Murder in Battle Creek by Blaine L. Pardoe

Author:Blaine L. Pardoe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2013-01-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

NEW HOPES

I knew something was wrong—the kitchen rug was wadded up against the sink.

Floyd Zick

Battle Creek Enquirer and News

January 15, 1963

We’ve all become a bit misled about how police investigations work thanks to movies and television. In our era of CSI and DNA, we’ve been shown that lab technicians solve most crimes by providing physical evidence to link the killer the crime. That is the Hollywood version of how it’s done.

In the 1960s, and even today, a great deal of work was done by interviewing people, paying close attention to details, sharing information and following the directions of logical thinking. Evidence plays an important role, but many crimes are prosecuted every year on circumstantial evidence rather than something a lab tech has found.

The investigators of the Zick murder relied on this kind of police work to attempt to solve the crime. One of the early leads that came to investigators came in from observation. This particular lead began a few months before the murder. Fred Ritchie of the sheriff’s department had been visiting with John Blodgett, the owner of the CIO Club in Battle Creek. The bar was frequented by the shifts coming off work from Post and Kellogg’s. Ritchie, who was single at the time, was sitting in the car chatting with Blodgett, when they noticed an attractive redhead walking by.

The thirty-seven-year-old Blodgett made the comment that while the woman they were watching was attractive, he knew of another redhead that frequented his establishment. While he didn’t name her, he gave tantalizing clues that stuck in Ritchie’s head. She was from Wattles Park and was married. Furthermore, she was an employee at Kellogg’s. According to Ritchie, Blodgett described her as “a wild one.” At the time, the deputy gave it very little thought; it was simply the idle chatter of two men.

Unbeknownst to Fred Ritchie, the day after the murder, Wayne Fitch had stopped at the Mar Creek Inn in Ceresco, Michigan, about four miles from the Zick home. Fitch saw John Blodgett coming out of the bar, his clothing disheveled and a nasty cut on his face as if he had been scratched. It was obvious from what Fitch said he saw that Blodgett had been in some sort of fight. When he pressed the man as to what had happened to him, Mr. Blodgett answered that someone had told him a funny joke and he had fallen off of his bar stool. It seemed unlikely, but there was no reason to think differently.

The two officers, both working the case, brought up John Blodgett and compared notes. Was it possible that Daisy hung out at the CIO Club and that Blodgett had been involved with her?

A check of the tips that had come into the investigators certainly added some substance to their suspicion. Tip 122 was that Robert Allen of Marshall had been seen dancing with Daisy at the CIO Club a month or so before her murder. Police found that Allen worked at Kellogg’s. In their check of Kellogg’s, investigators validated his alibi.

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