On April 17th, 1954, in Des Moines, Iowa, two teenage boys out fishing along a river bank found a body floating beneath the Court Avenue bridge.
Police first thought the victim had simply drowned, but the man’s skull bore fractures consistent with blows from a heavy, blunt object, and the fact that there was no water in his lungs further cemented the cause of death as murder.
Fingerprints revealed the deceased as sixty-seven-year-old Charles Sanders, a painter and paper-hanger who lived with his son not far from the Des Moines River. Because the man’s wallet was missing, it was assumed that robbery was at least partially the motive for the killing. His family later speculated that perhaps someone who knew that Charles had recently received money from a job had clubbed him over the head to rob him, and had not necessarily been trying to kill him.
Charles Sanders had last been seen in a nearby bar on Thursday morning, and investigators hypothesized that he might have gotten involved in a brawl there which ended with his death. However, no witnesses reported seeing any fights in the tavern that day, and subsequent interviews of residents along the riverbank likewise yielded no clues.
Interestingly, Charles had indeed been involved in some type of altercation on the previous Christmas Eve. Some unknown assailant had knocked Charles out and left him lying on Sixth Avenue East in downtown Des Moines. He was found the following day by family members, and taken to Des Moines General Hospital with serious head injuries which he spent the next month recovering from. It was never discovered if this particular attack was related to the one that killed him less than six months later.
The seemingly random crime has never been solved.
Crime Immemorial 