Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
In the summer and fall of 1974, while much of America was watching the twists and turns of Richard Nixon's downfall from the White House, something else strange was happening in the Toledo area as a storm of unusual and deadly violence was being unleashed.
By the middle of October, Toledo police had 42 murders logged for the year and eight of them were unsolved. That number didn't include the victims whose bodies were found outside of the city limits, nor did it include the homicides in other surrounding counties. In fact, the total number of homicides by mid-October 1974 for the Toledo area was 65, and 20 of those were unsolved — and still are to this day.
The most recent of these homicides reported were those of two young women who had been living in Toledo but vanished after they left their Fulton Street home together with a male friend on Oct. 10. Their bodies were found the next day along Muskellunge Creek Road in Sandusky County, just west of Fremont.
The victims were identified as 17-year-old Gilda “Tiny” Paschall and 19-year-old Peggy Townsend. Both had died with two gunshots to the back of the head, fired with a .38 caliber weapon.
Reports at the time said Paschall’s mother lived in Cleveland Heights, and that Paschall had been living with her father James in Inkster, Mich. Gilda had visited her mother in Cleveland Heights but returned with a boyfriend to Michigan the Tuesday prior to the murders. Officials said the two girls had been staying in Toledo at the time, though, with a relative of Gilda’s father.
Sandusky County Sheriff's detective David Gangwer was the investigator at the time and was quoted saying they had few leads or motives. The evidence was sparse and they were trying to determine why these teenage women might have become victims. There was also no sign of drug use associated with the scene or their bodies. It was a puzzling case.
That was October of 1974. Fast forward 52 years and today it is Detective Ken Arp of the Sandusky County Sheriff's office who is now taking another look at the case. While he was not involved in the initial investigation, after inquiry from The Press a few weeks ago, he has since taken a closer look at the case files. Those files are filled with old interviews, photographs, and other investigative notes from 1974, but Arp says there is little information included that provides them with any concrete leads or suspects.
The case remains officially open and active, with no new leads generated over the decades. Detective Arp did say there is some information in the files that may provide a hint of a possible motive. The investigation revealed that the teens might have been sexually trafficked in the area, and there is information that one of the girls had talked to U.S. postal investigators in the weeks prior to her killing. She apparently had information about an $18,000 mail theft robbery in Toledo and the names of some men who might have been involved. Thus, Detective Arp ponders the theory that she might have been targeted because she knew too much about this robbery or other crimes.
Compounding the mystery is that a Toledo man by the name of the Richard Simmons, who had befriended the young women over that summer, was also missing. His exact relationship to them remains unclear, but he was mainly described as a friend who looked after them and was reportedly the man they were last seen with. Detectives wanted very much to talk with him at the time, but strangely Simmons was nowhere to be found — for good reason.
In mid-November 1974 the body of a young black male was discovered by hunters in nearby Ottawa County in an abandoned dump site off Trowbridge Road near Williston. Sheriff's investigators identified the body as that of the 21-year-old Simmons. He too had been shot to death, execution style. A coroner's report could not specify the time or day of death but thought it was likely the killing had taken place about a month before, sometime in October. Thus, it was deemed likely that he too was the victim of the same gunman who killed the young women.
There were many questions and few answers. Who wanted these three young people dead? Why had their futures been extinguished so violently, and by whom?
That's what current Ottawa County Sheriff's investigator Aaron Leist would also like to know as he said his staff is looking at some of the area’s old, unsolved cases again. In fact, they plan on re-examining the information and evidence from 1974 to see if today’s newer technology could be used to find new leads.
Leist even plans to meet with investigators in Sandusky County to compare notes on the three murders that appear to be related. But today — as in 1974 — there is little more to lean on other than theory and speculation without new evidence.
“We’d like any help,” Detective Arp said.
Arp also offered that if anyone in the area knows something about this case, the Sandusky County Sheriff’s Department will listen to any new information that might bring these unsolved cases to a conclusion.
And those three homicides were among several more from the area that remain unsolved. In next week’s edition of The Press, we’ll have part two of this story in which we discuss those cases.
NOTE: If anyone has any information on these cases, please contact the sheriff’s department in either Ottawa County or Sandusky County.
