Murder of a Journalist: The True Story of the Death of Donald Ring Mellett

4. Unraveling the Conspiracy

62 · murder of a journalist· 62 · 4 Unraveling the Conspiracy I t would not be an easy crime to solve. But perhaps a substantial reward would loosen a few tongues in Canton’s underworld, or lure some reluctant witnesses out of the shadows. Whether the idea for a reward was prosecutor Charles McClintock’s, former judge and Mellett friend H. C. Pontius’s, or the Daily News’s isn’t clear. Nevertheless , within hours of the murder, Pontius provided the first $1,000 followed immediately by Henry Timken’s $5,000. The reward fund eventually grew to $27,000, including major contributions of $5,000 from Scripps-Howard newspapers, $5,000 from Cox’s News League, $1,000 from the Evening Repository, and $2,000 from the county commissioners (who would also have to foot the bill to bring the perpetrators to justice). Almost all of the reward was provided by Canton’s civic and business leaders and Ohio newspapers.1 Not unexpectedly, the money attracted an army of amateur and professional sleuths who arrived in Canton in the days following the crime to join the contingent of journalists already covering the story. In 1926, $27,000 was a substantial sum, worth nearly $250,000 today , and a frugal man might retire on a payday of that size. Crime was also paying off in legitimate ways for the city’s hotels, boardinghouses , restaurants, and telegraph services as the hordes of reward unraveling the conspiracy · 63 seekers took up residence and the newsmen filed 276,000 words of copy through the telegraph offices.2 The Repository, perhaps whistling past the graveyard, noted on July 19 that “newspapermen assembled here to cover the story [of Mellett’s murder] agreed there was little to warrant the assertion that vice is rampant and open.” There were other possible rewards not counted in cold cash. Public officials could not profit monetarily, but the political gain could be significant. That politics would play a role in the pursuit of justice was almost a given. Both the county prosecutor and his assistant were running for higher office, and even the governor had a political stake in the outcome. Don Mellett, partisan that he was, was no stranger to politics or the motives of politicians. Nor had he been above attempting to use political pressure to achieve his goals in his law-andorder crusade. He would not have been at all surprised that politics played a role in investigating his murder and in trying his killers. even defense attorneys stood to gain should they succeed in getting a defendant acquitted in this high-profile case. The Canton police department, under Chief Lengel’s guidance, had already exhausted its leads by the time Mellett was laid to rest in indianapolis on July 19. After stumbling around the crime scene the night of the shooting, detectives were sent that Friday to check car rental agencies, haul in strangers found on the city’s streets, and bring in twenty or so of the leading vice purveyors for some not-veryhard questioning by Lengel, swope, and Clarke. All were released within three hours. Mellett supporters decried the fact that many of those questioned were notable for testifying against Lengel at his civil service hearing.3 Not surprisingly, no one admitted to knowing anything. Lengel then completed his bumbling investigation by dispatching the workhouse crew to clean up the vacant lot on saturday morning.4 Lengel concluded that the murder was an outside professional job, a “Black Handed” affair, he said, and the work of Pittsburgh italians, many a police department’s prime suspects for unsolved murders. yet no one offered a motive for why italian thugs would want to kill Mellett. The Black Hand was generally nothing more than local italian gangs who made their living extorting money from other 64 · murder of a journalist italians in return for not blowing up their homes or businesses. The Daily News paid the Black Hand scant attention. in fact, the paper reached out to Canton’s ethnic communities in ways few other newspapers did. in November 1925, Mellett had hired Theodore Andrica, a romanian, to edit and report news from the immigrant neighborhoods . While this cost $35 a week, it made the paper the first in ohio to publish this type of news and engendered considerable goodwill.5 With no leads, Lengel was groping for an answer and may have recalled that...