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

5. The Gang of Three

78 · murder of a journalist· 78 · 5 The Gang of Three O ra slater now had three suspects in a conspiracy to kill Don Mellett: Pat McDermott, Ben rudner, and the mystery driver, smitty. since McDermott had initially come from Cleveland, slater guessed that he might have returned there. He quietly asked Cleveland police to try to find McDermott. Detectives scoured Cleveland and learned that Pat had been seen hanging around the Hough– east 79th street district just after the murder. A Cleveland poolroom operator recalled that Pat wanted him to help square an old bad check. The always-broke Pat had, the man estimated, around $60 or $70.1 Detectives managed to track Pat to Catherine “Kitty” Barnes’s east 78th street boardinghouse. They learned that around the third week of July, officers had stopped there to break up a noisy birthday party. A fellow identifying himself as Charles Collins opened the door for them. Collins, a new boarder, had arrived the evening of July 16 and paid for two weeks in advance. The police asked the proprietress if any liquor was present, and Kitty denied it. unconvinced, the police searched the house anyway. on finding one inch of booze in the bottom of a glass, the officers threatened to arrest her. The gallant Pat McDermott, alias Charles Collins, apparently stepped up and offered, “Miss Barnes, if you have to go [to jail], let me go in your place.” His noble gesture the gang of three · 79 did not go unrewarded. A few days later, when Pat was broke once again, Barnes loaned him $3 and later $5 more. Boarder Thelma Harris told police that she noticed Pat grow increasingly nervous about the cops, and by the end of the month, Pat was gone. He didn’t leave a forwarding address, but detectives did trace a long-distance telephone call from Barnes’s phone to Ben rudner on July 21. unfortunately, the story was too big to stay secret for very long, and Pat McDermott’s name was leaked to the Cleveland press. With reporters hot on the story, slater had no choice but to go public with the manhunt for McDermott on July 30. He concluded a briefing of the press by calling Pat the “key man” in the crime. When pictures of McDermott appeared on wanted posters and in the papers, Daily News circulation manager Charles Gaston told investigators that Pat, wearing only glasses as a disguise, had visited the paper the afternoon before the murder at about two or three o’clock. He asked for Mellett, “The big boss in the little front office.” When Gaston pointed toward the business office, the stranger studied Don for a long minute before leaving without saying a word. Cleveland police had failed to nab Pat McDermott in their dragnet , but they did snare another important, if reluctant, witness. Peggy Cavanaugh, later nicknamed “Pretty Peggy” by reporters, was a cute twentysomething waitress from the Hough district in Cleveland. since this murder story lacked the requisite sex angle to really sell newspapers , reporters tried to mold Peggy into the role of murderer’s girlfriend . But Peggy was reluctant to talk to detectives and steadfastly refused to accept the press-assigned role of McDermott’s consort. she insisted that she was just a waitress who flirted with the dapper, talkative McDermott, a regular customer at the lunch counter where she worked. Peggy admitted to investigators that she had a chance meeting with Pat on the street in Cleveland on July 26, the date she recalled as the same day she quit her job as a waitress. Pat, who fancied himself a ladies’ man, struck up a conversation. (When it came to women, Pat wasn’t in steve Kascholk’s or Bill Bitzler’s class—no wife, no ex-wife, no illegitimate children—not even a girlfriend.) it is unclear what Pat wanted from Peggy, but he did convince her to go along with him on a car trip to Akron. Pat had succeeded 80 · murder of a journalist in convincing Homer J. Connelly, an ohio Bell Telephone lineman he had met the previous March, to drive him to Akron in Connelly’s Ford coupe to “see a fellow.” Pretty Peggy may have been invited because Pat was showing off, or she might have been an inducement to get Connelly to drive. The trio drove to a restaurant in Akron called...