David Myers - Wicked Columbus, Ohio

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2015 by David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker

All rights reserved

First published 2015

e-book edition 2015

ISBN 978.1.62585.449.0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015943187

print edition ISBN 978.1.62619.922.4

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the authors or The History Press. The authors and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

To Alexandria Alix Reese.

On May 27, 2010, a friend asked Alix for a ride to her boyfriends apartment on the far east side of Columbus. The only way the two young women knew to get from the Short North to Bexley brought them to the intersection of Atcheson and Trevitt Streets, just before 11:00 p.m. Not a good place to be.

Swerving to avoid what they initially thought were bottle rockets, Alix inadvertently drove through the middle of a fight between rival gangs. She was stopped when six bullets smashed through the car. One of them cut through her neck, severely damaging her spinal cord and paralyzing her from the shoulders downanother innocent victim of gang violence. The shooter has never been identified.

What happened to Alix was not wicked; it was evil. The thugs fled. Alix likely would have died had it not been for the aid she received from Calvin Giles, who ran out of his house and applied pressure to her wound until the paramedics relieved him.

Anyone with information about this crime is asked to contact the Columbus Police Department or Central Ohio Crime Stoppers. The authors royalties from this book are being donated to Alix Reese to assist with her medical bills. Others wishing to contribute can do so through the website prayersforalix.com.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book was made possible by the readers of our previous books. If it werent for themfor youour publisher would not have asked us to do another. So thank you, one and all.

As always, we owe a debt of gratitude to many of the same people who have assisted us on past efforts, beginning with Julie Callahan, Nick Taggart, Jack Shaw and the other ever-helpful staff at the Columbus Metropolitan Library. The CML continues to be the gold standard for public libraries. Now, if only it were bigger

There were a lot of people who contributed to this book simply by listening when we were thinking out loud. If you were one of these people, consider this your thanks in case we neglected to say something at the time. Your forbearance was appreciated. Evelyn Keener Walker deserves a special shout-out for her editing advice.

We would also like to acknowledge those who went out of their way to provide us with assistance, encouragement and tolerance: Tony Cox, Beverly Meyers, Sam Walker, James Dailey, Dede Stump, Tara Narcross, Tom Holton and Karen Wilcox. The images used in this book are courtesy of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Library of Congress, Columbus Citizen-Journal and Columbus Citizen Newspaper Collection at the Grandview Heights Library, the Dailey Archives or the authors collections.

INTRODUCTION

We all have flaws. Mine is being wicked.

James Thurber

My father and I take crime seriously. We know too many people who have been touched by it. Some have had their lives changed forever. A few even died. So when our editor, Krista Slavicek, suggested we contribute a book to The History Presss Wicked cities series, we struggled with how wicked differed from evil.

For thirty years, my father worked in the field of corrections. His experience shaped and informed many of our previous books: Central Ohios Historic Prisons, Historic Columbus Crimes and Inside the Ohio Penitentiary. It stimulated my own interest in the subject. However, we never considered the crimes we wrote about as being anything less than evil. Is there a difference?

In the epigraph quote, James Thurber, a son of Columbus, was referring to the villainous Duke of Coffin Castle in his grown-up fairy tale The 13 Clocks. The dukes nights were spent in evil dreams, and his days were given to wicked schemes. Few people have ever written with more precision than Thurber, yet he uses the words wicked and evil interchangeably, or so it seems.

Wicked likely comes the Old English wicca or witch. Definitions of wicked generally include terms and phrases such as evil, morally wrong, bad, sinful, intended to harm someone but also, perhaps, playful. The definition of evil, on the other hand, emphasizes that it is profoundly immoral, sinful, vile, wicked and causing harm, especially when referencing a supernatural force in a religious context. But playful? No. Something that is evil is rarely, if ever, regarded as playful. Still, there is much overlap between the two terms.

Christian cartoonist and missionary E.R. Pace spent much of his life warning people to watch their step. Authors collection.

Wicked behavior was a frequent subject of Columbus-born Christian cartoonist Dr. Ernest James Pace (18791946). His pen-and-ink drawings began appearing in a local newspaper after a reporter noticed him sketching during a church service. For thirty years, Paces work was published weekly in the Sunday School Times and reprinted throughout the world. In one of his illustrations, Temple of Pleasure, a carefree couple is seen descending a stairway to the depths of degradation, from Dissipation to Death.

In the early twentieth century, the Bad Lands of Columbus were as well-known as New Yorks Tenderloin, Clevelands Central Avenue, Chicagos Black Belt or Detroits Heights. The area was home primarily to three types of institutions: the saloon, the gambling hall and the brothel. The main northsouth thoroughfare, Cleveland Avenue, was once called Harbor Road, possibly because it gave harbor to many horse thieves. North Grant Avenue was originally North Seventh Street but was renamed to dissociate it from the many gambling dens and brothels that thrived there.

The expression experiencing the tiger was used to describe what happened to many unwary folks who came from out of town to sample some of the citys vices only to wake up in the gutter with an aching head and empty pockets. Wicked, indeed.

Its a little-known fact that the first published use of the term gangster was in the Columbus Evening Dispatch on April 10, 1896: The gangster may play all sorts of pranks with the ballot box, but in its own good time the latter will get even by kicking the gangster into the gutter. Although the reference was to a politician and not a member of a criminal organization, some might say thats quibbling (it wasnt until 1925 that gangster acquired its more accepted meaning).

And the first true gangster novel, Little Caesar, was written by East High School graduate W.R. Burnett. Published in 1929 by Dial Press, the book was an immediate sensation, but it was inspired by Chicago, not Columbus. Burnett had only left home for the Windy City two years earlier. Before that, he toiled as a statistician for the Ohio Department of Industrial Relations while trying to establish himself as a novelist.