John A. Crow of Mark Township, Murdered! Or Was He? - Part 1

Sometime in 1885, two fishermen discovered a decomposed body along the West Michigan Railroad, about a mile from Big Rapids, Michigan.  They immediately notified the authorities who suspected murder: the victim's clothes were in disarray with the pockets rifled and his skull had been crushed by a rock which was underneath the body.  Sheriff Eli Frederick led the investigation, according to a story that ran in the Big Rapids Herald and then was reprinted in the Hicksville Tribune on Thursday, December 17, 1885.  

Clues led the sheriff to Mark Center.

The papers reported:

"At Mark Center, Defiance county, Ohio, a young fellow named John A. Crow, aged about 22 years, left his father and mother, who resided on a farm, and for the first time in his life, started out into the world.  His companion was an old acquaintance named John Vanniman.  They left on May 30th of this year.  Vanniman had been making Mark Center his home.  He is a widower with three children, one of them aged seven and one five years; they were all in the care of a sister who had married a brother of John Crow; the third child is two years old and has been and is still in care of the deceased wife's sister in Defiance county.

The two men came to Michigan. On Tuesday morning following, Vanniman surprised the folks by appearing in Mark Center and alone.  He had one of the Crow boys take his two children to the station, saying he had not found any work north, but had a job at a factory there.  Telling Crow not to wait with the team, that he would soon find a place to board, Vanniman saw the team and driver start back, and then, after some talk with the station agent about a ticket for another place, purchased a ticket for Chicago and the next train bore Vanniman and his children to that city.

Time went on.  The Crow folks had not received a word from their son, John; neither could they learn any tidings of him.  The matter was talked over, but no solution was discovered.  Rumors of the Big Rapids dead body find reached them, as also the inquiries set afloat by our officers.  Sheriff Frederick found the trail getting hot; he visited Defiance county, gained a mass of information.  A public meeting was held there in the settlement, a fund of money raised; Sheriff Wonderly of that county came to Big Rapids; notes are compared; the two Sheriffs and Marshall Hunt visited the lonely grave; the balance of the clothing was taken from the bones, and after being washed, is, with the clothing taken off by Ex-Marshall Jones, fully identified by the mother as that worn by her own son when he started out on that fatal trip to Northern Michigan.

Suspicion now pointed stronger to Vanniman, whose whereabouts are unknown, and the work of looking him up is commenced."

In December, 1885, Vanniman was located and arrested at Peabody, Kansas, as the alleged murderer of John A. Crow.

To be continued...