Paul Hoffman - Murder in Wauwatosa: The Mysterious Death of Buddy Schumacher

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2012 by Paul Hoffman

All rights reserved

Cover images: All Schumacher family photos courtesy of Brian Egloff and Keith Egloff.

Recent photos of Wauwatosa by Paul Hoffman.

First published 2012

e-book edition 2012

ISBN 978.1.61423.572.9

print ISBN 978.1.60949.673.9

Library of Congress CIP data applied for.

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 author or The History Press. The author 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

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the following: my wonderful wife, Kimberly, who has been with me and encouraged me through all the investigation, writing and editing of this book; my awesome daughters, Kirsten, Jaclyn and Emily, who gave up a little bit of Daddy time during this process; my father and mother, Raymond and Sharon Hoffman, for their love, encouragement and pride; my brothers, Mark, Douglas and Andrew Hoffman, for all those things that brothers do; Brian Egloff, Keith Egloff and Gordon Schumacher for sharing memories, photographs and research of their family with me; Ben Gibson and the staff at The History Press for all their hard work and having faith in me as an author and in this story as book-worthy; Robert Tanzillo, a fellow author who suggested that I contact The History Press and pitch my idea; Karen Barry and the Wauwatosa Historical Society staff for their tremendous support and help; the staff at Wauwatosa NOW for publishing my three-part series on this subject in 2010; David R. Windisch Jr., who helped with the preparation of many of the photographs herein and whose daily taunting has actually become enjoyable; authors Michael John Sullivan and Heather Hummel for their advice and encouragement; Olive Crawford, former English teacher at Wauwatosa East High School, who instilled in me a desire to learn and employ proper English grammar and usage; Ryan Felton, who advised me to see one project through to completion before moving on to another; Larry Widen, whose photo services saved me loads of time when he noticed my wife and I taking notes from old Wauwatosa News articles with pencil and paper; friends, supporters, teachers, coaches and bosses too numerous to mention by name (if youre not sure, just go ahead and include yourself); Art Schumacher for selling his house to my dad in 1969; and finally Lillian Harwood for sparking my interest in the Schumacher boy, leading me on a forty-year odyssey to tell Buddys story.

Chapter 1

MRS. HARWOOD KNOWS

I know who killed the Schumacher boy.

Lillian Harwood

Lillian Harwood lived with her husband, James, next door to my family for several years when I was growing up in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, a suburb just west of Milwaukee. Mrs. Harwood was generally a good-natured older lady who served as a school crossing guard at the corner of Milwaukee and Wauwatosa Avenues between Wauwatosa East High School and Lincoln Elementary.

She loved kids and enjoyed gregariously telling me and my three younger brothers to make all the noise you want! or Youre one of the good ones!

There were times, though, when Mrs. Harwood did or said things that kind of made you scratch your head. These days, we would say that she might have been getting Alzheimers. Back in the 1970s, we just thought she was kind of crazyusually a harmless, odd type of crazy, but crazy nonetheless.

She once washed her car with a garden hosethe inside of her car. When a basketball accidentally got tipped over the fence from our driveway basketball court into her backyard and my brothers or I went to her back door to ask if we could retrieve the ball, we were never quite sure which Mrs. Harwood would answer the door. More often than not, it was the one who was happy to see children at her door. Sometimes she wasnt quite so together. Once, when my brothers went over, they heard the rock band Foreigners Head Games blaring from her kitchen radio. Mrs. Harwood asked them if they liked the pretty Christmas music. Crazy, but harmless crazy.

A map of key locations in the Buddy Schumacher story on the 1930 Caspars Official Map of the City of Milwaukee & Vicinity. Copyright C.N. Caspar Company. Permission sought.

A: The Schumacher home, 191 Alice Street, which later became 1319 Alice Street and then 1319 Seventy-fourth Street. The site is now a parking lot.

B: The island in the Menomonee River near which there was a swimming hole called Blackridge.

C: The approximate location where the body was found.

D: Wauwatosa Cemetery, where Buddy was buried.

E: Originally 176 West Center Street, and now 8118 Hillcrest Drive, the house to which the Schumacher family moved in 1927.

F: Lincoln Elementary School.

G: Longfellow Junior High School, which is now at the corner of North and Wauwatosa Avenues, just south of the Wauwatosa Cemetery.

H: Wauwatosa High School, now Wauwatosa East.

I: Mount Olive Lutheran Church, 5327 West Washington Boulevard, Milwaukee, where the Schumachers attended.

J: An area of several hospitals, including the Milwaukee Sanitarium/Psychiatric Hospital (later the Dewey Center and now the Aurora Psychiatric Hospital), Muirdale Sanitorium, Milwaukee County Home for Dependent Children, the Milwaukee County Infirmary (originally known as the Almshouse and was torn down in the 1970s) and the Milwaukee County Insane Asylum.

However, there were also these rare times when, as a young boy, I felt like I needed to keep my distance. Mrs. Harwood would occasionally slowly patrol the sidewalk in front of her house on the 8100 block of Hillcrest Drive with flushed cheeks and an intense glare in her eyes. She would eyeball every car parked on the street that she didnt recognize and look us in the eye, saying things like, They look in my windows at night or, I know who killed the Schumacher boy.

Over the course of a few years, Mrs. Harwood told me that the police knew who killed the Schumacher boy and that it happened near the Menomonee River and the railroad tracks around Hoyt Park. When I was about ten or twelve years old or so and heard her say things like this, I mostly chalked it up to her being an old lady who either misinterpreted things shed seen or heard or was being paranoid and crazyor both. But the statements she made about the Schumacher boy started me wonderingmy father had bought our house at 8118 Hillcrest Drive in 1969 from a man named Art Schumacher.

I started asking myself a lot of questions. Did Mr. Schumacher have a brother or a son who was killed? If so, did the police know who killed him? Was Mrs. Harwood insinuating that there had been some sort of coverup? Was this just some figment of her imagination, or did she really know who killed the boy?

I asked my dad, and he said he didnt know if Art Schumacher had a brother or son at all, much less one who had been killed. Being a young kid, I was too unnerved by Mrs. Harwoods demeanor when she mentioned the Schumacher boy that I never asked her for any more information. Id just mumble an uh huh and go about my business.