(gentle music) - Welcome to "Forum 360."

I am Mark Welfley, your host today.

Thank you for joining us for our global outlook with a local view.

If you tuned in today to hear about murders, robbers, traders, bootleggers, prostitutes, swindler, thieves, and madams in historic Northeast Ohio, you are in the right place.

My guest today is author Jane Ann Turzillo.

Jane is an award-winning true crime biographer and historian with a love and lens for people, places, and events in Northeast Ohio.

Two of Jane's many books, "Wicked Women of Ohio" and "Unsolved Murders and Disappearances in Northeast Ohio" were both nominated for an Agatha, and both won the Ohio Professional Writers Award for adult nonfiction history.

Jane was one of the original owners of the "West Side Leader" in Akron, a large Northeast Ohio weekly newspaper, where she covered police news and wrote a historical crime column.

Today we will take a deep dive into Jane's book, "Wicked Women of Northeast Ohio," and talk about her newest release, "Wicked Cleveland."

So welcome, Jane.

- Thank you, thank you so much for having me.

- You're welcome.

Tell me a little bit about your background.

How did you get started in writing and why crime?

- Well, I guess I probably, from the time I was a little girl, my sister and I, my sister's also a writer, we had dolls, and stuffed animals, and puppets, and we just made up stories all the time and just kept making them up and making them up.

I finally got published in 1976 when I found the story of an old-time counterfeiter that lived in the valley between, I'm sorry, 1800 to 1865, and I think that's probably what started me down, if you wanna call it, my criminal path.

(both laugh) - What was the story of the counterfeiter?

Can you recall?

- Well, his name was James Brown and at the time he was the biggest and best counterfeiter east of the Mississippi.

He even counterfeited money and took it over to, or was starting to take it over to China to buy teas and things like that to bring back to sell, but he was unfortunately caught, or fortunately actually, caught before he was able to set sail.

- So in your book, "Wicked Women of Northeast Ohio," you profile 10 of Northeast Ohio's most deranged divas and maniacal murders complete with a prison break.

What was the inspiration behind writing the book?

- Well, all right, I kind of fell into it, to be honest with you.

I had retired and I was watching my grandchildren.

When they would take their naps, I would go on the computer and I was looking for a project.

I hadn't written anything in a while.

So I found the company, The History Press, the publisher, The History Press, and I noticed that, of course, they published history, and I have a great love of history.

And then, oh boy, they also publish crime, and I have a degree in criminal justice.

So those were, you know, those two things, and so I got off the computer and I thought, "Wow, I gotta think of something here."

and this was serendipitous because it wasn't very much later that the acquisitions editor for this area of Ohio who used to be a reporter for "The Record Courier" contacted me and he knew of my book on Hudson, and he asked me if I wanted to do another book on Hudson.

And I said, well, I didn't know whether I could, because I had already done the one for Arcadia.

And I told him I had been on the website and I would like to do something.

And he said, "Well, shoot me three or four ideas."

And I didn't have three or four ideas crystallized, so I just had to come up with something.

And I wrote back and I said, "How about a history of the Akron police department?

Because they had a lot of the old gangsters.

How about a story of the old time counterfeiter, and how about oh, pioneer women of the Western reserve?"

And then I had been out to lunch with some friends a couple of days before, and we were giggling and one of the women started saying, "Oh, we're shady.

We're a bunch of shady women."

And so I said, "How about shady ladies?"

And it was like that he came back to me and he said, "I like shady ladies, but let's make it wicked women."

And that was it.

- I love the alliteration.

Both of them, actually.

(both chuckle) - So in reading your book, I two or three times remarked to myself, how did you decide who makes the cut?

Who gets in, who gets out with these dastardly deeds?

- Well, it's very easy.

Number one, they have to be interesting.

And number two, there has to be enough information to write about.

So that's it in a nutshell, really.

- Well, who was the first lady that you came across and said, "Well, this, will be my first individual for my book?"

- Wow, I think it was the woman from Canton, as I remember, 'cause I went down to the library and they have hanging files, and I just started going through the hanging files, looking at, you know, and just came up with and I thought, "Boy, this looks interesting."

So sat down and started to read it and realized that there was enough there for me to write about.

- Sure, I like how concise your book is.

It just gets right to the point, and incorporates a little nuance at the same time.

I'm curious, did you learn anything about yourself when writing these books?

- No, the only thing I would say that I learned was how much I love the research, and somebody the other day said, "Yeah," he was a fraud investigator, and we were talking about this and I said, "I just love the research.

I love the research."

And he said, "I understand."

He said, "It's the thrill of the chase."

And that kind of sums it up.

- Sure.

From your book, can you take one of your ladies and just tell me a little bit about her.

I mean, give me one profile from here.

- Well, Velma West- - Is my favorite.

- And she's a favorite of a lot.

If you can call her a favorite, you know, a favorite wicked woman.

She was a party girl, and she was very young, and she married a very well to do man, and she was from the big city, and she liked, like I say, she liked to drink, and smoke, and we're talking in the twenties, 1927, I think.

And he was from the country and he liked to go to church suppers and things like that.

And so one night they were supposed to go to a party in Cleveland and he had hurt his leg during work and didn't didn't wanna go, and so she wanted to go without him, and he didn't want her to, so, you know, what's a girl to do?

She picked up a claw hammer and hit him over the head.

And then that wasn't enough.

She hit him several times, and then she took the lamp cord and wrapped it around his feet and his arms so that he couldn't get up.

Of course he was already dead, and then she put a pillowcase over his head and then she beat him with a table leg.

And of course she did get caught.

- She also wound up going to that event?

- Oh, yes she did.

- After she did all that to- - Oh yes, she went, - Her husband.

- to the yes, and nobody knew, nobody knew.

She had a great time, you know?

She drank and smoked and sang, and everything and nobody knew, and the next day she went Christmas shopping with her mother and bought him a Christmas present.

But as I say, of course, she was caught, and she went to prison and she broke out of prison.

She and three other women broke out of prison, and the warden, which was a woman, her name was Riley, she thought that Velma wouldn't get very far because Velma had a bad heart, and she thought that the other woman would leave her behind, but she was gone for three months and they finally found her and Mary Ellen Richards, I believe, in Texas, and she had a job down there and everything.

But she told the warden, she said that she just wanted to breathe free air again.

And she had tried to be paroled and the Parole Board wasn't hearing anything of it.

So I think she probably figured what have I got to lose?

- It also sounded like she had developed a friendship, or at least a respectful relationship with the warden.

- With the warden, yes.

- And she was almost sad to break out.

- She wrote her a letter, yes, and said that, you know, she was sad about that.

- But it was better to breathe one breath of air.

- Yes, yeah.

- Than honor her relationship with her.

- Yep, and have one more journey as she said, so, yeah.

- Yeah, interesting.

You dedicate your book, "Wicked Women of Northeast Ohio" to your mom, Lucille, who I read a little bit about.

What influence did she have on you and your writing?

(Jane chuckles) - Let me just put it this way, my mother belonged in the book.

(Mark chuckles) And so that's why I thought, you know, I really should dedicate this to my mom.

You know, my grandmother was probably a better role model for both my sister and me, 'cause well, she always encouraged us and she was a reader and she wrote, and so that's the story there.

And granny, my grandmother, her name was Hazel Peltier and she loved history too, and her favorite thing was to take us on picnics in the cemetery of places where she lived and tell us the story of the town by going around in the cemetery, and that just enthralled me as a kid.

And so history is just a favorite with me from that.

- [Mark] I read that she also, after the passing of your father- - My dad, yeah.

- Ran the construction company for a dozen plus years.

How was she as the president of a construction company?

(Jane chuckles) - She was there.

That was about it.

I think the men who, the vice presidents and the secretary, they actually did the day to day business, yeah.

- If you're just joining us, thank you for joining us.

I am with Jane Ann Turzillo.

Jane is an award winning true crime biographer and historian with a love and lens for people, places, and events in Northeast Ohio.

And Jane is the author of the book we've been talking about, "Wicked Women of Northeast Ohio."

Jane also has a new book that just recently released, and congrats on the new release of your book, which is right here, "Wicked Cleveland."

And I took a little excerpt.

It says, it describes this book as brings together the strippers, gangsters, robbers, shady politicians, and more from Cleveland's rough and rowdy past.

And I couldn't go any further by saying, I gotta hear more about this.

So tell me a little bit about your new book.

- Well, first of all, you know, I love Cleveland.

Cleveland is a wonderful city.

It has everything.

It's got wonderful museums, parks, you know, you name it, the lake, but it also has its dark side just like every other city in the United States has a dark side.

And so I just collected stories in history of the darker moments and darker people of Cleveland.

- Can you tell us about someone in the book?

- Well, I kind of start out with Short Vincent Avenue, which for people that don't know, it's a 485 foot block, I guess you would call it, between ninth and sixth streets.

And it just had a lot of the shady bars and just a lot of illegal stuff going on there, but it also had some good restaurants and things.

So I really enjoyed telling the tales of those.

And then I went on to tell about that Cleveland had a man named Leon Czolgosz that murdered President McKinley.

There's a couple of really good bank robberies in there, including a hostage situation.

And then I suppose, Ted Conrad, who made a way with $215,000 from the Society National Bank in 1969 and was never seen again, I wrote the story about him in one of my other books, "Ohio Heists," and then last November, I got an email from a person asking me if I was interested in more information.

And I said, "Sure."

And they sent me an obituary for a man named Thomas Randell, and I didn't know that name and the picture didn't look like Ted Conrad anyway, but of course this is 52 years later and Ted Conrad was 20 when he left Cleveland.

But as I read the obituary, I thought, "Boy, there's a lot of similarities here, and when I got to the mother's name was Ruthabeth Kruger.

That was Ted Conrad's mother's name, and I just you know red flags just went up the flag pole.

So I then called a friend of his and we talked about it for a while and he wasn't sure what I had there.

So I finally went to Facebook to look at his daughter's Facebook page, and she had a lot of pictures of him on there, and as I scrolled through the pictures of him got younger and younger and it was Ted Conrad.

And so then I wrote to the US Marshall, because he had helped me with the information, he and his father, had helped me with the information for "Ohio Heists," and I knew that they wanted him.

And then we talked on the phone and he then confirmed that Thomas Randell was Ted Conrad.

- Where did Mr. Conrad go for all those years?

- To the Boston area.

He had just become obsessed with a movie, the 1968 movie "Thomas Crown Affair," and Steve McQueen that played in it, which for anybody that doesn't remember, Steve McQueen was a very wealthy man and he was bored, so he planned a bank heist.

And so apparently Ted just thought, "Well, I could do the same thing," and he did.

Oh, and you asked me, it was filmed in Boston, and I think that's why he went to Boston.

- You touched on this, I think, a second or so ago, when it comes to the shocking and seedy the underbelly of crime and murder, how does Northeast Ohio compare to other regions of the country?

- Oh, golly, I don't know.

I suppose we're like any other region, and depending upon the population, I suppose, but I can't really answer.

- Yeah, okay.

I'm also curious, you are the co-founder, were the co-founder of the "West Side Leader" and wrote about crime, a column.

So where did you get your stories for the "West Side Leader?"

Did you follow police blotter?

How, and, you know, take me on a journey for one of the stories that you wrote.

- Well, I've always liked history, as I've said, and I liked the history of the west, and I just would read stuff, and whenever I read something that I liked, whether it was in a newspaper somewhere, I would just cut it out and I put it in one of my files.

And then, again, if it was something I liked and there was enough material that I could write it up and that's how it got in the paper.

- Was it your idea to start a column dedicated to crime as kind of one of your missions in starting the "West Side Leader?"

- Yes, yes.

- Versus just kinda coming about with your- - Not necessarily in starting the paper, but we always knew that when we started the paper, that I would be the one that would do the police and fire news.

But I think, you know, once I got there, I knew I had to do a historical column, or a vintage true crime column.

- Can you intersect from your research any history where a big known crime person, Bugsy Siegel or others, came to Cleveland and somehow was involved with Cleveland and crime.

- Oh, you know certainly Alvin Karpis.

He was part of the Barker Gang, and he liked Ohio, he loved Ohio.

And once Ma and Freddie Barker were killed in Florida, and Doc Barker was picked up in Chicago, I think, he was number one.

And he liked Ohio and he came to Cleveland quite a bit because he liked to go to the Harvard Club.

And then of course, he robbed a train in Garrettsville, so, yeah, that's one.

- [Mark] That's a big, sure.

- That's one.

- I believe I remember reading in the book that one of your ladies was actually picked up by Doc Holliday.

Did I see that?

Arrested by, Holly came calling?

Okay.

- That's my dog's name.

- [Both] Doc Holliday.

(both chuckle) - Looking back on your past of all the things you have done and accomplished, what are you most proud of?

- Oh, I'd have to say my son, of course, 'cause if I didn't say that he'd be mad at me, but yeah, I would say I worked at the Akron Art Museum for a while, and that was probably one of the best jobs I ever had.

And I was always proud of my work there, and I was proud of starting the "West Side Leader."

My last job, I taught English to students, mostly women, who were kind of, I don't wanna say disadvantaged, but yeah, they were in a way, and it was college age students.

And I'm really proud of some of them because three of 'em went on to become attorneys.

(Jane coughs) - Your sister is also a writer, and so I'm wondering when you were young, were there dueling manuscripts, or did you write to impress each other or did you evolve into writing at later days?

- Well, Mary has a PhD in English literature, and she taught at Kent for 30 years.

She's, (Jane coughs) I'm sorry.

She writes science fiction.

So she goes one end of the spectrum, and I go the other end, history and science fiction.

And in fact, she just had a book come out called "Cosmic Cats."

So we really never, you know, we always read each other's stuff, and we talk about writing, but she doesn't write history, and I don't write science fiction, so.

- Okay.

You have a place in your heart for, I think even your domain, right, is dark hearted women.

Did that come from your mom, or just evolved outta the interest in that one chance encounter when you were looking at the internet as you mentioned earlier?

- That's kind of where it was born, but then of course, I got interested in their stories, of course, and I realized that a lot of people wanted to read about it.

And so it was kind of like, they like to read about it and I like to write about it, so that's how, yeah.

- Beside your books, nine, now?

- [Jane] Nine, yes.

- Nine going on 10, right?

- This was number nine.

- And your next book is about what?

- Well, I'm writing about cold cases in Northern Ohio.

- Okay, can you share a cold case with us?

- One I will share is, since we touched on my dad's company, one was the murder of Norman L Liver.

He was a soils engineer and he was the Executive Vice President of my dad's company, and he was murdered.

He lived in Lakewood.

He was murdered in 1980, and they never were able to find who did it.

So and I saved all the information for that.

And that's what has led me to work on this one that I'm doing now.

- Is there a place locally in Northeast Ohio where an enthusiast of the bad actors in our Northeast Ohio area can go to see and learn more about these people?

- Well, since they're all from different parts of, but I would say the libraries.

I always start at the libraries, and of course I have subscriptions to historical newspaper databases, and the Library of Congress, and each case is different where I get my research.

- [Mark] Okay, thank you.

- But yeah, there are a couple of police museums, one in Cleveland and one in Akron.

- Thanks, Jane.

What do you get when you combine a love for history with a degree in criminal justice technology and a degree in mass media communication, both from the University of Akron?

You get our guest today, historian and crime biographer, Jane Turzillo.

Thank you, Jane, for your nearly 40 years of commitment to Northeast Ohio.

You have informed us, and educated us, scared us, perhaps, but most importantly helped us appreciate the color and canvas of Northeast Ohio.

Good luck with your new book, "Wicked Cleveland."

Thanks for watching and listening.

Let's keep our eyes and ears and minds open.

Until next time on "Forum 360."

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