Thomas Crowl - Murder of a Journalist: The True Story of the Death of Donald Ring Mellett

Murder
of a
Journalist

TRUE CRIME HISTORY SERIES

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James Jessen Badal

Tracks to Murder

Jonathan Goodman

Terrorism for Self-Glorification: The Herostratos Syndrome

Albert Borowitz

Ripperology: A Study of the Worlds First Serial Killer and a Literary Phenomenon

Robin Odell

The Good-bye Door: The Incredible True Story of Americas First Female Serial Killer to Die in the Chair

Diana Britt Franklin

Murder on Several Occasions

Jonathan Goodman

The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories

Elizabeth A. De Wolfe

Murder of a Journalist: The True Story of the Death of Donald Ring Mellett

Thomas Crowl

The True Story of the Death
of Donald Ring Mellett

THOMAS CROWL

The Kent State University Press
Kent, Ohio

2009 by Thomas Crowl

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2009005098

ISBN 978-1-60635-002-7

Manufactured in the United States of America

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Crowl, Thomas.

Murder of a journalist : the true story of the death of Donald Ring Mellett / Thomas Crowl.

p. cm. (True crime history series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60635-002-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Mellett, Donald Ring, 18911926. 2. MurderOhioCanton.

3. Murder victimsOhioCanton. 4. Trials (Murder)OhioCanton. I. Title.

HV6534.C282C76 2009

364.152'3092dc22

2009005098

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.

13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated with love to my daughters, Jennifer and Laura

T he late-nineteenth-century press lord and father of journalisms highest award, Joseph Pulitzer, wrote in 1904, Our republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested public spirited press, with trained intelligence to know right, and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.

Pulitzer knew something about journalism as a profession and the role of the press in a free society, having himself become rich crusading against public and private corruption. Pulitzer introduced a populist appeal to newspapers, asking the public to accept them as a champion of the little guy. His splashy investigative articles and editorial crusades worked. Circulation went up and with it profits and influence. Every successful publisher of the day would have to follow some version of Pulitzers model. There were critics, and charges of yellow journalism, but the industrialization of newspapers by large corporations seeking profit ensured that Pulitzers template would endure. Despite this new aggressiveness by the press, violence against journalists was very unusual.

The 1926 murder of Donald Ring Mellett was an exceptiona rare act of retribution against a journalist for what he advocated in print.

The 1920s are remembered today for bootleggers and gangsters who organized crime syndicates that were far more sophisticated than most city law agencies and who operated across the lines of legal jurisdiction. A newspaper editor murdered for his editorial stance would be shocking today. But in the 1920sthe Roaring Twentiesat the height of Prohibition, it was seen not as a killing but an assassination, with the victim becoming a martyr. The Eighteenth Amendment was adopted to bring about a better world, one free of the social ills associated with alcoholic excess. Instead, Prohibition resulted in a rise in crime, rich and powerful bootleggers, gangland violence, and widespread corruption. Prohibition could not have arrived at a worse time. The country was in a buoyant mood. A world war had just been won, and the United States was an emerging world power. The stock market was in a seemingly endless climb, fueled by borrowed money. And then there were the flappers wearing eye-popping short skirts, smoking, listening to the new jazz, and dancing the Charleston. Prohibition was seen by many Americans as spoiling the party and was ignored in the pursuit of a good time. Reasoned voices in America, especially in the press, decried the decline in accepted mores and increasing disregard for the law. Their editorial protests generally lacked a focal point, however, and did not succeed in sparking national outrage.

But, for a brief time, the slaying of Don Mellett did provide the focus needed to bring the issue of corruption and chaos to national attention. While calling for the speedy apprehension and punishment of Melletts slayers, many editors could not resist the opportunity afforded by the murder to attack what they saw as an epidemic of lawlessness that an apathetic American public seemed willing to tolerate. Press giant William Randolph Hearst wrote in the trade journal Editor and Publisher that the assassination was a crime against human life, a crime against freedom of the press, a crime against the safety of the public. Journalists saw Melletts death as an assault by powerful criminal forces on their most cherished ideal: the freedom of the press. For many in the newspaper world, nothing less than the fate of the republic was at stake.

Don Mellett was not your typical 1920s journalist. A college-educated, temperate, and God-fearing man, Mellett came from a family of newspapermen in Indiana that believed it was the duty of the press to work for the public good. He married his high school sweetheart and was father to four young children. As the sixth of seven sons born to a small-town publisher, Mellett was, not surprisingly, highly competitive. His much-traveled career included stints as the editor of a pro-Prohibition paper and of his own failed daily in Indiana. At age thirty-three, Mellett landed in Canton, Ohio, and in less than a year became editor and publisher of the Canton Daily News, one of several papers owned by former Ohio governor James Cox and the number-two paper in a two-newspaper town. Mellett, who came to the job feeling he was a failure, was determined to achieve the professional success that had thus far eluded him.

Canton, nicknamed Little Chicago, was a typical midsized northern industrial city with a large immigrant population and more than its share of crime and corruption. Here Mellett found fertile ground for a crusading journalist bent on boosting circulation. He set out to reform Canton, whether or not Canton wanted to be reformed. He approached the task with a zeal that bordered on recklessness. Mellett was not only going to make the hapless Daily News profitable, but he was going to make it a force to be reckoned with in the region.

Don Mellett never doubted that his vision for Canton was right. He expected to step on toes, in high and low places, as he hung Cantons dirty laundry out for everyone to see. Occasionally, he pushed the limits of journalistic ethics to make his point. Yet to him, attacking crime bosses and public officials in print was his job. It sold newspapers, and it was for the public good. However, this proved to be a fatal miscalculation. Nothing in Melletts small-town Indiana experience prepared him for the ruthless men he encountered in Canton. He failed to appreciate that while he did not consider his editorial crusades personal attacks, his targets did. Melletts dogged pursuit of what he believed right while failing to realize he was making dangerous enemies ultimately led to his death at the hands of an unholy alliance of bootleggers and corrupt cops.