unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together, to the disturbance of the publick peace, at any time after the last day of July in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and fifteen, and being required or commanded by any one or more justice or justices of the peace, or by the sheriff of the county, or his under-sheriff, or by the mayor, bailiff or bailiffs, or other head-officer, or justice of the peace of any city or town corporate, where such assembly shall be, by proclamation to be made in the King's name, in the form herein after directed, to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, shall, to the number of twelve or more (notwithstanding such proclamation made) unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously remain or continue together by the space of one hour after such command or request made by proclamation, that then such continuing together to the number of twelve or more, after such command or request made by proclamation, shall be adjudged felony without benefit of clergy, and the offenders therein shall be adjudged felons, and shall suffer death as in a case of felony without benefit of clergy.

How far we’ve all come! Wave your flag.

(Art: Astor Place Riot, New York)