Mystery of Lost Aviator Paul Redfern Has Links to Toledo.

A crowd of thousands gather to see Redfern’s Stinson Detroiter prior to his departure from Sea Island. (Redfern Family Collection)

It will be 97 years this summer since the world last heard from Paul Rinaldo Redfern. The dashing young aviator was trying to make history as the first pilot ever to fly nonstop from the North America to South America. Tragically, he did make history, but not the kind he was seeking. Paul Redfern and his Stinson single engine plane vanished into the fog of mystery after he departed an airport in Brunswick Georgia that summer morning of 1927, leaving a behind him, a cheering crowd of well wishers and his worried bride from Toledo. In days to come, the only signs of him came from some reports that Redfern had indeed made it across the Carribean Sea and was spotted just off the coast of Venezuala when he flew low over some Norwegian fishing boats, and dropped some notes, while on a heading towards the mainland. What happened after that brief sighting? Over the next weeks, months and decades, his fate would become the subject of mystery, conjecture, hoaxes, sightings, hope and intrigue. Some say he made it to land, only to crash in the jungle and was severely injured, then taken captive by aboriginal natives in the rainforest. Some say they found pieces of his aircraft, and pieces of his clothing. Others claim there were reports of him taking a wife among the native tribes and having a child. In the end. No one knows for sure. His fate remains as mysterious as other ambition seeking aviators of the day who dared to defy the odds, only to become the stuff of legends.

Who was Paul Redfern and what was his connection to Toledo? To answer the first part of the question; Redfern was a dreamer. An ambitious dreamer. Son of a preacher and educator. His full name was Paul Rinaldo Redfern. Born in 1902 to Blanche and Dr. Frederick Redfern. While raised for part of his life in New York and Ohio, he spent his teenage years in in South Carolina where his father was a dean at  Benedict College. His mother taught English at Benedict. As a child, Paul would show great promise and intellect. He was said to be musical prodigy, his father wrote of him:

At an early age, Paul showed a strong mechanical inclination. His fascination with the violin led him to create one from a cigar box and a single string. He displayed exceptional musical ability by playing any tune that interested him. His unique technique involved holding the cigar-box fiddle between his knees and the staff against his shoulder. By age eleven, his exceptional playing caught the attention of the Idaho press, which featured his achievement and published his picture in a playing position.

Gertrude Hillbrand Redfern, his love from Toledo.

But Paul also had an keen mind for mechanics. He had so much natural talent in the understanding of the science and mechanics of aviation, that as a teenager, he built several small planes and gliders. At 16 years of age, he was asked by the U.S. Army to be a production inspector for their aircraft plant in New Jersey. He stayed with them until 1919. After the World War was over, he returned to South Carolina and finished high school. He build several more airplanes and after he graduated from high school, Paul acquired and flew a Curtiss Jenny JN-4 and a Dehavilland DH-4. It was then he began to realize his boyhood dream of making a living in the cockpit of an airplane. Operating out of the airport in Columbia, South Carolina, Paul started performing acrobatic stunts at county fairs, and became an “aerial advertising artist.” In addition to being a barnstormer, later he would work for the U.S. Customs office in spotting illegal whiskey stills from the air during prohibition. He also began to pioneer the first commercial flights, taking passengers to points North. Canada, New York and Ohio . It is not documented as what took him to Toledo, but by 1925, he had taken up residence in the Glass Cityand likely spent some time with other famous members of this pioneer flying fraternity in Toledo, such as Lincoln Beachey and the great Roy Knabenshue. It is in Toledo where he also flew promotional flights for numerous products, including a cigar company working for cigar salesman, Charles Hillebrand. Redfern’s job was to drop packages of the cigar samples around the city. As the story goes, Hillbrand and his wife invited the young fier over to their home for dinner and that’s when he met their daughter Gertrude. He fell in love at first sight with the pretty auburn haired 20 year old. The attraction was mutual. It didn’t take long for the two of them to begin a relationship and soon, they were married ny January of 1925. They lived for awhile in Toledo, but Paul was offered a job in Georgia and they moved from Toledo to Savannah where he got his job with U.S. customs as a flying revenue agent, finding illegal stills from the air.

Redfern and his wife Gertrude pose with the biplane he built after high school. (Redfern Family Collection)

Redfern obviously loved challenges and with the arrogance of youth, he jumped at the chance to accept a challenge to become the first pilot to fly solo from North to South American, non stop. The year was 1927. Lindberg had just made history flying from the US to Paris. Redfern wanted to break that distance record for a solo flight and this would be that opportunity. It would be a 4600 mile flight and would require at least two-days of being fully awake at the controls. The City of Brunswick Georgia said they would pay 25,000 to the first pilot who could achieve the feat and fly from their nearby airport on Sea Island Beach. It was the same amout that Charles Lindberg had earned just, a few months before. Redfern was certain he could do the same and more.

Barriers to Reaching Brazil

On Wednesday morning, August 25, 1927, Paul Redfern and his wife Gertrude appeared at Sea Island to greet the thousands of well wishers, photographers and reporters who gathered to see him this attempt to set a new long distance flight record. His green and yellow Stinson SM-1 Detroiter monoplane that he purchased from his friend Eddie Stinson in Detroit had been christened “Port of Brunswick”. The signs around the airport exclaimed “Brazil or Bust”.

The arduous journey by air would take him over the Atlantic Ocean and the Carribean and then over the tangled and dangerous jungles of the Amazon rainforest before reaching his destination of Rio De Janeiro. No shortages of hazards were involved.

His marathon flight to Rio de Janeiro would cover 4600 miles, over miles of untamed and hostile jungles and mountains of Brazil.

The daunting itinerary provoked many questions. Could the plane stay aloft for those long hours of operations? Could Redfern stay awake? Even Lindberg admitted that he kept falling asleep on his transAtlantic flight to Paris. If he did crash in the jungle, would he survive? Or would he fall victim to the dangerous animals reptiles, and the hostile natives who inhabited the remote area? Redfern did bring some guns and a rifle with them for that possibility. He even packed some fishing gear and flares. He was undeterred and determined to break Lindberg’s distance record. If he did, he would eclipse that record by a thousand miles. And like Lindberg, in these early days of aviation, there was radio or altimeter or other modern avionics to help navigate. All he had was a compass and a map and a dream. And hopefully enough fuel.

He tried to allay the fears of friends and fears by saying he thought if he should have to crash land in the jungle he could still survive and someday emerge and not to give up on him “if you don’t hear from me maybe for weeks or months”.

Paul Redfern, Bound for Brazil

Paul’s take off from the beach airport in Georgia was officially recorded 12:46 p.m. He taxied the airplane down the beach and then as wife watched with a cheerful smile, the Stinson Detroiter slowly lifted above the horizon and then turned towards the sea on its way to South America. The crowd watched intensely as the planee droned over the water and out of sight. It was written by one reporter that his new Toledo bride, Gertrude Redfern watched tearfully and collapsed into the arms of a friend. Reality was upon her. Her beloved husband, Paul Redfern, was out of her embrace and out of her sight and she didn’t know if she would ever see him again.

The cheerful smile fell from her face and she couldn’t hold back her emotion and sobs. Paul soared over the Atlantic Ocean, heading southeast at 85 miles an hour. He managed to survive the first night in the air and the next morning off the coast of South America he saw a ship below him in the ocean. It was the Norwegian tramp steamer Christian Krohg. He dropped his altitude and descended to the ship and threw package with a note asking for directions to South America. The steamer captain pointed the bow Westward. According to this account, Redfern apparently had succeeded in traversing the miles over the ocean. Then later that day, Lee Dennison, an American engineer, reported seeing his plane, The Port of Brunswick, flying over Venezuela’s Ciudad Bolivar Plaza. But it was not a jubilant sighting. He said the plane was “trailing a thin wisp of black smoke.” If that indeed was Redfern plane, it was the last time it was seen.

Paul Redfern Vanishes

As Redfern was to wing his way south to Rio De Janeiro, hundreds of Brazilians were ready to great him at the airport and carry him into the city. Those in the waiting crowd were Washington Luis, President of Brazil, and Clara Bow, silent movie star. His plan was to drop some flares over the town of Macapa to signal whether or would make it to Rio or try to land at at the alternate site of Pernambuco. It would depend on weather and fuel supply.

As the hours dragged on, however, there were no flares sighted. No flares, nor any sign from the intrepid flier as thousands of people scanned the skies. watching and waiting. With no sighting that third evening, it was apparent that he either had run out of fuel and crashed, or had been forced to make a landing along a 2,500 mile route that stretched from the jungles of the Amazon to the mountains. Over the next days, the world was on edge awaiting some word from Redfern that he was okay. His wife, Gertrude was thrilled with the early story that he had been seen over Venezuela and believed at that time that her husband was safe, wherever, he may be.

Searching for Paul Redfern and the Port of Brunswick

The long days though would turn to long weeks, and the hope would turn to resignation that Redfern’s fate was dubious at best. Over the next ten years, Paul’s family, including his wife, all traveled to the remote area of Brazil in search expeditions to see if they could find some shred of evidence or a clue to provide more information of his whereabouts and whether he was dead or alive. Every now and then, this void of information was filled by bush pilots or missionaries who would come forward with stories that he was seen alive. That he had crash landed and stranded in the jungle. In 1932, an American engineer named Charles Hasler made headline when he claimed that Indian natives were holding an American pilot whose legs had been broken, but the information was so limited that no expedition was organized.

In 1935, another story emerged of a “white man who came out of the sky, had both legs broken, and lived in an Indian village”. Similar accounts surfaced from jungle inhabitants in remote villages. Rescue and search parties formed, but after weeks of exploration, nothing was ever found. Rumors persisted.

The Searches Continue and Hope Lingers

Pilot Art Williams (second from left) led a search in Brazil for Redfern nine years after he disappeared. (Courtesy of the Paul Rinaldo Redfern Aviation Society of Columbia, S.C.)

Pilot Art Williams, in British Guiana, reported that in early 1936, that he passed over an Indian village in Brazil and that the Indians fled into the jungle but he saw “a lone white man standing in the open and waving frantically to the plane.” Williams said he later took a friend and they went back to the area with a small boat in an effort, but says when they finaly got to the village, a heavily armed tribe of Indians met them and they narrowly escaped with their lives.

Another expedition was launched the next year in February 1936, when an American Legion Post in the Panama Canal Zone put together an attempt to find Redfern. CBSNews correspondent James A. Ryan also accompanied the expedition. To pay the trip, the group issued five thousand “Redfern Rescue” stamp covers that had postmarked from Dutch Guiana to sell to stamp collectors. One customer, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who bought two of the “Redfern Rescue” covers.

The search effort not only failed but ended in disaster and one man emerged from the jugle to report they found trace of Redfern and that CBS correspondent James Ryan had drowned when his canoe tipped over in a river. 

Wife and Family Suffer From Cruel Hoax

There were more than a dozen search efforts made to find the lost pilot, but none to cold a cruel and the one in 1936 that fanned new hope that Redfern may indeed be alive and living as “white god” among a tribe of natives. It turned out to be nothing more than a despicable hoax.

Alfred Harred, a freelance reporter said he and the former pilot Art William actually found Redfern on in area on the Brazilain border with French Guiana. They said Redfern was living with a tribe of nude Indians and was hobbling around on crutches. His airplane was still hanging in the branches of a big tree.

He says Paul Redfern told them that when he crashed the plane, his legs and arms were broken, but eventually healed and married an Indian woman. He says they had a son. Harred claims that he and Art Williams were chased away from the village because the tribe thought they were going to take Paul redfern away. They fled under the threat of poison arrows and violence. This fantastic story as related by Alfred Harred were spread quickly around the world, it fell apart like a cheap suit in the rain. When reporters tried to contact Art Williams, he denied everything saying he never met Redfern and never met Alred Harred who would eventually admit it was all fiction.

The Final Rescue and Search Attempt

Amelia Earhart

By the fall of 1937, there was yet another massive search effort underway to find yet another missing aviator.   The object of this search: Amelia Earhart who vanished in her Lockheed Model 10 Electra in July of that year. As the world trained its attention on a remote island in the south Pacific where her plane was last heard from on a round the world attempt, the Redfern story seemed to fall to the margins. The world’s press was not as interested it seemed and Redfern’s fate was fading from the newsprint.

That however did not deter Paul Redfern’s family in their quest to get some answers. Ten years had passed but they wanted to try one more time to find their son and Gertrude’s husband. In 1937, they requested New York explorer Theodore J. Waldeck to lead an expedition from British Guiana. This attempt was risky and deadly. The expedition became marooned at a place called Devil’s Hole on the remote Cuyuni River . One of the men on the trip, Dr. Frederick Fox of New York, contracted jungle fever and died. He was buried on site as the others kept travelling until April 27, 1938. On that day, Theodore Waldeck reported that he had found the wreckage of the Port of New Brunswick in Venezuela. He says he could prove that Paul Redfern was in fact dead, but for some reason he never did. So as far as many were concerned, the young aviator’s fate was still unknown. His parents never gave up hoping that someday he might walk out the jungle and walk back into their lives.

His wife Gertrude also held on to hope for many years, but finally, after she too had gone to South America on one of the many expeditions, she also became more convinced that his fate was tragic, and decided it was best to move on with her life, as best she could. While living and working in Detroit, she petitioned a Michigan court to have her husband declared legally deceased. They had no children, and Gertrude never remarried. The Toledo native lived the balance of her life as a single widow and and died in 1981.

.The story of Paul and Gertrude Redfern is hardly recorded in Toledo. More so in Redfern’s South Carolina. At the time, as the drama was unfolding, the Toledo papers heavily covered this local-interest real life adventure mystery. But news stories do have a limited “shelf life”, even one as compelling as this. When Gertrude Redfern passed away in 1981, there was no significant story in the Blade’s obituary, but just a mere mention of the fact of her dead pilot husband’s disappearnce in South America. The story had lost its luster with each passing decade along with the generations of Toledoans who might have followed its many twists and turns.

But Redfern’s tale has been given some new lift in recent years. The world it seems loves a good mystery and this is surely one of them. Will we ever really know what happened? And could there have been a seed of truth in all the reports that he in fact did crash and survived. There are many who still believe the end of the Redfern tale did not end with a fatal plane crash. And that he may have survived. There are others who think he may have veered far off course and the searchers were all loooking in the wrong place. Whatever and wherever his fate, Redfern’s name is now a legend. At Rio de Janiero, there is even a street named for him. Back at home, in South Carolina, his high school in Columbia bears a plaque and a sign in his memory, as does the airfield in Brunswick, Georgia. In South Carolina there is a group called the Paul Rinaldo Redfern Aviation Society. The group reportedly meets every August 25th, at exactly 12:46 p.m., the exact time that Redfern’s Stinson Detroiter, called the “Port of Brunswick” crawled down the runway, lifted into the blue and disappeared over the horizon on that summer morning in 1927. At that appointed time they hold a ceremony and they raise a glass, maybe more, to this one-time Toledo aviation pioneer, wherever he may be.

Paul Redfern and his Father Frederick Redfern in front of the Stinson Detroiter that took him to eternity

The Curse of Bairdstown….truth or trifle?

My kinfolk, the Santmires, were from Bairdstown, Ohio.  Grandma Ethel grew up there and that’s how I know about the town.  But if you have never heard of it or been there, you’re  not alone.  Bairdstown is not much more than a fly speck on the map,  a tiny forgotten cluster of humanity, about six miles due east of North Baltimore that has seen its better days.  But at one time, a hundred years ago or so, back in the oil-field era, Bairdstown was a boom town.  A much bigger burg, once brimming with promise and prosperity.  Two hotels, plenty of saloons, stores, a barrel factory, and a reputation as a wild brawling village in the center of a prosperous oil patch.  As a result there were plenty of oil and refinery workers who made the small southern Wood County hamlet their home, along with the many farmers who also toiled in the fields of “corn and crude” in this oil-rich region of Southern Wood County.  So rich it was, during that era, it was considered the oil capital of America. Hard to believe, but true.

But it also turns out that many of these once thriving villages in this rural countryside  were also rich in legend and lore. One of those legends is the “Curse of Bairdstown”.  As the legend has it, Bairdstown’s fortunes, or lack thereof, may have been determined by one old resident who lived there long before the advent of oil. His name was Jim Slater, and he and his wife, had settled in the area sometime in the 1840’s.  Slater bought a quarter section of land(a quarter square mile) to farm and worked hard, to make it go, but the hardships were too much to overcome. He seemed cursed.  His corn died, his cattle wouldn’t give milk, and fortune was fickle.  Slater not only struggled and remained poor, but his wife died in childbirth from the cruel realities of a primitive pioneer environment.  Adding to Slater’s bad luck, were the rumors that not only was he a nervous and irritable man, but that he was mentally unstable and given to a quick and violent temper. As a result, he was not well liked among his neighbors and had few or no friends.

One farming season, according to an article from a 1937 Toledo News Bee, Slater persuaded his farm neighbor, William McMurray, to plant wheat in his field on shares. At harvest time, however, the friendly agreement as to how to to dispose of the wheat and split the profits became a point of argument between the men as Slater objected to McMurray taking the wheat off the land to be threshed. The argument sharpened and became a war of wills and McMurray decided to take it to the courts to decide. The courts agreed with McMurray and he won the legal case against Slater who became livid with anger and declared after the verdict,  that the “wheat would do McMurray no good”.   A few weeks later, the stacks of wheat in field were set ablaze and destroyed. There were also harnesses and other equipment stolen from McMurray’s barn. Slater quickly became the chief and convenient suspect in the arson and robbery as he was promptly arrested and taken to Perrysburg and thrown in jail. The evidence was weak at best and when his case finally did come to trial, Slater was acquitted.  But what should have been reason to rejoice was not, for Slater had spent all of his money defending himself in court, and while he was in jail, he couldn’t tend to his farm and pay his creditors who wanted their loans paid off. Despite attempts to keep them at bay, a foreclosure was filed and the land that had been his farm was sold at a Sheriff’s sale to a prosperous farmer in the area by the name of Josiah(John) Baird. It was Baird who when took the land to plat out the plans for a small town.  In 1874, he built a hotel, a flour mill, a saw mill, and when the B&O railroad tracks were laid through this new village called Bairdstown, Baird’s future looked bright.  Jim Slater, however, now penniless and embittered, angrily declared of the new town,  “If there is a just God, he will curse this place till the end of eternity. The curse of the place goes with the wronged man and all who have had a hand in robbing me.”

It is not written as to how the townspeople reacted upon hearing Slater’s curse, but it wasn’t long until the bright promise of the little community began to dim. Josiah Baird, who built the town was also facing problems with his creditors. They were relentless in pursuing his debts and took him to court. Then his sons, it was said, began to develop bad habits and did not tend well to their father’s business.  Baird’s flour mill was burned down, by persons unknown and his cattle in the fields became ill and died.  Baird saw his hopes dwindle and his good fortune whither, and wondered in Slater’s curse was something to take seriously.  Believing that he might be jinxed, he left the town that bore his name and moved his family to Arkansas. He took up hotel keeping, but within a short while,  both his wife and daughter took ill and died. Baird returned to Ohio, but far away from Bairdstown and lived out his years in the southern part of the state.

Meanwhile, George Strain, the man who was the prosecuting attorney in the criminal case against Jim Slater developed a serious mental disorder and was put in an insane asylum where he died.  And David Hayes, Slater’s defense attorney, also met with the ill winds of misfortune as he too went broke and his wife and daughter died.  Slater, himself, not long after, died in the infirmary, the poor house, at Bowling Green where he is buried in a Potter’s field.

From those years forward, Bairdstown has never been able to get past the curse of Jim Slater. Misfortunes and fires have bedeviled the community over the years. In 1890, a train derailed on the B&O tracks in Bairdstown in February, resulting in several deaths. Then in July of that year, a series of mysterious fires, over a three-week period destroyed much of the Bairdstown business district. In 1894, a hold up occurred on the B&O Railroad between Deshler and Bairdstown, ending with the murders of two men aboard the train.  Even during the boom years of the oil-field wealth, Bairdstown never quite blossomed, as did other towns nearby, but always found itself doomed by some tragedy.  Today, it  is not much more than an aging curiosity along Route 18 between North Baltimore and Bloomdale.   A collection of older homes, a cemetery, a set of railroad tracks and a public park named for my great uncle, Merle Santmire.  Who I might add, never believed in Jim Slater’s curse.  Said he didn’t have the time to ponder what he regarded as a trifle.  But some people around Bairstown at least consider the notion that Slater’s angry oath may have in fact been more than just the crabby words of a  ranting old man.  And I confess that I too have given it a thought or too, for despite Uncle Merle’s cynicism, his father, my great-grandfather,  Amos Santmire, in 1898, at the age of 46, the father of ten children, including my grandmother, was struck and killed by a freight train on the edge of  this little troubled town…..Bairdstown.

The Toledo Trunk Mystery, A Grave Robbing Tale

 

 

It was known as “Toledo’s Trunk Mystery”  and for a while in 1886, it was probably the most talked about story of the day. Not  just in Toledo, but around the world as it made headlines in many major newspapers. And no doubt it would be just as attention grabbing today, for this story was not only sensational, but  laid bare the grisly truth of grave robbing by medical schools. A story that began in a Toledo train station where the lifeless body of a young woman was found in a large trunk. As the New York Times relates the story on September 11, 1886, the trunk had been put on the Wheeling and Lake Erie train earlier in the day in Bellevue, about 40 miles east of Toledo.

  

“Among the assortment of trunks that arrived this forenoon was one from which there came a terrible odor. It was placed in an isolated spot and the authorities were notified. When the detectives broke open the trunk it appeared to be filled with straw, but on pulling out a quantity, the officers found the body of a young woman. She was of medium height with blue eyes and brown hair. The clothing was of fine quality, indicating that the victim was of a family in good circumstances. In the mouth, a lot of tissue paper had been stuffed.”

Police stayed with the trunk and waited for someone to claim it and and finally a man did. He was promptly arrested and identified as Martin.E. Wilson. He told police he lived near Bellevue, Ohio and didn’t know the contents of the trunk but had been given money by “certain parties” to take the trunk to Toledo where he was to turn it over to a Dr. Hill from the Toledo Medical College on Lagrange Street. Dr. Hill, however, later said he knew nothing about it. A subsequent investigation by the Lucas County Coroner’s Office concluded that the woman had died of consumption a day or two earlier and without any foul play, but for some reason this woman’s body had been spirited away before her burial. The coroner even noted there had been puncture marks under the arms for embalming. By the next day, however, more information was forthcoming and it was revealed that the body was that of Belle Bowen, the 17-year old daughter of a well-known and “prosperous farmer” John.M. Bowen. She had died of consumption(tuberculosis) and had been buried in a small cemetery near Attica, but her grave, still fresh from the Friday burial, was exhumed that same evening. It latercame out at trial that Wilson had worked under the light of a full moon that September night to pull her body from the grave and then put it into a large trunk before loading it on the train to Toledo with a final destination at the Toledo Medical College. When news of what appeared to be a “grave robbing” surfaced, indignation grew rapidly. And it was widely speculated that this might have been part of a regular system of grave robbing that had been taking place to help medical schools obtain cadavers for research and training. The Bowen family doctor, an H.G. Blaine was arrested. It was alleged that the man who took the trunk to Toledo, Martin Wilson was his assistant and the two of them had conspired to steal the body of young Belle. Wilson also faced charges, along with several staff members of the Toledo Medical College. Back in the Attica and Bellevue area, neighbors and townspeople were irate. A number of men threatened to lynch the two medical men if they returned to the area. Meanwhile, farmer John Bowen traveled to Toledo, with the empty coffin of his daguhter to reclaim his beloved Belle.

In the ensuing trial, it was learned that the 35-year old Wilson was a medical student who had been offered free tuition by the Toledo Medical College to bring them cadavers which were rare in those days since there was no lawful way to obtain them. Wilson was eventually convicted and sent to prison, while Dr. Blaine was cleared of charges, claiming that he didn’t know Wilson had stolen the body and had merely helped him buy the large trunk.  Blaine eventually returned to practice and moved to Willard Ohio. The staff members at the college were also cleared of wrong doing.

Today, Belle Bowen’s body lies undisturbed, and otherwise undistinguished in her grave at the tiny Omar cemetery near Attica, alongside her parents and other family members. There is no notation of how famous she was in death in 1886 when much of the world knew her name and her macabre story.

The practice of grave robbing was apparently in vogue for a number of years in the Toledo area, for only ten years later after this case made Toledo famous, another Toledo doctor was arrested for stealing corpses from the Toledo Infirmary cemetery. Dr. F.O. Hunt was charged with stealing the body of Edwin Cartwright from his grave. The New York Times reported that the coroner at the time, said he was believed to be “part of a gang of professional ghouls operating here for several months and reaping a rich harvest”.

  

　

　

 

 

 

What Ever Happened To Satira?

Patricia Schmidt, “Satira” seen in here publicity photo. Credit BurlyQNell

It seems that for whatever reason, Toledo has had many strange connections to Cuba. (I’ll cover some of those in a future posting). But one of those Cuban connections involves a young woman from Toledo by the name of Patricia Schmidt. It appears that she moved to Cuba, in the 1940’s as an exotic dancer(stripper), who took the stage name of “Satira”. She was only 21 at the time and became a sensation – not just as a dancer, but as a defendant in a  high-profile murder trial.  The young Toledo native was accused of cold-blooded murder  in the shooting death of Chicago lawyer and playboy, John Lester Mee aboard his yacht “Satira” in Cuba.

The story of Patricia Schmidt began in Toledo where she was raised as the daughter of a well-known druggist, John Schmodt who worked for many years in east Toledo.  The family however lived in West Toledo on Belmar Street and Patricia attended Devilbiss High School in graduated in 1943.   She had reportedly  been an honors student in her junior and senior years. Shotrly after her mother passed away, she decided to take a new track in life. She moved to Chicago and began dancing as an exotic dancer is this is where she met John Mee, a lawyer, poet and former commander of a Navy PT boat.  Her agent in Chicago at the time, convinced her to move to the Caribbean and to take her dancing act to that region the world.  At 21, she departed the cold climate of the Midwest for the warmer climes of Cuba and Jack Mee soon followed.  Soon they were living together on Mee’s makeshift yacht and she would tell the Cuban court during the trial that she became intimate with Mee and they became lovers. Then in January of 1947, she testified that a few weeks after she move din with him,  she learned that Mee was a married man and it wasn’t long after that their relationship would begin to sour.   She also alleged that she wanted to leave the yacht, but that Mee held her as a captive aboard the yacht for another six weeks until April of 1947 when she says they had a violent argument one night which ended when she shot Mee in the neck  with his .22 caliber handgun.  He died eight days later.  During the trial, she re-enacted the shooting in emotional and dramatic detail for the three-judge panel, pleading self-defense, and the all-too-eager photographers who helped spread this Toledo woman’s story and face around the world.   Evidence was also shown during the trial of scratches and bruises on her body that she claims were inflicted by Mee whom she alleged to have sado-masochistic sexual fetishes.   Some court observers predicted that the young Toledo woman might be acquitted, but she was not.  Instead she was convicted and given a 15 year prison sentence.

Toledo’s “Satira” in Cuban Prison

According to Time Magazine…“In sentencing Cootch-Dancer Schmidt to 15 years for manslaughter (TIME, Feb. 2), the judges had chided her for “appearing nude on the deck of [Mee’s] yacht like a nymph,” and for “swimming naked in [Havana] Bay.” Said Toledo-born Satira: “They just don’t understand our customs.”

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,887908,00.html#ixzz0btfUftI0

But Satira would not serve anything close to that term. Instead, after considerable legal intervention and personal pleas from friends in Toledo and elsewhere, Patricia Schmidt got a pardon from the Cuban President. She ended up  serving only about 17 months of that 15-year term in a women’s prison in Cuba until October of 1948. Within hours, after the pardon, she returned to the United States and did fly back to Toledo to see her family.

Schmidt, arriving home after being released from prison.

One of the side notes to the story is that, according to an article in the Toledo Blade,  her fourth grade teacher from Hamilton School Toledo, Mrs. Irene(Tilly) Wasserman, made a personal plea to the court for Schmidt’s release. Her parents also went to Cuba several times before and during the much publicized trial.

The case of this young Toledo woman seemed to have the right “sex-appeal” for yesterday’s news editors. It became a nearly international incident at the time and Toledo’s petite “Satira” was the “star”.   A Google search shows that the story was carried in great detail in papers in Chicago and Miami and Los Angeles. The Toledo Blade covered it, but not with front page bold headlines, but mostly in respectable three graph stories buried deep within its pages. One can only wonder how the story would be covered today.

Little is known about Patricia Schmidt’s life after her brief bout with fame, but some newspaper accounts indicate that she began dancing again in the U.S. under name of Satira and was, for a few years, able to exploit her fame in the Cuban murder affair, but apparently not for long. I have been unable to find anything printed about Patricia “Satira” Schmidt much beyond the early 1950’s.   So I am only left to  wonder what ever happened to this Toledo “star” and just  how and when she fell from the sky.

If you know anything about this story and what ever happened to Patricia Schmidt, I’d love to know the follow-up.