I graduated Harding in ’72. During the ’60s the Girl Scouts took a tour of the old city hall and there was an ax on display that had fingerprints on it from a murder between neighbors on Fairground Street across from the east entrance to Fair Park. One house is gone, but the other may still be there. I remember it because I lived in Fair Park, and the two small houses were both still there at that time. Unfortunately, I don\u2019t remember when the murder occurred.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Curious about the story, I posted a message on the Facebook group \u201cGrowing up in Marion, Ohio\u201d to see if anyone remembered the names or dates associated with this tragic story, and many people responded. GUIMO member Dennis Fabian in particular was very helpful in digging up the original newspaper articles as they appeared in The Marion Star<\/em>. The Marion County Historical Society<\/a> also generously shared high quality scans of the original Star<\/em> articles.<\/p>\n Just before Christmas<\/strong><\/p>\n Wednesday, December 23rd, 1959, was a cold day in Marion. The weather forecast called for a high of only 31, and there was a chance of snow. Perfect Christmas weather, in other words. People in Marion were busy with the last minute shopping and baking and choir rehearsals and school plays that fill the days leading up to Christmas. Amid this hustle and bustle, Willis Stewart went to check on his widowed, 83-year-old step-mother, Rose Stewart, in her East Fairground Street home. Nothing could have prepared him for what he would find there.<\/p>\n Mrs. Stewart was dead. She had been strangled and struck multiple times with an ax, and her killer was on the loose in Marion.<\/p>\n The Murderer<\/strong><\/p>\n As hard as it may be for us to imagine today, Mrs. Stewart did not have running water in her home. As a result, she relied on her neighbor, a sporadically employed 52-year-old named Daniel Hunter, to carry it to her twice a day (once in the morning and once in the evening). Early in the investigation, police noted that Mr. Hunter,\u00a0most likely the last person to have seen Mrs. Stewart alive, showed\u00a0very little emotion about Mrs. Stewart\u2019s murder and very little interest in the investigation.<\/p>\n When police later sat down for a formal interview with\u00a0Mr. Hunter later on the 23rd, he insisted that Mrs. Stewart had been alive and well\u00a0when he had gone by with water that morning. Police weren’t buying Mr. Hunter’s story, though. They had noticed\u00a0some of the buckets of water in the house were frozen, and they concluded that Mrs. Stewart\u00a0had been dead\u00a0since at least the previous night. After further questioning, Hunter finally confessed to murdering Mrs. Stewart on Tuesday evening, and police promptly charged him with first-degree murder.<\/p>\n During his police interview, Hunter dispassionately laid out the details of the murder as it happened on the evening of the 22nd:<\/p>\n Hunter said he carried the two buckets of water into the kitchen, put them down, went back out to the rear porch, picked up a long-handled ax that Mrs. Stewart kept there, went back in and stuck her on the head with it.<\/p>\n He next went back out to the rear porch and found an electric light cord which he took back in and wrapped around the neck of the prone woman.<\/p>\n After wrapping the cord around his victim\u2019s neck\u2026he struck her again a number of times with the ax but could not remember how many times.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One of the most troubling aspects of the crime was the lack of a clear motive. After killing Mrs. Stewart, Hunter rummaged through her house; when police asked him what he had been searching for, he replied, \u201cI guess I was looking for money.\u201d Finding none, he\u00a0left empty handed, locking the door behind him.<\/p>\n Mrs. Stewart, it seems, had died for nothing.<\/p>\n Mr. Hunter\u2019s Sentence<\/strong><\/p>\n Mr. Hunter initially pled not guilty to the first degree murder charge. Just one week before his trial was scheduled to begin, however, he agreed to plead guilty to second degree murder. Judge Paul Smith sentenced him to life in prison on June 30th, 1960. The entire proceedings, from the time Hunter entered the courtroom until the judge passed sentence, took just seven minutes.<\/p>\n Despite his life sentence, it appears Mr. Hunter died a free man in 1976. His death certificate lists a Pearl Street address as his residence.<\/p>\n The Ax<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s also one loose thread I should mention: the ax that Ms. Christiano saw hanging on the wall. I got in touch with Kathy Caudill, who has been the property manager for\u00a0the Marion City Police for the past 17 years. Unfortunately, she was unable to find out what had happened to the ax. However, she has promised to let me know if she hears anything.<\/p>\n -Josh Simpkins<\/p>\n _______<\/p>\n Sources:<\/p>\n The Marion Star<\/em>, December 24th, 1959<\/p>\n The Marion Star<\/em>, June 30th, 1960<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Note: In May of 2012, Marie Felt Christiano sent me the following message: I graduated Harding in ’72. During the ’60s the Girl Scouts took a tour of the old city hall and there was an ax on display that had fingerprints on it from a murder between neighbors on Fairground Street across from the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-true-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1904"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1927,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions\/1927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"](\"http:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/rosestewart.jpg\")
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