The Big Story - 1948-05-12 TCOT Lucky Longshot [Robert Early, Indianapolis Star]

English · True Crime

Only part 2 of this episode is known to have survived at this time. This almost sounds like an episode of The Whistler ! An Alabama radiator manufacturer goes to Indianapolis "on a business trip" to see the 1930 Indianapolis 500. He makes sure that people notice him in the area. He even writes a letter to his wife about how he's looking forward to getting back home after the race. These are part of a scheme to cover up an affair and to get money from his own life insurance. He kills a hitchhiker near the Speedway, puts the body in his car, and sets the car on fire. Harold Herbert Schroeder's ruse works: everyone believes he is dead. Over a couple of weeks they realize that the size of the body and that of Schroeder's didn't match, and they suspected Schroeder was alive. They found him near his home in Mobile, Alabama, where he arrived back just a few days prior. He concocted various stories while in custody that it was self defense, and he burned the car so that people would not accuse him of murdering the still unidentified man. Another was that he drove into a ditch and the hitchhiker died from a broken neck, and covered up his reckless driving by burning the car. He was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced for two to fourteen years in prison. He was paroled after just three years. Schroeder moved to Florida, and passed away in July 1959 at age 64. Robert Early worked for the Indianapolis Star for fifty years. He died in 1987 at age 81. The publisher of the paper, in Early's obituary, stated "No one who had the privilege of knowing Bob Early will ever forget him or his total devotion to his newspaper. He was totally loyal to those he worked for and those he worked with. He was a managing editor who managed extremely well." Details about the case can be found in Historic Indianapolis Crimes: Murder & Mystery in the Circle City by Fred D. Cavinder. Google Books has limited access to the text. Preview sections of the book offer details about how they determined the body was not Schroeder's in this pre-DNA testing era. Schroeder was just plain sloppy, not just in finding a victim who was not his approximate size, but for mailing letters back home that received postmark dates after he supposedly died! No one ever identified the hitchhiker. He was originally believed to be a young man named Tony Yonell, who was thought missing for a short time, but he returned home safely. A newspaper reported that a parent of a missing man showed Schroeder a picture of their son, and he shook his head "no." Another time a psychic was used in a failing attempt to identify the person. The Cavinder book states that the police were getting so many pictures of missing young men that Schroeder refused to look at them.

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.