Ohio Mysteries

Five mysteries in Ohio that involve the gravesite of notable Ohioans. We explore the strange habits of the granite ball over the Charles Merchant Family plot, why Chief Joc-O-Sot might be haunting the Joining us is Michael Bonano, administrator of the Facebook page "Too Late For Autographs, Ohio," who has visited each of the featured sites. www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patr...

Cincinnati arrested and convicted Posteal Laskey Jr. for running over and stabbing to death a woman he picked up in a stolen cab. But was Laskey also responsible for the rape and choking deaths of six other women in 1966? Officials believe he was the "Cincinnati Strangler," though he was never convicted in those deaths. The story was made more complicated because Laskey was black, during a height...

In 1925-26, a man with a face painted red and a maniacal laugh stalked the west end of Toledo, randomly selecting women and clubbing them - many, to the death. A serial killer still unidentified to this date had this city on the edge of hysteria, and with good reason. www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.twitter.com/mysteriesohio www.facebook.com/ohiom...

When Albert Sabin graduated from medical school in New York, his mentor encouraged him to focus his career on a killer that had terrorized a generation: Polio. So when Sabin accepted a job as a medical researcher at the University of Cincinnati, he did just that. After solving the mysteries of the virus, he made Cincinnati the first American city immune to the illness. www.ohiomysteries.com feedba...

Why does the Painesville, Ohio tombstone of Joseph Linhart proclaim him to be "Not Guilty." Why did thousands of people visit the McMorran family plot in a small St. Paris, Ohio cemetery in 1975? Why does Jessica Lyn Keen have markers in two different cemeteries in West Jefferson, Ohio? www.ohiomysteries.comfeedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.twitter.com/mysteriesohio www....

In 1945, Jim Heckman of Akron, Ohio was knocked out of the sky over Germany by an enemy pilot. More than 40 years later, a German man who had been made an orphan by American bombers works to bring the two pilots together in a unique friendship. www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.twitter.com/mysteriesohio www.facebook.com/ohiomysteries Additional musi...

10-Minute Mystery: How old is Ohio? Ohio has been treated like a state since 1803, when Congress extended federal laws to the land. But in 1953, researchers preparing for Ohio's 150th birthday learned something stunning: Congress had never actually declared Ohio a state. So how old is Ohio, and what does it mean for the eight presidents Ohio gave the country in its first 150 years? www.ohiomysteri...

In 1968, Barbara Ann Butler, a 23-year-old schoolteacher, went to a store in Kettering in the middle of the afternoon. The next day, she was discovered dead on the floor of her car. Four years later, police named their top suspect as Jimmy Wayne Howard and closed her case, saying they were unable to pursue a conviction but were confident of his guilt. www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.c...

In the early 1960s, four American soldiers patrolling the DMZ between South Korea and North Korea separately made an incomprehensible decision - to seek asylum in the communist country. Larry Abshier, a private from Garfield Heights, Ohio, was one of the four, and never seen by anyone in the free world again. His life was a complete mystery until 2004, when one of the defectors was able to leave N...

In the 1942, in an Akron-built Goodyear blimp delivered to the Navy after the start of WWII, a two-man crew set out over the Pacific from San Francisco for a short four-hour patrol in search of Japanese subs. The blimp returned. The crew did not. www.ohiomysteries.comfeedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.twitter.com/mysteriesohio www.facebook.com/ohiomysteries Music: Get Tha...

In a weather event Ohio had never before experienced, a powerful "derecho" thunderstorm formed as Fourth of July revelers gathered along the Lake Erie shoreline for a fireworks show. The storm capsized 200 boats before making its way south to Wayne County and its neighbors, where flash floods devastated communities. In the end, 41 people were killed and an estimated 21,000 homes and businesses dam...

A wild trip through Ohio's geologic past, from when it was a mountain, to when it was a warm tropical sea, to when it became buried beneath a mile of ice. We also share where Ohio allows you to walk on the bottom of the ocean, and how Ohio's unique location contributed to rich resources that range from oil and gas, to quarries of limestone, to one of the most amazing stretches of farmland in the c...

The story of a determined detective who identified - and then caught - a serial killer. In the last of this 3-part series, Tallmadge Captain Doug Bohon describes the trial of Gus Sapharas - from pre-trial hearings that threatened to throw out key evidence, to the nail-biting wait for the jury's verdict. www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.twitter.com/...

The story of a determined detective who identified - and then caught - a serial killer. In Part 2 of this three-part series, Tallmadge Captain Doug Bohon learns the shocking truth of his prime suspect, Gus Sapharas, whose criminal assaults spanned 40 years. www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.twitter.com/mysteriesohio www.facebook.com/ohiomysteries Mu...

The story of a determined detective who identified - and then caught - a serial killer. In Part 1 of this three-part series, Tallmadge Captain Doug Bohon discusses two unsolved homicides from the 1970s - Karen Bentz and Loretta Davis - and what compelled him to pull their files and try one more time to solve these old mysteries. www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohio...

This 2-part series shares recent successes of Othram Inc - a genetic genealogy lab that in the past 12 months has identified seven Ohioans, most of them lying in out-of-state unmarked grave. Tonight, the story of four of them: Brenda Sue Black of Vandalia; Colleen Rice of Portsmouth; Doreen Tiedman of Cleveland; and Douglas Streeter of Bryan. www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.pa...

In the past 12 months, Othram Inc - a genetic genealogy lab that uses DNA to build family trees of unidentified homicide victims - has given three Ohioans their names back. Now the work can begin to find the killers of Florence Charleston of Cleveland, Robert Earl Sanders of Youngstown, and Maggie Sniegowski of Toledo - missing loved ones only known to authorities as Jane Doe or John Doe for decad...

In 1975, 13-year-old David Evans never returned home after heading out to skate at a local park in Boardman, Ohio. He was found dead days later, killed by a diabetic coma because he wasn't home to take his insulin. But who kept him from home, and then tried to hide his body in some bushes?  www.ohiomysteries.comfeedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.twitter.com/mysteriesohio...

In 2011, the owner of nearly 60 exotic animals released them in one final act before taking his own life, setting up a massacre as local law enforcement raced to stop lions, tigers, wolves and bears from fleeing into the wild. Why would a man who spent more than 30 years caring for the animals doom them to such a tragic end? www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomyst...

A hometown mystery: The unique way Willoughby residents came up with their town name, and the century-long obsession the town has with trying to figure out the origin behind Lost Nation Road. We offer two popular theories, and a third that is long forgotten but might be closer to the truth.      www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.twitter.com/mysterie...

Cincinnati's Kate Chase was groomed to be a society lady, but the Civil War-era "Belle of the North" adopted her father's ambition for the White House and became a political strategist that made her the most influential woman in the nation's capital. Yet her end read like a tragic Victorian novel. www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.twitter.com/myster...

Episode Notes: One of the most confounding disappearances in Ohio history happened in May of 1978, when Judy Martins vanished on a late night walk between a friend's dorm room and her own room at Kent State Engleman Hall. With no evidence of foul play, the police eventually destroyed their file on her and there is no active investigation to find out what happened. But those who know her say she ha...

In Loveland, Ohio, a medieval castle rises above the Little Miami River. It was built by stones hauled up from the river by a World War I vet obsessed with the era of knights and chivalry. Harry Andrews was one-of-a-kind, and the Knights group he found still operates the castle as a museum.      www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.twitter.com/mysterie...

In 1990, Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig were brutally murdered in their Portage County home during a burglary. A few years later, four men were named as their assailants, with one sentenced to death. But with no physical evidence putting any of them at the site, and confessions determined by an expert as having been coerced, did the real killer get away? www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.co...

In 1897, Cincinnati's own Mary Becker Greene became the first woman to receive a steamboat pilot's license, and she and her husband spent the next 50 years plying the rivers of Ohio and the Mississippi. She later joined her son Tom aboard his Delta Queen. But after she died in her stateroom, some folks became convinced Captain Mary never left the ship.      www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomyste...