On May 23rd, 1966, forty-year-old Ohio State University professor and rocket scientist Loren E. Bollinger was found dead in a pool of blood in a storage room. The well-liked and unmarried professor had tempered his resignation with the college shortly before, and had planned to open up his own office that July in the building where his remains were ultimately discovered.
Loren had been shot in the back five times by a .25 caliber pistol in what appeared to be an execution-style slaying, though there was no evidence he had been robbed. Strangely, no shell casings were recovered from the scene.
Authorities were almost immediately able to link Loren Bollinger’s death with two other murders from the previous year, those of service station attendants Joseph Scowden and Claude Quesenberry, both of whom had been killed in the course of robberies. A third attendant, Ray Sigler, was robbed and shot, but survived his injuries. Police were able to determine that all four of the victims had been shot with the same weapon, though they were confused as to why Loren Bollinger had not been robbed like the others. And despite Ray Sigler giving a detailed description of the white male assailant to investigators, no trace of the gunman was ever found.
Loren Bollinger’s murder was also briefly thought to be linked to the May 6th slaying of thirty-two-year-old Lisa Davenport, who only lived five blocks from Loren’s apartment and was found stuffed in the trunk of an abandoned car in Findlay, Ohio. Lisa had reportedly last been seen by her husband Edwin as she drove off toward the city of Lima, Ohio to visit friends, a destination at which she apparently never arrived.
Like Loren, Lisa had also been shot several times in the back, but detectives soon came forward and stated that there was no connection between the two crimes. Police Chief Roy Thomas, in fact, informed the Sandusky Register newspaper that he knew who had killed Lisa Davenport, but did not go so far as to inform the media of his suspicions.
Although police released a description of the man thought to be responsible for the three so-called Columbus Murders—a white male between thirty and thirty-five years old, standing about five-foot-nine, weighing between 170 and 200 pounds, and driving a gray 1960 or 1961 Chevy Corvette—no arrests were ever made, and the trio of possibly related killings of Loren Bollinger, Joseph Scowden, and Claude Quesenberry remain unsolved more than fifty years later.
Crime Immemorial 