Ohio Mysteries

On March 15, 1971, sheep rancher Clifford Badger is returning from a morning business trip when he stops to pick up the mail outside his farmhouse in West Salem. He finds a box of homemade chocolates, and a simple handwritten message that reads "To Our Good Neighbor." A few minutes later, Clifford would be lying dead on his kitchen floor. His wife, who had sampled the candy as well, had time to ca...

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...

Two days after Christmas in 1928, 4-year-old Melvin Horst is playing in a vacant lot with a friend when he realizes its dinner time. "Goodbye, Bobbie. I got to go home now," he says. An hour later, all his parents find is a little red wagon abandoned in the front yard. For the next year, local bootleggers and mobsters would use Melvin's disappearance to try and put each other out of business. Eigh...

Episode Notes On May 4, 1937, Ruth Baumgardner said goodnight to her sorority sisters, then went to her dorm room at Ohio Wesleyan to study for a test. But Ruth didn't make it to that class, or any other class, the next day. A national manhunt was launched. Two years later, her parents would privately ask police to close the case, with no public explanation of what they had learned or if Ruth had...

In 1953, Ron Tammen Jr. was a 19-year-old Maple Heights man nearing the end of his sophomore year at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. On April 19, a typical evening, Ron walked into his dorm room to study - and was never seen again. www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.twitter.com/mysteriesohio www.facebook.com/ohiomysteries Music: Shorts Season, by T...

Episode Notes In 1977, a Barberton man made a remarkable claim: He was the legal owner of the corpse of John Wilkes Booth. How could an Ohio optometrist come to own the embalmed remains of arguably America's most infamous assassin? Follow the twists and turns of this bizarre mystery before you scoff. www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.twitter.com/mys...

Episode Notes: In 1979, 17-year-old Mary Leonard and her boyfriend, 19-year-old Ricky Beard, disappeared after a date night to a drive-in movie theater. Years passed, both families clinging to hope that their loved ones were alive, especially after private investigators and police detectives suggested they may have run off together. In Part 1 of this 2-part story, we talk to Ricky's sister, Luanne...

Beard and Leonard: Waiting for Justice, Part 2 In Part 1, 17-year-old Mary Leonard and 19-year-old Ricky Beard of Akron vanish after a date night to a drive-in movie theater. Their whereabouts are unknown for nearly six years, their families helpless but to follow every lead and tip, alternating between despair and hope. In this episode, learn about the discovery in 1985 that ended one mystery whi...

Episode Notes: At 5 a.m. in the pre-dawn darkness of Portage County, a police chief in northern Portage County and two sheriff deputies in southern Portage County are calling in reports of a saucer-shaped object plowing through the sky. Two deputies will even give chase, soon joined by a patrolman in another county as they follow the object all the way into Pennsylvania - and into history. The eve...

Episode Notes What if you heard someone pelting your house with rocks, then investigated to find yourself face to face with a large hairy beast on two legs. In 1978, the Cayton family and several others living in and around Minerva reported seeing a manlike creature they couldn't identify lurking in the woods, something that has come to be known simply as "the Minerva Monster." Akron Beacon Journa...

Episode Notes: Phil Trexler joins us to discuss the mystery of Raymond Timbrook! Raymond Timbrook of Mentor was a successful businessman, engineer and father of two teenage sons when someone coldly executed him as he sat in his car on the side of the road in a vacant development in Kirtland Hills. More than 25 years later, his unsolved murder still haunts Phil Trexler, who spent his career coverin...

Episode Notes: On Dec. 8, 1909, the train ferry SS Marquette & Bessemer No. 2 sank during a winter storm on Lake Erie as it made its daily run between Conneaut, Ohio, and Port Stanley, Ontario. More than 30 lives were lost, and residents on both shores reported hearing the haunting wail of its horn as it desperately searched for a port before slipping beneath the waves. More than a century later,...

Episode Notes: In 1974, 17-year-old Linda Pagano reportedly stormed out of the apartment she shared with her stepfather and was never seen again. Many presumed her to be a runaway. In 2015, a Cleveland woman became curious about a cemetery index that mentioned the interred bones of an unknown young woman with a bullet hole in her skull, buried in 1975. How Internet web sleuths turned Linda Pagano...

Episode Notes In 1758, the British took Fort Duquesne in Pittsburgh from the French who had established it. But before their arrival, the French spared 10 men to whisk away their army's payroll. They loaded 16 packhorses with gold and silver and headed for Fort Detroit. They never made it. The British intercepted the small detail, killing eight of the 10 Frenchmen. But not before the French soldie...

Episode Notes  The 1987 Holiday season was a tense one in the Akron area. Over an 18-week period, four area women, all doing absolutely average activities, were snatched from the streets, raped and murdered. While evidence suggests the timing was a coincidence and the homicides  were work of at least three different men, fear of a serial killer kept residents on edge from August through Christmas...

Episode Notes For a century, Northeast Ohio teens have made trips to Rogues Hollow in the dead of night to look for its ghost train, headless horse, and listen for weeping at Crybaby Bridge. We'll share the real history of this once-lawless frontier. www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.twitter.com/mysteriesohio www.facebook.com/ohiomysteries Learn mor...

Episode Notes Join us as we tell the story of Marion Brubaker, a 12-year-old Akron area girl whose life was suddenly snuffed out as se rode her bike home from the library in 1962.  Fifty-Six years later, her killer has never been brought to justice. Who is Marion, and what do we know about the day her life ended? www.ohiomysteries.com feedback@ohiomysteries.com www.patreon.com/ohiomysteries www.tw...