Manitowoc Herald-Times from Manitowoc, Wisconsin • 9

HERALD TIMES REPORTER www.htrnews.com Sunday, May 20, 20 12A-9 hrWVw hi (0 CQ III I mj- i-n. Investigators in 2007 revisit the 1988 disappearance of Cheryl Spaeth-Duvall as they search for possible evidence on a dairy farm at South Parkview Road in the town of Manitowoc Rapids. FileHTR Debra "Debi" Hochstetler visits the grave of her son, Richard Hochstetler, at Evergreen Cemetery in Manitowoc in 2002. Hochstetler was killed by a hit-and-run driver in 1999. FileHTR 1 1 1 Louise Frank of Two Rivers, who went missing one day in 1984, has never been found.

Photo courtesy Two Rivers Police Leo Rocque In what is one of the county's oldest cold cases, officer Leo Rocque of the Two Rivers Police Department was shot and killed in an ambush attack on Oct. 5, 1926, according to accounts of the crime. Sometime after midnight, the 48-year-old officer, who was on his first tour of duty on the night shift, transported a prisoner to the Manitowoc Coun-ty Jail. The five-year veteran of the department was back on duty at the combined police and fire department at 17th and Washington streets at about 2:30 a.m. when he heard the doorbell.

He put his cigar in the ashtray, took off his glasses and placed them on the newspaper he had been reading, and took the stairs from his second-floor office to the first-floor entrance. He turned on the light. When he looked through the glass upper part of the door to see who it was, a bullet shattered the glass and slammed into his throat. The bullet struck the knot in Rocque's tie and bullet fragments lodged inside his upper torso. His last act before he died was to use his police billy club to pound on the floor to awaken the firemen sleeping in the same building.

Firefighters found his body minutes later. Rocque's grandson, John Krey of Manitowoc, never met his grandfather, but keeps an extensive file on his murder. "I think there might be someone that knows, but never came forward," he said. "Somebody out there could possibly have information." The case took some interesting twists. "The entire investigative file went missing back in the 1930s, so there was a whole cloud of suspicion surrounding that investigation," Two Rivers Police Chief Joe Collins said recently.

"That was back in the day of Prohibition and it was suspected that he may have been working on an alcohol case of some sort." Another interesting fact about the Rocque case is that the department requested assistance from the FBI in 1941, Collins said. The department wanted help with a handwriting analysis of a threatening letter that had been received by the city manager as well as help with an analysis of bullet fragments and a cartridge found at the scene. The department received letters from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover regarding the investigation, he said. Hoover said the bureau didn't have the resources to help with the handwriting analysis, but did an analysis of the bullet fragments.

Despite Hoover's help, Rocque's murder remains unsolved. Suzanne Weiss: (920) 686-2140 or sweissShtrnews.com CASES From A-1 for their actions, Luchter-hand said. "We would love to do everything we can to bring these people to justice," he said. Here are six of Manitowoc County's cold cases. They have been compiled from law-enforcement reports and newspaper accounts.

Richard Hochstetler The obituary photo is frozen in time. A smiling boy with big glasses and a short haircut gazes out, forever 17. Lincoln High School junior Richard "Ricky" Hochstetler was walking home from a friend's house in the early morning hours of Jan. 10, 1999, when he was hit by a motorist. The teen was left to die of massive injuries along a cold, lonely stretch of Manitowoc County CR, not far from his home, according to newspaper accounts.

His mother, Debra Hochstetler, known to friends as Debi, had dropped her son off at a friend's house earlier in the evening to watch movies and he had apparently decided to walk home. Hochstetler was on the west shoulder of the road when he was hit from behind and dragged nearly 80 yards. She was awakened to every mother's worst nightmare, a knock on the door at 4:30 a.m. Standing at her doorstep were officers and the coroner, waiting to tell her the news. Her son was' dead.

His body was found at about 2:30 a.m. by a passing motorist. It was later determined that Hochstetler died of a skull fracture, brain trauma, spinal cord injury, neck and back fractures and other internal and lower body injuries. "The loss of child is one of the most devastating losses a person can go through and the not knowing I don't know how to deal with that," Debra Hochstetler of Manitowoc said recently. "I need to finish my own healing process." She holds on to the hope the case will be solved and said she's not interested in punishment as much as she is finding an answer.

"My own opinion is someone else knows who killed him," Hochstetler said. "You can't have an accident like that and I truly think it was an accident you can't have someone go through that and not confide in someone. That person had to have done something with the vehicle. I just have a feeling that someone else knows. I just hope that one or two or three or more who know come forward." She believes the person responsible didn't come forward out of fear, she said.

"Somebody's going to say something. It could be someday I get a knock on the door," Hochstetler said. "I do have hope. I can't lose Associated Press con-sidered the death of Richard one of the most high-prof ile cases in the history of the County The killing of Two Rivers Police officer Leo Rocque in 1926 is one of the oldest unsolved crimes in the county. Photo courtesy Two Rivers Police Department Sheriff's Department at the time.

The department hasn't uncovered anything new in the case, Hermann said recently. "The biggest thing is finding that vehicle, but as time goes on, you don't know what happened to the vehicle," he said. According to newspaper accounts, law-enforcement officials gathered more than 200 shattered pieces from the front end of the vehicle that was believed to have hit and killed Hochstetler. Some were found at the scene and others were found at the intersection of Newton and Center roads. Among those pieces was a radiator fin shroud.

Apparently, the impact was so severe that it pushed the wall that holds the radiator in place backward into the fan shroud. Tire tracks in the snow at the scene were 7Vi inches wide, and the tread marks indicated the tires were likely older mud-snow tires. Evidence indicated that the motorist did not stop after hitting the teen. Officials believed the driver may have been drunk or fell asleep at the wheeL Investigators determined they were searching for a late 1980s model Chevrolet truck, Blazer, Suburban or van. The problem was, there were about 15,000 of those kinds of vehicles registered in Manitowoc and four surrounding counties.

The sheriff's department was reported to have spent thousands of man-hours at a cost of more than $100,000 to investigate, and the FBI was called in to assist. Despite the efforts and a $25,000 reward, the suspect was never found. Cheryl Spaeth-Duvall Investigators obtained search orders, brought out cadaver-sniffing dogs and put their shovels to use, yet never turned up any trace of 38-year-old Cheryl Spaeth-Duvall, who went missing Oct. 1, 1988. The investigation came to a halt when leads dried up, but was reopened five years ago when a family member asked the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department to revisit the woman's disappearance, according to newspaper accounts.

Investigators in January 2007 scoured two properties owned by John M. Neuser, a town of Manitowoc Rapids dairy farm on South Parkview Road, where Spaeth-Duvall was living AM through the grass and over a driveway to a tool shed. Officials said she was known for taking long walks and wandering around the neighborhood, frequently becoming lost. That's what apparently occurred on the night of her death, Luchterhand said. A man at a bar at 20th and Hamilton streets saw her outside and she told him she was lost, the man told police.

The man said he walked with her to the area of the cemetery and left her there as they weren't able to find her home. She lived a few blocks from the bar, but they ended up walking in the opposite direction, Luchterhand said. "Her purse was left at the scene, so robbery was not a motive for the crime and she was not sexually assaulted," he said. Male DNA was found on Fick's stocking, but may have been from someone assisting at the scene since it was not custom to wear gloves in those days, Luchterhand said. The DNA has been entered into the national FBI database in case a match would come up, he said.

"We may never know," Luchterhand said. Louise Frank If Lake Michigan snared Louise Frank in its icy clutches in 1984, it has yet to release her. Louis Frank reported his 64-year-old wife missing on Nov. 30, 1984, according to an investigation summary from the Two Rivers Police Department cold case files. Frank was believed to have been walking to a downtown Two Rivers restaurant at about 3 p.m.

An hour later, a witness spotted her walking alone in Lakeshore Park at Memorial Drive and 12th Street. A second witness saw a woman matching her description walking toward the lake at 4:30 p.m. Investigations showed that Louise Frank did not appear to have gone to the restaurant. Friends and family indicated that she talked of killing herself by throwing herself into the river. In early December, a citizen found a purse on the beach at Point Beach State Forest.

The purse bore Louise Frank's identification and showed signs of washing ashore with the ice along the shoreline. Over the course of 20 days, searches were conducted by foot, with K-9 units, on ATVs and from the air. Authorities also dragged the East Twin River, which leads out to Lake Michigan. Two Rivers police received assistance from the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department and Point Beach State Forest rangers but came up empty. A memorial service for Louise Frank was held on Nov.

30, 1986, but her information remains in a national law enforcement database as a missing person to this day. with Neuser before she went missing, and another property in the town of Cato. Neuser, who in 2006 moved to a home on U.S. 10 in the town of Cato, was not a suspect and wasn't charged with any crime, Hermann said at the time. Some of the evidence found at the South Parkview Road was sent to the state crime laboratory, but analysis was inconclusive, Hermann told reporters.

Her ex-husband, Mike Du-vall, described Spaeth-Duvall as mild-mannered and a good mother who loves her children when he talked to reporters at the time. Duvall said he became suspicious when his ex-wife failed to call to talk to her children for about two months. The couple had been divorced for about four years and had a "very civil relationship;" he told reporters Duvall had custody of their two boys, but allowed Spaeth-Duvall to take them to Neuser's dairy farm on weekends. Duvall said his ex-wife would sometimes wait a month before calling to take the boys for the weekend, but two months was not typical. Irene Roedig Was the 43-year-old Manitowoc woman killed by a former lover? A railroad transient? Officials considered every angle.

The 1980 Manitowoc case was never resolved, but the facts remain chilling. After firefighters extinguished a suspicious blaze at Irene Roedig's residence in the 1200 block of South 26th Street on Jan. 22, 1980, they discovered her naked, rope-bound body inside. At 7 p.m. that evening, just two hours before the fire, she had talked to her mother on the telephone.

A knock on the door interrupted the conversation. When her mother asked if she should hang on, Roedig replied that it was OK, that she knew who was at the door. Robbery was ruled out after authorities found stacks of silver coins on the kitchen table and piles of cash tucked away in the freezer. Suicide also was ruled out, but sexual rumors abounded. Forensic tests confirmed that she had had sexual intercourse within 48 hours of her death.

She had expressed concern to friends that the man she had been seeing, who was married, was bothering her and she was not sure how to handle it. Roedig lived near a railroad gathering house, where people frequently came and went. In those days, transients slept near the railroad tracks. Complicating the case was the fact that she was considered mentally delayed and had only a second-grade education. She worked at Holiday House, a workshop for the mentally challenged, and at a local supper club washing dishes.

She often used taxi-cabs to get around town. "We looked at the case in 1990 and 2007, with changing technology to see if there was anything we could do," said Luchter-hand. Detectives were able to identify male DNA that was entered into a national FBI database but, so far, no matches, he said. Emma Fick The gruesome 1970 case of a 76-year-old widow, who died after her head was bashed in on a tombstone in a Manitowoc cemetery, has never been solved. "At the time, we had a very good suspect," Luchterhand said.

"We don't have anything newer today than we did in 1970 to be able to charge him out." Emma Fick, who lived alone in a three-room apartment in the 1600 block of Marshall Street, was found dead at the rear of St. Mary Catholic Cemetery at South 18th and Division streets by two young boys riding their bicycles through the area on their way home from Pulaski Park. An autopsy showed she was killed by repeated blows to the back of the head. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage resulting from a compound skull fracture. It appeared that she was dragged by her feet 1 1.