Sometimes the difference between life and death can be as simple as who walks out the door first. That was the case for Edward Kriz, 43, the owner of George’s Buffet, a tavern on Market Street in Iowa City. Kriz closed the tavern shortly after 1 a.m. on November 10, 1962, and headed next door to the Hamburg Inn for a late-night bite with his wife, Bernice, and employee Ralph Thomason.
After finishing their meal, the group left through the back door at around 1:45 a.m. Edward Kriz barely made it two steps out the door before a man wearing a Halloween mask opened fire. Kriz lurched forward, wrestling the man for the gun. Two more shots were fired before he crumpled to the ground.
The shooter fled north toward Bloomington and Gilbert Streets. A witness heard the shots, then saw a man running across Linn Street. He got into what looked like a foreign sports car and sped away.
Kriz was rushed to University Hospital, where he died less than an hour later.
The police believed the masked assailant had been planning to rob the Hamburg Inn, but was startled and reacted violently when Kriz emerged from the back door. A policeman remarked, “Ed was just in the right place at the wrong time.” Whoever walked out first would have been the target.
 |
| Edward Kriz walked out the back door of the Hamburg Inn, into the path of a killer |
Bernice Kriz said the shooter was 17 or 18 years old, stood 5’6”, weighed about 150 pounds, and had dark hair and dark eyes. During the struggle, the mask was pushed up, allowing her to see the man’s face, so she got a good look at him.
Iowa City Police Lieutenant Charles Snider told reporters, “I think we’ve got a desperate kid on our hands.”
A few days later, on November 14, police arrested Robert Schneider, 18, and charged him with murder and robbery with aggravation for the holdup of Shannon’s Supper Club in North Liberty.
Schneider had had a previous run-in with the law. He was free on bench parole after robbing a service station in Coralville the previous year while still a high school senior.
County attorney Ralph Neuzil said Schneider fit the general description of Kriz’s killer and the robber at Shannon’s. He noted four similarities between the two cases:
·
The assailant
didn’t speak.
·
He wore a
mask.
·
He carried a
.45 caliber pistol.
· He seemed trigger-happy.
There were also differences. Kriz’s killer wore a Halloween mask, while the robber at Shannon’s used a silk stocking to cover his face. The robber at Shannon’s fired into the air but didn’t shoot anyone, while he shot and killed Edward Kriz without provocation outside the Hamburg Inn.
A key piece of evidence linking Schneider to Kriz’s murder was a button found in a pool of blood where Kriz fell. It matched a coat the police found in a search of Schneider’s parents’ home. The search also turned up a Halloween mask. The only thing missing was the gun. The prosecution would have had a slam-dunk if it had been found.
Schneider denied any
involvement in either crime but admitted writing the note handed to the
bartender at Shannon’s. He told authorities he wrote it a long time ago for his
friend, Glen Evans, and believed it was a joke.
 |
| Edward Kriz was shot while grappling with the robber for control of the gun |
Schneider also admitted to buying a .45 caliber pistol from Evans but wouldn’t say what happened to it. On the witness stand, Evans denied both claims.
On December 14, a Johnson
County grand jury indicted Schneider for Kriz’s murder and the robbery at
Shannon’s Supper Club. The judge ordered him held without bond on the murder
charge and set a $10,000 bond for the robbery.
Despite the indictment, the case unraveled quickly. In January 1963, a jury found Schneider innocent of robbing Shannon’s after witnesses failed to positively identify him. And then, on February 15, County Attorney Neuzil dropped the murder charge against Schneider, citing insufficient evidence. The bloody button the prosecution pinned its case on—mysteriously disappeared from the FBI lab in Washington, D.C. Without it, prosecutors couldn’t link Schneider to the crime scene.
Neuzil explained dropping the charge left room to reopen the case should fresh evidence surface later. If the case went to trial now and Schneider was acquitted, he couldn’t be tried again.
In May 1964, Judge Clair Hamilton revoked Schneider’s bench parole for an incident at the Swisher Dance Hall. He sentenced Robert Schneider to serve out his ten-year term at the Anamosa Men’s Reformatory.
Edward Kriz’s murder
remains unsolved to this day.
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