The Cumminsville Ripper

Throughout 1904, a series of assaults and murders would make headlines in the Cincinnati neighborhood of Cumminsville. There, in the area surrounding Spring Grove Cemetery, a beast of a man preyed upon vulnerable women traveling at night…

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Mary McDonald was a woman facing some challenges. She was 31 years old and there was plenty of sorrow to drink away, so on Saturday night, April 30th, 1904, she met up with her sister at the Stagaman residence at 7 Moline Court, in the Cumminsville neighborhood of north Cincinnati.

McDonald, her sister and her husband Charles reportedly drank three buckets of beer. Then, around 10 pm, Charles Stagaman offered to walk Mary, sometimes known as May or Mamie to her friends, to catch a streetcar at Knowlton’s corner.

Once there, McDonald and Stagaman instead visited a number of saloons and reportedly had five whiskeys each. The barkeep said they left in the early morning hours of May 1st.

Stagaman would later say he put Mary McDonald on a streetcar for home; the College Hill and Main Street line. For some unknown reason, Mary McDonald left the car just a few blocks later.

At 2:05 AM the engineer on engine number 9 saw Mary McDonald near the tracks along Mill Creek, leaning against a telegraph pole in a hollow in the creek bottom. It was his opinion that she was in a drunken stupor.

The engineer, David Shoemaker, passed Mary McDonald near the Ludlow Avenue crossing. The Enquirer reported McDonald was swaying to and fro and held her hat in her hand. The Enquirer story said “he called to her to look out or she would fall,” as the locomotive passed.

Returning on its inbound route just over two hours later, at 4:17 am, the conductor on the same train, James Flavin, discovered Mary McDonald lying along the tracks. She had suffered a terrible, violent attack, and her left leg had been severed above the knee by a passing train.

She was the first in a string of serial murders that would terrorize Cumminsville so completely that, for years afterward, the Cincinnati press referred to it as The Murder Zone.

You don’t have to go far these days to find crime-related news and entertainment. We’re reminded everyday that “true crime” is an ever-present obsession in a society where we’ve chosen to always advocate for justice and against evil. In that context, the story of The Cumminsville Ripper is shockingly little-known — it has all the elements of a compelling mystery, yet to be solved, but very few people know about it.

A beast of a man stalks the foggy cemetery and lurks around the train station, waiting for vulnerable female victims traveling alone at night. He strikes, rapes, kills… then vanishes.

In the course of researching the Cumminsville Ripper, we’ve discovered that much of the information available is incorrect, incomplete, or otherwise vague in a way that causes the case to be poorly understood. As a result, we will make a point along the way to correct a few commonly-repeated misconceptions and clarify a few things that will let us establish a basic vocabulary and landscape to understand the case.

The first, most vital aspect of the case that should be understood is the absolutely unique time in which the Cumminsville Ripper murders happened.

The year was 1904. To our friends across the pond it was the Edwardian Era, and in Cincinnati, it was a time of rapid development. However, one of the early obstacles to urban development was transportation, especially in cities like Cincinnati, where the topography is a challenge in the winter, and even more so in the era of the horse and carriage.

Cincinnati is built around a basin, with the low-lying creek hollow in the center surrounded by a semicircle of hills, and in the early days of settlement it was nearly impossible to navigate many of the unpaved streets with a horse and wagon. Early attempts at horse-drawn street cars didn’t work much better.

The solution to settling Cincinnati’s more far-flung neighborhoods came in the form of the train… the diesel locomotive and the electric streetcar.

Now if your attention is starting to wander at all this talk of the train, wait. This is important.

The neighborhood of Cumminsville was once an independent town before it was absorbed into Cincinnati. Today it is divided into two separate neighborhoods by the Interstate — the South Cumminsville neighborhood and “Northside.”

1904 in Cincinnati was a time of trains. The Cumminsville neighborhood had three major rail lines running right through it, and ridership was huge.

For example, one recent year, Cincinnati had 20-million people ride the bus.

In 1904, it’s estimated 100-million people rode the train in the city.

Everybody was using mass transit. Cars and trucks did not yet clog the streets. And that’s what makes it a unique time — and perhaps harder for those of us from a car-centric culture to understand.

And if we can’t understand the time, then we won’t understand the crime.

This is what I found important to grasp.

The north end of Cumminsville had a rail line for the Cincinnati Hamilton and Dayton railway that would be considered an “interurban” — an urban train that also goes city to city.

Through the center of Cumminsville, there was an electric streetcar system, with cars that ran on tracks up and down the main thoroughfares. Another rail line for the Big Four Railroads, also known as the B&O, stretched through the southern part of the neighborhood, roughly paralleling Mill Creek.

All three of these railroads were interconnected at various points in Cumminsville’s history which resulted in a spiderweb of tracks and depots (which they called a “waiting room” in 1904) all over the city.

In reviewing historical press accounts of the Cumminsville Ripper case, it pays to understand this setting. When you find a story that says someone “caught a car” at a certain location, it helps to comprehend these distinctions.

The train would be a very common setting in the crimes of the Cumminsville Ripper, starting with Mary McDonald.

Big Four Railroad’s Engine Number 9 discovered Mary McDonald lying along the tracks on their inbound route at 4:17 AM on May 1st, 1904. She was a dark shape on the tracks in the engine’s brilliant headlight and the engineer rolled his locomotive to a stop and notified the authorities. It was clear Mary had been struck by a train and her leg had been severed above the knee.

Believe it or not, Mary McDonald survived initially, but she was delirious, suffered hallucinations, and never managed to give a coherent statement before she succumbed to her injuries at the hospital. Early media reports suggested investigators were favoring a “drunken accident” explanation.

On Monday, May 2nd, the Cincinnati Post reported Police Lieutenant Winters told Chief Millikin that it was “his opinion that while ill from the effects of liquor she walked upon the railroad tracks and was run over.”

In spite of the quick assessment, the Post report pointed out there was an unexplained “bruise” behind Mary McDonald’s ear, like that from a beating with a blunt instrument.

Naturally, the police interviewed Mary McDonald’s last contact, Charles W. Stagaman, her brother-in-law, and he attempted to account for his whereabouts on the night of April 30th.

I pause here to point out a clarification: Charles W. Stagaman’s name has been reported in a variety of ways. He is listed as “John Stagman” in several stories with notable inaccuracies, (including the story someone used as the source for an extremely poorly written Wikipedia entry for the Cumminsville murders). In the interest of getting it right, we dug into it a little bit and believe the correct name of the last person to see Mary McDonald alive is: Charles W. Stagaman.

Is it a coincidence that the case is unsolved when we have to work so hard just to get the very first suspect’s name correct? But I digress…

When questioned, Stagaman told investigators he arrived home from work to find Mary McDonald hanging out with his wife. They drank beer together until about 10:15 pm. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported on May 5, 1904:

“She prepared to go home at 10:15 o’clock and Mrs. Stagaman was preparing to go with her to the car, when [Charles] Stagaman said he was going to take a walk to Schueler’s saloon. At this time the McDonald woman told Mrs. Stagaman that she need not go with her as “Charlie” could take her to the car.”

Stagaman incorrectly told investigators he’d sent Mary off on a streetcar at Knowlton’s Corner sometime around 11 pm. Later, when confronted, he admitted that he had been very drunk and had to consult with the barkeep to freshen his memory. The Enquirer story detailed their movements for the rest of the night:

“Stagaman said that they walked to Schueler’s Saloon, at Spring Grove and Hamilton Avenues, and had two drinks of whiskey there. They then went to John Wagner’s saloon, on Spring Grove avenue, at 10:45 o’clock.”

After returning to Schueler’s Saloon (also known as the Elk Saloon) about 11 pm, they each had another whisky and a lemon soda. The barkeep, a man named Frank Stegman (with an ‘e’), said it was about 1:40 AM when the two left.

Approximately 25 minutes later Mary was spotted by the Conductor of Big Four Engine 9 on his outbound route, leaning against a telegraph pole, just a few feet from where she would be found on the inbound route at 4:17.

Her location means she would have had to exit the streetcar almost immediately after parting company with Stagaman, cross Mill Creek, and walk through the creek bottom trail along the Big Four tracks, covering a distance of one mile in 25 minutes. The Enquirer story described the scene found by Conductor Flavin:

“The blood upon the leg was coagulated and the wound had ceased bleeding. There was also clotted blood on her face from her nose. The clothing was not disarranged, only as it had been by the train which struck her. From appearances she must have been there about an hour. He smelled liquor on her breath. The hat was found about six feet to the east, and her chatelaine bag was lying nearby. Her right arm was beneath her neck, and the left was outstretched as though she had fallen.”

One interesting note. Conductor Flavin was so troubled by the event that he returned to the scene after his shift to do his own investigation. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported his findings:

“He examined the ground and found footprints of a woman alongside the tracks. From the position of the footprints the person must have been staggering. He followed these to where the body was found and there found a foot mark alongside the track that had scuffed up the dirt and appeared as though she had slipped and fallen upon the track. There were no other footprints discernible.”

It had been almost a week since Mary McDonald’s death and many were still characterizing her death as a drunken accident. The lack of footprints contributed to the belief that a young woman who’d had too much to drink staggered onto the railroad tracks and was struck.

Stagaman remained under suspicion for some time, understandably, because even then, investigators understood that victims frequently knew their killers.

Unforeseen events would soon challenge that notion.

We don’t know the exact date of the Cumminsville Ripper's next attempted kill, because the event itself was kept quiet for several weeks at the request of the victim's family. However, we know things were quiet most of the summer. Schools dismissed for the season, Independence Day came and went and the residents of Cincinnati went about their lives. Cumminsville was uneventful until mid-September.

Then, Miss Josephine Clausing was attacked one night as she was crossing the CH&D railroad trestle near Dreman Avenue, on her way home, about 7:30 pm. “Shut up or I’ll kill you!” the man commanded. He grabbed her throat and hit her in the face, loosening a few of her teeth.

Two friends who had been trailing behind her turned the corner from Dreman Avenue and could see something happening near the trestle, but could not make out what it was. They continued toward the trestle and found their friend, Josephine Clausing, bleeding and only semiconscious. Her purse was missing and the man was gone, but the attacker left a clue.

A slouch hat.

Miss Clausing later gave a description of her attacker. She said he was short, heavy-set, and had a mustache. Josephine was taken to a saloon on the corner of Dreman and Dawson. A doctor who was called to the scene found she had a three-inch long cut on the back of her head. This attack would not be publicly reported until November.

On Friday night, September 30th, 1904, approximately two weeks after the attack on Josephine Clausing, a Cumminsville woman identified only as “Mrs. Wheeler” went for a walk with her sister. The women soon noticed a man was following them and were frightened enough to run back to Mrs Wheeler’s home near the intersection of Mad Anthony Street and Ludlow Place. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer Mrs. Wheeler said:

“His slouch hat was pulled down over his eyes and his coat collar was turned up. One hand was thrust into his coat pocket as if it contained some kind of a weapon. I noticed a small package in his other pocket. He was muttering to himself and naturally myself and my sister were greatly frightened by his conduct.”

The attacker reportedly hung around for awhile and then left. Mrs. Wheeler said he walked to the nearby railroad tracks and disappeared in the direction of “Lovers Lane.”

Here’s another moment where I’d like to pause for clarification… Mrs. Wheeler also gave a description of her attacker’s race. She believed he was “mulatto.” However, the Cumminsville Ripper has never been conclusively characterized as any particular race. Others who would cross his path would disagree with Mrs. Wheeler and describe the attacker as clearly a white man. Considering the time and the potential for race bias, our research team has chosen to not reference the attacker’s race at all, other than the clarification you’ve just heard. The Enquirer wrapped up their story by saying:

“Mrs. Wheeler is positive the man was bent on serious mischief.”

Two days later, on Saturday morning, October 2nd, the body of Louisa Mueller, known to her friends as “Lulu,” was found just off Spring Grove Avenue on Fergus Street. According to the description offered by the Cincinnati Enquirer on October 3, 1904, the “unimproved continuation of Fergus Street” at the time was known as “Lovers Lane.”

Lulu had apparently been severely beaten. She had two deep lacerations to her face, and the base of her skull had been fractured.

Lulu Mueller’s body was less than 50 feet from the tracks and a trail of blood had dripped from the weapon between her body and the tracks. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, an initial theory that she had been struck by a train before crawling to the spot where she was found was quickly discounted.

As investigators retraced Lulu Mueller’s last movements, they were able to establish a few facts, but first we need another clarification.

In the case of the Cumminsville Ripper, we see many descriptions and references to “Lover’s Lane,” and although the area near Spring Grove and Fergus was a lovers’ lane of sorts in our modern conception of the word, if you read between the lines of press coverage from the day, you realize they were also saying something else — Lover’s Lane in many cases was code for a kind of “Red Light District.” Things were likely considered a little wild, with drinking, drugs and sex out on Lover’s Lane.

It’s possible that the investigation got off to a slow start due to the public’s perception of who Mary and Lulu were.

Investigators were able to put together a good, if incomplete, timeline of Lulu Mueller’s last hours. About 8pm she met up with friends William Wilson, a painter, and Theodore Salmon, an expressman, at Spring Grove Avenue and Fergus Street. Salmon’s stable was nearby. The men were socializing with two female acquaintances when Wilson noticed Lulu Mueller, the girlfriend of an acquaintance, Frank Eastman. A short time later, Lulu spoke to Wilson and told him she couldn’t talk to him because Eastman was the jealous-type.

Forty-five minutes later, Albert Glins of 4149 Mad Anthony Street reported seeing Lulu one block south, at Knowlton’s Corner, where young people were holding a political rally. It was the last time she was seen alive.

Just like the Mary McDonald case, attention focused on the girl’s love interest. Frank Eastman was questioned about his relationship with Lulu Mueller and his whereabouts on the night she was murdered.

According to multiple reports, Lulu Mueller had a number of love interests and had scheduled a “date” with Frank Eastman that night. According to one report, they had a “tryst” scheduled to happen “at the entrance to Fergus Street.” Although his story wasn’t airtight, the police were satisfied that there were enough witnesses to Frank’s whereabouts that night that they concluded he had not been with Mueller and had nothing to do with her death.

The coroner’s report said Lulu Mueller had last eaten grapes, onions and tomatoes at dinner time and the state of digestion fixed her approximate time of death as 10:00 PM. Her whereabouts for the 75 minutes between when Albert Glins’ saw her at Knowlton’s Corner and her death are unaccounted for.

The spot where Lulu Mueller’s body was found is one block from the spot where Mrs. Wheeler and her sister were pursued two days earlier. It was less than half a block from both the CH&D tracks to the north and the streetcar line on Spring Grove to the south.

The last place Lulu Mueller was seen alive is the same place Mary McDonald was sent home on a streetcar. Knowlton’s Corner.

On November 2nd, 1904, Miss Dorothy Hannaford, who was the daughter of former Mayor Samuel Hannaford, waited for a transfer streetcar at the corner of Spring Grove Avenue and Winton Road, at the southeast corner of Spring Grove Cemetery, just across the creek from where Mary McDonald’s body was found in May. It was about 7:30 pm.

According to the Cincinnati Post:

“She noticed on the opposite side of the street a low, rather heavy set man, standing half behind a tree. He seemed to be hiding, and yet looking for someone he expected to arrive on a Clark Street car. The man had on a slouch hat, and his face was in the shadow. His attention became fixed on Miss Hannaford, and he emerged from behind the tree and ventured half out of the shadows toward her. Just at that moment another car came up and a young man alighted. The other man retreated behind the tree, and Miss Hannaford’s car came along and she got on.”

About one hour later in the same location, two residents, Mrs. Unkaback and Mrs. Hagerdorn, reported a beastly man came out of the trees in the cemetery and grabbed Mrs. Unkaback by the arm. The Akron Beacon Journal reported Mrs. Hagerdorn gave the attacker a vicious punch in the face and he fled.

Twenty minutes later, Motorman Hicks in car number 9 of the Winton Place streetcar line said, at 8:50 pm he saw the suspect. As the train made the turn from Spring Grove Avenue onto Winston Road, the headlight swept across the scenery and Motorman Hicks saw the suspect standing just behind the waiting room. He aroused the suspicion of Motorman Hicks, who noticed he was still there when the train passed the junction again 18 minutes later. If the suspect had been waiting for a train, two had passed during that time. Hicks said the man wore a slouch hat, dark pants and a dark jacket.

As the sun set that night, a thick, heavy fog rolled in and blanketed Cumminsville, as if nature itself conspired to pay homage to the legacy of Jack the Ripper. A person reportedly couldn’t see their hand in front of their face in Cincinnati that night, and the fog did its job. The arrival of daylight revealed another horror.

A stone’s throw from the spot where Dorothy Hannaford noticed a stalker, and where someone had seized Mrs. Unkaback by the arm, and where Motorman Hicks had seen a suspicious person behind the waiting room, Alma Steinigeweg, met her end.

Our best guess tells us Alma Steinigeweg (who went by the Americanized last name ‘Steinway’) arrived at the Winton Road and Spring Grove Avenue waiting room about 9:15 PM, when she was viciously attacked.

From the examination of the crime scene investigators were able to deduce Miss Steinway had been attacked with a blunt object right in the street. Her hair combs had flown off her head when she was struck and her head wound left a pool of blood on Spring Grove Avenue.

The killer dragged her body by the wrists across Spring Grove Avenue, through an opening in a fence that separated the street from the Mill Creek hollow, then picked her up and carried her, slipping and sliding as he descended the embankment. He dragged Alma Steinway further, then stopped to rest. We know because detectives found a pool of blood in the spot where the killer paused to catch his breath. The madman then grabbed her by the ankles and dragged Alma Steinway’s body to the spot where it was eventually found, at the east end of what is today the Mill Creek Greenway.

Why would a killer go to so much trouble?

They didn’t express it in the same way we do today, but in 1904, when a story in the newspaper said Alma Steinway suffered a “terrible outrage” in addition to her murder, the meaning was clear.

The conductor of a streetcar had discovered her body. A story in the Washington Times spared no details:

“The dead body of Alma Steinway was not found until 10 o’clock of the morning after her death. It was then that a conductor of a street car saw her body in the big vacant lot that extends from Spring Grove Avenue to the tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio Southwestern and Big Four Railroads. It was lying in the rear of the lot and on the bank of Mill Creek, which flows through that section. The girl’s head rested in a big pool of blood. Her eyes were wide open. The teeth were missing, and her face completely covered with blood. In one hand was clasped a transfer.”

Later they would report a trail of blood was found from the Lotter street tracks, and several of Alma’s teeth were found along the trail. She had multiple skull fractures and her jaw was broken. Investigators also found shoe prints along the muddy, bloody trail.

Part way down the path from Spring Grove Avenue investigators found Alma’s hat, and nearby, a strange paper bundle. Inside were a pair of canvas shoes that were packaged in the paper by Falkenstein’s shoe store, presumably when the buyer of new shoes decided to wear them out and had his old shoes wrapped up to go.

It is a clue that remains unexplained even today.

The Ripper must have been enjoying hearing the public statements of well-meaning-but-mistaken streetcar Conductor Frank Limle as winter approached. In the weeks after Alma’s murder, investigators searched for a man Limle had mentioned as suspicious.

Depending on which press account you’re reading it goes something like this: a man got on the streetcar with Alma at Knowlton’s Corner. The two of them rode together to Winton Road, where Alma Steinway got off to transfer, and the man followed her off.

Pretty damning, right? The implication is clear.

Conductor Limle said he recognized the man. He said the man frequently rode the train with Alma Steinway, and Limle said he would recognize the man if he saw him again.

With that, some thought an arrest was imminent. They just have to find this guy.

However, investigators soon discovered that Limle had the entire scenario wrong.

There had not been one man on the car with Alma, there had been two. There had also been another woman on the car. When she spoke to investigators, it became clear they had been chasing a red herring.

Both men on the car with Alma were local residents, the woman said, frequently rode the car together, and she said the men had gone the opposite direction as Alma Steinway when they left the car. The police eventually located the men and verified their identities and stories.

Side note: in the course of researching this story, we found it interesting that Alma Steinway got on a car at Knowlton’s Corner — the same place Charles Stagaman claimed to have put Mary McDonald on a streetcar and also the location where Lulu Mueller was last seen alive.

Alma Steinway came from a different station in life than Mary McDonald and Lulu Mueller. Steinway was a respected local telephone operator and the daughter of a prominent local citizen. Just 18 years old, Alma Steinway’s murder grabbed the attention of Cincinnati residents in a way the murders of McDonald and Mueller hadn’t. Bell Telephone Company offered a $1,000 reward. Soon, everyone had seen the Ripper, or someone worthy of suspicion.

On the night of Alma Steinway’s murder, there were reports of a man matching the Ripper’s description showing up in a saloon and asking the barkeep for directions to the quickest freight train out of town.

Police questioned a man known to local residents as a harasser of women. On November 7th, 1904 the Cincinnati Post reported:

“Another man who will be questioned closely as to his whereabouts on the fatal night is a ‘Jack the Pincher,’ who, it is said, has been annoying young girls for some time. The man is known by sight to many, but his real identity is not known. He is said to be a mechanic, and has been seen to carry a hatchet or hammer on many occasions. Either could have inflicted the wounds that caused the death of the girl.”

The residents of Cumminsville were getting a little restless. They were demanding answers from city leaders, better lighting on city streets and better policing from law enforcement. Their restlessness was justified. The attacks would keep coming.

The very next night, November 4th, shortly after 10 pm, the Weimer sisters and Mamie Roddie were accosted by a man who came out of the Spring Grove Cemetery shadows, struck at the girls and attempted to throw one of them to the ground. The Washington Times reported the girls turned on him and fought back, pulling his hair and gouging his eyes. The Ripper knew he was outnumbered and fled; leapt over the wall of the cemetery and disappeared among the headstones.

Two nights later, at about 11pm, Mrs. Harry Winnes answered a loud knock at the door of her home at 1323 Alabama Avenue. A short, burly man at the door asked for some food in a tone Mrs. Winnes would later describe as “surly.” The Times reported:

“The stranger pretended to leave the premises when she declined to feed him, but instead he slipped to the rear door of the house and hid behind it. Mrs. Winners saw him standing there when she went to the back yard. She did not get a glimpse of him until her foot was across the threshold. Then he pounced on her and seized her throat in an iron grip.”

“She struggled with him, but he was bending her slowly back across his knee, his eyes glaring at her, his powerful hands steadily squeezing the breath out of her body, when his clutch on her throat slipped and she took advantage of the instant’s respite to utter one piercing scream. Mr. Winnes was in the house. He had changed his mind, on the moment’s spur, about going to the pharmacy, and was walking through the front door when his wife’s cry rang through the hall. He passed through the house in long bounds, snatching a gun from an antler rack as he sped to her aid. The woman’s assailant heard his heavy tread and fled. Mr. Winnes pursued the fiend, blazing away with both barrels of his shotgun on the run, but the Ripper escaped in the darkness.”

Now that sounds like a hell of a story, right? And wow, that guy could be the Ripper, right?

Well, not so much.

1904 was the era of yellow journalism and the outlet that printed that story is the Washington Times whose coverage of the case needs to be closely scrutinized for sensationalism. Like many papers of the era, they struggled with journalistic ethics and often sensationalized headlines and story content for sales.

Here’s the same story from the local Cincinnati Post, November 7th, 1904:

“A short heavy-set unknown man, who gave his name as George R. Hamilton, of Indianapolis, when arrested by Patrolman Piepenbrink, Sunday evening, badly frightened the wife of Harry C. Winners, 1323 Alabama Avenue, Cumminsville.”

“The man went to the door and asked for something to eat, but left when refused. A few minutes later Mrs. Winners went into the back yard and found the man hiding behind the woodshed door.”

“She screamed with fright and ran to the street, while the man started to run out the back way. Patrolman Piepenbrink caught him. In Police Court, he was fined $50 and costs on a charge of loitering.”

Notice, there’s no husband rushing to save the day in this version. No shotgun blasts in the night. And the assailant didn’t get away in the Post’s version, either. Patrolman Piepenbrink issued him a citation and it was the last we ever heard of George Hamilton of Indianapolis. We can only presume he wasn’t considered a plausible suspect to be the Cumminsville Ripper.

The attack on Mrs. Winnes was not in the same area of town as the others, and although the event in question is typically included in the list of assaults attributed to the Cumminsville Ripper, there is much disagreement about whether it should be.

Josephine Hewitt, would be next to encounter the Ripper. And she was ready. According to the Akron Beacon Journal:

“But for the fact that she had a revolver concealed in the folds of her shirt waist and did not hesitate to make use of it, Miss Josephine Hewitt would have fallen a victim to Cincinnati’s ‘Jack the Ripper.’ Miss Hewitt lives in Cumminsville and her encounter with the fiend was within a few rods of the place where May McDonald, Lulu Mueller and Alma Steinway were slain and a dozen other girls attacked within six months.”

“She was on her way home about 10 o’clock Friday night when she encountered a rough-looking man, who appeared to have emerged from Spring Grove Cemetery. She was prepared and when the man made a grab for her throat she first landed a stiff blow in his left eye and then whipped out her revolver. When her assailant saw the revolver he turned and fled, but Miss Hewitt opened fire on him and continued blazing away until every chamber of her revolver was empty. Without waiting to see whether the bullets had found their mark she ran home as fast as she could.”

Point of clarification again here. Several online sources at the time of this podcast, including the Wikipedia entry, list Josephine Hewitt’s encounter as November 22. This event actually happened on Friday night, November 11th, 1904 and was reported in the Saturday editions the following day, November 12th.

Two days later, on Monday, November 14th, Mrs. William Wergel and her mother, Mrs. Robert Kelley, encountered the supposed wild man while passing through the woods of Spring Grove Cemetery. They screamed and fled through a cornfield to the street and the man disappeared into the cemetery.

The very next night, in a story with only scant detail, Mrs. Phillip Gerbig reported being attacked twice in the same night at Spring Grove Avenue and Winton Road, and both times she fought her assailant and fled.

Thanksgiving came and went in Cumminsville and there was no more mayhem from the Ripper. Then Christmas and New Years — 1905 dawned without any new blood in the streets. People dared not hope that the killer’s reign of terror had come to an end, but with each passing day it seemed more likely.

This is a good place to reflect.

After hearing this much of the story, our first question was where were the police while all of this was going on? Your puzzlement is justified. Three women were dead and nearly a dozen had seen or had an encounter with the Ripper, many of them in locations where someone had just been attacked the day before; the hour before. How did they not stake out the Spring Grove Cemetery or the train cars?

Of course, there’s no definitive answer to that question, but it helps to remember the time. In 1904, the FBI didn’t even exist. The FBI’s forerunner, the Bureau of Investigation, wouldn’t even be created for another 4 years.

Undercover cops were a special circumstance kind of operation then. Police Departments did not have the huge investigative divisions of a modern police force.

Even more significant than the difference in policing, however, was a difference in the attitude and perception of murder in 1904. To most people, if they heard there had been a murder, they immediately assumed there had been a robbery. Serious crimes were presumed to be property-crime related.

There were multiple stories about Mary McDonald which speculated about a robbery motive. In every case, if any of the victim’s valuables were missing or even believed missing, the papers would mention it, but within those stories, there’s another telling sentiment we see repeated again and again. Some people kill just for the thrill of it.

I’m paraphrasing multiple sources for the Cumminsville Killer case, all of which printed some variation of that sentiment.

Today, it’s a fact of life. Somebody is gonna kill tonight, somewhere in the world, just for the thrill of it. We all know it and understand it and hopefully, prepare ourselves for it.

In 1904, that was a novel concept — a surprise to most people, including law enforcement. They simply didn’t yet police their community with the understanding they needed.

Hey, that guy that attacked those women on Spring Grove and Winton might show up again tonight, just because he enjoys killing.

In 1904, the question would be “Why would he show up in that spot again, all desolate and dark, when there’s nobody there to rob?”

There were a LOT of missed opportunities.

For those familiar with the Zodiac Killer case, there’s one encounter that stands out as the closest police ever came to capturing the killer. It was the moment when a police officer drove right by the suspect as he was about to enter the Presidio because the officer believed the suspect he was looking for was a black man. It’s a painful missed opportunity.

Similarly, the Cumminsville Ripper case had a moment where we were a hair’s-breadth from having him in handcuffs — if only the crew of the Clark Street car had known who they were looking for.

Please bear with me. We include this story at length because it’s that important.

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Saturday, November 5th:

“At 9:39 o’clock on [Wednesday] night a Clark Street car manned by Motorman Smith and Conductor Wm. Ehlers, drew up at the loop at the Chester Park terminus for a wait of two minutes before returning to the city. Noticing a figure seated at the dark end of the bench, Conductor Ehlers strolled over and sized the man up. A slouch hat was pulled down low over his brows, and on the pretense of looking at his watch Ehlers leaned against the sandbox that stands against the fence of the resort and lighted a couple matches. Thinking the man asleep, Ehlers lighted another match, stooped down and looked in the fellow’s face. His eyes were wide open, and he glared at the conductor, but didn’t utter a word.”

“His nose was a short one of the pug variety, and his face was covered with a beard of about a week’s growth. He must have let the mustache remain the last time he shaved, as it stood out more prominently than the whiskers that covered his face.”

“Ehlers slapped the fellow on the shoulder and shouted ‘Hello there; you must be mighty chilly, ain’t you? This is a warm night; why are you muffled up in such a manner?’”

“The man gave vent to an audible grunt, roughly shook Ehler’s hand from his shoulder and turned away from him. The motorman shouted from his car ‘Well it is none of your business if he is cold, Billy. We haven’t time to light a fire under him. It’s time to go to town on our return trip.’”

“Ehlers then ran to his platform, jerked the bell rope and the car started for the city, both men looking back at the mysterious stranger and wondering what he was doing in that place at that lonely time of night.”

The Post story explained the men had forgotten about the incident until they heard Conductor Frank Limle mention the man he had seen riding the train with Alma Steinway. The Post theorized the man seen by Ehlers and Smith may have been the Ripper, who had enough time to kill Alma Steinway, then “rush through the weeds along the banks of Mill Creek in the rear of the factories and gain the bench in front of Chester Park.”

In the minds of many, it is the closest we ever came to capturing the Cumminsville Ripper.

This is a part of the podcast where I might divide the audience down the middle, because this is where our research team has decided to part ways with conventional wisdom on the cases of the Cumminsville Ripper.

According to most sources, the Cumminsville Ripper was quiet from 1904 until New Year’s Eve, 1909, when he came out of retirement to kill Anna Lloyd. Except, in our opinion at least, when you examine the circumstances of Anna Lloyd’s murder, it doesn’t seem to fit the MO of the Cumminsville Ripper.

Anna Lloyd was murdered on her way home from work in a different part of town (in the same sketchy neighborhood where the story of questionable veracity about the attack on Mrs. Winnes happened).

At the time of this writing, several online sources (including the Wikipedia entry) list Anna Lloyd’s last known location as near Spring Grove Cemetery, which would seem an uncanny coincidence regarding the similarity to the attacks of 1904. However, it’s not true.

The authorities speculated Anna Lloyd was murdered as she waited for a Spring Grove Avenue street car, but she was not near the cemetery. She was walking to the waiting room from work at The Hanna-Wilborg lumber offices south of Mill Creek, a mile or more from where the attacks of 1904 happened.

Press coverage of the murder of Anna Lloyd also tells of a dispute she had been having with a co-worker, and there’s a hinted allegation that he may have waited for her on the night she was last seen alive, New Years Eve, 1909.

For all these reasons and others, our team has concluded the Anna Lloyd murder does not belong amongst the attacks of the Cumminsville Ripper and should be investigated on its own.

Taking that a step further, the Cumminsville Ripper has historically been named for five murders — Mary McDonald, Lulu Mueller and Alma Steinway in 1904, Anna Lloyd on New Years’ Eve, 1909, with the fifth supposed victim being Mrs. Mary Hackney.

Mary Hackney was found dead in her home in October of 1910, right in the neighborhood where the murderer killed in 1904. However, Mary Hackney’s murder would also be wildly out-of-character for the Ripper.

The police found the perpetrator tried to clean up the scene and wash blood stains from the floor in the Hackney home. The rags used for the job were missing.

Does that sound like the Cumminsville Ripper, who shows all the characteristics of a disorganized killer with a penchant for wild, violent sprees?

Mary Hackney’s husband also gave statements that shed light on whether she was alive when he left for work that morning, because the testimony he gave directly contradicted witnesses observations. Despite the statement of a neighbor who claimed to have seen Mary Hackney alive on that morning after Mr. Hackney went to work, in all likelihood, the murder of Mary Hackney is a case of domestic murder and does not belong amongst the cases attributed to the Cumminsville Ripper.

If the Cumminsville Ripper isn’t responsible for the murders of Anna Lloyd and Mary Hackney, that leaves us with three known murders, all killed in a violent spree that included attacks survived by nearly a dozen others in 1904.

The crimes of the Ripper happened so long ago that they are truly historic… remembered only because of the words written about them at the time. At the time of this writing, the oldest person on Earth was a Japanese woman who was 1-year old when the Ripper stalked Cumminsville. There’s literally nobody alive who remembers it — no chance to bring a killer to justice, and no hope of bringing closure to a loved-one who lost their sister, daughter, in such a brutal fashion.

So, why are we interested?

I answer that question with a question of my own.

Why wouldn’t we be interested?

We live in an amazing time of technology and innovative detective work from investigators who are redefining criminology.

It feels like we should be able to figure this out, doesn’t it? The Mystery is begging to be solved.

To that end, I’ll venture out on a limb and offer a theory on the identity of the perpetrator, if somewhat non-specific.

Based on the research we did for this episode, it seems very likely that the Cumminsville Ripper is someone who worked for one of the rail or street car companies in Cumminsville.

McDonald, Mueller and Steinway were all found within 75 feet of either the railroad tracks or the street car line.

Remember, after Mary McDonald was found, the papers reported Conductor Flavin’s personal investigation:

If there were actually no other footprints near Mary McDonald’s body it would suggest that her killer may have approached and/or escaped using the train.

It wasn’t too long ago I saw a video of a young man who was standing near the train tracks, taking a selfie video as a freight train barreled past just feet away, and just as he smiled for the camera, a worker riding the train and incensed that the young man would stand so close to the tracks, stuck his foot out as he passed and laid his boot across the young man’s face. Train engineers and conductors don’t take kindly to young thrill-seekers standing too close to the tracks. Or drunks.

Is it possible the Cumminsville Ripper worked for the railroad?

Another theory: Is it possible the Ripper is someone who ran a business at Knowlton’s Corner?

Let’s be clear. All three murdered women were essentially last seen alive in the same place… a really drunk Mary McDonald when Charles Stagaman walked her to the street car, Lulu Mueller listening to a speaker at a political rally, and Alma Steinway’s final train ride began there as well. It all began at Knowlton’s Corner, and it doesn’t take much imagination to wonder whether a killer, of a breed the authorities had not yet acknowledged, stalked young women on the train.

Did he watch them for a time; learn their habits?

Did he know where they would get on and off?

Did he ride the car with them?

It’s not hard to imagine an employee of a Knowlton’s Corner business, or perhaps a resident who overlooked the intersection, following stumbling drunks and preying on pretty young girls using the streetcars to get around.

We just don’t have the answers.

A third theory: The Cumminsville Ripper exhibited a spiraling behavior, ramping up his attacks to be more frequent and more reckless in November of 1904, with attacks on November 3rd, 4th, and 6th, and another cluster of attacks between the 11th and 14th. His attacks were bold, sometimes taking on more than one potential victim at a time. This kind of risky behavior usually leads to the perpetrator getting caught or killed. And the Ripper’s crimes stopped right after this.

Did the Ripper get caught for something, maybe in a neighboring city where the news would not be noticed? Or did he get killed by someone attempting to perpetrate another crime but the authorities never put the connection together?

The case of the Cumminsville Ripper is so interesting that in the course of researching this episode, our team has developed an interest in further exploring the case. There are facts that need to be established and questions that need to be answered.

For example: On May 5th, 1904, when describing the last movements of Mary McDonald as Frank Stagaman accompanied her out of Schueler’s saloon and walked her to the train, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported Stagaman “...said that they walked up to Hoffner Street because Hamilton Avenue is torn up for the laying of conduits.”

The meaning of that statement isn’t clear since Hamilton Avenue and Hoffner Street intersect at Knowlton’s Corner. So, saying someone walked to Hoffner Street is a little nonsensical and clarifying exactly where he put her on the car is one essential question.

Furthermore, the physical landscape of The Murder Zone, as the Cincinnati Press dubbed it, is relevant and important for understanding the case. Much has changed since the construction of Interstates 74 and 75 and many of the street names have changed, but a surprising amount remains the same. As a result, our research team has built a map in Google Earth with relevant locations marked and labeled. If you’d like to see it, you can find the link in the show notes. Even better, if you’re knowledgeable of the case and would like to add our public understanding of this long-ignored murder spree, find that map and request permission to edit.

https://earth.google.com/earth/d/16_3lEH22SooBe66O-x0V62lM8ElFvlNK?usp=sharing

There is one other possibility that should be mentioned… the Cumminsville Ripper may be the same person who killed as many as 5 people in Dayton, Ohio, just 54 miles up the road, between 1906 and 1909. There are similarities in some of the attacks that cannot be ignored — a killer who may have stalked his victims from the train and liked to bludgeon and strangle.

That case, like the case of the Cumminsville Ripper, has been poorly covered and seems loaded with misreporting, irrelevant information, and cases that don’t belong amongst the Strangler discussion.

But that’s a discussion for another day.

I suppose there’s a possibility the case of the Cumminsville Ripper might be solved one day. A million-to-one shot, though, right? Maybe we’ll get a genetic genealogy hit one day that spells out the answers. Or maybe a sleuth like you will uncover the clue that brings the whole thing to a close and gives us the answers we so dearly desire. Until that day, the identity of the Cumminsville Ripper will remain Unresolved.

continue to the dayton strangler

Episode Information

Research and writing by Troy Larson

Hosting and production by Micheal Whelan

Published on April 9th, 2022

Music Credits

Original music created by Micheal Whelan through Amper Music

Theme music created and composed by Ailsa Traves

Sources and other reading

“Believe She Was Struck by Train.” Cincinnati Post [Cincinnati], 02 05 1904.

“Body of Murdered Girl Telephone Operator Found.” Mansfield News Journal [Mansfield], 04 11 1904.

“The Cincinnati Streetcar Murders.” Unsolved Casebook, 5 June 2020, https://www.unsolvedcasebook.com/the-cincinnati-streetcar-murders/. Accessed 23 March 2022.

“Cumminsville murders.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumminsville_murders. Accessed 23 March 2022.

“Dayton Strangler.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayton_Strangler. Accessed 26 March 2022.

“Dazed and Dopey.” Cincinnati Enquirer [Cincinnati], 25 11 1904.

“Declares It Was Quarter of Two.” Cincinnati Enquirer, 05 05 1904.

“Disproved is the Story of Stagman.” Cincinnati Enquirer [Cincinnati], 04 05 1904.

“Dying on the Railroad Tracks with One Leg Severed Above the Knee.” Cincinnati Enquirer [Cincinnati], 02 05 1904.

“Exciting Experience of Miss Hannaford.” Cincinnati Post, 07 11 1904.

“Four Arrests in Maud Mueller Case.” Chillicothe Gazette [Chillicothe], 05 10 1904.

“Girl is Murdered.” The Daily Times [New Philadelphia, OH], 04 11 1904.

“Light Thrown Upon the Steinway Mystery.” Cincinnati Enquirer [Cincinnati], 05 11 1904.

McCormick, Mike. “HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: The murder of Indiana State Normal graduate Sarah Schafer.” Tribune-Star, 18 October 2008, https://www.tribstar.com/news/lifestyles/historical-perspective-the-murder-of-indiana-state-normal-graduate-sarah-schafer/article_5c6a8222-a54d-533b-9852-2c78f69aebec.html. Accessed 23 March 2022.

“Mystery is Still Unsolved.” Chillicothe Gazette [Chillicothe], 05 11 1904.

“Shoes May Furnish a Clew.” Cincinnati Enquirer [Cincinnati], 07 11 1904.

“Stagaman Interviewed by Chief Millikin.” Cincinnati Enquirer [Cincinnati], 06 05 1904.

“Story of the Cumminsville Horrors.” Cincinnati Enquirer [Cincinnati], 06 11 1904.

“Suspect Now Sought; Find a Trail of Blood.” Cincinnati Post [Cincinnati], 07 11 1904.

“Thinks Friends Saved Her Life.” Cincinnati Post [Cincinnati], 07 11 1904.

“Thousands of Morbidly Curious Visit Scene of Murder of Louisa Mueller.” Cincinatti Enquirer [Cincinnati], 03 10 1904.

“Was Little Louise Mueller Murdered?” Butler County Democrat [Butler County], 06 10 1904.