Silas Jayne

[2]: p13 Jayne and his younger brothers, DeForest and Frank, and half-brother, George, were skilled horse trainers and riders, who owned and operated a number of stables in the Chicago area during the 1930s.The academy hosted the Elston Saddle Club which held an annual horse show and rodeo featuring the Jayne brothers and their students.[5]: p4 The Jayne brothers shipped feral horses from the Western United States by railroad to Woodstock, where they were herded through the streets to Frank's corral south of the city.[2]: p6 [6]: p5 In 1936, George Jayne began holding annual horse shows at his Sportsman's Riding Stables in Morton Grove, Illinois.In one case when he was losing in a horse show competition, Silas and his brothers beat the rider who was winning until he could no longer compete.He was not a made man of the Chicago Outfit, but his Idle Hour Stables were patronised by "Mad Sam" DeStefano and other prominent gangsters.[3]: pp185-186, 327 On October 18, 1955, the naked bodies of three young boys, John Schuessler, 13, his brother Anton Jr., 11, and their friend Robert Peterson, 14, were found in a ditch in the Robinson Woods Forest Preserve on the northwest side of Chicago.The boys had traveled from Jefferson Park to downtown Chicago to see Walt Disney Productions' The African Lion at the Loop Theater, 165 North State Street,[14] on the afternoon of October 16.Nearly forty years later, ATF agents investigating the 1977 disappearance of candy heiress Helen Brach were told by informants that Silas Jayne's former employee, Kenneth Hansen, had boasted of committing the murders at the Idle Hour Stables.It emerged that Hansen, who was 22-years-old at the time, had met Peterson and the Schuesslers while they were hitchhiking after having last been seen by a classmate at the Monte Cristo Bowling Alley on 3326 West Montrose, about eight miles from the Loop Theater.The original forensic investigators in the case believed that marks on the bodies had been caused by the floor mats of a Packard station wagon model that had been owned by both Hansen and Jayne in 1955.Hansen's conviction was overturned five years later on the grounds that the jury should not have heard prejudicial testimony regarding his frequent cruising the streets in search of boys to prey upon, whom he termed "chicken".Then when authorities requestioned Hanna, he told them that Blottiaux had borrowed a white 1960 Buick LeSabre from his lot on the day of the murder.[23] Ann Miller, 21, and her two friends Patricia Blough, 19, and Renee Bruhl, 19, vanished from Indiana Dunes State Park on July 2, 1966, a little more than a year after the murder of Cheryl Rude.The witnesses later spotted them conversing with an unidentified man sailing a white boat, 14-to-16-feet-long, with a blue cabin and an outboard motor.Investigators have explored the possibility that Blough, Miller and/or Bruhl may have witnessed the bomb that killed Cheryl Rude being planted.As Grod was walking into the courthouse, Silas Jayne's brother Frank handed him an article about a key witness in a criminal case being murdered.When called to testify, Grod had a sudden case of amnesia, stating under oath, "I can't even remember what I had for breakfast this morning.[28]: p10 Fearing more attacks, George Jayne hired Frank Michelle Sr., a former chief of police of Inverness, to provide security for his home and business.[3]: pp84-86 On October 28, 1970, George Jayne was fatally shot in the heart through a basement window in his Inverness home with family on his son's 16th birthday.Melvin Adams, a 37-year-old dishwasher from Posen, Illinois, became a suspect when he was spotted driving a red-and-white Ford with a license number beginning 936.In May 1971 George Jayne's widow, Marion, accompanied by Illinois State Police investigator David Hamm, offered $25,000 in cash to Melvin Adams as a reward for information.Adams and Barnes said that Edwin Nefeld, the chief of detectives at the Markham, Illinois police department, had been hired by Silas Jayne to assassinate George.[3]: pp348-349 On February 17, 1977, 65-year-old Helen Marie Voorhees Brach attended a scheduled checkup at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.[31] The flight crew could not recall anyone who matched Helen's description on the trip that day, despite Matlick's claim that he met her at O'Hare International Airport.Around Chicago, Bailey had a reputation as a con-artist who preyed on wealthy middle-aged ladies who had recently been widowed or divorced in order to defraud them of their money through poor horse investments.[32][33] Brach's brother was of the opinion that Matlick had murdered his sister without any involvement from Richard Bailey or horse racing racketeers.Plemmons' testimony prompted Bailey to request a fresh sentence hearing, claiming that the proof showed he was not responsible for Helen's abduction and that he should be freed from prison as a result.[40] However, in 2005, the court dismissed his appeal, concluding that the evidence was insufficient to support a reduction in his sentence and, in any event, did not disprove his involvement in Helen's murder.[41] In 2022, Bailey released a book with the Dorrance Publishing Company entitled Golden Tongue: The Innocent Man that Killed Her?