Tommy Gibbons vs crime, his last profesional fight

[janitor]

After his profesional boxing career Tommy Gibbons worked as a Ramsey County sheriff and continued to get in the news. Here is some information taken off the3 Gibbons family website.
[Only registered and activated users can see links]

[Only registered and activated users can see links]

Most great fighters fade away after they retire but some write another chapter. Tommy Gibbons served as Sheriff for four six year terms and was involved in some high profile cases like the one detailed here.

LAKEMURDER of the MAN-CHASER WIFE

Her first marriage ended in failure, and her second ended in murder. Her body was found in lake.
by MIKE DAWSON
IT was the 24th of September, 1947, when Arthur DeZeler first reported that his beautiful dark-haired wife, Grace, was missing from their home in New Canada Township near St. Paul, Minnesota.
He sat in the sheriff's office, a good-looking man in his late forties, with a full head of grieving blond hair. "I haven't heard from her since the 19th," he told Sheriff Thomas Gibbons of Ramsey County.
"Why didn't you get in touch with us sooner?" asked tough, broad-shouldered Sheriff Gibbons.
He was the same Tommy Gibbons who had gone fifteen rounds with Jack Dempsey in a boxing ring twenty-five years before. He looked a bit like Dempsey, in fact. , DeZeler leaned forward, nervously, his shoulders slumped in resignation, a sad expression on his pleasant face. '1 didn't think of it, at first. She used to go away often. She's got a boyfriend," he confided.
''Were you planning a divorce?" the sheriff asked.
"I offered her one, but she didn't want it," DeZeler said. "She just couldn't stop playing around, much as she wanted to, but she said she wanted to stay married to me. We were both married before. She's my third wife, and Fm her second husband."
"Who's the boyfriend?" asked-Gibbons, taking a notebook and pencil. "Man named Charlie Ludeker, who lives up in Minneapolis," DeZeler replied. "All right. We'll look into it and see what we can do, Mr. DeZeler," said the sheriff, dismissing the man.
GIBBONS assigned Deputies Norton Risedorph and Kermit Hedman to investigate the disappearance of Grace DeZeler, and without delay, they drove out to the DeZeler house at Radatz and White Bear Avenues in New Canada. They found Grace's fourteen-year-old son by her first marriage, also named Arthur, at home. A sixteen-year-old daughter lived with friends.
Young Arthur told them he had last seen his mother about eleven p.m., on the 19th, when he had come home from a movie and stopped in her room for a chat. She was lying on the bed, fully dressed, reading, and the boy got the idea that she was waiting for someone. The next morning at eight, when he had gotten up, she was gone, and so was some of her clothing. His stepfather had assured him that she had probably gone away on a trip for a few days and would be back soon.
"May we see her room?" Deputy Risedorph asked.
In Grace's bedroom, everything seemed neat and orderly, with no signs of violence. There was one thing that struck the deputies as odd, though. "Where's the mattress from the bed?" Hedman asked. "I don't know," the boy answered. "It's been gone since my mother left."
The officers checked the rest of the house and found nothing suspicious. Then they went on to the home of Mrs. Sophie Borden, the missing woman's closest friend. Mrs. Borden told them all she knew about Grace's complicated marital life. She verified what Arthur DeZeler had said about the boyfriend, Charlie Ludeker, and added that she knew that Grace often dated a number of other men. "I don't know what's wrong with her," she remarked. "Her husband's a wonderful guy, and he makes a good living as a machinist, but she just won't stop playing around."
"Do you think he was capable of harming her?" Deputy Risedorph asked.
"I doubt it," replied the woman. "Look at all he's been taking from her, and he was even willing to give her a divorce if she wanted one. He's a sweet, gentle guy, and he stuck by her when she said she'd get over this new infatuation soon."

[janitor]

FIGHTING SHERIFF
1923, Tom Gibbons went fifteen rounds with Jack Dempsey. Now Sheriff Gibbons fights for law and order. "How about this Ludeker?" Risedorph pressed.
"I only met him a couple of times, and he seemed to love Grace very much. He wanted her to get a divorce. But he was also the jealous type," Mrs. Borden replied. "I know he beat her up a couple of times when he found her playing with other men. If anything's happened to her, he might know about it. But, then again, so might any of the other guys she's gone out with."
It now seemed that Grace DeZeler could have run off with any of a number of men, or possibly have met with foul play at their hands. The first to be questioned, though, was the acknowledged Number One, Charlie Ludeker. He was a tall, husky man with black hair and dark complexion, about ten years Arthur DeZeler's junior. Yes, he knew that Grace was missing, and he was terribly upset about it. But he had no idea where she was.
"Maybe she found a new boyfriend," he said bitterly. Questioning Ludeker's friends, relatives and employer revealed that, except for his going with a married woman, his life was a secure and stable one. He had a good job, made a good salary, and was able to devote time to his hobbies of hunting and fishing. He owned a cabin on one of the Minnesota lakes and went up there often.
"I think we ought to question DeZeler, himself," Risedorph suggested to his partner, "and get a thorough and more exact account of his and his wife's movements on the night she disappeared." They returned to the DeZeler house that night to question the husband. "We'd like to find out more about the activities of you and your wife on the 19th and 20th," Deputy Hedman said. "Give it to us as exact as you can remember."
"Well," DeZeler began, "I wasn't staying at home then. I took a room in. St. Paul a few weeks ago because I didn't want to be~ reminded all the time that my wife was being unfaithful to me. So I'm not too sure what she did that night, except for a call I made to her about ten-thirty."
"What did you do?" Hedman persisted.
"I went to a football game at Central Stadium. After the game, I felt lonely, so I called my wife, and I asked if I could come down. She said she was expecting someone, so I just drove around awhile, and then I got to my place in St. Paul about midnight."
"Anybody see you come in?" Risedorph asked.
"Yes. My landlady, Mrs. Annette Jackson," De-Zeler replied.
"What did you do the next day?" Deputy Hedman asked.
"I came down to the house here to pick up my duck boat and trailer and to take it to a friend's house," DeZeler related.
"Was your wife here?"
"No," said DeZeler. "Just her boy, Arthur, and he told me about seeing her dressed and waiting for someone the night before, so that fits in with what she said to me on the phone. I just took my boat and drove off. But when I learned from Arthur and Mrs. Borden that Grace still hadn't returned after five days, I went in to see Sheriff Gibbons to tell him about it."
"Where will you be staying now?" Risedorph wanted to know.
"Right here," DeZeler answered, wearily. "Somebody's got to look after the house. Besides, I want to be here if she conies back."
THE deputies left and decided to check DeZeler's alibi at the St. Paul end. They found Annette Jackson, his landlady, to be a slender, attractive woman in her early thirties, with a thick pile of brown wavy hair. "That's right," she told the deputies. "He came in about midnight. He told me he'd been to a football game." And that was that, for the time being. Further inquiries turned up no one who had seen Grace DeZeler since the 19th of September, nor any evidence that pointed to what had become of her when she left.
EARLY on the morning of October 14th, four fishermen in two row-boats were drifting across the surface of lonely, secluded Little Bass Lake, about one hundred and thirty miles north of the twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul. They were gently casting and reeling in their lines, when suddenly one of them, William Dougherty, let out a cry.
"My God, look!"
There on the water, about a dozen feet away from his boat, floated what seemed to be a human corpse. The men paddled the two boats up closer and stared in horror. The body, they could now see, was that of a woman. It rested on its stomach, and the long, dark hair of her head spread out, eerie and fan-like, and moved in the softly rippling water. She was nude, except for thin, light-colored panties.

[janitor]

THE four men tried to raise the body into one of the boats, but found that they couldn't. A length of electric cord was circled about the dead woman's waist and was anchored to something down in the depths of the water.
"We'd better call the sheriff," muttered fisherman Parker Davis. The group paddled furiously to shore, and while Dougherty and Davis leaped into a car to drive to the nearest telephone, the other two remained at the lake to guard the body. When Sheriff Roy Wickland of Crow Wing County received the call at his office in Brainerd, he immediately summoned the coroner and County Attorney, and with a group of his deputies set out for Little Bass Lake, thirty-four miles away.
FROM the description given by the fishermen at the scene, there was no doubt in the minds of the officers that they had a murder on their hands. At the lake, they rowed out to where the body floated and towed it into shore. A cement building block was tied to the other end of the length of electric wire.
"The block held her down for a while," Coroner John Thabes remarked, "but the natural tendency of the body to rise overcame the weight."
"How long has she been in there?" Sheriff Wickland asked.
Thabes looked at the dead woman again, then said, "Probably three to four weeks."
"Huh! Another couple of weeks, and the lake would have frozen over, hiding her till the spring," Sheriff Wickland muttered. "There might not have even been anything left of her by then. What killed her?"
The coroner pointed to the lower part of the woman's skull, just where it joined the neck. "Two well-placed blows, right here. Probably killed her instantly, but we'll wait for the autopsy to tell," he said. "I've got a hunch she was lying down and asleep when it happened. The usual heavy, blunt instrument was the murder weapon, although I couldn't tell you exactly what it was."
Sheriff Wickland quickly compiled a description of the dead woman. She was about thirty-five, and had been slender and very attractive in life. She wore a wedding band, but it wasn't engraved. The best clue were some dentures, which her dentist might be able to identify. The sheriff knew that no one approximating that description was listed as missing in his county, and he realized that the dead woman had probably been murdered at some distant point and transported by car to her resting place in secluded Little Bass Lake.
Wickland walked down to the shoreline, stared out at the spot where the body had been discovered, then turned to a group of his deputies. "Let's scout the woods around here for any clues the killer might have dropped," he said. "Seems to me some of her clothing ought to be around, if nothing else."

[janitor]

THE lake was small—a half-mile one way and a quarter-mile the other—and there was only one approach road and landing dock. Starting from there, the officers moved out carefully through the woods, examining the ground. Wickland's hunch proved correct. Within half an hour, two of his men summoned him to a clearing, where1 a rain-soaked pile of ashes lay. In the pile were charred remnants of cloth from a slip, a coat, and what was either a sheet or pillowcase; two buttons, a zipper, and a pill box. There was also a fire-blackened handbag, inside of which were some charred papers, one of which was a pay check stub made out to Grace DeZeler by a St. Paul business concern.
"That could be her," said the sheriff, and then, remembering what the coroner had said about the victim's probably being asleep when she was killed, he picked up the scrap of bedsheet or pillowcase, and added, "and this seems to bear out what Coroner Thabes said, about her being killed in bed. You men collect this stuff and bring it into town after the ambulance removes the body. I'm going ahead to make some telephone calls."
THE telephone call from Wickland to Sheriff Tommy Gibbons in St. Paul was the first substantial break Gibbons had since his office had taken on the investigation of Grace De-Zeler's disappearance. Deputies Risedorph and Hedman sped to Brainerd to examine the evidence found in Little Bass Lake. After a conference between them an4 Sheriff Wickland, it was decided to send the body to St. Paul for autopsy and identification purposes. The autopsy by the Ramsey Coroner and pathologist confirmed that the victim had died from the two blows at the base of the skull.
But when Arthur DeZeler was taken to the morgue to view the remains, he said, shuddering, "I really can't tell if it's Grace. How could anyone recognize this corpse?" Sheriff Gibbons understood what was probably going on in the distraught husband's mind. He didn't want to face the fact that his wife was actually dead, murdered and lying on the morgue slab. Mrs. Sophie Borden, however, seemed positive that the dead woman found in Little Bass Lake was her missing friend. Then, when Grace's dentist recognized the dentures as his work, the identification was positive.
Sheriff Gibbons and Deputies Risedorph and Hedman reviewed with County Attorney James F. Lynch the previous work they had done on the DeZeler case. "There doesn't seem to be any real suspect," said Lynch. "But now that we know she was murdered and isn't just off on a fling somewhere, I think you'd be justified in requestioning everybody."
"One thing that strikes me," Sheriff Gibbons remarked, "is the fact that the two leading contenders as Suspect Number One—her husband and her boyfriend—were hunters and fishermen, and might know the Little Bass Lake area well enough to have brought the body there."
THE first to be requestioned was Arthur DeZeler. He told virtually the same story about having gone to a football game the night of his wife's disappearance, and then having gone home after talking to her on the telephone. Again, he said, that Mrs. Annette Jackson, his landlady, would verify the time he got home. Had he ever fished, or hunted duck around Little Bass Lake? Yes, he knew the area, but hadn't been over that way in many months.
After dismissing DeZeler, and while waiting for his deputies to bring Charlie Ludeker in, Gibbons decided to supplement his information on DeZeler and his late wife by calling the sheriff of the county in Wisconsin where they had previously lived, each of them married to other people. What Gibbons learned made him send Risedorph and Hedman back out again the moment they came in with Ludeker.
"Pick up Annette Jackson," he instructed them.
THEN, Gibbons turned to questioning Charlie Ludeker. He, too, repeated his earlier alibi that he hadn't seen Grace since two days before she disappeared. He admitted knowing the lakes area around Brainerd well, but his cabin was located many miles from there.
"You struck Mrs. DeZeler a number of times, didn't you?" Sheriff Gibbons suddenly shot out.
Ludeker flinched at that and looked embarrassed. "Yes, I did," he confessed. "But she asked me to. She wanted me to punish her for cheating on me. But I had nothing to do with her death. I loved her very much. That's all I can say."
Gibbons allowed Ludeker to return home, instructing him to keep himself in readiness for the authorities. Then, with a couple of lab technicians, he returned to the DeZeler residence. This time, the place was given a minute going over, and tiny specks of blood were found on the wall just above the bed, lending substance to the theory that the dead woman had been slain in bed while sleeping.
"What happened to the mattress and sheets from your wife's bed?" Sheriff Tommy Gibbons asked Arthur DeZeler.
"I don't know," he replied. "They disappeared when my wife did."
"I'd like you to come back to headquarters with me again," Gibbons said. "There's someone there I want you to meet."
Risedorph and Hedman, armed with a search warrant, were instructed to remain behind and continue the search of the house.
THE someone, of course, was Annette Jackson. Seated together in the sheriff's office, with Attorney Lynch present, Gibbons shot out, "Why didn't you tell me that Mrs. Jackson was your former wife, and not merely your landlady?" DeZeler hesitated, nervously. "I didn't think it was important," he mumbled. "Why bring Mrs. Jackson into this?"
"Because you've renewed your relationship with her, and that gives you a motive for murder, which you didn't have before," Gibbons said. "Take him out of here for a while," he instructed one of his men.
Alone with Annette Jackson, Gibbons snapped, "Why did you lie in saying that DeZeler got home at midnight that night?"
"I didn't lie," said the woman, sadly.
But Gibbons knew what he was talking about. One of his men had already learned from a neighbor that DeZeler's car had not been parked outside the house at all the night Grace disappeared, as it had been for many months since he had renewed his relationship with her. Constant hammering at her story finally began to wear the woman down, and she admitted, "Well, maybe it wasn't twelve. Maybe it was later. I'm not sure." It was a small break, but it was enough to start with.
Then, Deputies Risedorph and Hedman returned with something even more concrete — a blood-spattered monkey-wrench found underneath the tire compartment in the trunk of DeZeler's car.
"Here's another thing, too," said Risedorph. It was a photograph of a beautiful blonde named Millie Wheeler, who appeared to be about fifteen years younger than DeZeler. The picture had been found in a drawer in the suspect's room. It was autographed to him, with abundant appropriate endearments.
"Sure got around a lot, didn't he?" Gibbons remarked. "No wonder he was willing to put up with his wife's playing around. Get hold of that girl immediately and question her thoroughly."

[janitor]

NOW the crack in DeZeler's alibi began to widen, and the dam broke. Millie Wheeler readily admitted that she had been having an affair with DeZeler, and had been out with him on the night of his wife's disappearance, until some time around eleven o'clock. "He told me he had been at a football game earlier" she said. "Then we took a .drive, and we parked near his house in New Canada for awhile, and he said he had to see his wife. He came out in a few minutes, drove me home, and said he couldn't stay because he had to go to Brainerd that night on business." This last statement gave the lie to DeZeler's earlier assertion that he hadn't been near Brainerd in many months.
THE picture was still confusing, but Sheriff Gibbons and Attorney Lynch began to see it this way. It was DeZeler, himself, who had had the date with Grace the night she had vanished. The football game, and his date with Millie, and Annette Jackson's story were his alibis. He had stopped by the house while out with Millie, just to make sure Grace was home. He had called off his date with Grace and she had gotten undressed and had gone to bed'. Then he had returned later and killed her. He had taken her clothing along, and spent the night driving to Little Bass Lake and disposing of the body, her clothes and the bloody mattress, sheets and pillowcases. Evidently, he had decided against bringing Millie into the matter, feeling it would look worse for him if he did.
As proof, there was the bloody monkey-wrench—the weapon, and Annette Jackson's recent admission that DeZeler had not been at her house by midnight. Ultimately, more incriminating evidence was uncovered. Electric wire, identical to that used to anchor the body was found in the DeZeler basement, and at a building site a few lots away were found concrete blocks of the same type as had been tied to Grace DeZeler's dead body.
The motive was DeZeler's desire to get rid of his wife, Grace, to return to his ex-wife, Annette. It had appeared that his offer of divorce had been made out of his sympathy for Grace's new love, but his actual reason for it had been a desire for his own freedom. Grace's refusal to grant a divorce had led him to murder.
DeZeler had taken great pains in setting up his alibis, in committing the crime and in covering up afterward, but it was amazing how many obvious loopholes he had left.
Arthur DeZeler was found guilty of murder in the first degree on December 28, 1947, and was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Stillwater State Penitentiary.
NOTE: The names Charlie Ludeker, Annette Jackson, Sophie Borden and Millie Wheeler are fictitious to protect the identities of real persons innocently involved in this case.

CONFIDENTIAL DETECTIVE CASES
March 1957

[klompton]

Tommy once arrested Pa Barker of the famours Ma Barker and the Barker boys gang. I have a photo of Barker behind bars in Tommy's jail with Tommy standing there with him.

[janitor]

Tommy once arrested Pa Barker of the famours Ma Barker and the Barker boys gang. I have a photo of Barker behind bars in Tommy's jail with Tommy standing there with him.

Nice.

[GPater11093]

nice find janitor

was he a better detective or boxer

[janitor]

nice find janitor

was he a better detective or boxer

Tough call.

At his peak as a boxer he was arguably the No3 heavyweight in the world behind only Dempsey and Wills.

As a sheriff he did get a number of high profile arests and was re elected untill he was 68 and too old to serve further.

I guess that he got to a higher level as a boxer but enjoyed better longevity as a lawman.

[GPater11093]

nice analaysis of his 2 careers

only on esb can you have a guy saying

'I guess that he got to a higher level as a boxer but enjoyed better longevity as a lawman.'

btw im not disrespecting you Janitor i just think its kinda funny

[Boilermaker]

Tough call.

At his peak as a boxer he was arguably the No3 heavyweight in the world behind only Dempsey and Wills.

As a sheriff he did get a number of high profile arests and was re elected untill he was 68 and too old to serve further.

I guess that he got to a higher level as a boxer but enjoyed better longevity as a lawman.

I think he was underated as a law man. Imagine Gibbons v Earp at the OK coral. I think Gibbons takes him.

[janitor]

I think he was underated as a law man. Imagine Gibbons v Earp at the OK coral. I think Gibbons takes him.

Provided there are no guns involved my money would be on Gibbons.