Unsolved Indiana: Murder Mysteries, Bizarre Deaths & Unexplained Disappearances

By Autumn Bones

Enduring mysteries from the Hoosier State

Crime and tragedy have all too often disturbed the peace and stained the memory of Indiana's bucolic countryside. The small town of Dupont was thrust into the nation's spotlight in 1947 after a series of suspicious deaths were blamed on a well-known local housekeeper--suspected serial killer Lottie "Tot" Lockman. On a fall day in 1976, a Benton County farmer found an unusual package in his cornfield--a corpse. Dubbed "The Box Lady of Benton County," her identity remains a mystery. On September 13, 1989, Joseph Bova was killed outside of his Merrillville home when a pipe bomb rigged to his truck's ignition exploded. With no witnesses, suspects, or motive, his case remains unsolved.

Author Autumn Bones explores some of Indiana's least-known unsolved cases.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Oct 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781439676370

Autumn Bones

Autumn Bones is an Indiana native who lives in Brown County with her family and pets. As a freelance journalist, Autumn spends her free time sifting through newspaper archives, searching national missing persons registries and scouring state records to find unsolved cases from Indiana.

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1

THE WOMAN IN THE WELL

Seventy-year-old Leona Disseldorf was reported missing on September, 26, 1958. Leona, who lived alone at 1000 South Brady Street in Attica, Indiana, had retired from teaching twenty-four years prior and, for the most part, relied on her Social Security check for income. When the check was due to arrive and she didn’t come out to meet the mailman, something Leona had never failed to do, the mailman was worried. His concern was only furthered when he peered into Leona’s letter box and discovered the previous day’s mail uncollected inside.

After knocking several times and receiving no answer, the mailman sought help from Leona’s neighbors. When the group glanced through a window, they noticed that her dogs’ bowls were scattered about the floor as though the animals had been searching for food. Worried that their elderly neighbor may be hurt inside, the group summoned police. Police arrived and, after making entry into the home and finding no sign of Leona, they reported her missing.

Other than the food bowls, nothing appeared to be out of place in Leona’s home. The only things missing, aside from Leona herself, were her purse and a small lapel watch that she always wore. This led police to believe Leona had left with every intention of returning home a short time later.

Leona was quite active. While she was known to hitchhike, Leona was also known to walk long distances alone, even to West Lebanon, eight miles away. Worried that Leona had possibly gotten injured on one of her walks, police and locals searched her regular routes, including a rural farming property that she owned near Stone Bluff. Leona’s sister, who passed away a few years before, had left Leona the eighty-acre piece of farmland, and Leona frequently walked the property. But even after an extensive search of the area, police found no sign of the missing woman.

Leona Disseldorf’s Attica, Indiana home. Journal and Courier staff photo, September 26, 1959. Newspapers.com.

Fifty-two days later, on November 17, Bill Young and Don Hart, two rabbit hunters from Covington, Indiana, stopped to take a break atop a well covered in wood planks when they noticed a foul smell coming from within. The well was eleven miles southwest of Attica and owned by a woman named Mary Hickman, but the property was farmed and cared for by her brother-in-law Guy Grady.

Moments after Bill and Don arrived at the well, Guy and his son, who had been farming the property all day, arrived at the well to get water for the radiator in his tractor. Also noticing the pungent odor, Guy helped Bill and Don remove the planks. Peering into the forty-foot well, the men noticed that the water appeared to be oily and of a strange bluish color. They assumed that an animal must have fallen in and was decomposing in the water below.

The rural well where the bound and weighted body of Leona Disseldorf was discovered. Journal and Courier staff photo, September 26, 1959. Newspapers.com.

In an attempt to retrieve the dead animal, the men lowered a length of barbed wire into the dark well. When they pulled the wire up, it was covered in human hair. After a second glance down the well, the men saw what appeared to be a human form in the ten feet of water and immediately summoned the sheriff. Hours later, the badly decomposed body of Leona Disseldorf was pulled from the rural well. She was first identified by her cousin, who claimed that a pair of shoes pulled from the well definitely belonged to Leona. Her identity would later be confirmed using her dental records.

Indiana State Board of Health coroners certificate of death for Leona Disseldorf. Public domain.

Leona was found fully clothed except for a red sweater that she wore daily. Her purse and watch were also not recovered. Her feet and wrists were bound with white plastic clothesline, and her arms were tied around her neck. Five electrical wires were found wrapped around her waist. Carefully attached to the wires were seven bricks from the local Attica brickyard. A white towel was also found tied around her throat in two square knots. During the autopsy, a rag was found in Leona’s mouth. Later, duct tape cut to the size of someone’s mouth was retrieved from the well. Due to the advanced state of decomposition, a cause of death could not be determined, but it is believed that Leona might have still been alive when she was tossed into the well. When police first attempted to retrieve her body, they discovered that her hand was still clenched around a small pipe inside.

Leona was reportedly last seen on the day before her disappearance by a former student. According to him, he saw Leona getting out of the back seat of a car near Highway 41 wearing her red sweater. He could not give a description of the car other than that it had local plates. Police believe that robbery may have been the motive for Leona’s murder, due to the fact that her purse and watch were never found. It was rumored that Leona may have hidden a large sum of money she had been collecting from the small farm property her sister left her, but police believe those rumors were completely unfounded.

Leona had been married once, to a man named Edgar Emmons. During their marriage, Edgar had had Leona involuntarily admitted to a state hospital, claiming she was incapable of managing her financial affairs. Leona claimed that Edgar was abusive, and the two divorced in 1931. In 1943, Edgar assisted a woman named Catherine Farner in kidnapping Catherine’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Dorothy, whom she had recently lost custody of. Together, Edgar and Catherine entered the local high school and forcibly removed Dorothy from the building. When detectives attempted to arrest the pair later that day, a struggle ensued between a policeman and Edgar, resulting in Edgar shooting the officer once in the arm. Edgar was arrested and died a few years later. Leona had no children, and after divorcing Edgar, she never remarried.

Police exhausted all efforts to find Leona’s killer, but the case of the Woman in the Well remains unsolved.

2

THE BROWN FAMILY MURDERS

Just a short drive from Lake Lemon, along a rural road in northern Brown County, Indiana, you’ll find Lanam Ridge Cemetery. Perched among the four hundred graves, looming atop a small hill, sits a large marker bearing the last name Brown and three first names: Marion, Lourena and Paul. Given that the tombstone reads that all three family members perished on the same day, one would assume they must have met with an unfortunate fate. The problem is, only two bodies are buried beneath the Brown marker, and no one is sure who the bodies belong to.

On December 15, 1930, sixty-eight-year-old Marion Lee Brown called on neighbor Chester Bunge to help him chop firewood. Chester, a close friend of the Brown family, happily obliged. Later that afternoon, Marion insisted that Chester join him and his wife, Lourena Brown, sixty-six, for lunch. Chester happily agreed, and Chester and Marion made their way to the Brown farmhouse.

While Marion and Chester were standing in the kitchen washing up for their lunch, Marion and Lourena’s son, twenty-nine-year-old Paul Brown, entered the room and drew a .25-caliber revolver from his pocket. Paul suddenly began wildly shooting at the two men, striking them both in the chest and hitting Chester a second time in the wrist. Marion fell to the kitchen floor, while Chester made a run for the cellar door, seeking shelter in the Browns’ basement.

After hearing the shots, Lourena, who had been in the nearby living room, dashed into the kitchen, grabbed the phone and called Frank Crews, another neighbor of the Browns’, for help. Chester heard another two shots, followed by a loud thud on the floor above. Chester decided he would take his chances and made a run for the front door of the home. He dashed out of the basement and through the front door, but Paul had reloaded his gun and was hot on his trail. He shot several times in Chester’s direction but eventually gave up and stopped the chase.

Last known photo of Lourena and Marion Brown. Ancestry.com.

Chester, who managed to survive the attack, ran toward the home of Frank Crews. Frank, who had just received the bizarre call from Lourena, was already on his way to the Brown home when he ran into a wounded Chester. Chester told Frank what had happened, and together the pair summoned police. The sheriff, accompanied by a posse of forty men, went to the Browns’ home to find it engulfed in flames. A single pair of footprints matching Paul’s shoe size was found in the snow leading to the nearby woods, but they abruptly stopped at the edge of the tree line and went back toward the farmhouse. The posse searched the woods, nearby lakes, ponds and wells but found no sign of Paul. After the fire was extinguished and the charred remains of the house were inspected, the bodies of two people were discovered in the basement.

Two local doctors, including the Brown family physician, were called to the scene to help identify the badly burned bodies. They were unable to make a visual identification due to the severity of the burns, but they concluded that they were most likely Marion and Lourena. The pair was buried together in a single casket in Lanam Ridge Cemetery.

Police theorized that robbery might have been a motive for the attack. The Browns’ property was worth about $20,000, and it was no secret to their children that their parents kept a small mason jar buried in the yard filled with gold and liberty bonds. However, after discovering the jar undisturbed, the robbery theory became an unlikely one. Several days after the murders, a local farmer named Winfield Richards, a neighbor of the Browns’, discovered a freshly dug grave on his property. Police searched the shallow hole but found nothing.

Two months after their death, the bodies were exhumed and taken for autopsy at Riley Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana. An Indiana University professor of pathology performed the autopsy and, once complete, made an astonishing claim: both of the bodies were males, one middle-aged, the other much younger. The local physicians who had examined the bodies disagreed with the pathologist’s new findings, but the pathologist and several other professors were adamant that there was no possible way either body belonged to Lourena.

The Brown family gravestone at Lanam Ridge Cemetery. Photo by Shelly Couvrette. Findagrave.com.

The Brown family was well known and respected in the area. Marion had moved to Brown County at the age of three. Growing up, he lived on a farm with his family