South Bend, Indiana – December 22, 1939
Stephen hit the ground hard. The tape held his eyelids tightly closed, preventing him from seeing where he was.
His hands were tied behind his back, and he could feel the cold snow against his bare fingers. Struggling, he rolled over onto his side. His ankles were bound together, too, but Stephen thought that they felt looser.
He writhed against his bindings, trying to free himself. His hands were still tight as ever, but his ankles felt looser. Stephen focused his efforts there, working his legs hard against the bonds. After a few minutes, he could feel them starting to release.
He kept at it and, finally, he felt his right ankle come free. With an effort, he brought himself up to his knees, and then slowly got to his feet.
Stephen couldn’t see or cry for help, but he knew that he couldn’t stay on the ground. It was December and it was freezing outside. He had no idea where he was. If he stayed still too long, he was sure he would freeze to death.
He weighed his options. If he stayed put and there was someone around, then maybe someone would come and help him. Somehow, though, he doubted very much that he had been dropped any place where someone could help him. If that was the case, then he might never be found. In his mind, that left him with only one choice.
Slowly, he started shuffling forward. He moved slowly and carefully. Unable to see anything, he was constantly worried about running into something. Or, even worse, falling off something.
He could hear the snow crunch under his feet as he focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Occasionally he would feel branches scrape against his face and coat. Was he in someone’s yard? A forest? Stephen had no idea. He just kept going, one step at a time.
As he walked, he began to feel one of his shoes coming off. He tried to put it back on but couldn’t quite manage it. A few steps later it came off completely. Soon his sock was completely soaked by the snow.
Stephen kept moving. The world was silent around him except for the sound of his own breathing and his footsteps in the snow.
Finally, Stephen sat down. He was exhausted and his foot felt like a block of ice. It had long since gone numb. He knew he was faced with the same choice as he had before. He could keep moving and hope that he found help, or he could just sit there and possibly die in the cold without anyone finding him until it was too late.
As he weighed his options, Stephen thought that he heard something. Was that a car? He held his breath, listening.
It was! He struggled back to his feet and started moving toward the sound.
Stephen wasn’t sure where the car was exactly, but he started moving toward where he thought the sound was.
Suddenly, Stephen felt something slam into him. He felt himself taken off his feet and into the air. For a moment he was completely weightless, and then he crashed back to the frozen ground, his world melting into an endless white-hot pain.
He felt his insides tearing, his bones breaking. And then there was nothing, and Stephen was floating again into darkness.
—
William Joyce could hear his tires squeal on the pavement.
He and his wife had been driving down Highway 20 toward Arkansas. It was around 3 a.m. and there were hardly any other cars out on the road. Things had been so quiet, and then a man had walked out in front of the car.
He had come out of nowhere. He had slammed both of his feet on the brake pedal, but it was already too late. The car hit the man hard. A few feet later, the car had come to a full stop. Joyce took a second to compose himself and check on his wife. She was fine; just a little shaken up.
Getting out of the car, he started looking for the man he had just hit. Joyce saw him lying near a road sign. Joyce felt his stomach knot. He felt terrible. One minute the road was empty and the next he had caught just a glimpse of someone as they walked right in front of the car. They hadn’t even stopped.
Joyce ran to check on the man. He was breathing, thank goodness. Joyce asked the man if he was okay. All he got in response was a kind of muffled groan.
Looking at the man’s face, Joyce saw that his eyes and mouth had been taped securely shut. That was odd, he thought. But he didn’t have time to worry about that. He needed to get him help as soon as he could.
He told the man to stay still. He was going to get help, and he would be back as soon as he could be. Returning to the car, he drove to South Bend and called the police from the first telephone that he could find.
While William Joyce was calling the South Bend Police Department, another driver saw the man lying in the road as he passed. Pulling over, he also went over to check on him. Seeing that he was hurt, he told him that he was going to get help, then went and called the police in the nearby town of Mishawaka, Indiana, a town directly next to South Bend.
Officers from both departments responded to the scene, as well as an ambulance for the victim.
The man was quickly identified as Stephen Melkey, a resident of Mishawaka. Someone had tied his hands behind his back with rope and then taped his eyes and mouth shut with surgical tape. All of this was carefully but quickly removed as he was loaded into the ambulance and taken to the nearest hospital.
As the tape was removed from his mouth, someone noticed that his mouth had been stuffed with a handkerchief. It was plain with no identifiable markings but had lipstick on it.
Police questioned William Joyce and his wife, but quickly understood that they had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They had hit him, but who had left him stranded in the area bound, gagged, and blinded to wander in the snow?
As they spoke to the Joyce’s, the local coroner, Donald Grillo, arrived to help the investigation with one of his assistants.
In addition, he was also there to determine which police department would have jurisdiction over the case.
The accident scene was near the intersection of McKinley Avenue, which became Highway 20 as it passed out of the city, and Logan Street. The dividing line between the cities of South Bend and Mishawaka was about in the middle of the intersection.
Unfortunately, Joyce wasn’t sure which side of the road he had hit Melkey on. Was he just over on the other side, or had he come fully into Joyce’s side? Before it became too big a debate, the two departments came to a decision of their own.
Instead of arguing, the South Bend and Mishawaka departments choose to pool their resources and work together in solving the case. With that issue resolved, they went back to work.
As they did, they received news of Stephen Melkey’s condition: he had died in route to the hospital. He had never even made it there.
That news, combined with the fact that someone had seemingly left him at the intersection to wander until he was hit by a car or froze to death, turned the case into a possible homicide.
Footprints leading from the accident scene led back to the intersection. On the side of the road was a depression in the snow, indicating that someone had sat there for some time. There were more footprints matching Melkey’s that led off into some nearby woods.
As police continued to follow them, they came upon Melkey’s missing shoe. Continuing, they found an area where there seemed to have been a struggle. This was where Melkey seemed to have started his final walk. Nearby, a set of tire tracks led down a road through the snow.
Investigators figured that someone must have kidnapped him, then bound him and taped his eyes and mouth shut. They then brought him here and threw him out into the snow. There had been evidence that his legs had also been tied together, so they figured that he must have struggled out of his bonds there so that he could move his legs.
Coroner Grillo took plaster casts of the tire tracks so that they could be matched against the tires of any potential suspects later.
Police also found a second set of tracks in the snow near Melkey’s, but couldn’t tell if they had been made at the same time or if they were older. These tracks followed Melkey’s for a while before coming to a stop behind a telephone pole near the intersection.
If they had been made at the same time, then it might indicate the kidnapper had followed Melkey. From there, the kidnapper had a full view of the intersection from the telephone pole, so it was feasible that they had stopped there and watched as Melkey walked in front of Joyce’s car.
Mishawaka police had heard of Melkey. He had originally imigrated from Hungary to the United States in childhood, eventually moving to Mishawaka in about 1911. Nine years later, he had married and started a family. Sadly, his wife had died five years before, leaving the 44-year-old Melkey to raise three sons by himself.
He worked at the Mishawaka Rubber and Woolen Manufacturing Company, and was taking a correspondence course that he hoped would help him get promoted to a better-paying foreman job.
Allegedly, Melkey had been romantically interested in a 27-year-old woman named Bertte DeVos. She was divorced and worked as a waitress at a restaurant called the Old Heidelberg Café. Unfortunately for him, she was already engaged to another man, Allan F. Polomskey.
The story was that the two had had a few arguments over DeVos that had almost become violent.
Police theorized that if Melkey was interested enough in DeVos to fight over her, then maybe Polomskey had gotten worried he would be able to steal his fiancé away from him. If that were the case, he might have decided to completely remove Melkey from the picture.
Bertte DeVos and Allan Polomskey were detained by police and brought in for questioning. Although they were questioned extensively overnight, they both had an alibi.
Both said that they had been together from 10:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. They supported each other’s alibi’s and there was no evidence to contradict their claims. The couple was released.
An examination of Melkey’s body showed that he had suffered multiple injuries from the crash. Both his right ankle and femur had been snapped and he had broken his neck. He also had several internal injuries.
Detectives believed that Melkey could very well have known his kidnapper. They theorized that his eyes had been taped shut because he would have been able to identify them.
Investigators were able to trace the source of the tape to medical supplies at Melkey’s workplace, lending further support to the theory.
Unfortunately, investigators couldn’t match the rope that had bound his hands and feet to its source. The casts of the tire tracks found near where Melkey had been dumped had flaws that were bad enough that they were concerned that their condition would prevent them from finding a proper match.
Detectives theorized that it was very possible that there had been more than one kidnapper. Melkey was known as being a formidable man who knew how to box and wrestle. He probably would have been more than capable of dealing with one kidnapper, lending more credence to the theory of multiple attackers.
Although authorities followed up on a few more leads over the next few weeks, nothing ever came of them.
Then, in a surprising move, Polomskey was arrested a second time. He gave them the same alibi and even agreed to take a lie detector test when he was asked. DeVos, who was now his wife, also consented to take a lie detector test.
Both easily passed. With that final avenue exhausted, investigators had no more leads. The case quickly went cold.
Who kidnapped Stephen Melkey? And, more importantly, why? In the 85 years since his death, no new leads have ever surfaced, and the case of Stephen Melkey remains one of Indiana’s most bizarre unsolved crimes.
Sources
Stephen Samuel “Steve” Melkey. Findagrave.com
Kidnap Victim Killed by Car. South Bend Tribune, 12/22/1939
New ‘Woman Angle’ Traced in Melkey’s Kidnap Death. South Bend Tribune, 12/23/1939
Kidnap Death Theory Traced. South Bend Tribune, 12/24/1939
Kidnap Clews Lacking. South Bend Tribune, 12/26/1939
Find New Lead in Melkey Case. South Bend Tribune, 12/28/1939
Melkey Probe at Standstill. The South Bend Tribune, 12/29/2939
Probe Renewed in ‘Blind’ Death. The South Bend Tribune, 1/7/1940
Pair Cleared in Lie Test on Melkey Test. South Bend Tribune, 1/8/1940