IL IL - Stanley Skridla, 28, & Mary Jane Reed, 17, Oregon, 1948

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TallCoolOne said:
I think the problem here isn't finding someone who knows something........it's finding someone who will tell what they know.

This is a very small rural area and the good old boys are still in charge. The town of Oregon has approx. 5,500 people or so, but back in 1948 was smaller yet.

I hope they are able to get someone to spill the beans, but after this much time and from what we are reading I'm not going to hold my breath.
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Exactly..that's a prime example of LE being run by the good old boys - no one will speak about this case at all even 60 years down the road. It will probably never change. I still hope Mary Jane's brother can get some answers though. He's not going to give up on this and I give him all the credit in the world for pursuing this as aggressively as he has.
 
Is it possible the clothing found tucked inside the vault were the ones given the funeral home for her burial? If so, being buried in the clothing she was killed in would have hidden them and the evidence forever, or so it may have been hoped. I wonder if the funeral home/mortician had any ties, familial or otherwise, to the sheriff's department.

Very interesting case. Fiction is INDEED much stranger than fact; keep it simple does not work for all cases.
 
I'm just not sure why CURRENT LE would object to her exhumation. I mean really, is anyone who was in charge when this murder occured (1948), still in the department or actively holding some kind of important office?
 
Maybe the killer was a relative of or a mentor to someone who is now covering it up, trying to keep the name and reputation of the killer from being tarnished.

Does anyone know of any other young women who disappeared from the area back then?

Do y'all think the missing 13 min of audio (when the examiner found something he or she had never seen and couldn't turn over) was about the skull and vertebrae or something else?
 
birdie74, StealthTheory, Blackwatch:

I don't know about the other clothes found in the casket. It's very strange. Maybe they were going to use those to dress her for the funeral, like you said but for some reason didn't do it. If so, you would think they would give the clothes back to the family and not put them in the casket with her! That's just one of many strange events in this case.

I don't know if there were any people from the funeral home related to the Sheriff's office. They did say Mary Jane apparently was involved with a high-ranking member of the Sheriff's Dept. Why that would pertain to the current members of the Sheriff's Dept. and keep them from cooperating with her brother in this case is beyond me. Unless there is a member of the current force who is related to someone who was in the dept. 60 years ago.

It also says in the article that the case was closed in 2005 because the Sheriff's Dept. "thinks they know who did it" but since the suspect is dead they won't name him. That is also odd. If they "think" they know who did it, they can maybe obtain DNA from that person's family and actually "solve" the case instead of closing it!

There have been no other follow up articles since the one I posted above but I'm going to keep checking on it.
 
I wondered if maybe the killer had to hide evidence several years after the murders, and maybe he had a young protege or friend to help him. If so, that person could now be in a position of authority, and afraid that if it comes out, he would be in trouble for the cover-up. I don't know if I completely buy that, but people are still acting pretty suspiciously after all these years.

I read a bunch of old articles on this case last night on newspaperarchive.com (and still have some left to read), and here are the notes I took from them:

The coroner was Fred Horner, and Mary Jane was buried by Farrell Funeral Home.
Here is a list of people mentioned as investigating the case, or who were in pictures of the crime scene:
State Officers K. Garvi; Sgt. Howard E. Brewer, Rockford; Lt. Ray Cramer
Sheriff Joseph Maas
Chief Deputy William Burright
State Atty. S. Donald Crowell
Former Sheriff Jim White
State Officer Russell Gentry

The Dixon Evening Telegraph reported the day her body was found that she was shot in the left upper chest. The next day, they said she was shot from behind at the base of the brain.

According to the Sheboygen (Wis) Press on 6/30/48, Mary Jane's brother Donald said that a few weeks before, she told him, "You know the fellow who brought me home had a .32 caliber pistol. He said he keeps it in the glove compartment of the car for protection." Donald wasn't sure which guy she was referring to, and he didn't think much about it until they were killed with a .32.

Dixon's paper reported 11/21/49 that the Skridia-Reed murder was one of a series in Ogle County in a period of about 100 days, and at that point none of them were solved.

I have a lot more that I'll post later.
 
birdie74 said:
I wondered if maybe the killer had to hide evidence several years after the murders, and maybe he had a young protege or friend to help him. If so, that person could now be in a position of authority, and afraid that if it comes out, he would be in trouble for the cover-up. I don't know if I completely buy that, but people are still acting pretty suspiciously after all these years.

I read a bunch of old articles on this case last night on newspaperarchive.com (and still have some left to read), and here are the notes I took from them:

The coroner was Fred Horner, and Mary Jane was buried by Farrell Funeral Home.
Here is a list of people mentioned as investigating the case, or who were in pictures of the crime scene:
State Officers K. Garvi; Sgt. Howard E. Brewer, Rockford; Lt. Ray Cramer
Sheriff Joseph Maas
Chief Deputy William Burright
State Atty. S. Donald Crowell
Former Sheriff Jim White
State Officer Russell Gentry

The Dixon Evening Telegraph reported the day her body was found that she was shot in the left upper chest. The next day, they said she was shot from behind at the base of the brain.

According to the Sheboygen (Wis) Press on 6/30/48, Mary Jane's brother Donald said that a few weeks before, she told him, "You know the fellow who brought me home had a .32 caliber pistol. He said he keeps it in the glove compartment of the car for protection." Donald wasn't sure which guy she was referring to, and he didn't think much about it until they were killed with a .32.

Dixon's paper reported 11/21/49 that the Skridla-Reed murder was one of a series in Ogle County in a period of about 100 days, and at that point none of them were solved.

I have a lot more that I'll post later.
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Thanks, birdie. I read through a lot of stuff about 3 years ago when this case first came to my attention but I don't have time to go back and look up articles at the moment. Hopefully I will have more time in a week or so when work slows down.

I remember reading what she said to her brother about the .32 and wondering if it was the member of the Sheriff's Dept. I also thought it was interesting about the other murders in Ogle County at the time. I never looked up though to see if any had been solved after 1949.

I appreciate anything you can dig up on this case.
 
zelmajane said:
Even in 1948 all murders should have still gone to a state medical examiner, right?
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Only if the county coroner or federal authorities requested it. Those were the days when state authorities typically did not get involved in cases that were not under the direct jurisdiction of state police, in fact many states didn't even have a state ME, they would just appoint a physician -who was not necessarily a pathologist- to a case when required. As for county coroners, in those counties where sheriff and coroner were not one and the same, the individual elected to the position rarely had any medical knowledge for the simple reason that rural doctors had no time to devote to such an office and did not run for it. Also in those days the coroner was the only official in a county authorized to arrest the sheriff so it was in the sheriff's interest to have one of his buddies fill the office, which made for flawed forensics.

Nowadays such a situation as the Reed investigation would likely not be allowed to happen because state police are allowed to take over investigations at the slightest hint that county authorities may be involved in a conflict of interest, thanks to legislative changes that have broadly expanded the powers of state attorneys over county cases. One of the most notable changes is the fact that ME's, who by law must be physicians (many are both physicians and lawyers) can overrule coroners in those jurisdictions that still have the office. For this reason a coroner will now typically include the ME's report with his/her own, lending it more credibility in court. Coroners and sheriffs are not as closely associated as they used to be; in my own county the coroner's office is located at the county courthouse and he/she doesn't share resources with the sheriff like they used to.
 
I'm about to leave town and will be away from my computer til Mon PM, so I'll post the rest of the info I have when I get back.

Have a happy Labor Day!
 
This is just a test. I typed a bunch of info, but I couldn't post it on the server, so I'm just checking before I retype it all.
 
Reed's body was found by Harold Sigier, a truck driver for Meyer's Construction Co., around 9:30 AM 6/29.

According to the Amarillo Daily News on 6/30, her body was found face down. Horner said there was no evidence of mistreatment of of her body except scratches on the shins, indicating her legs had been dragged. Considerable blood was found under body, indicating she had been shot near the spot, and her body dumped soon after.The bullet entered her head at the base of the skull.

I hate to include this part, but this article said that she was wearing her underclothes and a blouse, with her brown slacks removed and tossed over the lower part of her legs. Horner said that decomp had started, and he couldn't tell whether she had been raped.

More to come...
 
Thursday 6/24, Reed worked 6-10 pm, but she didnt call her mom when she got off, which was unusual.

Bob Martin saw her and Skridla in a tavern sometime before midnight with another couple. Another article mentioned that a mystery couple argued with them just before midnight.

Around midnight, Mrs. Ollie Thomas saw 2 cars parked where Skridla's body was found. She ID'ed one of them as Skridla's.

His body was dragged to a ditch. His wallet was missing... he had had $50 cash and a $120 paycheck.

A blue 1941 model auto was seen at 1:10 am near the area where Skridla was found. It was on a side road and appeared to have many people in it.

A neighboring farmer noticed an elderly man parked in the lane, sitting alone in his car night after night.
 
birdie74 said:
Thursday 6/24, Reed worked 6-10 pm, but she didnt call her mom when she got off, which was unusual.

Bob Martin saw her and Skridla in a tavern sometime before midnight with another couple. Another article mentioned that a mystery couple argued with them just before midnight.

Around midnight, Mrs. Ollie Thomas saw 2 cars parked where Skridla's body was found. She ID'ed one of them as Skridla's.

His body was dragged to a ditch. His wallet was missing... he had had $50 cash and a $120 paycheck.

A blue 1941 model auto was seen at 1:10 am near the area where Skridla was found. It was on a side road and appeared to have many people in it.

A neighboring farmer noticed an elderly man parked in the lane, sitting alone in his car night after night.
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I never read that before, about the elderly man. I wonder if he was ever ID'd and questioned? It could mean nothing that he was parked there. I grew up on a farm and there was a long lane leading to a neighbor's house adjacent to our farm. People used to park there all the time and just sit. I used to do the same, listening to music, looking at the surrounding woods and watching cars go by. But given what happened in this case, I just wonder if this guy was ever questioned.

Thanks for the info, birdie.
 
You're welcome. I also think the blue car sounds like it was probably a coincidence.
 
I'm trying to remember which road it was that the car was found on and at the present time am unable to recall. Seems to me though that it was an out of the way gravel road. If it's the road I'm thinking of, the chances of another vehicle being out there on the same night seem quite odd. I think there is only one or two farms on it if I'm remembering it right. Not a road that would have a high volume of traffic.

Farrell Funeral Home is still an operating business. I wonder how a person would go about finding out whether someone from LE was either related to or in some other way connected to anyone there.

The part about her dress and slip being found wrapped in newspapers containing articles of their murder is beyond strange. I cannot for the life of me make sense of why they would not have buried her in the clothing provided by her family and that the family would not have noticed, unless it was closed casket.

Seems the more we find out about this one, the more questions we are left with instead of the other way around.
 
Most of the articles just described it as a lonely lover's lane, which sounds like your description. I just found one that said it was on the edge of Oregon where Rt. 2 and the Pines Rd. join. Is that the place you were thinking?
 
birdie74 said:
Most of the articles just described it as a lonely lover's lane, which sounds like your description. I just found one that said it was on the edge of Oregon where Rt. 2 and the Pines Rd. join. Is that the place you were thinking?
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Hmmm...... actually I was thinking just a little south of there. I want to say it was off Rte 2, just a little south of the railroad overpass. Pines Road intersects Rte. 2 on the south end of Oregon. Still in the city limits. But that could be considered the 'general area'.
 
Here's an article from January 2008 that I never saw before. In this article, a retired Oregon mortician disputes the fact that the skull found in the casket was not Mary Jane Reed's. Also, at the bottom it says Stanley Skridla's car was found near the corner of State Route 2 and West Pines Road. But it said the car was earlier seen parked in a local lover's lane on County Farm Road.

Oregon Man Calls Reed Skull Switch Idea 'Ridiculous'

SHAW NEWS SERVICE

OREGON - The idea that the skull in Mary Jane Reed's casket belongs to anyone but her is "ridiculous," said a retired Oregon mortician who helped remove the body of the murdered 17-year-old from a ditch along Devil's Backbone Road.

More at link...


http://www.saukvalley.com/articles/2008/01/03/news/local/30601127851129.txt
 
Wow... this case is just so strange. The comments under the article are interesting, too.

Horner was the coroner at the crime scene who was quoted in the articles back then, but I read last night that he worked at Unger funeral home, so I was wondering why it was his case since she was buried by Farrell funeral home. This article explains it since Horner didn't do the autopsy.

I know they tried to get DNA from her clothes during the most recent autopsy, but does anyone know whether they tried to get DNA from the skull? Maybe they could do facial reconstruction, but DNA testing would be even better.
 
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