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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening. Losing a loved one to murder is life's ultimate tragedy. But when the killer is never captured, a family's paralyzing grief only compounds. In this pass pain grows, time heals nothing. Parents, spouses and children of the victims never find peace. Investigators continue to lie awake, night after night, year after year, thinking if only cold cases fascinated us
because of the endless possibilities. What if Alice Hachossler hadn't driven her daughter home from work while the strangler was running loose. What if Oda Apple's wife hadn't sent them to the corner drug store. What if Linda Bricca hadn't been so beautiful and her husband not a workaholic. J. T. Townsend takes us on a sinister journey through thirteen cases which took place in Cincinnati, Ohio, between nineteen o four
in nineteen seventy one. You'll meet Francis Brady, a pretty bride to be gunned down at her own front door. Tommy Coby, a eight who arrived home to an empty house and learned later his parents were lying dead in their car. Patty read Bolts, a popular cheerleader who was bludgeoned in a neighbor backyard while walking to break up with their teenage boyfriend. What do these cases have in common? A fleeting, irrational act of violence with no resolution. Somebody
literally got away with murder. Each episode took place in sheer moments, but hundreds of innocent people still remember, still mourn, and are still haunted by horrible, unbearable images. Townsend's riveting accounts include never before published details from police files and insights from both investigators and witnesses who done it. Well. Never know for sure, but we can certainly make some informed,
calculated guesses. Meanwhile, on these pages, each victim returns to vibrant life, becomes as real to us as those loved ones that they left behind, and still cries out for justice. The book they were featuring this evening is Queen's City, Gothic Cincinnati's most Infamous murder Mysteries, with my special guests, journalist and author JT. Townshend, Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for greeing to this interview. JT.
Townshend, thank you, Dan, glad to be here.
Thank you very much for coming on. Very very fascinating book you have here. First off, just tell us how you came to be in a position to want to write this book. What drove you to or put you in a position to write Queen City Gothic, Dan, that's a great question.
You might say. I turned to crime to beat cancer. I was a regular corporate working stiff. In two thousand and seven, I got a colon cancer diagnosis. While taking chemotherapy, I decided to go through all my cold case clippings and write this book I've been wanting to write. Six months later, I was cancer free, and I had a pretty bad first draft. A couple of years of editing later, Queen City Gothic hit the market, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Interesting. Tell us what you have thirteen you've submitted thirteen of Cincinnati's unsolved classic unsolved homicides. How were the thirteen cases selected?
Well? I had I think I had a list of about fifty. A lot of it had to do with media coverage at the time. A lot of it had to do with more prominent victims, more upper middle class neighborhoods. You know, everything that makes a good murder, you know, a hint of scandal, a whisper of sex, you know, the personal cause homicide where the killer and the victim are somehow involved. And all these cases in Queen City Gothic were front page fodder for weeks and months after
these crimes occurred. I think probably the coverage, more than anything else, probably dictated which cases would make it.
In one quick question, why the what's with the name? What's the background or the history of the name Queen City for Cincinnati.
You know, that's a nickname Cincinnati's had, I think since the mid eighteen hundred. It was considered the gateway to the West, and the name just kind of stuck, the queen city of the Midwest, and I don't know, it's kind of stuck all these years.
We're going to discuss in particular three of the incredible stories that are in the thirteen just because we won't be able to cover too many of these fascinating stories week just between us picked these stories to highlight and what you call in particular terror in the gas Like district.
And this is about the Cincinnati Strangler and the particular one of the most I guess, memorable cases in Cincinnati history for the horror and the terror that inflicted that would inflicted on the city because of the Cincinnati Strangler. So let's talk about the Cincinnati Strangler. And you start
this in nineteen sixty five. So tell us Cincinnati, what's going on in the city, in the Queen City at this time, and you talk about October nineteen sixty five and Elizabeth Creco, So tell us about what the city is like at that time, and then tell us a little bit about Elizabeth Kreco and what happened.
I tell you, if I was gonna give you a quick blurb, a conservative Midwestern city in the nineteen sixties confronts a serial killer and its own burgeoning racial turmoil. No, this is not a John Grisham novel. It's the unknown legend of the Cincinnati Strangler. This was a major serial killer in nineteen sixty six that barely anyone has heard of.
Boston Strangler was well known from sixty two to sixty four, the term serial killer had not yet been coined, but I think with the Boston Strangler, people started to realize that there were killers who did kill multiple victims with
a passage of time. And suddenly, in October of nineteen sixty five, we had a woman named Elizabeth Creco attacked in the Walnut Hills neighborhood, strangled into unconsciousness, raped, but she did survive, and that is considered to be the beginning of the Cincinnati Strangler saga.
Now, what are some of these signatures and the mo of this person. Right from the beginning, you say she was attacked, but she survived. So what was the description that was out there for police and what was the description they released, and how did the investigation proceed after this attack?
Well, she described her attacker as a short, slightly built black man. She was a white woman. The Strangler, as he moved through his series of crimes, was known to improvise a ligature. I think the ligature in each of the stranglings was different. A pair of stockings, a men's tie,
the belt to a bathrobe, a clothes line. And he would be someone we'd describe as an unorganized offender, someone who would base do just a little stalking, pick a victim of chance, kill the victim, leave them right where they were murdered, no attempt to cover up any clues or to cover his own trail. And that would contrast with an organized serial killer like a Ted Bundy, someone who had a lengthy stalking behavior, someone who took a victim and did not create a crime scene, take the
victim across jurisdictional lines, jump the body somewhere. So that is not what we had in Cincinnati. We had someone operating in their own comfort zone, taking victims of chance, basically in this case women that were fifty years of age and older.
Right, yes, Elizabeth Greco is sixty five years old. You say that nineties. Nine days later, two more women were assaulted. Both of these attacks. You say, these people reported that black males had assaulted them, but there were different descriptions. There were, and you talk about October twenty this, yeah, go ahead, no, go ahead.
Again, this is all in the Walnut Hills neighborhood, so it's been very confined at that point. Again, this similar description short, slightly built black man. But was their facial hair was there not? Was he wearing a beret? Was he not? There was a lot of discrepancies in these descriptions, and you know, so far we haven't had any fatalities, so Cincinnati really at this point, okay, we've got some hit and run assaults, but I don't think anyone had an idea of really what was to come.
Right now, you talk about October twenty fifth, there's another attack Margie and she's thirty nine years old, and someone tried to put a rope around her neck. So tell us about that attack and then the subsequent attack on December second with Emma Jeen Harrington, fifty six years old.
All right, Yeah, Margie Helton again in Walnut Hills, leaving work. And we've seen this in some of the other attacks. A young black man asks for street directions and then attacks the victim. In this case, he looped a rope around Margie Helton's neck, managed to steal ten dollars, but she screamed, managed to hit her car horn. The attack was broken off. December second, nineteen sixty five, the first acknowledged victim of Cincinnati strangler was found. It was fifty
six year old Emajeen Harrington. She had just come home. It was a Thursday afternoon. The Claremont apartments very nice neighborhood, very nice, broad daylight. She went looking for the janitor of the building to help her carry in groceries, and somewhere in the basement of this cavernous apartment building she ran into the Cincinnati strangler. She was hit a crushing blow to the head, taken down, raped, strangled, and left there in a an a basement restroom, and the janitor
she'd been looking for found her body. She was the wife of an aerospace scientist at the University of Cincinnati. Fairly prominent victim. So on December second, we have our first murder in Walnut Hills.
You right that there's a double knotted very much a double knot just very much like the Creco rape.
So closeline double knotted on each end, you know.
So police make that make some connection very very early on in these cases, and all.
These attacks have again been in the Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati. Appears to be a comfort zone for this attacker. Again, a disorganized attacker is not going to go far away from his territory. So it's all confined to the Walnut Hills area. And we've got one near fatality, we've got one murder in at least three or four attacks leading into the end of nineteen sixty five. But again, I don't think Cincinnati really realizes what is in store at this point.
You right by April fourth, nineteen sixty six, you say, the phantom struck again. And this is Lewis Dant. She's fifty eight years old and her husband just goes out for a short period of time and comes back and tell us what he finds and what's the condition of his wife. Lois Dent.
Yeah, I tell you, Dan, this one bothers me. She and her husband were always together on Monday morning when he would go help. He would go to the parish and help count the collection plate from Sunday. It's the only period of time during a week when she would be alone in her apartment. And that's when the strangler got her. Her husband came home, found her bludgeoned, raped, strangled with one of her own stockings. He just missed the killer. He was coming in the back door as
the killer was leaving the front door. This one was interesting because the victim herself was able to tell us what was going on. Right before her murder, she was on the phone with her cousin, said there was a knock at the door. The cousin heard her answer the door. She came back on the phone and said it was some man looking for the caretaker. Talk with her cousin. Doorbell rings again. She said, well, maybe it's that same man. I'll call you later. She hangs up and goes to
the door. And that's the killer. The door to the killer. And yes, her husband found her. I've seen the crime scene photos. Boy, I no husband should ever have to see something like that. And again we've got the same improvised ligature, a blow to the head to take the victim down, then the strangulation and the rape, which in this case was posthumous. I believe the victim was almost
already dead when the rape occurred. Now, this is on the west side of Cincinnati, Dan in the Price Hill neighborhood. This is way across I seventy five from where this offender has been operating. And this is a extremely in nineteen sixty six, a white neighborhood. And it's hard to believe a black man could have operated in this neighborhood in nineteen sixty six without attracting some attention. And I speculate that if a black man had been at her
or she might have mentioned that to her cousin. That would be a real singular experience in this neighborhood in nineteen sixty six. So with this crime, you have a killer who appears to know that the victim will be alone, and you have a victim who really didn't appear to be alarmed at whoever this man at her door was. Makes me think that if it had been a black man, she would have mentioned that to her cousin, but she did not. So now we've got a second murder similar
to the first. Cincinnati is starting to become a little tense about this.
You say that some police, though hesitated to think the murder with the Harrington, would connect this murder with the Harrington murder.
Why would that be, Well, again, the fact that she was killed during such a tight window, but when her husband is always with her except on Monday morning, and it seems like an odd time for a serial killer to be operating on a Monday morning. So we have that, we have the fact that she did not say the man at the door was a black man. And again, in this neighborhood in nineteen sixty six, that might have been caused for alarm for a white woman at home.
Not so much today, of course, but in nineteen sixty six to have a black man in that neighborhood would have been quite unusual, and with a lot of the victims. As we went forward, they found pubic hair consistent with a black man. In the lowest dance case, they did not find that pubic hair consistent with a black man. So there's been some speculation that this may or may not have been one of the Cincinnati strangler victims.
Now what you say, though, interestingly, is that within weeks this investigation is stalled, and then on June tenth, a man finds a woman's badly beaten body. Again, this is a feature that we talked about battered, and so some of these bodies are badly beaten above the head. You're talking about crushing.
Absolutely. Yeah, the June tenth murder in Burnett Woods, that would be our third victim. That was Jeanette Messer, fifty six years old. She's merely doing something she does every day. She's walking her dog in a beautiful public park near the University of Cincinnati called Burnett Woods. Sun's not quite up yet. Other dog walkers see her. She takes a normal trail through the woods and she meets the strangler. Again, we have this crushing blow to the head and not
multiple blows. This is basically almost like a shark would do. Just put the victim down, I mean unconscious. And in this case she was strangled with a man's necktie and her dog was tied to a nearby tree by the killer. And she was found all her clothing had been ripped off, fractures about the face, strangled with a necktie, and raped in a public park with really quite a lot of
people moving about that morning. This was a very audacious crime, I would say, kind of almost Jack the ripperlike, and it's daring.
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Now, throughout this you provide an account of what is going on in terms of society, and part of that is the reaction from society based on what the media is writing. And you talk about the Enquirer, and you tell us about the headline that they had, despite what the police are saying, despite what they may know and what they don't know. What are the headlines and what is contained in the headlines at newspaper like the Inquirer, Well after the.
Third crime dan rather provocative headline. I'm looking at it right now, Negro killed three women. Police say, of course they're using the term negro that was used at the time. But the CINCINNTI police kind of had to make a decision here do we have one killer do we have three? And they looked at everything in total for these three murders Harrington, Dant, and Messer, and they basically came out
and said, we have a single killer operating. Again, the term serial killer was not used or coined yet, but after that third murder June tenth, the word came out that we have a black man killing elderly white women in Cincinnati. And it is the mid sixties. We've got Vietnam War protests, we have race riots, civil rights issues, we've got hippies, we've got counterculture, we've got the Beatles. It's a time of tremendous change, and yet Cincinnati prides
itself on being immune to change. I think it was Mark Twain that said, if the world was coming to an end, I'd moved to Cincinnati and spend ten more glorious years. So I think the headlines were basically saying, how can this happen here. We're not New York, We're not Los Angeles. You know, this is the Queen City. We're innocent, So how could this be happening to us? I think that was the focus of a lot of the headlines. You know, how could it happen here?
You add the historical juxtaposition too, that's very interestingly. July nineteen sixty six is also a time of the infamous killers arising, and you talk about two in particular, Richard spec and Charles Whitman, and you say they had ushered in the era of modern mass murder. Spec butchering eight, Whitman shooting thirteen boy Dan.
We'd we'd never seen crimes like this. I mean, there was no template to process. Richard Speck killing the student nurses, and two weeks later, Charles Whitman going up top of the tower at the University of Texas and sniping the fourteen people. We just hadn't seen things like this. I think we've become kind of inured to it today. You know, mass shootings are really not so unusual anymore. But in nineteen sixty six, a guy kills eight student nurses, and then a guy goes up on a tower and shoots
fourteen people two weeks apart. It was just shocking. I was twelve years old. I just remember reading these stories like what is going on here? There was just no there was no template to process these kind of crimes, and they're certainly a part of this story without question.
Now you continue with this too. We talk about July nineteen sixty six, and by August fourteenth, back in Cincinnati, the strangler strikes again, and it's a question mark. Barbara Bowman, thirty one years old. You talk about a black cab drivers reported a Negro cab driver picking her up from Clifton's Lark's Cafe. Tell us about what she's doing at two am? How does this happen? What do witnesses see? Ye tell us what police find?
You know, was this the strangler? That was the big question. She was a thirty year old single woman, I would say, way younger than the previous victims. She's drinking in a bar and she calls for a cab and a short, slightly built black cab driver comes in. She leaves with him. They are approximately one block from her house at about two thirty am when this cab driver attacks her and attempts to strangle her and attempts to rape her in
the back seat of the cab. Barbara Bowman manages to break away in a pouring down poor and starts running along the street, and the cab driver pursues her in the cab, runs her over and then hops out and stabs her in the neck as she's laying in a rain swept gutter, and she dies there and the cab
is disabled. The cab driver takes off, and this cab eventually turned out to be a stolen cab, and this was a bootleg cab driver who had taken seven or eight fare that night, you know, just taking calls from a dispatcher until he picked up Barbara Bowman. So she's murdered. The cab driver escapes, but we've got a younger victim. We've got a stabbing, and again the taxi cab itself was used as a murder weapon. I the inquiry called this one of the most bizarre murders in Cincinnati history.
You know, is this indeed the strangler? I mean, there is an attempt at a strangulation, but she was actually run down and stabbed and there was no rape. So CINCINNTI police were kind of divided on this one. If you ask me, that's the strangler. He had an opportunity with this younger woman. I think he took it. She easily could have been strangled, but she was young and strong and she managed to break away and was run down and stabbed. But I think this is indeed our
perpetrator at the point. But it certainly didn't fit the pattern in many ways.
What did this do for the community in terms of after the headline of three Negroes killed, or Negroes killed three women, or negro kills three women. Pardon me, you do? You have the composite drawings of the bowman suspect, and you'd say that black men, especially Cabby's, are rounded up. So black men are rounded up for lineups and questioning, aren't they?
Oh boy, I tell you, I've seen the photos of this Dan. You know, the Miranda ruling had just been passed in nineteen sixty six, you know the rights of the suspect. Cincinnati was in such turmoil and such fear that basically they were rounding up any suspicious looking, short, slightly built black man who may have driven a cab and they were hauling them in for lineups for witnesses
at the bar that Barbara Bowman was at. There were some people that drove by and happened to the attack on Barbara Bowman and see the driver in the cab. So they were parading these men in front of these witnesses, really without any due process. And civil rights groups were rightfully outraged, but because of the fear sweeping through Cincinnati,
no one really cared. People were again, black men were being hauled in to the lineups without any real due process, and the directive went out from the Cincinnati police if anybody's acting strange, just bring them in. So there certainly was some racial tension starting to grow at this point, and the heavy handed investigating tactics of the CINCINNTI police certainly didn't help matters at all. But again, everybody was
so afraid. I don't think anybody was worried about the rights of the suspects when this.
Was going on, say, before anybody can really get their bearings. By September, a woman named Virginia Hinners, forty years old, is accosted by a black man and she tells police and Jesus survives. Obviously, She says that this guy says, do you want what the others got? And it's right she's attack Emagen Harreton was.
Killed, so she is right. She is right across from the Claremont apartments where Emageen Harrington was killed in December of nineteen sixty five, short, slightly built black man assaulted her in the janitor and said to her do you want what the others got? And Cincinni police flocked to the scene of this assault. This had all the earmarks of the strangler. You know, we found a woman alone in a church office and made a serious attempt to strangle her, but the custodian coming in kind of saved
her life. But again we're back in Walnut Hills, or right across the street from the scene of the Harrington murder. So this appears to be our perpetrator, the Cincinnati strangler, once again in a failed attempt.
Now there must have been another composite drawing. Did it compare to the other ones? And what is the result of this composite drawing? What is the reaction overall the city, the police with this further attack with Virgina Hinters, Well, things.
Are the tension is really heating up. You know those composite drawings, they were kind of all over the place. There were several of them. They didn't really get any hits on those. No one really recognized this composite drawing. When when I look at who was eventually arrested, I don't see really a resemblance. But I think a September rolled in this attack. Everybody was again on kind of a heightened alert, when is the strangler going to strike again?
And of course, within days of this attack on Hinters, we had a completely different kind of crime occur on the west side of town.
Right you talk about October dell Ernst and two nights later an attempt to strangle a forty eight year old woman. But tell us about the attack on dell Ernst, sixty nine years old, and this is in October.
I wonder if I could just back up just a second Dan again. Three four days after the Hinters attack, a family of three, the Gerald brick Of family, was knife to death in their home on the west side of Cincinnati. And we've already had a lowest Dan and Barbara Bowman killed on the west side. And this was a lovely family. A Monsanto engineer, his beautiful ex araline stewardess wife and their four year old daughter stabbed to death in their home, and the initial the initial reaction
was that this was the Cincinnati Strangler. Extremely heightened alert when this family was butchered in their own home. It's hard to talk about the Cincinnati Strangler without mentioning the brick a family. And of course, as this turned out, the perpetrator of the brick And murders was not the Cincinnati Strangler. There was no relation to the Stranglings. Sad to say that fifty one years later, the brick And murders remain probably the most notorious cold case in Cincinnati history,
unsolved to this day. Just like the Stranglings are, so city's on high alert, and this beautiful family is butchered in their own home. Wasn't related to the Cincinnati Strangler. Did nothing to ease the tension in the city. And as you said, we had an assault in early October a very nice part of Walnut Hills. A woman named Dell Ernst was attacked in her hallway by a short, slightly built black man who would ask her for direction somewhere.
And again, this has all the earmarks of a strangler attempt. So we start rolling up toward October eleventh at this point, which was another significant date, right, Will.
You want to talk about Alice hawk Hustler.
Boy, Well, this was this was really the climactic event of this saga. Dan. She was a fifty one year old wife and mother of nine children. Her husband was the chief surgeon at Good Samaritan Hospital. They lived in the gorgeous Clifton Gaslight district, fine old homes, gas lights,
a very elite neighborhood. And on the night she was murdered, Alice Hawkhausler was out picking her daughter up from her job at Good Samaritan, dropping her daughter off at the daughter's apartment because she was afraid that the strangler was going to get her daughter. And while they were parked in front of the daughter's apartment, a car pulled up behind them, a two tone Chevy with a lone black driver. This fits the description of a driver and a car
seen near some of the stranglings. The man eventually drives off, and Alice Hawkhausler lets her daughter off and she drives home to her house, parks near the garage. Her husband and seven of her children are asleep inside. She has forty feet to go to the safety of her back door. She never makes it. Strangler hits her a crushing blow on the driveway, drags her back into the garage, rapes her, and strangles her with the belt of her bathrobe. The
woman was dressed for bed. She was merely picking her daughter up and dropping her daughter off because she was worried about her daughter. I mean, the irony of her murder. She wouldn't even be out at midnight on October eleventh if she wasn't worried about the strangler killing her daughter. And the strangler kills her twenty feet from her back door in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Cincinnati. And
Dan the Fertilizer hit the fan with this one. This was a prominent victim, prominent in the arts and charitable work. This is one of Cincinnati's finest neighborhoods. And the strangler has really come home to roost and taken a high profile victim. And you know, police will tell you we investigate all crimes the same, but when the victim is high profile, they obviously spend more time. So this again, this spawned the largest law enforcement mobilization in Cincinnati history.
I'm looking at a massive headline now in the Cincinnati Inquiry, five thousand man posse beefs up hunt for sex maniac. This was Kennedy assassination and Pearl Harbor font And the five thousand man posse was milkmen, mailmen, delivery drivers, meter readers, anybody moving throughout the city was deputized to look for a lone black man in a two tone Chevy. And you know, I was in seventh grade then, Dan, never seen anything like it in this city, a complete mobilization.
We've had five murders, a tribute to the strangler, and we've had this beautiful family the Brick has butchered in their own home. During this same timeframe, the fertilizer has hit the fan in Cincinnati. And you know, Dan, you even moved they moved Halloween to the daytime.
Yeah, incredible that year. Yeah, you talk about the Brick of murders and you talk about Alice Hawcastler, so so too high profile, within a few weeks of each other, within two weeks of each other, and you say, now the newspaper lines, the newspaper headlines, they were frenzied, feverish coverage and you say that coverage was nothing since well, I hadn't seen anything like that except the coverage bonned by the Cummingsville railroad killer in nineteen oh four, which
you write about near chapter.
One in this book, Chapter one, very similar to that. Actually, of course those were the back then, nineteen oh four nineteen oh five. That was kind of the heyday of the yellow journalism. They loved that sensational kind of thing. But I'm looking at other headlines here from sixty six grim manhunt on for mad strangler, series of sex crimes
shatters calm of serene Cincinnati. You know, it was I would say this was perhaps unprecedented, more so even than the Cummingsville ripper of nineteen oh four nineteen oh five. This was without question the largest law enforcement mobilization this city has ever seen. And Dallas Hawkhouse or murder is what really really brought that on. You know, to have a victim of this stature murdered steps away from her own back door, with her husband and seven of her
children inside. This this crime was beyond audacious. This was the boldest crime the strangler had done. There was an outdoor barbecue going on to two yards over there were twenty people there. Nobody heard or saw anything. This woman was killed on her own driveway. Yeah, Halloween moved to the daytime. I mean, the fear was rampant in the month of October.
You talk about a press conference where they linked Alice Hacostler's murder to other to the other murders by blood type. Absolutely, and you put again, just incredibly exactly one year apart from there.
And almost to the day, really really one day short of the one year of the Creek attack. And you know, police have been looking at these tips about a short, slightly built black man, but they've got nothing. They know nothing about this man. They don't have a single solid lead. And you know, a crime expert predicted that the strangler would next strike in December, and I think, as you know Dan from reading it, there couldn't have been more wrong about that.
Tell us what happens. You talk about rose Winstill, you talk about how the police link the four out of the five attacks and Walton Hills in Clifton area, but still no suspects, And then you talk about they even pulled state hospital records for the criminally insane and mental hospital patients records, but let's talk about what happens. Yeah, let's talk about what happens with rose winstill and what happens in this case nationally afterwards.
Well, this was really unusual that the killer would strike within ten twelve days of a murder. And this was also in Clifton, though you couldn't get much more different from where Alice Hawkhouse was murdered in the Clifton Gaslight district and rose Winstel was murdered in Coryville, which is kind of a seedy neighborhood part of Clifton. This woman was eighty one years old, and this crime varied in
a number of ways. There was forced entry. The killer actually had broken down her door and attacked her while she was asleep. She was way older than the other victims. She was beaten way more severely than the other victims, almost like it was a personal attack. And instead of leaving the victims spread eagled with a ligature around them, in this case, the killer actually covered her face and tried to jam the body under the bed. And police were responded to this and there was some question is
this our strangler? Because this woman had been living with her brother up to about a week before the murder, and he had been moved to a nursing home, so she was really living alone for the first time in years. And the forced entry that's something we haven't seen at all. And the age of the victim. This woman was half blind, eighty one years old. I mean, she's not anything close to a sex object at this point. I mean, whoever this killer is, he just really wants it all. I mean,
this is an absolute depraved crime. There were bite marks on her body. Again I say, she was beaten way more severely. And then it was almost like the killer and I've seen this before, was ashamed of what he had done and tried to hide her body and the bed. And this was not how the other victims were left. The other ones were kind of displayed, so whoever found them would be shocked. This was almost like a killer who like was ashamed of what he had done. So
we have another murder eleven days after Hawkausler. Is it the strangler? I think it is? And Newsweek magazine finally the strangler goes national. The news Week magazine has an article about the Cincinnati strangler based on the rose winstool crime, and suddenly we've got national exposure to what's going on in Cincinnati. You know, I'm reading here from newsweek. Five such killings in ten months had made the signature fearfully plain to Cincinnatians and yet hard for police to read.
So we've got our sixth victims and police have nothing, absolutely nothing. They are powerless to stop this man at this point.
You talk. December ninth, police get a good tip and boy an incident with Sandra Chappis, twenty two year old, tell us about her run in with somebody while she's senior.
Champis is twenty two years old. She works downtown at the Kentner Corporation, and it's slightly after midnight on the ninth and she's an attractive twenty two year old woman walking home to her apartment, just a few short city blocks in downtown Cincinnati. Of course, during the reign of the Strangler, a few short city blocks can be awfully long. A car pulls up beside her. It is a two tone Chevy with a lone black driver. He starts shadowing her.
She gets within sight of her apartment and runs runs into the apartment and runs up the stairs. The driver stops, the car, hops out and starts chasing her up the stairs. She manages to get to her apartment. A neighbor hears the commotion and peeks out and sees a short, slightly built black man panting in the hallway like a dog
and grabbing his crotch. He sees her, he bolts, almost runs into this woman's husband coming out the door, and he has the great presence of mind to note the license plate number of this suspect and repeated it to himself until he got upstairs and could write it down. So we have a license plate number of a suspect who attempted to attack a woman on December ninth. Seems like the police really have something here. But as you know, eight hours later, the strangler one block over from where
Sanda Chaps was menaced. The strangler takes his seventh victim. I mean, this is really audacious. There's police all over downtown because of this chap as assault, and yet this guy slips through the net kills eighty one year old Lulu Carrick when she comes home from church, strangles her in the elevator of her apartment with one of her stockings.
No rape this time. This is again an incredibly bold crime on a Friday morning with people going in and out of this apartment constantly, so no time for a rape. Just strangles this eighty one year old woman in the elevator and police respond and at the same time they finally trace this license plate number to the driver of that car and they show up at his workplace to arrest him.
You talk about the suspect postile last twenty nine years old. You talk about Wee Steele po Steele, thank you.
Yeah.
You talk about what police questioned him and his disposition at that time, but you also talk about that he was questioned earlier and also tell us a very very interesting thing regarding cab driving.
Yes, he was a former cab driver. They brought in witnesses to the Barbara Bowman situation, people that saw the cab driver at the bar. They identify Laski as the cab driver. And indeed, they've got the cab driver's voice on tape from the night of the Bowman killing, and he's using the same call number that Laski used when he was a cab driver. So people witnesses to the Bowman case start coming forward after Laski's arrested, identifying him
as the cab driver who picked up Barbara Bowman. And they've got a really good case against post Tielaski Junior for the murder of Barbara Bowman. Two women who had stopped to ask directions of the cab driver as the attack was proceeding against Barbara Bowman identified that cab driver as post Ti Alaski Jr. As did all the witnesses in the bar and several people that rode in the cab with Laski before he killed Bowman because he was
taking fares. He was driving people to where they wanted to go in a stolen cab and pocketing the money. So he's identified by numerous witnesses and he is charged with the murder of stabbing death of thirty year old Barbara Bowman in the month of December. Now is this the strangler? Good question? Good question? Is this the strangler?
The police did not do as did not conduct an investigation and lay any other charges as a result of this or afterwards. After these charges were laid, there was no other further charges mentioned or talked about, even though they had really done.
I mean this guy, this Lasky guy, he had a sheet as long as my arm. There was a man who had four previous convictions and prison terms for assault. And on October ninth day and nineteen sixty five, he had assaulted a sixteen year old girl very severely, and he was given probation and he was out on the street later that day, on October ninth, and three days later, Elizabeth Craco was attacked in Walnut Hills. And I've seen
this with disorganized serial killers. Before they get tired of being identified by their victims, they're going to continue to attack women. They just don't want to be identified anymore. And it's very possible that posti Ulaski, as he hits the street, you know, some judge astoundingly giving him probation, he could have made a decision at that point, I'm going to start killing these women. So he is charged with the Bowman murder, and he has tried, and he
is convicted, and he is sentenced to death. And the Cincinnati police say they have no comment on the six strangulations. Laski has never charged with any of them. All those six strangulation murders of the elderly women remain unsolved to this day. Posti Ulaski remains the prime suspect in those cases.
You also talk about the NAACP, and they didn't like when the black men were rounded up, and again their constitutional rights were obviously not at all, Yes, but not go ahead about tell us about what other reactions to the verdicts.
Well, they didn't really like the trial either. This was an all white pro death penalty jury. We had white witnesses claiming Laski was with Bowman. Laski had witnesses claiming he was home that night, mostly family members. So we've got a jury believing the white witnesses over the black witnesses. We've got Laski sentenced to death. And a lot of unrest occurred at this point, and Laski's conviction and death sentence eventually led to a major race riot in Cincinnati.
On June eleventh, we had a week long race riot which two government commissions linked it to the arrest and conviction and death sentence of Poste A. Laski. A black community felt this man had been railroaded. They felt that these strangler cases were hung over his head during his trial for stabbing a woman, and that he was being convicted of being the strangler, not necessarily the killer of Barbara Bowman and it led to a serious race riode
in June of nineteen sixty seven. And I don't think Dan, I don't think Cincinnati has ever been the same since these events. You know, this is not the kind of thing that was supposed to happen in Cincinnati, Ohio. You know, a serial killer, racial tension, this kind of thing. We really kind of went through the fire or so to speak, from nineteen sixty five through nineteen sixty seven, and I think it kind of shattered Cincinnati's image of being this nice, innocent, clean,
conservative Midwestern town where nothing bad ever happened. But hey, something did, and seven women died. And it's still kind of a mystery. You know, people still tell me when I give talks on this program, well, Postiolaski was the strangler, right, And I have to remind them he's the alleged Cincinnati strangler. He has never been convicted of the six rape strangulations of the elderly women. He was convicted of stabbing a
thirty year old woman in a taxicab. That's the only case he was convicted of, and he died in prison in nine proclaiming his innocence Throughout he got a death sentence. But when the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty, he got off death row along with the Manson family. Uh, Sir hen Sir Han, Richard Speck, all those bad actors got off death row free. So that kind of that kind of wraps it up there as far as this story. But quite a story, eh.
Yes, you talk about one. One last thing though, that one police officer mentioned that been involved with this said, the killings ceased one Zlaski was arrested.
You know they did. Indeed they did. Indeed, Dan, we had some we had some additional assaults afterwards. I like to say there's two myths about serial killers that both come into play here. One is that they never stop. Well, that's silly. They definitely do stop. Jack the Ripper stopped, Zodiac stopped, VTK stopped, Texar Cana Moonlight murderers stopped, hillside stranglers even stopped. They do stop. And the other myth
is that serial killers are white males. But if you look back through the history of serial murder, black serial killers basically occur roughly around twelve to thirteen percent, which is basically the occurrence of black people in the population of this country. So the representation of black serial killers mirrors really the representation of our population. So there are black serial killers, and serial killers do stop, and the
stranglings did stop. You're absolutely correct. Some people take that as like the main piece of evidence that Laski was the strangler that they stopped. I don't. I think two of these cases, Lois Dant and Rose Winstel, those don't seem to fit the pattern. It looked like a killer who maybe knew the victim would be alone. I think Laski did some of these, but possibly not all of them.
Let's get back to the case that intersected and a very very important case and fascinating case too. And we mentioned it Gerald Brica and his wife Linda. Oh and if you call it in a chapter, you call a vision of deadly desire and the brick of family murders. And this is right in the midst of this Cincinnati strangler that never was.
Two weeks before. Alice Hawkhausler, Yeah, it's two weeks before. I've never seen a case like this. The rumor mill is still active after fifty one years. I give talks on the West side of town about the brick a case. I'll get two hundred and fifty people showing up. This case has haunted Cincinnati for more than half a century. And you can't separate the Cincinnati Strangler from the Brickercase.
You just can't. And the brickercase narrowed to a single suspect, a prominent veterinarian who was linked romantically with Linda Brica, and this gentleman lawyered up and they were unable to interview him further in the case stalemated for more than half a century. But it is the most notorious cold case in Cincinnati history, if you asked me, the second in Ohio history, behind the murder of Maryland Shepherd in Cleveland, which is also a mystery these days, you know, with
Sam Shephard acquitted. But yeah, the brickercase is just it's notorious. I get rumors about it all the time. Recently, some people have linked ay beloved Katie show host in Cincinnati in the sixties with the brick of murders. Indeed, this man was interviewed in conjunction with the investigation in nineteen sixty six. So you can't separate the strangler and the Bricker case. But the Bricker case, I think because of the murder of the child, you know, the four year
old child who obviously knew the killer. It just incensed people. And my next book will cover the saga of the Cincinnati strangler and the brick of family murders and what Cincinnati went through in nineteen sixty six. I'm hoping to have it out by the end of the year. We'll see.
Absolutely, we won't get into all of it. But again, just for those curious, you talk about the four year old daughter, and you talk about maybe we could just go through the crime scene just as a sort of prelude to what you'd be writing about later. And I'm sure we'll have you back on the program to talk about that.
So let's we still have enough time.
Sure, absolutely, let's talk about exactly who this family was. He was twenty eight years old. His wife was Linda and very beautiful. We alluded to that, and they had a four year old daughter, Debbie. So tell us who they were, and before we get into this actual incredible crime scene that again galvanized police, confounded police, and has captivated Cincinnati and a bigger audience for over thirty three years, well.
Really for fifty some years now. It was nineteen sixty six. Gerald Bricca was a young engineer at the Monsanto Corporation. They transferred here from Seattle, rising star in Monsanto. Upwardly mobile, workaholic, but in an eighty hour weeks. His wife was a stunning former airline stewardess. They had a beautiful four year old daughter named Debbie. I'm looking at the pictures of this family right now, and you've seen him in the
book Dan and Sunday Night. September twenty fifth, nineteen sixty six, Jerry Brica was seen taking out a garbage can, spoke with a neighbor, went back into his house, and the family was murdered, probably within fifteen minutes after the neighbor saw him outside. Stabbed to death. Killer wielded the knife maybe twenty five times. Killer or killers, because there's certainly some question about that. I've seen the crime scene photos.
Pretty bad stuff. Jerry Brica was an extremely muscular young man. Linda Brico was dressed in a skimpy neglige. He was stabbed in the back and in the neck. She was stabbed in the chest, in the neck and thrown on top of him. So they're kind of spread eagled on top of each other in the master bedroom next door. Four year old Debbie appeared to have been dragged from underneath a bed, stab four times. The knife went all the way through her body. Now the family is not
seen on Monday or Tuesday. Tuesday night, neighbors have noticed newspapers piling up, garbage cans still at the curb. Jerry has not gone to work. Neighbors investigate, they open the front door, they are assaulted by forty eight hours worth of death wafting out of this house. I mean, the neighbor who leaned in the door said he knew what it was the minute he did. And police descend on an absolute atrocity of a crime scene, just a vicious, vicious killing. Jerry Brica had two socks stuffed in his
mouth and a piece of tape. His carottit artery had been cut and he was probably gurgling, and the killers stuff the socks in his mouth, I think to shut him up. There was some question about whether Linda Bricker was raped. The coroner initially said she was raped. Lead investigator eventually said no, she had recent intercourse and the semen they took out of her is part of a DNA profile that exists today, and they were able to verify that she had sex with someone who was not
her husband within twenty four hours of her murder. And along with that semen, they have Marlboro cigarette butts and some human hair found clasp in her hand. So we've got a DNA profile on this one. I wish I could say it was a really good DNA profile. I've been told by investigators, you're not going to get an oj Simpson number. It's not going to be one in seven million, be more like a one in twenty five kind of thing. They've sent a through Cotis known offenders,
no hits. But of course we've got a prime suspect in this one, Dan who's deceased, so remains to be seen what's going to happen. But I'm telling you there's not you know, you can link the Strangler to this case. There's no two more notorious cases in Cincinnati history than the Cincinnati Strangler and the Brick of Family murders, and they all coincided in nineteen sixty six, probably one of the most frightening years in Cincinnati history.
The FBI is involved in this and unlike the other crimes that they report that a black man or a negro is on the loose. Are the FBI Do the FBI determine if this is a black man or a white man, or white men or black men.
Well, they sent a lot of evidence to the FBI lab. I mean, this is nineteen sixty six Dan pre DNA. You know, municipal labs are pretty rudimentary. If you've got something complex, you'd go to the FBI. And the Hamilton County was investigating this case. It fell outside of the city of Cincinnati. So we've got the city of Cincinnati investigating the strangler in the Hamilton County sheriffs investigating the
Bricker case. And the county was very quick to put a headline in the paper brick a killer believed white. And they did that specifically to head off possible vigilante action. I think if people thought a black man had killed the brick A family, I think we would have had some serious harassment of black people in the city and county put that out there specifically to let people know this is not the strangler. The strangler did not kill
this family. It was a white man, and they determined indeed that it was based on the evidence they had based on the hair and certain other things. But you know, it's easy to trash the victim in cases like this. Linda Brica was a stunningly beautiful woman, There's no question about that. She had a troubled marriage with her husband, and she appeared to be having a relationship with a prominent veterinarian in the area. Linda Brica had a tremendous
love for animals. She was an animal rights activist long before that was fashionable. And this veterinarian had two interviews. He certainly incriminated himself in the second interview by his demeanor and his answers, and he lawyered up immediately and they were never able to talk to him again. It just stalemated. You talked about till his death in two thousand and four.
Now, did something happen in two thousand and four that made anyone have a renewed interest in this case or not?
Well, what was interesting is our suspect and his wife attempted suicide together and he died and she lapsed into a coma. But there was a suicide pact from the main suspect in the Bricka murders, and you know they've since reopened the case now that they have a DNA profile. I was actually on the task force in twenty fourteen. I've been given complete access to all the files. I'll tell you, Dan, I thought about this case for a long time, and I always thought it was a single killer.
When I saw the crime scene photos and I saw the physique on Jerry Bricka even in death, I think it's multiple killers now. All it was was looking at the crime scene photo and the whole crime changed for me just looking at those photos. I don't think one man could have handled him. I mean, if he thought his family was in danger, I think he would have fought like a tiger. So I think we've got multiple suspects here, probably one with a gun. And this family
was slaughtered without Jerry putting up a fight. There was no sign of a struggle. They had two aggressive dogs who were found locked in a basement playroom, and the dogs possibly were drugged. And again the tape on Jerry Brica's face turned out to be veterinary tape. There's all kind of clues in this crime that would point to a veterinarian, and indeed our prime suspect is a veterinarian.
But there's actually a number of suspects. I have a list of about fifteen bona fide suspects, but that vet's number one, without questions. Right, it's a chilling case. And you've got the beautiful victim, the workaholic husband. You know, it's the sixties. There's wife swapping going on, there's swingers, there's key clubs, you know, all this kind of stuff, and the conservative Cincinnati and the rumors of her affairs
started almost immediately upon the finding of the bodies. It seemed like everybody seemed to know this woman was stepping out and it possibly got her family killed. Yeah, I'm totally obsessed with this case, Dan, I think you.
Know that what's interesting is that it seemed that the knife there was a carving knife possibly uses the murder weapon which was missing, but also that it was the carver's knife was also part of the home. It's so that is another interesting yes, question, isn't it knife was missing?
People always felt thought that that carving set had been kept hidden away and that someone who was familiar with the house knew where it was. So I've been told by someone I interviewed who babysat for the brick was the carving set was out on the buffet. The fork was still there, the knife was missing. The knife was six and a half inches long. It certainly fit. The wounds was never found, but this was a confident killer or killers who managed to control the dogs, control the
family use of ligatures. The family was tied up, no defensive wounds, No neighbors heard anything, and the houses were very close together. There were neighbors out and about. People were at home watching the television premiere of Bridge on the River Qui. That night, sixty million people across the country watched that movie, and the brick of TV set two days later, when the bodies were found, was found on that channel that was playing the movie, so they
apparently had settled in to watch this movie. Jerry had just gotten home from work on a Sunday night when the killer or killers arrived.
Just a.
Stunning case. It just gets under your skin like a splinter. Everybody that looks at this case becomes obsessed with it. And yes, we had a strangler running around at the same time. Just an astounding year in Cincinnati for crime. Really was.
You talk about the crime scene itself, tell us if this is your deduction or partially police deduction, that it seemed that it wasn't ransacked, but rather that incriminating evident was removed.
There's certainly drawers were pulled out, it looked staged. Nothing of value missing from the house. And again the speculation was, we're incriminating things linking Linda Brica to the killer, perhaps taken the killer. Killers appeared to spend a long time in the house after the murders. The Monday morning paper which hit that driveway about two thirty am was missing, could have been used to wrap a knife in, could have gone in the brick of garbage cans which were
picked up that morning. You know, we don't find the bodies until Tuesday night, about about ten o'clock. So the first forty eight hours in this investigation are gone. I mean, the police are already hamstrung. I mean witnesses. You know, forty eight hours go by, people start to forget what they saw or what they heard, you know, I mean, you know, can you remember something you saw or heard
two or three nights ago. Probably not. So there was kind of hamstrung from the beginning, and as we see in a lot of crimes back then, Dan, the crime scene was utterly compromised. There was no clear jurisdiction when the bodies were found. There was a period of about ninety minutes when this crime scene was not controlled, numerous first responders wandering through, firemen, EMTs, cops from four different jurisdictions.
I interviewed several of the people in the house. They said people were picking up things and looking at them, you know, wandering around, and finally Hamblin County took control and kicked everyone out. So we've got a probably a compromised crime scene. But you know, back then, Dan, almost all crime scenes were compromised. You just had to weed out the stuff that the detectives brought in in basically
against the actual evidence. So the one big rumor was that it was a screw up, and the other big rumor about why this case wasn't solved as it was a cover up because the suspect was so prominent, and that somehow the police let him skate, you know where they kid gloved him kind of thing, and I see no evidence of that. They put surveillance on this man for years after this crime. They were following him into the nineteen seventies, and he continued to run his veterinary
practice over there. So they never let up on this guy. But they just didn't have enough to go to a grand jury with. I mean, they could link him to the female victim. His demeanor and behavior was very suspicious. He did not have an alibi for the murder night, but that's just not enough. And he refused to cooperate and supply fingerprints, blood or hair, and he got himself a very good lawyer, very good player, and the whole thing, the whole thing just stalemated. Yeah, what was the.
What was the The other employees were interviewed, and this is how it led to him being interviewed. And then his behavior raised some red flags, you say, But was there anything to the idea that he was a forty five year old man maybe spurned by this twenty three year old beauty.
He was actually he was actually he was actually thirty five. He was married with five young children. He from what I've seen, he was a bit of a hound. Linda Brica would have been a she's only twenty three, just a stunningly beautiful woman who loves animals, and she appeared to really enjoy working with veterinarians. They actually interviewed Dan seven veterinarians in conjunction with this case that knew her,
that's how crazy she was about animals. But during the second interview, he was unable to account for his whereabouts that night, and they caught him in several lives like literally, you're lying, and here's how we know that. And then he terminated the interview and immediately went out and lawyered up and that was it. They never spoke to him on the record again. His lawyer gave them such restrictive conditions for a third interview, the police refused to do it,
and it just stalemate it. You know, I guess they could have had a grand jury subpoena him. I spoke with a county prosecutor, would you have done something different in nineteen sixty six, and he said, I could have called a grand jury. They could have subpoened him as a witness, and he would have taken the fifth and that would have been it.
Yeah.
So sometimes you got a clear suspt you just can't make the case. For whatever reason, you cannot make the case. And that's what we have here. And the brick A murders Haunts the West Side. To this day, I have people on a waiting list for this book about this case. And in my new book, the Bricker case will be the A plot and the strangler is the B plot, because you can't separate one without the other.
So what was a media response to them not making an arrest and how much did they know about the suspect and what did they write about that suspect?
Well, he was never identified, never officially identified at all. But you know, I was able to learn who he was. And you know, I see headlines like neighbor of brick A cleared, Police want certain man, Brica probe narrows to sing suspect. One brick of suspect remains, Police admit, here's one that's particularly on the anniversary of the brick Of murders one year later, prosecutor believes he knows who killed brick a family pretty much just putting it out there.
Prosecutor said, you know, here we have a man who killed three people, but there were no witnesses, and because of the Miranda ruling, we can't grill this guy. You know, we've been deprived of those tools by the Supreme Court, and you know, so it just it just stalemate it. I know, it was frustrating for all the law enforcement people. I've interviewed the wife of the lead investigator who's passed on. She said he was haunted by this case, never got over it. I mean, he was unable to close the
biggest case of his life. And she told me he was quite positive that the veterinarian suspect was the killer, had no doubt in his mind that they had basically brought this investigation to this guy's doorstep. They couldn't they
couldn't close it. It's a it's a I tell you, I've been I've been obsessed with this case since it happened Dan, you know, and and and you know, I was already everybody was afraid of the strangler, and suddenly this beautiful family's butchered at the height of the strangler terror, Like what is going on in Cincinnati? And it's interesting to me that the strangler really got very little publicity.
I mean, people today they know who the Boston strangler, they know the Boston strangler case very well, but they don't know the Cincinnati Strangler. People don't know this case. And by the way, Dan Albert de Salvo was not the Boston Strangler, And I think that's a great that's a great show for another time. I'd be happy to talk about that.
But absolutely, Yeah, Well we haven't covered at all whatsoever. So so many murders and so many so little time.
Well, we that's one we should maybe talk about at some point. The only evidence against Albert de Salvo was his own confession, which included the similar errors that were in the newspaper. He had a photographic memory. I think he just memorized the accounts of these murders and uh, he was interrogated by a guy who asked him leading questions, you know, like what color was a bathroom? Was it blue?
Yeah?
I think the Boston Strangler was a number of different killers. In the case of the younger victims, there were clear suspects that knew these women and had reason to kill them, but it all got grouped together under one killer. So that would be a good show for another time.
Definitely, absolutely what you speaking of conclusions and deductions, you do that in this book, So tell us this unique sort of aspect of your book and why you've decided to do it.
I've I've ever seen it done this way, and you know, Dan, I wrote this book for true crime people. You know, I didn't put twenty photos in the middle of the book. I've got one hundred and fifty photographs spread through each chapter. As you know. On my on each beginning chapter page, I have a picture of the crime scene as it
looks today, pictures of the victims immediately. But at the end of each case, I did a thing called eye witness, not an eye in my head, but I as in me, and I wrote a used a different font, I wrote in present tense, and I recreated the murders, and I pointed a finger. I attempted. There's my attempt to solve them. I've had some of my fans of this book say, boy,
those eyewitnesses were really something. Who wrote those? I said, I did, well, it would read so different than the rest of the book, And I said, it's just, you know, I'm trying not to leave people hanging. I don't want people to finish the chapter and go, wow, I wonder who killed them? This is what I think happened. I've had a really positive response to that. I've never seen that done in a true crime book. But yeah, I
don't skimp on the photos. True crime. People like a lot of photos, don't they absolutely?
You know, they don't want them.
I don't want them in the middle of the book. Don't you hate that trying to turn into a middle section to look at a photo and then turn back to your chapter. I would I would never do that. In my readers, the photos are where you need them. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. So the eyewitness thing people seem to like it kind of reads like a little short story. I was able to kind of stretch my novelist chops a little bit there, and yeah, I named the killers. You know, uh, you know,
I'm giving it, given up my best shot. I think you know, these are all cold cases. It's I dedicated the book to the victims, my attempt to achieve a sense of social justice for them. I didn't want these people to be forgotten just because their cases weren't solved. And I've talked with a lot of family members and I think people really appreciate what I did here to get these cases back out.
Tell us about your task, tell us about your task force involvement. Tell us more about that.
Oh the brick a case. Yeah, I was invited, one of two civilians to to actually come and look at the brick a file, and I had been attempting to get into this file for more than a decade without any luck. The Hamilton County jurisdiction refused anyone access to this file. They would say, you know, it's an unsolved case, so there's no freedom of information, and I reminded them at that point unsolved status does not preclude a freedom
of information search. Now, the sheriff at the time who was guarding this file retired and the new Hamilton County sheriff was able to let me in and we had a series of meetings with detectives, had some action items assigned, looked at suspects. I went out and interviewed more people, and unfortunately the two detectives eventually got swamped with actual current crimes. We met off and on for about a year, and basically, I believe my book, my forthcoming book, will
be the best chance of solving this case. Our prime suspect has been dead since two thousand and four, and I don't see DNA solving the case at this point. I wish that wasn't so, but I don't think that is going to happen, So it's kind of on me now. I'm the caretaker of this story. The strangler, the Brick of Family, and you know what happened to Cincinnati in nineteen sixty six. I mean, people really need to look
at this. It's two crimes that haven't gotten a lot of national publicity, but as sensational as anything else that was happening around the country, as far as crimes. I mean, seven women murdered by a serial killer, beautiful family of three murdered in their own home at the same time, Richard Speck, Charles Whitman. Valerie Percy, the daughter of the Senator in Chicago, was murdered the week before the Brick
of Family. I mean, it just really a lot of high profile, true crimes in nineteen sixty six.
Without question, you talk about a three hundred percent increase in either violent crime or murder in ten years in Cincinnati.
Yeah back then, you mean, yeah, absolutely, yeah, that's what the statistics said. There had been a real upsurge in violent crime in the sixties. Wasn't just these high profile cases we've been talking about either. I don't know if it was just a byproduct of the sixties, you know, racial problems, Vietnam protests, hippies, it just really seemed to be a major upsurge and all kinds of crime during that decade. And if you look at Queen City Gothic my table of contents, one, two, three, five of my
cases took place in the sixties. It's the most represented decade of the book by far, and really the most high profile cases. Patty Rebholtz, the brick Is the Strangler, the Dumbler, triple murder in Mount Lookout in nineteen sixty nine, all of these unsolved, you know, just waiting, just sitting there, waiting to be opened by somebody, you know, like a present under the tree that's still sitting there. So yeah, quite a year.
And you talk about the fast the nation with these cold cases to these unsolved murders, and this book, you say, being very important in the city of Cincinnati and being a bestseller there. Tell us also about just a little bit about Queen City Notorious. And before I let you go, maybe tell us how people might be able to look at your other work. Go to your website, tell us a little bit about that contact it's information.
Yes, I wrote Queen City. You know, Queen City Gothic changed my life. I was able to retire from a thirty two year business career. Longest book. It was a It was a regional bestseller. The library Public Library of Cincinnati had sixty copies. The book was on hold for eighteen months. Literally copies came in and they went right
back out. Certainly sold a lot, and several detectives I worked with, you know, these old cold case guys, said hey, j T. You know, great book, but we kind of looked like we weren't very competent in some of these cases. Can you write a book where we solve the cases? And Quincy Notorious is that book. It's dedicated to the detectives some extremely high profile cases in Cincinnati where you actually get to meet the killer, see the trial, see
the punishment. And these are all killers next door. These are all ordinary people for the most part, that were driven to murder, and some of them are some of the most unlikely killers you will ever see, and yet they've killed. And this book was my ode to the detectives. It's a great book. It has not sold as well as Queen City Gothic, And based on my research and what people tell me, people want mystery, not justice. I watch a lot of crime shows. I like to see justice.
But there's something about the lure of a mystery. People just can't get enough of the mystery. And Notorious has done well out there, and I'm glad I put it out there. I wanted to show how an investigation is successful. They won these investigations. These killers were caught, in several cases electrocuted. But there's something about the lure of the mystery. But both books are available on Amazon or anywhere else books are sold. My website is jttownshend dot com. I
have a Facebook page, JT. Townsend True Crime Detective, which has got tons of stuff about these cases. I encourage people to get on there, and certainly like the page. My website has some longer pieces. I was on Coast to Coast AM radio a couple months ago talking about the Lindberg baby kidnapping. Have a lengthy, lengthy article on that on my website with exclusive photos from inside the house where this child was taken. And I don't know
anybody that has these photos. So if you want to see the room where the child was taken and what the inside of the house look like, hop on JT Townsend dot com or hop on JT. Townsend True Crime detective on Facebook. I point the finger right at Charles Lindbergh. I will kid you not.
Well, it's been fantastic. I want to thank you very much, Dat Townsend coming on and talking about Queen City, Gothic, Cincinnati's most infamous murder mysteries. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much. You have a great evening and.
I appreciate you having me. I'm looking forward to a future program.
Absolutely, I can't wait till next time. Thank you very much, thank you, good night, good night.