Crime Immemorial

Sixty-two-year-old Clarence Raymond Case, called Ray by friends and family, was a veteran of World War I, and had worked as a welder for many years before retiring to go into business for himself. Along with his wife Edith, he opened a tavern in Davenport, Iowa called Ray and Edith’s Travel Inn, at which the couple’s two grown daughters, Edna and Betty Ann, sometimes helped out.

On February 15th, 1961, Ray had gone with his daughter Betty Ann and her two-year-old son Donny to Point Byron, Illinois to visit his brother, Frank Case. Edith had remained in Davenport to keep an eye on the tavern until the family’s return later that afternoon.

At a little past nine p.m., Betty Ann drove Edith back to the Case’s home, which was only ten minutes away from the bar. She then returned to the tavern briefly, noting that a handful of customers still remained inside. At approximately quarter to ten, Betty Ann left the bar and walked to her own home three blocks away, leaving her father to close up the establishment for the night.

The following morning, Edith awoke to find that her husband had not come home. She phoned the tavern several times, but received no answer. She then called her daughter Betty Ann, who also made numerous calls to the bar, likewise getting no reply. Edith told her daughter that she would take a bus to the tavern to check things out after running an urgent errand she had planned for that morning.

Meanwhile, at around ten-thirty a.m., a regular customer and friend of Ray’s named William Claussen entered the tavern through the unlocked back door, and spotted Ray Case lying dead in a pool of blood. He immediately summoned the police.

Betty Ann was finally able to get someone to pick up the phone at her parents’ tavern; unfortunately, when she asked if she could talk to her father, the police officer who answered the call told her bluntly that Ray Case was dead.

From the outset, it appeared as though the murder had been committed in the course of a robbery, though the savagery of the killing gave investigators pause. Ray Case had been repeatedly bashed in the head with what was soon determined to be a toilet seat that had been wrenched out of a stall in the men’s room. It was thought that the victim had been attacked from behind as he sat at a table near the rear entrance of the bar.

Bolstering the robbery theory was the fact that the bar’s safe was unlocked and contained nothing but a few coins. The cash register had not been closed out from the night before, and still displayed a ten-cent sale.

According to authorities, the last customer in the tavern had left at approximately twelve-thirty a.m. on the morning of February 16th, though this person was never positively identified. However, investigators were quickly able to track down everyone else who had been in the bar in the hours prior to the murder, and all of these individuals, including family members, were fingerprinted and photographed. Several even submitted to polygraph tests; all passed.

Physical evidence gathered from the tavern included a bloody swatch of clothing, a set of latent fingerprints, and smears of blood inside the bar’s phone booth.

Soon after, the inquiry began to spread outward from the Cases’ tavern and into the surrounding neighborhood. One witness claimed he had seen a car with large fins parked in the bar’s rear parking lot after the establishment had closed. A woman who worked at a nearby doughnut shop told police that she thought she had heard a banging sound coming from the direction of the tavern at around five-forty-five a.m. And several blocks away from the bar, authorities discovered a blood-stained soda bottle which was thought to have originated from the crime scene.

Whether the murder of Ray Case was simply a robbery gone wrong or a more personal attack was never established, and though several men were questioned, none were detained, and the investigation ultimately stalled. Edith Case, after a several-month hiatus, eventually returned to run the tavern she had opened with her husband, but she went to her death without ever knowing who had killed him or why.