Marion Brubaker probably would have been a grandmother by now.
She didn’t get to go to high school, date boys, attend college, find a job, get married or have children.
She didn’t get to grow up.
Fifty years ago, Marion took a shortcut through woods only three blocks from her home in Coventry Township. The 12-year-old girl fell victim to a monster far worse than any she had read about in a storybook.
Marion, a minister’s daughter, was returning from a two-mile bicycle trip to the Portage Lakes library on Aug. 27, 1962, when she disappeared about 3:30 p.m. on a well-worn path through the trees at South Main Street and Killian Road.
About an hour later, a neighborhood kid burst into his house and yelled to his father: “I think there’s a dead girl in the woods!”
Summit County deputies received the call at 4:30 p.m., rushed to the secluded area and discovered a horrifying scene in the underbrush. A girl’s partially clothed body — face covered, shoes and socks placed neatly to the side — was found about 70 feet east of the path. A deputy checked for a pulse and found none, but noted that the body was still warm.
A bicycle, books and child’s purse had been ditched under an apple tree 20 feet away. Deputies saw impressions in the grass that indicated the girl had been dragged to the thicket, where she was strangled. Her broken horn-rimmed glasses were on the ground.
Investigators found Marion’s library card and took it to her Killian Road home. Her shocked father accompanied deputies to the woods and identified his daughter’s body.
“God didn’t take her,” said the Rev. Clair D. Brubaker, pastor of Hillwood Chapel Community Church off South Arlington Street. “She was taken by the sin in a human heart.”
He and his wife, Ruth, and their daughters Evelyn, Martha and Nadine were devastated by the loss, but found comfort through their faith in God.
“Marion was a fine, Christian girl,” Brubaker told a reporter. “We have prayed and we’ve settled everything here in the family.”
Marion would have been a seventh-grader at Lakeview School. She was a good student, took piano lessons, loved to read and dreamed of being a teacher when she grew up.
She made three visits that summer to the library on Manchester Road. She rode her bicycle and carried books in a front basket. Each round trip usually lasted two hours.
On this Monday, she left home shortly after 2 p.m. and arrived at the library before 3, checking out a few books, including Princess in Denim, Sue Barton Visiting Nurse and Secrets of the Martian Moon. She also stopped at a drugstore to buy a greeting card that her mother had requested.
Investigators asked a deputy’s daughter to travel by bicycle along the same route so they could estimate when Marion arrived at the woods across from the Infant of Prague Villa, a Carmelite monastery where the Interval Brotherhood Home is today.
“She had permission to take the shortcut home through the woods,” her father said. “There was no disobedience on her part. All the children used the shortcut, which we believed was safe.”
More than 600 mourners attended Marion’s funeral on Aug. 30 at Hillwood Chapel.
The Rev. Richard L. Burch, pastor of Grace Brethren Church, delivered a eulogy: “God’s way is best. He makes no mistakes. We may not understand his way, but all this is in accord with his plan and purpose.”
Fourteen officers were assigned to the case after the sheriff’s office requested the assistance of Akron police. They sent physical evidence to the FBI laboratory in Washington, D.C., for testing. No usable fingerprints were found.
Investigators interviewed at least 100 people and questioned a dozen suspects, including a convicted sex offender who lived near Portage Lakes. Police administered lie detector tests and truth serum to determine the veracity of the stories.
One suspect was the 15-year-old boy who reported finding Marion’s body. Officers quizzed the Coventry High School student repeatedly, including an eight-hour session that lasted until midnight.
At one point during the grilling, the boy reportedly said of the slaying: “If I did it, I don’t remember it.”
Deputies charged him with delinquency, saying he gave “false information,” and took him to the detention home, but he eventually was released.
On the first anniversary of Marion’s death, Summit County Sheriff Robert D. Campbell described the case as one of the toughest he ever faced. He kept the evidence in his office.
“I look at her bike every day,” Campbell said. “I keep it here to remind me of the case. We hope someday that it will be cleared up.”
In March 1964, authorities arrested a new suspect. A 49-year-old street peddler from Hubbard reportedly had visited his sister’s home in Portages Lakes on the day of the killing. Relatives noticed that he had scratches on his arms, but believed the wounds were self-inflicted because he had a history of epileptic seizures.
For three days, deputies questioned the peddler, a former Hawthornden State Hospital patient who could not read or write and who spoke in a rambling manner. Just when they were about to let him go, he confessed to the crime.
He told deputies that he attacked Marion in the woods because “I wanted to see everything her had on her.”
Authorities took the peddler to the scene of the slaying, and said he pointed out where the crime was committed.
“He told us some things only the murderer would know,” Assistant Prosecutor Bob Murphy insisted.
A skeptic might have pointed out that the crime scene had literally been mapped out in newspapers. The slaying was a topic of conversation in homes across Northeast Ohio.
Marion’s father talked with the peddler for an hour at the county jail.
“It goes a long way toward resolving the uncertainty of the last 18 months,” Brubaker said. “He insists that he did it. However, I’m not sure.”
The boy suspect, by then 16 years old, breathed a sigh of relief after the peddler’s arrest. He said his life had become “a long nightmare” after he discovered Marion’s body.
“You don’t realize how it feels to be telling the truth, know you’re telling the truth and know that some people don’t believe you,” he told the Beacon Journal. “I really didn’t think they’d ever find him, though.”
Three days later, the peddler retracted his confession, saying deputies “made him” say he killed Marion.
“I was there, but I didn’t do it,” he said.
In April, the peddler was sent to Lima State Hospital for testing. Psychiatrists there said he was not fit for trial.
“In our opinion, he doesn’t understand the nature of the charges to be brought against him and he cannot counsel his own defense,” Dr. Bohdan Nedilsky wrote. “Therefore, he would be considered insane.”
A grand jury refused to indict him. He was sent back to Hawthornden.
No one ever was convicted of killing the girl.
Marion’s mother was 82 when she died in 2002. Her father died in 2010 at age 96. They are buried near their daughter at Hillside Memorial Park. The girl’s three sisters grew up, married, moved to California and welcomed children and grandchildren.
Wind rustles through the trees this summer in Coventry. The dark woods at Killian and Main conceal a 50-year-old secret that might never be brought to light.
Beacon Journal copy editor Mark J. Price is the author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
