A Body Between The Rails
True Crime Historian
Richard O Jones
4.4 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2024
⏱️ 119 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 198 is centered on one of my favorite murder tropes, the so-called “eternal triangle,” between the cranky old farmer, his fading wife, and the handsome young farmhand. Yeah, that’s not going to end well, but they might have gotten away with it if they had just put the body across the tracks. It’s all in the details.
Culled from the historic pages of the Hamilton Journal-News and other newspapers of the era.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Popular.com |
| 0:03.0 | Riley, Ohio, June 1, 1948. |
| 0:20.0 | Morris, Roland Abbott, age 46, was last seen at 10.30 p.m. Monday at Buell's Lake, a small fishing pond in the neighborhood. |
| 0:32.5 | There he was with Ben Mussie and other friends. Abbott left in his truck and apparently drove directly to his |
| 0:39.8 | barnyard where he had been accustomed to park his truck. When following this procedure, he walked to his |
| 0:46.9 | home along the quarter mile lane. There was no evidence of a struggle. Blood-soaked soil showed where he had been struck over the head and killed. |
| 0:57.0 | The Slayer carried the body to the truck not far away, and then returned to move some loose soil over the bloodstains on the ground. |
| 1:06.0 | The Slayer then took the wheel of Abbott's truck, and without using the lane to the house, |
| 1:12.4 | drove to Hart Road, and along this road to the railroad crossing, estimated less than two miles away. |
| 1:20.0 | There he parked the truck just off the roadway, and dragged the body to the tracks, |
| 1:25.9 | placed between the rails of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad line, |
| 1:30.6 | where it was found at 5.30 a.m. Tuesday. |
| 1:34.4 | The body was 20 feet from the crossing proper, with face upward. |
| 1:44.0 | Relatives became alarmed when Abbott failed to return home for the night, |
| 1:48.0 | and several neighbors were notified. |
| 1:52.0 | Early in the morning, these men began a search of the neighborhood. |
| 1:57.0 | Harry Schwab and Ray Khan, both of nearby Peoria, discovered the tragedy after touring a number of roads in the vicinity. |
| 2:06.7 | Their attention was attracted to the abandoned truck, which they had identified. |
| 2:12.2 | Further search brought them to the victim. |
| 2:15.3 | Although several trains passed over the body in the five or six hours it was between the tracks, |
| 2:21.3 | officials believed these trains had no part in the fatality. |
| 2:25.3 | Motive of the slayer was not fixed. |
... |
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