Erie's Backyard Strangler: Terror in the 1960s

By Justin Dombrowski

On a cold morning in December 1960, sixty-year-old Laura Mutch was found strangled behind a house in downtown Erie.... The city was reaching new heights, including a triumphant run for the coveted "All-American City" award, yet the incident created pandemonium. As investigations progressed, attacks on women continued, sending citizens and seasoned investigators to the brink of chaos. Seventy-two-year-old Clara Carrig was brutally stabbed, and Helen Knost narrowly survived an attempted killing. Mary Lynn Crotty, Eleanor Free and Marian Graham were found murdered, all by strangulation. Women throughout the region locked their doors and avoided the streets at night. The case attracted nationwide attention after the arrest of truck driver John Howard Willman in 1963 yet many questions remain unanswered. Author Justin Dombrowski charts the harrowing attacks, investigations and mystery surrounding Erie's 1960s reign of terror.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Feb 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781439677179

Justin Dombrowski

Justin Dombrowski has studied local history for more than fifteen years, specializing in local historical and criminal records. A native of Erie, Pennsylvania, he obtained a degree from Mercyhurst University and worked as an intern with the Erie County Detective's Unit. Having worked in the film industry since 2011, Justin is also a cofounder of Pickwick Entertainment, an Independent Film Production Company. His first book with The History Press, Murder & Mayhem in Erie, Pennsylvania , received critical acclaim for its writing and research. He resides in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

HOLLAND STREET HORROR

It was just past four o’clock in the morning on December 31, 1960, as forty-year-old George Meucci stood before the front desk of the City of Erie Police Department in the basement of city hall. Outside, a cool breeze rattled the frost-covered windows. Across from him, Detective Sergeant Carl Kalinowski feverishly scribbled back and forth, filling in a missing persons report.

Kalinowski paused, looking up at Meucci.

Haven’t I seen you before? Kalinowski gestured with his pencil. Weren’t you in here only a week or so ago to tell us about another missing person?

That was my brother Leonard Mutch Jr., Meucci mumbled.

And now you want to report your mother missing?

Meucci glumly nodded, telling Kalinowski that his mother, sixty-year-old Laura Mutch, was still grieving the death of his brother Leonard and that as a religious woman had recently found solace in prayer. The night prior, around seven o’clock, Meucci dropped her off at the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church, located at 560 East Eighth Street, near the corner of Ash Street. Before driving away, Meucci attempted to get his mother to accept a ride home, but she declined, preferring to walk instead.

Around three o’clock in the morning, Meucci received a phone call telling him his mother never returned home. Hastily dressing himself, Meucci walked to his parents’ home at 615 Holland Street. From there, he and his brother Andrew searched the neighborhood for their mother. It was only after speaking with the pastor of the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church, the Reverend Richard J. Gibbons, that the family decided to file a missing persons report.

Meucci described his mother as heavyset with graying hair and blue eyes. When he last saw her, she was wearing a heavy pink overcoat over a navy blue dress, her head covered with a flower-patterned scarf.

Kalinowski looked over the report. Having been with the department for the past five years, he knew it was not out of the ordinary to receive missing persons reports such as this. There was, however, a peculiarity about the report that nagged at him. Next, Kalinowski placed a call to Detective Captain Armand Chimenti. The year 1960 was drawing to a close, and detectives were being kept busy investigating dozens of burglaries, purse snatchings and assaults in the city’s east side neighborhoods.

Kalinowski watched Meucci shuffle out of the department. He hoped George Meucci’s mother would be found—and soon.

A cold front continued to hammer the lakeshore, and temperatures had dipped near below zero when Detective Sergeants Chester Wizzy Wizikowski and Raymond J. Lapenz were tasked with searching for Laura Mutch. The pair traversed several different routes Mutch could have traveled on her way home. As they patrolled the dark streets and alleys around East Eighth Street, the detectives also ventured into nearby all-night restaurants and diners, thinking Mutch may have had an accident or wandered in for a late-night cup of coffee. Wizikowski and Lapenz came up empty-handed.

As the crisp wind howled and the dark blue sky gave way to the morning twilight on the horizon, the detectives were unable to locate any trace of Laura Mutch.

Laura Mutch had simply vanished.

Hours later, just before nine o’clock in the morning, thirty-seven-year-old Charlotte Clugh had just finished feeding her children inside their small duplex located on the first floor of 717 Holland Street. Making her way to her bedroom at the rear of the duplex, Clugh tidied up, preparing to leave for an appointment that morning at the Boston Store.

Raising the shade of her window, Clugh was met with a grisly sight.

Below the window was the body of an elderly woman lying on her back, hands at her sides, her dress appearing to have been lifted and bunched around her waist. The woman’s eyes were open, her mouth slackened wide, and something had been shoved into her mouth.

Frightened, Clugh brought her hand to her mouth.

Oh, my God, Clugh muttered, her voice quivering.

Detective Sergeants Chester Wizikowski and Raymond Lapenz. Erie Daily Times.

Momma, what’s wrong? asked her son, Frank, who was standing in the doorway.

Nothing, Clugh stammered as she dropped the shade.

Clugh brushed past her son, rushing to the front door. Turning to her son as she opened the door, Clugh slithered her arms into the sleeves of her coat, telling Frank to make sure his siblings stayed inside and to not go near the back of the house.

Clugh stepped out into the piercing cold, trudging her way next door to the Muffler King building at 202 East Eighth Street, where she told her landlord of the frightening discovery.

Clugh’s landlord immediately phoned the switchboard operator at police headquarters.

At the same time Charlotte Clugh made the gruesome discovery in her backyard, Detective Sergeant Carl Malinowski was sipping his cup of coffee at Jim and Lee’s restaurant. Standing just over six feet tall, the husky, fifty-seven-year-old detective was an Erie native, like most of those in the department. Malinowski had worked as a salesman and driver for the Erie County Milk Association and often operated a small barbershop from his home. In 1936, he attended the state police school, followed by the FBI school in Erie in 1939. After joining the police department, Malinowski served as a street sergeant and patrol sergeant, and since 1949, he had served as a detective sergeant.

717 Holland Street on the morning of December 31, 1960. Erie Times News.

Witness Charlotte Clugh poses in the backyard of 717 Holland Street. Erie Times News.

Sitting next to Malinowski was his partner, fifty-two-year-old Detective Philip Lupo. Lupo was a Baltimore native but had spent most of his life in Erie. Following World War II, in which Lupo served as a lieutenant, he joined the police department in Erie.

As both men settled into their cups of coffee, they received a call over the radio about the discovery of the body behind 717 Holland Street. Malinowski stood up, fishing some bills from his pocket and leaving them on the counter as he made his way to a nearby phone to notify Captain Chimenti. Within minutes, both detectives peeled away from the curb, en route to the scene.

Minutes later, Lupo and Malinowski arrived on scene, greeted by a small crowd of men and women clustered in front of 717 Holland. Sergeant Robert Sheridan and Officers Paul Miller and Raymond Pelkowski, having just arrived minutes prior, greeted the detectives, directing them toward the backyard. As the detectives walked along the northern side of the building, their feet crunching against the ice, they entered through the narrow, three-foot-wide clearance between the duplex and the neighboring garage of the Konzel Construction Company.

As they rounded the corner, the body came into view underneath the rear bedroom window. Morning frost clung to their nostrils as they inched closer, their own breathing drowned out by the distant barking of a dog in the morning sun. Inspecting the body more closely, they noticed one of the woman’s shoes was partially off, the other still on her foot. Her coat was open, and her blue dress underneath was pushed up to and around her hips, leaving the victim nude from the waist down. Near her right hand lay a black Bible. Two feet from the Bible were a pair of women’s glasses, with the right lens broken.

Detective Lupo crouched down on the ground, eyeing several buttons nearby that looked as if they had been torn from the woman’s coat and sweater. Malinowski’s attention was frozen on a flower-patterned scarf, which had been elaborately tied around the woman’s throat and mouth. Leaning over, Malinowski noted that the woman’s neck was bruised and swollen and that the scarf had been tied and knotted in an intricate way. Soon, the detectives were joined by Detective Captain Armand Chimenti and Sergeant of Identification Carl Kalinowski.

Chimenti, the son of Italian immigrants, had spent time in his twenties working at the Erie Dock Company at the foot of Parade Street before going on to graduate from the FBI Academy and join the police department in Erie, where he rose through the ranks. With an infectious smile and chiseled good looks, Chimenti was an all-around gentleman who gained the respect of those he worked with as well as the general public. Kalinowski, who arrived with Chimenti that morning, armed with his speed graphic camera, was filling in for duties normally performed by Inspector Frank Figaski, who was at home nursing a sprained right ankle.

As Chimenti and Kalinowski looked on, Lupo pointed out the buttons. Kalinowski stepped forward, carefully placing them into evidence envelopes. One of the detectives also pointed out what appeared to be an unidentified liquid substance on the ground near Konzel’s garage.

It was just past nine thirty in the morning when Sergeant Kalinowski began photographing the scene. As detectives searched the backyard, they realized there was very little evidence visible. The ground was frozen, with no recent snowfall that would be able to reveal any fresh footprints. There was also no evidence of any weapons. Toward the rear of the yard, detectives sifted through several discarded Christmas trees, one of which had blown into the alley near the Hill Mill Dairy building, but nothing of additional value was located.

By then, an ambulance had arrived with an intern, Dr. Morris, from Hamot Hospital, and the woman was officially pronounced deceased. Additional patrolmen and detectives fanned out to the nearby streets and alleyways, searching for additional evidence and questioning neighbors. The search proved fruitless, save for a frozen footprint found in ice behind the Pennsylvania Rubber Company near East Seventh Street.

Chimenti, Kalinowski, Lupo and Malinowski were still in the rear of 717 Holland when Erie County coroner Merle E. Wood arrived on scene. Wood, thirty-one, was wrapping up his first year on the job, having served previously as chief deputy coroner alongside his father, Warren W. Wood, before winning the election for county coroner in November 1959. Wood was tall and lean, wearing black-rimmed glasses that made him instantly recognizable as he stepped into the backyard. On his arrival, Wood was briefed on scene by the detectives. As Coroner Wood inspected the body, Chimenti grouped with the detectives, motioning to the narrow entrance that led into the backyard.

East Eighth Street looking west. Author’s collection.

Creeping up from behind after she passed, the man must have put a crushing arm-lock about her throat. Chimenti gestured toward the ground. While dragging her back through the narrow passageway between the two buildings, he may have slipped and fallen with her. Or, it could have been there that he assaulted her, before lugging the body back into the rear yard where it might remain undiscovered until daylight.

Chimenti’s mental reenactment was interrupted by Coroner Wood as he informed detectives that he estimated the woman was murdered at least ten hours earlier, and the primary cause of death looked like strangulation. Wood also hinted at additional evidence that the woman had possibly been raped. Wood ordered the body removed to Hamot Hospital for the autopsy and excused himself as Chimenti and his men continued to theorize about the crime scene.

Laura Mutch. Courtesy of the Kocher family.

It was the whining of sirens that had attracted the attention of George Meucci and his brother-in-law as they stood outside 615 Holland Street that morning. As they approached the scene, Meucci overheard that a body had been found in the backyard. Approaching one of the nearby patrolmen, Meucci mentioned his mother had been reported missing earlier that morning and inquired as to the description of the body. Recognizing Meucci, officers placed him and his brother-in-law in the back seat of a police cruiser parked across the street by the No. 2 Jones Elementary School.

As the body was being removed from the rear of 717 Holland Street, the cruiser was maneuvered into the driveway in front of Konzel’s garage. Meucci and his brother-in-law exited the car and were shown the body. Meucci confirmed that the body was that of his mother, Laura Mutch.

After the body was removed, detectives spotted that the ground underneath it had melted, most likely due to the victim’s body heat at the time of death. Captain Chimenti and Sergeant Kalinowski set off for the Mutch residence while Detective Lupo entered the bottom duplex of Charlotte Clugh. Detective Malinowski, meanwhile, spoke with Peter Opalensky, the upstairs tenant of 717 Holland Street.

Inside Clugh’s duplex, Lupo noticed Clugh’s two German police dogs. Clugh nervously tousled her hair while retelling the events of the previous night, explaining that around ten o’clock, she was listening a new record on her hi-fi, Tennessee Ernie’s hymns. In the front room, three children belonging to the Opalensky family and Clugh’s own children were watching an episode of The Twilight Zone. Clugh remembered the time because ten o’clock was when show came on the television.

Around that time, Clugh told Lupo, she heard a whining noise that caught her attention; she believed the sounds were coming from her dogs. Clugh shrugged this off when she noticed her dogs in the front of the duplex, and she then went back to ironing her clothes. According to Clugh, she had recently acquired the dogs for protection, due to the increased attacks and burglaries in the neighborhood.

We’ve had prowlers around here twice during the last month, Clugh continued. Both times, I phoned the police after my dogs alerted me. But the prowlers got away before the officers arrived.

Clugh kept the dogs chained outside during the daytime and inside at night. Clugh told Lupo the dogs never caused trouble and only created a disturbance when they heard someone walking through the passageway into the rear of the yard, something they did not do the previous night. The only other information Clugh could provide was that she’d been outside around nine o’clock in the evening to remove clothes from the clothesline. She reported noticing nothing out of the ordinary then.

At the Mutch home, Chimenti and Malinowski confirmed the news to Laura’s husband, George Meucci Sr., and spoke with him and several of the Mutch children, trying to find out some further information.

Didn’t your wife realize the danger of being alone on the streets in this neighborhood? Chimenti asked. Didn’t you know about all the purse-snatching that’s been going on, and the attempted assault on another housewife only a few nights ago?

Meucci shrugged, explaining that they had just moved from Lawrence Park three weeks before and were unfamiliar with the neighborhood. This, coupled with the family’s grief over burying their son, overshadowed any awareness of present danger in the area.

In Chimenti’s mind, the murder raised a red flag, and he couldn’t help but wonder if the attack from several days prior was in any way related to the murder of Laura Mutch. It was shortly before midnight on December 26 when a fifty-year-old woman arrived at headquarters, reporting she had been attacked. Speaking to police, she recalled her frightening ordeal.

I was walking on 7th Street, between French and Holland, when a man who had been hiding in the shadows near my home leaped out at me, the woman told police between sobs. He grabbed me from behind and kept one hand over my mouth so that I couldn’t scream for help. Then he tried to drag me back into the alley behind a house. But I broke loose and ran.

(1) The Mutch home, (2) 717 Holland Street, (3) Muffler King building, (4) Hill Mill Dairy, (5) Scobell Manufacturing and (6) Gospel Tabernacle Church.

The street where the woman was attacked was unlit, and despite there being no moon, she was able to provide a fairly good description of her attacker: a short, stocky white male dressed in dark slacks and a shirt, between thirty and forty years of age. He was unshaven and had bulging, dark eyes. Chimenti’s mind replayed the woman’s words over and over. What troubled him more was the suspect who had later been arrested and questioned in the attack. An investigation into his alibi checked out, and he was released within twenty-four hours. He couldn’t have done it.

Or could he?

There were also the other attacks that had occurred since September. Late on the night of September 11, a seventy-five-year-old woman was returning home from a friend’s house when she was grabbed from behind and dragged between two houses near 713 Holland Street by an unknown attacker, who then stole her purse, containing four dollars, before fleeing the area.

On December 28, 1960, around ten o’clock at night, another woman reported being followed by a white male in his twenties near French and Holland Streets. The man grabbed her, attempting to drag her off the street into a nearby yard while trying to kiss her on the cheek. The woman screamed and fought her attacker, who then ran off.

Detectives Carl Malinowski and Philip Lupo inspect Laura Mutch’s clothing. Author’s collection.

And then there was December 30, 1960, around nine o’clock, just hours before Laura Mutch’s murder, when another woman reported to police that she was seized from behind by a young man on East Seventh Street between Holland and German Streets. The woman’s attacker stole her purse and ran south through a nearby alley, only five