When Marlene “Mickey” Padfield, 17, of Lisbon, Iowa, disappeared on February 18, 1959, it was assumed she’d run away. There was a small notice in The Cedar Rapids Gazette the next day, then nothing for nearly two months. But that all changed on April 29 when the skeleton of a young woman was found on a section of timberland near Roy White’s farm.
White said his dogs walked up to him carrying
what looked like bones. When he checked, it was a human hand. He did a little
digging and found a skeleton lying on a nearby road. Apparently, the dogs dragged
it out of the timber.
Ethel Padfield, Marlene’s mother, identified
the remains by the blouse she was wearing and the color of her fingernail
polish. More of Marlene’s clothes turned up in May—her purse, a shoe, and her
underwear, but none of them helped detectives piece together what happened to
her. Her skirt turned up the following February, and pieces of her slip after
that.
A pathologist examined the remains but couldn’t
determine the cause of death because there wasn’t enough soft tissue left to
test. The skeleton didn’t provide any clues—there weren’t any broken bones or
other clues to show foul play.
Detectives spent the next few weeks piecing
together the girl’s life and last days.
Marlene was described as an attractive,
brown-haired girl who tried a little too hard to be popular during her junior
year. She had short hair above the ears, with curls up front—stood 5 foot four,
weighed 112 pounds, was smart, aggressively friendly, and wanted everyone to
like her.
She joined the band and acted in the school
play, “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay.” And then, six weeks into her senior
year, Marlene decided it was too much. School bored her, and she wasn’t
learning anything worthwhile, so she dropped out and ran through a string of
low-wage jobs, earning $28 to $32 a week. She worked as a waitress at several
restaurants, clerked at Mongomery Ward, then got a job as a bookkeeper at J
& T Radio and Television Repair.
Ethel Padfield dropped Marlene off at J & T
Radio and Television Repair in Cedar Rapids on February 18. She talked to her
daughter on the phone several times during the day, and said her daughter
planned to take the bus home.
When Marlene didn’t come home that night, she
assumed she stayed with friends. When Marlene didn’t show up for work the next
day, Ethel reported her missing. Her coat and sweater were found a few days
later near Big Creek Bridge on Mount Vernon Road.
Detectives checked the area but didn’t find any
signs of foul play, so they wrote Marlene off as another teenage runaway. Her
mom seemed to agree, saying Marlene wanted to be an actress, so she might have
run off to chase her dream.
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| A milkman remembered seeing Mercury parked by the road the night Marlene disappeared |
A few days after Marlene’s body was found, a milkman remembered seeing a parked car with someone sitting in it at about 5:30 a.m. on the morning of February 19. It was a two-tone, black and red Mercury with out-of-state plates. That was about three miles from where the body was found. The motor was running, and as he passed it; whoever was in the car held up a coat or blanket so he couldn’t see them. He thought little of it because that strip of roadway was known as the local lover’s lane. It wasn’t unusual to see parked cars or someone trying to hide their identity.
But when the skeleton was found, he contacted
Sheriff James Smith.
Three suspects surfaced as the investigation
progressed.
Marlene’s boyfriend, Gary McHugh, 22, spoke to
a Cedar Rapids Gazette reporter on May 5. He thought she had run
away and was ashamed to come home.
Besides, the relationship wasn’t really going
anywhere. McHugh thought Marlene wanted to get married, but he was looking for
something different. He gave some insight into Marlene’s character, though. He
thought she was lonely and didn’t have any friends.
The night she disappeared; they went to John
Harvey’s trailer to play cards. Harvey was her boss at J & T Radio and
Television. The game broke up about 10 p.m., and Harvey, 19, and his wife drove
Marlene and Gary into town. They dropped him at his house in Cedar Rapids and
were going to take Marlene back to their house, where she planned to spend the
night.
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| Arthur Scott dropped Marlene off outside the Kozy Inn in Cedar Rapids |
The next day, McHugh learned Harvey dropped Marlene off at the Kozy Inn, where she met up with Arthur Scott, 18, a student at Coe College.
Scott told detectives Marlene was upset and
wasn’t in “the right state of mind,” but didn’t explain what he meant by that.
They talked about a community theater production of “Inherit the Wind” that
Marlene wanted to act in.
They left the inn sometime between 12:15 and
12:30. Marlene headed east on First Avenue on foot. He got in his car and drove
home. That was the last Arthur Scott saw of her.
That turned out to be a lie.
Scott later admitted offering Marlene a ride
home. He said she got angry with him (for no reason) as they were driving, so
he stopped to let her out near the Armar Ballroom. The next day, he had
scratches on his face. When the police asked him to take a lie detector test,
he lawyered up and refused.
And then, a week after Marlene’s skeleton was found,
it looked like the case was solved. Johnny Lee Kohl, 24, confessed to killing
her. He was in jail in Davenport for assaulting a woman and was wanted in Cedar
Rapids for assaulting another woman there.
The Davenport police were sure Kohl was the
guy, but Sheriff James Smith discredited Kohl’s confession. He believed Kohl
was capable of committing the murder, but his story didn’t add up. The details
he gave about the time, location, and the crime scene didn’t match up with the
information the authorities had.
Kohl’s wife said her husband was with her the
entire day Marlene disappeared. He only confessed because he figured he had
nothing to lose. He was already looking at life in prison for several other
assaults, so one more charge couldn’t hurt him.
Marlene’s body was exhumed in late May so
investigators could conduct a more complete autopsy. Little information was
released, other than they were able to determine her blood type so they could
match it to a car suspected of being involved in the case. The lead apparently
went nowhere because nothing more was mentioned about it.
Gary McHugh and John Harvey passed lie detector
tests in early June and were ruled out as suspects. Arthur Scott lawyered up
and refused to talk, so detectives wrote him off. That made little sense,
because he was the last person to see Marlene Padfield alive. He had fresh
scratches on his face the day after she disappeared and a flimsy excuse to
explain them. He told detectives he fell in his home, and they let it go at
that.
Linn County Attorney Richard Nazette thought
Scott knew more than he was saying, but presumed his lawyer advised him not to
say anything so detectives would not be talking to him again.
Roy White's dog came walking up to him carrying a human hand
In July, Nazette said Marlene’s case looked like “one of those that would never be solved.”
And he was right. Over sixty years later,
Marlene Padfield’s murder is one of hundreds of Iowa cold cases.
Before you go ...
Stuff like this is what I always end up chasing—the little lines in old newspapers and magazines, the parts most books skip over.
I pulled a bunch of those stories together into Iowa Crime Time if you want more of it.
And if you just like reading this kind of thing, Buy me a Big Gulp / Support Retro Iowa
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