In three years' time, between August 1979 and October 1982, eight victims were dispatched in grisly style by a killer (or killers) who preyed on young Ohio couples, randomly selecting victims in a triangle of death that stretched from Akron and Toledo in the north to Logan, in the south. No motive has been ascertained in any of the slayings and the killer, at this writing, is presumably at large. The first to die were Richard Beard, 19, and Mary Leonard, 17, gone missing from an Akron drive-in theater on August 24, 1979. Their fate remained a mystery until May 29, 1985, when a backhoe operator in Northampton Township unearthed a skull and other skeletal remains. A second skull and more bones were discovered on May 30, a single bullet hole suggesting cause of death. The victims were identified from dental records on May 30, but no clue to the identity of their killer was forthcoming. In the meantime, other unsolved slayings kept detectives occupied. A young Toledo couple had been beaten to death in May 1981, their bodies locked in the trunk of the dead boy's car. The crime was repeated on August 3, with victims Daryl Cole and Stacey Balonek, both 21. This time, two bloody baseball bats were found beside the corpses, in the trunk of Daryl's car, abandoned two blocks from the Balonek home in suburban Maumee. The evidence suggested at least two killers, but again police were left without the necessary evidence to name a suspect. Detectives called it "a coincidence" that three of the four Toledo victims had worked for the same supermarket chain. On October 4, 1982, the action shifted to Logan, 110 miles south of Akron, with the disappearance of 19-year-old Todd Schultz and his date, 18-year-old Annette Johnson. Searchers found their mutilated torsos in the Hocking River ten days later; missing arms and legs were found October 16, buried in a nearby cornfield. As in Akron and Toldeo, there was nothing to suggest the killer's motive or identity. Authorities stop short of looking on the "couples" murders as a series, but the similarity in choice of victims and the show of brutal violence cannot be ignored. The occupational connection in Toledo indicates a link between two sets of homicides, at least, but nothing more can be advanced with certainty about the ghoulish string of crimes that terrorized the Buckeye State for three long years.
In three years' time, between August 1979 and October 1982, eight victims were dispatched in grisly style by a killer (or killers) who preyed on young Ohio couples, randomly selecting victims in a triangle of death that stretched from Akron and Toledo in the north to Logan, in the south. No motive has been ascertained in any of the slayings and the killer, at this writing, is presumably at large. The first to die were Richard Beard, 19, and Mary Leonard, 17, gone missing from an Akron drive-in theater on August 24, 1979. Their fate remained a mystery until May 29, 1985, when a backhoe operator in Northampton Township unearthed a skull and other skeletal remains. A second skull and more bones were discovered on May 30, a single bullet hole suggesting cause of death. The victims were identified from dental records on May 30, but no clue to the identity of their killer was forthcoming. In the meantime, other unsolved slayings kept detectives occupied. A young Toledo couple had been beaten to death in May 1981, their bodies locked in the trunk of the dead boy's car. The crime was repeated on August 3, with victims Daryl Cole and Stacey Balonek, both 21. This time, two bloody baseball bats were found beside the corpses, in the trunk of Daryl's car, abandoned two blocks from the Balonek home in suburban Maumee. The evidence suggested at least two killers, but again police were left without the necessary evidence to name a suspect. Detectives called it "a coincidence" that three of the four Toledo victims had worked for the same supermarket chain. On October 4, 1982, the action shifted to Logan, 110 miles south of Akron, with the disappearance of 19-year-old Todd Schultz and his date, 18-year-old Annette Johnson. Searchers found their mutilated torsos in the Hocking River ten days later; missing arms and legs were found October 16, buried in a nearby cornfield. As in Akron and Toldeo, there was nothing to suggest the killer's motive or identity. Authorities stop short of looking on the "couples" murders as a series, but the similarity in choice of victims and the show of brutal violence cannot be ignored. The occupational connection in Toledo indicates a link between two sets of homicides, at least, but nothing more can be advanced with certainty about the ghoulish string of crimes that terrorized the Buckeye State for three long years. |
