BOOK LAUNCH ANNOUNCEMENT! SUNDAY FEBRUARY 16, 2025 10 AM (CST) SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.
On Sunday, February 16th, 2025, the official book launch for both of my latest books, Thursdays with Doc. Dr. Wayne C. Temple’s Recollections of Springfield & Lincoln and Osborn H. Oldroyd: Keeper of the Lincoln Flame, will be held in Springfield, Illinois. 10:00 am (Central Standard Time) at Books on the Square 427 E. Washington St. Springfield, IL 62701. (217) 965-5443
https://www.booksonthesquare.com/
The author will speak about Doc and Oldroyd, their connection to each other, and Springfield, the day after the Abraham Lincoln 216th Birthday Event: Symposium & Banquet in that historic building across from the Old State Capitol Building where Lincoln served. A book signing will follow the talk. All purchases of Doc’s book that day will include a limited edition, hand-numbered bookplate signed by Doc, Dr. James Cornelius, and the author.
Osborn H. Oldroyd devoted his life to acquiring everything relating to Abraham Lincoln. For nearly half his life, Osborn Oldroyd made his home and displayed his collection in two houses directly associated with the 16th President: the Lincoln Homestead in Springfield, Illinois, and the House Where Lincoln Died in Washington, D.C., a feat that will never be surpassed. Oldroyd guarded a gateway between two worlds. On one side was the world of the now and on the other, the world of the past. When Lincoln passed from life to history, the nation’s grief gave way to reverence; sorrow gave way to esteem. Oldroyd, the loyal log cabin Republican and veteran soldier, did his best to ensure no one forgot. Oldroyd had the institutional memory gained from walking in Lincoln’s footsteps, talking with Lincoln’s contemporaries, and examining the objects associated with his idol. Oldroyd was never trained as a curator. He was a born collector whose experience in handling and researching objects while building his personal collection was his curatorial education. His ability to recount the story behind the object and inject it with enthusiasm, humor, and believability, made him a folk hero to the common man. Just as Oldroyd’s museums can be considered the first of their kind in American museum history, Oldroyd himself can be labeled as America’s first folk curator. To the collection and study of Lincoln, Osborn Oldroyd’s name is unavoidable, particularly in the study of his assassination. It could easily be said that without the efforts of Osborn H. Oldroyd, we may have lost the Lincoln Home in Springfield, the House Where Lincoln Died, and Ford’s Theatre itself. Oldroyd’s obsessive, idiosyncratic devotion to Abraham Lincoln brought the martyred President down from the fog of intellectualism and back to earth for everyone to rediscover in object form. Oldroyd was the last of his kind and the first of another. He arrives by adoration and departs by dedication, opening doors for every Lincoln collector, admirer, and scholar that followed. Born in an age of covered wagons and canals, Oldroyd lived to see the age of the automobile and the airplane. And, thanks mainly to Osborn Oldroyd, visitors to the Petersen house today can walk through the first floor, down the long hallway to stand inside the tiny, dimly-lit otherwise insignificant room with the slanted ceiling where the last, best hope of a nation was lost.
KA series of informal discussions with Springfield Illinois Lincoln scholar and author Dr. Wayne C. Temple, known affectionately as “Doc”. Who, for over 56 years, worked for nine different Illinois Secretaries of State and ten different Governors representing both parties, a remarkable feat of its own. It is a record unlikely to be equaled. Doc was with the Illinois State Archives from 1964 to 2016, much of that time as the Chief Deputy Director. Before that, Doc was editor-in-chief of the Lincoln Herald and in charge of the Dept. of Lincolniana at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee from 1958 to 1964, remaining in that position remotely from Springfield until 1973. Doc was an honorary member of the Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission, 1959-1960, and served on the advisory council of the United States Civil War Centennial Commission, 1960-1966. Doc served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946, and during that time he helped to establish General Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower’s communications in Europe. Doc has authored over 20 books, mostly on Lincoln, and has written over 600 articles, poems, reviews, and papers during his career. Doc graduated from the University of Illinois in 1949, studying under his mentor J.G. Randall, the “Dean of Lincoln Scholars.” Doc’s accomplishments are well covered in this volume. This book spans almost three years of interviews with Doc, James Cornelius (former Curator of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum), and author/newspaper columnist Alan E. Hunter. The topics cover Abraham Lincoln, the little-known history and colorful personalities of Springfield, Illinois, the Indigenous Peoples of Illinois, and the life and times of Springfield’s preeminent Lincoln scholar. Now over 100 years old, Dr. Wayne C. Temple has seen it all.
Break on Through to the Other Side.
Original publish date May 31, 2013. Republish date May 14, 2026.
https://weeklyview.net/2026/05/14/break-on-through-to-the-other-side-2
Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist of The Doors, died in Rosenheim, Germany after a long fight with cancer on May 20, 2013.
His death came 42 years, literally a lifetime, after the death of Doors’ frontman Jim Morrison. (Assuming of course that you don’t cast your lot with the conspiratorialists that believe Mr. Mojo Rising is alive and well, drinking whiskey sours on some deserted Caribbean Island.) The Doors were one of the most influential bands in the history of rock-n-roll, owing, in large part, to the innovative keyboard riffs of Ray Manzarek. It was the marriage of Manzarek’s sonic banshee keyboard style to Morrison’s haunting vocals that made the band so unique. But because Morrison died so young, the picture of The Doors I have tattooed on my mind is that of youth and Ray’s passing just doesn’t jive with that image.
Raymond Daniel Manczarek, Jr., born February 12, 1939, was an American musician, singer, producer, film director, writer, and co-founder of The Doors from 1965 to 1973. Manzarek died of complications related to bile duct cancer. Manzarek was a gritty Polish kid, born and raised on the south side of Chicago. Growing up, he took private piano lessons but his real love was basketball. Young Ray only wanted to play power forward or center and at 6 feet 1 inch tall, that was going to be a challenge. At the age of 16 his coach insisted that he play guard, or not at all. So Ray quit the team. Manzarek said later if it was not for that ultimatum, he might never have been with The Doors. He attended St. Rita High School in Chicago and graduated from DePaul University with a degree in Economics and played keyboards in many shows at the school. In 1962–1965, he studied in the Department of Cinematography at UCLA, where he met film student Jim Morrison. Forty days after finishing film school, thinking they had gone their separate ways, Manzarek and Morrison met by chance on Venice Beach in California. Morrison said he had written some songs, and Manzarek expressed an interest in hearing them, whereupon Morrison sang a rough version of “Moonlight Drive.” Manzarek liked the songs and co-founded The Doors with Morrison at that moment.
Outwardly the two were an odd match. Morrison, strikingly tall, dark and handsome, looked the part of rock star. Manzarek, with glasses and comparatively close-cropped blonde hair, looked more like a college professor. Later, Manzarek met drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger at a Transcendental Meditation lecture. Krieger’s Spanish-influenced guitar and Densmore’s subtle, jazz-infused drumming cemented the band’s signature sound.
In January 1966, The Doors became the house band at The London Fog on L.A.’s Sunset Strip. According to Manzarek, “Nobody ever came in the place…an occasional sailor or two on leave, a few drunks. All in all it was a very depressing experience, but it gave us time to really get the music together.” The same day The Doors were fired from The London Fog, they were hired to be the house band of the legendary Whisky a Go Go. Their first performance at the Whisky was with the Van Morrison’s group “Them” (Remember G-L-O-R-I-A…Gloria?).
The Doors’ first recording contract was with Columbia Records. After a few months of inactivity, they learned they were on Columbia’s drop list. At that point, they asked to be released from their contract. After a few months of live gigs, the band was “rediscovered” and The Doors were signed by Elektra Records.
The band took their name from a line in Aldous Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” The line comes originally from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Together, The Doors recorded numerous multi-platinum albums and had hits with “L.A. Woman,” “Break On Through to the Other Side,” “The End” and Ray Manzarek’s masterpiece, “Light My Fire.” The Doors have sold more than 100 million albums and their music has been re-released and repackaged multiple times over the years, been featured prominently in movies, and holds a lofty perch in rock history.
The Doors lacked a bassist, so Manzarek usually played the bass parts on a Fender Rhodes piano. His signature sound was the Vox Continental combo organ. Known for its bright, thin, breathy sound, the “Connie” was used by many other psychedelic rock bands of the era. If you’re not a devotee of The Doors, you’ve heard the “Connie” featured prominently on hit songs like “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals, “96 Tears” by Question Mark and the Mysterians, and “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” by Iron Butterfly. But nobody played the Connie as well and as often as Ray Manzarek. Later Ray switched to a Gibson G-101 Kalamazoo combo organ because the Connie’s plastic keys frequently broke during Manzarek’s frenetic playing.
Manzarek occasionally sang for The Doors, including the live recordings of “Close To You” and on the B-side of “Love Her Madly,” and “You Need Meat (Don’t Go No Further).” He also sang on the last two Doors albums, recorded after Morrison’s death, Other Voices and Full Circle. Additionally, he provided one of several guitar parts on the song “Been Down So Long.”
For fans and musicians alike, The Doors’ brooding and sometimes dark sound crystallized the experimental rock music emanating from Los Angeles. The “L.A. Sound” stood in stark contrast to the lighter, soaring sound coming out of the San Francisco Bay Area typified by the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. To me, what made The Doors sound so musically different was that Ray Manzarek’s keyboard was the lead instrument. I’d never heard that before. Most bands led with a guitar, some with the drums, but The Doors led with a keyboard. I’m sure it had been done before, but it was a new sound to me. And, after all these years, it’s the sound I can remember. If you doubt it, Google “Riders on the Storm” and get back to me.
In an interview with National Public Radio in 2000, Manzarek described the band’s sound this way: “We were aware of Muddy Waters. We were aware of Howlin’ Wolf and John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Plus, Jan and Dean and The Beach Boys and the surf sound. Robby Krieger brings in some flamenco guitar. I bring a little bit of classical music along with the blues and jazz, and certainly John Densmore was heavy into jazz. And Jim brings in beatnik poetry and French symbolist poetry, and that’s the blend of The Doors as the sun is setting into the Pacific Ocean at the end, the terminus of Western civilization. That’s the end of it. Western civilization ends here in California at Venice Beach, so we stood there inventing a new world on psychedelics.”
Ray Manzarek was iconic, brilliant, eccentric and way ahead of his time. From all accounts, Manzarek loved life. We should all be so lucky as to find something that makes us as happy as pounding keyboards made Ray Manzarek. The fact that he helped change the face of music while doing it, well, that’s just a bonus. Manzarek himself explained it thusly: “The only thing that ultimately matters is to eat an ice-cream cone, play a slide trombone, plant a small tree, good God, now you’re free.” In that case, make mine a triple scoop.
The Treasure Hunter and the Abraham Lincoln pocketknife unearthed.
Originally published in August 2012. Republished August 11, 2022.
https://weeklyview.net/2022/08/11/the-treasure-hunter
My long-suffering wife Rhonda honored me recently on the occasion of my 50th birthday with two fantastic gifts. The first was an exact replica of President John F. Kennedy’s “Carolina Rocker” rocking chair purchased from the Kennedy Museum in Massachusetts. The chair was a signature item in JFK’s life, much prized for it’s value in easing the pain of Kennedy’s aching back damaged while saving crew members of his sunken PT-109 boat during World War II. That gift alone was more than I deserved and it certainly gave my two children the giggles as they pointed out that I was getting a rocking chair as a gift on my 50th birthday. (They got me an age-defying case of Quisp cereal. Smart kids.)
The second gift was presented to me while I was seated in my new chair. Good thing too as it may have otherwise buckled my knees. It was an 1860s-era Abraham Lincoln pocket knife. Not just any Lincoln pocket knife, but an Abraham Lincoln Mourning knife with a direct tie-in to the Civil War. The knife itself was enough to make me slap my head, but it was the story attached to it that makes it truly special to me.
Turns out that this knife is a relic rescued from the Ohio soil where it had been resting undisturbed and forgotten for nearly a 150 years. Rhonda found the knife on, where else, eBay and printed off the description to go with the prized relic. I was fascinated with both the item and the story. I just had to talk to the treasure hunter who found it. Turns out, the knife was dug from the ground surrounding an ancient schoolhouse in the woods of Northwestern Ohio by metal “detectorist” Jerry Goodwin of Richmond, Ohio. The area is located on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border about 120 miles south of Cleveland. Ironically, most Richmond residents consider themselves part of “Steeler Nation” rather than the dawg pound of the Browns. “We’re only about a half hour over the river from Pittsburgh.” said Jerry.
Although I’ve never been there, Richmond, Ohio holds a special place in my heart because the town was “visited” by Brig. General John Hunt Morgan during his famous Civil War raid from Southern Indiana up through Ohio in June and July of 1863. My great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side rode with the 8th Kentucky Cavalry of Morgan’s Raiders and my g-g-grandfather on my father’s side served with the 33rd Indiana Infantry of Coburn’s Brigade, who were chasing Morgan and his men. I jokingly tell my kids that if one had caught the other, I might not be here. Richmond is also the hometown of Abraham Lincoln’s powerful Secretary of War, close friend and fierce legacy protector Edwin M. Stanton.
The story of the finding of the knife is priceless. I will let Jerry tell you the details in his own words. “I consider myself a historian and major Civil War buff but I must admit, this creeped me out a little. After getting permission from the landowner, I was working a site from an old 1800’s one room schoolhouse. The site produced a nice Indian Head (penny) within 10 minutes of my getting there. After a while, I dug this item and, after rubbing the dirt off, I was a little creeped out when I saw that it had the somewhat uncomfortable look of a skull!” Above the image were the words, “Our Lamented.”
Jerry had no idea what it was, but he guessed that it was made of nickel or bronze, but didn’t know much else about it. So he posted a picture of the fragment on the “What Is It?” forum of the “Treasurenet” treasure hunting site he is a member of. He figured he’d get the super sleuth’s minds working on it. Someone on the public forum suggested the image might be Abraham Lincoln. Jerry continued, “Another comment suggested (and was right on) that it may have originally said ‘President’ beneath the figure. Imagine the thrill I got when near the end of September I returned to the old schoolhouse site and I dug a signal that brought up another piece of the knife that says simply ‘President’ on it.”
Jerry could tell by looking at the broken edge of the “President” piece that it would fit his previous find perfectly like a jigsaw puzzle. “I knew exactly what it was and couldn’t wait to get it home to match it up with the original piece I’d dug in June.” Jerry continued to search the site. ”I swung over the hole again, got another strong signal and got the other side plate intact that says ‘Our Union Is Preserved’!” It turned out to be the complete back plate of what he later found out was a pocket knife made shortly after Lincoln was assassinated. This additional find completed the puzzle. “It is always a thrill at these old one room schoolhouse sites to dig an old Indian Head penny or piece of kid’s jewelry, but this knife was one of my favorite finds.” Jerry said.
Jerry took the pieces home to clean and reassemble them. “I think Abe is a little more presentable now. I simply used some hobby wood to take up the space that the blade or blades would have occupied. I was able to salvage the entire top pin and the head of the pin below Abe’s left shoulder. The bottom pin is a cut off nail. Turns out this pocketknife was made of all brass except for the blade.
“Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865 just five days after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House. I’m sure our country was still in a terrible state of mourning when this knife was being produced. I wonder if it was therapeutic for the craftsman who designed it? My research has turned up nothing about this knife.” said Jerry.
Jerry meticulously documented his discovery, cleaning, restoration and reassembly of the knife on the Treasurenet forum. His find turned out to be one of the best ever presented in the magazine and the forum boards fairly lit up with congratulatory messages and praise about his special find.
I asked Jerry if he shares his discoveries with the landowner, “Yes, always. Recently I found an 1843 silver half dollar on a farm. I took it home, cleaned it, put it in a coin sleeve and gave it back to the property owner. His family had lived on the farm for generations and he was thrilled with the discovery. He directed me to another site on the property that had been long ago abandoned where I found an 1833 one cent coin. It’s about the size of a silver dollar, really cool.” said Jerry. So it’s not necessarily the treasure that keeps him going, but the thrill of the hunt.
According to Jerry’s TreasureNet forum research, the knife is most likely a boy’s knife pattern; a small jack knife with a single blade. Most likely made by the American Knife Co. (1858 – 1919) of Plymouth Hollow, Connecticut. Similar knives were made for the 1876 Centennial Exposition, 1878 Paris World’s Fair, and 1892 Columbian Exposition in Chicago (of H.H. Holmes & Devil and the White City fame). The knife was most certainly only available for a short time after Mr. Lincoln’s assassination as the “Union Is Preserved” slogan fell out of favor rather quickly after the War’s end.
Naturally, upon hearing the mention of Jerry’s hand-held GPS, my questions wandered quickly to geocaching, a subject covered in depth in past columns. Turns out Jerry and his wife Angi are avid geocachers too. But Jerry points out that the GPS was purchased for metal detecting, not geocaching. Turns out, Angi is not much for metal detecting but tolerates her husband’s hobby, despite the countless hours Jerry spends out searching for buried treasure. “I tried to get her interested in metal detecting, but it didn’t work.” This despite the fact that when Jerry took Angi out for her first treasure hunt, she found a 1967 silver dime. “She’d rather geocache instead. We do that with our kids and often plan trips around it.”
Jerry stressed that if you want to get involved with metal detecting, visit the Treasurenet.com Web site first and always, ALWAYS, get permission from the landowner before you dig. Some states and state parks require permits while others don’t. “It all depends. In Pennsylvania you can’t metal detect in any state park,” he said.
For this writer’s part, I have friends who metal detect, one of whom purchased an expensive, tricked out detector in hopes of searching Civil War battlefields for just one minie’ ball bullet, (I actually accompanied him on one such hunt in Virginia and sat on the railroad tracks smoking a cigar as he searched in vain for that treasured Civil War bullet, coming away with ticks and mosquito bites instead). I have personally avoided diving into the treasure hunting hobby because I know my limitations. My OCD tendencies would quickly come out and I would most certainly spend every waking moment looking for buried treasure after I went out on that first hunt.
After all, I could search all my life and never find an item I treasured half as much as I do this knife. So, of course, I asked the question that had to be asked; “If the Lincoln knife was your best find ever, why on earth did you give it up?” To which Jerry replied, “I have lots of stuff I’ve dug up over the years in display cases all over my house. The Lincoln knife was one of my favorites but I thought it was time for someone else to enjoy it.” Believe me folks, the knife will be well loved and cared for by the Hunter family for many years to come.
If you’re interested in reading the entire story as it developed, you can go to http://www.Treasurenet.com and look at the forum sections for June 14, 2008 and September 28, 2008. Jerry has posted several other pictures of the Lincoln knife in “as found” condition, during his careful restoration into it’s final stage. It’s a fascinating story.
A Gallery of photos of the Lincoln knife discovery posted by Jerry Goodwin.
The Indianapolis Airport Ramada Inn Disaster.
Original publish date October 25, 2013. Republished October 22, 2026.
https://weeklyview.net/2026/10/22/the-indianapolis-airport-ramada-inn-disaster
I found an old 1960s Era brochure from the Indianapolis Airport Hotel. As I looked at the sparsely populated landscape that used to surround the old Indianapolis Municipal Airport and flipped through the folded pages containing great old interior views of the “modern” hotel, my mind automatically went back to an event from the pages of Indy history. The Ramada Airport hotel plane crash.
I googled it and realized that the crash took place 39 years ago. The Ramada Inn air crash and resulting fire occurred when a United States Air Force pilot failed to reach the runway and the plane crashed into a nearby Ramada Inn. On Tuesday morning October 20, 1987 35-year-old Major Bruce L. Teagarden flew his US Air Force A-7D-4-CV Corsair II, serial 69-6207 airplane over the city of Indianapolis. Down below, at the Indianapolis Airport Ramada Inn, the housekeeping staff was busily preparing for the guests to check out. A salesman had stopped at the hotel in search of a pay phone. In short, it was a routine day.
At 9:10 a.m., Teagarden’s instrument panel went dark. The 12-year-veteran pilot notified controllers at Indianapolis International Airport that his aircraft was experiencing engine failure 15 miles southwest of the city at 31,000 feet. He requested to return for an emergency landing. Controllers directed the pilot to Runway 5L, but due to the low cloud ceiling and poor visibility, Teagarden was at 3,100 feet as he passed over the runway and he attempted to land on Runway 32 instead. The crippled corsair’s engine stalled, the joy stick locked up and now the plane had the aerodynamics of a brick.
Teagarden made a right turn eastward away from the airport and dropped to 2,000 feet just east of Interstate 465 when he disappeared from the radar. At 500 feet, the aircraft made a slight right turn towards the Park Fletcher complex. The pilot looked out at the open farm fields ahead, hoping his $7.9 million jet would crash harmlessly there. He hit the eject button and moments later, Teagarden hung helplessly from his parachute and looked on in horror as the plane headed towards the hotel. It bounced off the roof of the Bank One branch in the 5600 block of Bradbury Avenue and flew across the street before hitting an embankment. The hobbled missile now hit the berm like an Evel Knievel ramp, rocketing 25 feet through the air before crashing into the front of the Ramada Inn.
The plane’s cockpit and engine went careening into the lobby, killing nine people. Another person suffered severe burns and died a week later. The wings and fuselage flew into the upper floors and carport of the hotel. The jet fuel on board ignited on impact, causing a massive fireball that engulfed the entire front of the hotel up to the fourth floor. Indianapolis Airport crash trucks, which had been following the plane from runway to runway, arrived on the scene a minute after impact and immediately started to use foam to extinguish the fire, which was under control within four minutes. Airport fire and rescue team members, assisted by the Indianapolis Fire Department, Wishard Ambulance Service, Wayne Township Fire Department and the Decatur Township Fire Department, searched the building for survivors.
After making his call, Thomas D. Murray of Carmel stepped out into the parking lot just in time to see the plane barreling down towards him. The 37-year-old salesman watched the plane slide on its belly past him pushing cars out of the way as it passed before crashing through the lobby entrance. Murray avoided contact, but he was quickly enveloped in the resulting fireball. He suffered third-degree burns over 95 percent of his body. He held on for nine days at Wishard Memorial Hospital’s burn unit and died on Oct. 29. A handful of other employees and guests were slightly injured, but most of those present that day made it out relatively unscathed and stood in the parking lot watching helplessly as the hotel burned.
Inside the hotel, nine employees died almost instantly. Dawn Shelly Martin was the front desk clerk. Allen Dale Mantor, 18, and Chris Evans, 21, were bellboys. Brenda Joyce Henry, 26, and Emma Jean Brownlee, 37, were housekeepers. Katherine Cox, 33, managed the dining room. Mary Stuart Marsh, 29, and Beth Louise Goldberg, 30, were in charge of sales and Narinder S. Kanwar, 41, was the top financial officer. Their bodies were so badly burned that it would take several days to identify them through dental records.
Family members of the missing arrived on scene and the long, agonizing vigil for news of their loved ones began. The parents of Chris Evans told an Indianapolis Star reporter that they had gotten a phone call from their son that morning and were sure it happened after the crash. Their hopes were dashed when they realized the call had been made just moments before the disaster.
Pilot Teagarden landed safely in the parking lot of the Ace Supply Company four blocks away with only minor injuries. The cause of the crash, as revealed in the Air Force’s January 1988 final report, was a defective gear in the accessory gearbox. It sheared, causing the driveshaft to rip open the lubricating oil system, and the engine then seized up soon afterward. The Air Force eventually paid out $50,427 ($147,362 in 2026) in property damage claims on October 26. Major Teagarden remained grounded until a flight evaluation board investigated the incident. Ultimately, Teagarden was found blameless in the tragedy, because of the airport controller’s actions.
Over the years, Teagarden suffered the ire of family members and was often blamed for the tragedy. Many felt that he should have initially ditched the plane in the countryside, rather than heading back towards the airport. Wild rumors persisted that Teagarden had been drinking rum and cokes heavily the night before after attending a friend’s funeral in Pittsburgh. On that fateful day, he was headed back home to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. He told investigators that he couldn’t see the ground because of poor weather conditions, and therefore couldn’t pick a place to safely eject until he was below the clouds. In the transcript of his conversation with the air controllers, Teagarden twice asked to be guided away from population centers. He never spoke publicly about the crash nor gave any media interviews.
For more than two years, the charred building stood as a sad reminder of the tragedy. The hotel owners never rebuilt because they were unable to decide on an appropriate design. Today a parking lot stands on the site. The bank branch building damaged by the plane is still standing but has since been converted into a hospice, but closed its doors in 2022.
The most famous Hoosier you’ve never heard of.
Original publish date June of 2011. Republished on June 25, 2026.
https://weeklyview.net/2026/06/25/the-most-famous-hoosier-youve-never-heard-of
Today he is virtually unknown to all but a few dogged devotees, students of 20th century history, readers of obscure books, and researchers into the paranormal and bizarre. William Dudley Pelley, a truly fascinating fellow, was one of our countries’ best known public figures during the Great Depression. Now, he is largely forgotten and rests in peaceful anonymity in a quiet Noblesville cemetery, an ironic outcome when you consider how he lived. If you happen to encounter anyone who knows anything at all about Pelley, you are likely be told that he was a “fascist,” “Nazi,” “new age crank,” “occultist,” “racist cult leader,” or just plain “nut.” All true, to be sure, but William Dudley Pelley was viewed as a genuine threat back in his day, and the Roosevelt administration took notice.
Pelley’s political ideology essentially consisted of anti-Communism, racism, extreme patriotism and isolationism. He was perhaps the most vocal opponent of FDR’s New Deal program. His activities angered Roosevelt and his supporters so much that federal charges were drawn up against the Silver Shirts in 1940. His Asheville headquarters was raided by federal marshals, his followers there arrested, and his property seized. Pelley was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Ironically a decade later Senator Joe McCarthy would use this same committee to root out Communists from the U.S. Government and Hollywood.
Pelley’s Silver Legion was unique in that, although there were permanent barracks for Silver Shirt training and local units in every region of the U.S., there was no central headquarters building. Instead, the Chief, as he was known to his followers, ran the Legion from his Ford touring car. Never staying in any place for more than a couple of weeks, constantly traveling from one headquarters to another, he staged outdoor rallies and mass meetings along the way. Reportedly, he went through several cars per year, traveling a then astounding 20,000 miles annually. This constant traveling served several purposes; it tied the various headquarters closely together, gave Pelley an intimate understanding of Americans at all levels, from all regions and exposed millions of people to his wicked ideology. His grassroots plan resulted in his name being placed on the presidential ballot, but he too got lost in the 1936 landslide re-election of Roosevelt.
According to Pelley, FDR’s re-election brought closer the “conflict between the Light and Dark forces on earth” and he accurately predicted the coming war against the Third Reich in his first national radio speech. His failed election bid increased Silver Legion membership threefold. Soon Pelley was winning praise and support from important figures like aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. and Walt Disney — both of whom attended Silver Legion rallies and shared the podium with the Chief. Not only did Pelley and his group openly support the Nazis and Adolph Hitler, Pelley himself announced that he considered Japan to be the only true power in Asia and the only hope of blunting the Soviet attempt at total domination in the region.
Soon, the government charged Pelley with tax evasion and although he eventually beat the rap, the great expense, in both time and money, required to defend himself ruined his chances of entering the 1940 Presidential campaign. By now, Pelley was furious with the government and his Silver Shirts joined up with the American-German Bund, the Ku Klux Klan and numerous other “uber” patriotic organizations to keep America out of war. Pelley’s effort became so popular that national polls taken a week before Pearl Harbor showed more than three quarters of Americans were against war with the Axis powers. That is, unless the United States was physically attacked. As you can imagine, everything changed on December 7th, 1941 with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Soon afterward, German atrocities in the concentration camps of Europe were revealed and Pelley and his Silver Shirts were banished from the American scene forever.
Pelley had married a Hoosier girl named Helen back in 1935, but spent little time with his new wife, by whom he had a daughter. After his fall, Pelley joined them in Noblesville, where he attempted to forget the world he had tried to save. Pelley being Pelley, he could not resist the urge to criticize FDR and his war time policies in print as he continued to publish radical newsletters and minor magazines, but he never again rose to his level of pre-war prominence.
However, Pelley just could not keep his big mouth shut. Just weeks after Pearl Harbor, he published an un-proofed article charging President Roosevelt with understating the damage caused at Pearl and claiming, contrary to FDR’s reports, that the U.S. Navy was destroyed in the attack. Pelley rushed into print with an article titled: “Japanese bombers made Pearl Harbor look like an abandoned W.P.A. project in Keokuk!” The special edition hit the streets like a bombshell, and when FDR saw it, he exploded, demanding Pelley’s arrest on April 4th. The charge: high treason!
Pelley was charged with twelve felony counts of violating the Alien and Sedition Act — an obscure ancient set of laws originally designed to deport troublesome foreigners during the American Revolution. The Sedition Act provided for fines or imprisonment for individuals who criticized the government, Congress, or president in speech or print.
The highly publicized trial for treason of William Dudley Pelley was broadcast nationwide. National hero Charles Lindbergh personally testified as a character witness on the defendant’s behalf, to no avail as Pelley was sentenced to 15 years in a maximum security federal prison. The trial ruined Pelley in many ways, leaving him penniless and unable to mount an appeal. Lindbergh stayed true to the end, telling a Chicago Tribune reporter that Pelley was “no traitor, but a true patriot who was obviously being persecuted for saying publicly what a growing number of Americans were discussing privately.”
Pelley remained unrepentant throughout, saying: “Some day, we Americans will see in true perspective what an alien horde of four million Jews did to us, and why we have been so stupid to suffer it.“ In 1952, with FDR dead, World War II over and McCarthy in full “Red Scare” stride, Pelley was paroled on the condition that he participate in no “political activities of any nature,” a flagrantly unconstitutional requirement I must point out. Frail and sickly, his daughter and her husband nursed him back to health at the family home in Noblesville, Indiana.
William Dudley Pelley died peacefully in his sleep on July 1, 1965, at the age of 75. During his private viewing and funeral, someone burned a cross on the front lawn of the funeral parlor. It was never determined if the fiery cross had been set there by friend or foe. Blinded by racial hatred and intolerance, he ended up a forgotten historical footnote in a lonely Noblesville graveyard called Crownland.
Pelley Photo Gallery.
Pat Quinlan and the Ghost of H.H. Holmes, Parts I & II
Original publish date October 22, 2015 Republished October 8, 2026
https://weeklyview.net/2015/10/22/pat-quinlan-and-the-ghost-of-h-h-holmes-part-1
As a lover of all things historical, the stories I find myself most drawn to often include the aftermath of a historical event. One such story involves an incident and personality from the pages of Irvington history. In October of 1894, America’s first serial killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes committed one of his last murders in a quiet little bungalow on what was then the far eastern edge of Irvington. He was captured, imprisoned, convicted and hung in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 7, 1896. While that was the end of HIS story, it was not the end of THE story.
H.H. Holmes left behind a massive building at 63rd and Wallace in Chicago that the press dubbed “The Murder Castle.” Here Holmes tortured and killed his victims as systematically as cattle in a stockyard. Some claim that Holmes killed over 200 people; he confessed to killing 27. The 3-story building was a maze of confusing hallways with blind corners, doors that opened to brick walls and rooms that were escape proof with the only exit for guests being a greased chute leading to the basement.
The building was described in a contemporary newspaper article as: “The castle was built admirably for a murder shop. A dumb waiter ran from the third floor to the basement and there were no connections with the dumb waiter on the intervening floors. The conveyance was big enough to admit a man riding upon it. On the top floor in one of the rooms was a gigantic stove. It was eight feet high and three feet in diameter. It was an ideal stove for the burning of a human body. A person could be thrown into the stove bodily and could be burned to nothing. In the basement were quicklime vats. Bodies could be thrown in quicklime and consumed.”
*Tintype Credit: “Brownie’s Long Lost Images” c.Blue Brown (2018).
Patrick Quinlan was the caretaker of that Murder Castle. Police described Quinlan as being “five feet, eight or nine inches tall, slim build with light curly hair, sandy mustache around 38-years-old” at the time. “Pat” Quinlan had done a pretty good job portraying his innocence in the dirty deeds that went on at the Murder Castle. He said that he was only an employee of arch murderer H. H. Holmes. He claimed that he was just the janitor of the Holmes Murder Castle, 701 63rd Street, Chicago, and nothing more. He admitted he had helped build the secret trap doors and lined the killing rooms with asbestos, designed to deaden the sound of dying men and women, but Quinlan insisted that he knew nothing of their purpose, and had no part in the devilish machinations of his boss.
Quinlan was only an ordinary employee who did what he was told unhesitatingly. Quinlan never questioned the authority of his boss, H.H. Holmes. He never asked who the many women were Holmes had visiting him. He never questioned why he would see them come in but never see them go out. He never asked where they went when they disappeared. He was an ideal servant. That was the face Pat Quinlan showed to the authorities and the role he played for the public, but the truth was vastly different. Pat Quinlan was playing games of his own in the Murder Castle.
Seems that the married Quinlan liked the ladies as much as his boss did and apparently held them in the same regard. In 1893, he got a chambermaid that worked at the Castle, named Lizzie, pregnant. His wife lived in Ohio, but would soon be joining her husband at the Castle in time to see the 1893 World’s Fair located a short six blocks away. As the time for his wife’s arrival drew ever nearer, heated arguments between Pat and his very pregnant mistress made Holmes aware of the problem. Quinlan asked his boss, Dr. Holmes, if he could deliver the baby and “keep it quiet so the missus don’t find out.” Quinlan’s agitation grew as Holmes paused for a long uncomfortable minute before answering, “I’ll do anything I can Pat.”
The plan to deliver the baby changed days after his revelation to Dr. Holmes. Now Lizzie threatened to tell Pat’s wife of their elicit love affair. Worse, Lizzie had already told her sister. Quinlan went to Holmes and explained the situation in an undisguised effort to take advantage of his boss’s nefarious skills he would later claim he had no knowledge of. Quinlan lured both women to a small room in a remote part of the Murder Castle. He left the two women and met Holmes in the basement where the doctor turned on the open gas jets, filling the room with the deadly invisible killing atmosphere. Within a few minutes the two sisters were dead.
Their bodies were disposed of in the usual manner and without a trace. Quinlan’s problem was instantly solved and his silent loyalty guaranteed forever. Since Quinlan did an admirable job of keeping his mouth shut while proclaiming his innocence, no one will ever know what part he played in the murders at the Castle. What we do know is that Quinlan likely remained quiet for no other reason than fear of Dr. H.H. Holmes. One of the requirements of employment with Holmes was a life insurance policy for $5,000 naming Holmes as beneficiary. Quinlan also knew that the caretaker before him was a man named Robert Latimer who tried to blackmail Holmes after learning of the insurance scams. Pat’s fellow employees told him that Latimer just disappeared one day.
On trial in Philadelphia, Holmes said this of Latimer, his 13th victim: “Robert Latimer, a man who had for some years been in my employ as janitor, was my next victim. Several years previous, before I had ever taken human life, he had known of certain insurance work I had engaged in, and when, in after years, he sought to extort money from me, his own death and the sale of his body was the recompense meted out to him. I confined him within the Secret Room and slowly staved him to death. Of this room and its secret gas supply and muffled windows and doors, sufficient has already been printed. Finally, needing its use for another purpose and because his pleadings had become almost unbearable, I ended his life. The partial excavation in the walls of this room found by the police was caused by Latimer’s endeavoring to escape by tearing away the solid brick and mortar with his unaided fingers.”
In September of 1893, one month before the close of the all-important 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the Murder Castle caught fire in several different locations simultaneously. True to form, Holmes had insured the building with several companies for a total of $25,000 (which shakes out to $657,000 in today’s money). Investigators discovered strong evidence of a liquid accelerant used to start the blaze. The fire had not spread to the lower floors and the insurance company never paid Holmes’s claim. The fire destroyed the top floor but Holmes was never charged with arson. The fire was the beginning of the end for H.H. Holmes.
Pat Quinlan and the Ghost of H.H. Holmes, Part II
Original publish date October 29, 2015 Republished October 15, 2026
https://weeklyview.net/2026/10/15/pat-quinlan-and-the-ghost-of-h-h-holmes-part-2-2
H.H. Holmes paid for his misdeeds with death by hanging on May 7, 1896. But his former “Murder Castle” caretaker/janitor Patrick “Pat” Quinlan would never escape his own self-made prison. When the Murder Castle caught fire in September of 1893, he was arrested with Holmes but eventually freed. Quinlan was accused of starting the fire (and most likely did) but it was his actions after the fire that tipped off Chicago Police that there may have been something more going on in that building than a botched attempted arson.
During the fire, many bones were found around Holmes Castle. Holmes explained they were beef bones left over from a time when the flat had been used as a restaurant during the World’s Fair at Chicago. He explained that the huge dumb waiter was used to convey those many pounds of beef. He explained that the asbestos was to make the house fireproof and for insulation. For the moment, Holmes had wriggled off the hook by the use of those crafty lies. He would soon leave town with the ill-fated Pitezel children in tow and would kill 10-year-old Howard Pitezel in Irvington a short time later.
After the fire, caretaker Quinlan took several cartloads of garbage out of the “factory.” The cops searched the dumpster a week later, they were now mostly empty but with traces of obvious human ashes and bone fragments inside. In 1893, forensic science was still a few years away and the discovery of a blood soaked rag in the basement of the castle could set off a plausible legal argument over whether it was blood or paint and a piece of bone was hard to differentiate between human or animal. Ironically, the first use of bone fragments as evidence would happen a few years later in 1897 just blocks from the Murder Castle. Adolph Louis Luetgert (namesake of the A.L. Luetgert Sausage & Packing Company) was charged with murdering his wife and dissolving her body in lye in one of his factory’s sausage vats in 1897. A bit of jaw bone found in the factory (which was thriving at the same time as the Murder Castle) was identified as the remains of Adolph’s wife, Louisa.
Quinlan continued to live in one of the thirty-five bedrooms on the second floor, and the street-level retail shops remained open for business. A whisper campaign proliferated in the area after the World’s Fair left town. The local economy was hurting and now people were suspicious of Dr. Holmes and his questionable predatory business tactics and neighborhood scams. Chicago police were hesitant to investigate the Castle prior to July 1895 for fear of injuring the local construction trade, as Dr. Holmes had been almost continuously adding onto his hotel up until that time.
But the reputation of the place as the local haunted house was drawing negative attention by the Chicago press. Many reporters and gawkers broke into the Castle, wandering its maze-like corridors, staring at its grotesqueries, stealing Holmes’ abandoned belongings, and generally destroying it as a crime scene. The vandals drove Pat Quinlan out of the Murder Castle for good. On August 2, 1895, after Holmes was secured away in Philadelphia’s Moyamensing Prison, Patrick Quinlan (and ironically his wife) turned state’s evidence and testified against his former boss. Quinlan, now comfortable in the knowledge that his tormentor H.H. Holmes was safely behind bars, described his former boss to police detectives as a “dirty, lying scoundrel” who should be hung for his crimes and that “he (Quinlan) would only be too willing to spring the trap.”
Quinlan gave testimony at Holmes’ trial that he was aware of the practice of stealing bodies from Western Michigan graveyards under the direction of Holmes. These bodies were then sold to local college and university medical schools, no questions asked. Quinlan’s wife testified to this too. Both claimed they were aware of the practice but did not participate in the actual grave robberies. It was reported Quinlan and another man only received the bodies and participated in the “remaking and lining” of coffins for corpses before sale for medical use.
The fire didn’t actually level the building (as most books say) but it did destroy a lot of evidence. Pat, along with his wife, continued to live in the burned out shell of the old Murder Castle while Holmes was on trial. Soon, the negative attention and gangs of marauding vandals roaming through the creepy old building at all hours of the day and night drove the Quinlan’s from the building. When the Quinlan’s went back to his home state of Michigan, Pat found himself the center of suspecting eyes and backhanded whispers. Everywhere he went, he was stared at and treated as fodder for gossip. While the rest of the world forgot Holmes, the little town where Pat lived continued to speculate about how much he really knew.
His closest friends said that Pat Quinlan often reproached himself for his part in the dastardly affair. He told friends and family that he blamed himself for not suspecting Holmes and turning him in to the police. He was clearly dealing with demons all his own many years after his evil ex-employer was dead and buried 10 feet deep under six tons of concrete (to discourage grave robbers). For nineteen years Quinlan could not sleep. At night he would wake up screaming and covered with sweat. He experienced night terrors almost every night. He would call for help and when a light would be brought to his room or when the electric switch would be turned on he would recount how he was “attacked while half asleep by strange hallucinations”.
For nineteen years this man had been unable to sleep peacefully because of the awful experiences he endured during his employment by Holmes and during the period immediately after. While he remained in Chicago, Quinlan claimed that the Castle was haunted by Holmes’ many victims. He told friends that his former employer would visit him in his sleep, that the victims roamed the halls and pecked on the windows of the Castle. That the spirits followed him even after he moved back to a farmhouse in his Portland, Michigan hometown. By the spring of 1914, Pat Quinlan was a broken man. On March 7, 1914 Patrick Quinlan, the former caretaker of the murder castle, picked up a slip of paper and scribbled a note reading, “I could not sleep.” He then quietly committed suicide by drinking from a bottle of pesticide whose active ingredient was deadly strychnine. Pat’s facial muscles stretched tight and a peculiar metallic taste flooded his mouth. His calf muscles began to stiffen and convulse, his toes curled up under his feet and as his head thrashed back-and-forth, blinding flashes of light darted across his eyes. His body went ice cold as he finally drifted off into that final sleep. Witnesses claimed that in death, he looked as though he had been carried there by the ghosts of the slain women of the Castle he helped to build. Pat Quinlan had killed himself and his death did not cause much of a stir. His name would be forgotten.
And what became of the Murder Castle, the building that had seen so much misery and pain? It stood for another twenty years on the corner of 63rd and Wallace on the southside of Chicago, a city section known as Inglewood. Of course it was known as the most haunted building in the area while it stood. The retail shops remained relatively unchanged and open on the ground floor but the two upper floors were changed radically. The building remained until the U.S. government purchased it in 1937. A United States post office was built on the site in 1938 and since then it has been the scene of poltergeist activity in the basement tunnels where the Murder Castle killing zone once stood. Chicago paranormal adventurers have heard the sounds of moans and crying coming from the site and a ghost chaser friend of mine claims to have seen one actual, full-body apparition there. No trace of the Murder Castle remains and the hauntings there may be the only evidence the of the murders that were left behind.
