Was Joe Chandler Really This Dude?

Chandler

Dial

An Eastlake, Ohio, man who called himself “Joseph Newton Chandler” was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his  efficiency in 2002. He was an odd man, an electrical engineer who tinkered with his own inventions and listened to static on headphones instead of music. Actually, he was odder than anyone really knew…authorities eventually discovered that he was not Joe Chandler, but some stranger living in their midst, under a name he’d gotten off a  kid’s death certificate.

So who was Joe Chandler? That the mystery Eastlake cops have been trying to solve ever since. Tips have come in over the years, suggesting he could have been everyone from the Zodiac killer to Jim Morrison. My favorite theory, first posited by Chris Yarbrough over at CrimeShadows, is that Chandler was a man named Stephen Campbell, a mechanical engineer who tried to blow up his wife in Wyoming in 1982.

But recently, reader Karen Hoy brought a new suspect to my attention. She thinks police should consider John Victor Dial, a man who has been missing from Texas since 1966. There are a lot of interesting similarities–Dial came from a town in Texas not far from where the real Joe Chandler died, Dial married a Panamanian woman, the Eastlake guy told people he had once been married to a Cuban woman, Dial had mechanical experience.

I still think the resemblance matches Campbell better. But what do you think?

My new book…

My new book, The Serial Killer’s Apprentice, is now available. It includes 13 unsolved crimes from the Northeast Ohio area that I’ve tried to crack open. It reports new facts and leads. Maybe you or someone you know will read it and discover that you have information that could lead to one of the final pieces to these puzzles. The 13 “cold cases” are:

• Strongsville native and Tri-C student Joseph Kupchik died after falling from a nine-story parking deck in downtown Cleveland in 2006. He had also been stabbed many times. Had his secret gambling debts caught up to him, or was Joe a victim of circumstance? The coroner believe it was suicide. His family thinks it was murder. So do I.

• Sometimes the worst crimes don’t happen in back alleys; they take place inside victim’s homes in otherwise safe neighborhoods. In 1964 the quiet suburb of Garfield Heights was gripped with fear after 16-year-old Beverly Jarosz was murdered in her bedroom during daylight hours. Who did Beverly know well enough to let into her house and was willing to end her life? There are a lot of strange individuals who’ve become suspects and the police haven’t stopped digging.

• This one sends chills up my spine. In 2005 Cleveland-native Ray Gricar vanished from Western Pennsylvania nine years after his brother went missing. Here’s where it gets bizarre: A few years prior Ray had encouraged a friend to complete writing a science fiction novel involving a murder that takes place on the same day Ray disappeared. Something tells me this isn’t a coincidence.

• Before becoming known to the regulars in Akron’s strip club scene, 21-year-old dancer Andrea Flenoury was a cheerleader at Lordstown High School. After taking up the pole she used the pseudonym “Gemini,” until her body was found wrapped in chains at the bottom of a canal on a hot summer day in 2005. Many fingers were pointed at her deceased child’s father-to-be, but could it have been any one of her numerous fans who lined up nightly with dollar bills? This story took me to some of the seediest parts of the city I call home.

• While Cleveland has had more than a few crime kingpins, nobody wanted to rule the local underworld more than Phi Huu Mai, a Vietnamese immigrant who went by the name “Chinese Tony”. After a few of his minor criminal enterprises failed, Tony disappeared. Eight years later, in 2005, his shattered skull was found the woods behind a Westlake parking lot. What did Tony do to deserve a bullet to the back of the head and why did it take so long to find his remains? The answer is out there.

• It doesn’t take an experienced criminal to pull off a brilliant heist. Ted Conrad was only 21 when he grabbed over $215,000 from a Lakewood bank in 1969. His keen wit and knack for picking up foreign languages has kept him at-large ever since. Forty years later the FBI is still trying to track him down. I’ve come close to finding this guy, and his family and friends aren’t too pleased.

• Jeffery Krotine is a strange guy, but does that mean he murdered his wife Ramona in their Brook Park home in 2003? According to police, he never asked about her death, never shed tears, and he quickly began remodeling his master bedroom after the crime. Despite the mass of evidence presented by prosecutors, he was finally acquitted after two mistrials.Why? And who was the mysterious man seen dancing with Ramona the night of her murder?

• The 1990 murder of 16-year-old Lisa Pruett caused a media stir and a witch-hunt in the city of Shaker Heights. Her body was found the night her boyfriend was released from a fancy detox facility. Many residents pointed to Kevin Young, an angry young man who may have confessed to the crime under stress. Could the real killer have been someone else very close to her?

• Small towns aren’t exempt from violent crimes. Dan Ott became known in Burton, Ohio as a talented and popular greenhouse grower, not to mention a Casanova among the older ladies (including his friends’ moms). Just days before starting a new high paying job, Dan was supposedly gunned down in front of his girlfriend by a camouflaged intruder. His May 2006 murder is still a mystery, but a local gun shop owner and noisy blogger thinks he knows the culprit.

• Joseph Newton Chandler used someone else’s identity for decades, but nobody knew until his decaying corpse was found in an Eastlake apartment complex in 2002. More than one crime blog believes he may have been the Zodiac killer, or possibly even Jim Morrison. He may have been sick at the time of his death, but why commit suicide? What was it this guy was hiding?

• In 2005 I received a package filled with recordings of a psychic claiming to know the fates of two missing Cleveland girls. Amanda Berry disappeared near the corner of West 110th and Lorain Ave. on April 21, 2003, just a day before her 17th birthday. Almost exactly one year later on April 2, 2004, Gina DeJesus vanished nearly a block away. Help me find out if these cases are connected, and if the psychic is correct.

• Two years after completing my book Amy: My Search for Her Killer, I continue my hunt for the person who kidnapped Amy Mihaljevic from a Bay Village shopping center in 1989 and left her body on County Road 1181 in Ashland County three months later. Was it the accountant who allegedly tried to hire a prostitute to find a young girl? How about the “Shaggy Haired” man who lived near the sight where Amy’s body was found and had suspicious contact with his middle school students? Could it be the “Artist” who wore the killer’s composite sketch as a mask to work? This is the story that is the closest to my heart and one that I think we can solve.

• In 2002 Clintonville resident Robert Buell was executed by the state of Ohio for the 1982 murder and rape of 11-year old Marshallville local Krista Harrison. He proclaimed his innocence all the way to the death house and even in his last words. While Buell may not have been a nice guy, I think he may have died for the wrong reasons.

I need your help to find the truth behind these mysteries. Only by bringing new information forward can these crimes be solved. The book includes a wealth of new information about these cases and provides ways for you to share any leads or new tips.