Why were those names deleted from the transcript, does anyone know whose names they were?
Here's a little more info in regards to your question... The only one of that group at the bar who I could find (so far) with ties to a location "south of La Farge" was Dorien Barclay, who lived at one time in the Town of Forest (with his parents, Edward & Della), outside of Viola, Richland County, WI. I would think that it would be easy enough to get plat maps from 1953 for that area to see who lived where.
http://z10.invisionfree.com/usedtobedoe/ar/t7241.htm
Andy Thompson, Peggy Lovejoy and Susan T. Hessel are collaborating on a book about Hartley, who went missing from a baby-sitting job in La Crosse on Oct. 24, 1953. When they made a plea in the La Crosse Tribune for anyone with knowledge to come forward, it sparked Mel Williams' memory.
"Well, I even forgot I had the tape," said Williams, 76, of La Farge, Wis. "I simply forgot about it until I saw (the story) in the paper."
Back then, around 1968, he was a musician and was taping a band in a La Farge bar, The Raven. The bar is still there, but now it's called The Getaway.
Williams says he doesn't know whether the men on the tape were speaking the truth.
"Anybody can make up a story. But there's got to be something to this," he said. "Why would the story come to this town? Why does everybody (in La Farge) have a story about this?"
The tape includes a conversation between an unidentified man and a man who implicates himself and another in Hartley's disappearance.
Williams and the book collaborators know the implicated men's identities, both of whom are dead, but the Tribune will not reveal them at this time.
"I do know they were capable of it," Williams said.
"(The man on the tape) claimed to take Hartley from La Crosse to a house in La Farge," Thompson said, and from there to a location south of La Farge where he supposedly buried her.
When he listened to the tape, Thompson said, he got the impression that the other man implicated had committed suicide because of his involvement with the Hartley case.
Further on at that link...
Peterson was associated with a group of men who Williams described as "drunk veterans," and they frequented Williams' tavern in La Farge, about 45 minutes south of La Crosse.
However, Peterson was by himself when Williams began the interview. By himself, that is, until he was joined by Whitey Barkley (Dorien Leland "Whitey" Barclay), a local mink farmer and "a bigmouth," according to Williams.
"He knew everything," said the barkeeper. "He said, ‘Tell him about that Hartley girl you kidnapped, Tywee.'"
And he did.
By (Clyde) "Tywee" Peterson's account, he went with Jack Gaulphair (Gaulthair) (a local "vagabond," said Williams) and a mutual friend to La Crosse on that fateful Saturday night.
Gaulphair (Frank L. Gaulthair) knew or knew of Hartley, and where she was babysitting. From the Rasmussen home, they took Hartley to their friend's farm.
There, Gaulphair (Gaulthair) killed her.
Unfortunately, he could not be questioned: Gaulphair (Gaulthair) had committed suicide less than 10 years after the kidnapping.
Authorities have asked that the place of the murder and Hartley's makeshift grave alleged on Williams' recording remain undisclosed. What they don't they want us to know needs to be made public after 62 years.
Williams and the book collaborators know the implicated men's identities, both of whom are dead, but the Tribune will not reveal them at this time.
Here I thought the newspapers were supposed to be exposing the truth, not hiding it. No wonder this case is still unsolved.
